#this man invokes strong feelings in me and they are Rage and Violence

[v-tired-queer]

Thirty seconds into the first actual scene with Spencer in Delilah Green Doesn't Care and I already want Delilah to beat his ass from here to the middle of next week, fucking sass him out, Delilah

[gwynrielendgame]

Gwyncien part 4

TW: Mentions of SA, violence, and dark thematic elements. This is not any worse than acosf, so if you read that and I’m assuming you did if you’re a gwynriel fan haha, then this fanfic probably won’t bother you.

There will be one more part after this and it’s partially written, so hopefully it’ll be up soon. Thank you for all the support I have received over this. It really motivates me to keep writing.

"Do you see the male with the long dark hair, blue jacket?" Lucien pointed to a window in a tavern. Gwyn followed his line of sight before nodding. "That was the general of the raid. He left soon after the cauldron leg had been retrieved. He still managed to enjoy himself according to rumors, but he left before Azriel even got there."

Gwyn was unsure how Lucien came across this intel. Part of her wanted to question him, but did not think it was appropriate given that she was planning to kill that male nonetheless. She was unsure if she could recognize him or not given the distance. She figured she would not be able to though. Azriel killed all the men directly involved in her trauma, but there were many young priestesses there that day and many of them shared the same fate as her. Some of those soldiers had escaped Azriel's fury. Gwyn made a promise to herself that they would not escape hers. She shifted her stance so that she was kneeling instead of crouching. Leaves rustled under her which earned a cringe from Lucien. They were currently spying on the Hybern general from a forested hill. Apparently, the male frequented this tavern enough for Lucien to find him. Gwyn questioned whether he was solely Tamlin's emissary or if he did a variety of work. He was much better at spying than she initially figured.

"Do you want me to handle this one?" He asked warily. He knew why Gwyn wanted to do this, but he also understood if she would not be able to follow through.

"No." She shook her head while whispering. "I need to do it."

They continued to watch inside the tavern. The male was drinking quite a bit and was being a bit obnoxious from what Gwyn could tell.

"It's time." Lucien interrupted her careful observations. She looked towards him curiously. "At this time every Friday night, he steps outside to smoke his pipe. Supposedly, his wife finds the smell horrendous and requires that he step outside for it. You will be able to catch him alone if you wait by that back door in the alley." She followed his finger to find it pointing at a door to the side of the tavern. She shuddered a little at the fact that this male had a wife. Gwyn wondered if she knew what type of man she had married. She hesitated.

"What if this goes poorly, Lucien? I cannot live through Sangravah again." She sounded desperate and she knew it. Gwyn wanted affirmation that she would never be powerless again.

"It won't." He reminded her. "But I will be watching from here the entire time. I will not allow anything bad to happen. First sign of trouble and I will be by your side before you can blink." He grabbed her hand from where he knelt beside her and squeezed. She looked into his eyes and her nerves began to fall away. That one russet eye, so similar to Catrin's, put her at ease. "Hurry. Or you will miss your chance." He let go of her hand.

Before she left, she placed her invoking stone on her head at Lucien's insistence. It would give her an advantage and she would take all that she could get right now. She started to utter a prayer. It was one that she read in a random book about the rules and rituals of warriors from different cultures. This one originated from the Illyrians.

"For the honor and glory of the Mother, for the safety and freedom of my kingdom, and for the respect and love of my family."

She stood up and slowly began to descend the hill as quietly as possible. It was difficult considering the leaves were still brittle from the cold. She pulled her cloak tighter around her as the icy wind whipped around. Soon enough she was near the door. She plastered herself to the wall, concealing herself in the shadows. It made her miss her mate and his shadows. She remained quiet as the male loudly stumbled out. She spent a few moments observing him. He was tall and physically imposing, similar to Cassian in that way. Gwyn knew that was the only similarity the two males shared though. His hair was longer than hers and tied back out of his face. Sweat collected on his face as he pulled out his pipe.

"Do you remember me?" It was all Gwyn could muster, but it startled the man. He looked towards the shadows she was hiding in. She certainly did not recognize him. There was so much chaos during the raid that her memory only had room to process so much. She was glad she could not remember anything more, could not remember what this specific man did.

"I dunno darling. I can't see you." The disgusting smirk on his face made her decision easier.

He was handsome that much she could tell. It made her feel so much worse for some reason. Perhaps she wished his outsides matched his insides. She quietly pulled her hood down while she stepped into the light, making eye contact with the male. His eyes hardened as they caught on her invoking stone and his stance was no longer relaxed. It was all Gwyn needed to know that Lucien's intel was good. She thought she might feel more fear or maybe more overwhelming anxiety. It was the typical response she had around harmless men, so she expected to feel it even more so now. However, all she felt was disgust. Looking at this male made her skin crawl. She wondered how long his list of unconsenting females was. Her grip tightened on silver majesty as her resolve hardened.

"Came back for round two?" He sneered as he lit his pipe. Clearly deciding she was no threat.

"Actually, I need your help with a decision." She should not toy with him this way, but his comment grated her just enough. She took a step toward him, waiting for the anxiety to bloom. When it did not, she cocked her head to the side as if she was analyzing him. He looked at her in expectation, but did not verbally respond.

"I was planning on killing you tonight. I think it might be more torturous for you though if I let you live without a certain appendage. Thoughts?" She lifted a singular eyebrow while a smirk played at her lips. Her face may have looked amused, but she did not feel that way. Truthfully, she wanted this over with. The statement did not have the desired effect, however. The male began to laugh so deeply that he was bent over, his pipe forgotten. The profuse arrogance provoked her into action.

Before he could react, she slammed her dagger into the side of his thigh- just barely missing an important artery. His scream of pain should not have brought her joy. Gwyn was aware that it was wrong to find pleasure in anyone's pain. This was different though. Her rage began to consume her, engulf her. Suddenly, she was back in Sangravah. She was not helpless this time, though. She could stop this male. She could stop all the males. A sharp pain to her temple brought her back from her flashback. The male had recovered and slapped her away from him. Unfortunately, her dagger was still lodged in his thigh.

"Fucking bitch." Is all he muttered as he launched himself at her.

He mistook her for a meek priestess who shied away from any negative emotion. She would never be that priestess again. Instead, she allowed her anger to consume her. She ducked under his arms and quickly turned around, kicking him in the back in the process. He was slow, poorly trained even for a general, and drunk. Gwyn would continue to toy with him even if it was just to satisfy some sick need for revenge. This death would not be quick for him. He stumbled back to his feet as he ripped her dagger from his thigh. He wiped blood from his nose from crashing into the building face first and waited for Gwyn to make the next move. She could be patient though.

"You never answered. Which do you prefer? Your life or your cock?" That vulgar word had never left her mouth before but she refused to give that away with a blush. He managed a smirk.

"You tell me. Would you prefer your life or my cock? Cause that's the only way you will be leaving here alive."

She saw red. It was like her body went on auto-pilot. She knew what she was doing, but there was no way to stop. She hurled herself at him, knocking her dagger out of his hand. She sent her knee to his crotch which he managed to block somewhat. He still let out a groan. With his face closer in range, she jammed her thumbs into his eyes. Before she could do too much damage though, he was shoving her away. She fell to the ground, but quickly propelled herself back to him. He did not even have time to recover before she was back and this time with her dagger. She shoved Silver Majesty through the center of his palm. His screams and groans were powering her to continue. He deserved this she found herself repeating like a mantra in her head. He caught her off guard with a strong kick to the ribs, but after the initial surprise she was swinging her dagger back at him. Luckily for him, he managed to dodge her swing that was headed for his eye. He grabbed her by her cloak and dragged her to him from behind. His arm wound itself around her neck. She was struggling to breath which is when she slammed the dagger that was still in her hand that lay unguarded by her side into his crotch. He immediately pulled away to grab himself. As he hunched over, sending explicit curse after explicit curse her way, she took a few lungfuls of air. Blood poured from his crotch so she knew she hit her mark. He fell to his knees and continued to scream. Gwyn, suddenly, remembered where she was. Why was no one rushing out to help him? His screams were loud enough for all to hear in the Tavern. Perhaps even his loved ones knew he deserved this. She approached him, grabbing his hair and pulling his head back. She put her dagger to his neck and before she could drag it across, he began to splutter excuses.

"Wait, wait! You can take it. Cut it off, burn it if you must, but I want to live." He pleaded. She turned up her nose in disgust. He had no honor and no shame.

"Sorry. Offer expired." And then she slit his throat. Pulling her hood up and cleaning off her dagger, she quietly trekked her way back to Lucien- attempting to remain unseen.

She thought she might feel sad or anxious or upset with herself. She had killed before- in the blood rite. That had been in the name of self-defense, though. This time she committed pre-meditated murder against a seemingly helpless male, although she knew better. She should be ashamed with herself, but if she was being honest, she felt powerful. She knew that no man would ever have that power and control over her again and this very moment proved that. She could not stop the sly smile that lifted the edges of her mouth. She was a force to be reckoned with and she would let every Hybern soldier involved in that raid know it.

***

Gwyn slid her dagger across his throat once more. Blood poured out and the limp body fell with a thud. Gwyn had been chasing the high of her first kill, but with each new fallen Hybern soldier, Gwyn felt further and further from control. Logically, she knew they deserved to die. She just no longer felt the power she originally possessed after her first kill. She had felt liberated, now she felt trapped by her revenge. It seemed to be an endless cycle. This was only the third Hybern soldier, but Gwyn did not know if she should continue. It felt like a betrayal to the other priestesses from Sangravah. She did not know if this would ever stop otherwise though. There would always be some vile male who deserved death and some beaten female who deserved to be avenged. Gwyn wiped her blade clean on the male's jacket and adjusted her invoking stone that had been knocked askew in the struggle before walking away. She lifted her hood to hide her face as she quietly slipped off to where Lucien was waiting. To his credit, he offered to kill the soldiers himself. The idea became more and more appealing as Gwyn's emotions sucked the life out of her.

"You okay?” Lucien asked once the priestess began to approach him. She pulled her hood away and simply nodded, quietly grabbing his arm. It was her subtle way of tell him she was ready to leave. After one long look, Lucien winnowed them back. Instead of the castle though, they were at a lake. It was beautiful, but definitely presided in the spring court. Gwyn sent a surprised look to the male.

“Should we be here?”

“I have no doubt that you single handedly could take on Tamlin.” Lucien responded with a sly smile. It broke some of the tension hanging in Gwyn’s mind. She plopped down at the edge of the lake to shimmy her boots off. Lucien followed suit and then they were sitting side by side with their feet in the lake. It was beautiful. It made her wish Catrin could see it.

“What troubles you, granddaughter?” He was trying to make her laugh and it worked. A small chuckle left her throat before a heavy sigh. She grabbed his hand and squeezed.

“I thought this might take back some of the control I lost, but it just makes me feel...” she took such a long pause that Lucien had to nudge her to continue. “Like they have won. It is just another part of me they control. As long as I am controlled by the need for revenge, I am controlled by them. Do you know what I mean?” She looked at him to find any sort of understanding in his eyes. He did understand- more than she could ever know. He had also been controlled by his need for revenge at one point in his life.

“I can finish it for you. Just say the word.” He would do it for her because he wanted to. He wanted to protect her when he failed so spectacularly in the past.

“I thought I could not travel a world, escape the library, if men like those Hybern soldiers existed. But those men will always exist. I think I need to accept that rather than killing my way through the problem.” She swished her feet back and forth through the water. The truth is, she was able to leave the library even with those men existing. Lucien had shown her a great many things, including this lake, that made her want to see the whole world despite her fears. Perhaps that was the best revenge anyways.

“Whatever you decide, I will support you no matter what.” He rested his head on her shoulder, drinking up the scene before they would inevitably have to leave again. He had not been here since his time with Feyre and Tamlin, and the experience was bitter sweet. It was beautiful though, and he knew Gwyn would love it.

“Thank you, Lucien.”

***

Azriel had been putting off this conversation for the last 500 years and did not particularly want to bring it up now, but enough is enough. He needed to move on with his life. He did not think he would be able to until this conversation was finished. He eventually found the beautiful blonde immersed in conversation with Emerie at the House of Wind library. A clear of his throat caught both of their attention.

“Hi Az.” Emerie gave a slight smile which he returned before looking at Mor. She looked beautiful in a revealing red dress and curled hair. He wondered where she might be going tonight to be so dressed up. Especially considering Emerie was still wearing her training leathers. Clearly, they did not have plans together for tonight.

"Mor, can we talk?" He turned his slight smile to her. She gave him a brilliant smile back. It did not seem to have the same effect on him as it once did though.

"Of course! I feel like I have not seen you at all recently." She gave Emerie a hug before walking past the Shadowsinger and into the kitchen for more privacy. It was not nearly the amount of privacy he wanted for this conversation, but he would make do. His shadows used this time to abandon him when more than anything he wanted their comfort.

"Why?" Was all he could muster. His cheeks already turning a slight pink. He leaned onto his forearms using the counter from the island for support. Mor stood on the opposite side of the island. She crossed her arms over her chest a bit defensively.

"Why what?" She asked with a frown.

"Why won't you give me a chance? There are times when you seem interested and then there are times when you seem interested in Cassian." He explained further. The look on Mor’s face told him that she wanted this conversation to happen as much as he did. They had avoided it long enough though.

"Az..." she began with a long sigh but trailed off. She refused to look at him now, choosing to stare at the floor instead.

"What?" He did not think it was an unfair question to ask, but apparently she did.

"I don't want to talk about this."

"That's not fair. If there's a real chance for us I want to know. But if you just like having two Illyrians attention rather than just one I'd rather you leave me out of it." It was harsh and a low blow. That did not make it less true. Sometimes he felt that the reason she refused to turn him down outwardly was because she liked the attention. Or she liked having someone stand up for her against Rhysand when he did something she did not like. Azriel was growing tired of their current situation. It needed to change before he started to resent her for it.

"That's not fair either, Az! You're my friend. I don't owe you a relationship." She yelled in outrage. She finally looked up at him and he could see the rage burning there. Guilt began to claw at him.

"You are right, you don't. But you know my feelings on the matter and you continue to lead me on. Or maybe you're confused too. I don't know but that's why I want to talk this through. Just tell me what you're thinking." A long pause ensued after that. The fire burning in her eyes slowly eased away. She moved to sit on top of the island next to him with his stance unchanging.

"Technically, there could be a chance for us. I just don't want to take it. Our friendship means too much to me and..." she muttered while trailing off. Now he was definitely confused. Why wouldn’t she want to take the chance? What was so wrong with him that stopped her from wanting to try a relationship?

"And?" He pushed her to explain further.

"And I think I prefer females. That's why I don't want to take a chance on this. It'll only end badly."

"Oh." He stood up and looked Mor over throughly. She was not dressed up for some party tonight he finally realized. She was trying to impress Emerie. And suddenly, he felt very stupid. He also felt a bit of relief. All this time he was trying to discover what he lacked for her to pass him over for Cassian- what he needed to change to be good enough. Nothing, apparently, given that he could not magically turn into a female.

"Oh?" She gave him a cautious look as though he was some rabid animal who might bite. He realized why she could never have been his mate in that moment. Gwyn had never given Azriel that look.

"Yeah I wish you would have told me sooner. All this time I thought you couldn't decide between Cassian and me." He explained. He could have saved himself so much torment if only he had known. Not that he was blaming her. He was truly blaming himself. He is the spymaster after all, how could he have missed all the stolen glances and longing looks Mor always sent to the females at Rita’s.

"Oh." She repeated what Az had said earlier. She was suddenly very interested in examining her nails.

"Yeah. I am sorry if it seemed that I do not value your friendship. I genuinely thought there was a chance here." He tugged at her chin to make her look at him. He wanted her to see how genuine he was. Mor was one of his oldest friends and he would not let this ruin that.

"I'm sorry I lead you on. If I'm honest, it was partly on purpose. If I keep enough men flaunting after me, It leaves less questions from busybodies." She gave him a sheepish look. Hearing that did not upset him as he thought it might.

"I would do anything to protect you, including lying about a relationship if that's what it took." He would do it now even. It would mean he could not be with Gwyn in the way that he wanted, but he would protect Mor from her father until the end of time.

"I do love you Az. Just perhaps not in the same way." She grabbed his face to look at hers as she said it. He wished she would grab his hands. He let out a long sigh before pulling his face away.

"I love you Mor, but I don't think it's in that way anymore either." She gave him a questioning look that he only shrugged away, moving across the kitchen to put some space between them. He was starting to feel overwhelmed with this heart-to-heart without the comfort of his shadows.

"Really?" She gave him a look that said she did not quite believe him.

"Yeah. I always imagined this moment to be heartbreaking and instead I just feel relieved. Like I finally have the answer to life's question." It was true too. He thought he would never be able to love someone as he had Mor. He realized now that those feelings had been rather superficial. A fantasy he created in his head that felt safe.

"Probably helps that you are mated." She surprised him with that response. He lifted a singular eyebrow as she played with one of the bracelets on her wrist.

"Yes, Az. We all know." She rolled her eyes at this. "But you almost ruined the night courts reputation, risking Lucien's demand of a blood duel, so we figured we might as well let the Elain thing play out on its own." He scoffed at her terrible summary of his actions these past few months.

"I could have used your advice." He replied sarcastically. A single shadow curled around his ear before spotting Mor and disappearing once again. It made him sigh.

"You wouldn't have listened." She insisted. Part of him understood why his family allowed him to hide from his feelings. He was stubborn after all. Sometimes he wished they would push a little harder though. The way that Nesta did. It was why he let her get away with her comments about Rhys- she tried harder with him than any of them did including the high lord.

"I listened to Nesta's." He had already decided that Elain and him could not continue what they were doing after his kiss with Gwyn, but Nesta’s words helped him. Immediately after that conversation he went to talk to Elain, who surprisingly felt the same way.

"Yeah well Nesta and you are two sides of the same coin. Of course you listened to her." He rolled his eyes at that.

"Should I be offended?"

"Yes." They both chuckled. It was quiet for a minute or two before Az spoke up again.

"Thanks for telling me." She nodded before heading back to the library. Azriel finally let out a breathe. His chest no longer tighter with tension. He felt much freer than he had in these past few weeks. It was time to get his girl back.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

It’s very strange to think of Joe Biden as a world-historical figure. For decades, he seemed to me to be a bit of an irritating blowhard who rarely took the chance to edit himself. He was a classic slap-on-the-back backroom pol, with an everyman-on-the-train vibe, who loved the ornaments of public office, and that was basically it.

Washington will always need people like Biden, and he played the part well, but he was hardly a star. He rarely inspired, he made cringe-inducing gaffe after gaffe, his vanity required him to cover up his baldness with what, for a while, looked like a painful rice-paddy of plugs, he plagiarized a speech so obviously and crudely he almost begged to be caught, and despite his rep for retail politics, was terrible at campaigning for president. In 2008, he quit after Iowa, with one percent of the vote.

His big moment came when Barack Obama picked him as his veep. And the choice of Biden was specifically designed, it seems to me, to ruffle no more feathers, and to assuage white working-class discomfort with a young, inexperienced black guy with a funny, foreign-sounding name. Even at the time, it felt to me that Biden’s acceptance speech was fine but not exactly great — but what worked nonetheless was his persona: “It’s hard not to feel affection for this scrappy old guy — especially if you’re a Catholic,” I wrote. “This was a very culturally Catholic speech, especially at the beginning, and Biden will speak to people who might be leery of this young African-American. It was also focused on middle class economic anxiety and spoke about it in intimate ways that voters will immediately understand.”

Twelve years later, this guy is even older and less scrappy but still has the same core appeal: that old Irish dude who can go on a bit but has a heart of gold and hasn’t completely disappeared into the left-liberal elite. The drastically curtailed Covid campaign was a godsend in retrospect because it removed countless opportunities for him to get in his own way, while very successfully projecting and burnishing this image. Yes he could get a bit Abraham-Simpson-y at times, but I confess I began to find that a little comforting after a while, in the era of Trump. The combination of decency, vulnerability and humanness became even more potent up against an indecent, inhuman con-man. It became the stutterer versus the monster.

And Biden’s core appeal, as he has occasionally insisted, is that he ran against the Democratic left, and won because of moderate and older black voters with their heads screwed on right. He was the least online candidate. For race-leftists like Jamelle Bouie, he was part of the problem: “For decades Biden gave liberal cover to white backlash.” For gender-warriors like Rebecca Traister, he was “a comforter of patriarchal impulses toward controlling women’s bodies.” Ben Smith a year and a half ago went for it: “His campaign is stumbling toward launch with all the hallmarks of a Jeb!-level catastrophe — a path that leads straight down … Joe Biden isn’t going to emerge from the 2020 campaign as the nominee. You already knew that.” The sheer smug of it! And the joy of seeing old Joe get the last laugh.

It’s worth recalling the obloquy the woke dumped on Biden in the early stages of the race because this will surely be a battle line if he wins the presidency, and we will have to fight for him and against them if we are not going to sink into deeper tribal warfare. He is one of the last vestiges of the near-extinct rapport between white working-class voters and the Democrats, and if he wins next week, it will be because he has wrested older white voters from the Republican grip, and won white women in a landslide (unlike Clinton), even as his support among blacks and Latinos may come in slightly behind Hillary’s.

Biden ran a campaign, in stark contrast to Clinton’s, focused not on rallying the base around identity grievances, but on persuading the other side with argument and engagement. If you believe in liberal democracy — in persuasion, dialogue, and civility — and want to resist tribalism, Biden may be our unexpected but real last chance. And in this campaign, he has walked the walk.

His core message, which has been remarkably consistent, is not a divisive or partisan one. It is neither angry nor bitter. Despite mockery and scorn from some understandably embittered partisans, he has a hand still held out if Republicans want to cooperate. In this speech at Warm Springs, where Biden invoked the legacy of FDR, you can feel the Obama vibe, so alien to the woke: “Red states, blue states, Republicans, Democrats, Conservatives, and Liberals. I believe from the bottom of my heart, we can do it. People ask me, why are you so confident Joe? Because we are the United States of America.”

And while he has promised a deep re-structuring and redistribution in the wake of Covid, climate change, and destabilizing inequality, he has done so in pragmatic, rather than ideological, terms. Against the surreal extremism and divisiveness of Trump, he has offered moderation and an appeal to unity. Look at the careful balance he has struck on the protests against police misconduct this summer: “Some of it is just senseless burning and looting and violence that can’t be tolerated and won’t, but much of it is a cry for justice from a community that’s long had a knee of injustice on their neck.” We need both these impulses, if we are to extract real reform from distorting rage, and make it stick.

He is not perfect, of course. I suspect he is naive on some questions. He realizes, does he not, that when he uses the term “equity” rather than “equality”, with respect to race, he is using code for the crudest racial discrimination. He surely knows that critical race theory is not about being sensitive to the pain of others, but about seeing the U.S. as no less a white supremacy now than under slavery, and liberal constitutionalism as a mere mask for oppression of non-whites. He knows that the Equality Act eviscerates the religious freedom he has previously championed, does he not, and folds the category of sex into one of gender, jeopardizing at the margins both gay and women’s rights? And it should be troubling, it seems to me, that, when confronted with the fact that his son, Hunter, is corrupt in the classic, legal, and swampy way, Biden refuses to see anything wrong with it at all.

But these are quibbles in the grand scheme of things. And it is striking, as David Brooks noted this morning, how deftly Biden has walked through a field of culture war landmines and not see one go off. That has taken discipline — and Biden has shown that he can exercise it. Maybe he learned it from Obama.

His closing message has been about healing — from the wounds of Covid, economic crisis, and resilient racism. And if there is one thing Biden really knows in his heart and soul it is healing. Recovering from the loss of a wife, a daughter and a son requires a profound sense of how to take the hits that life can bring, how to stay strong while accepting vulnerability, and how to move slowly forward.

This is how he put it last week, as he related to the isolating, desolating casualties of Covid19: “Alone in a hospital room, alone in a nursing home, no family, no friends, no loved ones beside them in those final moments, and it haunts so many of the surviving families, families who were never given a chance to say goodbye. I, and many of you know, what loss feels like when you lose someone you love, you feel that deep black hole opening up on your chest and you feel like you’re being swallowed into it.”

I have felt that way for four years now. What I grieve is an idea of America that is decent, generous, big-hearted, and pragmatic, where the identity of a citizen, unqualified, unhyphenated, is the only identity you need. I miss a public discourse where a president takes responsibility even for things beyond his full control, where the fault-lines of history are not mined for ammunition but for greater understanding, where, in Biden’s words, we can once again see the dignity in each other. I am not a fool, and know how hard this will be. But in this old man, with his muscle memory of what we have lost, and his ability to move and change in new ways, we have an unexpected gift.

“I’ve long said the story of America is a story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things,” Joe Biden said last week. Well, ordinary old Joe, it’s your turn now. Do the extraordinary.

ANDREW SULLIVAN

THE WEEKLY DISH

[moonlitgleek]

Had Lyanna married Robert, would he still have ended up the wifebeating drunk like in canon? He loved her.

In the words of a certain teenager:

Love is sweet, dearest Ned, but it cannot change a man’s nature.

This is what I think the idea that Robert may have been experienced a personality change if he’d married Lyanna miss - those character traits that manifested during Robert’s marriage to Cersei are not new. The unsavory parts of Robert’s character - the violence, the hedonism, the irresponsibility, the deflection of blame, the feeling of entitlement to women’s very bodies, those are in Robert’s nature. His marriage to Cersei may have witnessed an exacerbation of his worst tendencies but the signs were there long before that. Robert was sleeping around both before and during his betrothal to Lyanna, even right in the midst of a war he was supposedly fighting in her name and while he fully believed that she was being repeatedly raped. His glory in violence is well-documented, as is his tendency to lash out physically when angered. See Joffrey and the cat incident. See how he speaks of physical violence.

I sit on the damn iron seat when I must. Does that mean I don’t have the same hungers as other men? A bit of wine now and again, a girl squealing in bed, the feel of a horse between my legs? Seven hells, Ned, I want to hit someone.

[Robert] stared down at his hands, as if he did not quite know what they were. “I was always strong … no one could stand before me, no one. How do you fight someone if you can’t hit them?”

I swear to you, I was never so alive as when I was winning this throne, or so dead as now that I’ve won it.

Yes, Robert. Please tell me how alive you felt fighting a devastating war, while your brothers were starving in Storm’s End and your betrothed was being repeatedly raped as you’re fond of yelling every time someone tries to oppose your desire to kill children. Do throw a hissy fit when more prudent people try to stop you from participating in a melee because you long to hit someone. Show me how utterly befuddled you are over the concept of fighting someone without hitting them. This is so making me believe that your regret over hitting Cersei is sincere, even more than when you presented your reasoning as it not being kingly.

Also preceding Robert’s marriage to Cersei is his tendency to treat women as a possession. I don’t see much difference in his attitude between

The gods be damned. It was a hollow victory they gave me. A crown … it was the girl I prayed them for. Your sister, safe … and mine again, as she was meant to be.

and

Oh, Cersei is lovely to look at, truly, but cold … the way she guards her cunt, you’d think she had all the gold of Casterly Rock between her legs.

Speaking of the woman he supposedly loves as a possession that belongs to him conveys the same entitlement he shows to Cersei’s body. See also his “he has Lyanna now and I have her” as if Lyanna and Cersei are mere objects to be had, prizes to be awarded to the victor. The man thinks he is entitled to sex from his wife and considers Cersei cold because of her refusal to make herself available for sex. For this.

For Robert, those nights never happened. Come morning he remembered nothing, or so he would have had her believe. Once, during the first year of their marriage, Cersei had voiced her displeasure the next day. “You hurt me,” she complained. He had the grace to look ashamed. “It was not me, my lady,” he said in a sulky sullen tone, like a child caught stealing apple cakes from the kitchen. “It was the wine. I drink too much wine.” To wash down his admission, he reached for his horn of ale. As he raised it to his mouth, she smashed her own horn in his face, so hard she chipped a tooth [..] He did remember what he did to her at night, she was convinced of that. She could see it in his eyes. He only pretended to forget; it was easier to do that than to face his shame. Deep down Robert Baratheon was a coward. In time the assaults did grow less frequent. During the first year he took her at least once a fortnight; by the end it was not even once a year. He never stopped completely, though. Sooner or later there would always come a night when he would drink too much and want to claim his rights.

That was during the first year of their marriage. Robert started hurting Cersei in bed right from the beginning but still holds her to blame for not wanting to have sex with him. Because nothing is ever Robert Baratheon’s fault. No, no. Rhaegar won Lyanna. Cersei made him hit her. Jon Arryn made him marry Cersei. He didn’t want the throne, Ned, why did you make him take the throne so he has to like, work and stuff?

Robert Baratheonis fundamentally characterized by his inability to bear responsibility. He has been eschewing it since he was 16 and his parents went down on the Windblown... and Roberts turns around, leaves his brothers and his new lordship to go hang out in the Eyrie with Ned and Jon Arryn. He sleeps around with no remorse to the point where he makes light of cheating to Ned’s face because “no woman wants Baelor the Blessed in her bed”. He likes his wine too much and shows no intention to ever restrain himself. And he has a very specific idea of a woman’s place in a marriage and what she should and shouldn’t do, down to her sexual availability.

The mirth curdled on Robert’s face. “The woman tried to forbid me to fight in the melee. She’s sulking in the castle now, damn her. Your sister would never have shamed me like that.”

Sorry, Bobby B. Doesn’t sound like Lyanna Stark to me. She would have had about as much tolerance to your crap as Cersei ever did. Justifiably.

That’s why I don’t actually buy that Robert loved Lyanna. Despite his claims, Robert displays a staggering ignorance of Lyanna’s character every single time he speaks of her that it becomes very apparent that he isn’t in love with her but rather with his idea of her, a romanticized imaginary creation of his that he projects all his expectations of an ideal wife on. But that Lyanna does not exist, and Robert knows nothing about the real Lyanna, as Ned points out every time Robert starts blabbing about what Lyanna would have wanted or would have done. The real Lyanna, the one who donned armor and jousted for Howland Reed’s honor, the one who disapproved of Robert before she was even 14, the one who might have carried a sword had her father allowed it, that girl would clash with Robert just as much as Cersei did. She would suffer his reportedly terrible rage and his drunkenness and his affairs just as gladly as Cersei ever did. And Robert would have  those episodes because his expectations wouldn’t be fulfilled and his fantasy of Lyanna would give way to the real person, stubborn, willful and unladylike as she was.

Furthermore, I will always push back against the implication that Robert became that abusive despicable person because of Cersei. No, he became that person because of Robert. Acting like Robert would have been a better person if only he’d married Lyanna puts the blame of Robert’s own faults and failings on Cersei (who is not to blame for her own abuse) and expects Lyanna to be some sort of restraint on Robert’s behavior, which is neither her job or responsibility. Neither woman is the fulcrum of Robert’s morality nor are they in charge of his moral and ethical reform. They are not his parents. They are not his teachers. They are not responsible for his conduct. Robert Baratheon is a grown man who is responsible for his own behavior, try as he might to blame his actions on any and everything in sight.

Finally, I just have to ask: where did the idea that Robert’s love for someone curbs his worst tendencies come from anyway? One of this story’s main arcs is literally built on the premise that Robert would have killed Jon Snow if he’d known who he was, irrespective of his “love” for Lyanna or love for Ned. Robert’s love for Ned certainly did not prevent him from condoning and ordering the murder of children to Ned’s mounting fury, did it? Not even when that love was directly invoked did it matter.

All Ned could do was take [Sansa] in his arms and hold her while she wept. He looked across the room at Robert. His old friend, closer than any brother. “Please, Robert. For the love you bear me. For the love you bore my sister. Please.”

How did that work out for Ned, Sansa and Lady?

[datura-foxglove]

Curses and Deals (Dazatsu Halloween Day 2)

Rating : M

Trigger warning : implied animal abuse, blood and violence, implied cannibalism, throwing up, horror of supernatural kind (those are why the M rating for)

Prompt : Werecreature and witchcraft.

Summary : Dazai chased after the vile stench of dark magic that led him to a village terrorized by a weretiger. Each night, the weretiger would get out from it’s den in the forest and eat the villagers. In the forest, Atsushi cried as more and more blood stained his hands and resentment slowly eroded his sanity.

Warm. Sticky. Disgusting. Disgustingdisgustingdisgusting---

Another splatter. Stench of rotten meat and blood filled his lungs and he couldn’t breathe.

“Curse them. Curse those humans. Thirst for their blood. Hunger for their flesh.”

A yowl of pain, not from himself but from the cats trapped in the cages all around him. All of them stared at him, at the abomination he would become soon. Their scared eyes as they watch the skins of their kind covered his whole body. Blood staining the once pure white fur crimson, and dark charcoal ink painted strips on the fur like a child’s attempt to draw a tiger.

“Take all my hatred and turn them into fangs. Take all my resentment and turn them into claws.”

Stop it. Stop it. Stopstopstop---

“I pay for my sins with my own blood and soul. In return, turn this wrath into a beast that will devour those that had wronged me.”

He wanted to cry out. He was changing. His humanity stripped away to become the vessel for this person’s revenge.

“Kill every last one of them.”

Atsushi screamed, but all that was released from his mouth was a deafening roar of rage that should not be his to feel.

.

The moment he stepped into this village, he could already taste the misery in the air. His nose could pick up the faint whiff of blood, tears, and death loomed over the village with it’s scythe raised. Malice marked the village, warning those gifted with magic to stay away from this soon to be doomed village. He ignored those warnings and walked further into the heart of the village. The vile magic in the air soon turned it’s animosity to him, clinging to his coat like a sticky and hot tar. With ease, he brushed them all away like how one brushed dusts from their clothes.

The curses stopped bothering him at that point, realizing how superior his core was.

He visited the only tavern in the village, filled to the last chair of mourning men and women in grief. Most of them had defeated looks on their faces, like they were just waiting for death to take them away.

How enviable, he thought, that they had the certainty that death would bring come.

He slipped into a chair recently vacated with ease and familiarity despite his first time visiting this village. Decadence was the same everywhere after all. So did the bitter taste of alcohol that did little to numb the void within them all. An escape that was barely enough to keep them afloat in this ever chaotic sea called life.

He didn’t have to wait long until one of the guests broke down. Well, also thanks to the incense he had secretly burnt the moment he stepped inside this tavern. Nothing harmful, just enough to inebriate someone already under influences of substances like alcohol so that their loose tongue would spill everything in their heart.

“I can’t take this anymore!” one man slammed his empty mug to the bar. “If that—that monster wants me, then I won’t go down like a livestock!”

A woman near him scoffed, her flushed and despairing face looked beautiful to him. “You will only end up like my moron of a husband.” Aww, she was already married. What a shame. Then again, had that ever stopped him? “Killed and eaten like pigs. I don’t even have enough of his remains to bury.”

The bitterness in the woman’s voice sobered the first man, though his protest died down when he saw tears spilling from her eyes as she sobbed. “That monster had killed my husband, my father, and my niece. My mother has spilled her brain on the floor and can only wail like terrified toddler! My son is only five, how could he help with our field?”

“Either the monster killed us all first, or the starvation from failed harvest will.” An older man on the bar muttered. “In just five months, that monster had killed a third of our village.”

“The last traveler who promised us help had never returned.” Another woman commented glumly. Her eyes had this glazed sheen that he was familiar with. A gaze of someone that had seen too much death. “But at least we don’t have to scoop their remains like how we had to whenever someone from our village tried to escape.”

“Why…” the first man dropped back down to his seat, his face bowed and hands clasped in prayer that wouldn’t be answered. “Why this tragedy had to befall our village?”

“I wonder…” the sobbing woman let out a deranged giggle. “How many people will die tonight?”

He slipped away silently and unseen. A silver coin tossed into the mug he had used. With a swish of his hand, the incense died. Getting out didn’t really gave him fresh air, but the smell of smoke and alcohol were something he had known for years. Not much new information, but at least he didn’t have to wait long for night to come. He had better prepare first then.

There were few that Dazai hated more than surprise and being ill prepared after all.

.

His whole body jerked due to the force of his vomit. It hurt. It burnt his throat so bad everytime he threw up, but he had to force it out from his body. The taste of bile and blood was the only thing he could taste for a while, but it’s better to remember the bitter taste than to remember that warm and soft flesh—

He threw up again, even when there was nothing in his gut already.

A soft, concerned meowing distracted him from all the pain. Three cats, all with identical pure white furs, stared at him. When they saw that they had his attention, they snuggled up to him, staying clear from the mess he had created. They pawed relentlessly at his tattered clothing, licking his dirt and blood stained hands. Right, he had to feed them. There were only a few more hours until sunset and he had to catch a fish or two for them. Atsushi stood up, ignoring the pain in his joints and stomach. If there was something he was good at, it was at enduring pain.

The cats followed him, meowing demandingly at him to hurry up. Atsushi smiled weakly at them, grateful for their company despite what they had to go through. From forty-nine white cats that person caught, only these three were spared. Atsushi had to bury all the other cats, sobbing and begging for their forgiveness despite not being the one who murdered them all.

‘Ah…’ Atsushi wondered as he dunked his whole body to the river in feeble attempt to wash all the blood off. The hiss of anger as the cats dodged the incoming splash reminded him that he had to catch some fish for them. ‘When will this end…?’

Which one would end first? His sanity or the life of everyone in that village?

.

Dazai was awakened from his meditation when he heard a small commotion on the outskirts of the village. When he had finally reached the bloody scene, he wasn’t interested in the remains of the monster’s latest victim. He looked around, focusing on the hot rage his senses picked up. He smiled to himself when he found what he was looking for; a tuft of white stripped fur.

“Found you.” Dazai picked it up, the residue of curses stung his fingers a bit before his own magic smothered it to submission. He walked away from the scene, the talisman he wore around his neck had compelled normal humans to ‘look away’, ‘forget everything you see’, and ‘nothing of interest here’. He focused more magic in the fur and with a short, simple spell of ‘seek’, the air around the fur distorted within a grey glob of pure magic that turned darker and darker until it’s shape change into a raven. It’s empty gaze looked at Dazai for a moment before the raven took flight, to where Dazai’s target hid within the forest.

Even when the raven was out of his sight, there was a tether that bound it to Dazai. So Dazai followed at a relaxed pace, while at the same time the gear in his brain created many plans to capture the monster. Discarding and adding a new one every a few seconds. It’s akin to a game to him, like a hide-and-seek. The only difference was, if he lost, he would die.

Nothing different than the usual stake.

It took him a few hours of walking in the forest with the raven guiding his path until he found something. There was a hole underneath a big tree, big enough for a beast to crawl into. He couldn’t really see inside, but the malice in the air was concentrated here. The presence of death was so strong that the environment around the den were withering in spirit. It’s like an isolated space within the forest, repulsed by the flow of life of the forest itself.

There were four breaths of life inside that burrow, but three of them were too small to be anything but small animals. The only human inside that burrow’s breath was shallow and weak. It’s hard for Dazai to sense his life at all. Probably dying, or the burden of the curse had slowly extinguished his own life. The magic within them was different than the vile magic he had sensed since yesterday, so they must be only a bearer of the curse instead of the invoker. It would be troubling if the curse bearer died now, since they were the reason why he was here after all.

“Time to wake up the sleeping beauty.” Dazai’s hand rummaged through the bag he carried, taking out a silver flute. In practiced ease, the witch played a long and simple tune. Through each tune, he breathed magic to the instrument. For a conscious person, it sounded beautiful. For unconscious creatures though… it’s nothing more than rude awakening. It’s akin to having your blanket ripped away from you and facing the chill in the air.

A weak yelp, accompanied by three angry yowls of cats resounded from the burrow. Three white cats carefully stepped outside, hissing at Dazai with judging glares in their eyes. Dazai threw a dried meat nearby where the cats could see it and the tempting smell of meat distracted their attentions. Dazai waited as the cats fought over the scrap of meat, his eyes watching the entrance of the burrow where he could feel the slowly awakening curse bearer.

A young man, barely out of his teenage years, crawled out of the den. His clothes were tattered and dirty, but what attracted Dazai’s eyes the most were the thin wire like ropes digging painfully on his neck and limbs. Dazai was familiar enough with binding that he recognized the material immediately by how it clung to the flesh like bear trap. Women’s hairs, woven into ropes while chanting a spell under the moonlight. Effective for those that hadn’t reach their adulthood yet, like a mother’s suffocating and binding’s love. Although, seeing the frayed ends of the rope, even a mother’s devotion couldn’t protect their child from ferocious beast.

“Good morning!” the sun glared harshly at them as if reminding him that it’s far from morning. “Had a nice sleep?”

The curse bearer, a boy from the lack of curves on his body, jerked like Dazai had whipped him. His eyes widened in terror and he tried to scramble back inside. Dazai tapped his shoe to the soil under him and the burrow suddenly collapsed. The boy shrieked in fear and scooted away from the collapsed den. The cats ran away from the commotion, leaving the two of them alone.

“It’s not my intention to hurt you, but if you won’t stay still I have to tie you up.” Dazai pointed at the ropes around the boy’s neck. “I think you won’t like it.”

The boy shrunk, his body trembling like leaves in the mercy of the blowing wind. His wide eyes watched Dazai’s every move, searching for opening so he could bolt like lightning. Dazai watched him in return, his eyes didn’t only see the physical, but also the resentment clinging to the boy like a slime. It’s truly ugly, seeing the depth of what human could become.

“So, boy.” Dazai knelt in front of the young man, ignoring the way the boy flinch and effort to lean back as far as possible. “Do you want me to save you?”

The fear in the curse bearer’s eyes sparked into apprehension. “Save…?”

“The witch who cursed you died, right?” a deadly hex like this could only be paid by the witch’s soul. “Without them, you have to ask for another witch to release you from that curse.”

The boy sniffed the air, his apprehension turned into suspicion. “You are a witch.”

“Correct,” Dazai hummed, cataloguing the young man’s sensitivity to magic in his mind. “It’s in my capability to save you. You will find it very hard to search for a witch that can and want to deal with this kind of curse.”

“What’s in it for you…?” the young man’s voice was bitter. “Witches never strike a deal without something they want.”

“You, obviously.” Dazai pointed at the curse bearer. “Having a willing weretiger as a source of my ingredients is enough.”

“Ingredients?” the young man squeaked out fearfully.

“Nothing that won’t grow back or replenish by itself.” Dazai counted with his fingers. “Nails, hairs, blood, and maybe a bit of skin. As a payment for your life, it’s cheap.”

The young man looked conflicted. Dazai waited patiently, seeing him clutching at his tattered clothing and blood stained hands until he finally asked. “You said… a willing weretiger. Is it impossible for me to turn back to normal human? Or you won’t because you need me to stay as weretiger?”

“A bit of both.” Dazai grinned despite the young boy’s glare. “Turning you back to normal human will have a much heavier price than what you can pay now, and I do need ingredients from you to make my potions. Maybe in the future when you are able to pay me that price, I will turn you back.”

For a sacrifice of life to turn a human into a monster must be countered by another sacrifice of life. While Dazai sought for death, dying to a curse wasn’t something he looked forward to. It would erode his immortal soul to dust, not to mention really painful as his soul was ripped away from his body. That’s why Dazai wondered what kind of wrath the witch who had cursed this boy had, to surrender their soul from the circle of reincarnation and enduring the soul crushing pain as his soul was torn to shreds?

“Then… what are you saving me from, exactly?” the young man muttered, his eyes downward to the ground. “I am still a monster.”

“You may still be a weretiger, but your mind will be your own.” Dazai watched as the boy’s hands twitched. “I can release you from the path of carnage. Unless you like it?”

“How can I like it!?” the young man shouted in indignation. “I—I never wished for this! When that witch said that he would accept me as part of his family, I never had thought that being that man’s tool of revenge will be the price I had to pay!”

“Ah, so that’s why you are so cautious.” Dazai chuckled. “I am not an honorable man, so it’s wise for you to be cautious of me. But I’m fair when I strike a deal. You give me what I want and I give you what you want. You became my source of ingredients and I free you from all that hatred.”

The young man hesitated. Dazai looked up towards the sky and warned. “It’s going to be sunset soon.”

He bit his lips, wariness warring with his own fraying sanity and despair. “O-only what I willingly give. You can ask, but I can choose how I give it to you.” So Dazai couldn’t just tear his nails or bleed him dry.

“Fair enough. With a source as potent as you, I won’t need that much.” Dazai offered his hand. “Do we have a deal? What is your name, boy?”

Taking his hand in a handshake, Atsushi nodded. “Nakajima Atsushi.”

“My name is Dazai Osamu.” Dazai wove his magic into both of their cores, binding their deal as official. “Looking forward to business with you.”

.

Atsushi watched as Dazai spilled bottles and bottles of potion into the earth around Atsushi. A few weird shaped talismans tossed around with so little care that Atsushi wondered if he had made the right choice of asking this weird witch for help. With each passing seconds, the more restless Atsushi became. Would they make it in time before the sunset? Would Atsushi have to kill again?

“Atsushi-kun.” A tap on his shoulder jerked him out of his fear. “Drink this.”

Atsushi stared at the suspicious vial of amber liquid with as much judging as he could. “What is that?”

“You told me that the witch sacrificed forty-six cats and their fur got absorbed into your body. Well, those poor felines’ animosity is what is slowly killing you. But since the vessel of their animosity, their furs, got absorbed into your body we have to get it out the painful way.” Dazai cringed. “Throw it all up. Thankfully, it will be easier on your body since you are not the object of their hatred.”

Atsushi blinked and took the potion. “I have been throwing up daily. It should be easy.”

“Throwing up human flesh and throwing up resentment is different, Atsushi-kun.” Dazai tutted. “But I need you to get all that resentment out, so I can use it.”

“For what?”

“Why, I need my cat army to battle that witch’s resentment.” Dazai stepped away and started burning some incenses. “Kinder witches would try to solve things peacefully. For me, it’s just easier to have a cat fight and be done with it.”

Atsushi really, really started to doubt his decision. But he had no other choice, so he drank up the potion in one go. It tasted a bit sweet, which Atsushi was grateful. He let the scent of incenses filled up his lungs, waiting until the potion worked.

Then, Atsushi started hearing hisses. He looked around, trying to find the three cats he had lived with, but they were nowhere to be found. Suddenly, his skin started burning. Atsushi gasped in pain, feeling like something was tearing him from the inside out. He cried out, claws digging to the ground as tried to find any purchase to alleviate the pain. There was something bitter digging into his gut, the sounds of cats yowling and hissing echoed within his head just like that night where he watched them all slaughtered. Again, he felt the burning hatred that wasn’t his. The stench of fear and pain as he experienced the same dread the cats felt that night. How a sharp blade of ice ended his life and rough hands tore his skin.

Unforgivable. Unforgivable. So much pain. So much hatred. So much fear.

Atsushi instinctively put his hand in front of his mouth, but it’s futile as dark tar like liquid spewed out from between of his fingers. Instead of the burning he usually felt on his throat, now all that he felt was pain as the resentment crawled with all of it’s claws and fangs out of him. The more black liquids he threw up, the more he could feel the warm and sticky blood that stuck to the white fur slowly receded. When the fur that had covered him from head to toe became as pure as the snow itself, with only the black stripes remaining, Atsushi had collapsed to the ground. His face was pale and his whole body shuddered in cold sweat. The fur slowly being absorbed back into his body, now free of the cats’ resentment.

“Good work, Atsushi-kun.” Atsushi weakly focused his eyes on Dazai, who stood in front of him with a branch of a plant he had never seen before. Dazai waved the branch on the black liquids all around Atsushi and blue lights sparkled from the branch like pollen raining on the liquid. It bubbled and gathered, shaping itself like a living being into a jet black tiger with red eyes and blue silhouette.

“Just in time too.” Dazai’s voice roused Atsushi from his musing. “It’s sunset.”

Just the word ‘sunset’ invoked so much fear in Atsushi that he pushed his body to sit up. He was about to beg Dazai to run away when he felt it. A cold breath on his ear as two stick like hands grabbed his face and neck. A screeching sounds of unending muttering of nothing but ‘kill, so sad, hate, so painful, revenge, revenge, revenge’ whispered into his mind. He felt chill all over his body and a crushing weight on his shoulders. The face of that witch, contorted with rage, eyes completely black glaring at him, and skin so pale it’s almost white, hovered above him. His mind was torn apart, leaving his body weak and pliant as rage and hatred drowned him. He was going to transform. He was going to kill someone else again.

A great roar froze even the time itself. A sweet scent of silvervine filled his nose and then something pounced him, but it passed through him harmlessly. The coldness and resentment went away, leaving Atsushi with the control of his body again. However, a sudden jerk on his neck made him fall over backward. Atsushi had to twist his neck painfully to see what was happening behind him. His eyes widened as he saw the blackened ghost of the witch that had cursed him being dragged away by the tiger who had a firm bite on it’s neck. But the curse stubbornly clung to him by the ropes on his neck, refusing to let go.

“Revenge… revenge for those who had wronged me…!” the curse shrieked in rage. “Those villagers… they killed my family just because we are witches! I will kill them all, burn this village to ash and dust along with my soul!”

“So that’s why.” Dazai kneeled beside Atsushi, a silver knife on hand. “Stay still Atsushi-kun. I have to cut away those ropes.”

“You…child… I had taken care of you for years, this is the price you have to pay! Your soul is already tainted with the blood of so many people, you won’t be saved even if you get rid of the curse!” it threatened. “For the rest of your life, you will be burdened with that sin! You will never be free from it!”

“I… already know!” Atsushi gasped out, glaring at the curse head on. “Even so, I want to live! I will carry that burden with me forever, but I will live! I won’t go down with you!”

That was the reason why he had never taken his own life, no matter how bloody his hands became. For the hope that there would be something that was worth all of this pain. To pay for this sins someday in the future. To proof that he was more than just a monster.

With a slash from his knife, Dazai cut through the ropes clinging to his neck. Since he had to be quick, he couldn’t avoid cutting Atsushi’s neck too, but the wound was superficial and would heal quickly. The ropes dissolved into dust, along with the ones on his wrists and ankles. Atsushi gasped, clinging to Dazai’s robe as he tried to gain his breath. However, his eyes couldn’t tear away from the scene in front of him. The tiger clamped it’s strong jaw on the curse’s neck, breaking it with ease. The curse wailed and shrieked in vain as the tiger devoured it alive. By the end of it all, the tiger looked at Atsushi for a moment before roaring to the moon. It’s form dissolving into forty-six white cats whose ghostly bodies sparkled like stars. Dazai raised his fist and blew a life into it. A winged mouse that smelled faintly of sweet silvervine squeaked cutely before taking flight. The cats followed the winged mouse, flying off into the night sky until they disappeared from Atsushi’s sight.

A soft meow attracted Atsushi’s attention and he looked down to see the three white cats looking up at him sadly. He let go of Dazai’s robes to pet each one of them, feeling them purring and snuggling close to him.

“It’s over.” Atsushi sobbed, his bottled up emotions finally cracked down and spilled. “It’s finally over.”

Atsushi cried, holding on for dear life to the three cats that had keep him company all along. A warm hand petted his head awkwardly, and Atsushi clung to the small act of kindness.

.

Dazai hummed as he waited, already finished with his preparation. A white cat rested snugly on his lap, demanding petting and small bits of dried meat he gave to it. The sound of disturbed bushes stopped his humming, his eyes finding Atsushi who walked out of the bushes wearing nice clothing that were too large on his thin frame. The other two cats followed closely around Atsushi’s feet, trying to trip the poor boy as they rubbed themselves all over his legs.

“Um, Dazai-san.” Atsushi blushed cutely as he fiddled with the too long sleeves and robes that dragged behind him. “This… looks weird on me, isn’t it?”

“You look cute, Atsushi-kun. But yes, maybe we should get you some clothes soon.” Dazai stood up, ignoring the offended meow the cat on his lap gave him. “Now let’s go, it will take some time before we reach my house.”

“While I’m grateful that you let me stay at your house…” Atsushi stared at him in confusion. “Why? It’s not like you always need me nearby for your ingredients.” with the magic Dazai bound to their core, Dazai could always find Atsushi easily. Not like Atsushi had anywhere else to go.

“Well…” Dazai smiled, more brittle than his usual mischievous smirk. “You reminded me of my friend. He would be so disappointed at me if I left a stray orphan by himself in a forest.” Truly, disappointment from Odasaku hurt more than his anger or even his magic bow.

“That person sound way more decent than you, Dazai-san. Can I stay with him instead?” Atsushi returned the smile, though a spark of mischief in his eyes told Dazai he was just teasing.

“That hurt me so deeply, Atsushi-kun!” Dazai pouted. “Besides, he already takes care of five orphans. Pity him, Atsushi-kun.”

“Well, living with you shouldn’t be so bad. I survived much worse.”

“Atsushi-kun, your tongue sure is sharp.” Dazai chuckled, walking ahead of Atsushi. “The next thing we know, your tongue will be barbed like these cats.”

“Very funny, Dazai-san.” Atsushi followed close beside him, folding up the sleeves so it wouldn’t hang down his hands. “Still, please take care of me.”

“Please take care of me too.” Dazai affirmed with a gentle smile.

[mst3kproject]

The Vindicator

 We’re heading back to Canada, the True North Strong and Free that brought us The Final Sacrifice.  Our indie movie scene up here is pretty weird and very cheap, and this is a prime example of the latter.  It’s a dimly-lit, badly-directed ripoff with shitty effects and a has-been headliner. The perfect thing for Pearl to throw Mike’s way in between her other cruel experiments.

A research guy named Carl is killed in a Science Accident at EvilCo, so his bosses save his brain to make into an indestructible cyborg I hereby dub RoboCrap.  Boy, that’s a great idea.  Not like he’ll escape and go on a rampage.  EvilCo’s boss decides that the only way to get him back is to hire Hunter, a ninja lady played by the closest thing this movie has to a star, Pam Grier. By using RoboCrap’s wife Lauren as bait, they lure him back to EvilCo for a final confrontation.  Somehow this all results in people being able to land on Mars.  I don’t know. I don’t care.

So despite a title that’s supposed to invoke The Terminator, this is in fact a ripoff of Robocop, and it’s very, very bad.  Almost Future War bad, where they really shouldn’t have tried to make this movie on this budget.  I can say in its favour that it did understand what was interesting about Robocop and tried to ape that rather than just showing us a cyborg killing people, but it still gets it all wrong.

Let us start with RoboCrap himself – I know his name is Carl because people keep yelling it at him.  He’s obviously the Alex Murphy of this story, the guy whose death is co-opted to create a killing machine, and who eventually turns this weapon against his creators while reclaiming his humanity.  They do this wrong at every stage.  RoboCop made sure we got to know Murphy just well enough to feel for his death and be interested in him rediscovering himself.  When we meet Carl we see that he’s at odds with his boss over funding, but this isn’t particularly compelling, and the only thing we know about him on a personal level is that his wife is pregnant.  It’s kind of like Hawkeye in Age of Ultron, where the existence of a family is treated as a substitute for characterization.

Having failed to humanize Carl, the movie then fails to dehumanize him.  RoboCop presented the title character to us very much as a machine, with very little idea, at first, how much of Murphy was left in him.  Carl still knows who he is and soon finds out what he is, and there’s never any doubt even among the bad guys that there’s still a human being under all that machinery.  This is illustrated best by the movie’s own visuals – one of the way’s RoboCop hid Murphy’s humanity was to cover his eyes.  The Vindicator covers everything but Carl’s eyes.

While I’m on that topic, the suit design is terrible.  Robocop had an easily recognizable silhouette that looked convincingly mechanical while not being distractingly complex. RoboCrap here looks like he’s made of garbage.  There are far too many little parts and the lighting is so bad you often can’t see anything but a mass of vaguely metallic stuff.  Even in daytime shots, you never really get an impression of what this being looks like or what any of this junk does.  The fact that you can see the actor’s eyes mostly just emphasizes that this is a stupid costume with a guy stumbling around inside of it.

Look at that.  This shot would be forty times better if he were standing in front of the yellow van, where he’d stand out, instead of in front of the scrap metal he blends right into.  Morons.

I guess the wardrobe department’s reasoning for leaving the eyes uncovered was that it would allow the actor to emote.  It’s too bad they hired a crappy actor.  He’s bad as RoboCrap, and worse in the early scenes where he’s just supposed to be Carl.  The worst thing he does is shout NOOOOOOO during the science accident, which is so awful it’s hilarious.  Then not only do they show it to us again in flashbacks, they also have him go off on another NOOOOOOO when he realizes he’s killed a bunch of people in a sewer. You can’t watch this and take it seriously.

A poorly-handled main character will kill a movie very effectively, but The Vindicator does just about everything else wrong, too.  The EvilCo boss’ reasoning for creating this cyborg never makes any sense – in fact, it makes so little sense that other characters keep pointing out how dumb it is!  When you know something in your movie is stupid, the last thing you want to do is draw attention to the fact!  Nor do we ever really know what it is Carl’s trying to achieve.  He hangs around in the sewer, leaves cryptic messages for his wife, and defends himself from a biker gang and from Hunter’s mercenaries.  Eventually he reprograms himself to remove the insta-kill mode they inexplicably installed in him, but that happens offscreen and is rather anti-climactic. The insta-kill is established for us in a scene with a lab chimp, where the CEO of EvilCo literally pokes the animal with a stick until it gets so pissed off at him it dies of a heart attack.  This is established like it should be a plot point, but we never even see anyone concerned that Carl will Rage To Death.  The movie has totally forgotten about it by the time we get that far.

Similarly, we never find out what Carl was threatening to ‘blow the whistle on’ when he argues with his boss.  EvilCo is up to some shifty stuff to be sure, but as far as I can tell from the movie we see, it’s all disguised.  The development of the robotic limbs was undercover as advanced prosthetics, the indestructible shell was a spacesuit, the mind control was only for use on animals, etc etc etc.  Even the people developing this stuff were surprised when the CEO had them bring it all together to create RoboCrap.  What did Carl know?  We never find out, because the movie never mentions it again.  I figured he would try to use secrets as leverage but nope.

Another really weird plot point has to do with the synthesizer in Carl’s house, which apparently has a short circuit or something that picks up radio broadcasts.  RoboCarp uses this to communicate with Lauren, but it’s never clear why this is necessary.  He’s perfectly able to speak, and there’s no reason why he couldn’t just phone her. Using the synthesizer doesn’t even accomplish anything in the plot – EvilCo has the house bugged, so they’re listening in on the conversations anyway!

The list of crap goes on.  There’s an annoying little kid playing in a junkyard who sees RoboCrap and asks him if he’s from outer space.  Like the ape raging itself to death in the opening scene, this kid is introduced as if he ought to be important to the plot, but he isn’t – he just stands around going ‘ooooh’ as RoboCrap lifts cars, and then he’s gone. I guess we should be glad of that, because it means we’re not obliged to put up with his ‘cute’ antics for more than a couple of minutes.  At the same time, he’s still annoying, and since he doesn’t do anything important, he’s also pointless.

One of the biggest ruined opportunities in the movie was the character of Carl’s co-worker Bert.  When they’re introduced they seem to be good friends and Carl asks Lauren to contact Bert for him so that he can ask for help.  Bert meets Carl, but it turns out to be a trap by EvilCo, who have rewarded Bert for his help with a promotion.  This makes Bert, and the conflict between his loyalty to his friend and his loyalty to his job, potentially quite interesting… but then it turns out he’s just an asshole, who only hung out with Carl at all because he was in love with Lauren.  When Lauren rejects him, he tries to kill her.

This means we don’t have to feel bad about it when RoboCrap kills Bert a few minutes later, and neither does RoboCrap himself. But honestly, it would have been a way better movie if we did.  Carl and Bert’s friendship was one of the only relationships in the movie that was properly established, and having Bert actually blackmailed into betraying him, and Carl actually forced by his programming to murder his friend, would have had far more emotional impact.  Carl is horrified by his own killing but we don’t really feel that when his victims are criminals and his evil bosses.

Is there anything good in this movie?  There’s a few things here and there.  The lab animals that escape from their cages to kill the scientist who’d been torturing them did richly deserve that revenge.  There’s a scene in which some extremely creepy dolls are used to emphasize that Carl has become an uncanny effigy of humanity or something, and it goes on way after we’ve got the idea but it’s all right.  It’s also established that RoboCrap will only kill in self-defense, when a perceived threat activates the insta-kill.  He states that he doesn’t want to kill people but cannot control this programming – so the bad guys repeatedly bring violence upon themselves when they attempt to attack him.  This is clearly intended to be ironic and kind of works.  Hunter’s suicide, when it’s very unlikely RoboCrap was actually going to kill her, functions on a similar level.

Man, this movie is bad, and it’s not even bad in a fun way – it’s just bad. It ‘got’ what made RoboCop worth watching but it still couldn’t do anything with that, and everything it could have done with what it had, it fucked up.  The result reminds me of that Fix Auto commercial where the kid flails around and ends up whacking his mom’s car instead of the pinata. They could have had something tasty, but instead they just made an expensive mess.

[enneagramspam]

ISABEL LOVELACE

8w7

“Don't die. Be a big girl, and don't die.“

Isabelle Lovelace is a textbook Eight; as a Captain, she is authoritative, resourceful and strong-willed, but also prone to domineering and confrontational behaviour. Upon her return to the Hephaestus, she demonstrates the ruthless, authoritarian streak of a deeply disintegrated Eight, but over the course of the series she is able to integrate back into a healthier Eight, a heroic figure who is genuinely able to protect her crew. 

Basic Fear: Of being harmed or controlled by others

“Oh, I'm not following one of your orders? Gee, must be Monday…”

In comparison with the rest of the cast, who grow to reasonably distrust Goddard after betrayal, Lovelace has never been good with authority of any kind; it’s simply a facet of her personality. This is made clear in Greensboro;

“There's been times when I haven't seen eye-to-eye with my superior officers. Like all those times they gave me stupid orders. On those occasions, I was inclined to carry out my orders with a bit of... creativity.”

Lovelace remains her own ultimate authority, following orders only when they suit her, and as such, she is not truly beholden to them at all. Interestingly, there are pages of glowing testimonials from those who served under Lovelace, while those above her in the chain of command found her to be disobedient and punished her as a result; being a good leader and a bad follower isn’t at all uncommon for an Eight. 

Lovelace takes great pride in her independence, and expresses contempt for those that, in her eyes, allow themselves to be controlled, particularly her rules-obsessed second in command Officer Lambert, who effectively represents this basic fear- she calls him “an asinine teacher’s pet,” and repeatedly admonishes him for a lack of “a mind of his own,” even ridiculing him in front of the rest of her crew. Lambert is in fact the perfect foil to Lovelace, because while he is endlessly obedient to Goddard, he repeatedly undermines her, as Hilbert observes;

“You are perhaps needing someone who... questions superior officer? Who does not immediately do what is told? Who will fight for what they think is right way of doing job?”

Taking all this into account, it’s no wonder Lovelace dislikes Lambert so much when he both represents the control she so fears and the disobedience she cannot tolerate. The anger he provokes causes her to slip into the role of the intimidating Eight, which causes some friction with the rest of her crew, who describe her as “scary,” and observe that her personality is fundamentally combative; “she’d be bored without something to fight against.”  

Lovelace’s preoccupation with control is part of the reason that her discovery that she is an alien replica of her previous self subject to the whims of the aliens who created her is so distrubing for her- this is the avenue the habitually manipulative Kepler takes to try and unsettle her, preying on her basic fear;

“Are you sure that it's you that made the choice? Less than two days ago you were speaking words that weren't your own. … Maybe they're always in control, and they've made it so you can't tell. What if everything you think you're doing for yourself is just our friends out there pulling strings? What if your thoughts aren't your own?”

For Lovelace to even admit that this bothers her is difficult; Eights natrual tendency is to avoid vulnerability. It’s not until her control is completely taken away when she is trapped in a time loop orchestrated by the same aliens in Out of the Loop, driving her to disintegration and essentially forcing her to do so in the hopes of moving on.

“I - I'm sorry. I... Maybe Kepler's right. Maybe I'm not in control of what I'm doing.”

Ultimately, Lovelace is forced to live her basic fear, again and again, to begin to overcome it. Her arc culminates in her worst possible scenario- Cutter, the manifestation of the insidious control she has been raging against throughout the series, gaining direct control of her by manipulating the psi-waves that affect her alien physiology;

“If you have enough psi-waves in the air … you can control all sorts of things. What do you think, Isabel? Pretty neat, isn't it?”

Lovelace can’t wrest herself from Cutter’s control entirely- she shoots Minkowski, and is unable to fire at Cutter. She is, however, able to distract him for long enough for Minkowski to kill him. Not only is this a direct confrontation of Lovelace’s basic fear, with her being forced to accept that sometimes the situation is out of her control, this scene forces her to eschew her basic desire, and instead, rely on someone else to protect her; as an Eight, this is the logical conclusion to her arc.

Basic Desire: To protect themselves (to be in control of their own life

and destiny)

“There’s something I needed to remind myself of. That you're not just what you were made. That you can grow. At least... when you assholes don't interfere.”

Repeatedly, Lovelace cannot stand seeing others allowing their destiny to be decided for them- even when she particularly dislikes the person in question. When Eris announces her intention to self destruct on behalf of Goddard, she is furious;

“You can't just let these people delete you! You should fight this! ...Just because someone made you something doesn't mean that's all you're going to be. You can be more.”

She reacts similarly, if far more explosively when Hilbert is unfazed upon discovering that Goddard were planning on betraying him;

“What... the hell... is wrong with you? (BEAT) I will never understand you. How are you not angry? How are you not revoltingly angry? They were going to leave you up here. To rot … Listen to me, you despicable waste of a soul: that's not how you react to this. Humanity 101: when someone lies to you, when someone betrays you, when they leave you to die, alone, in the cold, you DO NOT FIND IT PERFECTLY EQUITABLE! You get angry, and you do whatever you have to in order to show them they have made the worst mistake of their lives. It doesn't matter what you have to give up, who you have to hurt, how far you have to go -”

Indeed, Lovelace goes to every length to be the one in control of her own destiny and to protect herself and those that she cares about. Aside from her dead man’s switch, there’s her response to Kepler’s game of “eeny-meeny,” when he is deciding who to shoot in Desperate Measures- she interrupts him with a “fuck you,” and then proceeds to insult him and spit at him. What could be mistaken, though, for an outburst of pure aggression and resentment is clearly shown to be an attempt to deliberately provoke him and thus control the situation in the only way she can, and an attempt to protect Eiffel; 

EIFFEL: “Captain... why did you - you didn't have to - 

LOVELACE: “Yes, I did. I did. It's fine.”

She smiles at him. Sadly. 

Inaction- and particularly, feeling helpless- drives Lovelace to distraction. She’s desperate to try to take control of the situation in Pan-Pan, repeatedly dismissing Minkowski’s plan to make a distress call, “The only way we're going to get off this station is if we do it ourselves.” On the other side of things, Lovelace’s mini episode, Greensboro, is markedly different from those for each other character. Critically, she doesn’t interact with Cutter, who has a pattern of exploiting the cast’s basic fears, and in reflection of this, it’s her basic desires that Rachel, who is interviewing her, praises and tempts her with;

“You. Deep space. Mission command. You've got … Glowing recommendations from practically everyone you've given an order to. And when you're multiple light years away from your superiors? It's probably good to have someone who can think for themselves.”

It’s easy to understand why Goddard took this unique approach with Lovelace specifically; threatening to control her would result in automatic pushback and rebellion from her, whereas promising her a degree of the control that she so craves was the perfect way to ensure that she agreed to work with them. 

Disintegration to Five:

“I invented being paranoid on this station.”

Enneagram Institute describes deeply disintegrated Eights’ actions as “vengeful, barbaric, murderous.” This is particularly true of Lovelace- the first time she flees the Hephaestus, she leaves behind a message promising to exact revenge against Goddard:

“So if you're listening to this: Run. And. Hide. Because by the time that I'm done you will feel more helpless and more alone than all the innocent people you've ever hurt. See you soon.”

Like an unhealthy Five, she is secretive and fearful, leaving her paranoid. She initially admits to turning on Hilbert without proper cause;  “I was so paranoid by that point, I think I would have turned on anyone who was with me.” This indiscriminate destructiveness is a hallmark of a disintegrated Eight, and when Minkowski confirms, “You attacked him?” Lovelace simply answers, “Best defence.” She goes on;

“I figured it was just a matter of time before he tried to kill me. So I incapacitated him and I ran. I got on the ship we'd constructed and left him behind. (beat) Not my proudest moment.”

Her violence continues when she returns to the Hephaestus- pouncing on Hilbert on sight, choking him and bashing his head against a wall. Like an unhealthy Five, she is suspicious and information obsessed- planting a gun with a hidden listening device so that she can eavesdrop on Minkowski and Eiffel. 

In addition, Enneagram Institute says of disintegrated Eights, “If they get in danger, they may brutally destroy everything that has not conformed to their will rather than surrender to anyone else.” This repeatedly holds true of Lovelace;

““I hope you don't think we'd go down without a fight.”

Indeed, she threatens to invoke the “Taking You With Me,” trope on multiple occasions, to the point that it becomes something of a running joke for her; 

“Believe me, kids, right now I'm up for killing everything and everyone on this boat.” 

Perhaps the most serious example, though, is the explosive she wires to activate should her heart stop or increase too much which she reveals in the episode aptly named Mutually Assured Destruction, a failsafe she describes, unfeelingly, as “insurance.” When Minkowski doubts her, “You’d be killing yourself. I don’t buy it,” Lovelace simply answers; “Then you’ve never been as scared as I have.” This neatly demonstrates Lovelace’s complete unwillingness to surrender or be subjugated, willing to completely self destruct in order to avert this outcome. Additionally, she uses this threat as a means of seizing control of the station, becoming the ruthless, dictatorial disintegrated Eight;

“There's a new sheriff in town, and I am not taking suggestions, complaints, or objections. Here’s what’s going to happen… Whatever game Command is playing with this station is over. Welcome to my Cold War, kids. Fasten your seat belts, stay out of the way, and don’t try me. Any questions?” 

Integration to Two:

“I realized something. The whole epic rampage of revenge thing? Isabel Lovelace wouldn't do that. The terrible wretch that you people made Isabel Lovelace into? Oh, she'd do that. But... I'm not going to be that person anymore. (BEAT) I'm going to be Isabel Lovelace again. Even if I never have before.” 

When integrated, Lovelace’s has the sincere care for those around her of a healthy Two, using her own strength of character to support them. A good example of this is when she quite generously agrees to take over for Minkowski when she feels unable to command the station. It’s significant that Minkowski convinces her by appealing to her own respect and need for control;

“ I... I did what I did because I lost control. And until I get it back, I don't think my hands are the best ones for this crew to be in.”

Also notably, Lovelace is demonstrably reluctant to take control, establishing it only happens, “on the very clear understanding that this is a temporary situation, and that [she is] going to sort [her]self out and kick [her] out of [her] chair ASAP.” This Lovelace, genuinely looking forward to ceding control to a person she respects and trusts, is a far cry from the control obsessed woman she is introduced as. Additionally, she uses her strong authority with the goal of actually meeting the needs of her entire crew- for instance, in Theta Scenario;

LOVELACE: “I'm not making that call for everyone. We're voting, and we're not doing anything until we have a unanimous decision.”

EIFFEL: “Fine, lets v-”

LOVELACE: “No. We're not gonna make an informed decision until we know as much as we can about what the hell has been going on here.”

EIFFEL: “Why?”

LOVELACE: “Because I'm the Captain, that's why. That call I will make.”

As aforementioned, Lovelace is also able to depend on Minkowski during her most dire moments during the finale. Early in the series, Lovelace clearly felt that it was her destiny to personally take revenge on Cutter on behalf of her crew, with her promising that outcome to him as an inevitability;

“I'm going to really mess you up someday. You know that, right?”

Allowing Minkowski to be the one to take him down instead is a subtle but incredibly important demonstration of her growth- she thoughtlessly sacrifices an opportunity she would have been unlikely to have given up on without a fight earlier in the series. This courage and self-sacrifice is far more along the lines of what one would expect from an integrated Eight. 

w7:

“Let's just say that I am very eager to be a private citizen again.”

Maintaining her own freedom and happiness is a big priority for Lovelace, which is indicative of her Seven wing. She dislikes ruminating on painful subjects, and while she generally copes by being action-oriented; her refusal to confront her grief is explored in Variations On a Theme, where she has no tolerance for herself slipping into present tense when speaking about her past group;

“No. Focus. Work. Be here. Be now. Don't stop to remember. Don't stop to think. Stay away from the ghosts.”

And, in Need To Know it’s revealed she was deliberately getting high on painkillers after the disastrous events of Who’s There?;

“I got a broken an arm trying to save one of my crew members. It was a very difficult time.”

Turning to addiction as a form of escapism is not uncommon for a Seven in disintegration.

Additionally, despite her extreme fury towards Goddard, Lovelace is also driven for much of the series by an extreme desire to return home; 

“I want to go back to earth.”

It’s only in her internal monologue- presented as fragmented and scattered, as many disintegrated Sevens can feel and behave- that she acknowledges the painful truth that returning to earth won’t truly fulfill her desires- earth is longer home, and home is gone;

LOVELACE: “I will do this. I'll do it faster. Better. Deal with crazier. Won't die harder. Fix this goddamn engine. Get them out. Go home.”

SECOND LOVELACE: “You can never go home. You were home.”

THIRD LOVELACE: “And now you're back. And you can never go back.”

LOVELACE: “I know. I know.”

In fact, Lovelace’s powerful desire to get off the station is more reminiscent of the blind claustrophobia of a disintegrated Seven- the desire to escape a painful atmosphere- than a draw towards a compelling, satisfying one. Towards the very end of the series, this changes. Significantly, she mentions earth not just in the context of revenging on Goddard or escaping the Hephaestus, but as presenting the opportunity for revitalizing, healing experiences, with something close to the optimism of a healthy Seven;

“Oh, there are so many choices. Look up some old friends, take apart Goddard Futuristics brick by brick... maybe go to Disneyland? But first, I'm going to take a long vacation, somewhere warm and quiet, where nobody has any idea who I am.”

Ultimately, though, her wing isn’t very developed- she’s more than willing to stay on the station late in the series to try and learn more about the aliens and their wants (and by association, about their control over her), and doesn’t try to flee the situation in the same way that Eiffel wants to at that point. Similarly, she’s willing to die to protect him in Desperate Measures- her core desires and fears as an Eight will always overpower the aversion to pain associated with her wing whenever both come into play. 

[pamphletstoinspire]

The Death Penalty and the Myth of Closure

Many argue that the death penalty can help survivors move on with their lives. However, this counselor writes that true healing can happen only when we learn to "walk with the pain."

The death penalty has been with us for millennia. If you take the time to read the Old Testament, you will find that the death penalty was widely accepted. We find in the words of Exodus the justification invoked to this day to defend the use of executions: “You shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (21:23–25).

This is known as Mosaic law and is an integral part of our legal system. And yet Jesus came to challenge it: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on [your] right cheek, turn the other one to him as well” (Mt 5:38–39).

What a truly radical notion! In the Old Testament, one sees that violence was a way of life, and execution was a primary tool for meting out justice. But Jesus sweeps that all away.

As with many things Jesus said, excuses have been made and qualifiers added: Love your enemy . . . except when he is a murderer. Then you are justified to kill him, a conclusion that sounds very much like Mosaic law.

Desire for Vengeance Is Real

On the other hand, even if we accept Jesus’ teaching, turning the other cheek is not that simple. I can’t simply say, “Well, Patterson, you claim to be a Christian, so you must love your enemy and oppose the death penalty.” I also understand the desire for vengeance.

Some years ago when I was an Army psychologist, I was tasked with evaluating a man arrested for beating his 3-month-old stepdaughter within an inch of her life on Christmas Eve. It had already been determined that the child suffered irreversible brain damage. As I was interviewing the man, I received a call from the pediatric ICU informing me she had also been blinded. I hung up and told this man that news. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Oh, well.”

In that moment, I wanted to jump across my desk, grab him by the throat, and beat him within an inch of his life! As I think about him almost 40 years later, I have the same feeling. I am not proud of that, but it also helps me to be sensitive to the feelings of survivors when it comes to discussions of the death penalty. It reminds me to be sensitive to survivors’ need for justice and, possibly, vengeance.

Many justifications for executions set aside the language of Mosaic law and focus on possible benefits for the surviving family. One doesn’t so much hear the word vengeance in such discussions, but one does hear the word closure. A common justification for the death penalty is that it provides closure for the family.

When Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death, the mayor of Boston expressed the hope that “this verdict provides a small amount of closure.” Similarly, when the decision was made to allow survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing to witness the execution of Timothy McVeigh, Attorney General John Ashcroft stated that he hoped the execution would help survivors “meet their need to close this chapter in their lives.”

Whether executions provide closure depends on what we mean by that word. For most of us, closure implies a completion or conclusion. When a corporation announces store closures, that means those stores are no longer operational. So, in discussing the process of grief and trauma, closure would seem to imply a conclusion—the suggestion that there is an end point to grieving.

This expectation of closure is sometimes supported within a person’s social network. At this time, I am counseling several parents of children who committed suicide. All have commented on encountering, either directly or indirectly, the message “Aren’t you over it by now?”

Think for a moment of the people in your life you have lost. Are you no longer grieving? If I think of loved ones who are gone, I become aware that I may be grieving those losses for the rest of my days. My grief may not be as intense as it was at the time of the loss. But reminders of someone’s absence in my life help me see that grief goes on, that there is no closure in the sense of conclusion to my grief. There’s no point at which I dust myself off and say, “OK, I’m done missing that person.”

The Myth of Closure

In her book Closure: The Rush to End Grief and What It Costs Us, Professor Nancy Berns makes the compelling argument that the concept of closure has emerged within a political context to justify the death penalty and as a “made-up concept: a frame used to explain how we respond to loss.” It has become such a common word in discussions about grief that people assume it exists and is within their reach. In fact, its prevalence reflects the hope we all have that we can heal from the devastation of tragedy and trauma.

For some, closure means the conclusion to a very public process of crime, arrest, trial, and multiple appeals. Anecdotal evidence suggests that indeed the execution provides that sense of closure. But the word closure also implies healing and completion. Evidence suggests that not only does the death penalty not facilitate healing but, in fact, may interfere with it.

In his 2007 study of families of murder victims, Scott Velum found that only 2.5 percent indicated a strong sense of closure resulted from the execution of the murderer. A study published in the Marquette Law Review compared survivors’ reactions in Minnesota and Texas. Killers in Minnesota were sentenced to life imprisonment, an outcome that was experienced as satisfying by survivors. Texas survivors were less satisfied by death penalty verdicts, in large part because of the prolonged appeals process.

As Bill and Denise Richards, parents of a 9-year-old boy killed in the Boston Marathon bombings, wrote in the Boston Globe, asking that the government not seek the death penalty, “The continued pursuit of that punishment could bring years of appeals and prolong the most painful day of our lives.”

Jody Madeira worked with and studied survivors of the Oklahoma City bombings. In her book Killing McVeigh: The Death Penalty and the Myth of Closure, she noted that Timothy McVeigh’s execution did not provide the kind of closure some survivors may have hoped for. As one survivor noted, “There won’t be closure till I am dead.”

The Path to Healing

Are survivors then simply left in anguish, or is some form of healing possible? Perhaps rather than talking about closure, we should be talking about healing.

Sociologist Loren Toussaint suggests that healing is possible through the process of forgiveness. Madeira agrees that forgiveness can help but argues that it is not the only path to healing. This is a delicate topic that must be approached carefully and without judgment. Forgiveness can indeed help survivors heal, but it isn’t that simple. Forgiveness is a process, one that can last a lifetime.

First, let’s be clear on what forgiveness isn’t. Forgiveness does not mean condoning—a distinction relevant to people dealing with someone on death row. Forgiveness does not minimize what was done. The bombings in Boston will never be acceptable. The 9/11 attacks can never be dismissed in terms of the personal trauma. The murder of a loved one will never be OK. After all, the God of my understanding is indeed a God of mercy, but also a God of justice.

Then there is the common phrase forgive and forget. Not only is that often not possible, but in some cases it’s not a good idea. If someone has assaulted me, I may need to forgive that person, but it may not be a good idea for me to invite him or her over for dinner. That person may have no remorse and might assault me again.

The first step in forgiving is making the decision to forgive. The important thing to realize in making this decision is that the person who will benefit most from forgiving is the forgiver. Forgiving frees the forgiver from all the negative venom of hatred and resentment. Essentially, to forgive is to reclaim power from the forgiven. Professor Madeira quotes Oklahoma City bombing survivor Bud Welch as saying about forgiving Timothy McVeigh: “I was the one that got relief from all this pain . . . and it wasn’t about McVeigh.”

Sometimes we confuse forgiveness with reconnecting with someone in a loving way. That reconnecting is a decision that I may make after I have forgiven. I also have the option of not having the offender in my life. In other words, to forgive doesn’t necessarily mean to reconcile with someone.

To forgive means I also have to face all my rage and anger, all my thoughts of vengeance. We can’t sidestep the emotions. I have sat with some people who experienced tragedy or trauma and afterwards stated, rather flatly, “I’ve forgiven that person,” without any acknowledgment of the pain inflicted by that person. This to me is an intellectual exercise, not an experience of true forgiveness.

Learning to Walk with the Pain

In exploring alternatives to the prevalent concept of closure, we also need to broaden our understanding of grief. The concept of closure may have its roots in Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ famous five stages of dying. That theory has been broadened to include grief. The fifth stage is acceptance. Like closure, this notion has many meanings.

What does it mean to accept the death of a loved one? Again, some kind of finality is suggested, a sort of conclusion to the grieving. I have sat with persons who judged themselves because they did not feel they were finished grieving. Others had well-meaning friends and relatives suggest they should be “over it by now” or that they hadn’t “accepted” the death because they were still grieving.

Over the years I have dealt with many people who came to see me because someone else was concerned about them or, more often, because they themselves questioned whether they were grieving correctly.

I recall one beautiful woman who came to see me after the death of her husband of 50-plus years. She was concerned whether she was grieving correctly. She stated that well-meaning friends had given her a stack of books on grieving. Not wanting to disappoint anyone, she read them all. When I asked what she thought after all that reading, she told me: “I’m completely confused. They contradict one another.”

So what did I do? I gave her a book to read! Only it wasn’t an edition of Grieving for Dummies. It was C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed, his journal written the first year after the death of his beloved wife, Joy. The book has no easy answers, and, at its conclusion, it is clear that Lewis will continue to grieve. There is no nice, clean ending. No closure. Only Lewis trying to learn to walk with the pain.

In dealing with losses in my own life, what works for me is to view grieving as a process of learning to walk with the pain. This suggests that, because of a particular loss, my life is changed forever. I am challenged to find a way to move forward living my life as well as possible while at the same time carrying the loss. This is especially true for those who’ve lost a loved one through some criminal act, be it murder or terrorism.

To learn to walk with the pain has several facets. One is to make the decision not to let the trauma define the loved one’s life. It is to affirm that I will not be known as the parent of that girl or boy who was murdered. Rather, I will be known as the parent of a child who touched lives in a beautiful way before leaving life much too soon.

Another facet of walking with the pain is to facilitate the loved one’s legacy. Such legacies may take the form of charitable donations or even the establishment of a charity. Others might establish a scholarship fund. Some get tattoos or plant trees. Such actions don’t make pain go away, but they create a legacy that has some meaning.

For me, acceptance means acknowledging that life is now different, and that I will be walking with this pain until I meet my loved one again in a better place. That may be the only real closure.

By Richard B. Patterson, PhD

[randomnessunicorn-imagine]

👿 Cuphead Fanfiction:  Infernal Redemption [Part Four] 👿

{ Hello! This is the “Devil Ending” because this fanfict will have two different endings. This ending is very similar to the game’s, I guess, don’t know if it’s a spoiler, I don’t think-- The next chapter will be the “King Dice’s ending” but for now, enjoy this chapter! It’s been very difficult because I had no inspiration but I hope it will be good enough— This ending and the next one are separated and they both follow the third chapter. }

Pairing: The Devil x Neutral! Reader x King Dice Rating: Red ( Violence and harsh contents )

>>> First part <<<

>>> Second part <<<

>>> Third Part <<< 

🌋 : Devil’s Ending : 🌋

How many days passed? Nobody knew it.

There were no clocks in this cell, there was no light, and nothing at all. There was only solitude and decay. You waited for the Devil to come back to torture you again because this game had no end.

The Devil wanted to play with you and you were his favourite toy. The feeling he felt toward you was confused. Something as violent and passionate as a crime. A strong emotion of cruelty and suffering. Somehow, it satisfied your thirst because that suffering was not painful but familiar. As if it was a déjà-vu. Something you have already lived in a distant past, it gave you a sentiment of nostalgia. You had already felt this feeling before and old memories crossed the vast land of your mind.

The Devil was not a gentle man, and he was not like that person. He was not like your old husband, but something of the Devil reminded you of him. Because the relationship you had with your old lover was unlike any other. It was as tender as the smile of a child but also as morbid as the madness of the world. It was as loving as hug shared between two young lovers but it was also as violent as the blood of the innocent ones. It was everything you had always wanted. It was everything and nothing.

In the Devil, you saw his dark side, because nobody in the world was perfect and those feelings came back to life. Only now, you were realizing it and you did not understand. A dormant desire. You have been asleep this whole time and maybe the Devil’s whip has woken you up.

Being imprisoned here has allowed your mind to think and rediscover the person you were in your past. The person you had forgotten but it was still alive. This brutal experience has allowed you to look into your spirit. You have realized that you were so busy despising the world around you and filling your hunger that you forgot there could be a future for you. One chance. A chance that someone wanted to give you. Someone was coming, accompanied by his irreverence and cruelty. He.

The same air became stinking and gloomy, everything smelled of death and despair. Your soul was rotting and no awareness could change this fact. Your hunger came back and this made you vulnerable and irritable. It would never have subsided, there was no way, even when you satisfied it, it came back and you fell into the abyss.

This time the Devil wanted to make a deal with you, but this was his job. He was resolute and his sneer showed no insecurities.

You were sitting on the frozen floor, with your back against the wall. You were not tied up anymore but you were motionless and waited for him to tell his speech.

He could not read your mind but he wanted it but then maybe it would not have been so fun. He loved the mystery, and he wanted to play with you. You were not a docile and quiet animal and this excited him even more.

It seemed the Devil was puked out of the darkness as if he jumped out of nowhere. You did not hear any sound. He appeared before your eyes and you stared at him coldly.

His glance was cruel but he did not speak and he stood still, admiring you as if you were a sort of masterpiece in a museum. Something was different. His eyes were psychopathic but also very cold and for the first time a feeling of fear crossed your spine but this fear was not irritating but relaxing. A feeling you had already felt before.

You had anything to be afraid because he took his decision. Only the best for you.

“Oh, look who’s here! My favourite prisoner!” he said, grinning.

You had anything to say and you kept observing his moves as if you were a deer who was about to run away from the hunter but you were trapped and there was no way out.

The Devil lit his cigar and it was the first time you saw him smoking since he usually came here to torture you, it was another method to relieve his stress. Maybe he was waiting for you to speak but you had nothing to say.

Now he seemed more relaxed and even his eyes did not manifest any anger and his expression was calmer but you could understand something in his behaviour was wrong. The Devil was confused and irritated and his mind was tormented by a dilemma. You were that dilemma. He hated not being in control even if he was the one in control here but the feelings he felt were so fascinating and annoying.  

“What do you want now?” you said with a disgusted tone.

“Oh, you’re very impertinent, that’s not the proper way to treat a visitor.” he said pretending to be offended.

“Oh, really? I thought you like my impertinence.” and then his eyes went wide and his mind kept pulsing with rage and confusion.

Yes, he loved your impertinence and bad behaviour and he also loved torturing you but he did not want to kill you and this was something that never happened because he always killed his prey. He was a very capricious and fickle man and he got easily tired of people because they were boring. Humans were strange but they had no appeal on him. They were like pets for him, toys to play until he decided to broke them because he was just a spoiled child and nothing satisfied him.  

This time was different because you were a toy he cared about and he did not want to break you and, for this reason, he asked to Dice to heal you so he could play with you for the rest of the eternity but this was not enough for him. It was not only a mere whim but something else he did not want to accept and his mind kept refusing because it was absurd and scare. It was a sort of affection but not a normal affection. It was a desire of possession, like an obsession, something sick and primordial because he was unable to feel love for someone. His heart –even if he did not possess a heart- was not capable to feel pure love. As if he was cursed or he could be considered as a sort of invalid and this made him insensitive to certain feelings and these feelings became something else. The other side of a coin because he did not hate you but he was obsessed and he wanted you to be his and only his. He loved hearing your screams and seeing the pain in your eyes and he was never tired of it. He still controlled himself and he never overcame the limits because human beings were fragile and he did not desire to kill you.

He knew you felt the same for him but you have not already realized it because you were like him, he understood, and you liked all of this. You wanted more and you were as sick as he was.

“Yes, I may like your impertinence, but I also hate your stubbornness because you keep on misbehaving. You love making me angry. It’s not right!” he said and his voice was harsh and he wanted to scare you.

“Nothing is right here!” you were truly stubborn as he said, and this behaviour made him angrier and then, with his flaming tail, he hit the wall behind you. You made no sound. You stood still, staring in his yellow eyes.

“Yes, anything is right here! It’s hell, are you stupid?” he growled like a dog.

“Yes, maybe I’m stupid because I still don’t understand why you have locked me here.” your eyes were colder than ice and he liked it. Then you said, “Why didn’t you kill me? Since it’s hell, I should burn like the others but I’m still here. I’m not dead and it makes no sense!”

Everything made no sense and you should not have been alive now. You have been tortured as a slave but then he asked to his right hand man to heal you. This was illogic. There was no explication for this but the Devil was lying on himself because there was an explication. He was attracted to you; this unconscious and unpleasant feeling was tormenting him. It was not love but a sick sentiment but it was something he has never felt for anyone else.

This dilemma was driving you crazy and you started laughing as if it was the most hilarious show of the existence. You laughed and laughed harder, until your throat hurt.

The Devil did not understand and he felt humiliated, he was mad, because you were laughing at him. Actually, your laugh was a liberation because you were exhausted and confused. This situation was surreal and nonsense. Laughing was a sort of vent for you. He was a mystery and you were a mystery for him. This was madness. You fell into the Rabbit Hole and now you were gone mad. This was the dark side of Wonderland. Because you fell into the abyss. The abyss of your mind.

“Stop! Don’t laugh!” and the Devil hit you with his tail, because he was pissed.

You crashed to the ground and the pain flowed through your veins. You found yourself as if you woke up from a horrible nightmare but you were living a nightmare.

Then a macabre silence invaded the room because you have not spoken and he was still staring you with his flaming eyes.

“I wanted to free your soul and it’s your answer! If you care so much to burn, then I will make your wish come true!” his eyes became two flames and he was furious.

Suddenly the ground started shaking and the walls were about to fall. He created an earthquake and a big chasm was created under your feet but you were agile enough to jump and run away. You did not fall in that abyss of desperation and death.

You heard screams. They were the suffering voices that came from the underworld. From the flames of hell. They were the cries of the damned who were invoking pity and would burn for the rest of eternity.

You stood up, watching the emptiness below you. Your mind was filled with those suffering yells.

The Devil smiled diabolically, because this scene amused him. He loved observing suffering people, especially the cries of sinners who deserved their fate. They deserved to burn.

After that, he looked at you, speaking, "Do you see them? Do you perceive their agony? Their fear? They will burn for the rest of eternity. Do you want the same? Do you want to burn? I admit it would be a shame since you have not yet lived your young life but I would be so kind to realize your desire.” The Devil grinned sadistically.

His voice was rough and warm, a voice that was able to hurt like a knife, but you did not know what to answer. You did not want to burn.

He also said he wanted to free your soul, but what did he mean?

"No, I do not want to! What did you mean by freeing my soul?” You asked, coldly.

"So you listen to me. You're smarter than you think. I intend to free your soul from the pain that keeps tormenting it. I think you know what kind of pain I'm talking about. Your soul is crying, from the first moment I understood it was sick. And very unsatisfied”.

It was true. Your hunger, the demon that haunted you, made your soul burn like one of those sinners.

“Really? And how?” you said without thinking and you did not want to appear like a desperate but the Devil grinned and desperation was what his ears heard. A sweet sound he loved hearing.

“Yes. For freeing your poor soul all you’ve to do is to give it to me!” and he extended his hand to you as if he wanted to shake it to make a deal but you did not grab it.

“So I will end like them?” you asked, pointing his attention to those poor sinners.

“No, if you cooperate!” he said, grinning.

“By cooperate you mean sell my soul to you, but it would be the same.” You answered, confused.

“No, silly! You’ll be healed, I’ve noticed in your eyes, you hid something you can’t say me, but your soul is clear and it feels pain. It’s sick. You won’t feel that pressure anymore without it.” he explained, getting closer to you as his eyes became more yellow.

“What about me? What would I be? I won’t be a human anymore.” You asked, perplexed. Actually, you were only confused but it was true. Your only desired was to get rid of this ravenous hunger. You did not care about it or the creature you would become because you have never felt like a human. You have always thought to be different from everybody else. Yours was curiosity and you felt no fear as he came closer and your bodies almost touched.

“No, but you’ve never been human, haven’t you?” he grinned, laughing softly.

It was as if he was reading your mind but he did not possess this power. Maybe he just understood you because he was like you. Even the Devil possessed a hunger that made him never satisfied. This was a hunger for guts, blood and violence and it was never enough for him. Maybe he saw himself in you and he perceived a sort of pity or compassion.

“Then…?” you said in a whisper as you stared into his yellow orbs that shined as two flames in the night.

“Then you’ll be mine… Until the end of time…” and he spoke quietly as he placed his big hand on your cheek and he caressed you. His gesture was strangely delicate and soft. It was not him and maybe he was pretending to be kind to tempt you. You knew but you did anything to stop him. You could not do anything anyway.

“Eh?” you murmured.

“Yes, it’s the reason I kept you alive, because you’re not like the others. You’re a monster inside just like me. We’re very similar. You’re like a beast who is unable to satiate its hunger because you want more and more. It’s never enough. You’re a caged beast because this world imprisons you. Thanks to me, you’ll discover your true nature and anything will be forbidden no more.”

He wanted you to become his slave for eternity even though this was not the appropriate word to define it. In a sense, he estimated you but his was not love. You were not looking for love or compassion, but you wanted to free yourself from the torture that afflicted you every day.

You were not attached to this earthly world and you considered humanity as inept and useless. You did not want to be part of that humanity. Since your husband has gone, everything has lost its meaning and perhaps the Devil wanted to give you a new meaning.

You had nothing to lose and even your soul betrayed you, because it was like a disease. Your soul was like a tumour, it was destroying your life, but this tumour could be exported and you could heal.

"I'm tired ... Everything is so heavy ..." you whispered and your life was a weight on your shoulders even though it was empty.

You were like a black hole to fill. You needed to suck the light of others to live.

Yes, you two were identical and you had no choice but to join him.

"Deal? Here you will be free to do whatever you want without limitation, with no one to judge or torment you. Everyone wants this but no one would ever admit it ..." he said proudly.

"So, take my soul." your tone was cold and austere.

You did not manifest any emotion. Maybe you were a little sceptical but you decided to do it.

By now, you had become completely crazy and if you had to fall, you had to do it with style. Fall to the bottom. Without inhibitions.

He smiled maliciously and then everything went dark.

This place and he disappeared. You disappeared.

You did not feel anything anymore. As if you were floating in the void of boundless space. Just like a black hole. You were nothing. You did not feel anything.

No hunger. No desire. No fear. No pleasure. No pain.

Nothing. And this was heaven.

You were like an inert body floating in cosmic space.

It was what you wanted. Do not feel anything.

The void embraced your body and you just slept without caring at all.

Your soul was gone and with it, even your inner demon vanished. You were that demon now. You defeated it and you were victorious.

Feeling no emotion was fulfilling but also contradictory.

Actually, you were still the same person but you were freer and more conscious of yourself because that monster was your handicap and it blocked you but now it was vanished.

Without your soul, you could not be considered a human, and not even a living thing. You were like a dead person since you donated your soul to the Devil so you were designed to live in Hell for the rest of eternity and it could not be more wonderful than this. Because it was what you wanted and what you searched for. The eternal damnation. A redemption in this infernal place. You understood.

*

*

*

  “How do you feel now?” a harsh voice you knew spoke and you came back to reality. If it was reality.

“I don’t feel…” you spoke and for the first time you were surprised and you did not hide your stupor.

“Yes, it’s like heaven, don’t you think?” he said with irony and then he laughed hard.

“It’s weird…But marvellous at the same time.” you answered and then you looked around and the place was different. You were not in that dark cell anymore. In front of you, the Devil seated on his throne and everything was surrounded by flames and death. You were at his home now. This was your new home.

“You’re welcome… Make yourself at home.” he said and he kept laughing.

You did not know what this fate would give you but now you were fulfilled.

Even the Devil seemed more reassured and satisfied. His hunger healed, after he devoured your soul he felt better. Maybe he was waiting for someone like you until now but he has never found it. He did not even know. He seemed so different now but he could not stay calm forever.

Your life was restored but now you had to spend time in some other ways and the ideas of watching those poor sinners burning triggered your mind. As if you would find a sort of pleasure in it. You wanted to see them suffering and laugh of their agony. A sadistic desire took place where once was your heart. In the place where your soul was, now there was a hole, the darkness, a void but it did not hurt and it was comfortable because you were finally in control.

Your dark side took control and even your consciousness and all the good that there was in you vanished. You became evil because this was the place of evil. There was no time for hope, dreams, kindness, or benevolence.

You were not born to burn but to watch them burning because you have suffered until now, during your pathetic human existence and this was time to take your revenge against all the ones who have judged you or insulted you for your diversity. The day of reckoning has come.

“I like the light in your eyes. You’re finally free, congrats.” said the Devil and in his voice you found a sort of comfort that you did not expect.

Maybe he was trying to be truly nice for once in his life but you did not perceive lies in his words.

“Yes, thanks. I feel a total new person, it was right. That disease was killing me slowly and my soul was just an obstacle for my true nature. I feel alive, brand new.” Even your expression was brighter as if you discovered a part of you that you did not know but it has always been there.

“I’m glad to hear it, let me be your guide. I’ll show you the wonders and magical things this place hide.” then he stood up of his throne and he extended his hand to you in a gallant way you did not expect from him. He appeared as a bad-tempered person but he knew how to be a gentleman –when he wanted-.

You grabbed his hand you followed him.

You just nodded and a new curiosity invaded your mind. Because so many things were waiting for you.

This was only the beginning of your brand new life.

[ FIFTH PART ]

[kenzieam]

The Right Wrong Choice - Chapter 10 (Eric X Fox)

Rating: M (swearing, violence, smut - everything you’ve come to expect from me :* )

Genre: General/Humor/Drama/Eventual Angst

Thanks everyone for the re-blogs and support!!! IT IS SO AWESOME!!!

@emmysrandomthoughts@beautifulramblingbrains @iammarylastar @tigpooh67 @bookwarm85 @mom2reesie @elaacreditava @badassbaker @captstefanbrandt  @treeleaf @pathybo @beltz2016 @lilu46  @girlwith100names @gaia25 @readsalot73  @slayer0507 @stone-met @lostinthebeans @lauraaan182 @letmagichappen @girlslovestorys @tonyt1995 @lacy-love @littlesouthernrebel @fuckthatfeeling  @sparklemichele @vitaevandal @shaunarcanine @jojogoo65 @micolegg @frecklefaceb @jaihardy @equalstrashflavoredtrash @bookgirlthings @queenara4 @sterek-foreverandever

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**********UPCOMING TRIGGER WARNINGS************

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Death. That is Eric’s sentence. Two counts of murder for the dead guards; one count of attempted murder for Jeanine.

I has been two days since my world ended, and it is no easier to breathe than it was then. I can’t function, my heart is trapped with Eric. They haven’t let me see him yet, although I demand it ceaselessly. Jeanine is said to visit me today, in my padded room in the Erudite hospital, my first true visitor since everything collapsed. She’ll want a promise of loyalty from me, and I’ll say anything to be granted freedom, to see Eric again. They hurt him, as I was being dragged from the room I heard him yell in pain and everything went grey. When my vision cleared again, three guards clutch their broken limbs, two more hold me on the ground while an Erudite woman stabs me in the neck with a needle. I woke up here hours later, my throat parched, my limbs leaden and bruised. The doctor that observed me through the door told me the time and day, and I realized I’d lost nearly six hours since the council hearing. An official letter told me of Eric’s sentence, and the date of his chosen execution. Today, at 5 pm. I pace the cell, it is past noon, Jeanine is toying with me.

The door is unlocked and I stop, turn to face the intruder. Finally, Jeanine. Guards flank her with weapons drawn, but she is safe for now, I won’t kill her until after I see Eric. She is my ticket to him. She watches me and I keep my face impassive.

“Your boyfriend is going to die today.”  

Her words cut me deeply, and a fresh arterial spray of anguish splashes the room, visible only to me. I bite back my groan of agony, it’s what she wants.

“What do you want from me, Jeanine?” I rasp.

“Your cooperation.”

“With?”

“Everything. You are Erudite now, you will contribute to the faction. You will head studies, further research, you will become Erudite.”

I hesitate, then nod. Tell her what she wants to hear.

“Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing? You are saying what you think I want to hear.”

“Let me see Eric, please?” My game is up, all I have now is honesty. “Let me see him one last time, be with him when he dies..... if you grant me this mercy, I will serve the faction.”

She watches me carefully and I wait passively. She holds the cards right now, I have nothing but her mercy to help me. A small smile touches her lips, she suspects. She has her game and I have mine, we shall see who walks away the winner.

“Alright. You will shower and clean up first. Wear Erudite blue and project the image of our faction.”

“Let me wear my Dauntless black. Let Eric see me one last time as a warrior.”

Jeanine nods, a small concession; she is either playing a deep game or is supremely arrogant. I hope for the latter.

“Guards will fetch you at 3 pm. Be ready. You will be taken to Dauntless and be with Eric as he is executed. You will then drop this delusion of yourself as anything other than an Erudite.”

I nod, the terms are acceptable, for now. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________

I fight not to strain and pull at my guards grip. His pace is far too slow for my liking, anything short of a mad dash is too slow now. My heart burns, aches to see Eric again. Jeanine walks proud beside me, head high and I visualize snapping that neck.

One last indignity. I am shoved into an empty room and left to wait. I’m ready to crawl out of my skin. I pace and rage silently. More games, more bullshit. LET ME SEE ERIC!

Finally, the door is opened. Guards flank me as I am marched to another room. The door is opened and I am pushed inside. Eric is on his knees in the centre of the room, his hands bound behind his back. My heart breaks. I push past the guards and fall on my knees in front of Eric. He raises his head and the dead look in his eyes disappears. Pure joy shines instead and I throw my arms around him; mourn the fact that he cannot hold me back. Tears flow and I don’t stop them. I gasp his name over and over again, a prayer, a benediction.

He nuzzles his face into my neck, breathing hard and we just exist for a while. No one bothers us, or maybe they do, and we are cocooned into our own little bubble and don’t notice. I pull away enough to cup his face in my hands and our kiss is sweet.

“Fox, listen.” Eric’s voice is soft but firm and I press my cheek to his so he can whisper in my ear. “It wasn’t your parents.”

I jolt is surprise, but don’t pull away, there’s more.

“It was Max, all this time it was him. He came to see me yesterday; arrogant prick told me the whole thing. He wanted a legacy, wanted me to marry his daughter. You were in his way, so he set the Statute in motion, helped your parents invoke it, brought Jeanine over to his side. It was all him, Fox, all him. That fuck is the reason we’re here.”

My blood runs cold. Betrayed by our leader, betrayed by the man entrusted to lead the warrior faction. A killing hate runs through my limbs and Eric senses the rage.

“Baby, no. Listen to me.”

I pull away to gaze at him, stroke his hair from his forehead. He leans into my touch.

“Don’t.” His words are a whisper. “Don’t ruin your life.”

“W-what?”

“I accept my sentence, I killed two men. Don’t die with me.”

I can’t stop the tears and collapse against him. Although he can’t hold me, Eric continues to murmur in my ear and my parched soul absorbs every word.

“Fox, don’t cry, please. Baby, I love you. I’m glad we met, there is nothing I regret. Living with you, even for these short weeks was worth it. You are the best part of my life. You showed me love, you gave me perfect happiness. You made me alive, you made my life worth living.” He exhales raggedly before continuing. “I love you, so fucking much. I wish we had more time but we don’t. But it’s not the end, baby. We’re Blood-Tied, we’ll always be together. Live for me now, live for us.”

Hands grab me and pull me away and the last pieces of my broken heart explode, shatter outwards, slashing me to bleeding ribbons. I fight and claw desperately through my tears, trying to get back to Eric. I freeze when I feel the sting of a needle.

“Stop fighting.” Jeanine’s voice is cold. “This syringe holds Memory Serum. Continue to struggle and I will depress the entire contents into your neck. You will lose the last year of your life. You will forget about Dauntless, you will forget about Eric.”

I shake my head slightly. NO. I CAN’T FORGET. I will stand still, just please don’t take my memories too.

Guards hold Eric down, he tried to rise to help me. Our eyes meet and hold. It is time. Everything else disappears. The masked guard appears, gun drawn, pointed at the back of Eric’s head. I can’t look away, this is the best I can do for Eric now, to be the last thing he sees.

“I love you Eric.” I whisper, my voice breaking.

“I love you too baby, so much.” He whispers back. He is so brave, truly Dauntless. I will be brave with him. Our eyes never waver.

The gun fires.

I watch the light fade from Eric’s eyes. Watch his massive body slump to the floor.

I snap my head sideways, pull free of the needle and launch myself at Eric’s body. Dimly, I hear Max, the ultimate traitor say ‘leave her, give her a minute,’ but it hardly registers; my thoughts are only for Eric.

I cradle his head in my lap. Blood mats his baby-soft hair, streaks across his handsome face. His expression is peaceful, relaxed. I gently close his eyes. My tears glisten on his face. Everything else fades away and I can clearly hear the exact moment the tattered remains of my heart crumble to dust.

I lied. I will not be a good little scholar. I will not continue in a world that is black and meaningless. I lied to Eric, but it was a necessary lie. I will not live for him, because I cannot live without him. My tired mind races. I wish there was time, wish I had time to put a bullet between the eyes of both Max and Jeanine, but bigger things demand my attention.

I’ll never know if he lets me or not, but the guard beside me doesn’t move fast enough to stop me. I pull his gun from his holster.

Cold steel presses to my temple.

“I’m coming, Eric.”

I pull the trigger. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________

I open my eyes. I am standing in a beautiful meadow. I look ahead of me, to the right. I see the walls, the city. Finally, I am outside, I escaped in death what I could not escape in life.

“Baby.” The word is soft, my heart sings back.

I turn.

Eric stands there. He is tall and strong. Whole and healthy. He opens his arms and I run to him. He crushes me to his chest. His powerful arms band me, his strength comforts me, his scent surrounds me. Our lips touch.

And finally, I am home.

[howlsmovinglibrary]

Review: Miranda and Caliban by Jacqueline Carey

Miranda is a lonely child. For as long as she can remember, she and her father have lived in isolation in the abandoned Moorish palace. The wild boy Caliban is a lonely child, too; an orphan left to fend for himself at an early age, all language lost to him. When Caliban is summoned and bound into captivity by Miranda’s father as part of a grand experiment, he rages against his confinement; and yet he hungers for kindness and love.

I received a free ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Miranda and Caliban is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Tempest, which is a) a really good play, and b) a colonialist fantasy told from the perspective of a powerful white man. The play’s protagonist is Prospero, a magician who can control all of nature and bend it to his will, which he uses to ‘civilise’ the Moorish (read African) island on which he is shipwrecked, and its inhabitants, in order to enact his revenge on his evil usurping brother. He has a daughter, Miranda, and a slave called Caliban, who is the son of a demon worshipping witch. Prospero explains in one scene that he tried to ‘civilise’ Caliban, but was unable to due to Caliban’s inherently evil blood, which led Caliban to attempt the rape of Miranda, the crime which is now used to justify his slavery.

Miranda and Caliban¸ as the name obviously suggests, takes this play and rewrites it without the colonialist ideology of Prospero – Miranda is now the narrator, and we see the world through her eyes, rather than her father’s. Some chapters are also written from Caliban’s point of view, and that means we get to see Prospero specifically as a slave master, from the perspective of the colonised. I really enjoyed this choice of focalisation, as it takes a critical stance on Prospero: he is made into the antagonist of the narrative, stubborn, racist and set in his ideals of Western civilisation, which he uses to dictate both Miranda and Caliban’s behaviour against their will. When Miranda, rather than her father, is allowed to tell her story, what happens is a romance: one that Prospero cannot understand because he has placed his daughter on a pedestal as the only figure of feminine gentility on the island, and it is unthinkable that she would have feelings for a ‘monster’ like Caliban. The book attempts to take a postcolonial stance of the play, criticising 16th Century ideas of femininity and of race.

Things I liked about it:

 The writing style is really beautiful. The dialogue is written in a semi-Shakespearean tone but still makes sense, which lent it authenticity.

 The book draws on a lot of postcolonial/feminist theory surrounding the play, which as a lit graduate made me very happy. But specifically, ideas of womanhood – like Miranda having to be a gentle and feminine noblewoman despite living on a freaking island with no one but her father to judge her – are interrogated, and giving Caliban a voice means that he’s no longer just the evil black demon worshipping slave. Making Prospero the antagonist was awesome, as it is portrayed  all the damaging influences of patriarchy and embodied them in one character.

This book is a lot more ‘fantasy’ than the play, which for a play about a magician didn’t really go into the magic in any particular detail. I liked the uniqueness of the 16th Century magic system that Carey created, which basically involves invoking certain gods through certain actions and deeds that don’t always make sense, eg. killing a hare, because it is quick footed like Mercury.

Miranda has a lot of agency. She’s a magician in her own right, and strong willed. This is nice, because in the play she’s a little bit of a wet blanket, and not one of Shakespeare’s best written heroines. Similarly, some of the twists in the Carey’s plot explain away the problems with her character, specifically, the instalove between Ferdinand and Miranda.

Things I didn’t like about it:

Generally, I just I don’t think it goes far enough as a postcolonial retelling. The first half of the book is amazing and merciless in picking apart Prospero’s version of events, but then things start to go downhill….

A lot of this book deconstructs the racist image of Caliban as an animalistic, uncivilised slave. However, some stereotypes endure: for instance, he is more overtly and crudely sexual than Miranda. Oversexualisation is obviously a huge issue and I feel like Carey should’ve avoided it, particularly if you look at Othello, where Othello’s overt sexuality and sexual desire are portrayed as part of his inherent violence as a black man. And then the murder plot of The Tempest is kept in the book, which is basically just perpetuating this stereotype of violence.

 Further in this vein, the second half of the book is pretty much just a straight forward rehash of The Tempest, but from Miranda’s POV. The first half of the book is really interesting, as it offers something additional to the Tempest plot, looking at Miranda and Caliban’s childhood and the friendship they develop – stuff that Prospero only talks about, but we never see, in the play. But after that it just reverts to the Shakespeare story: the criticism just ends, and it just felt a bit dull and boring to simply go through the play scene by scene. If I wanted that, I could reread the play.

The ending. This book just kind of…finished. It’s not just that not much from the original plot was changed, or scrutinised in any way. It isn’t even the position the characters are in at the end, which is definitely not happy. It’s just that….nothing new happened. The book pretty much finishes where the play finishes, in a way that places Caliban at a serious disadvantage. It kind of undid all the work the first half of the book: Miranda is given more agency, but Caliban is left a powerless slave, and I just don’t get why no one saw how super problematic that is.

Overall Rating: 3/5

[lev0112358]

Can we please stop quoting Rev. Dr. King out of context to justify rioting? If you haven't read or watched his speech, "The Other America" and are just sharing that single sentence because it's Martin Luther King saying something that seems relevant to today, stop. Go read or watch. He's providing a REASON, he's not saying it's desirable, good, productive, or in any way helpful. In fact, in the immediately preceding text he says exactly the opposite. And anyway, if he actually thought rioting was an effective tactic, does Rev. Dr. King REALLY seem like the kind of person who would sit it out? Because he did just that. Willing to get beaten and jailed for protesting, but find me one picture of him taking part in a riot and I'll cede the whole argument.

His point is that riots are inevitable when the voices of oppressed peoples go unheard despite repeated calls for change and for their needs to be met. And like him, I'm refusing to condemn either the riots or the rioters. Full stop. Who among us has shown the leadership to address their concerns? Who has listened? Who has acted? I don't what else the people in the streets could possibly be doing right now. Ironically, though, it's probably one of the safest places for a black person to be right now.

My real point in this is just to make some observations about some of the things that I see a lot of white folks doing in the name of ally-ship that are pretty troubling to me. Now I don't really claim to know the first thing about all this, so I'll invite any discussion on it (assuming anyone on facebook reads this far). These are just things I've been trying to process over the last few days that don't quite sit right in my own heart, that deceitful and wicked organ.

- Not too long ago we had a word we used to describe a bunch of white people getting around to passively watch a black man's murder. Can we please stop sharing traumatizing videos of black people being humiliated, tortured, and killed and then using those videos as a segue into broadcasting how brokenhearted, outraged, incredulous, etc. we are? Our private outrage isn't an excuse for sharing another person's humiliation, suffering, and death millions of times. Especially not without the consent of him or his family, who had to relive his final moments who-knows-how-many times so that strangers could relieve themselves of rage over some misplaced sense of decency. And don't tell me it's spreading awareness. There are other ways. And anyone who has been paying attention the last 30 years is already aware. They will believe you if you describe it. Let's not call laziness just.

- I think one of the parts of white privilege we don't explore much is how to translate the subtleties of white power structures. Maybe that's because we don't spend a lot of time thinking about our privilege as white folks, let alone how it's constructed and protected. Hell, maybe this isn't necessary, maybe black folks and poc can already see it. But I've been especially disappointed at how many white folks show up to these protests and/or riots and partake in the looting and/or destruction of property. I understand that riots are much more nuanced than they at first appear (that rioters almost never attack libraries, for example, but tend to focus on institutions that represent economically, politically, or socially oppressive ideologies), but those white people have got to know that it's black faces that are going to show up on the news. Participating, furthering, or even instigating (if the reports are true) rioting hurts the cause for equality. White people get to go home anonymously afterwords. But in a very real and direct sense, a riot CANNOT be separated from the extrajudicial murder. They are part of the same system. No matter the motivation for rioting - even WITH a good motive, which they DO have! - we have got to be clear, as Dr. King was, that riots are SELF-DEFEATING. Rioting fuels the narrative that black people are violent and dangerous and that black people in groups are lawless, savage gangs because it is almost a foregone conclusion that poc will be the ones the media broadcasts on the nightly news. DO NOT hear me saying that I believe this is true. But it is the narrative, even if it is a lie. And that narrative, when it has examples it can point to, is the narrative cops turn to when they use the "I feared for my life" defense. In other words, when white people start riots at protests for racial equality, the system survives, white people go home, and black people pick up the tab. If we want to explain why riots happen, great. Go for it. But if any of us are or know someone who is going to these rallies and inciting or fanning violence, I think we've got to confront that behavior.

- Have you forgiven Derek Chauvin? If your cry for justice requires a victim, requires blood, then you are crying out for vengeance, not justice. Don't confuse the two. Don't equivocate. Calls for vengeance leaves the system in place. Systems of violence, systems of oppression, dehumanize both the oppressor and the oppressed. We have a system in place that put Derek Chauvin and George Floyd together in a situation that a true "justice" system should have prevented from even being a probability. No matter who Derek Chauvin was or appears to us now to be, the role he played in the death of George Floyd was a ROLE crafted by a SYSTEM, a role that put him in a position to make decisions no one should even have access to, nor the power to execute. And he was at the intersection of several different systems at the same time.

I don't say this in any way to suggest that what he allegedly did (I believe in presuming a man's innocence until proven guilty in a court of law) was not wrong, or that he may even have known he was in the process of taking a man's life, or even less to mitigate the severity of what he did. Exactly the opposite. It's because of the severity of this act that I say it is as close to an imperative as possible that we forgive Derek Chauvin. Not because he is innocent, otherwise it would not be forgiveness. Because forgiving him breaks the system that NEEDS vengeance to exist. That is the very same system that Chauvin invoked in the murder of George Floyd. The system that says "this person doesn't deserve..." because I/We say so. 

We’ve done nothing noble in demanding vengeance. Even beasts understand vengeance. The noble, the human thing, is to enlarge the heart and begin to see how a murderer is also a victim. They have victimized themself by denying themselves access to the only person who could look them in the eyes and say “I forgive you for what you have done to me.” I hope someone in Floyd’s family finds the courage and a strong enough love some somewhere beyond the realm of human understanding and can offer Chauvin that forgiveness on behalf of George Floyd. Imagine what a powerful statment that would make, what a loving message, what a testament that another world IS indeed possible.

I realize, of course, I can't ask anyone to agree with me on this. Not only is it such a wildly "fringe" viewpoint that I'm sure I must look eccentric at best or heartless at worst, it's also something every person needs to work out for themselves. We rarely feel more righteous than we are presented with someone who has done something that can almost universally be recognized as evil. And that's our right - to privately entertain the thought that someone else's evil absolves us of our own. But that's the system that got George Floyd killed and I've not heard evidence to the contrary. I hope everyone will at least take the time to consider whether they can forgive him. For OUR sake as much or more than for his.