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capnjay21 · 4 years ago

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A House is Never Still 5/6

Five years ago, Emma Swan disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Killian Jones’ disappearance, well, not so mysterious – given the denizens of Storybrooke all but blamed him for her murder. Drawn back to town by a series of strange events, he soon realises the story of what really happened the night she vanished is beginning to unravel, and what’s more: it isn’t over.

A/N: this week really got away from me - but here is chapter five! some answers are finally upon us, as we rattle towards the story's conclusion. thank you so so so much for everyone’s support, and as ever I send many large buckets and spades of thanks to @hollyethecurious for this glorious aesthetic - which, really, made the fic write itself. enjoy!

Rating: T

Warnings: mentions of suicide, canonical character death, and some Spooky Business™.

Continuing the tiny taglist I started last time - but if you want off this list, just let me know and I promise I will not be offended! <3 <3 and if anyone happens to want on the list for the last part, just give me a buzz!

@snowbellewells @carpedzem @kmomof4 @optomisticgirl

AO3 | one | two | three | four

-/-

5 - ghosts were created

October 25th 2014 – 5 Years Ago

She managed to catch David, Regina and Mary Margaret before they headed home after school, and drew them around the back of the building in order to afford some privacy. First, Emma had shown them the dagger, and then she had told them about the visit she and Killian had paid to Belle Gold. Then finally, and she had hoped Killian would forgive her for doing so, she had filled in some of the gaps in their knowledge surrounding the circumstances of Liam Jones’ suicide – the house, the papers, stuff they might have been too young to fully realise when it happened. And the fact that, some weeks before he died, he had been exploring the possibility of something more… supernatural making itself known within Brooke House. Something that the existence of the dagger might now lend far greater credence to.

Her fingertips tingled with the strange truth of it all.

Magic existed, and Emma did not know how much that changed the world.

They had been silent for a long time, exchanging doubtful looks that Emma understood but did not care for, but when it became clear she wasn’t going to jump up and shout ‘just kidding!’, David was the first to speak up.

“This is crazy, you know that, don’t you? You know this is crazy.”

“I know how it sounds,” she said, willing herself to look as sincere as possible. “And without the dagger I’d have written it all off as completely mad.” She gestured to the aforementioned implement, sitting on the ground between the four of them. None of them seemed to want to touch it.

“How did you find the dagger?” Mary Margaret asked.

Emma felt her cheeks warm, and thought about how she had found herself back at Brooke House last night. None of it was clear in her memory, just vague flashes of feeling, and it was a struggle to try and muddle through the fog. When she had awoken in her room she had been tired and groggy, and it certainly felt like she had been up half the night – but the truth was she just couldn’t know for sure if that strange, breathless walk by midnight was something she had imagined. Whatever had happened, stumbling about the woods at night in her pyjamas made her an idiot, so she had already decided she would be leaving that detail out.

“I left something at the house yesterday,” she said, avoiding a lie. “I went back for it after we’d all left, and I found it there.”

David had been for dinner at Mary Margaret’s house – there was nothing to suggest anything otherwise had happened.

Regina stalked forward and reached down for the dagger, whipping it off the ground with speed; to her surprise, Emma felt herself almost lunging forward to stop her before she stayed the movement. The callous handling of the dagger was suddenly so distressing to her. She forced herself to stay put, and let Regina carry on her examination. She traced the tip of a perfectly manicured finger over the grooves where Liam’s name had been carved into it.

“Alright, say it’s true,” she declared imperiously, eyes snapping onto Emma. David made to protest and Regina silenced him by raising a hand. “Say all of it is true. That there’s something going on with that house, and that it has something to do with how Liam died. If so, then why on earth are we messing around with the same stuff? If it’s all connected, surely following directly in his footsteps is a way to get us all dead at the bottom of that ravine.”

She flinched at the harshness of her words, but could understand the sentiment. Emma had been turning the same thought over in her mind the entire day – these were clearly forces beyond their understanding, maybe even beyond their control. So she decided to reveal one final detail.

“The truth is…” Emma began reluctantly. God, she hoped Killian would forgive her for saying this. “They never found a body. Liam’s body, I mean. There was enough evidence to suggest he had definitely been in the car, enough to rule out any reasonable doubt. And the river down there is aggressive, so the consensus was that it was probably swept out to sea. But they never actually found anything.”

Killian had told her this once, quietly. Had whispered it into the air when they were thirteen, as if he had just wanted to see how it would sound to admit out loud that, sometimes, he imagined it meant Liam was still alive.

Regina’s eyes dropped warily to the dagger in her hands. Liam Jones, it still said. As if worried she might meet a similar fate, she carefully laid it back on the ground and stepped away.

“What if this means that not only was Liam not crazy, but it could mean… well, I don’t have to spell it out.”

She didn’t want to say it, because to give it a voice would make it sound ludicrous and outrageous and would probably make them all give up on the idea, herself included. The others felt the same, she could sense it, but they were also all thinking the same thing.

What if it meant that something else had happened to Liam Jones? That maybe, and there was the slimmest chance for it, but it was there all the same – that Killian’s most fervent, irrational hope might be true. That he was still alive.

“Then we have to try.”

Emma was surprised to see it was Mary Margaret who had spoken, but felt immensely relieved to hear it. She had been sure the other girl would be the hardest to persuade.

David almost looked alarmed. “You believe all this?”

“I don’t know what I believe,” she said, and Emma could see doubt still marred her expression. “But I know what I hope, for Killian. If there’s any chance… we owe it to him to do this.”

Emma agreed wholeheartedly. “Exactly.”

Trying to summon some kind of evil spirit, or demon, or whatever she had felt inside that house may not be exactly what they wanted to do, but whether it succeeded or not, whether it was real or not, helping Killian was more important than any of that. Best case scenario, they discovered something important, something that changed theirs and Killian’s lives forever. Worst case scenario, it might stop Killian wondering. It might bring him some form of closure.

Emma picked up the dagger, and the metal felt warm to the touch. Welcoming. As if it were telling her to believe this would work, in the best way that they all wanted. It strengthened her resolve.

David and Regina exchanged looks, but they also agreed.

Which was what brought them later to the end of the gravel driveway of the group home, after Emma had asked Archie if Killian was around to come outside and join them. It still felt somewhat odd, even after a year had passed, to be knocking on the front door to the group home and behaving like a guest. In a lot of ways it still was her home, Archie’s kindly smile still her welcome, the redbrick walls the backdrop to her life. It was here she had experienced most of the formative moments of her life.

Although she cared very deeply for both David and Ruth, and was grateful for everything they had done for her, the quietly realised truth in her heart was that they had come a little too late.

Killian looked bewildered as they all recounted what they had decided eagerly, talking over each other in their enthusiasm to let him know they were here, they wanted to help, they’d do whatever he needed them to. He took the dagger from Emma as if in a daze, tracing the letters of his brother’s name faintly, but tenderly.

“You’d do this?” he said finally, still uncertain. “For me?”

“Of course,” Regina replied smoothly, as if just an hour earlier she hadn’t been voicing her own, significant doubts. “We’re your friends.”

“We’re in this together,” David agreed. “But you definitely have Emma to thank.”

Emma felt her face flush when he turned his gaze on her, and memories of their time spent at Granny’s on her birthday swam to the surface. He was looking at her like she’d hung the stars.

That wasn’t it at all – she’d just found the dagger, nothing more. Killian had done all the legwork. She was just stitching the fragments together.

His lips parted, and she had a sudden urge to stop him as she felt he might say something horrendously heartfelt and embarrassing in front of the others, so she spoke over him quickly.

“You can thank me later,” she said briskly, flashing him a smile. “But we’ve got to catch ourselves a demon first.”

They agreed on the following night, Thursday, as they didn’t have school on Friday thanks to a local holiday. After they parted ways, Killian keeping a tight hold of the dagger, Emma felt a certain buoy in her step but she couldn’t really work out why – it was that powerful sense of doing, of really getting ready to achieve something for a friend that had her so motivated.

David teased her about it, but she let him. Her mind was already on tomorrow evening, and the secrets they might uncover in the walls of Brooke House.

-/-

Present Day

Killian – Killian, don’t –!

Killian jerked himself back to the present.

When David had asked to meet him he couldn’t help the surge of relief within him; it hadn’t done much for his already troubled mind to remain at odds with the other man, especially not when he was one of the few people in Storybrooke who didn’t actively shoot poison at him through their eyes whenever they passed him on the street. He knew his continued association with Regina couldn’t have gone unnoticed, nor their frequent trips out into the forest while they visited Brooke House. They had spent a few days with their full, combined efforts on the house, but had turned up nothing.

Unless he was alone, Emma refused to make her presence known. With every passing day, Regina’s scepticism that there was anything to be found in Brooke House continued to grow, and he knew he was running out of time.

He had promised the dark, moonlit vision of Emma that he would help her escape Brooke House; she had begun instructing him immediately. She suggested herbs to burn and in which order, phrases to be spoken aloud and the intention with which they should be uttered, and Killian had begun slipping some of these practices into he and Regina’s attempts, passing them off as something he had learnt while he was away. What the spectre of the house did not realise was that he fully intended to release Emma – his Emma, and her alone. He was sure she was in there, she just had to be. The only thing left to figure out was how to get her out, and weakening some of the enchantments around the house had to play a part in that. So for now, their goals somewhat aligned.

David had asked to meet by the lake in Memorial Park, and Killian had arrived a good ten minutes early. It was only because his plan for the morning had been for naught – on a whim, and because it was nearby, he had decided to visit the group home. He wasn’t exactly sure why. Mostly, he felt like the person he wanted to speak to most was Archie Hopper, and although he had been hoping he might run into him around town by an act of providence, it was yet to occur.

Archie’s counsel hadn’t always been something welcome to Killian. He had been a stable enough figure in his teenage years, when stability had been the thing he lacked most in the world, but after Emma’s disappearance Killian had forced a gulf between them as wide as he could muster. He hadn’t wanted to look at Archie’s kind, sad face any longer, and he had vehemently rejected any attempts of comfort, or wisdom, when all he had wanted was to be angry that the world was not done taking people from him.

They had spent much of the year on bad terms, but had departed on worse. Their final argument after Killian announced his plans to leave town the evening following graduation had been full of vitriol and spite – all stemming from himself. Archie had wanted him to stay, to grow, to move past his personal tragedies and face those who condemned him. Killian had wanted to disappear. With reluctance, the older man had let him go – but the worst of it was that this had only made more concrete his younger self’s belief that nobody would fight for him anymore, not even Archie.

With age he could see the affection Archie had borne for him for what it was – genuine, and without conditions. He had been able to feel his heart pounding as he raised a knuckle to the old wooden door of the group home, anxious at the idea of meeting him again, of giving the apology he knew to be long overdue.

He needn’t have fretted. The social worker at the door informed him, rather tersely, that Archie had moved on some years ago and no longer worked there. Perhaps his disappointment had shown rather more clearly than he intended, as the young woman took pity on him and told him that the last she had heard he had moved to Portland, but even that information might now be outdated. She offered to see if a forwarding address had been left for him, but Killian assured her it was fine, and thanked her for her trouble.

His heart felt like a lead weight. There was so much he had wanted to say, and he was sure he might never get the chance to now. To clear his head he had taken a few turns around the park, but like everywhere else in Storybrooke it was drenched in memories of Emma, sweet and sad, of water fights on the grass or climbing trees as tall as their younger bodies could manage.

Before long, he found himself at the edge of the lake, awaiting David’s arrival. The afternoon was brisk, and he was regretting his decision not to wear gloves as his fingers felt brittle and slow, now curled up in the pockets of his jacket. The sky had turned a bruised grey, and the surrounding forest left the surface of the water the murky colour of moss, disturbed only by the occasional ripple of wildlife or the breeze brushing across it.

“Hey.”

Killian turned and found David striding towards him, a look of trepidation clear on his face. David had always worn all of his emotions on his sleeve. They exchanged a few awkward pleasantries, but it didn’t take long for David to jump to the heart of the matter.

“I’m sorry I blew up at you,” he said quickly. “It was unfair.”

“You don’t need to apologise,” Killian assured him. “You were right – I haven’t been here. I should have been more sensitive to how much things had changed.”

For a moment he thought about the first few months of their senior year, before it all happened. The five of them had been thick as thieves. Killian and Regina had always been friendly due to a shared acerbic sense of humour, but it wasn’t until Emma had brought David and Mary Margaret into their lives that he had really, truly begun to think of anyone else other than Emma as a close friend.

Killian could almost see them now, clustered in a circle at the end of the driveway of the group home, telling him in no uncertain terms that they’d like to give summoning a demon a go, just because friendship didn’t need any other excuses.

“I know you don’t care for Regina much anymore, but she’s been really helpful.” He let out a long breath. “Still has the emotional capacity of a lawnmower, but in her own way I think she’s been looking for Emma all this time.”

Looking for magic, looking for purpose, perhaps. To Killian it was all the same thing.

“We tried to be there for her, after her dad died,” David shrugged, but he clearly carried some remorse over it. “She didn’t want to know.”

That didn’t surprise him. She had only been nineteen, and she had become distant enough after Emma disappeared, even to him. With a twinge of regret he considered that perhaps his sudden up and leaving after graduation didn’t do much for her ability to rely on others, not that she would ever admit it. Just one more thing he’d done wrong that year.

They started walking, catching up properly in a way they hadn’t had a chance to since Killian came back to town. David talked about his job at the animal shelter, where old schoolmates had ended up, how Ruth was faring. Killian coasted over the harsher details, but tried to give David a similar recount of what he had been doing with himself over the past five years. It mostly consisted of travel stories, of the odder jobs he had picked up on the road in order to keep himself afloat. He didn’t want to talk about living hand to mouth, of the multitude of nights he had spent freezing and sleeping fitfully in his car, or the reasons he had chosen certain places to visit, and their penchant towards the supernatural. It was easier to pick the funnier things to talk about, and he sensed David knew he wasn’t telling the whole story, but probably preferred it that way.

After a little while, when they had almost exhausted every other curiosity, Killian finally decided to bring it up.

“Do you want to come?” he asked, gently. “To Brooke House?”

David’s steps faltered, and Killian could see his eyebrows had knitted together in concern.

He swallowed. “Is – is she –?”

“She’s there,” Killian admitted, even if he hadn’t done the same for Regina. David had seen her, after all. A troubled mix of joy and trepidation overcame David’s expression, a smile threatening to pull at the corners of his mouth, and although Killian hated to pull the rug from under him, he didn’t think it would be fair to give him false hope. “She’s… not herself. But I think you know that.”

David deflated instantly.

“So it’s – it’s what I thought, then. It’s not really her. Emma. It’s just… that house.”

Killian had found himself wondering the same thing. “I’m not sure. I’m investigating, Regina is helping me.” He hesitated, but decided to offer again. “Do you want to come?”

Emma had been special to David in ways far different to Killian. Killian may have shared a roof with Emma for many more years than David had, but he was under no illusion as to what his true feelings for Emma had been – David’s had been much more fraternal. The idea of not being able to protect her had hit him particularly hard, even if Emma had only ever indulged his strong sense of brotherly vigilance with an arched eyebrow.

It would be difficult for him to see her as she was now; fragile, unhinged. Twisted. It was why Killian had initially wanted him as far from it all as possible.

To his surprise, David actually agreed with him.

“No, I – I don’t, really,” he said, wincing as if he were afraid Killian might be cross. How could he be, when he understood better than anyone? “I want to remember her the way she was. I don’t want this to…”

He trailed off. Killian tried to look as understanding as possible, to assure him it was all perfectly fine. From the miserable look David was giving him, he wasn’t sure he succeeded.

“I should never have called you,” he muttered with dismay, “and put you through all this again. I brought you right back into it.”

Killian smiled ruefully. “The truth is, David, I never really left it.”

For a long while they were silent, only the rustling of trees surrounding them, and Killian felt that even the chirping of birds sounded morose and downcast.

It was difficult to find reasons to stay cheerful.

“Let me take you somewhere,” David said finally. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to show you.”

Seeing no reason not to, he allowed David to take the lead. He led them farther into Memorial Park, and Killian realised with reluctance that he was taking them in the direction of the old chapel behind the Convent of the Sisters of Saint Meissa. He wasn’t too thrilled about it, not just because of the unhappy association with Belle Gold that the convent reminded him of, but also because he had a strong inkling of why he was being brought here, and he didn’t much care for it.

Following David past the chapel, his sense of foreboding only grew as they began to walk cautiously among the headstones of the graveyard, many weathered with age and moss as if they had sprouted from the ground themselves. After they had passed a tall statue of a woman cradling her face in her hands, David slowed to a stop and turned.

Killian froze. From where he stood, he could see only the back of the headstone. The stone was light, an unremarkable, opalescent grey, unmarked by time. It was impossible to see whose name had been engraved across it without closing the distance between he and David and turning around, but it was also impossible to imagine it being for anyone else.

Killian stood, stranded between it being her and not being her, and felt a weary agitation begin to rise in his gut.

“I – can’t.”

David seemed to understand, for he didn’t beckon him any closer.

It was odd, Killian felt, that David could not bear to see Emma alive, but at Brooke House – and yet Killian could not bear to think of her dead, at peace, in the earth.

“We had a service, just a little while after graduation,” he said, quietly, crouching down in front of the stone. “When they officially closed the investigation. I didn’t want to, it felt like… but I agreed for Mom, you know?”

Ruth had taken Emma’s disappearance almost as hard as Killian had. Certainly as hard as Archie had, and Killian had done nothing but punish him for it.

“I wanted to invite you. I would have invited you.” The hurt in his tone was unmistakable. “I had no idea where you were or how to contact you.”

A full year had passed by the time Killian tried to touch base with his friends from Storybrooke – he had bought a phone, and texted David the number. By then he had missed the death of Regina’s father, and whatever event had finally made the gulf between her, Mary Margaret and David unbridgeable. Truly, he was relieved. Killian didn’t have the heart to tell him just how vehemently an invitation to a funeral service for Emma would have been rejected.

He said nothing.

“It might help,” David suggested. “To see it.” He reached out the tip of his fingers to gently trace the words, gaze flickering up to where Killian stood a few feet away. Killian shook his head tightly. “Maybe it would be better if we all just let go.”

Killian struggled with his reply, forcing down the wave of indignation that came with the suggestion. “I appreciate what you’re trying to say, Dave. But I can’t. If roles were reversed, Emma would never have let go of me.”

She didn’t, in fact, when Killian had been nothing more than a ghost himself. Twelve-years-old and she had clung on tight.

David acquiesced, but he did not look like he agreed.

They waited for a little while, breathing between the whistle of birdsong, remembering. Then David stood, and wordlessly they began the slow walk back into the park. Killian left the headstone unread.

In his fractured heart, there was nothing else but her. There was no other choice.

-/-

October 29th – 10 Years Ago

Killian’s new room was cold.

The group home was much airier than the little flat he had shared with Liam, which had been only a small bedroom attached to a sitting room. They had just one window, and in the summer it had been unbearably hot; he had spent many an hour sat miserably in front of the cheap fan Liam had picked up from a convenience store, begging for fall. When they moved in Liam had insisted Killian take the only bedroom while he slept in the sitting room, which Killian did not envy in the balmier evenings.

By contrast, the group home was all flat edges and cold surfaces. The corridors were so wide you could fit three people standing abreast, and footfalls against the landing echoed noisily against the walls of the building. This room he also had to himself, but it felt too big. Another empty bed rested against the opposite wall, a reminder that at some point, this space would be shared – it wasn’t really his. Not the way his room in Liam’s flat had been. He didn’t want to unpack his suitcase. It would be like admitting that all his worldly possessions belonged here now, where someone else could pick them up and touch them whenever they liked.

He missed Liam.

He missed Liam so much, he could feel hot, angry tears begin to well in his eyes every time he thought about it.

Curling his knees up to his chest, Killian took a steady breath and tried not to cry. They wanted him to go back to school on Monday, and he didn’t think he could make it through seventh grade if everyone thought he was the kind of kid that cried.

There was a sharp, abrupt knock at the door. The impatient rapping of knuckles against old wood. Killian hurriedly wiped his eyes, but the visitor didn’t wait for him to invite them in. He supposed he might have to get used to that.

In tumbled a girl with blonde hair and bright green eyes, who he knew took one look at his red-rimmed eyes and decided immediately to pretend she didn’t realise he was crying, by marching over to his window and looking out. Even this act of compassion made him burn with humiliation, piss off, he wanted to scream, he didn’t need their pitying looks. He didn’t want their kindness.

He just wanted Liam back.

The girl whirled around, and to his consternation she was smiling like she was in on the joke.

“Another banner year, right?”

Killian blinked. “What?”

“We’ve all got ghosts here.”

At the mention of ghosts Killian bristled, his mind flashing back to the headline on the newspaper in Archie’s office. The man had tried to hide it once he realised Killian was staring, but he had seen it. The social workers had told him Liam wasn’t well, and that was why he had done it. Killian knew he had been perfectly well, and that the rest of the town thought he was completely mad and believed in ghosts and thought that was why he had decided to do it. Killian didn’t know either way. He just wished he hadn’t done it.

Killian directed the cold fury that headline had ignited in him at the intruder. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No,” she said shortly, and she looked offended at the idea. She looked familiar to Killian, and he had a feeling she was in his grade at school – he thought he might’ve seen Regina speaking to her a few times. Regina was the only sort-of friend he had made so far in Storybrooke. Sort-of, because he felt like they weren’t really friends, so much as aware of the fact that no one else really wanted to be their friend, so they may as well stick together.

Killian didn’t care about Regina right now. He just wanted this girl to bugger off, and for him to get Liam back.

“I’m just saying, we’ve all got tragic backstories in here. No one will be all that bothered by yours by Tuesday.”

This was not all that reassuring. The idea of Liam fading into memory made him feel even more wretched.

“What’s yours then?” he said, rather nastily. Mostly because he wanted her to go.

His tone didn’t phase her in the slightest. Instead she dropped on the opposite bed and ticked them off on her fingers one-by-one, as if they were a grocery list.

“Parents abandoned me by the side of the freeway when I was a baby, got carried to the nearest diner but the boy who brought me in vanished three months later, got adopted by a family until I was three but then they had kids of their own so they took me back.” She grinned wryly. “Thank God they still had the receipt, right?”

Killian eyed her warily; she spoke with the sort of nonchalance that suggested she would allow him to make fun of her the same way she was making fun of herself, but it was also completely transparent. It was obvious these experiences were painful for her, even to talk about as a joke. And from the sounds of it she’d been living in a group home all of her life. Her whole life in big, cold rooms like this. The thought of it made Killian balk.

Despite himself, he felt a twinge of sympathy for her. For both her determined eyes and her bravado, too. He knew what that was like.

“What are you doing?”

“Talking,” the girl replied, giving him an odd look. “With you, I thought.”

“Why?” he demanded.

She shrugged. Killian didn’t remember if he’d seen her with any friends at school, all he could really remember were those few nebulous occasions she had spoken to Regina around him. He didn’t know her name, which definitely meant she wasn’t friends with the bigger, more boisterous groups in his class. That was okay, though. He didn’t particularly care for them either.

There was only one thing Liam had wanted out of him at school. It didn’t matter what grades he got, or whether he was good at sports or got involved in clubs. All Liam had ever made him commit to was being kind.

And the last thing he had said to Liam had venom enough to last for the rest of his life.

I’m not finished, his brother had barked, don’t you walk away from me.

If he had known it would be the last time – which, Killian had learnt, was what made last times so devastating, you never really knew when they would be – he might not have slammed his bedroom door and refused to come out.

But who could say, now?

Thinking about Liam had the same affect it had for the last few weeks – it was like a punch to the gut. He could feel the frustration that had started building since they put him in that room begin to ebb away, feeling much calmer in a matter of moments.

Kindness, that was all Liam had asked for. That wasn’t so hard, was it?

“What’s your name?” he asked.

The change in tack cheered her up immensely and she grinned. “Emma.”

Emma, right. Yeah, he remembered now. Emma sat right at the back of class, near Leroy. Definitely one of the least desirable seats in the room.

“I’m Killian.”

Something easier settled between them, but it didn’t completely assuage the awkwardness. Killian felt tired. He stared at his suitcase, still zipped tightly shut, and he still wasn’t really ready to make it otherwise. He could sense Emma following his gaze.

“So,” she said brightly, to draw his attention away. “Do you wanna know where Archie hides the good snacks?”

After a moment’s hesitation Killian relented, and when she bounded over to the door he followed suit.

Somehow, the prospect of going back to school on Monday seemed just a little less daunting. Maybe, he thought privately, he could ask if Emma wanted to sit by him instead.

That would be nice.

-/-

Present Day

“That’s it,” Regina declared glumly. “That’s the last spell I have in here. We have officially tried everything that might be relevant.”

The air was scented distinctly by a combination of cedar and sweetgrass, thick enough that Killian could feel it catching in the back of his throat. He flapped a hand in front of his face, suppressing a cough, and reached for the bottle of water he had brought with him. The haze had started to rise into the high ceiling, and Killian could spot it escaping through a gap in the brickwork where a roof slate had come loose near the top corner of the room. In his opinion, Regina had somewhat overdone it on the herbs; she had a tendency to rely on the more physical ingredients required, and actually ignored the fact that she did appear to have a natural instinct for the craft.

It was normal, he supposed, for somebody trying to dip their feet into something as intangible as the mystique, to try and ground themselves in more physical expressions of it – but she didn’t need to. Not that she would welcome his advice.

Besides, he was somewhat put out by her announcement. “Everything?”

“Short of getting down on my knees and begging, yes, everything.”

Killian snorted. “Now that would be real magic.”

It had been a week already, and nothing had changed. Whenever Regina was inside it, Brooke House remained vacant, a gaping wound they kept determinedly placing themselves inside, suggesting nothing at all beyond brick and rotted wood and revealing even less. To every suggestion or provocation they made, the answer was only silence, and Killian could already see Regina losing hope. Either in her own abilities or in the idea that there was anything to find, he couldn’t be sure, but neither boded well for continuing their efforts.

Privately, Emma goaded him into bringing the dagger to the house. Every night she coaxed and cajoled, only to rage and curse once she realised he had not brought it – he daren’t, not yet. Unknowingly, Regina had helped him loosen the chokehold the spirit claimed the house held on it, and the final step was bringing her the dagger.

The way Killian saw it, the looser the hold, the nearer to the surface Emma must be.

But nothing they tried looked like it had made any impact. Every night, Emma was the same. Beguiling and capricious, aggressive and cold. And he was running out of time.

“There has to be something else,” he insisted, stepping across the room to where Regina had left her book of shadows and began flipping through the pages.

Irked, Regina stepped over to join him. “You’re right, why would I know all the options in my own book?” she scowled, peering over his shoulder at whichever page happened to be open. “Why don’t we try that fertility spell and see what happens? I’ll get the pinecones, shall I?”

“Very funny.”

“I mean it, Killian. That’s it. There’s nothing else in here worth trying.” When Killian still looked chagrined, Regina’s expression softened. She laid a hand on his arm. “Do you really think I’d hold anything back if it were for Emma?”

Resigning, Killian shook his head. He let out a long breath. “I just don’t like dead ends.”

“Neither do I. But have you considered we are not the problem?”

The air felt too thick. The herbs had mixed with the musty smell of the old furniture and left a stench in the air like something unpleasant had congealed, or gone rotten. Deciding he needed to get something a little fresher in his lungs, and feeling oddly like he didn’t want this conversation to be observed by the walls of the house, Killian gestured for her to follow him out of the front door.

The afternoon was beginning to shift from a light coolness to something much colder, the forest a palette of dappled light through a deep, copper canvas. From the outside, Brooke House looked like it always did. Silent. Daring. Even without their history together, it begged to be explored.

“I’ve always wondered,” he said lowly, watching the house with a critical eye, “why Liam got involved in all of this in the first place.”

Without Liam, they would never have started down this path. The house, Belle Gold, the rotted pieces of orange string tied around the peeling skin of old birch trees. Killian reached for one nearby, picking absently at the knot, hardened through time and years of ill treatment by the elements.

“He was restoring the house,” Regina offered cautiously. “That’s what everyone says.”

He had certainly begun that way – you could tell that much just by looking at the work he had started on the far wall of the sitting room.

“But then why the rest of it? Why did he go to see Belle?”

“Maybe he found the same picture you did – he could’ve just wanted to know more about the house.”

The same questions and the same answers he had cycled through hundreds, thousands of times before, once again began the lap around his consciousness. Brooke House had taken so much already and he still understood so little about it. There was the dagger, for one. Emma’s name was on the dagger now, and that twisted, dark vision of her in the house was what remained, with his Emma buried deep inside.

Liam’s name had been on the dagger once, back before Emma had disappeared. Could that mean –?

No. Liam had been in the car. He’d been over this a hundred times; they said the evidence was incontrovertible. He’d been in the car that crashed into the river even if they never found his body.

Even if once, quietly, he had admitted to Emma that sometimes he imagined that meant he was still alive – somehow.

And say they were all wrong; if Liam wasn’t in the car and had ever been like Emma was now, why didn’t he appear before?

But Liam’s name had been on that dagger. And he was only just scratching the surface on what that might mean.

Killian scrubbed a hand over his chin thoughtfully.

“Gold – Belle’s husband – she said he went to Brooke House because he knew there was a power inside it, and he wanted it. To… possess it, I suppose. And that’s ultimately why he disappeared.” There was power inside it, certainly. And Killian didn’t doubt its ability to lure someone out of their homes, their lives, and seduce them with the promise of something more. “But Liam wasn’t like that.”

But Liam, but Liam, but Liam.

Killian had never been able to reconcile the two motives in his mind. Gold wanted to control the spirit, but what had Liam wanted? He had done all the work for them with regard to summoning the demon; he had doodled the key elements to the ritual on an old piece of paper and had stuffed it in his toolbox. Killian could see the scribbled note as clearly as if it were still in his hand. Salt circle. Curvy dagger. Five points. Where had he gotten all this from? And what did he want from it?

And after all of that, the same question hammered against his skull with ever pressing urgency. It had been ten years since Liam Jones had driven his car over the edge of the ravine, but Killian could still barely restrain himself from hurling his head back and screaming until the heavens gave him an answer.

Why?

Why did he do it?

The gaunt face of Emma Swan from that first night swam before him, promising to give him every answer he had ever asked for, in exchange for her freedom. Maybe the only thing left was to give it to her, and damn the consequences. It might, for one sparing second, finally quiet all the tumult that had lived within him for far too long. Put the ghosts to rest.

Get Emma back.

“The darkness is seductive,” Regina said, but Killian had already forgotten what he had said before it. “Even for the kindest of souls.”

So good of you to come and see me.

“Come on,” he said, after a long moment, “let’s just go get our stuff.”

It was with great reluctance that they gathered their things back in the sitting room. Killian packed away each piece of his equipment with greater care than necessary, slowing down the process enormously. Regina seemed to mirror his sentiment as she started to needlessly take inventory of every herb or crystal she had brought with her, and which of them she was expecting to take back. She even decided to pack away the old scarlet scarf that had been there since the house had returned, and lifted the Ouija board from the ground. Killian knew why.

She was not planning to come back.

It felt right, somehow, to remove all evidence of their ever having been there, even as Killian’s heart began to feel heavy at the prospect. He already knew he would be returning tonight, and he would bring the dagger, finally. Only sights unseen could decide what happened now.

“Killian.”

It was quiet, but sharp. For a moment Killian didn’t register that Regina had spoken, until he looked over his shoulder and saw her staring, frozen, at the darkest wall, the one opposite the front window. The one Liam had abandoned his work on all that time ago, where he had pulled part of the wallpaper away and begun scrubbing at the dirt underneath.

It was not the curling, rotted sheet of wallpaper that Regina was looking at now, but the bared wood panelling that had rested underneath it. Killian knew this because there was something there now that had not been there before.

Written in bold, spiky letters on the wall in some kind of permanent marker, was the word COME.

Killian’s heart began to pound. As he rose hesitantly to his feet, he could feel more than hear the floorboards groan with protest underneath him.

“Don’t,” Regina got out, when he started towards the wall. “We – don’t know where that came from.”

Killian thought he had an idea.

As he approached, he could hear his own blood rushing in his ears, thumping, beating, alive, he had never felt so alive, so sure, so ready for whatever came next. COME, it beckoned, he came, and lifted a trembling finger to the wall to touch the letters. The end of the black pen lines faded into a patchy grey, as if they had been scribbled in a hurry. Killian traced the edge of the E, and realised the end of it extended beneath the wallpaper.

Digging his fingertips underneath it, Killian grimaced as the paper was moist to the touch, and then ripped at it as harshly as he could. A strip of it came clean away, and his eyes widened once he saw what was underneath it.

Another word. LISTEN.

In a frenzy he dug again, harder this time, but pried with a little less force, hoping to bring more of the paper away in one go. The entire sheet pulled away, tearing in his fingers and baring the entire panel down to the ground.

Regina audibly sucked in a breath.

COME, it had said, LISTEN.

But that had only been half of the message.

In a daze, Killian suddenly remembered a detail of the night Emma had stolen his kiss that had slipped from his mind, something hastily stuffed into a bookcase upstairs and promptly forgotten about.

COME LISTEN TO YOUR RECORDER.

-/-

October 26th – 5 Years Ago

They were far quieter this time around.

Their plans had to be put off until long after dark had fallen, for convenience’s sake and in order to avoid arousing suspicions from unaware parents – and because they all knew (but would not own up to) they probably had a greater chance of success by attempting the ritual at night. The moon was bright and full, and Brooke House was lit only by the constant flicker of torchlight and the clear, silver shadow it cast through the sitting room window.

Killian had cradled the dagger close to him while Emma had shouldered a bag full of his black marker, the candles and the salt he had stolen from under Archie’s nose again. Regina had brought her Ouija board, for no other reason than because it felt appropriate, and David had brought an Apollo chocolate bar.

“What?” he had said defensively, his mouth barely forming around the word as the wrapper crinkled in his grasp. “I’m hungry.” He had brought one for Mary Margaret too.

Emma had quickly decided that they all looked ridiculous. They were each dressed in as many layers as possible while still retaining motor function in order to combat the chill night air, highlights including Mary Margaret’s wide eyes being the only visible portion of her face as she had practically wrapped her entire upper body in a bright red scarf, while Emma struggled to keep her beanie from catching on errant low-hanging tree branches as they made their way there. She had always assumed looking cool was something that came naturally when you were as burdened with solemn purpose as they were, but all that really meant was nobody said much and everyone was nervous.

It was perplexing how much spookier Brooke House looked at night.

Where before Emma had seen vivid green ivy climbing the walls from its foundations, now she saw black, curling fingers creeping upwards with unfaltering progress. The cracked windows and shattered roof slates now looked threatening instead of symbol of fatigue, as if something from inside the house and pushed and screamed until the glass exploded and the roof flew open. She thought about the attic, about the thumping of the wardrobe door that had led her to the dagger, now clutched carefully in Killian’s grip like a prayer. Maybe they had already let the danger out. Or maybe there was more to find.

Without much preamble Killian had leapt up the steps to the front door, but the rest of them followed more slowly behind. Emma felt she could understand the source of their reluctance, as even her heart hammered with trepidation while her fingers trembled with excitement.

Magic was real and the world was different now.

Emma had thought that while she and Killian set up the pentagram and the salt circle, that the other three might play again with the Ouija board as they had the first time they had been there. They did not, instead sitting in almost silence while David munched on chocolate and Mary Margaret and Regina stared anywhere but at she and Killian making preparations. The board sat on the ground, untouched, the planchette a few feet away. Mary Margaret took off her scarf.

She had just finished setting up the last candle when Killian called them over, softly, and wordlessly they took their places at each point of the pentagram. The air felt damp like the forest outside, and tingled with something unsaid between them. Emma felt charged and ready to snap.

Killian cleared his throat. “Listen, whatever happens, whatever we find… I’m so grateful, to all of you.”

“We’re with you,” David said, and they all murmured their agreement. Emma took his hand.

Killian squeezed it once, tightly, and in the tremor of his fingers she could feel how nervous he was. Then he released her and reached for the matches, making his way around the circle and lighting each of the five candles, and they all switched off their torches as they did so. Soon, the only light came from the moon, and the flicker of candlelight in front of him.

Then, finally, he placed the dagger in its centre.

Emma heard something hiss, like the sudden suction of air after opening a can of soda. It was so brief that she almost thought she hadn’t heard it, but she knew she must have. Nobody else seemed to, though, so she pressed her lips together and chose not to mention it. The blade glittered in the warm orange glow of candlelight. Killian took his place by her, folding his legs beneath him. The candle left half of his face bathed in shadow, but Emma thought she could see his mouth moving, his eyes flickering closed for a moment. For a moment she imagined he might be praying, and resisted the urge to dismiss that notion as soon as it came to her. He hadn’t believed in any sort of deity for as long as she had known him, but nobody laughed at God when they were staring at the evidence that the world was already stranger than they had dreamt it.

Like before, they reached for the hands of those either side of them, completing the circle they had made on the first night. Except this time it wasn’t about them; it wasn’t about David and Mary Margaret, shyly but enthusiastically clutching at each other, it wasn’t about Regina’s desire to be heard or the impossible sounds that had come to Emma from the wardrobe upstairs. They knew what it was about, and they knew who. It seemed only natural that Killian would speak.

“Show yourself,” he said.

He announced this with confidence, as if he had already decided who it was they were speaking to. As if he knew them already. As if he had just been waiting for them to know him.

It began in much the same way it had before, except this time Emma knew what to expect.

She shut her eyes tightly, and felt the noises from outside the circle begin to dissipate; the rustle of the trees, the old creeks and groans they had come to expect from the ancient framework of Brooke House. The air had gone still, as if it, too, was holding its breath and waiting, and although she knew the others weren’t far from her, she could no longer sense their being close in the same way – it were as if they had all been thrust underwater, and the only true sensation was Killian’s hand in her right, and David’s hand in her left.

The temperature had begun to drop, as if by welcoming some spectral presence it had to absorb everything that made the room conducive to life, but a different kind of warmth had begun to vibrate from somewhere near her collarbone. It tugged at her, touched her, wanted her to lean forward.

Yes, it purred, come.

A low buzzing began to circle around them, and with it Emma began to feel the air moving again, picking up into a mild gust brushing past them and Mary Margaret let out a squeak of alarm.

“Don’t let go,” someone said. She thought it might have been Regina.

The breeze began to grow into a flurry, and Emma felt her beanie being whipped off her head and carried into some other dark part of the room. Orange light swam behind her eyelids as the flames from the candles darted about violently, but they did not go out as she would have expected them to. On they burned, and the buzz rose into a roar until it drowned out every other sound, and the buzz was now a whisper except it had always been a whisper, and she had no idea how she could have ever thought of it as otherwise. A thousand voices whirled about them in chorus, speaking too quickly or too loudly for Emily to distinguish any of the words, but when she heard the others gasp in fright her eyes flew open, and she couldn’t stop the noise of alarm she made once she saw what the others had been looking at.

The dagger was now floating above them, suspended in mid-air.

Even though she knew she was seeing it, and she knew exactly what she was seeing, Emma found it difficult to reconcile it with everything she knew to be real and true.

The world was different now.

“Why – why is it doing that?” David had to yell to be heard over the roar around them.

“Don’t break the circle!” Killian hollered back.

The air began to crackle, and Emma was again caught by the sensation that a storm was about to break out, and half expected to feel the patter or rain on the back of her neck. The wind was whipping her coat and her hair in all directions, but she tried to keep her focus on the dagger – which was the moment she realised it was vibrating, moving in such infinitesimal increments and with such speed that it was impossible to focus on its outline, and it had become a muddled blur of bruised grey and black.

Killian’s hand tightened on hers.

And that was when lightning struck.

Mary Margaret screamed. David let go of Emma’s hand to shield his face from the sudden blast, but it was unlike any kind of lightning Emma had ever seen before. It was aggressively black, and once it struck the dagger it stayed attached, like a sharp, pulsing vein, whirling violently in the squall. Then another struck. And again. And again. With more clashes so loud that her ears began to burn with heat, with pain, darkness latched itself onto the dagger hovering above them. She felt Killian’s touch like an anchor, keeping her tethered to the ground, and David’s loss was like a gaping hole in her side, a vacuum where something strong and indomitable should have been.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She thought her face might already be wet, where tears had rolled down and struck her dumb and more than anything she wanted Killian to look at her, but his awestruck expression remained focus on the obsidian zephyr that had engulfed the dagger, swirling dangerously like a storm they were only just out of reach of.

It was too late, now, to put it back in the box.

They should never have done this.

Emma knew it like she knew the shape of her own heart, like she knew the jagged edges of Killian’s soul, like the sharp blade of her fishing knife, like David’s warm, warm embrace.

In Brooke House they had touched something evil, and flung its cage wide open.

Emma gasped, which was how she knew she was struggling for air.

She heard someone call her name, but she had no way of knowing who it might be. She couldn’t see through the vortex to Mary Margaret and Regina, David was cowering away and Killian, and Killian, and Killian.

Killian watched, his mouth open in a silent cry.

Liam, he said – his heart shouted it – Liam, Liam, Liam.

Emma tore her gaze back into darkness.

Which was when she realised someone was inside it.

The realisation struck her with the force of an icy wave. Struggling inside the hurricane there was a man, his arms held up to shield his face, his scream noiseless amongst the thousands of other voices the storm had brought with it, and it was clear he was trapped. Emma couldn’t see his expression but knew immediately that he must be in pain from his posture.

She jerked forwards – and suddenly she was in herself, in fact, she felt so aware of her arms and her hands and the shape of her own eyes that she hadn’t realised she had been away from them until that very moment. It felt like the way she had stumbled in front of Brooke House the night she found the dagger. She was dazed and released and confused but she could breathe, and with a jolt she remembered the man imprisoned inside the vortex.

Her head darted from side to side, but David didn’t look like he had seen him, he was reaching for Mary Margaret – Killian couldn’t have either, or he would not be so frozen and still, she was sure, she was the only one – she was the only one –

She was the only one who could –

“There’s – there’s someone in there!”

Killian had heard her, and immediately jerked his head to look at her. His mouth formed around Liam’s name, but Emma couldn’t hear it over the roaring in her ears. Killian’s eyes darted back to the dagger, unseeing, and he looked at Emma again, helpless. He couldn’t see the man.

Emma could see him.

She was the only one who could –

Emma let go of Killian’s hand.

His cry of alarm was the only thing she heard before she stood, stumbling against the force of the wind all around her.

“EMMA!”

The man saw her. His mouth opened in a silent scream.

She had to help him.

Emma hurled herself into the storm.

She was nothing but air. She was stirring, shattering, waiting, hoping, spinning, crying out, she was screaming, oh God she was screaming, thrusting, grasping, wanting, hurting, oh it hurt, it hurt, it burned like the day she had first been born, like the day she had made herself all over again. She pushed and she pushed and her arms were aching and there was blood, there was so much blood, but she felt something solid in front of her and her fist closed around it.

The dagger.

It was white hot to touch but she couldn’t let go, her hand was locked. It was all over her arms. Her wrists erupted in angry, crimson welts and she screamed, and she could see Regina, wide-eyed and fearful. She turned, she turned, she turned. She could see Mary Margaret. She turned, she turned, she turned. There was David, standing now, shouting, she couldn’t hear what he was shouting, his legs were braced, he was readying himself for a fight.

Where was the man?

Was he okay?

Unseen hands grasped at her skull, tugged and everything was a blur of colour except everything was white, and she gasped, and it hurt, and she couldn’t release the dagger, and the voice was telling her to let go, to let go, to let go.

Come, it hissed, listen –

She was being unmade.

And then she saw Killian.

She saw Killian and her heart hurt. She wanted and she wanted and she wanted and then she wanted more, she wanted everything from him, she wanted everything for him, he was yelling but she couldn’t hear him, and she wanted nothing more than to hear his voice and beckon him inside, yes, yes, every voice was screaming yes, bring him in, bring him in, bring him in –

No.

No one else.

Not one more person.

She wrenched her focus back onto Killian, she could see him ready to pounce, to throw himself into the hurricane and follow her, always to follow her, to the end of the world or time and –

And she loved him.

The darkness would not claim one more person. Not a single person, for as long as she was alive.

And she was alive.

She opened her mouth.

“Killian – Killian, don’t –!”

Her cry made him hesitate – and it was enough to stop him in his tracks.

It was enough, he was safe, and she let go.

-/-

As suddenly as the storm had struck, it was gone.

Gone was the wind, the noise, the charged black lightning, and the stench of something rotted, something old, something wanting. The dagger clattered down onto the ground.

David was the first to recover, breathing heavily, eyes wild.

“Where’s Emma? Where – where did she go?”

Over and over, Emma’s final cry rang like crystal in Killian’s ears.

Killian – Killian, don’t –!

It had all happened so fast.

He could still feel her hand slipping free from his grasp.

He’d been ready to jump in after her, if he’d been just a second quicker, if he hadn’t hesitated – why? Why did he hesitate?

Killian – Killian, don’t –!

Because he’d seen her eyes, black as charcoal, her wrists stained crimson. He didn’t think he would ever forget it; especially since it had made him falter. Since it had possibly cost them everything.

Killian tumbled forwards, reaching blindly for the dagger. He didn’t want to look at it, but he was sure he knew what he would find. The others were slowly coming back to their senses, recovering from the suddenness of something that had been very much there, suddenly not being there, and realising along with David that Emma had vanished. That Emma had let go of his hand. That Emma had screamed at him not to follow and he had obeyed.

In the second where everything had mattered most, he had been afraid, and he had obeyed.

“Bring her back.” It was David again, but Killian could scarcely even hear him. He felt like he was speaking to him through fog. “You bring her back right now, Jones, or I swear –!”

Killian never found out what he would swear to. His attention was fixed on the dagger, and he heard the breath escape the others once they realised what it was he was looking at.

The name engraved across the blade had changed. Liam Jones had gone.

He could still feel her hand slipping free from his grasp.

The dagger, glittering in the dark, now read Emma Swan.

In his bones, he already knew the devastating truth, even as his soul railed against it.

Killian – Killian, don’t –!

Emma was gone.

#jay writes #a house is never still #cs role reversal #cs fic #cs ff #captain swan #cs au #cs halloweek #killian jones #emma swan #i hope you guys enjoy this!

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damienthepious · 4 years ago

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I’d love a fic commentary on the scene in Going Through Changes where Arum reads the torn up letter from the monster council, even just a small portion would be amazing!

[Pick a short passage from any fanfic I’ve written and send it to me, and I’ll give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet]

ahhhhh HELL yeah okay that’s chapter 4, near the end there.

[It is the Will of the Universe that the monster collective does as it pleases. The Senate does our utmost to uphold this Will, and it is to our pleasure that the human infection be eradicated. By failing to destroy a growing number of humans - chief among them a healer of their kind, and a monster-killer - you defy the Will of the Senate, and by extension the Will of the Universe itself. You are going destroy them. The Senate assures you, Lord Arum, that it will be your Will to do so. A monster may only defy its nature for so long, and the human infection will destroy you, if you do not destroy your own small infection first.]

We know very, very little about how the monsters actually work. What we know is only based on a) what Quanyii told Rilla, b) what we can extrapolate based on the priorities of the Judge and the other monsters during the courtroom scene, c) what Arum himself has said. Altogether... it’s just a pile of assumptions, and it’s about a group of creatures that seem to REALLY not want to be defined in any single way. Between all of those things, though, it seems pretty clear at least that the SENATE are a bunch of bullies who use the IDEA of the desires of the Universe to enact their own will. Therefore- this sort of nonsense.

[Arum can see the holes on either side of the parchment, where his own claws must have dug in before he tore the page entirely asunder. His own claws fit neatly in those spaces, and part of him wishes to tear it all asunder yet again, if only for the letter's smug, self-important tone.] Arum does NOT like being condescended to. It’s that pride of his, y’know? There is also a running thing in this fic of Arum responding to things... the way he already has, even without the memory of it.

[Evidence, he thinks vaguely, and the word comes in the little human's confident voice. Mention of a healer and a monster-killer, the doctor and the knight- the letter shredded and half-burned in the hearth- barely legible even after wasting half an hour in the effort-] Rilla is pretty inarguable, just, like, as a person. She’s a bit of a force of nature, and Arum has a hard time ignoring the things that she says. And also- Arum can imagine how the letter got exactly where it was. Can imagine himself reading it, alone, and then tearing it up in fury and defiance, and then burning it as if to prove how little credence he gives their words. But the humans would have mentioned, if they knew, wouldn’t they? so he must not have told them. Pride, again. Or- protectiveness?

[If this is part of some enormous lie… it would be a nearly impossibly elaborate one.] Literally. how in the WORLD would anyone trying to trick him... how would they know exactly what to write? How would they know that Arum would look into the hearth, would notice that seal? How could someone rest their hope on Arum meticulously reconstructing a destroyed letter, JUST to trick him? It would be MADNESS. (if either rilla or damien found the letter- a different story, of course, but that isn’t what happened.)

[Arum looks at the small pair of gloves again. He smooths over the torn edges of the letter from the Senate.] Evidence of domesticity, evidence of the humans being welcome, here. It goes unsaid, but- Arum stitched those gloves for her himself. He knows his own handiwork. And then- evidence of outside influence, outside malice. Evidence of the monster hierarchy sticking their claws where they don’t belong. The gears in the lizard’s head are TURNING.

[The growth within his greenhouse corroborates the timeline the Keep and the humans claim, the year he has lost. A year of making room in his home for these creatures. A year of dulling the sharpness of his claws, a year of experiments he no longer knows, a year of, apparently, deceiving and defying the Senate.] Again- without outright saying it, outright admitting it, his train of thought here is running on the assumption that the humans are being truthful, combined with the assumption that the letter is genuine as well.

[You are going to destroy them. // Arum feels his frill shiver at his neck. // it will be your Will to do so.] Assertions, and assertions that Arum almost obeyed without knowing. He almost killed Damien- panicked and without a thought and of his own free will. Of his own free will- removed from context. Stripped of his own memory, stripped of... whatever will kept him from killing the pair of them in the first place.

[Arum's mind churns, confusion and frustration and fear, and he digs his claw into the wax of the Senate's seal.] he WANTS to tear the letter up again. instead he pokes angrily at the symbol of their influence. [Their words certainly sound like the threat of a curse, to Arum's ears. And if it truly was the Senate who stole a year from him-] It never seemed like Arum had any love for the Senate. And maybe that’s just context, but- deadass disrespectful silence during his trial- i don’t think he cares about the Senate, i don’t think he cares about the war (a privileged position, from the Lizard Lord), but the idea of them going after him directly, assaulting his MIND?

[(The memory is gone. Utter blankness. Did he truly, honestly risk the safety of his Keep? Did he truly dig his heels in to earn the Senate's ire?)] He is lost, he is hurt, he is fucking pissed.

[He needs to speak with the humans again.] and he decides, in this moment, that the humans are more trustworthy than the Senate could ever be.

... not... of course... that he does trust the humans. Of course. /lie

#elle's fanfic meta #going through changes ripping out pages #THANK YOU THANK YOU #anon #asks

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joshscorcher · 5 years ago

Text

Friendly Fire Philosophy

Unconscious Thoughts, Fiction, and Confession of Character

As an Internet Personality, I’m required to spend much time on the internet so I can stay up to date on recent trends and remain relevant. I spend a lot of time lurking on YouTube as a result. Recently, I stumbled across a video about unconscious/implicit bias and watched it (I will not link it for obvious reasons). The speaker told me that everyone, including the viewers watching, has biases and preconceptions of which they aren't even aware.

I don’t wholly disagree with this idea. Many times people have tastes that they can’t explain. Some think that blondes are the most good-looking kind of person. Some think Asians are the most good-looking. Some love green eyes. Some like freckles, scars, or traits not considered “Hollywood Hot.” A simple scouring of DeviantArt is very good evidence that no one agrees on universal bodily beauty (I really wouldn’t recommend doing that, by the way. It gets very weird very quickly). Point is, we all have different tastes that we cannot logically explain other than, “I just do” or “That’s how I was born, I guess.” It gets to the point that shaming someone for something they can’t really control seems not only like an exercise in futility but also cruelty and injustice.

I was silently nodding along to the video, thinking that’s where the speaker was going with this. Then the person made the statement that prompted this essay: They claimed that we all have unconscious prejudices and bigotry.

I thought the idea was shocking. We have bigotry that we don't even know about? How do we actually deal with that? How would we even know about something like that? I searched, but I could find no credible studies proving the existence of this. Not only did I believe this idea was logically flawed, I was personally upset by this concept.

This person is telling me that I'm a bigot and I didn't even know it? What an arrogant statement! They don’t know me nor can they read my thoughts. They’re implying they know so much about how the brains of millions of different people work, that they can accuse them of unsaid thoughts, or even unTHOUGHT thoughts? It sounded sillier the more I continued to think about it.

Of course, I rejected this idea. People aren't a monolith and no one acts the same way. Yes, the fact that we have professions of neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry certainly lend credence to the idea that there are patterns of behavior between humans, and I also agree with the idea that our unconscious mind can influence our actions. However, this assumption that everyone is bigoted in some way? It was very hard for me to swallow.

The person continued. It was a very twee, platitudinous, and condescending speech about sensitivity, empathy, and being all kum-ba-yah. Suddenly, the person talked about how they confronted their own unconscious biases and hates and wished to spread their newfound enlightenment to others. In that moment, everything became clear:

I was being accused of something of which my accuser was guilty.

I stopped being angry at that point, because I understood. This person felt bad about their racism, and I shouldn’t be harsh on them for that. On the contrary, I believe it's very admirable that they did some thorough self-examination and attempted to safeguard their behaviors and ESPECIALLY their thoughts. Not many people are self-aware enough to police the way they think about people and many people underestimate the value of keeping your mind clean and disciplined. They also wanted to stop racist behaviors from manifesting in other places, again, not a terrible motivation. That being said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I still have an issue with them accusing me of being the same as them. Again, they didn't know me, so how could they make a sound judgment on me, especially something as serious as bigotry? Why is this person assuming everyone is like them?

I'm reminded of something Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.“ I can't say I disagree. Many times, the way we see the world, reveals a lot about our personalities. How often do nice people think the world is great? How often do unpleasant people think the world is terrible? How often do artistic types see beauty everywhere they go? Iroh from Avatar: The Last Airbender corroborates this idea: “If you look for the light, you can often find it. But if you look for the dark that is all you will ever see.” Heck, this concept can be said about the art we create as well.

Art is also commonly referred to as a self-portrait. Kehinde Wily for instance says that "All art is self-portraiture." Frequently, artists are very much encouraged to "write what they know." It can be argued that even the art we create is a confession of character. We often put a lot of ourselves into the art we create and I can't say I disagree with this idea.

Permit me to deviate from my point for a bit. Trust me, I have an endgame here.

My Dungeons and Dragons campaign “Welcome to the Show” has the underlying theme of redemption being open to those who seek it. In the story, the party is trying to get the deposed Queen Jeminya back on the throne of her kingdom, but they quickly hit a snag. As a devil-spawn, Jeminya's soul is damned to the Nine Hells no matter how "good" of a person she is, and she is made painfully aware of this reality. However, she continues to do good anyways, because she believes good is worth doing and it's worth believing in. Her god sees her pure intentions and offers her an escape from her fate; it will be a hard and bumpy road, but she will be able to achieve redemption should she seek it.

Sound familiar? It should. There are sprinklings of my faith littered all throughout the story, and many times I didn't even know I was doing it. I even unintentionally based Asmodeus, the head devil, off of Screwtape from C.S. Lewis' "The Screwtape Letters" because my trashy fanboyism has apparently seeped into my unconscious.

Some might have noticed that it is very difficult for me to create/act a character who is evil for the sake of being evil, often giving them sympathetic backstories or more often redemption arcs. This is mostly because I find it hard to imagine myself in the position of being pure evil; not having any other underlying motive. In fact, I doubt Pure Evil people even exist. Even Kefka Palazzo from Final Fantasy VI, whom I really enjoy playing and analyzing, I realize I don’t believe to be Pure Evil. Insane and dangerous? Definitely, but looking closer at him, there are some tragic elements to him; he was experimented on which made him insane. Throughout the game, he descends into a person who cannot comprehend love, happiness, or joy, and cannot find any meaning in life other than destruction. He’s not pure evil; like many of us he’s looking for personal fulfillment.

Many have noticed I take a very Don Bluth approach to my storytelling; "[If] you don’t show the darkness, you don’t appreciate the light. If it weren’t for December no one would appreciate May. It’s just important that you see both sides of that. As far as a happy ending…when you walk out of the theatre there’s [got to be] something that you have that you get to take home. What did it teach me? Am I a better person for having watched it?" This is also a very Christian concept, as we believe that as dark and hellish as it gets on earth, there's a paradise at the end of the journey.

Now back to my point.

I'm not denying the existence of unconscious thoughts influencing our conscious thoughts and behaviors, because I just gave some very good anecdotes of this very phenomenon. What I am denying is the accusation that everyone specifically has unconscious bigotry because one person found unconscious bigotry within themselves.

Have you ever noticed that we very often try to give people the advice that we need to hear ourselves? I'm no exception; very often I've told people that they need to not let their anger control them and to grow thicker skins. Anyone who's met me for two minutes is probably laughing right now, and I wouldn't blame them. They all can tell you that I get defensive and emotional very easily and taking criticism is difficult for me. I do NOT have a very thick skin.

And I HATE it.

I hate the fact that I'm that overly sensitive. I hate that I lash out at people who just want to help me improve myself. I hate that I empower people to control me by letting my emotions get out of hand, as it's caused me to make very stupid decisions that still affect me to this day. I hate the fact that I DESPERATELY want everyone to like me. I hate the fact that I'm the only one of my siblings that has this problem.

I've taken steps to improve myself, but it's still hard and every day is a challenge, especially as an Internet Personality. I took a test and found out my love language is Words of Affirmation. I'll never forget the sarcastic remark my mom made when she found out: "Your love language is Words of Affirmation, and yet you're an internet personality... good luck."

At some point, you realize that everyone is a hypocrite about something. My older brother loves to say, "We often fail to meet our own standards." We hate liars, but who here has never lied, even like a little white lie? We hate thieves, but who here has never stolen, even something small like downloading a $2.00 song? How many times have you taken a french fry from someone else's plate? Maybe you're the rare exception and haven't done any of these things, but this is my point: We often hold others to standards that we don't follow ourselves, and to claim otherwise is to claim one is perfect, which is impossible.

That's why I've stopped getting angry at accusations of closet racism or unconscious hate. These accusers rarely know anything about the people they accuse because they don't know others’ thoughts. In fact, due to what I’ve written above, I often believe in my heart of hearts that these people are projecting their own insecurities and biases onto others, but amusingly, that makes ME the hypocrite because I don’t know their thoughts to be able to make that judgement. All I and anyone else for that matter have to go on is merely our own thoughts.

To be fair, they are correct in their implied point that actions speak louder than words and even thoughts. The Bible says in Matthew 7:16, “Therefore by their fruits you will know them.” So, the actions you take and the fruit you produce are also a strong indication of character, but context exists to complicate the issue. There’s a reason we categorize a human causing the death of another using terms like 1st degree murder, manslaughter, or self-defense. There's a difference between beating up an intruder threatening you and your family, and beating up someone because they called you a nasty name.

If you do have inner thoughts that you might not be proud of, take comfort that someone might be feeling the same way. Certainly not everyone, but there’s a high chance another person is out there who’s going through what you are going through right now. Safeguarding your thoughts is important, and I would talk to someone reputable for their wisdom or an authority figure you trust on how best to do so.

But no matter what, remember: we are all flawed humans, so you’re not alone.

#should i make this into a video?#unconscious bias #fiction #philosophy

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finalfantasyxivwritings · 6 years ago

Text

Know You More

AO3 Version

Relationship: Haurchefant/Reader (Miqo’te!WOL)

Rating: General Audiences

Summary: Haurchefant is almost sure that you feel the same for him as he does for you, but he's not certain. To check some suspicions, he looks into the fact that, whenever you smile at him, he notices that your tail seems to fluff up--do you do this when you talk to others?

He has to find out, if only to know that his feelings are mutual.

When Haurchefant first has suspicions about the truest feelings that you hold for him, they’re nothing more than that: simple suspicions.

He had no clear nor tangible reason to think the relationship as anything more than cordial allies. Despite this very respectable thought process, the Elezen also had quite the extravagant imagination and, honestly, he could never find himself at odds with the idea of you being ever so fond of him–Haurchefant in fact welcomed the idea with open arms and a less-than-appropriate mind that wandered quite often while going through paperwork, if he’s being quite honest.

Regardless, he had a suspicion that the feelings may very well be mirrored, if not entirely mutual. He knew almost for a fact that behind those beautiful eyes and that smile which graced each and every stoic nod of assurance you gave him, there was but a smoldering desire which could very well rival Haurchefant’s very own.

His reason for thinking so?

Your tail.

Well, pray tell not the fact that you have a tail, since that would be absurd. It’s what you do with your tail when you look at him, smile that glorious grin upon Haurchefant like but a beam of warm sunshine briefly offering Camp Dragonhead a mercy from the oh-so-common cold, cloudy days.

It puffs up. Specifically speaking, it puffs up when you speak to him, often in the same breath as when you flick your eyes to the ground and smile that very smile you do so often without realization in his presence. It appears so soft to the touch on any normal day, but in those brief moments it looks but as soft as silk and as fluffy as a newborn karakul that it almost pains Haurchefant that he cannot simply reach out and stroke down the length of such a wondrous part of you.

Though the man didn’t completely understand the physiology of the Miqo’te tails, he certainly knew enough about people in general context to understand when something questionable is afoot–and he knew that there was something behind that little tell of yours.

As a man of observation, Haurchefant began to take note of things whenever you spared a moment to visit Camp Dragonhead. He paid close mind to when you interacted with others, if only to see if such a difference came to perception or if it was all but a silly man’s affections run amok in his own mind.

Though he certainly did well not to outright follow you from one conversation to another, Haurchefant did find it easy to excuse himself about the camp as was needed, especially since his close alliance with you was no secret–the two of you had helped one another plenty in the past, after all. A run-in here, a convenient meeting there, it didn’t take much for the Elezen to pull the strings how he needed to get but a cursory glance at your interactions with others.

You smiled often and spoke with liveliness to all who cared to listen to you, though that in itself was obvious to anyone who but heard rumor about you as a person let alone esteemed warrior of light. Haurchefant was not interested in such things when he knew they were not the evidence he sought near-desperately.

There were moments where your tail twitched or ears flicked, though what few times he noticed was largely when he had reason to believe you were getting agitated–he didn’t let those moments linger for very long of course. Let it always be known that Haurchefant would not tolerate any sort of discrimination to anyone who placed foot within Camp Dragonhead, be they Elezen, Miqo’te or otherwise; he made quick work of what few young and very ignorant initiates decided to test the tolerance held in Haurchefant’s warm heart.

For many times he watched you as you visited, sometimes with business in the snowy lands and other times to visit him personally (of which Haurchefant was always lost in his head like a lovesick schoolboy). Despite all the time he had to figure things out, he just couldn’t quite note a moment that your tail did quite the same thing as he was curious about–not a single time did it puff or fluff up in quite the same way, though there were a multitude of other things it did in otherwise staunch conversation.

In fact, Haurchefant came to realize there was a lot of meaning in but the simple movements of a tail or the softest flick of the ears when it came to the Miqo’te. So much did he realize was lost to him when talking to you, so many queues and nonverbal messages he had missed without realizing it.

The way you flick your tail when you’re shy, the way you pull back your ears when your nervous. Did you ever realize that, when you’re trying to answer a particularly hard conundrum, you wrap your tail around your own leg?

Haurchefant found it endearing. Just one more thing to add to the ever-growing list, something he could speak about until his very breath ran cold and his mind had long since moved on into senility.

But no matter the breadth of knowledge and appreciation gained, the several days of observation offered little insight towards answering the very question which begun the man’s internal questing. With several visits and seemingly no closer to the end, it became clear that the only way the Camp Dragonhead lord may gain such a perilous answer would be to do what he considered as last resort:

He could ask you directly.

It would be a risky choice, as Haurchefant didn’t want his personal quest to be revealed, lest he lose all the carefully collected data–as well as put himself in a horrible state of embarrassment should he be wrong in his assumption.

The very last thing he wanted was to tarnish the friendship he had forged with you.

He waited an extra couple days, allowed himself to build up a convincing reason to ask such an odd question if only so your suspicion wouldn’t be aroused. Though Haurchefant considered himself somewhat capable of smoothing over a lie, he doubted his ability to convince you that he had a distant Miqo’te relative, whether by blood or adoption. He had scarce contacts in the Black Shroud or La Noscea, but he could pull upon some familiar names tied to Ul’dah if explanation was needed…

Too complicated.

When the day finally came for him to ask, he didn’t honestly have much of a plan in motion. It certainly didn’t help that your next visit after his decision came quicker than he thought, leaving Haurchefant to scurry for words and actions mere moments before they happened in much akin to the same lovesick schoolboy he often considered himself to be around you.

He was lucky there was naught amiss, leaving you able to spend time with him privately and talking of simple things over a drink together.

“I hope you don’t find it a bother,” Haurchefant tried to keep his words casual, swirling the dark liquid in his glass. “But I had a question for you I’ve been hoping to ask. It deals with matters you may be best suited to answer, dealing with something of a Miqo’te habit I’m unlearned about.”

You blink, curiosity filling your gaze and smile as it pulls at the corners of your lips.

“I’m of the understanding that Miqo’te are rare in these parts; far too cold to be comfortable and far too cloudy for worship of any sort.”

“Oh no,” the man said, the lie already starting to drip gently from his lips. “It’s not for my personal interest.”

“Oh?”

“You see I have a dear friend of mine who has become quite taken with someone-”

You feel one of your brows perk.

“-a Miqo’te. The details are certainly of no import in the matter, but he has found himself besieged with a question he cannot answer. Though I’ve implored him to but ask himself, he seems resigned to never know the answer.”

Haurchefant grew confident with every word, feeling the story twist together in a neat little plait in which couldn’t be easily unraveled. Certainly he would be able to ask the question without worry of suspicion, especially since you seemed so politely quiet in wait for it yourself.

“You see, he’s noticed that whenever they’re together, his love’s tail seems to-” Haurchefant feigns in the search for the right word, hoping the lapse of memory would only give credence to the story. “Ah, what did he say? Oh! Puff, that’s right–he says his love’s tail puffs right up, like a blowfish of somesort if only such a creature was covered in fur instead of spines.”

He mulls over the words for a few moments extra before letting his eyes fall to you, watching your expression with care as he takes a sip from the glass in his hand.

It doesn’t fall from pensive thought, though he does take a prideful note of how your ears twitch, flicking as if like a bird’s wings aiding it to take flight, though for you it is simply to launch yourself into a series of thoughts.

Was that weird? Perhaps that one was a bit weird, even for him.

“Well, there could be a lot of reasons, but is there any specific time that it happens besides being together?”

“Well, he says it’s usually when he catches a smile or a giggle from his partner.”

You pondered on it for a few moments, tapping a finger lightly at your chin.

“Sounds like a tell to me,” you laughed after a moment, shrugging your shoulders casually. “Nothing beguiling about that, no more than you are Haurchefant, perchance did you know that you tend to bite at your lower lip when your nervous?”

The man blinked, suddenly realizing that he indeed had some of his lower lip between his teeth. He swiftly shifted his weight in the chair and tried to make the act look aloof, just making himself more comfortable in the moment is all.

“D-do go on, dear friend. I hope that whatever may be unsaid between he and his love, my friend has nothing to worry for?”

“Of course not!”

The exclamation was made with no shortage of amusement. You couldn’t hold in the laugh for more than a moment before your hands fly up to your lips and hide what little dignity you can from escaping in the resulting uproarious noise of humor.

Haurchefant merely looked at you, looking something between worried and confused.

“Some Miqo’te do that when they’re happy,” you finally relent, wanting not to torture the poor man. “Your friend has absolutely nothing to worry about, though I’d insist he’d as his partner himself for their specific thoughts on the matter. Likely it’s just how his partner tells him that they love him dearly.”

Haurchefant all but feels his heart stop in the moment, mind trying desperately to put the words together in the way his mind needs, answer yet before him to the question he so very much wanted to solve. He doesn’t have much of a chance to continue the conversation however as you suddenly feel a ring in your ear–your linkpearl, alerting you of a recall back to the Waking Sands for something that seems at least mildly urgent.

You relay this information quickly enough to the Elezen and begin to make your leave, thanking him generously for his time and drink.

“It is I who should be thanking you,” Haurchefant says, gesturing towards you with a mild flourish, as if but words alone can’t accurately describe the meaning. “There are few who would come to these cold, deary mountains to visit even a close friend; your company is always welcomed here with a warm fire and attentive company.”

His words make you smile, a familiar send-off that you’ve grown so accustomed to that it almost feels like leaving Camp Dragon head is akin to leaving home. You begin to make your leave from the room but stop just a few steps short of the door, turning your head around to catch Haurchefant’s gaze with your own.

“Oh, one more thing,” you say, smile tugging at your lips and an unmistakable fluff to your tail. “You could have simply asked me outright about my little tell. I am very much fond of you in kind, dearest Haurchefant, and I’d love to know you more.”

And only then do you leave the room post-haste, catching one last sight of the man with a shock to his wide eyes, a flush upon his cheeks and his lower lip between his teeth in sudden realization that his ruse had been known from the very beginning.

#ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #haurchefant #haurchefant x wol #readerinsert #haurchefant readerinsert #sfw #sfw readerinsert #miqote!wol #writing #readershot #miqote!reader #sfw readershot

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kuro-gossips · 6 years ago

Text

Splashes of Colour

Chapter 1: Shades of Blue

All Newt has known is shades of grey.

When he looks in the mirror, his skin is light grey, eyes grey, curly hair grey. It is so monotonous and boring, but he knows he is not alone in this world who suffers from the same symptom.

It is so rare that a person meets their intended soulmate; too many humans on Earth and the probability of bumping into the one is infinitely small. But he hears whispers, gossip, old wives’ tales of the unusual ones that have and the stories tell of life suddenly having meaning and colour (such a foreign word on his tongue). As a child, the young wizard blushed at the thought of coming across such a wondrous opportunity, but as he ages, he realizes that such childlike fancies are merely that. He lets go of the hope that one day he would meet his soulmate.

Of course, when one least expects it, these things have a tendency to hit oneself in the face with the speed and ferocity of a charging Hippogriff. Years later when he is 29 years old, he is standing hunched over in an attempt to shrink underneath the gazes of many important wizarding figures. Picquery commands his case full of creatures to be impounded and immediately, it gets summoned into Graves’ awaiting hands without a single word escaping his lips.

“Wait, no,” Newt begins and starts to reach for his wand in the inner pocket of his coat, “Give that back--”

“Arrest them.” Picquery declares. Graves sees the magizoologist’s hand reaching for something and his free hand is immediately there to prevent any further action on the British’s part with powerful wandless magic as he forces Newt back in the air and then onto his knees on the cold tiles in the depths of MACUSA’s headquarters, arms clasped behind him in some sort of binding spell to prevent him from resisting arrest.

“Don’t hurt those creatures. Please, you don’t understand.” Newt rambles, pleading, “Nothing in there is dangerous. Nothing.”

“We’ll be the judges of that. Take them to the cells.” Picquery’s tone carries such utter finality in it that the British magizoologist’s heart clenches in fear.

“Don’t hurt those creatures! There’s nothing-- nothing in there is dangerous!” Newt’s voice becomes increasingly frantic as he goes on, dragged further and further away from his beloved creatures, “Please don’t hurt my creatures! They aren’t dangerous! Please, they’re not dangerous!”

***

Hours pass and now Newt is seated in a drab room, scarce of any decorations. The chair he occupies is relentlessly cold, which he feels biting through his wool clothes. Tina is still chained behind him with two female Aurors standing guard. Her eyebrows are drawn up in fear and worry. The freckled man flexes his wrists after the chains come loose. Across the metal table, Graves stares at him and Newt refuses to make any sort of eye contact with the Director.

“You’re an interesting man, Mr. Scamander.” Graves utters, but before he can continue, Tina interrupts him.

“Mr. Graves…”

Percival shushes her with a finger to his lip and shakes his head in disappointment. Properly chastised, she retreats to her former position.

Graves sighs, exasperation from Tina’s actions plain as day in his voice, and examines the papers detailing Newt’s past, “You were thrown out of Hogwarts for endangering human life--”

“That was an accident.”

“-- with a beast. Yet one of your teachers argued strongly against your expulsion. Now, what makes Albus Dumbledore so fond of you?” Newt detects a hint of aggravation contained within this question. He doesn’t comprehend why his answer would be relevant to the situation at hand.

He quietly responds, regardless, shaking his head, “I really couldn’t say.”

“So, setting a pack of dangerous creatures loose here was--” The dark-haired man pauses for a brief moment, gesturing wildly to rest of the room, “-- was just another accident, is that right?”

“Why would I do it deliberately?”

“To expose wizard kind. To provoke war between the magical and non-magical worlds.”

“Mass slaughter for ‘the greater good,’ you mean.”

“Yes. Quite.” Graves leans forward, trying to catch his gaze and eager to hear the response. His pale hands seize Newt’s recently freed ones. The sensation is surreal when their skin comes into contact, an electrical shock passes between them; he can feel his magical core humming in bliss, and the next time Newt blinks, his world of grey is suddenly no longer. He can’t help but stare at the dark-haired man in front of him and takes in the room he’s in. It’s almost like he’s still seeing ashen tones, but that can’t be, because his coat is definitely not. It’s blue, his mind supplies automatically.

After a moment, he is able to compose himself and states, “I’m not one of Grindelwald’s fanatics, Mr. Graves.”

A slow smirk spreads across the other’s face. The only indication that the other man is affected by their contact is the slight widening of his eyes, but they return to normal much quicker than Newt's. He's lucky that he's facing away from Tina because he has never been good at schooling his features or lying for that matter. His palm is still placed upon Newt’s, providing a firm pressure that seems to ground him in reality for the moment. “You see, somehow I doubt that, Mr. Scamander.”

In another feat of wandless magic, he calls forth the Obscurus contained within a bubble, black mist jerking and swirling aggressively at the edges of the charm.

“No, no, it isn’t-- it isn’t what you’re thinking of! I managed to separate it from the Sudanese girl months ago, but- but it was-- I just wanted to take it home and study it. It cannot survive outside of there, it cannot hurt anyone in this form, not without its host.” The curly redhead glances nervously at the American witch behind him, he does not want Tina to think ill of his intentions.

“Then it’s useless without the host.”

“‘Useless?’ That is a parasitical force of magic that killed a child, what on Earth could you use it for?” Wide green eyes are peering into dark brown depths of the man sitting across from him, attempting to dissect his words for an ulterior motive. Sable eyes shift nervously from side to side, for the first time, Graves is the one eluding eye contact.

There is a lull in the conversation.

“You fool nobody, Mr. Scamander. You brought this Obscurus into the city of New York in the hope of causing mass destruction, breaking the Statute of Secrecy, and revealing the magical world. You are guilty of treason to your fellow wizards and are, therefore, sentenced to death. Miss Goldstein has aided and abetted you.” At these words, Graves rises from his seat and directs the two witches to escort Tina and himself to the execution room.

“Wait, what--” Newt tries to reason, as the blonde witch approaches him and places a wand at the base of his neck, “No, she’s done nothing of the kind! She- she has nothing to do with this!”

“She is your accomplice, Mr. Scamander, and she shall receive the same punishment as you. Just do it immediately, I will inform President Picquery myself.” He dismisses the two Aurors with a wave of his hand and brings said hand to rub his temple. The tall woman sobs loudly, tears staining the apples of her cheeks. Graves shushes them, ostensibly smug. “Please.”

Newt should be horrified and disgusted at the corruption that runs through MACUSA’s hierarchy, but all that he can think about is the fact that his soulmate is the one doing the sentencing.

***

The newly crowned fugitives manage to escape with Queenie's help and Newt's expanded suitcase. The whole ordeal with finding Dougal, and subsequently with the Occamy, through Gnarlak’s intel is interesting to say the least, but at least now, MACUSA can’t possibly blame any of Newt’s creatures for wreaking havoc on the city.

After chasing the Obscurial around Manhattan, its identity is revealed to be the young Barebone boy that Tina had defended. The British man is still reeling from discovering his soulmate at such an inopportune time, but he has something more important eating away at his mind: finding and helping Credence. Newt tracks the Second Salemer to the subway tunnels, his misty form clinging to the ceiling.

“Credence?” The Scamander takes refuge behind a pillar, talking to the Obscurial over his shoulder. His voice is more even than it should be after constantly Apparating and sprinting. “It is ‘Credence,’ isn’t it? I’m here to help you, Credence. Listen, I’m not here to hurt you.”

The curly-haired wizard takes a chance and peeks out from cover; he sees that the Obscurial form is no longer twisting in agony and rage, but its movement is more of a smooth glide through the space, and that spurs him to approach. He continues repeating the other's name, believing it to be some sort of comforting mechanism.

“I’ve met someone, just like you, Credence. A girl, a young girl, who had been imprisoned, she’d been locked away and she’d been punished for her magic.” Credence’s body starts to reform from the fog, eyes red, and tear tracks evident on his face.

“Credence, can I come over there?” Newt looks hopeful as he tiptoes forward. He repeats the question again, “Can I come over there?”

Credence doesn’t reject him -- he doesn’t say anything -- but before he can get any closer, the white flash of a spell, which he barely manages to cast a shielding spell against, forces Newt back and he lands roughly on the subway tracks. When he looks up, he can see the black-haired teenager running in the opposite direction of Graves, who had just appeared from the darkness of the tunnel. The Director hurls a couple more explosive curses at the magizoologist, but he manages to evade them by rolling out of the way, before ducking behind another pillar. He throws a counter spell at Graves, which is easily deflected.

When Credence is backed into a corner with nowhere else to go, the older man sends impressive bolts of lightning at him, but Newt leaps in front of the boy to protect him. Graves -- indignant, hateful, and outraged -- flings flash after flash of electricity at the freckled wizard, which are weakly warded off and cast aside.

“I never thought that one day I would stumble upon my soulmate.” The black-haired American exclaims, anger apparent in his voice. He laughs ironically. Newt is silent in fear and concentration as he defends the two of them. The moment he looks back over his shoulder at the boy, Graves takes advantage and spells the railway tracks alive to propel him back, before assaulting him with charged shots. Newt writhes on the ground, energy searing painfully throughout his frame.

“Do you know why I sentenced you to death? I didn’t want to accept that my soulmate would be such a pathetic, nervous wreck like you are!” His voice echoes as it gains in volume, causing the younger to violently flinch. The attacks come relentlessly now and he can’t protect himself properly from the ground. “Do you know who I am?”

The green-eyed male doesn’t have the faintest idea. He doesn’t get a chance to respond because Credence’s emotions begin to take over, triggering his transformation into the Obscurial once more. The black cloud looms over top of Graves, who merely whispers his name, pushing for obedience and trust, but the boy knows no such thing and dives down. Both Newt and Graves manage to Apparate out of the way several times as the Obscurus does its best to kill the two of them. Just as the dark smoke poses in waiting over both of them, lying on the ground, Tina rushes in, her words as hurried as she is, “Credence, no! Don’t do this. Please.”

The furious swirling slows down to a stop.

“Keep talking, Tina, keep talking to him. He’ll listen to you. He’s listening.”

“I know what that woman did to you. I know that you’ve suffered. You need to stop this now. Newt and I will protect you. This man, he’s using you.” The eldest Goldstein sister tries to explain, her voice faintly fluctuating from the emotions she is barely repressing after coming face-to-face with Credence again.

“Don’t listen to her, Credence. I want you to be free. It’s alright.” Graves shoots her a nasty glare as he talks. The black fog ceases its churning, listening to reassuring words, but unsure of whom to believe.

“That’s it.” Tina coaxes and Credence has almost calmed down, until waves of Aurors run down the steps with MACUSA’s President at the forefront.

Tina whips around and pleads to them because she sees them with their wands drawn, “Shh! Don’t, you’ll frighten him.”

“Wands down! Anyone harms him, they answer to me!” It's the most agitated anyone has seen Graves, eyes wide and frantic, hair awry, and flecks of dirt decorating his elegant clothes.

None of the new arrivals listen to either of them and start shooting spell after spell at the Obscurus. Newt can hear the anguished screaming of the Second Salemer boy and he has to cover his ears, yelling at everyone to stop, but the onslaught shows no signs of stopping. Finally, the smoke dissipates and only faint tendrils are left suspended around the opening in the tunnel. Newt picks himself up from the ground, dust covering his peacock blue jacket, a somber and heartbroken look adorning his soft features.

“Credence…” Graves mutters as he climbs up onto the platform, staring wistfully at the remains of the terrified boy. “Fools, do you realize what you’ve done?”

“The Obscurial was killed on my orders, Mr. Graves.”

“Yes, and history will surely note that, Madam President. What was done here tonight was not right.”

“He was responsible for the death of a No-Maj. He risked the exposure of our community and he has broken one of our most sacred laws.” Picquery counters.

“A law that has us scuttling like rats in the gutter. A law that demands that we conceal our true nature, a law that directs those under its dominion to cower in fear, unless we risk discovery. I ask you, Madam President-- I ask all of you, who does this law protect? Us?” Graves points upwards, indicating he is talking about the non-magical people. “Or them? I refuse to bow down any longer.”

Madam Picquery requests an Auror under her command to relieve Graves of his wand, but then a short-lived battle ensues between the multitude of MACUSA’s wizards and the Director. A couple of Aurors fall, defeated by the powerful man and the President’s face shows her underlying horror at the behaviour of the man she had considered her friend. At this point, everyone knows that something is terribly wrong. Newt unleashes the Swooping Evil hiding up his sleeve and binds Graves, stopping him dead in his venture and driving him to his knees, positions reversed from a couple of hours ago.

“Accio!” Tina says, grabbing the sleek ebony wand out of the air. The pair slowly walk towards the restrained man, the redhead holding his wand out in front of him, a charm on the tip of his tongue.

“Revelio.”

Graves’ features melt away and in his place, is none other than Gellert Grindelwald. The British wizard’s face is crestfallen; his fate could not have turned out worse. He had thought Percival Graves to be an abhorrent man, sneaking around and manipulating Credence, and yet, the rising Dark Lord is infinitely more horrendous.

Grindelwald is his soulmate. Newt wants to break down, to cry, to scream his lungs out so that he can’t feel anything anymore, but he cannot do that here in front of this many people. He tries his best to contain his emotions, slightly trembling at the amount of effort it takes.

“Do you think you can hold me?” Grindelwald questions the American dark-skinned woman, a lilt of amusement colouring his tone.

“We’ll do our best, Mr. Grindelwald.”

Even as he is being guided out of vicinity, the pale coloured man stops in front of where Newt is standing, head cast downwards. Feeling the Dark wizard’s gaze on him, Newt hesitantly catches his eyes -- one dark and feels like he's drowning at the bottom of a lake, and the other a luminescent light blue, sparkling with passion and life -- colours he can see all too well now. “Will we die, just a little?”

A knowing smile stretches over his lips and the redhead shivers.

#gellert grindelwald #newt scamander #grindelnewt #fantastic beasts #fantastic beasts and where to find them #soulmate!au #fanfiction #fantastic beasts fanfiction #fanfic #my writing #angst #soulmate!au where you see black and white until meeting them #splashes of colour

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regrettablewritings · 6 years ago

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Okay so I got asked earlier about elaborating on my feelings towards Fantastic Beasts 2...

Disclaimer: These ramblings are my personal feelings on the most recent addition to the HP franchise, Fantastic Beasts 2: Crimes of Grindelwald. You needn’t agree with them, but I have a right to express my feelings concerning the film and how it handled its story, its editing, characterization, and motivations. If you liked the movie, great! I didn’t. And here is where I will dispense why. Also, as if it bears mentioning, spoilers.

So...There’s a lot to unpack here. And, unfortunately, most of it is not fantastic beasts – mainly because aside from a few creatures that only exist as trailer fuel, the story’s pretty much departed from the importance of creatures and the allegories they can potentially offer. I mean, on one hand, I understand that it must be difficult to make five films revolve continuously around weird creatures and Newt’s efforts to utilize them and be the magical Crocodile Hunter. But on the other, they’ve made, like, five films centered around people reviving dinosaurs so this frankly isn’t impossible if done with good planning.

This, in my opinion, was not done with good planning. Rather than be done with the intention of being a suitable continuation to the promising first film, CoG wound up being a jumble of poor editing, nonsense twists, and character bastardizing to name a few.

But before I get into that, let me make it clear that I didn’t hate everything about it. The movie had some good qualities about it such as:

Theseus is actually a good brother. For years, we were kinda inched towards the idea that because he was the socially favored Scamander brother, that he must be a golden boy and even a bit arrogant. Newt’s impressions of him didn’t exactly help, either. But what we wound up with was a well-meaning if a bit primmer guy who’s affectionate (“a hugger” according to Newt), controlled, and ultimately does love his younger brother even if he doesn’t necessarily see eye to eye with him. I was talking with a friend about him and their relationship makes a bit more sense and even gains more points if you consider how Newt is coded as autistic: Theseus doesn’t get his brother and admittedly does wish he’d calm down, but he clearly isn’t comfortable with others looking down on Newt for his oddities.

Plus, Newt stepping out of his comfort zone to give Theseus a hug in his time of need is especially heartwarming even if in the face of something tragic.

Leta Lestrange being an example of how Slytherins aren’t all prejudiced assholes, rather they are characterized by their ambition and cleverness rather than the evils that can result from those traits going untamed.

Newton Scamander is the only person to make “your eyes look like salamander eyes” romantic.

“WALK WITH ME!”

Niffler babies!!

And, uh . . . yeah, that’s it. Everything else either left a bad taste in my mouth or punched me in the brain. So without any further ado or necessary order, let me just air my grievances and get this one-ton pain off my chest:

Too many storylines. I know this was a common complaint directed at the first installment of the series, but here, it’s really evident because we’re following Newt and Jacob following Tina who’s following Credence who’s following a trail and eventually following Grindelwald and Yusuf who’s following Tina to follow Credence and Grindelwald who’s not exactly following Credence but whatever then we got Leta who’s not necessarily following anyone but holy shit that’s without delving into the respective meat of all of the A, B, C, D, E, and so on plots

Queenie. Just. Queenie. What did they do to our favorite blonde Goldstein sister?! In the first movie, Queenie was established as being the more openly soft sister. Yes, she was more emotional than Tina, but it was never to the point of her actually making stupid decisions – especially because it was proven that the airheadedness was all a ploy and that Queenie’s actually pretty smart and intuitive (you know, when not reading minds). Which makes her decision to bewitch Jacob into marriage the first sign that something was wrong. The thing that made their attraction to one another in the previous film unusual yet still enjoyable was that it signified that not all magic-doers in America were against interacting with No-Majs and a potential allegory for interracial marriage, given how her initial intrigue towards Jacob as a No-Maj quickly evolved into genuine intrigue for him as a person.

By the time of CoG, however, this care has evolved into obsession wherein Jacob’s treated more like a commodity rather than an actual person. Yes, he does return Queenie’s feelings, but robbing him of his consent regardless is just an awful thing to have done to him. Jacob’s unwillingness to marry Queenie isn’t one born of fearing commitment; it’s because as much as he loves her, he hates the idea of her suffering for his lack of magic even more. Unfortunately, to Queenie’s now apparently rapid mind, this translates as him being too afraid and that it’s up to her to make any moves – moves that are highly concerning for everyone, let alone somebody who displayed such consideration in the previous film.

Going off of this, her decision to join Grindelwald is just . . .? The man will literally have people like the one you claim to love killed. Maybe not all, but the ones that do survive will likely not live well. This includes Jacob. So what sense is there to this?! And this is without considering she can read minds

Credence. I mean, I think everyone was sort of prepared for him to do what he did in the end, but actually watching it honestly made me realize how stupid it was for him to do that. I mean, you could argue that as far as he’s concerned, Graves and Grindelwald are two different people, as whatever was left of him managed to wisp away before the big Scooby Doo reveal. So as far as he may know, Graves did him wrong; Grindelwald is only trying to help. But even still, I hate what they’re doing to this guy.

Going off this . . . The whole Aurelius thing. I’ll admit that by that point, I was dead in my seat so I wasn’t sure if I heard the specifics, but did Grindelwald specify that Aurelius was Albus’ brother? Because if not, he’s just a relative in the Dumbledore family. Which kinda defeats the previous claim of Credence’s importance to the wizarding world imo.

Newt’s sudden infatuation with Tina comes off as clumsy. Yeah, it’s cute, but it seems so out of place. Sure, we can assume during the time skip that they kept in touch decently, but I sincerely doubt that in that amount of time, Newt managed to fall for her, let alone to the extent that he displays. I know I keep referencing the first film, but considering they’re, you know, supposed to be part of the same franchise, it’s key. But in the first film, the attraction is hinted at in the lightest of ways. We know they’ll get married, but that doesn’t mean they need to be immediately into one another, much less to the extent wherein Tina displays jealous tendencies and Newt is full of Freudian slips about how attractive he finds her. This wouldn’t seem too out of place later down the line, but to have that already just seems misplaced.

The situation regarding Yusuf and Leta’s mother and Corvus Lestrange . . . If this was supposed to be a sort of reference to the r@pe of black women from white men, yeah, it happened, but I’m not so sure how I feel about it being used here, mainly because it winds up contributing to Leta’s “tragic mulatto” trope. However, it also makes me wonder if it would be as intensely questionable if Leta’s mother had been white but that doesn’t really make it any better considering that the marriage was nonconsensual and resulted in death by childbirth.

This is more of a nitpick, but it bothered me how a lot of important exposition seemed to come from the mouths of those bearing hard-to-decipher accents.

This is just what I remember and what I condensed by the by. There’s probably a few other gripes I have rattling around up in the old noggin but I’m already exhausting myself here and this is already a pretty damn long list as is. But I the thing is, I don’t think I would’ve been this frustrated if they had just waited to do some of these things in a later film.

Some of these motivations and whatnot would’ve made more sense a little ways down the line after putting the characters through situations that pushed them to do the things they do. For example, Queenie’s nonsense decision to join a man who’d rather her lover’s kind mostly die doesn’t make sense in a movie that we acknowledge has had a timeskip, but doesn’t show what occurred within the timeskip. Choosing to join Grindelwald should be what happens after the audience sees her struggle to maintain the relationship. We need to have a reason to understand her dive into a darker mindset. The audience needs to see a woman who has been through trial after trial and snuck high and low to little success just to be with the one she loves, not a yandere flapper girl in the making.

Likewise, we need to see how Credence put himself back together. If the sequel to Fantastic Beasts couldn’t showcase that, they needed to at least dedicate time to Credence familiarizing himself with the magic world. The dude was a stranger to it all before, how did he wind up finding a magical circus? They’re not exactly lying about, especially in America, so who did he find or who found him and brought him into the wizarding world? I wanna see that, not him suddenly knowing how stuff works. (Going off of that, how did a mind and body-consuming form of dark magic go from a means of death to basically an Overwatch Ultimate? An Obscurus isn’t like a Hulk serum you can whip out and reel back in, that shit is deadly and nearly wiped out half of Manhattan.)

Anyway, by showing Credence’s further involvement in the magical world, he can be introduced to further situations that may arguably make him more pushed toward Grindelwald (even though it’d still be kind of dumb no matter what way you slice it). Having him suddenly join to find out who his parents were just feels . . . weak. Even for Credence, who’s in a constant state of vulnerability.

Like, Jo. Joanne. JK. Ms. Rowling. Please: I get that you’re trying to live up to the hype or what have you, but try not trying. Your stuff flowed better when you were just trying to tell a story, not hash out a story with intent on it becoming famous. I get wanting it to thrive from a business standpoint (anyone who pretends they wouldn’t want their shit to make beaucoup money is a damn lie), but it just doesn’t work when you’re forcing it.

So . . . yeah, that’s the gist. There’s definitely people who can say it more eloquently but whatever, you chose to read my take on it, so you got it. Like I said before, if you liked Crimes of Grindelwald, that’s fine. I like quite a few films others find trouble enjoying. I just didn’t like this one.

#crimes of grindlewald spoilers #fantastic beasts 2 spoilers #personal opinion #fantastic beasts: crimes of grindelwald #long post

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ngame989 · 6 years ago

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I heard this theory that something about Tom and star staying together, just so monster and mewman can live together in peace, considering they’re “monster and mewman” couples(Is Another Mystery) and also to support eclipsa and her husband supposedly, and another theory of them (Tom and star) being parallel to monster love too,and etc. personally I don’t believe this theory to be possible but what do you think? And my apologies for asking you this dumb question

OK, so first off I’m presuming that the multiple “but X said this, can Starco still happen?” asks I’m getting are the same anon. This is likely the last ask I will field about this and if I keep getting them I’ll disable Anonymous asking, as my many, many words on the subject should speak for themselves.

-Ngame, July 25, 2018

Next one makes me check the box in my blog settings. I know there’s no malice in these asks I’m getting, but I can’t help but see this as “but wait, Ngame, I know all the facts about climate change and I’ve studied the science behind it, but some guy I know said it was cold this week! does this mean it’s not real??? help!!” and I’m very quickly running out of meaningful things to say.

Tom’s speech in Is Another Mystery, while certainly meaningful to his character development, short-circuits every Tom fangirl’s brain. Tom has never been a discriminated common monster, he’s an accepted royal, and no one has had any prejudiced reactions to Tom and Star’s relationship in or out of the other royal families. There has not been a single other moment of parallel between those relationships, and if anything it’s the opposite since Tom was tied to her “being a better princess” mentality at the beginning of 3A, which makes him the more “traditional” choice as opposed to the rebellious one. Plus Marco has consistently been the one more concerned with the mistreatment of monsters since even before Star herself in Season 1.

It’s great that Tom steps up in this moment to defend Star and finally has some genuine concern for the problems other monsters face, I’m not discounting the importance of his speech to him. But it boggles my mind that anyone would treat 60 seconds of words out of a confused, insecure supporting character teenager’s mouth - words that literally didn’t convince their intended recipients, mind you - as the show’s dogma while ignoring literally everything else the show itself tries to tell you including the rest of the context in that exact scene. Considering those people see this show as “Tom vs. the Forces of Not Everyone Worshiping Him Like He Deserves Because He’s Changed™ Goddammit He Has Earned Star As His Prize” it probably shouldn’t surprise me, though.

Plus, this isn’t exactly new - to this day I’ve seen people who still think that Marco’s speech about getting to know Jackie better in Sleepover was actually the show proclaiming that that would be a crucial story arc and that the writers objectively failed by not doing that. As opposed to, y’know, it just being Marco saying what he thought he wanted at the time, and his lack of following up on it being an important sign that he didn’t really know what his heart truly wanted, which was the critical kickstarter to his season 3 growth. This is the point where I remind everyone that this show is meant to be accessible to literal children, with single-digit ages. God help us all.

What confuses me most, though, is that anyone who isn’t viewing the show through a viscous facial coating of a specific demon bodily fluid would give any credence to these “””theories””” whatsoever. There are certainly some reasonable concerns to have with the show and its future, I’m not blindly charging into the future brazenly sure that literally everything will be perfect, but c’mon now guys. I get it, I really do, you’re worried because 3A gave mood whiplash at the beginning (even though Marco returned in three episodes and instantly became the most important person to Star again). But the show itself is too painfully clear on all of this, and if you somehow aren’t picking up on that yourself then there are literally hundreds of pages of analysis where Seddm, myself, or others strap you in a stroller and go through a leisurely walk through the SVTFOE park with mountains of evidence. You shouldn’t need us to hold your hand and tell you it’s gonna be alright, and if for whatever reason you do we already did, repeatedly, both directly and indirectly.

#answered #unfortunately #anonymous

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sussex-nature-lover · 4 years ago

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Tuesday 22nd December 2020

Our Garden Birds. Part 1

♦ bold type indicates an outside link not affiliated to this blog

Before I start today, did anyone manage to see the Great Conjunction last night?

It was thick cloud cover here and the only bright light in the sky was a reflection of the house Landing lights in the bathroom window. I’ll keep looking out and you never know our luck although I have to say considering yesterday was the shortest day, today is putting up some stiff competition and the sky is a sheet of grey.

Back to birds...

Long Tailed Tit on one of our feeding towers

I’ve been chatting with Ms NW tE and she’s disappointed that her venture into bird feeding hasn’t taken off like she’d hoped and she wanted to have a conversation about that and about why and when do the birds come and go, so I thought that’s what I’d write about today. It’s turning out to be long, so I’ll have to carry over to tomorrow.

Why and How to Feed Garden Birds

First off think about your budget and the amount of time you’re prepared to put into feeding your birds. Second, think about the birds and wildlife you attract into your garden and what their needs are. For example we have a large and active squirrel population and for that reason we tend to avoid feeding peanuts - the cost is just prohibitive, we wouldn’t be able to keep up with them.

We offer hanging feeders with high quality fat balls NB please do not buy the coarse,cheap ones which are less nutritious and avoid the dangerous netting at all costs, Birds can get trapped in the net, it’s a very bad idea.

We have two metal garden obelisk type towers. They’re meant as features or to support climbing plants, but we have nicknamed them Italy and France (the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Eiffel Tower don’tcha know, No prizes for why they got those names) and we suspend ‘Squirrel Proof’ (excuse me while I convulse with bitter laughter) Fat Ball Cages from each of them.

So called Squirrel Proof feeders No offence to designers and manufacturers but this is a battle you will never entirely win.

Squirrels are skilled acrobats and endlessly determined. We’ve used an old football rattle, a saucepan and wooden spoon, a kid’s Super Soaker water gun and any manner of things to frighten them off. They work, sort of, for a while...a short while.

We’ve had squirrels chew through plastic feeders and the ones made of very sturdy wire; learn to open the top lid so we had to secure it with twine and it was a devil then to top up or refill: one little squirrel actually got INSIDE the cage and when all else has defeated them they’ve stolen feeders and taken them away never to be found.

Squirrels really do manage the most outrageous assaults on the food sources

We also offer seed in ground trays of various sizes. The large wooden one has bitten the dust though after being trampled by Deer and the small ones have proven just the right size for tiny twins.

In the end we just accept that they’re hungry and pander to them as much as we look after our birds.

This brings me to another topic, not very savoury, but to be borne in mind - bird food may attract much less desirables. You can’t choose to put out food and always see it taken by what you intend it for and worst case scenario you may find it attracts rodents. Take in food at dusk if you can, sweep up any spilled seed and if you do have an issue then you may have to stop feeding for a time.

Also top priority for bird and garden health is to keep your feeders and the feeding areas clean. Good advice can be found Here and I do recommend to diary note regularly as we all know time runs away with us on the routine tasks.

Where to Place your Feeders

Bear all these points in mind:

Sheltered

The bird table needs to be positioned where there is not too much direct sunlight or in a windy location. Birds will feel safer it is in a sheltered position.

Quiet

If possible locate in a quiet place in your garden, preferably not by a path or any other area with human traffic passing. Remember not to place the bird table too far away from your house then you can still enjoy watching the birds!

One last thing to consider, make sure the bird table is placed away from cat ambush sites including fences which cats can leap from.

Safe Location

The bird table needs to be positioned next to a bush or tree; birds will perch before landing on the bird table to ensure that is it safe for them to land on it.

Raised

A raised bird table is easier to view from your house and safer being away from predators. Most bird tables are complete with a wooden pole but you can hang bird tables from a tree.

Nuthatch particularly like Sunflower seeds and you don’t have to spend a lot of money on suitable containers

Our feeders are directly in front of the kitchen patio doors so we have great viewing from our seats at the table - this is why so many of my photos are hurriedly snatched shots taken through the glass. We’ve left the dead trunk of the palm as a kind of Totem (our name for it) as the birds do like to fly to the various trunks and perch there or queue before going on to the feeder. The palm also offers some shelter and protection from both the weather conditions and the predatory Sparrow Hawk. We have Bamboo growing in our garden and in the hot weather I’ve been known to cut branches down and use those as a natural parasol too.

A lot of our birds are so used to us now that they don’t mind our presence and are happy to come and feed while we’re around outside. Some, like the Pheasants will more or less come and ask for more supplies, indeed when we had some resident Mallards, they’d peck at the door in the mornings. The Blue Tits will flock around my Crow as he fills up the feeders. We imagine the cry going out ‘The Man’s heeeeeeeere’

Female Common Pheasant above and Male below. The record number we’ve had in the garden at one time was the Season we got up to 22 - cost a fortune in corn

Anything for Me Please?

We’ve also been very lucky that when we had Dennis and now M Flambeau visiting, they are so well fed that they didn’t bother the birds at all. Actually Dennis used to watch the wildlife like he had his own TV channel for viewing pleasure. Here he is with his own personal Christmas tree. The little birds used to come and perch in it while he sat underneath.

When he first came to live with us he would occasionally give chase to a Butler (Squirrells) or two, but he soon tired of that and saved his energies.

Attracting Birds to your Garden

Just think when the breeding season is highly active, during Springtime, your garden feeders offer a handy and easy source of food for busy parents and their hungry nestlings.

Hungry young Great Tit

In bad weather and harsh winters when natural food is scarce, feeders can be a life saver and please don’t forget to keep fresh water available at all times too.

The important things to remember are good hygiene for your birds’ safety and well being and that if you are going to feed, do it regularly as you don’t want birds wasting their energy seeking out a food source that isn’t available that day.

Much the same as humans have different tastes and diets which are based both on natural preferences and on learned or informed decisions, our animal and bird life is subject to the same. I’ve noticed how some birds learn new tastes and routines to go against type and some stick rigidly to their type. Insect eaters such as Swallows for example haven’t ventured into our feeding areas despite once nesting in our front porch in the Robin box. Robins and the bigger birds like Magpie, Jackdaw and Rooks have found it very tricky to use the hanging feeders, but have persevered and triumphed, adapting their skills and mastering them to reach a food they enjoy. Others will happily scavenge for the bits that fall below.

‘Joe’ Rook and his balancing act. Source of the Joe nickname is Here

Starlings taking advantage of the berries on the palm

Top Ten plants birds will appreciate in your garden.

Birds of all sizes can be found sharing and feeding with impeccable manners, while others like Starlings descend like a veritable plague and are noisy and ill tempered with it. It all forms part of the experience of bird watching.

(mostly) Young Starlings and Great Spotted Woodpeckers make short work of three fat balls

Our gardens are an endless source of food for Green Woodpeckers, who unlike the Great Spotted ones, feed off Ants. We just need thousands more Woodies to keep up the sterling work.

Also insect eaters, Wagtails will come only to drink, although we did have one particularly comical Pied Wagtail who we nicknamed The Inspector because he liked to patrol the ground trays and see off other birds even though he didn’t partake for himself. I believe the expression for that is Dog in the Manger

Generic internet illustration

What's the origin of the phrase 'Dog in the manger'?

The infamous 'dog in a manger', who occupied the manger not because he wanted to eat the hay there but to prevent the other animals from doing so, is generally said to have been the invention of the Greek storyteller Aesop (circa 600 BC).

We happily ascribe this expression to Aesop, disregarding the lack of evidence that he even existed.

Many of the fables that have been credited to Aesop do in fact date from well before the 5th century BC and modern scholarship doesn't give much credence to the idea that Aesop's Fables, as we now know them, were written by him at all. Accounts of Aesop's life are vague and date from long after his death and some scholars doubt that there ever was a real Aesop. If he existed at all, it was as an editor of earlier Greek and Sumerian stories rather than as the writer of them.

Nothing written by Aesop now exists in any form. Nevertheless, you can go into any bookshop and buy a copy of 'Aesop's Fables'

I never actually thought of the expression as one of the Fables. The one that always springs to my mind is that of The Tortoise and the Hare, or the Hare and the Tortoise as it appears on the link above.

The carved staircase at Thornton Hall Hotel, Wirral - with scenes from Aesop’s Fables (est c1892) We used to go often for Sunday lunch when the girls were small

Once young broods are successfully raised you might notice feeders fall out of favour for a while. The wild foods like seeds and fruits in hedgerows and spilled grains from the harvest, mean birds can assert their independence and do their natural thing. They tend to return when they need to. Long Tailed Tits are a classic example of this behaviour taking long breaks in the woods and being missed very much by us. It’s great when they return.

Birds often disappear and go ‘into hiding’ after breeding when they moult and need time to recuperate, get their strength back and replace their flight feathers, Poor worn-out things.

Feeding birds can also have a side benefit - since the G S Woodpeckers became so very fond of the fat balls, we’ve noticed attacks on the bird boxes have ceased (fingers crossed) and everyone’s happily well fed.

To be continued.

Male Woodpecker using a crack in the palm to hold steady a piece broken from a fat ball

And do remember, as I said, in both hot weather and cold, please leave fresh, clean water for the birds to drink and to bathe. You don’t need a dedicated bird bath, they’re not fussy and really do appreciate a water source.

Little and Large, or should I say very large and little. Sparrowhawk above on the bird bath and Goldfinch below.

Decorations from the Standen Courtyard Christmas Trees

Two handmade heart decorations today. I thought we could do with seeing something nice and bright and different. These two are particularly beautiful and well crafted.

December 22nd Advent Door. The ever popular Blue Tit

The Nature Watch Nativity

The Shepherds were frightened at the sight of a brilliant light in the sky, but an Angel appeared and told them they should not be afraid as there was wonderful news to share. The lowly Shepherds were the first to be told of the birth of the baby Jesus.

Christmas Hymn of Choice today from King’s College Choir, Cambridge

‘Angels from the Realms of Glory’

youtube

#caring for garden birds feeding birds Advent decorations Christmas #Nativity Goldfinch Sparrowhawk Woodpeckers #Squirrels nature photography

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feminalunae · 4 years ago

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To leave here or continue? Trying my hand at writing.

Once upon a time, there was a tiny mountain village. At first it appeared unremarkable. A standard farming town, the livelihoods of most based on the sheeps and goats that roamed the countryside. Those that didn’t tend the animals directly provided services to those who did. And thus the town continued on.

But the town did have one claim to fame, and at a second glance one could tell that the people of the town were healthier, happier, more prosperous, and more peaceful than most. You see, high in those mountains was a golden flower. And if you cut one single leaf off of the flower, and gave it to the village’s witch, she could make a tea that would cure any illness. The village did not charge for the flower, or for the witch’s services, because sick people shouldn’t have to worry about that. They still benefited from travelers staying in inns, eating meals, making purchases of hiking equipment, and occasionally paying for guides to the flower. And the town cared for the witch, because it would not do for their healer to starve. Rich travelers were also often compelled to donate to her, as the universe frowned upon taking advantage of a witch. And thus the town continued on.

And in this town, a girl loved a boy. She was beautiful, and known far and wide for this beauty. But she was also smart, and kind, and steadfast, and hoped to marry the boy someday. She loved the kindness he showed to his animals, his dry wit, and his intelligence. She trusted in this love, and in this decision. She was a seamstress, with an expertise in wool, and her clothes were prized for their warmth and beauty. And thus she continued on.

The boy did love the girl. He loved her mind, her thoughtfulness, and her resourcefulness. But he did not trust in this love. His own doubts and fears crowded in his heart and he could not believe in her steadfastness, as he couldn’t see why anyone would love a lowly shepherd boy.

“She has denied lords and princes for you. Have faith,” said his father.

“She has stars in her eyes when she looks at you. Trust.” said his mother.

“Her father has approved the betrothal, despite the other offers. Believe in the force of her love,” said his grandmother.

So the boy tried to have faith, trust, and believe. And when he sat across from the girl, he could convince himself of her love, and dreamed with her of their eventual life together. Alone, he continued to doubt, as the thoughts in his head got louder. He was afraid of her suddenly coming to her senses and regretting her decision. And because he did love, he didn’t want her unhappy. He kept pushing the wedding into the future because of his concerns.

One day as he was sitting with his sheep in the hills near the village, he was speaking of his fears out loud to the sheep, for they did not dismiss his concerns.

“You have right to doubt,” said an old man. “It is suspicious that she would choose a shepherd boy over a prince. The people here are naive. Look at the evidence.”

The boy looked at the old man, whom he knew. The old man was banished to the outskirts of the village, because he was hateful, negative, and a troublemaker. The only reason he wasn’t cast out entirely is the village could not condone leaving an old man to die alone, no matter how vile. The boy knew his reputation, and had an instinct to defend his family.

“My father pointed out that she denied lords and princes for me,” said the boy.

“She is waiting for someone better.”

“My mother noticed the stars in her eyes when she looks at me.”

“She is dreaming about all the wealth she will eventually have.”

“My grandmother said the proof was in her father’s approval of our match.”

“Father and daughter are stringing you along, making you a bargaining chip.”

“What is your proof of your claims? I have listed facts.”

“Logic. If she could have a prince, why would any smart girl not do that? And she is smart, is she not?”

“Very.”

The boy knew this man’s reputation, and tried to find the hole in his argument. But he was giving voice to the boy’s own thoughts and fears. And he seemed so confident.

“The village has cast you out for the things you say. Why should I believe you?”

“The village has cast me out because I tell the truth, and those sheep just don’t want to hear it. Truth-tellers are often persecuted, unfortunately,” he said with a sigh.

The boy looked troubled, as he could not come up with another counter. “Well, even if you are right, what would you have me do? I cannot become rich overnight, and I cannot stop loving.”

The old man crooked his finger and gestured for the boy to come closer conspiratorially. “You know of the golden flower?”

“Of course, our village is famous for it. It heals.”

“Well, if you take more than a leaf, if you take the whole plant, grind it up, and drink a tea made from it, you will become rich.”

“But then the plant will be gone!”

“No….it’s a, what do you call it? A perennial? If you leave the root, it will come back eventually”

“Then why has no one else done this?”

“Only the old ones know, and they are too set in tradition, and too content in their little lives to consider this. Not like you, you have dreams. Now, you can’t go to the witch for this. If everyone else knew about it, we’d all be rich. And then you wouldn’t be better off than anyone else.”

“Won’t they notice when I become rich overnight? Won’t they wonder why?”

“That is the beauty of the plant. It brings wealth to you in an explainable way. A rich man’s son will fall in a well and you’ll be rewarded for saving him. You’ll take a walk in the woods and happen upon a bandit’s treasure trove. Your sheep will start to talk and make you a fortune…”

As the boy frowned thoughtfully, the man knew it was time to let his suggestion percolate. “Well that’s just my two cents. You're a smart boy. You can make your own decisions.” And the old man hobbled away, cackling to himself.

Now, if we consider lying to mean the person knows they are deliberately telling falsehoods, then the old man had only lied about one thing. He had been betrayed in his youth, and as he never learned to forgive or let go, this betrayal festered in his heart. He truly believed all of the things he said to the boy about the girl’s faithlessness. And he was right about the flower. If the whole plant was consumed, it would guide wealth to the drinker.

In fact, the mountain had once been covered with this flower, until all had been hunted down and consumed. When it was realized that there was only one left, and that the flower needed two to propagate, and that this miraculous source of healing was almost extinct, the village banned the practice of eating the whole plant. Consuming it became very regulated and almost taboo, so that only those seriously ill would even consider it. But this had happened many years ago, and all but the very old had forgotten this story, and the importance of the protections.

This is what the old man had lied about. He remembered, and he knew that the flower would not return if consumed by the boy. He was an old man, and while the flower could cure illness, it could not prevent death by old age. So he did not care for the consequences for himself. And he was too full of hate to care about others. Plus, he despised that the town did not charge for the flower or for the witch’s services, thinking them naive and stupid, instead of longthinking and kind. He thought this would teach them a lesson.

The boy loved, but he did not trust. The old man had given credence to all of his fears, while annihilating his family’s reassurances it seemed. And so, in the dead of night, for the boy was a native mountain son and could navigate the trails in his sleep, he stole the flower, made the tea, and went home to a troubled sleep.

The next day, while the boy was minding his sheep and worrying about what he had done, a beautiful and bejeweled carriage made its way down the track at the bottom of the hill. As it neared the trees of the forest marking the end of the town, brigands jumped out of the trees. One pulled a bejeweled and beautiful man out of the carriage and pressed a knife to his throat. The boy, never hesitating, took his sling, placed a rock inside, and struck the man with the knife in the forehead. He fell. The other robber’s turned, and one by one the boy took them out. The bejeweled and beautiful man beckoned for the boy to come to him, thanked him for his services, and gave him a trove of gold and gems as a gift.

Now rich, the boy asked the girl to marry him the next week. She had been wanting to marry him for quite some time, for him to continually delay her, wanting to make his fortune. So she said yes, and a huge celebration was planned. The whole town had seen their love, and everyone was very excited.

Now, the witch loved as well. And her love, her wife, was the village storyteller. She was one of the few who could read, and she would read stories from far away and relay them to the town. And she was much beloved, by the witch most of all. A few days before the wedding, the storyteller became very sick, with a very high fever. She writhed in pain and hallucinated. Concerned, but not panicked, the witch made the journey to the golden flower, intending to use it, for the first time, on her own family. When she found it gone, she thought of the boy’s recent luck, and immediately made the connection. For while her face had no lines and her hair was raven black, she was as old as the village itself, and remembered the near catastrophe. She raced back down to the village, just in time to see the boy and the girl stand in front of the alderman, about to be wed.

“You! You ate the flower. It's gone! You have ruined us!”

Everyone looked around in confusion. The boy paled and began to object, while the girl pulled her hands away.

The witch took a breath and began the most powerful spell she knew. “You two will never be together. You will be born, again and again, time after time, and find each other every time, just to lose each other again. You will remember each life, each moment, and remember why this is happening as an eternal torment. And this is your punishment for your greed.” And the boy and the girl disappeared.

Now, the witch, in her anger and grief, acted rashly, punishing the girl for a crime she was unaware of. While the boy was at fault, he was misled, and knew not what he did. And so, the punishment did not fit the crime. When this happens, the universe tends to counter. So a cure was created, but left to the couple to figure out for themselves.

#short stories #fairy tales #original writing

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honeylikewords · 5 years ago

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In a perfect world where you were hired to help write and direct the final movie of the new trilogy, how would you want Rise of Skywalker to go? What adjustments would you want made to either address anything from the previous films, or to avoid what has thus far been hinted at in trailers and interviews?

Oh, man, there’s SO much to think about here. Let’s start with, I think, things I’d want to change from previous films (either retconning them in RoS or providing context that makes them fundamentally changed)…

So, to that effect, here’s an itemized list!

Just as a precaution, I make some assumptions or pull from information I’ve seen around the internet. Some of these MIGHT turn out to be close to canon, so if you want to avoid anything, just steer clear of this post. I’m trying not to theorize too hard, and thus avoid spoilers myself, so I don’t know anything with any solid confirmation, so I could be wrong. Just wanted to cover my bases!

Without further ado, here’s the list!

1. I think I’d retcon out the idea that Luke would ever hurt Ben as a padawan. The general characterization of Luke felt very… off in The Last Jedi, and I wasn’t sure why the writers went in the directions they did for that.

I’m not saying Luke can’t have a darker side– we know he struggled with a call to the Dark side during his training and feared it would overtake him– but the idea that he’d go as far as to even imagine killing a sleeping child, much less the son of his two most beloved people in the universe is… weird. And wrong.

So I’d retcon that out with it being a false memory planted by, let’s say, Snoke or Palpatine, in order to create a rift between them and bring Ben to the Dark side. I think that would make a great deal of sense, frankly, and bring some much-needed closure and relief to the idea that Luke would ever hurt someone so defenseless.

2. On a similar note, while I understand that the thesis of TLJ was “making mistakes and learning from them”, I felt like most of the “mistakes” engineered into the movie didn’t actually make sense for the characters making them. Poe being “selfish” and “glory obsessed” doesn’t at all match with what we’d seen of him in TFA, nor does it match with any of the extended (and canonical) material about him.

He left the Republic Navy because they were too accepting of the idea of sacrificing their soldiers. In the military, that’s called “acceptable losses”: the amount of cannon-fodder that the military’s willing to wave off and accept as the “expected amount” of dead soldiers. If that idea enraged Poe enough to leave the Republic Navy, why would he be so accepting of the same idea for the Resistance? As far as I’m aware, the only life Poe is ever willing to sacrifice is his own; he wants everyone else safe. So why write him like he doesn’t care?

Here’s a direct quote about him from his official Star Wars Wookiepedia entry:

“… Dameron developed a strong sense of commitment and duty, but had trouble with the line between his commitment to the Resistance and the commitment to his comrades, willing to disobey a direct order from his superior, General Organa, to make sure that the Millennium Falcon safely left Starkiller Base before its imminent destruction.”

Oh, yeah, that definitely sounds like the kind of guy to blindly let HUNDREDS of his comrades die. Yeah. For sure.

And then to act like he’s a bad person for not trusting a leader who isn’t making themselves clear in a time when clarity is of the utmost importance? To act like he’s a narcissist for trying to take the lead and help as best he can in a chaotic and, for all intents and purposes, leaderless situation? To frame him like he’s a bad guy for not trusting Holdo immediately, or acting like his distrust comes from a place of sexism or self-interest? Absolute rubbish.

So while I can’t retcon the whole “insubordinate bad listener self-obsessed narcissist” behavior that got written into TLJ, I’d try my best to re-contextualize Poe’s frustrations that he expressed in the film by showing why it would make sense for him to take the lead, to demand answers, to do his best to destroy the Dreadnought.

For example, showing why it was important to take down the Dreadnought: he’s constantly concerned about civilian casualties at the hands of the First Order. With a Dreadnought still active, millions of people could be killed at the First Order’s whims; by taking the ship down, he saved millions of lives.

Another good way to dispell the idea of him as a self-centered hotshot willing to throw away lives is to show just how much he values the lives of others and wants to keep them away from harm; show his own self-sacrifice. Show him being willing to take the damage to protect someone else. Show him telling someone to get behind him, to stay safe, telling them “I’m not going to lose you, too”. I think that would be a helpful step away from the perception of him as a glory chaser; show that his self-sacrifice is genuine.

Honestly, I’d put so much effort into fixing the fallout from the Poe mischaracterization that I could go on forever about it, but I’m sure you all want to read other stuff, too, so let’s move on for now.

3. Absolutely retcon the shit out of the idea that the Force connection between Rey and Kylo was anything more than platonic or an intervention of Snoke. Sure, you can indicate that there’s still a lingering connection, but clarify that it’s more about the battle between the Light and the Dark, and the inherent connection that such mirror images will have to each other, but don’t get it twisted as some kind of galaxy-spanning love story.

I’d put a lot of emphasis on Rey clearly expressing frustration with Kylo and saying “He’s failed himself. His pain is his own choice now; I tried to help him, but he rejected it, so it’s up to him to stop himself or we’ll do it for him” or something to that effect. And having her definitely avowedly denying any kind of “attraction” out loud. That’d be nice.

4. In a parallel train of thought, we gotta talk about Rey’s parents. While I’m certainly fine with the idea of Rey Nobody, because it’d be so great to have a Star Wars story where someone NOT from the Skywalker bloodline is just as strong as one of them, and is just as worthy and important, regardless of their bloodline or heritage, I’m also concerned that leaving her a Nobody would give credence to all that bullshit Kylo was spewing about her “not mattering” to anyone but him, ugh.

And it’d leave a door open for R*ylos to be like “WELL THEY’RE NOT RELATED SO OBVIOUSLY THEY CAN HAVE SEX!”, ew.

So we’d have to give her some kind of actual backstory, and finally clear up what that is. It’s not something I actually want to do all that bad– I’m genuinely totally happy to not know everything about Rey’s parents, and the story would be fine without ever knowing anything about them– but I feel like so many people would demand it, and ensuring that Rey and Kylo are somehow related would finally put a cork in that insufferable bottle.

I don’t really have any great suggestions for how to deal with it, but I think there’s definitely the potential for a cool twist where Ben isn’t actually Leia and Han’s biological son, but Rey is their biological daughter. A sort of switched at birth idea, if that makes sense, and while it might be hard to believe (wouldn’t a mother know if she gave birth to a boy or girl?), there are lots of ways to work around it, and I think it could be a cool twist, though it does leave the loophole of them still not being related…

Hm. Well, at any rate, I’d have to iron it out with some other brainstormers, but I’m sure there are ways to fully cap off and prevent R*ylo from ever happening. Don’t worry, I’ll name some later in the list.

5. I’d also do my best to take away any lingering ideas about Finn being “goofy” or “cowardly”. TLJ decided to present him as this selfish weirdo more interested in wealth and himself than in the greater good, which was… odd. While he’s certainly careful about self-preservation, he also has a good heart, so I’d do a lot to emphasize his strong, heroic nature, and not just use him as a guy for all the gags to bounce off of. He deserves serious, thoughtful moments, heroic moments, AND silly, light-hearted moments.

6. While on the topic of Finn, I’d also put FinnRose to rest and just… not have that be a ship. I’ve talked about it before, but I’ll summarize my basic issues with it: they just didn’t have any chemistry, it was a very forced and hasty relationship, and it didn’t make sense for either party.

Rose has a problem with hero worship; that much is evident. So why indulge her in it by pairing her with someone she childishly idolizes? Why not have her character arc be about finding her own personal bravery, not being reliant on others or their stories, but forging her own?

As for Finn, I’d love to see him end up staying close to Rey, possibly even beginning to walk the road towards their own relationship (though I do also value the idea of Rey not needing to have any romantic relationship in the saga at all), at the very least as friends.

The whole “what we love” line in TLJ made no sense (except as a shoehorn to explain the validity of R*ylo in future films?), so I’d just have her explain in RoS that she was talking about “what we love” being belief systems that we fight to protect, like defending human decency, freedom, and peace, and that the kiss was a weird, juvenile decision that she’s embarrassed about in the same way one might be embarrassed about a childhood diary entry about a crush. It was just a fleeting moment of weirdness, but now that she’s more grown up and sturdy in her own personality and life, she doesn’t have to rely on the childish ideas of heroes and romance to keep her going.

I think that’s a long enough list of the retcons for now, so I’ll move into things I’d like to see happen in the movie and things I’d rather NOT see in the movie (i.e. things from the trailers that are being hinted at that I want GONE).

1. I’m just gonna get out in front of this: I don’t think I’m gonna like Zorri Bliss. I don’t. I’m really tired of “badass female characters” in that “badass female character” is such a boring stock trope by now. Skinny white woman who engages in violence and is flippant and emotionally removed, oh, joy, I’ll hold for applause. But what I’m really concerned about is the angle they’re trying to push with her and Poe; specifically, that Poe may not be “that good of a person” because he used to hang out with her, and she’s implied to be a smuggler or mercenary of some sorts.

Look, I get it. We don’t like “perfect” characters. I know that I love characters with oddities and quirks and flaws, and who make mistakes. But there’s a difference between that and fundamentally re-working a character so that they’re “not so nice” anymore.

Poe already has flaws to work with and explore. Why make him have a “dark” backstory when he’s already interesting enough? And why make it connected to a “past relationship” with this random new woman?

I’m also concerned about them pushing a romance, which we simply don’t need, especially because it looks like it’s being done to finally quash any perceptions of Poe as queer. Which is just so shitty on so many levels, but I don’t have time to unpack them all.

So what I would do is probably just… cut Zorri altogether. We’re already introducing new characters in this film, and specifically adding Jannah to the roster, and tossing in new characters to an already crowded roster won’t really help. None of them will get enough screen time to properly reach catharsis in their arcs, so we just have to nip the least helpful bud, and Zorri’s seems like it’d be the first one to go, in my opinion.

Maybe she’ll turn out to be great in the film. Who knows. But if it was up to me, I’d drop the whole subplot of her, and making Poe’s backstory a sullied one. I don’t need that.

Instead, I’d use that time to allow the main trio to DO THEIR THING. We need to see THEIR character journeys: not random newcomers.

2. No Bendemption.

This is gonna be a slightly controversial take, I guess, but I think a redemption for Kylo would be kinda hackneyed and forced.

That’s not to say I don’t think villain redemptions are possible, fun, interesting, or worth exploring. But I’m saying that I think this particular one just… wouldn’t work.

Kylo doesn’t seem to be at all legitimately sorry for the things he’s done. He seems to be aware of his choices and capable of making them independently. Sure, the writers might force the idea that “oh, it was PALPATINE controlling him all along!”, but I feel like that would be so counterintuitive to the point of these stories.

The whole point is about choice: who we choose to be, what we choose to do. We can all choose to be kind, or we can choose to be cruel. We can choose to put others first or serve ourselves. We choose the Light or the Dark, and we get to decide what we do with that. Everything we do is a choice, and the Star Wars saga is about becoming out better selves and choosing to help those around us because it’s right.

So making the baddie secretly mind controlled would be… dumb. And hollow. And devoid of substance. So that’s out, not an option (if they want to tell a valid story).

So that just leaves us with Kylo Ren, Ben Solo, whatever, has been CHOOSING to be this way. And while he’s certainly felt pained by it, he also keeps making his choices; he’s now Supreme Leader, and he could choose to destroy the whole thing, leave, fight for good, but he doesn’t.

So he can’t BE redeemed. Because he doesn’t want to be.

I mean, I’d honestly have to write a whole essay on just this singular topic to accurately convey my point, but here’s a shortened version of it:

I think a Bendemption wouldn’t be prudent at this point because he just doesn’t have the time to make a satisfying arc in one movie without it feeling forced, rushed, and out of character. So, to tie off the saga, he has to go out like Vader did: he has to die to be redeemed.

He can either die a villain or die a hero, but regardless, I think he just… needs to die in order to properly close the book on him. It needs to end with sacrifice, and either he sacrifices himself or someone else makes a sacrifice of him. Only then do we reach the catharsis.

And, look, I know the Bendemption is gonna happen. But if I was writing it, I wouldn’t let it happen: he’d have to have his Vader death. At the very best, it could be a noble one. At the worst, he’d die as he deserved to. But it would finally be over.

3. No grey Jedi Rey.

I don’t really love this whole cultural direction we’re taking with our movies where “the bad guys are secretly good and the good guys are secretly bad and the real truth is just to be in the middle!” because it’s so unhelpful.

Yes, extremism is bad and blindly believing any one group is the best and most moral, without ever questioning that, often prevents people from critically analyzing their choices, but it’s not that there isn’t an objective truth in the world; there is. There are objectively good and evil things to do. So we can’t pretend that relativity is universally applicable, because it isn’t.

So having Rey “accept the Dark and the Light” would be… difficult without seeming clownishly college-philosophy-student-y.

While it would be important for her to accept that the Dark can exist in all of us, and that it’s not inherently evil to be tempted or to acknowledge it, the difference is in choice. She shouldn’t be allowed to have the best of both worlds because that isn’t how it works in real life, either.

Indulging in our worst impulses, darkest desires, or lowest cruelties doesn’t make us more “real”, it makes us worse people. So having her “use the Dark side” would also just feel like this weird attempt to allow her to love Kylo or accept evil as “alright because we’re all bad inside”.

This isn’t to say she has to live in a world of harsh absolutes, but rather that she should, ultimately, choose the Light, kindness, and a journey towards making sure that she is keeping herself in check, as well as making sure that she is doing her best work for herself and others.

So I’d write a clear moral line in: anyone can change, yes, but the important part is to change for the better, not just to accept the worst and stagnate in one’s most awful, darkest qualities.

The idea would be lenience by extending kindness, which anyone can choose to accept, not just “you’ve been evil but I love you anyway”. Nah. We can’t just tolerate people’s evil behavior and let it continue: we have to extend the possibility of mercy and tell the person they can come to the Light if they so choose, but we won’t descend to them. They rise, or they fall, and it’s in their own hands.

4. On a less philosophical note, DON’T make Finn, Jannah, and Lando all related.

A lot of the content I’ve seen circling for them seems to imply a familial relationship, possibly that Finn is Jannah’s lost brother, and that Jannah is Lando’s daughter. And, yes, while I’d love to see Finn reunited with his family and given a chance at a happy life… it’d be kinda cringey and bad to imply that the few black characters in Star Wars are all related.

I get that Star Wars is a dynastic story centered on families and genealogies and inheritances. But holy shit, it’s kinda racist to imply that the, like, only three black people in the series are going to be related.

It’s a galaxy full of people.

Not all of them have to be related just because they have similar melanin.

5. As for the overall plot, I think what I’d just want is the final triumph of good over evil. I really need to see that. I don’t need an ambiguous ending, I don’t need a dark one, I need one where the Light wins out, because that’s what we need to see, what we need to believe, and what we need to strive for.

The First Order NEEDS to fall. Kylo NEEDS to be out of power. And there NEEDS to be an emphasis on the value of lives, on the importance of taking care of the people in our universe, and on the belief that good does prevail, even when it doesn’t necessarily seem like it will.

I’m not too bogged down with details– planet-hopping is fine, traveling to new worlds and seeing new people is all cool– but more concerned about the overall message. The MESSAGE is what I’m most interested in. And we all know what my message would be.

6. Oh, and just focus on keeping the trio together. Structurally, I’d just need to see them working as a team; we’ve had way too much time of them apart, so it’d be nice to see how they interact and function as a group. I’d like that.

Anyway, this is just a short-list of things. If I were to actually talk about this, I’d need, like, a whole essay just to unpack my thoughts. Oh, and I’d probably prepare a full alternate script. Just because.

I have plenty of other ideas for things I’d love to see happen, but this is just a list of things I don’t want or things I’d do to prevent things I don’t want. LMAO.

I’ll come back to this idea, this list-ish format of thoughts, after the film is out and after I’ve seen it, in order to talk more about things I’d have done differently or changed (provided there’s anything I would have done differently or changed), but for now, this is just a handful of my ideas about things I’m concerned with.

Let me know what you guys are thinking; I’d love to be able to discuss this and kinda get a feel for what other people are thinking about, concerned about, worried about, or excited about.

#long post #gif warning #messages #anonymous #k reviews #(Sorta!!)

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chingonabrujita · 5 years ago

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The Role Of Science

As I stated before, research is going to be the cornerstone of this little project. It has to be, really. Scientific research tells us how the body works. The fields of anatomy and physiology tell us how the body is constructed and how it operates, respectively. Subsets of these fields, namely biomechanics, kinesiology, and exercise physiology, give us specific data on how the body moves and how it responds to physical activity. Without that information, we'd be stuck with a process of guesswork, and that's not good for anybody. It helps to understand what science actually is. I don't mean the pop-culture treatments of science; unless you've actually gone through some kind of post-secondary education, you may be convinced that science is what you see in TV shows. I can go ahead and tell you that it's not based on mad scientists working in hidden lairs; it's not rogue misunderstood geniuses making strides that the rest of the orthodoxy rejects. It's certainly not a 'belief system' that just happens to be opposed to emotion and faith. At its core, science is a process of observation and description. You see something happen, then figure out why it happened. That's all science is once you boil it down to the basics. You watch something happen, describe it in as much detail as you can, and then figure out why it happened. As you might imagine, this process can get quite in-depth, and most experiments will often raise more questions than they answer. Despite claims to the contrary, this is the greatest strength of science. It can update itself and constantly opens up new avenues to explore. We're always refining our knowledge and understanding. It's not a matter of having unchallenged absolute truth. It's a matter of constant learning. We've formalized this process into a series of steps called the scientific method. In broad terms, the researcher will come up with a hypothesis, design a way to test that hypothesis, then gather the data from that test to figure out what actually went on. A hypothesis is simply an idea or concept that can be tested: the sky is blue, grass is yellow. In reality, a hypothesis is usually very specific, some statement that can be tested in detail. When the average person says 'I have a theory...' and then goes off to talk about whatever he thinks about some subject, he's actually talking about a hypothesis, not a theory. In science, 'theory' has a different and specific meaning. The hypothesis is a question that needs to be tested, and thus either proved or disproved. The test of a scientist's hypothesis is the experiment. Experimentation has to be tightly controlled to ensure that there's nothing to confound the results. For example, if you're doing a study to figure out whether or not darkness helps you sleep, it won't do you much good to do it in a loud room. You'd have no way of knowing what was affecting sleep - is it darkness, or is it the fact that the room is loud and keeping your subjects awake? In this example, the loud noise is called a confounding variable, which makes it impossible to know if the thing you're studying is actually responsible for the effect. If you can't establish a cause-and-effect relationship, then it's impossible to say that X causes Y. This is why controlled research is important, to narrow down the exact cause of the effect we're watching. A big chunk of experimental design is about removing or minimizing confounding variables. If we don't do this, we can never be certain that there's a cause-and-effect relationship - we can't know if what we think is the cause is really the cause. When we have a hypothesis that stands up to repeated experiments, then it's formalized into a theory. Now as I mentioned, laymen tend to use theory and hypothesis interchangeably, implicitly meaning 'an idea I have about something or other'. In the science world, a theory is a hypothesis that has been tested and tested and tested again; through all that testing, it's remained true. A scientific theory has a proven track record, so we can assume that it holds true in all the circumstances we can test; certainly there's no reason to call it into question. Obvious examples of this would be things like gravity and germ theory. They've been tested so thoroughly that we just take for granted that they're true, though once upon a time they were just somebody's working hypothesis.

That leads to another thing I need to touch on. Scientific theories are explicitly designed to be falsified; they need to be tested and challenged. That doesn't mean we want them to be wrong; it means that we want them to be as accurate as possible, and this means they must be open to new data if they are wrong. A theory that has withstood scrutiny is a theory that's reliable. On the other side of the coin, a theory that's called into question by a new observation is a theory that will need to be updated – because it might be wrong. It's a process of constant refinement and learning. The ability to challenge and refine knowledge is the difference between a scientific theory and dogma. I can't emphasize this point enough. Science isn't about always being absolutely right - it's about being as right as possible with what we know. Case in point. Everyone's heard of the theory of gravity. Isaac Newton first formalized this back in the 18th century when he had a legendary run-in with an apple, or so the story holds. To this very day, Newton's ideas on gravity are considered fundamental to physics. Gravity is quite possibly the easiest of all theories to test, and I don't think anyone outside of Wile E. Coyote has ever come across an exception. Now, what would you say if I told you that Newton's theory of gravity is wrong? Poppycock? Balderdash? Not so fast. Back in the 1930s, one Albert Einstein came along with his theories of general and special relativity that stood Newton on his ear. Relativity is a complex mish-mash of concepts that are quite beyond this book, but the gist of it is that Newton was wrong - but only in circumstances that don't tend to arise on Earth (astronauts can notice the difference down to billionths of a second due to the difference in gravity in orbit, but that's about it). As far as anyone on our planet is concerned from day to day, Newton is absolutely correct. Yet he was still wrong. So what happened? Well, modern physics is still using Newton's concepts of gravitation because they're still accurate. We only invoke Einstein under those conditions where relativity fits better - when things are moving very fast, or when things are very very heavy. The classical theory of gravity, as Newton's work is known, wasn't thrown out; it was improved. Newton wasn't wrong, he was just incomplete. He simply didn't have any way to test things in the way Einstein did, and since it was completely irrelevant the the world of humans, it didn't matter. It was only when we reached out for further understanding that we discovered the greater detail. That's the role of a theory in science: it will stand as long no new information contradicts it. When we're talking about a well-tested and well-understood theory, the odds of it being thrown out completely are next to zero. Gravity isn't going anywhere, as one example. If something comes along to expand on the theory of relativity, you can guarantee that we'll still rely on Einstein's work. The new theory will only define new phenomena – it won't contradict anything we already know or anything we've already observed. Theories are refined and improved, but very rarely are they contradicted. This is unfortunate in an age where we have a sensationalist media that thrives on controversy, because they'll make it seem like any minor flaw or issue is suddenly a 'great controversy'. I don't care what the news or some web article tells you, science just doesn't operate like that. The reality is that we understand a great deal of how the final picture will look; missing a few pieces doesn't change that. Mass-media science reporting would have you believe that a puzzle, obviously creating a picture of a mountain, was really showing you a cat – just because you were missing the piece that contained the mountain peak.

It's never about absolutes, really (you see what I did there?). The point is not to think as right/wrong, but 'most likely correct' or 'probably not possible' based on the current body of evidence. When a scientist says something will 'never' happen, the implied meaning is 'so unlikely based on what we know that for all purposes it will never happen'. This is alien to a society so used to thinking in simple polarized terms like good vs. evil, but that's how things are. Which brings me to the field of exercise science. Unlike physics, chemistry, or even biology, exercise science isn't a fundamental subject. It's a subset of physiology that looks at how the body responds to physical activity. What this means is that in practice, it's not a very specific or well-understood field in comparison to others. Exercise science is comparatively vague, leaving open a lot of room for interpretation. There's as much creativity, and dare I say art, involved in the field of physical conditioning as there is genuine research. Aha! Science can't tell us anything! Not quite - the whole discussion on the scientific method throws that reasoning out the window. Just because we haven't finished the puzzle doesn't mean we can't tell what the final picture is going to look like. Exercise science still has quite a bit to tell us. The trick here is parsing it into useful terms, not just throwing it all out because it's not 100% complete. A lot of people seem to think that science has to give you a specific workout program, and never ever be wrong, in order to be useful. A lot of people will put science on the back burner, giving more credence to their own experiences. In both cases (and plenty of others) this boils down to people just not understanding the role that science plays - and not understanding how to apply the information that it gives us. Like any field, you'll start out with a broad understanding. With time and research, the knowledge will gradually filter down to greater detail; and that's the real power here. By narrowing things down, research establishes boundaries. It doesn't necessarily give us specific details and protocols, and you wouldn't expect it to do this. But it does give us general starting points. Most important of all, it tells us what doesn't work. You may wonder why that's important. Why should you care what you can't do? You want to lift weights, and you need a program to do that, right? It's important so that you can see through misinformation. Further, knowing what not to do is how we establish starting points. You'll always rely on trial and error to some degree, but you can make that process much easier by ruling out things that won't be productive. All that said, we have to be careful. Research does have very real limitations and we have to acknowledge those. Too many people treat research like an almighty gospel, as if presenting an abstract or two can justify any claim. It doesn't work that way either. When you look at a research paper, you'll find some common themes. First and most notable is the abstract, which is a brief summary of the research and the results of the experiment. This is useful because it lets you get the key details with a quick glance. A well-written abstract will cover all the bases and give you the idea of what the paper is describing. However, there are nuances and subtleties that an abstract just can't convey, and when we're interpreting a paper to figure out how useful it is, you have to look at the whole thing to make sure it's applicable. Research papers are written with certain common content. They'll all go into details on their initial hypothesis, or what they're wanting to test out; they give details regarding the actual experiment, including who or what was the subject, how the experiment was performed, how data was collected and so on; they'll detail the results of the experiment and any data collected; and finally the authors will usually discuss the results, how they relate to existing research, and what can be taken away from the paper. This is all done for good reason. Research is all about transparency. If you go into detail with regards to everything you did, then other researchers can duplicate your results and confirm your results. If you make an unusual choice in your experimental design, people can see that and note it. If your results don't fit with the rest of the data, you can explain why: maybe it was something to do with your actual test, or maybe it had to do with how you collected your data. In short, you have to consider a lot of variables when you're interpreting a study. In exercise-related research, there's a few recurring issues we have to look at in particular. Most research into exercise deals with either aerobic exercise or with rehabilitation. As you might gather, this isn't terribly useful for generalizing into strength-training concepts, let alone something specialized like bodybuilding. Although the West is starting to catch up, a lot of what you read about is actually taken from older Soviet-era information, which, while not bad necessarily, can be hard to corroborate. Once we start to look at the Western research into actual strength exercise, we start to see a common theme: 'untrained subjects'. Now, in some ways this is good because at least it's done in humans. However we run into some potentially major issues because we've seen it demonstrated repeatedly that an untrained person just doesn't respond the same way as someone with years of experience. Lots of strength-training studies will demonstrate amazing results in untrained subjects, but comparatively few of them account for this so-called 'newbie effect'. Beginners can get away with lots of things; often they will still improve in spite of what they do, not because of it. When we're trying to establish a cause-and-effect relationship, this can throw a huge wrench into things. It gets worse. The bulk of the research into the actual biochemistry and physiology is done in rats. While there's a lot of similarities in humans and rats, there's a lot of differences too. There's plenty of examples where things that happened in rats didn't pan out in humans; that's a big weakness. This is a favorite tactic of the supplement industry, actually. They love taking some rat research or weakly applicable research in humans and then claiming it supports their new magic product. They conveniently ignore the fact that not only is that data not applicable, but they also have exactly nothing showing their claimed results in humans. Besides the claims of the product users, of course - but that's not placebo effect or anything. See also my earlier point about controlling for variables; when you don't perform research in controlled conditions, you can't be sure that your attributed cause is creating the effect. Since giving out free supplements to bodybuilders is almost the definition of 'bias' and 'placebo effect', these testimonials have to be considered highly suspect. And of course all of these objections can apply just as easily to any workout routine, or any study that looks at strength training. The good news is that recent years have given us a good number of studies that have started looking at these factors in humans. It's still not perfect, but the picture is shaping up to be much clearer than it ever has been.

Finally, there's a limit to the resolution of research as it applies to any single individual. It simply can't apply to every last person in a literal sense. There's always going to be some deviation from this norm. This is where the creativity and trial-and-error aspects come into it. We can establish general starting points and guidelines, but these are derived from statistical analysis. Your mileage may vary, and in fact it's highly likely to deviate from the general rules by at least some degree. I say this because one of the big objections I see is that science 'doesn't apply'. I have a hard time seeing how that can be the case; by definition, science just watches and describes. To say that science 'doesn't apply' would be suggesting that somehow your body just happens to differ from everyone else's body. Last I checked, humans all had the same basic physiology. Your body will have specific responses within the boundaries that research describes, but you won't ever do something that's just completely out of left field. There are ways to account for your individual needs, though, and the fortunate thing is that nobody will deviate that much from the baseline. You need to adjust things to the individual, yes, but that doesn't give you permission to go do anything you feel like just because 'everybody's different'. You still have to obey the guidelines, even if you have flexibility within those guidelines.

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