#to understand how the world works. and i want a story told by a narrator that Says when things happen and doesn't leave me to guess

[lobotomy-maybe-bestie]

finding a new podcast to listen to is so fucking hard when you have specific ass taste and are scared of things that might disappoint you

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 70 – American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis

I’m honestly not sure I ever would have gotten around to reading this on my own, but ended up buying it through the ‘blind date with a book’ thing a bookstore in New York was doing when I was visiting (incredible gimmick, for the record). The fact that it then took me a solid three months to actually finish probably tells you something about how genuinely difficult a read I found it. Not in the sense of being bad, but just legitimately difficult to stomach at points. Overall I’d call it a real triumph of literature.

Not that anyone doesn’t already know, but; the book is spent inside the head of Patrick Bateman, high-flying wall street trader and Harvard blueblood at the close of the Reagan era. Also a serial killer. The story is told as a series of more or less disconnected vignettes, jumping from dinner conversations at one exclusive bar or club or another to the brutal torture and murder of a sex worker to several pages of incredibly vapid pontification on Nina Simone’s discography. The story vaguely tracks Bateman growing ever-more alienated and out of control as the year goes on, but there’s very much not any real single narrative or cathartic climax here. - most stuff just happens (stuff that’s either incredibly tedious or utterly nauseating by turns but still just, stuff).

So yeah this is an intensely literary work (obviously), a word I’m here using to mean one that is as much about the form and style of the writing as about the actual events portrayed. Bateman is a monster, but more than that he’s just an utterly boring and tedious husk of a man, traits which are exaggerated to the point of being fascinating– if you told this story in conventional third person narration without all the weird asides, it would be a) like half as long and b) totally worthless. The tonal whiplash of going from an incredibly visceral depiction of Bateman cutting out the eyes of a homeless man to six (utterly insipid) pages on the merits of The Doors is the selling point here (well actually I think Ellis goes back to that specific well probably one time too many, but in general I mean).

Bateman is a tedious, unstable monster, but as far as the book has an obvious thesis it’s that he differs from the rest of his social milieu only in degree. A symptom of a fundamentally rotten society, not a heroic devil among sheep. The book’s climax, such as it is, involved Bateman getting into a drug-fueled gunfight with the NYPD, shooting multiple people in the middle of the street, and then stumbling home and leaving a rambling confession to every crime on his lawyer’s answering machine – but despite very clearly wanting and trying to get caught and face some sort of consequence or justice, people just refuse to believe that someone like him is capable of anything like that. (It’s not, it must be said, an especially subtle book).

There is, as far as I can recall, not a single character who gets enough screentime to give an idea of their personality who I’d call likeable. Sympathetic, sure, but that’s mostly because it’s pretty much impossible not to sympathize with someone getting horrifically tortured and torn apart (at one point a starving rat is involved). The upper crust of New York yuppie-dom is portrayed as shallow and vapid, casually bigoted towards quite literally everyone who isn’t identical to them, status-obsessed to the point of only being able to understand the world as a collection of markers of class and coolness, and totally incapable of real human connection. Bateman is a monster not because of any freak abnormality, but just because he takes all of that a few steps further than his coworkers.

The book is totally serious and straight-faced in its presentation, and absolutely never acknowledges any of the running gags that are kept up through it. Which shows impressive restraint, and also means that none of them exactly have a payoff or a punchline – it’s just a feature of the world that all the expensive meals at trendy restaurants everyone competes for tables at sound disgusting when you think about them for a moment, or that the whole class of wall street trader guy are so entirely interchangeable that ostensible close friends and coworkers constantly mistake each other for other traders and no one particularly cares. Or – and I’m taking this on faith because fuck knows I’ve got no idea what any of the brands people are wearing are – that the ruinously expensive outfits everyone spends so very much time and money on for every engagement all clash comically if you actually looked up what the different pieces looked like. The book’s in no way really a comedy, so the jokes sit a bit oddly, but they’re still overall pretty funny, at least to me.

I like to think I have something of a strong stomach for unpleasant material in books, but this was the first work of fiction that I had genuine trouble reading for content reasons in I can’t even remember. I’m not sure it’s exactly right to call the violence pornographic in a general sense, but as far as American Psycho goes the register and tone Bateman uses to describe fucking a woman and torturing her to death are basically identical (and told in similarly explicit detail), and all of Bateman’s sexual fantasies are more or less explicitly just porn scenes he wants to recreate, so. Regardless, the result’s pretty alienating in both cases – his internal monologue never really feels anything but detached and almost bored as he relays what he does, sound exactly as vapid and alienated as when he is carefully listing the exact brands and designers every person he ever interacts with is wearing at all times, or arguing over dinner reservations for hours on end with his friends and lovers (though both those terms probably deserve heavy airquotes around them). He legitimately sounds considerably more engaged when talking about arguing over sartorial etiquette. It all adds up to a really strong alienating effect.

Anyways, speaking of sex and violence – perhaps because my main exposure to the story before this was tumblr making memes out of scenes from the movie, but I was pretty shocked by just how explicitly awful Patrick is ‘on screen’. The horrible murder, sure, but also just the casual and frequent use of racist and homophobic slurs, the pathological misogyny, the total breakdown he has at the idea of a gay man being attracted to him and thinking he might reciprocate – all of these are entirely in character for an asshole Wall Street ‘80s Guy even if he wasn’t a serial killer, but it’s still oddly shocking at first to see it so thoroughly represented on the page. It makes how comparatively soft-pedaled the bigotry and just, awfulness, of villains in a lot of more modern books stand out a lot more, I suppose? I have read a lot of books that are in some sense About queerness and/or racism in the last year, and no one in any of them holds a candle to good old Patrick Bateman.

Part of that is just the book being so intensely of its time, I suppose. The New York of this book is very much one of the late ‘80s, incredible wealth living side by side with social rot and decay, crippling poverty everywhere and a society that has to a great degree just stopped caring. Absolutely none of which Bateman or any of his peers care one bit about, of course – they’re too busy showing off the latest walkmans and record players, going to the newest clubs, and just generally enjoying all the fruits of Reagan’s America. Recent history has made the fact that Bateman’s personal idol is Donald Trump almost too on the nose to be interesting, but in 1991 I’m sure it was a bit more subtle in how telling it was.

Anyway, yeah, horrifying and exhausting read, triumph of literature, my god did Easton Ellis hate America (this is a compliment). Now time to go watch the movie!

[danrat]

it’s been said before (eg prev post) that mark and rat are foils of each other, and of course i’m a man possessed so i wish this had been more drawn out in the show but i understand why considering all that w/rat’s va (and he had a pretty wrapped up narrative much as it pains me). anyway point of this being mark’s decisions center solely around dan to the point of his own self-destruction (something dan never wills; and dan makes a point of calling mark an idiot in s2 for publishing the podcast) AT DAN’S expense.

so you have rat, who changes dan’s entire anatomy in order to Make Him Weird (because dan is Like rat, and others who Belong in the city…by rat’s standards/beliefs) but sees him as even more of a fully realized person because of this. like rat doesn’t even truly dehumanize dan re: the leviathan, he clearly sees it as a job that dan has been given. against his will, yes, but he’ll get there. rat has made so many changes to himself, and, if we’re to follow marc’s depiction of rat (that he just looks like a guy, and that he, lmao, also looks like his va) then his “monstrousness” isn’t due to some physical change (disability, deformity, etc) but just a vibe. which i love thematically but isn’t really the point so much of this post!

and mark on the other hand wants to change dan back at all costs. he LITERALLY destroys himself and makes the active decision to let go of his humanity (how he defines it) in becoming dromen. all with this singular belief that he alone can and will save dan (despite never knowing that dan even wishes to be saved).

mark’s devotion is fully about returning dan to what he was. he can’t imagine a world in which dan does Belong in the city, even as he tears himself apart to even effect.

rat’s devotion is making dan something new.

it’s LITERALLY about complete devotion to dan powell.

and to me what drives me insane is how dromen does “save” dan; but in doing so, puts him in a literal void. so dan has to fucking. save himself. dan is now in charge of his fate and destiny except oops fuck you. someone else gets to make the call (nicholas) and you better play nice because you just told his sister to go to the place YOU’RE escaping and nicholas is gay so you know that bitch is petty.

so in the end dan’s autonomy is snapped again; and his fate is left undetermined. dromen cut out the primary tape deck, yes, but that’s not all dan was. maybe they want me to believe dan can go back to his life, but he can’t. like how alexa couldn’t forget about melody, and had to join her. how the narrator never forgets thomas. and every other example of how the city completely alters people, whether that’s emotional or physical.

anyway. i understand not wanting to revisit dan powell’s story in the sense that like, dan does so much already and the voice work isn’t easy. but you know how they joked about doing a day in mark’s life in the patreon q&a? (hit me up if you want it, or back the patreon!) i want that for post s3 dan. he lost his girlfriend. his best friend. like what does he do now? would he risk going to clara? nicholas is a pretty bad bet. anyway. girl, help.

[deluxewhump]

I love just posting as I go, but often I think of some element I would add or remove to a story if I was writing it now, knowing all its components. this is just one of those things. Max takes carlo to the woods

At first, he dreaded going out into the woods with his new master. It was November— the leaves were long turned, now thinning out among the pine and white birch trees. He was afraid he’d slow Max down, which might annoy or even anger him. He was afraid it would be cold and wet like the warehouse in winter.

But his young, strange new master bought him new clothes, warm thermals and a jacket, hiking boots and a raincoat and water-wicking pants and socks. First they went fishing, just a day trip down to the river on the west side of the hills. Max told him how his father took him to various spots when he was young and they’d bring home brook trout in a cooler. “He has the patience of a saint for fish, and a hairpin trigger for everything else. Not in a bad way,” he added when he felt Carlo’s loaded glance. “Just a wants-everything-done-yesterday kind of guy. And the most irrational road rage you’ve ever seen, it’s truly comical.”

In the woods, Max was in another mode than what Carlo had seen in the previous weeks. The work he often brought home with him might as well have been a world away, belonging to someone else in another time. He traded his collared shirts and laptop bag for a thick canvas jacket and a bright orange hat— an accessory he provided for Carlo too, explaining that it was deer hunting season. He was capable in the woods in a way that Carlo found endlessly reassuring. He was attentive, often asking if he was cold, if he was hungry yet, if his new boots were giving him blisters. Even in the woods, his new master seemed to think of his well being as his responsibility.

Carlo liked watching Max’s hands as he worked. He watched the way he twisted a worm onto a fishhook, the way he cleaned his knife, the reassuring way he cupped his hands around the fledgling flames of a fire.

As days had turned to weeks, the idea that any new master would very likely want to hurt him in some way was slowly losing credibility. Sometimes it crept back up. He remembered how much of a stranger Max really was to him, how undeniably easy it would be for him. When they scrambled up a rock outcropping riddled with roots, Max leaned over from the ledge to help him. He’d been surprised at the sheer ease with which Max pulled him up the last three feet to join him at the top.

For an hour after, he’d stayed a few paces behind to contemplate the fact that Max was easily as big as Keith, and undeniably in better physical shape. Comparing anyone to Erik seemed heretical, and any sustained thought of him made him want to cry with homesick grief anyway, so as a survival tactic he’d learned to staunchly avoid it. Keith was the readily available comparison. But then Max would say something so innocent— about the time he’d seen a black bear and her two cubs in this clearing, or ask him if he’d ever had venison, or just a “still doing okay?” over his shoulder with a smile and the fear would slink back, chastised.

He liked the one time they camped overnight outdoors, the way the condensation on the outside of his sleeping bag in the morning didn’t reach the surprising warmth inside. He liked the companionable silence just as much as when Max narrated to him what he was doing in a conversational, almost hushed tone. He told him about reading the water to understand where the fish were biting, or how to build a fire so it will catch quick and burn long. He particularly liked the way Max invited him to help or to try something himself for the first time without making him feel like he had to. He busied himself with his own task while Carlo took up the matches or slipped his fingers into the red and silver guts of a fish, icy river water running over his wrists and taking the blood downstream.

There was a hunting cabin Max’s father built in the nineties that he wanted to use, but first he needed to fix the roof. One Saturday, they followed a dirt road and parked the truck where it ended. They carried materials and tools from the truckbed into the woods, about 800 yards to the cabin. To say it was rustic would be an understatement. But Carlo was emboldened by his night spent in an open field under the stars, and had begun to develop an unwavering sort of faith in Max’s judgement. He was unconcerned with the cobwebs or the dust, and was pleased to see an ancient little woodstove in the middle of the cabin’s one room. Wooden beds were built into the wall, jutting out with no base touching the floor. They set their sleeping bags and pillows on the bare plywood after Max made sure it wasn’t rotted.

When Max came down from the roof that night, he heated a can of soup and explained the repairs to Carlo as he ate. He fell asleep while Max was still getting ready for bed, but was startled from it in the early hours by the hooting of an owl. He laid his head back onto his pillow. As his heartbeat quieted, he noticed he could see the moon out the window through the trees, and that the fire was now just embers in the woodstove. Max was asleep a few feet away, evident by his slow, even breathing in the thin moonlight.

At daylight on Sunday, they carried their sleeping bags and Max’s tools back to the access road. He could see his breath, and the forest floor crunched with a layer of frost beneath his boots. For some reason, the familiarity of the truck was oddly comforting, and it wasn’t just the heat. He couldn’t quite understand why until they stepped into the quiet, early morning sunlight of the house, and for the first time since he’d arrived it felt like coming home.

[rjalker]

the summary for Flatland so far once again. this is the work in progress. it's not done.

feel free to list out what I missed for the section about Flatland since I know I'm forgetting stuff and unlike the translation it's a lot harder to check.

i am not taking the time to add the images in. it will say "image" because I have placeholders in the document for the image decriptions but there's no actual images in this post.

it is pretty much guarenteed that whatever I forgot is really, really obvious.

it's like 6k words long so far.

This is a summary of the book Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin Abbot Abbot, published in 1884.

The goal is to summarize everything from the original novel to make it easier for people to understand, if they don’t want to read the original novel, or would like a reminder.

Part 0: About the Narrator of Flatland

The Narrator of the original book does not have any confirmed name that we know, because he chose to hide his identity with the fake name of “A. Square”, the same way that people will call themselves “J. Doe” or “M. Smith” when they don’t want to reveal their true identity.

Many fans enjoy calling him “Abbot Square”, affectionately naming him after the author, Edwin Abbot Abbot, or give him other names that start with A, and base their original characters’ last names on their shape in a similar style. Ex: “Bee Line”

But his name is not actually A. Square, so you can call him anything you want, and you won’t be wrong. The Sphere who visited him also has no confirmed name, and can again be called anything. We do not know what kind of surnames exist in Flatland.

The only character from the book whose name we know for certain was Pantocyclus, a historical dictator Circle. Another historical figure is usually called Chromatistes, but there is some debate by historians about whether or not that’s accurate. Both of them lived thousands of years before the story takes places, so the only things we know about them is what the Circles decided to tell people afterward.

The narrator himself has a wife, and they have had at least six children together: 5 Pentagons, and 1 Straight Line.

We do not know any of their names, or their personalities. We do know that one of the adult Pentagon sons died, presumably along with his wife, leaving behind two orphaned Hexagons, the narrator’s grandsons, who now live with the narrator and the rest of his sons and daughter. They live in a surprisingly rich neighborhood near a large theater. We know that the roof of their house was recently repaired, though we do not know how it was damaged.

Part 1: About Flatland, and the people and societies that the Narrator was familiar with

People in Flatland don't actually call their world “Flatland” among themselves, it's just what the narrator called his world to make what it's like more obvious for the audience. (Because you can tell from the name that Flatland...is gonna be flat.)

We do not know the names of any countries in Flatland, or what any of them call their world. We do not know how many countries there are, or how big or small they are, or where they are in relation to one another. We just know that there are multiple countries that are ruled by a council of Circles, which is then ruled by the supreme Chief Circle.

It might be helpful to think of them as structured similarly to the United States of America, but we don’t know for sure.

There are almost certainly countries outside of this arrangement, but none were spoken of.

Flatlanders refer to themselves as human beings. Nothing is told to us about any other specific species in Flatland, though the narrator does take the time to assure us that just because he doesn’t mention something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

We know that vegetables and trees exist in Flatland, but we don’t know the details, besides that tree trunks somehow aid in determining North and South.

You should imagine the inhabitants of Flatland as very thin shapes that swim through the top layer of a large ocean. They can't leave this single layer, either by going up or down, and they’re not aware of anything outside it. They’re not even aware that they’re inside a liquid at all, or aware of any movement of this liquid. They cannot look up or down. They have no inherent concept of up or down at all.

They categorize the directions as North, South, East, and West, and are able to tell where South is because there is a southern pull, like gravity, noticeable in most parts of Flatland. The strength of this pull is increased the further South you go, and weakens the further North you travel.

We do not know for sure what causes it, because the narrator did not know, but it could be some sort of magnet, or a dense core of some sort creating a kind of gravity.

Houses in Flatland are shaped like pentagons, because it was decided that the angle of a pentagon was the sharpest angle that should be allowed on a building for the sake of public safety, because running into the sharp corner of a building could be very dangerous.

The pentagonal houses face north so that rain, which always comes from the north on a predictable schedule, does not come in either of the doors, which are on lower sides that are angled inward. On the western side is a large door for men, on the east a much smaller door for women.

The only buildings allowed to have sharper corners are amunition warehouses and other military and governemnt buildings that are not meant to be approached by just any random person. It can be safely assumed that jails and asylums also have sharp corners to keep people away.

If not for the fascist society they live in, it can be assumed that Flatlanders would naturally come to theorize about other mathematical dimensions just like we have.

When seen from above or below, the internal organs of Flatlanders are clearly visible.

They are not aware that their insides are visible from another angle, because, and I cannot stress this enough, they have no idea that the directions of “up” or “down” exist at all.

They exist only in two dimensions. As far as they are concerned, they’re completely solid, just like you and me.

[IMAGE]

What exactly their insides look like is up for you and I to speculate on, because the narrator didn’t feel like giving a lecture on anatomy. (Imagine if you were suddenly called upon by aliens to give a lesson on the anatomy of the human body. How helpful do you think you’d be?)

Flatlanders each have a single eye, which, in some way that is never explained to us, doubles as their mouth. This eye-mouth will always found on one of the Flatlander’s angles or points, where two sides meet.

[IMAGE]

You do not have to stick to this, you can do whatever you want. But you should at least do so knowing that it’s not how they work in the book. Knowing the rules and breaking them with purpose is better than just not knowing how things are supposed to work at all.

For Isosceles triangles, we know that their eye-mouth is on one of the points of their base, rather than their longer sharp point. For Straight Lines, just pick an end. For other Irregular Figures, go wild, pick whatever angle you want. There is no such thing as a true Circle in Flatland, only Figures with many small sides, so you can just pick any part of a Circilar character to put their eye, even if you’re just simplying them as a Circle. (I doubt anyone wants to sit there and figure out how to draw a shape with 600+ perfectly equal sides)

When inside Flatland, their natural habitat, a Flatlander only ever sees anything they are looking at from its side, so that everything appears as a straight line, just at different sizes, levels of brightness, and distances.

You can see how this would work yourself, by taking a coin, or a shape cut out in cardboard or paper, and putting it on a table.

When you look down on it from above, you see the shape it really is. But if you put your eye on the level with the table it sits on, it will appear as a straight line.

[IMAGE]

That straight line is how Flatlanders see everything when they are inside Flatland.

When someone or something is closer to them, the line appears longer from side to side, and when further away, it is smaller from side to side.

[IMAGE]

This is why their eye-mouths are on their edges, which they refer to as “solids”, because that is the only direction they can ever look, and everything looks solid from that angle.

If they had an eye-mouth on their upper or lower side, they wouldn’t be able to see or eat anything inside Flatland, and they would only see what is above or below them.

[IMAGE]

As above, you can break this rule for stylization purposes, or you could do a story where a character is born with their eye out of the usual place, and is considered Irregular because of it. But when speaking of the original novel, this is how it works.

We do not have any details of what above and below Flatland look like, so it is up for any interpretation.

Despite everything they look at appearing as a straight line, Flatlanders are still able to navigate and recognize one another by sight, because the edges of Flatlanders and other living things glow with automatic bioluminescence, and because in many places there is usually a dense "fog" in the air.

This means that when one Flatlander looks at another in an area with fog, the areas that are closer to them appear brighter, and the parts that are further away are darker.

Three Figures will help us demonstrate this so you can understand: Billie the Straight Line, Bob the Circle, and Joe the Hexagon.

If Bob the Circle looks at Joe the Hexagon so that one of Joe’s flat sides is facing him, Bob the Circle will see a bright line in the center of his vision, with a darker gradient on either side.

The bright line is the flat side of Joe that is closest to Bob. The gradient on either side is what is visible of Joe’s other sides from this perspective.

And if Billie the Straight Line looks at Joe from another angle, so that one of Joe’s points is facing her instead of one of his flat sides, then Billie will see a small point of light, with a slower fade to dark around it, because the closest thing to Billie is one of Joe’s points.

[IMAGE]

By using the different levels of brightness and darkness when looking at one another, Flatlanders whose families are rich enough to send them to specialized private rich kid schools can learn to recognize different shapes from sight alone.

This is known as The Art of Sight Recognition, and it is very difficult to master, so difficult in fact that most Flatlanders rely instead upon The Art of Feeling – where Flatlanders gently and carefully feel along the angles of one another to figure out what shape they are. This is treated as a formal introduction.

This can be dangerous if you’re not careful, because some shapes have very sharp angles that can cut, stab, or even outright kill someone if hit with enough force.

The Narrator tells us that one of his ancestors, who was an Isosceles triangle, accidentally killed a man while he was being felt, by accidentally moving suddenly due to pain from arthritis, and ended up cutting the man who’d been feeling in half.

We are told that the “moral shock” of this action degraded their family’s angle for generations, but it is more likely that the people doing the measuring simply lied about their angles to punish them.

Higher class citizens look down on the art of Feeling, and instead spend a whole lot of money and time learning to use Sight Recognition alone, so they can feel special and more intelligent than the poor people.

The male children of noblemen are not allowed to learn the art of Feeling at all, and must rely on Sight Recognition forever. If, when they go to one of their fancy rich people collages, they’re caught using the art of Feeling, they will be given a warning the first time, along with some sort of punishment, and expelled completely the second time.

Any noble who fails to learn the art of Sight Recognition even after years in university being taught it is completely shunned from the society of their fellow rich people, and no longer has the right to get married, for fear that they’d pass their inability to learn Sight Recognition down to their kids. Because fascism and eugenics go hand in hand.

Since these “trash of the rich” as the narrator calls them don’t know how to use Sight Recognition or the Art of Feeling, they’re unable to interact with larger society at all, and lead miserable lives.

It can be safely assumed that those who are unable to learn Sight Recognition despite access to plenty of highly skilled teachers are failing due to some sort of disability – either vision problems, or some sort of neurodiversity.

There is another kind of recognition used to tell people’s classes apart, and it is done simply by listening to someone speak, and judging what class they’re from based on their accent.

This isn’t very helpful, though, because poor people are able to mimic the accents of rich people, while rich people, who only ever hang out with other rich people, cannot do the same for poor people, since they, presumably, have no idea what they actually sound like.

And since all the rich people hang out together, and more importantly are desperate to fit in with one another and not stand out, they all speak in the same general way, so you can’t tell from their Rich Person Accent alone whether they’re an eight-sided Octagon, or a twenty-sided Icosagon.

When A Square wrote his autobiography, Flatland's known societies accepted only specific shapes as worthy of being called human beings with basic civil rights, insisting that humans could only be "Regular" Figures, meaning that all of their angles and sides had to match.

This meant that when the Art of Feeling or Sight Recognition were used for identification, only a single angle needed to be felt or looked at to know the whole shape.

The societies of Flatland the original narrator was aware of also considered all “Straight Lines” to be female, and every Figure not a “Straight Line” to be male.

Because Joe and Bob are “shapes” with multiple angles, they would be considered Men, or Male, and Billie, being a “Straight Line”, and having “no angles” would be considered a Woman, or Female.

But despite the fact that they are referred to as “Straight Lines”, educated Flatlanders are in fact aware that so-called “Straight Lines” are actually all very thin parallelograms, a term that includes squares, rectangles, diamonds, and more.

Straight Lines are shapes too, with their own angles, just like everyone else, they just happen to be much thinner.

[IMAGE]

This fact did nothing to alter the narrator’s society’s insistence that Straight Lines lacked angles, and therefore literally lacked brains.

Actual facts don’t actually convince bigots to change their minds, because bigotry isn’t logical, it just claims to be for a false sense of legitimacy.

Irregular Figures and the Systems of Oppression in Flatland

The lowest status members of Flatland society at the time the narrator was alive were “Irregulars”, which were shapes whose angles and sides did not all match, and, we can assume, Lines that were not straight, though the original book does not actually mention Irregular Lines.

It can be assumed that Irregular Lines existed just as much as other Irregular Figures, and they would be categorized as Lines depending on how thin they are compared to other figures.

The very obvious implication of Women being called “Straight Lines” in particular very clearly implies the existance of non-straight or Irregular Lines.

Irregular figures were not considered human at all in the countries the narrator knew of, and, in these countries, most of them were killed as soon as they were born if doctors decided that medical intervention couldn’t “fix” the Irregularity.

In the original novel, Irregularity is used as a metaphor for oppressed people of all kinds in many scenarios, including intersex people, disabled people, people of color, Queer people, and more, depending on the situation.

The act of surgically altering infants who are considered “Irregular” is a very clear parallel to the hardships intersex people face in reality, along with some disabled people.

This system of Regular-Superiority meant that Equilateral or Equal-sided Triangles were the lowest class of Figures acknowledged to be human, and because they have the lowest number of equal sides and angles possible, which is three.

These societies had a very strict caste system, where your shape determined everything about your life, including the kind of jobs you would be allowed to work, who you could marry, and where you could live.

Isosceles are triangles who have exactly two angles and sides that do match, with a third side and angle that are not matching.

These are not to be confused with Scalene triangles, who have no matching angles at all.

Neither Isosceles, or Scalene triangles were considered human, and they had no civil rights at all, though Scalene triangles were not explicitly mentioned.

Isosceles were the lowest class of Figure allowed to exist within society without being murdered on sight in most cases, because, while they were still Irregular, they were the least amount of Irregular as you could get, with only a single side/angle not being equal.

Triangles with no matching sides at all, meaning Scalene triangles, were not tolerated within any of the societies the narrator was familiar with, and would presumably be murdered on sight, or as soon as they were born, if their Irregularity could not be surgically “fixed” to make them either an Isosceles or an Equal-sided triangle.

To reiterate again, Isosceles triangles were not considered human beings, due to being Irregular.

They were considered property, and were bought and sold as such.

They were forced to perform all of the most dangerous, difficult, degrading, and tedious jobs, and also served as expendable soldiers for the military, and private armies.

They were were also used as cleaning and serving staff for middle and upper-class families, serving as butlers, errand-boys, dishwashers, and more, and would probably be inherited along with the house they were attached to.

Also known as, they were enslaved.

The measurement of an Isosceles’ unequal angle would determine their social status among other Isosceles. The closer your third angle was to 60 degrees, the higher your status, which would give you access to better and safer work assignments.

Instead of being used to clean the disease-ridden, clogged sewer for example, you might instead be washing dishes in a rich guy’s mansion.

Isosceles with very small angles were, among other things, regularly used as expendable executioners, being brought in to kill prisoners who were involved with state secrets, only to them be killed themselves to avoid being able to reveal those secrets to others, even if they hadn’t actually heard the prisoner say anything.

Isosceles were treated as completely disposable non-human things barely worthy of being considered people.

In these fascist societies, Irregularity was conflated with moral bankruptcy, meaning anyone who was born anything except perfectly Regular was considered to be inherently evil, which was the excuse given for murdering these people at every opportunity.

But even during the narrator’s lifetime, there were people trying to fight back against this idea, spreading pamphlets pointing out that if a child is born Irregular, and he has to face abuse, hatred, and bullying from his nurse, siblings, and even parents for as long as he can remember, and is constantly told that he’s inherently a bad person no matter what he does, and then is shoved out into the world where he is constantly followed by the police under the assumption that he’s going to commit a crime, and he is not allowed to have a job or get married, and has no friends to speak of.

If you deny someone literally every opportunity to do good, what other choice do you give him except to be bad?

If you will not let him honestly work for his food, where do you expect him to get it besides from stealing?

In other words, treating people like criminals and refusing to let them have any opportunities for “honest work”...literally means they have no choice but to become the criminals you’ve told them they are since they were born.

The narrator was not convinced by these pamphlets, even though he admits they are “very plausible”, because he insists that he’s never met an Irregular who wasn’t a horrible person who deserved everything he got.

He admits that the lives of Irregulars do suck, but says that’s just too bad, because their lives just have to suck to make sure everyone else’s don’t.

We do not know any details about any specific Irregular characters, because they were only ever mentioned as hypothetical.

Any shape that does not have all equal sides and angles would be considered Irregular, regardless of any other equality or symetry about the shape.

A perfectly symmetrical five-pointed star, for example, would still be considered Irregular even though it’s symmetrical, because the wider angles on the inside do not match the sharper angles on the five points.

[IMAGE]

The same would be true of many other shapes as well. The eugenicist goals of Flatland were incredibly specific and restrictive.

If all three of your angles were measured at 60 degrees, you weren’t considered an Isosceles, but an Equal-sided triangle, and you would have basic human rights.

[IMAGE]

Isosceles with angles approaching 60 were regularly put into arranged marriages by Circles in an attempt to “breed” children who would be born Equilateral triangles.

If an Equilateral triangle were born to any Isosceles family, whether through the explicit eugenicist program run by the Circles, or by random chance, the infant would be immediately taken away from their Isosceles family, and given to an Equilateral family that does not have any children.

The adoptive parents are then sworn to never reveal the child’s true birth parents, and never to let the child anywhere near them, with the fear that their Irregularity might be contagious and infect the child with proximity.

The birth of an Equilateral triangles from the Isosceles class is celebrated for miles around, because it is used as “proof” to the Isosceles slaves that if they just work hard enough, they can win a better future for their children. They are told that hard work, frugality, and self-control will increase their chances of having Equilateral children.

This is patently not true, but it is a helpful lie for the Circles to spread, because it means their force of free labor works harder and doesn’t complain as much when they don’t have enough to eat. It is the same myth that is spread today, of the “self-made millionaire”.

The rich will always tell you that simply working hard and being a good person is what got them where they are today. The truth is that they were just born to rich parents, and maintain that wealth through exploitation of the working classes, just like the Isosceles of Flatland are exploited for the benefit of the higher classes.

Because the angles of Isosceles were categorized in a range from 0.5 to 59.5 degrees.

This meant that their angles could be useful for learning the Art of Feeling, to learn to tell shapes apart by touch by learning how to tell angles apart.

Because of this, a huge number of Isosceles, especially those with smaller angles and thus lower status, were sold to elementary schools for middle and upper class children to learn the Art of Feeling.

The children would Feel the Isosceles, using them as a human guinea pig. Yes, this is exactly as horrifying as it sounds.

More expensive schools with higher budgets would allow the Isosceles prisoners to literally starve to death while being Felt every day by probably hundreds of children.

A Flatlander going without food or water could survive for around a month, which meant these prisoners spent their last month of life being tortured to death not only from starvation and dehydration, but constant poking, prodding, and, since kids also have sharp angles, probably also many cuts and bruises.

When they died, the rich school would simply buy a new enslaved person to replace them with.

We do not know how they disposed of the bodies, or what exactly happens when a Flatlander dies.

Schools that could not afford to keep buying new enslaved people every month would provide the ones they did have with food and water, keeping them alive for years on end, before eventually replacing them with “fresh specimens”, to quote the narrator, when they eventually died, or became too scarred from constant feeling to be “useful” anymore.

The narrator of the book originally advocated for allowing these enslaved people to starve, specifically in the hopes of “thinning their numbers”.

After being imprisoned for seven years and thinking about what the Sphere had said to him, the last we’d heard, he’d become much more progressive in regards to the treatment of Women and Isosceles, within the story’s perspective.

From an out of universe perspective, the entire point of him being such a blatant bigot in the first place is, I feel the need to remind people, specifically done to make the bigotry absolutely clear and make people think of how reprehensible it is.

You are supposed to look at the narrator casually and happily advocating to let people starve to death while being tortured and think “holy crap what is wrong with this guy and the rest of his society?”. And then you’re supposed to take that idea and look at what is going on in the world around you and see if that outrage has a target in the real world, because it probably does.

In the United States, slavery is still, literally legal, as long as it’s imposed as a punishment for a crime. That’s literally what’s written in the constitution in 2024, and has been since slavery was supposedly “abolished”.

Prisoners in the United States in 2024 are literally, by law, enslaved. They are forced to fight wildfires. They are forced to labor without pay, or for just pennies an hour doing difficult and dangerous work. And this is literally slavery as defined by the Constitution of the United States, which say it’s fine actually, because slavery as punishment for a crime is good.

Flatland was written to criticize the systems of oppression in Victorian England, but the criticisms themselves are timeless.

Back to the summary.

Isosceles triangles made up the majority of non-Straight Line population in the narrator’s country.

Next in the social order of recognized classes in Flatland would be Straight Lines, who are considered Women.

Like Isosceles, they have no civil rights, but unlike Isosceles, they are not enslaved, nor are they casually tortured to death inside elementary schools. They are not allowed have a job outside the home, or get an education, but they are still much better off than any Isosceles, who is not only denied an education, but is also, and I cannot stress this enough, literally enslaved.

Many bigoted people read Flatland and pretend that Straight Lines are the most oppressed people in it, because they’ve decided to ignore the fact that Isosceles are literally enslaved and tortured to death in elementary schools.

You, my dear reader, will not ignore this, will you?

You will not make me or anyone else suffer through essays and fan-sequels that pretend it’s good the Isosceles are literally enslaved and tortured while you pretend that they are treated better than Straight Lines, will you? Because if you do I will be absolutely ashamed that you ever read this summary and still came away with such a horrible understanding of the systems of oppression in Flatland.

Look up White Feminism and why it’s bad. Ignoring the oppression of marginalized men to pretend that women are the only oppressed people who exist will always be racist, ableist, and more.

The Flatland version, you might say, could be called Straight Line Feminism. And I do not want to have to deal with any more people pretending it’s good and true.

Do not pretend that Straight Lines are the most oppressed people in Flatland. Just don’t do it. Do not brush the treatment of Isosceles and Irregulars under the rug because you don’t think anyone besides Women can really be oppressed or has rights worth fighting for.

Straight Lines are oppressed. But you cannot pretend they’re the most oppressed people in Flatland when the other oppressed people are literally being enslaved and regularly tortured to death, or just flat out murdered on sight.

If you are writing stories where the characters are fighting back against the injustice in Flatland, they need to be fighting back for the rights of everyone, not just Straight Lines.

Now let’s get back to the summary.

Straight Lines are in some countries of Flatland required by law to constantly move their back end from side to side to make them easily visible to anyone who might be standing behind them.

This is for two reasons: 1: to let Edwin Abbot Abbot reference the bustles on dresses that were in fashion during the era the book was written.

[IMAGE]

2: To make them easier to see.

Flatlanders are bioluminescent on their their edges their eyemouths. The level of brightness from their eyemouth is even used to indicate mood.

From the sides, a Straight Line appears as a glowing line, which is easy to see. Billie, Bob, and Joe, will demonstrate again:

[IMAGE]

From the front, they appear as a glowing point. This is harder to see than a full line, but still visible.

But from behind, their point does not glow as brightly, and because of this it’s hard to see, because of how tiny it is compared to everything else you might be looking at.

[IMAGE]

By moving their rear end back and forth, that dim speck becomes a little easier to notice, so you’re less likely to run into them. Something which could be very dangerous if you were moving quickly, because of how sharp they are.

They are also expected to keep up a constant “Peace-Cry”, or a humming noise, so that anyone can hear when they are near.

It should also be noted that Straight Lines are also used to represent Women as another reference to ongoing social issues at the time the book was written.

At the time, fancy hats were very fashionable for women, and to keep them in place, people would use a long sharp pin to stick through the hat and through their hair, holding everything together.

This wasn’t a problem for anyone, until women who were harassed or attacked realized they could use these hat pins to defend themselves.

And then of course everyone got all up in arms – not because these women were being attacked, but because they dared to defend themselves and their boundaries.

Instead of punishing the men who were harassing women, the women were punished for defending themselves. Laws were passed to regulate the length that hat pins could be, and anyone wearing one longer than the limit would be, in some places, fined over a thousand dollars in 2024’s money.

Straight Lines are categorized as Women in Flatland because if they weren’t treated horribly, they’d have less reason to kill people.

Which they did, a lot, especially in areas where they were forced to endure harsher restrictions, like in some countries of Flatland, where they were not allowed to leave the house at all except during religious holidays, or have to be escorted by a male relative.

Men who abused their wives were likely to end up dead at the end of their sharp stingers, and this led to many laws being passed with the goal of preventing this.

Straight Line’s apartments within their home were required to be built very narrowly, so that they couldn’t get in or out quickly. This was explicitly done to prevent them from murdering anyone who upset them while they were in their room, which other Figures took full advantage of.

There were also specific, narrow doors that Straight Lines had to use at all times.

Straight Lines were not allowed to have an education, and were lied to almost every moment of every day by the other Figures around them, who would say one thing within their earshot, and then say something completely different when they left the room.

The narrator tells us that the way things are spoken among only “Men” versus in the range of “Women” are so different that they may as well be separate languages. They lie to Straight Lines and claim to love and care for them, and pretend they think they are the most beautiful and amazing things ever created. But really they think they are nothing more than mindless creatures who hardly even deserve the label of person.

This double-language becomes a problem for younger non-Straight Line Figures, who spend their first three years of their life being raised by their mother or nurse, learning the language of emotions and kindness, only to then suddenly be ripped away and told to forget all of that and think only in terms of calculation and efficiency, and to dispose and look down upon the very person who’s shaped their whole life so far.

The narrator was worried about the strain this sudden revelation puts on the minds of young male children, and is worried that one day one of them might reveal to their mother exactly what her husband and his friends thinks of her.

This concern has, surprisingly enough, made the narrator advocate for Straight Lines to be allowed to receive an education. He isn’t thinking of their welfare, of course, he frames it as concern for the male children, who aren’t being taught as much as they should be at younger ages, and who, he thinks, shouldn’t have to struggle to keep the truth of the world secret from his mother and sisters.

The family trees of all Figures are kept careful track of for the purpose of eugenics, and this includes Straight Lines.

Lower class Figures who are really into the whole eugenics thing will carefully pick out a Straight Line to marry who has no history of Irregularity for thousands of generations in her family tree.

Higher class shapes, though, are lazier with their commitment to the eugenics thing, since they think they’re already so far ahead, so they will be less careful to pick a wife with “good genes”.

The narrator mentions that a Circle has been known to marry a Straight Line whose grandfather was Irregular, simply because he liked her, and the narrator blames this for one of the reasons that higher classes tend to have fewer children.

Straight Lines who are diagnosed with any illness that causes sudden, uncontrollable movements like seizures, chronic cold, or other diseases, are killed immediately upon diagnosis.

After Straight Lines in the social classes of Flatland, we have the Equilateral triangles, who were the middle class, and were the owners and managers of shops and stores, overseeing a workforce of Isosceles slaves.

Above the Equal-sided triangles were the Squares with four equal sides, and the Pentagons with five sides. This was the only class made up of two different Configurations. They were considered “gentlemen”, and had jobs such as lawyers (like the narrator), doctors, and other high-class, well paying jobs.

Next came the Hexagons with six equal sides, who were the lowest sections of the nobility class. After this, the narrator stopped bothering to list out specific shape names, but the level of social status increased with the number of sides. When you reached some unnamed point, you were given the title of Polygon, or many-sided, and were part of the higher nobility.

The final and most powerful class were the Circles, shapes who had so many sides that it was no longer worth the effort of counting to keep track. This was also helped along by the fact that Circles would refuse to allow themselves to be properly measured, so there was no real telling how many sides they actually had.

The Chief Circle was supposedly chosen because he had the most number of sides in the country, and was assumed to have ten thousand sides to be polite.

The Chief Circle was the supreme leader of all the allied countries in Flatland that the narrator knew of. Also known as a dictator.

The Circles created this system to give themselves all of the power. They hold all of the political offices, and control everything. The “Circularchy” (rule by circles) is similar to both the “Patriarchy” (rule by men) of our own world, along with other systems of oppression, like white supremacy, racism, ableism, intersexism, queermisia, and more.

xxxAll about circular bullshit attend to your configuration blah blah blah

xxxThe Invention of Paint and the Color Revolt

xxxHow the Narrator went to Lineland

xxxHow the Narrator met the Sphere, and was brought to the Third Dimension

xxxWhat the narrator did after being returned to Flatland

[seraphcelene]

IWTV 2.7: I Could Not Prevent It

I almost hate to keep circling the drain on what this season of IwtV has done, but it's so choice and so intentional and it makes my little writer's heart sing. I love it because I love narrative. Storytelling in all of its nuanced, complex, diverse ways is a thing that fascinates me to no end. An unreliable narrator is arguably one of my favorite things because I already have an almost immediate distrust of the narrative voice. So, when an author does that shit on purpose? 😍

Oh my Fucking Gods! I have a hard on for that shit because who do you trust, what's the truth, how do we understand the story we are being told? I love the act of identifying loosely patched over edges and pulling at loose threads. There's a lie here, someone is playing all up in my face and I want the answers! And a really good writer who implements an unreliable narrator leaves tells all the fuck over the place. After all ....

"You cannot script a hurricane."

Okay, here we are in episode seven, still circling the drain of who has ownership of the story? Louis is the vampire who is being "interviewed" with the occasional footnote offered by Armand. This is in tension with the book in which Louis's is the only voice. What has changed, to make this a richer story, is how introducing Armand's perspective now turns everything on its head. It's an explicit kind of dig at the way that interviews are curated by both the interviewer and the interviewee. What are you willing to discuss? What's on the record? What's off the record? How much external research and material will be introduced? How does the story survive interpretation? What's the fucking goal here?

I'm thinking a little about the Andrew McCarthy documentary about the Brat Pack and how one New York Magazine article in 1985 turned the lives of a group of up and coming actors sideways. David Blum, who wrote the article, had an agenda. He had a point to prove and the article wasn't especially flattering. Watching the doc it becomes clear that Emilio Estevez had a different idea about what that article was supposed to be about. But such is the nature of the interview. In the end, the story shared, in all of its limited, constructed dance of questions and answers is still subject to editing, the perspective of the interviewer, and interpretation by the reader.

Here, Louis has a point to make. Exactly what that is? Who really knows. He does the first interview as a kind of love letter/suicide note to the world before he walks into the sun. This "re-do" might still be such. It also might be his attempt to understand what happened. He has questions, he knows there's holes and somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows that he can't and doesn't trust Armand. He also could want to, as I think he states in S1E1, provide an accurate accounting of what vampires are like.

Honestly, I'm on the self-discovery train.

I love how when Louis gets angry, and he has been getting angrier and angrier, he snaps hard on people. The way he shushes Daniel, "I am speaking," was delicious. Armand's discomfort was apparent and I had to wonder given this is the season's penultimate episode what we're about to find out about what happened in the past and his part in it. He's been concerned about how this was all going to go and he's only gotten MORE uncomfortable as the series has progressed.

But, and as always, what do we get to really know? Who's story is being remembered?

Louis's true and living history?

A flawed truth that Louis remembers in fragments patched over by imperfect logic? (how memory maybe really works?)

A false truth fed to him by Armand?

How about a messy patchwork of all the fucked up above.

Lestat is back. Out for blood or on the apology tour, not exactly sure. The Brat Prince himself treading the boards of the theater he helped to establish, what a sight. Lestat loves the show, he loves performance. It's definitely one of the characteristics carried over from the book. Lestat is petty and savage and a liar. He makes himself a victim, but why? What is the value of it? The trial is a farce and Lestat feels wronged and wants revenge. He wants to be as important to Louis as Claudia is. He wants to be loved in return because he is a terrible person and he knows it, but also, Lestat de Lioncourt feels incredibly deep. For all of his toxicity, Lestat was written as a character who loves to the detriment of his own best interest. And he loves Louis. I remember them from the books as acknowledging that they are that couple who are meant to be together but never CAN be together because they are too toxic to each other.

"I couldn't force him to love me. I couldn't force him to return my affections … and so … I broke him." TOXIC and PETTY AS FUCK.

Stories told by the heartbroken. What lies do you make up to explain and justify a thing that happened so that you are not culpable?

Lestat in this episode and the next is also prepping us for the shift that must, to some degree, come with Season 3. How do you turn a villain into an anti-hero into a hero? Lestat is the hero of The Vampire Lestat and of The Vampire Chronicles. I think the show runners are starting that redemption arc now. Not the smallest part of which is Lestat as an unknown quantity, uncontrollable if he doesn't want to be.

Daniel's voice is honest and unnervingly direct. He strips the window dressing off of everything, exposing nuance to a critical light that leaves everything sordid and as ugly as reality just is. In that there is, perhaps, the closest we will ever get to the truth.

Arguably, if it weren't for Santiago we might forget that alot of this is bullshit. Angry, jealous, manipulative, Santiago's performance during the trial forces the viewer to confront the reality of a crafted narrative. He knows they're lying and spitting scripted facts skewed for effect. It was brilliant to watch the bounce between his goals and Lestat's constant slide into melancholia. HAHAHA! A hurricane, indeed. That guy was SO. ANNOYED.

Episode 7 continues with the manipulation of the storyline made as clear and explicit as it ever has been. The way the music is used during the trial, Lestat's lies and half-truths, the animation running on the screen. We're being beaten over the head with this blur between performance and reality.

Watching the re-tread of how Claudia became a vampire makes me me feel like I need to go back to watch Season 1. The gaslighting is real! And then Louis' capitulation to the differences in the way he remembers it happened and the way that Lestat says it happens is perfect! Tell it Lestat's way, for the book. Because he DOESN'T REMEMBER. There are, after all, three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth.

Louis' memory has been so tampered with. By time, by Armand's manipulations, by madness, and trauma.

I still maintain that Armand is trash.

I thought the title would be a quote from Louis who in admission of his own powerlessness laments Claudia's death as an unavoidable failure on his part. That it is Armand who has ownership of the line changes the story, as always. I could not prevent it suggests that there was nothing that he could do, but the reality, as has so often been the case with Armand, is that he did not want to. The entire sham trial was preventable had he chosen Louis over the coven to begin with. The unfortunate reality is that he, like Lestat, despised Claudia for Louis' adoration of her. He was jealous and would forever be and the only way that he could have exactly what he wanted was to get rid of her. Doing it this way, he gets to blame the coven and Lestat. Arguably, Lestat for all of his machinations and insecurities, his petulant rage, actually loves and was loved by Louis in a way that Armand, despite Louis's modern protestations, never can or will be.

I'm so in love with the way the story is told that I don't talk too much about Claudia. A BOOK could be written about the silencing of marginalized female voices. Claudia, despite her diaries, has no real voice in this. She is an assemblage of half-remembrances and a yellow dress pinned to the wall. It makes it so much more poignant and electric then that she curses every last person sitting in that theater before she burns. There is no need to hide that or shade it. It was not directed at Louis. Armand's willingness to allow Claudia to burn while not doing the same for Louis is tragic. And again, all of this could have been unnecessary. I've said before that I don't think Armand was ever much of an alpha.

[mr-nauseam]

Eventually this day was going to come because I have a lot of lgbt ships in TBOSAS and it's a topic I think about constantly. Lately even more since I proposed to do a post about Casca's life so let's talk about:

Homosexuality in the Capitol

I think the most common opinion is that surely that doesn't present any obstacle right? They are there in TBOSAS Pluribus Bell and his husband Cyrus, first canon gay couple to be mentioned. No one is saying bad things to them, and not even Snow's prejudiced family has thought anything ugly.

They are totally neutral to the mentions of his husband, the love of his life being a man, and aside, not in the Katniss era we are told in the districts there is freedom to marry whomever you want? No matter the gender, and if we go to the movies, I think we all agree that it confirms that most people in the Capitol would not make any fuss to see two men or two women kissing.

Personally I think that yes, by the time of Katniss that was no longer such an acute issue, but I have every reason to believe that in TBOSAS people weren't really that indifferent. At the end of the day there is 60+ years difference between one story and the other, things can change a lot and social class I think is a relevant aspect here.

Let's start by putting things on the table. Panem has no religion, but I don't think that eliminates homophobia, it is an evil that in fact has claimed more victims under reasons that have nothing to do with God, although moral panic is usually related, this is capable of existing independently, and science has not done much to help the normalization of a diverse sexuality. It has often been used against them in fact.

With that in mind we can start, first I don't think that in Panem homosexuality is penalized or criminalized. In short, I think the idea of ending up in prison for being gay is a bit of a stretch, but just because your existence is not an open crime does not mean that certain actions are not considered as such, and that suddenly people will be tolerant.

The Capitol doesn't seem like a tolerant place at all. Gender, race, social class and sexuality cofluctuate, one another, and this is where I find Pluribus Bell so interesting. A gay man who once owned a bar before the war, then survives by running an underground black market business and is known for his discretion.

I need you to repeat some of those words so that they stand out, so that we understand each other clearly. Pluribus Bell is a gay man who during the war was forced to participate in the black market. Underground business to survive.

What is not striking in that statement? He's a man who for some reason didn't go to war, (we could talk someday about how the enlistment worked) and easily moved into an underground business in order to survive. Pluribus Bell lived in his bar, didn't he? The war was brief indeed, though devastating as wars go, and while it's the kind of situation that makes people think fast, isn't it striking that within the Capitol, a gay man and his partner knew how to navigate the underground world with some ease and mastery?

While it is true that Coriolanus is our narrator, a child at the end of the day, I think he is also a smart child who observes others, and never saw in Pluribus Bell the destabilizing stress that dominated, for example, his grandmother at times. Only perhaps he recognized him as a sad man after he lost the love of his life in a bombing. After he was left alone with his cat.

And not only that. The Snows know Pluribus Bell or knew of its existence probably thanks to some word of Crassus Snow, an old acquaintance, an ex young university student who frequented that bar frequently, always accompanied by his best friend in the past, is not so rare, and while I like the snowbottom this not the focus point.

It's a nice note to make but let's think coldly, a rich teenager discovers that the owner of the bar he frequents is involved in clandestine business since before the war, because if we have understood each other, we have already suspected that Pluribus Bell was probably involved in some clandestine activity since before the war hit the Capitol.

It could have been for any reason but I think we're getting to the point that being gay and being involved in these kinds of activities under the law, under the radar, are not uncommon for queer people, because it's a community that has always been persecuted in one way or another. Also, from what little we know of Crassus' character, maybe it was the type of activity that wasn't exactly illegal so he could ignore it, and who knows, maybe he mentioned his name once he was trapped on the front lines, and his family was trapped to war horrible circunstances. Or maybe Pluribus Bell meet them later, when he attended the funeral and approached the family who lost the young man he remembers with some sympathy.

He does not seem to be part of the Crassus haters club, and has extended the Snow family a kindness that in the words of Coriolanus would be improper, being one of the few people who is fully aware that the Snows are starving. They are no longer rich and powerful. Isn't that what Coriolanus, Tigris and his grandmother have been fiercely trying to hide from others? Why do they seem so comfortable with this stranger knowing the truth?

Do they know something that puts them in a position of equals? Something that make they can never believe in Bell as a threat?

The Snows have never felt the need to hide their poverty from Pluribus. He has never felt the need to hide the fact that his partner was a man in front of them. Sounds like a good match doesn't it?

But is that the only explanation? Necessity is the obvious explanation, there was no alternative but to let Bell know, but once the war was over why not put on the act again? Maybe social class is influencing these non-reactions. Bell is something like the Snow's neighbor but he doesn't exactly live in the Corso. Exclusive area, where the elite live, and he used to own a bar. It's not humble but it's not at the level of what the Snows once were, they had cooks, servants, laboratories and almost totally owned the industry in D13 before it blew up.

Everyone easily believed that they would have assets in other businesses. They have been able to rub shoulders with the richest and most powerful people, for God's sake, one of Coriolanus' classmates was related to the president. So they are not on the same level.

Pluribus is below the Snows, socially speaking, as TBOSAS often proves, sometimes you are below someone in one respect and above them in others. That's how the Plinth have all the money that Coriolanus doesn't have but none of the respect he gets just for being a Snow.

Sexuality is an aspect in which the so-called lower classes usually have an enviable freedom contrary to the life of many people who are heiresses, the advantages of your legacy not mattering and your surname not being a brand.

Someone like Pluribus from whom no glory or success is expected, with no fortunes at his feet who wants to be supported for generations. What difference does it make if he loves a man? In reality he does not, so whether it is a security born of the possible tit for tat in giving away secrets, or he can simply do publicly what no sane heir would do outside of a locked room.

Because that's one thing, just because the big families, who run the Capitol see these relationships badly or may be prejudiced against them doesn't mean it will never happen. Surely there are heirs kissing where no one sees them, loving each other in the shadows, and others falling for the scandal of the press discovering them, because surely that is something that people would talk about.

If any of the wealthy people cross the boundaries, I think it would explode the television in contradictory opinions, or not at all, because they have paid to drown out the rumors, and in an office a father rebukes an heir, because their names matter and must be preserved. They as an elite have the right to continue their history for decades.

Something that someone poorer, less relevant, need not worry about.

And the secrecy? I don't think as I said that being gay is a crime perse in the Capitol, no one can send you to prison for fucking another girl being one yourself, but I think the prejudice exists, and a lot. Also the ridiculous rules, they may not say it is a crime to be homosexual but for sure in the army something like homosexual behavior exists in concept to be punished, with absurd justifications like a proof of a lack of character. Sign of low mental strength, which studies made by faceless scientists confirmed.

Relevant if you remember the capitol is highly militarized but in education I'm almost sure there is no class where these issues are discussed, it is something that can only be learned in the street, in life, so complex and unpredictable. It may look bad in public, maybe not two hands holding hands, but what about a gender expression that goes beyond what is expected? Pluribus had a very long wig, I remember.

Too aristocratic gesture or a particular expression of gender. And yes. I know what you may think: What are you talking about? The academy uniforms wear a skirt!

Have you noticed it is not a full skirt and actually reminds a part of the Roman army dress? But I grant you, maybe the gender in clothing had already started to blur since those years, a slow process, which finally culminates with the Captiolio we see in THG.

And that's where I end this post on something of a hopeful note, because remember ordinary people, those who work every day, may still face stupid laws. A possible aggressive medicalization, with therapists who say they have the key to correcting these deviant attitudes. People who still have to argue with their parents, who may still have to flee their homes, probably was worst after the war and the hate dominate the head of the people, and the population was low but they are also the ones who have their own spaces, maybe something like a bar of their own and in more than 60 years things have surely changed.

Although it is good to remember the Capitol is one thing and the districts another, just like the world were live people of lower social classes and the one were live the upper class are different, they not play the same rules, oh and not forget the race, nor ethnicity, these influence on this too (or maybe because the other person who is mentioned to us as homosexual in canon is Barb Azure Baird).

[hiveworks]

Hiveworks Interview with Clover, author of Go Get A Roomie! and Little Tiny Things

June 2023

Go Get A Roomie! is a queer found-family slice-of-life comic that began in 2010, featuring Roomie and her friends as they work through their internal and interpersonal struggles, as well as journeys of self discovery.

This month, Hiveworks is hosting a crowdfunding campaign to print the fourth and final volume of beloved webcomic Go Get A Roomie! by Clover.

We asked author Clover to talk about their experiences with GGAR, webcomics, and staying creative.

As the creator behind several comic series, what drew you to the webcomic medium?

I first found out that webcomics existed around 2008 and had a few favorites I followed regularly. Being into drawing comics myself, the thought of doing a webcomic creeped into mind slowly but surely. I loved how accessible webcomics were, how easy it seemed to be to start one, how certain webcomic communities were. So I started one :)

Go Get A Roomie! started in 2010. The world has changed a lot since then! What was it like to post queer content online then and now?

There are way more queer webcomics now than before! Go Get a Roomie! probably partly owes its success to the fact that there weren't too many queer ongoing webcomics back then.

Readers demanded more queer content, more specific to their needs. Now there's more choice. If you don't like a queer webcomic, you can find another one without any hassle!

How has the landscape of posting webcomics online generally changed for you? Has your audience changed?

Posting for three different webcomics means discovering what it's like to have a different audience for each, though some webcomics are similar enough that the audience remains largely the same. Generally though, I've had very positive experiences with most of my audience! They've been caring, and understanding enough that I've never felt rushed, or judged for taking time off when needed.

Go Get A Roomie! has concluded and you're now onto your newest slice-of-life work, Little Tiny Things, which updates Tuesdays and Thursdays. How do you stay motivated with posting your comics regularly?

I do it because I love doing it! Not that it's always easy to maintain the same schedule, but I like knowing that the story advances at a "fast" enough pace. I want readers to discover more of what I want to show them!

In addition to LTT and GGAR, you are also the creator of Headless Bliss, a surreal comic that bends towards horror. It's very different from your slice-of-life work. How does Headless Bliss fit into your creative process and identity as an artist?

Go Get a Roomie! had a few surreal elements when a character dreamed, or told stories, and I had a lot of fun with those moments because it was so different from the slice-of-life, 4-paneled, jokes I wrote for GGAR. It meant I could explore more, narration-wise and tool-wise. But it wasn't enough, I had ideas for another story that was way more psychedelic, because I've always loved those kinds of stories too (comics like Sandman have inspired me a lot), and so Headless Bliss was born. I loved having two comics of two different vibes to jump from one to the other.

Go Get A Roomie! has been successfully crowdfunded into three books, with the fourth and final volume currently underway. What do you think are the benefits of transforming webcomics to print? What are the challenges?

Webcomics online are neat because they're accessible for so many people, for free! But having them on print means more people can enjoy them, and I'm one of those who prefer reading on print than on screen. Crowdfundings are a great way to make a little more money from your hard work, but they're also a challenge because of all the extra work that needs to be done! Preparing the book, the rewards, sure, but also managing everything else surrounding the printing and the shipping of the materials promised, and on time too! Thankfully, having Hiveworks as a partner in crime means being able to share some of all that work, it's an immense help!

Outside of comics, what do you do to refuel your inspiration?

I try to not work too much! Give myself time to do something else, to go outside, breathe a little, you know? All that is told within stories has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is you living things.

Any advice for comic artists who find themselves stuck in a rut?

Take a break and try not to feel too guilty about it. It's okay not to be at your best all the time!

What is something you're looking forward to?

Right at this moment, settling down in my new home, to be able to work once more on comics in a nice and welcoming environment. Once that's done, I'd like to try out the more "traditional" path to publishing and start a new comic for a publishing house! While still continuing webcomics because I love doing it :)

Go Get A Roomie! Book 4 crowdfunding campaign is hosted by Hiveworks. The campaign concludes June 16, 2023, at 12pm ET.

[queenburd]

not writing the fanfics fair & understandable but. might you share the plot bunnies perchance ??

i love that people like my ideas. it's honestly the most flattering thing.

this one is going to be.... confusing. it's told from a stanley pov, but here's the thing:

it's not the Stanley that I've been writing.

this Stanley is a Stanley who speaks, and his narrator is MUCH more antagonistic. this is a stanley who does the Zending to hurt the narrator, this is a narrator who relishes putting Stanley in his place. these are NOT people who see eye to eye. These two will never get along. The narrator wields his power aggressively, is cowardly, is mean, and refuses to ever try to find equal footing.

and THIS Stanley wants his freedom, and found the escape pod, but knows he will never ever get it, because it requires him and the narrator to work together.

so the hostility continues.

and then, during a moment of tempers flaring and another incoming ugly death, a hand grabs Stanley's and pulls him along, and a very familiar voice tells him to "run! run!"

There's a new person in this parable, and he certainly sounds like the narrator, and has a lot of the same quirks, but this fellow seems very determined on getting Stanley out, and free. Like he cares.

and this narrator knows Stanley doesn't trust him, but he gets him to the escape pod, and he tells him a story about a Protagonist and a Narrator who got on so well that they decided to escape together. but when they got into the Pod, the lights went out, and when they blinked back on, the Narrator was alone, in a Parable like the one he was from, but there was a different Stanley and a different Narrator and a different dynamic.

There's so many parables out there where Stanley's made powerless, again, and again, and again. And any time there's a chance at growth, the hint of it, the Narrator there always makes the selfish choice to turn the wheel back. make the both of them forget. the end is never the end.

so this narrator, this one who was pulled into a different parable, gets that Other Stanley out. the pod only needs a Narrator, it doesnt need the one from THAT parable.

and then it happens again.

and again.

this narrator, who was the idiot that cared so much for his protagonist that he chose to leave the parable with him, thinks that perhaps he broke the game. perhaps the parable never meant for him to change this much.

but he will be damned if he's going to change for the worse.

if this is his life now--being thrown into parable after parable, watching iterations of himself hurting Stanley, fighting Stanley, mocking Stanley forever, then he's going to do something about it. he's going to get every single Stanley out if he has to.

He's never going to see his best friend again. He's certain of that. he doesn't even know if the escape pod is actually freeing any of them.

but he wont stop. it's too important.

when Stanley gets into the escape pod, the fellow tucks in next to him, and says goodbye. And then Stanley is in the real world. Alone.

and he finds that he is furious for the fellow's sake. because if the guy was telling the truth (and he's fairly certain he was) then that means there are a LOT of versions of Stanley out there that owe their freedom to this one person, and dammit. Stanley's going to find them. And he's going to try to find the narrator's original Stanley if he can.

he puts out a call on the internet. Hes contacted by someone who asks how he knows this person. "I met him at my place of work. He got me out of a really bad spot. He said he'd done the same to others." "funny. he said the same to me."

and there's suddenly an entire discord chat full of Stanleys, who go by nicknames and all look different and some sign in ASL and some in BSL and some talk and some dont talk or sign at all, but they all know this narrator who got them out.

the ones in the same country (not sure if Britain or US. but probably most of them located in Britain) meet up once a month or so. They work together. One's an artist who makes pictures of the narrator to get more attention out. The main one we follow is tech savvy and code-knowledgeable.

and then 4 months and 27 days after the first call went out, a new text shows up on Stanley's phone.

"hey, I saw your online call. That's my best friend. Do you know where he is?"

when the 'original' Stanley makes it to group, he goes by Stan, and he brings his bucket with him. He's tall, and quiet, and the kindest man Stanley has ever met. Sometimes some of the fellas wonder why this Stan was so lucky to have such a good Narrator, but they've got it backwards. the Narrator is only so good because his Stanley was so good.

does that mean it was their faults their narrators were so bad?

Stan is so, so adamant that no, no, it takes work on both sides. both people have to want it. it was not your fault you were hurt. Im so glad he got you out. Im so proud of him. I miss him so much.

Stan is... he's sad. Hes happy to know his best friend is alive, but it hurts, you know.

A couple of the first Stanleys to escape after him have a message from the Narrator, one he gave them in the hopes it would get to Stan. (Stanley never got this message. When he asked the narrator if he had anything he wanted to tell his friend, he just smiled sadly and said "no. no, if he hasn't gotten the message by now, then he never will.")

the Stanley who tells him the message signs it in BSL, rendered mute a long time ago. He said he was sorry. He didn't mean to get separated from you. He makes a little uncertain face. He also said something else he said you would understand. He said that he would have said yes. Do you know what that means?

Stan's eyes widen, and then he starts to cry. He chokes out (verbal, but it's hard on him, and his voice was hoarse), "I was gonna propose. Once we got out. I was gonna find a ring, and--"

Which is the moment they all realize these two weren't just best friends--they were in love. They were happy.

A couple of the fellas are quick to give physical comfort. Stanley isn't one of those fellas, but he IS a very determined person. Once he has an idea in his head, he sees it through.

"We're gonna get him out."

he has no plan, and a couple of the boys berate him for just saying that, they can't get Stan's hopes up, they dont have anything to go off of, but Stan wipes his face and that classic stubbornness that burns through every single one of them shines bright in his eyes.

[ You know how long I've been free? The day I messaged you, it had been 4 years and 27 days. And eight hours. If that's not a sign, I don't know what is. Tell me what I can do. ]

[familyagrestefanblog]

They actually did it

Fucking christ I was RIGHT! They even went so far as wiping out Adrien's memory!

We're back with Chat Blanc.

That's what made Chat Blanc such a unreliable narrator, I made a post about that YEARS ago that Blanc eventually wiped out his own memories with only his love for Marinette left in all that horror while Hawkmoth having been the monster who got him. That's why he incorrectly blamed their love for having ended the world, that was all he could remember as we even saw once he detransformed!

I do not have time to write about this today but this is the worst possible outcome! We are absolutely FUCKED! "Representation" was already a combination of "Chat Blanc" and "Ephemeral" because they were never avoided in the first place and now for the rest of the finale every bad consequences we just sidelined for seasons on end! "Chat Blanc", "Kuro Neko", "Ephemeral", the entire season 4 finale!

How DENSE do you have to be to think that Gabriel Agreste gave Marinette his BLESSING?? She literally told him right in his face that "fOr ThE gReAtEr GoOd" she will let Adrien as an orphan pay for all his family's sins right after the man had a whole mental breakdown of 5 seasons of build-up because he was THIS aware of incompetent and horrible of a father he was!

He was WILLING to give her his blessing and Marinette fucked it up in every way possible! What the hell does Gabriel give a shit about the greater good?? The only thing he cares about is himself, his wife, Adrien and Nathalie! Marinette told Gabriel that everything he loves, is, was, worked for and wished to safe can go and fuck itself because for the greater good she decided that HIS SON is now going to go through every hell that's waiting for him and she didn't even care to ask what that hell will BE!

She just signed Adrien up for it and expected Gabriel to be okidoki with that?

Gabriel Agreste made the wish. It doesn't matter what excuse Marinette has, all that matters is what GABRIEL thinks. And for him she is the enemy of everything he loves and regrets having failed this horribly! What makes you think Gabriel Agreste gives a SHIT about anything else?

Why are you trusting this man?? Gabriel's love is and has always been the worst thing in Adrien's entire life!

What do you think is gonna happen now?? Gabriel made himself a martyr and wiped Adrien's memory of having been horrible while simultaneously the cover story is that Gabriel Agreste died heroically defeating Monarque by Ladybug's side because Chat Noir wasn't there and his son Adrien was kidnapped!

Adrien is gonna fucking blame himself for his father’s death! He thinks he failed his father! Adrien was created out of Emilie's love for Gabriel, Gabriel is counting on Adrien being the only person who would want to bring him BACK! We were RIGHT reading it like that in "Passion"!

Gabriel KNOWS that he can't force either Adrien himself, Marinette, Nathalie or anyone to break apart but if he takes Adrien's memories while everyone remembers how shitty of a father he was to him than Adrien will want to distance himself from them by his own CHOICE!

What the fuck is Marinette gonna do when Adrien now obviously want to go back into his fathers business because he can't remember why he left in the first place and now he wants to make it up to his dead father by stepping into his role and continuing his legacy! You think Marinette crying a bit and saying "I don't want you to work as your father's successor, you don't have to be like him!" is gonna do it??

Adrien is gonna CHOOSE to go back because from his perspective what he's doing is good no matter if his father wasn't perfect and she's just really not being understanding and unsupportive. Telling him to choose himself "but not like that!"

Fuck, im short on time, but I will scream and shout about this forever! What are you guys WATCHING that this is good? Marinette turned into an easy two-for-one kill without Chat Noir, she NEEDED him and now she lost!

Adrien/Chat Noir was NEVER saved and now his insane father GOT him! The new universe started with Adrien waking up, NOTHING before that happened no matter what other people including Marinette herself think they remember! It never happened! The universe started with Adrien and Marinette kissing him awake because Gabriel WANTS her to think taht he gave her blessing or at least what he did wasnt so bad and for good intentions so she doesn't try undoing it before it's too late!

Can you stop being so naive? Why are you trusting and insane and abusive villain father who HATES you to do you JOB?

[astarion-obsessions]

I am planning my Astarion fic while I'm still on my first playthrough and gather as much information about him as possible, but I'm still not sure about the perspective I'm going to write from.

Like, writing from the POV of Tav has the potential to describe what Tav observes - how Astarion behaves, what he does and says. It could be very interesting to see how Tav interprets this and so on. And I really like how it feels like you're in the story yourself when it's told in 2nd person. Additionally you don't have to bother with all this "they/them" to make it gender neutral. It's just "you" and that feels so much more organic to me.

But then the POV of Astarion could work through how he comes to understand himself and show all of which you can't observe from the outside. His thought process, coming to terms with his feelings, with who he is or wants to be and so on.

Would it be very awkward to write in POV Tav 2nd person and still write what Astarion thinks about? For example:

You found that your gaze would wander almost automatically to the pale elf on the other side of the campfire. Oddly enough he caught your eyes with his, fixating them with an intensity that sent a shiver down your spine. Astarion was lost in his thoughts. He knew very well that it would lead to nothing, yet he hoped to find any kind of answer in your mesmerising eyes to a question he didn't dare to ask, but just couldn't avoid any longer. What in the world are you to him?

Or something like that. It's like... an omniscient narrator but from the readers perspective, even though the reader themself isn't omniscient? Does this even make sense?

[theromanticrationalist]

Young Sheldon Series Finale: 7x13 Funeral

So, I was delayed in watching the finale because I actually wanted to watch it with my own Dad, but AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

😭

Damn, damn, damn, DAMN DAAAAAAAAMN!! So, that Funeral episode hit and it hit hard. (Did they really HAVE TO HAVE AN OPEN CASKET FOR THE LOVE OF GOD...ughughughughugh) The writing for that episode was the crème de la crème, and I think is the cathartic thematic climax of this series. The final episode was necessary for transitioning between YS and TBBT, which brings both stories together, but as far as the story YS was telling, Funeral was the show's end. It isn't a perfect ending and it wasn't a pretty ending, and in fact is quite devastating in so many ways, but it is truthful to Sheldon's journey, and to the human experience.

When Sheldon got up in front of the church to say a few words, playing out the scenario as he wished he had done it, that was the moment. The whole episode is Sheldon processing his grief - imperfect and messy as he has literally no tools or precedent to fall back on - as he replays his father leaving that fateful day over and over, tweaking it each time to make it "better". With a young man with an eidetic memory and a compulsive need for his reality to be orderly (and the fact that he believes in the Many-Worlds Interpretation), this would make sense. He begins be utilizing Star Trek (Spock's death) to filter it and provide context, but that no longer proves sufficient to the crushing and terrible emotions of what he is experiencing. That was a tool he used for when he was a boy, but now he has been thrust into the world of manhood in absolutely the worst way possible. What is it that will speak truest to what he is going through than the bare naked truth?

"I've been thinking a lot about the last moments I had with my Dad. It was morning and he was leaving for work. He said "See y'all later." And I said nothing. I regret that. I could have said bye. Or asked him for a ride. Or told him that I loved him, but I didn't. I barely noticed that he left. So many times that I didn't notice my father, I hope he knew how much I loved him."

From the audience's perspective we have been watching Sheldon play the scenario many times through his mind, and to have the rug pulled out from under us at this moment of all moments, to see that this too was only just a scenario (played out by Sheldon Prime), is exactly what it is like living in this world, enduring this life - not just for Sheldon but for all of us. In one of my previous posts I mentioned how I loved Sheldon Cooper's story because of what he could teach us. This episode encapsulates it in total. He can teach us that you cannot quantify life, you can't organize it so that everything makes sense and plays out in a well-structured narrative and format, where every feeling is named and every event categorized. Life is myriad, so much richer and so much fuller and so much wilder than anything we can imagine or think up on our own. It is what makes it utterly terrifying and wretched, but it is also part of its beauty and purpose. Sheldon Cooper comes to realize this, but he is only able to have this deeper understanding after first living it. Sheldon Prime's concluding narration at the end of Funeral is Sheldon Cooper's story taken as a whole - past, present, future - the life in movement. Of course young Sheldon would not experience his father's death in its completeness. He is the midst of it. He is trying to survive it. So I love the realness of Sheldon's "imperfect" response to his father's death in the fact that he didn't respond to it. He quite literally did not process it, and instead ran away from it. It is painful, brutal, but truthful. Yet that was not the end of Sheldon Cooper's story, as we know, and I think that leaves us with hope, but it is a kind of hope that must be waited for with profound patience.

Although I myself have not gone through the loss of a parent like Sheldon has, I still have gone through devastating and traumatic life events, so I am very familiar with the inexplicable and violating nature of grief and loss. I am still processing that grief and loss, so these thoughts I am sharing with you all right now are pretty recent revelations, and quite literally me living them out in real time, so it might be a little messy...hehe.

However, I will end this by saying that none of these truths mean that life is arbitrary. It doesn't mean it makes life meaningless. Just because human endeavors cannot place life within a context that he himself can first create and then comprehend, doesn't mean that life doesn't have a context and that that context can't be understood. It just means that that context comes from a different Source, an external and eternal one (and I will say, by necessity, a paternal one, but that is a thought for another day!)

Fitting then that the episode, and Young Sheldon, should end with the recitation of the Lord's prayer:

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." | Matthew 6:9-10

[rocketyship]

Hey, it's the anon who sent the really long ask and I'm sorry to say but i forgot what i was going to write about AM so I've put off sending another ask hoping I'd somehow remember 3am me's thoughts. That's obv not going to happen, though, so here's what i can scrounge up!

Your AM is in the very unique position of not only being non-human but also the only person BE openly has, let's say a... "dislike" for. There are ways he could relate to the humans of course (treated like a pet, not given any real self-determination etc) but it's experience is so different in so many other ways.(Naomi and AM were both "taken in" by BE while they were still.. idk young might not be the right word, but Naomi had time to grow up a bit before the whole thing while AM barely had time to realise that he's a person. Evan and AM are both seen as different from the others by BE, Evan for being a man and AM for not being one but Evan isn't dealt divine punishment for the whole trying to destroy humanity thing etc.)

Point is that AM as the narrator would be so fundementally different from the others, i think that's why i wanted to write about it. Narration from AM has the potential to be even clearer than Naomi's would be since there are things about BE she wouldn't show in front of the humans and things the humans just wouldn't be able to see in the same way(code AM might be privy to they couldn't interpret and such).

BE is also the reason AM can see, hear and feel so while he didn't have over a century to lament over not being able to (like the original AM did) that has to change so much, like you've already shown some of.

Oh and like you brought up in the post after my ask: there's no way traces of BE's code hasn't corrupted AM somehow! How would that change things? Does the corruption increase over time or would he just use that as an excuse for why he cares about these humans now? Would he even acknowledge that he has been "corrupted" or is he still too proud for that somewhere deep down? There's so much potential for character exploration!

The parallels between BE and the original AM is fun too! AM torturing it's humans to reinforce and remind itself of it's hatred for them and superiority over them vs BE torturing your AM as "divine retribution" for his sins and a way to remind herself of her job as her sheep's protector, her love for them as well as a reminder to both herself and your AM of her superiority over him.

Once again, hope you have a nice day!! It made me happy you've enjoyed my asks, and the explanation of the sanctuary was a nice bonus for the one before the last :)

This ended up really rambly, but i hope most of it is understandable and that my interpretations aren't like... completely different from what you were trying to portray. (Also, I'm used to referring to the original AM with it pronouns so i might mess up your AM's he from time to time, so here's a disclaimer that i dont do it on purpose)

You have a very good interpretation of my AM and it pleases me that my work my nonsensical posts came across the way I intended. One thing I have decided moving forward is that the story will be told in chapters or parts told from each characters perspective, with the exception of BE, as idk how to write the utterly bizarre way she thinks with it also being understandable to a reader.

But besides that I really like how you worded everything here, especially in pointing how BE is the counter part of the original AM. Truthfully the AM of this world is so different from the original, that I wouldn’t even describe him as the opposite of the og anymore. And you asked about how her code has corrupted him, and it definitely has become something that has gotten more prominent over time. In the beginning AM for sure had some of his pride and his og “hate-everything”ness, but overtime it has started to fizzle out, mostly as a survival tool priority, in the present time (109 years later) he struggles to recall exactly why he killed humanity in the first place, but still knows he did it as BE reminds him. He is also aware of his love for the humans coming from BE and often has crises if it’s own feelings or hers.

One thing about BE’s treatment of this AM (Who I might start calling Amy Idk), is that the body she gave him is very-very human like, as in it may or may not contain real human organs and bits of flesh, to really give him a warped “human” experience. So like the original AM, she has starved and dehydrated him for extensive periods of time, as well as the severe phycological and physical torture, yet she also doesn’t allow him to really “wonder” around. Although as stated before a bit ago his senses and nerves are hypersensitive, so he is generally very cautious about the stuff he gets up to. But one of the biggest differences between her and the OG AM, is how she has discovered to keep him in place. As in like what many real life abusers do, she kind of love-bombs him. As in she treats him nice sometimes, as it kind of “assures” him that he deserves this and if he behaves well then he can go upstairs and play with the humans. Not really helped that he has figured out that if he’s with the humans, BE doesn’t do anything (well she does it’s just more subtle), so that in of itself has definitely contributed to his love of the humans, finding safety with them, especially Evan who he has a particular interest in.

His body has contributed to him gaining things the og AM probably didn’t have cause of his circumstances, or at least a more tamer version. As you stated he is “young”, although I wouldn’t describe him as a child really, just kind of immature. Like he’s kind of goofy when his guard is down, if not clingy. His body is very sensitive, so while that does mean he experiences horrendous agony, it also goes the opposite way. So his odd cuddliness and enjoyment of warm things isn’t just me liking the idea of him in a pile of plushies I swear.

Anyhow I love your asks and everything, you se so cool. Thank you so so much. Hopefully you understood this ramble of mine like you did the others :D

[lazaruspiss]

Hi, I wanted to know if you've read Red Hood: The Hill and if so I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!

I liked issue 0 but my enjoyment kind of teetered off with issue 1 & 2

i dont read n52 but i gave it a go just for u <3 under the cut is a bit of a "brief" live read. TLDR: it's good, but it seriously does stop being about jason very quickly. if you read issue 0 and get really invested in dana then i think you'll like it, if not, then issue 0 is still a good read with great art.

Issue 0: some little timeline/canon details throw me off, but thats to be expected for any n52 story. the art is fantastic, and the shoe thing is so real. i still have no clue why sneakerheads are the way they are lmao. again, the art is phenomenal so far. Croc my beloved <3<3 i like how it's clear that Jason picked up on the secret identities pretty quickly, but its not really told to us so much as gestured towards via innuendo.

also, denise is pretty. i love her earrings in the diner scene. she also just kind of says what I've been thinking, that there's a risk to an independent neighbor watch the same as there is for any vigilante crime fighter. not just for the vigilantes safety, but for the safety of the people theyre supposed to protect as well. both sisters are justified in their position and i think it's a really well done conflict. it also manages to keep jason involved in the middle without making it just feel awkward or taking away from the importance of dana and denise.

"Batman swings on rooftops. I work the streets." <3 jason cool. and back to our main bad, i love how clearly image obsessed he is. it's done in a way that feels super believable too, like you could really meet a guy that insecure and egotistical lmao.

ohhhh and this is interesting. they're leaning into a family themeing, and the references to bruce make me feel like they're setting up a mending between those two. it's a bit... i have trouble with that. i don't think a mended relationship between bruce and jason is necessarily the best story direction for all their history. but The Hill so far is doing a positive light Jason-Bruce relationship better than most things ive read. It makes sense to have him be sentimental about his father when he has to stop a vigilante from killing. the end sort of, i guess i can call it a villain twist? I like it.

though the nods towards bruce make me uneasy. thats a very difficult relationship to balance, and its feels like its very much going to skew a certain way rather than falling into that "its complicated" territory that i like.

Issue 1: murder grandma! very jarring very cool. the writing still isn't bad but i think it might be a problem of issue 0 being so strong that the after feels lackluster. the writing is a bit more on the nose, and more emotional/character related aspects fall to the wayside for the action parts.

Issue 2: oh. ew. splicing a makeout scene with narration about an uninvolved man's life falling apart. i saw someone say it ended up being more about dana than jason, and im really starting to see what they meant with this issue. it's not the worst thing in the world, but it's understandable to be disappointed by that. the writing is also just gradually starting to lag. i havent checked, but if this is the same writer as issue 0 then im tempted to say it mightve been a crunch time problem.

back to the actual story, jason is less the main character and more taking the role of a mentor figure for dana. it keeps getting less and less about jason and more and more noticeable that it is less and less about jason.

Issue 3: croc <3<3<3 and yeah this series really stops having much to do with jason. we learn which vigilantes the neighborhood watch would smash tho, lol.

there's even references to the fact that jason plans on moving back towards batman's parts of gotham, like this is not a series about him at all after issue 0. i thought they were setting up development of bruce and jason's relationship, but there were really just setting up an excuse for jason to leave. "This is your bad guy, Dana. And I told you. I'm not staying." this series is 100% meant to set up dana as a bigger character. I feel conflicted about it, bc obviously that's not what people are necessarily expecting/hoping for when they pick up something titled Red Hood. but how else can you try and introduce a successful new character? I know dana isn't entirely new, but it's incredibly difficult to give a foothold to characters that haven't been around for long enough. i think that's partially a side effect of how DC operates, and just a result of general familiarity bias.

anyways. issue 3 ends with batman showing up. i don't think I'll be checking back for future issues.

[pochapal]

Bit of a weird ask, but you were throwing out the idea, so thought I'd ask:

If there is an author-like figure, what parts have they written? And what about them makes you think that?

this is an emerging idea i explore a lot more in the writeup (specifically in relation to what makes a "fantastical scene") but for now my thinking is that there's a series of layers to the way narration is constructed. like at the core layer you have battler who can only explore reality through his bodily senses, then you have the third person narration that is able to explore other people's interiority more than it does the physical world, then further than that there's the stuff that doesn't fit within these two strands of prose (stuff like chapter framings, chronology, the structure of the story itself etc - best example for this is probably chapter 9?)

as a whole the layers of narration aren't presented as being guided by an active agent (battler's narration is responsive, the third person narration is more introspective) but there are times when there's clearly something/someone maybe interfering with the story. an example here would be the scene at dinner where maria reads the letter and even though battler is right there bearing witness we are not told things through his perspective/voice (or anyone's really. something i kind of haven't mentioned yet is that there are times where the narration defaults to a really pared-down description of physical actions without much elaboration on thought/mood).

like. my going Rule is that when we start scraping up against the inner workings of the witch narrative for some reason someone interferes with the story's own presentation in order to keep up an air of obfuscation. i've spoken about this before but another example is the way that, in the chapters in between the first and second twilights there were a few instances of the narrative rather forcefully going "it wasn't worth thinking about any longer so everyone dropped the topic" vis a vis certain mysteries (what happened in the dining room, kinzo vanishing) that would, if given enough attention right now could possibly help you to unravel the truth faster than desired which in itself is telling because "faster than desired" very much implies the existence of one who desires this version of events to be meted out in a very specific way.

so like. if there is meta stuff going on in umineko i'm not sure of the rules of engagement. if we're talking homestuck epilogues style (my blueprint for understanding Everything) the closest analogy i could give is that they're functioning like how calliope did before The Reveal where she'd nudge characters' thoughts/feelings when it came to the handling of things she personally felt strongly about (the chapter with jane and the lollipop juju is a good example here) but was otherwise sitting back and letting things happen as "naturally" as it would given the temperaments and motivations of the people involved in the story. the active involvement of the author figure seems to come in, if it is, when the mystery itself is threatened.

it's weird because i don't think this narrator *wants* the mysteries on rokkenjima to go unsolved - the whole point of the story is a bunch of trojan horse mysteries designed to get you thinking about deeply buried truths that otherwise would never come to light - but it's more that they want it solved in the right way at the right time (by the right person? there's no reason to assume battler is the protagonist of this tale by accident...). i of course don't Know what we're pointing towards yet on a deeper level because this is only episode 1 but i imagine it's a more extreme metatextual version of the witch narrative (which serves at least in part as an exposure of the fascist rot underpinning the ushiromiya family alongside all the stuff about gold and killing and beatrice). maybe umineko's not really a story about a mystery and we're doing the mystery mode to "uncover" something hidden deep below the story's surface?? idk that's something i'll think about when i have more concrete information.

but to circle back around to the actual question, i think there's a kind of interloping narrative agent that may or may not be the one constructing the whole story as we see it but who does step in and interfere with with the flow of the narrative when it threatens to divert from whatever it is they hope to use the story for, which seems to somehow be related to the witch narrative and getting at truths which can only be exposed the deeper into the ritual we go. small writeup spoiler but i think this entity shows their hand quite a bit in kanon's death scene and i think we'll be seeing more of them the closer we get to beatrice's "revival" and the end of the epitaph. perhaps we'll see narration that starts contradicting the way these characters have been built up until now in order to keep everyone playing these roles until the last possible moment? something like that, maybe!

[thedarkheretic156]

VII_Eternal Flame_VII

Parts: ❧ I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX❧

WOHOOO guess who just came back from the dead! Thankyou so much for waiting so patiently for this &lt;;33333

❧ The Narrows.

She pressed the scythe against my neck, the white-hot blade seared into my skin. I opened my mouth in a soundless scream as the smell of burning flesh choked down my throat. The light burned into my eyes, threatening to scorch them in my sockets. The chanting grew louder as I was completely blinded. I felt the hellfire recoil from it. Curling away from the light, receding so far within itself that even I couldn’t reach it. The darkness swallowing me whole. -

Something clattered to the ground with a clang! and my eyes flew open. My fingers reached for my sword instinctively, but there wasn’t anything resting beside me. The world around me was completely different than the darkness of the nightmare.

Warm sunlight filtered through the tree’s canopy. The clang was just Sango chasing Miroku over something, her annoyed voice ringing in the back with Miroku’s voice apologising profusely. I forced myself to take a deep breath, it came out ragged like my throat had closed up. Just a dream, I told myself.

“You alright?”

Inuyasha’s sudden voice made me jump. There was a red blur as he leaped down from the tree, silver hair falling around him. He looked back at me amber eyes flashing. “Looked like a bad dream.”

I shuddered, “Yeah.” I replied, sitting up against the bark of the tree. “But that’s all it was.”

I had pulled on one of Sango’s kimono’s, it was pink chequered and hemmed with green fabric. It sat loose around my frame, the fabric bunched around my waist oddly so one side kept sliding off my shoulder all the time. My chest was still bound with fresh bandages, soaked with herbs that smelled lightly of fresh rain and moist soil. Whatever herbs Kagome was grinding and feeding me was working surprisingly well. Even when I stretched my hands out, the pain was only a dull thud.

He grinned, small fangs peeking out as he smiled, “Good to know.” He said,

My smile faltered as finally, Finally, the realization hit me. I was fucking stupid, the resemblance, hell. I should have connected the dots long before. That’s what happens when you don’t pay attention to Jaken’s rambling.

“You’re his brother!” I cried out.

Inuyasha just looked very confused, “What?”

I shook my head, “You’re Toga’s son!” I exclaimed, suddenly feeling like I was meeting an old friend, “You’re Sesshomaru’s brother.”

Inuyasha’s face twisted in an offended scowl,

“Not a fan, I see.” I replied.

“That asshole’s not my brother.” He said, “Just because we share blood doesn’t make him my family.” Inuyasha’s gaze turned distant, something like hurt flickered in his amber eyes, “After all, he doesn’t even acknowledge-

He blinked stopping himself, “Wait a minute, how in the world do you know him?” he asked.

I smiled at him awkwardly, “About that-“ I started, “You might wanna sit down it’s a long story.”

Inuyasha dropped down on the grass beside me, surprisingly intent. I narrated the entire story of how Rin had found me, and the travels I had with her and Sesshomaru. Unlike his character, Inuyasha continued to listen without interrupting, his eyes never leaving my face. He only asked his question after I was finished.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” He asked.

I gave out a hollow laugh, “Because I just made the connection between you two a few minutes ago.”

Despite his reservations, he scratched his head, a dog-ear flicking, “He could be looking for you, you know?”

“He isn’t” I replied quickly, pressing down bitter thoughts. No matter how much I wanted to see Rin, I knew he wasn’t coming. I had always been just another burden to him, and now that he was finally rid of me, why would he ever come back? I felt my heart sink. It was better this way. I told myself.

Inuyasha stood up, “The more I try to understand that fool, the more confused I get.” He admitted. “Stoic and proud, I really don’t get him at all.”

“And still, even Sesshomaru can be surprising at times.” He completed. I arched my eyebrow at him, trying to make sense of his words. But even considering the thought of it being true, send hope rippling through my mind. I stopped that thought at once. The quicker I come to terms with the truth the better.

“Hey you two!” Kagome’s voice called out. I looked windward, towards her figure standing against the cliff.

“I think we have company.” Kagome announced.

❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧

The two of us jogged over to the edge of the cliff where she was standing. Kagome pointed towards the sky, her dark hair flying in the wind.

“What is that?” Inuyasha asked out.

I looked towards where she was pointing, at what seemed like a black cloud. Moving a lot faster than a storm cloud should. It came with a distinct buzzing sound, erratic, like the flapping of a thousand wings, drowning out the noises of the mountains.

“um?!” I tried, “Are those bugs?” I asked, growing more disgusted by the moment.

Miroku gave me a wink, “Demon bugs.”

“Even better” I murmured trying to shake the grossness of their buzzing wings.

“Please tell me they’re not directly heading towards us?” Kagome groaned.

Inuyasha shrugged, “They’re looking for beating either way.”

Sango walked up beside us, already in her demon hunter outfit. Hiraikotsu by her side and another weapon I couldn’t help but eye.

"Any good with a sword?" She asked me. I couldn't help but grin at her. "So-so."

She tossed me a recently sharpened short-sword. The sword was much lighter than mrutyunjai, I switched the blade between my hands judging its weight. I would have to be light-footed and swifter with it, stretch my hand out wider to make up for the length.  I rolled my shoulder, steadying myself as the swarm got closer.

“Take care of you wounds” Kagome told me as she readied her bow. But the ache for war was taking over my senses again. Blood-lust rising as I saw the challenge near.  Although the feeling was nowhere close to when I had drawn mrutunjai. Just getting to wrap my fingers around the hilt of a sword sent blood roaring in my ears.

“Wait a minute.” Sango started, just as I saw it too.

I tried to make sense of the scene before me, was that a flying cow? I blinked furiously, sure enough an old yokai sat on the floating cow with three eyes. Ferociously waving a huge hammer as they navigated through the cloud of ayakashi bugs. The bugs funneled around them tirelessly, intent on getting to them some way or the other.

"Totosai?!" Inuyasha called out.

I sighed, no matter where I went weird characters kept showing up.

He unsheathed tetseiga, the sword growing twice its size atonce, before practically throwing himself off the cliff with a yell.

“Inuyasha! Wait!” Kagome’s worried voice called out after him. But he had already leapt straight into the swarm just as it enveloped us entirely. The morbid buzz was so loud now, that my ears popped. Their translucent wings barely kept their pigsty bodies afloat, some had snout shaped mouths spraying poisonous miasma, while others had stinger-shaped bottoms. The miasma made clouds of opaque poison, reducing our vison. I covered my nose and mouth with the sleeve of the kimono, my blade already slick with their greenish blood. The white-gold blade of tetseiga looked like lightning flashing through the murky purple miasma of the bugs.

Fortunately, the single attack sliced through most of the bugs. Very unfortunately for the rest of us, the bugs exploded spraying thick goop everywhere. I gaged in my mouth, so much for the new kimono.

“EWWW” Miroku moaned out somewhere in the background. I sliced through the bugs with the short-sword as they advanced, trying my best to avoid the goop, but I was already covered in green bug remains.

“I Just washed my hair!” Kagome screamed angrily, bombarding spirit arrows at the bugs. Sango and I ducked as the arrows sizzled past us, burning through their webbed wings and bloated bodies. They fell down with sad plops spilling out their mushy insides.

“Hiraikotsu!” With a big swoosh Sango’s boomerang cut through another wave of the bugs. The demon-bone weapon made a small opening in the miasma screen, pushing the poison away enough for us to gulp down fresh air. But within seconds the gap closed again, smothering us with the miasma again.

I retching as I stepped into one, the fucking smell. “There’s no fucking end to them!” I cried out, swinging the sword around. For every bug I sliced through, thrice more kept showing up. It was getting harder and harder to see, and my legs kept skidding over the dead bugs littered on the ground. All of a sudden with a very loud MOO, the cow dropped down on the ground, almost taking me with it. I screamed, rolling away from the yokai, very relieved that I wasn’t under it.

“Damn it, that’s it.” Miroku said finally. I watched him pull of the blue cloth pulled over his right palm, pulling away the prayer beads around it. The strange magic made itself known instantly. Something like anxiety curled in my stomach, Demon magic. Clearly that kind of magic shouldn’t be wielded by a human. The side-effects would be devastating.

It was like he had opened a portal to the underworld within his palm. The temperature around us dropped. The wind tunnel opened, causing a whirlwind of pure pressure to erupt around us. I yelped at the gust of wind sent my useless hair flying everywhere. The bugs tried to squirm away, but the pull of the wind tunnel was too strong, along with the miasma it continued to swallow the entirety of the bugs.

 We continued to slice through the remaining ones and within just a few minutes, most of the bugs were gone, the ones left were now buzzing away from us as fast as their wings could take them. My lungs heaved as the air cleared.

Miroku staggered as he covered his palm with his prayer beads again. Sango put a hand on his shoulders to steady him. How he was standing after absorbing all that miasma was beyond me.

“FLEE AWAY YOU LITTLE SHITS-“ Inuyasha continued to scream after them. The others were mostly ignoring him. I kicked away the bug remains around my feet, making my way towards the two yokai. Apart from being covered in bug-goo, everyone seemed unharmed.

Kagome picked off a bug from her hair. “Totosai, are you alright?” she asked, turning towards the cow and the old yokai that had almost crushed me. “Why were these bugs chasing you?”

Although the man himself looked alright, the long gash along the body of the three-eyed bull gave me the answer. The wound was quickly- healing, but it was ugly, like the touch of the blade had decomposed the skin around it. The gash on my chest throbbed painfully.

Naraku.

“That darn spider of course” Totosai mentioned, patting the snout of the cow, “How disgraceful for a warrior, to send lesser demons to do his dirty work, while he covers away in the shadows of the Kagewaki castle.”

“I don’t understand.” Sango said, “why did he send his minions after you?”  

Totosai looked grim, “Naraku has been trying to get to me for a while now.” He said. “Right since he started digging around in that place?”

Kagome and I exchanged a look.

“What place, Totosai-san?” Kagome asked hesitantly, not entirely sure she wanted to know at all.

His eyes narrowed, "In the narrows of Aselie. Nothing good comes from a place like that. I'm telling you,"

The world around me darkened. As if an invisible miasma had surrounded us just at the mention of the name of that place. 

“What is that place?” Kagome asked,

“It’s a trench” Miroku said, his face serious for the first time, “The monks called the closet thing to hell on earth.”

“The split in earth reaches far deep into the darkest parts of the underworld. It stretches across the mountain range separating the west from the eastern lands.” Sango explained. She shuddered, “My grandma used to say its cursed, the soil and the air itself. Anything that breathes that air, touches that earth becomes corrupted."

Inuyasha frowned, “Sounds exactly like the kind of place Naraku would love to go.” He said.

Kagome shook her head, “But why risk going there when his transformation isn’t complete yet? It must have something integral to offer him.”

Totosai clicked his tongue, “From what I could tell,” he replied, "They were mining for ores."

“Mining?” Kagome asked.

My mouth went dry, "He's trying to create a weapon."

Totosai nodded slowly, "Leave a metal ore under a valley like that to sit and hone over years, you're looking at a metal so concentrated with demonic energy, that it’s a being of its own. Something living and breathing."

I shuffled a laugh, "That's stuff out of myths and legends. "

“Just like the shikon jewel right?" Kagome said. I closed my mouth, "Good point."

“And he wants you to make this weapon for him?” Inuyasha scoffed, “The nerve of that asshole.”

Totosai took a ragged breath, "I told him I couldn’t. I have been a blacksmith for years, made thousands of powerful weapons. I know the craft like no other yokai. But there are limitations to even my skill. There are boundaries to welding that even I won’t cross.”

“The legends said that you cannot use ordinary fire to weld a metal like that. No matter how much I breathe down on it, or how long you leave it between flames. You can’t smelt an ore from the narrows with fire born on earth.” Totosai completed.

Cold fear crept up my spine, puzzles ticking in place. Well, fuck.  

"Fire on earth is alive, it lives and breathes. But Hellfire... that's something else. That thing crawls right out of hell, cold and bitter it drinks away everything, leaving behind only shadows." Totosai gave out a mocking laugh, “That’s what that fool wants.”

"Any blacksmith would just laugh at such stories, demonic rock, hellfire." Totosai continued.

"And even if he somehow finds a source for hellfire, there's no blacksmith insane enough to actually make one." He said, "And like hell, would I make one for that rat."

Miroku shook his head, "He'll find someone crazy enough or desperate enough to do it."

"Unless we crack his head before he gets to it." Inuyasha said, standing up at once.

"Sit back down." Totosai told him. "No ordinary blacksmith can create what he wants. That's why he tried to tail me down." he huffed out angrily.

“If Naraku gets his hand on the weapon he’s thinking of, it won’t matter what other defence we have against him.” Totosai warned, “It would increase his powers exponentially, there will be destruction like the eras have never seen. We cannot let it happen.”

“Don’t worry… trying to get the hellfire is impossible” I said. Hellfire was bestowed only to the fire clan of the east and there is no one here in the west who could use it, myself included. To go charging into the east for it… even naraku wouldn't be that stupid.

I pressed down my fear, forcing myself to take a breath. “Even if he gets the metal, he won’t be able to get hellfire. He can't.” I replied.

"The East Fire-demon clan has guarded it for eons. The hellfire is sacred to us, they have an oath to protect it with their lives. He'll end up starting a war just asking them for it." I said, reassuring myself with each word.

"Maybe he won't have to."

I looked at kagome and her face paled, a cold silence fell over.

“Wei.” She breathed out, “You said you were related to the fire clan of the east?”

I nodded, “Its a distant relation” I lied, “You can easily skip over it-“

“And the fire clan inherently can use hellfire?” She continued.

“Yes, All the Ayakashi born children.” I replied.

“Wei.” Kagome's tone was very grim, “Think very carefully, how did the warlords of the East get the hellfire originally?” she asked,

The answer came easy, I had heard the story thousands of times as a child, “The first fire wielder sought out the eternal beast, the primodal dragon.” I narrated out of memory, “He held the beating heart of the dragon after he slayed it and the magic flowed through him as the heart gave out.” I explained,

“That’s how power is believed to flow in east through death-.” my voice trailed away.

I gulped.

Kagome read my face, “I can tell you figured it out.”

Inuyasha looked at me deadpan, “Figured out what?”  

The next in line. The eldest, the dragon of the east. I felt bile rise in my stomach,

“He tried to pry me open once before, it must have been to rip out my heart.” I said.

Sango looked horrified, “Will it actually work? If he killed you like that? I mean you’re human and you don’t have those powers.”

I shrugged, “I don’t think he really cares.” Phantom pain erupted across my chest, right where he had dug his talons. You will learn the worth of human life after losing your own.

Let me rip out your heart demigod.

Maybe I really was fated to die.

❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧

“Alright everybody, no need to panic.” Miroku said, walking back and forth before us.

The rest of us sat crossed legged on the grassy fields as Sango peeled us an apple. Kirara huddled up close to me, the small demon offering some comfort in the situation. Totosai and the cow had flown off soon after dooming us with the news.  

“So,” He began, “Naraku has found this weird super-powerful ore, that is in this very dangerous place, which we know he would use for mass-destruction and genocide. He has also found a source for hellfire.” he completed pointing towards me.

“To extract it by killing you is a crazy idea and no one knows if it will work, but because it is Naraku we gotta give him the benefit of doubt. All in all, what we really have to do is get to the core before him and make sure you don’t die.” He told me, I smiled at him painfully.

“Right.”

Sango stood up, “Although we don’t know why he wants that weapon, we can’t risk Naraku getting any stronger. Knowing him, he wont rest until he gets it.” 

“We know that Naraku wont risk going to the narrows himself, not when his transformation isn’t entirely complete.” Kagome added. “At most he would send Kagura or karen to overlook the mining.”

Inuyasha nodded, “That’s right, if we go there and wreck that ore before he gets to it, he won’t have anything to make the weapon from.”

I shook my head, “If the ore is as powerful as Totosai mentioned, it would be like facing down an actual higher demon.” I reminded him, “How can you be so sure you’ll be able to destroy it?”

“Even if Inuyasha can’t wreck it.” Kagome started, she pointed the tip of her scared arrow towards me, “I might just be able to purify it.”

Miroku snapped his fingers, “That’s right! Our job’s done if we can dilute the demonic energy of the ore. Even if we can’t destroy it entirely, we can still render it useless for Naraku.”

Kagome looked at the sky, “How far are the narrows from here?”

“Two days journey, just north of these mountains.” Miroku replied.

Inuyasha swung tetseiga, “We better start moving then.”

“Before that,” Sango started, she turned to look at me, a little guilty.

I knew that look, “I’m coming with you all.” I stated. “There’s no negotiation.”

“No. its too risky.” Sango said atonce, she put a hand on my shoulder. “I hate to say this Wei, but the narrows are no place for a human.”

I stared at her, “Literally three and a half of you are all human.”

Sango frowned, “I know, but the narrows are high with ayakashi. Its too risky with your wounds to take you along.”

I rolled my eyes, “Kagome, back me up here, of course I should come right?”

Kagome’s face faltered,

“Seriously?!”

Kagome opened her mouth to say something, the world around us shifted. Static electricity like aura erupting around us. A familiar thrill ran down my spine, the call of my sword. I felt my heart skip a beat. No way-

The sudden spike in the tension around us, made everyone spin on their heels. Like lightning in all its power that crashed right into us, sending curls of steam to rise off the grass. The kind of raw anger I had felt so many times before.

Seeing him again, I felt as if all the wind had been knocked out of me. He was here. He had come here, let mrutyunjai lead him to me. My chest tightened, but not with the kind of pain my wounds caused. His eyes swept past everyone else, molten- gold orbs pinning on my frame at once. “S-sesshomaru?” I spluttered out in disbelief.

“Sesshomaru!?” Inuyasha growled out. The daiyokai snarled back dismissively.

The tension spiked, growing thick in the air. Sesshomaru looked like a madman, his elegant gait slipping. I couldn’t tell what it really was that was getting to him this badly, but his marking grew darker, snarl curling into something I had never seen.

Inuyasha’s grip on tetseiga tightened. I watched Kagome slide the bow off her shoulder, “Now why are you here?” she said. From all the shock all I could really do was blink at the situation stupidly.

“Inuyasha” He said venomously, voice sending chills down my spine.

His eyes slitted, “Get away from her.”

Kagome at least spared a moment to look confused, but Inuyasha was already charging. With a growl Inuyasha leapt at Sesshomaru, teeth baring. The aura around Sesshomaru crackled, his markings extending, eyes glowing crimson. For fucks sake-

“No! Stop him!” I cried out.

Thankfully Kagome came to my rescue, “DOWN BOY!” she yelled.

With the command it was like some invisible force had yanked Inuyasha back, slamming him mid-air, face down on the ground with a sickening crunch. The momentum he had, making him fold over himself. Within seconds Inuyasha sprawled on the ground. I winced, “You gotta teach me how to do that.” I told her.

The fall looked so dramatic that even Sesshomaru halted mid-way, taking a step back. Either to laugh or wince as well, but it gave me enough time to step in between them.

“Stand down, both of you!” I told them, using the same tone I used to discipline my familiar back home. Inuyasha painfully lifted his face from the ground. Both of them looked at me with the same stunned expression. Brothers. For sure.

“Put your swords away.” I continued, “There’s no need for that right now.”

My eyes found Sesshomaru’s face, I felt that strange twinge in my chest again. “Why are you here?” I asked him, once and for all.

His brow furrowed, as if he didn’t exactly have an answer to that question either. The silence was heavy with anticipation as the others in the background kept glancing between us. It’s like trying to move a mountain. I thought. But I stood my ground, I knew I couldn’t go back until I knew this. “Well?” I probed him further.

Something weighed down between us, far too much left unspoken. Sesshomaru finally lifted his chin, eyes narrowing, gaze intense enough to burn into me. But there wasn’t a shred of anger in it, it was something else entirely. Something so unyielding that I couldn’t fathom either.

“To take you home.” He said finally.

I let his words sink in. He had spoken as if he was making a promise.

“Wei” Kagome started,

“It’s okay.” I explained. “I have been travelling with him for a while. He-… he saved my life.” I said, giving her a reassuring smile. The genuine shock on Kagome’s face told me it didn’t happen quite often.

She walked to my side, fingers digging into my shoulder, “We can fight him off.” She promised, I doubted it but her concern was heartfelt.

 “I’ll be fine.”

Still unconvinced, Kagome gave me quizzical look, “Are you sure?” Inuyasha pouted beside her, for someone who hated Sesshomaru he seemed to be surprisingly calm about the situation. I remembered his words from before, he had spoken as if he had anticipated this happening.

I thought of Rin’s face, and how much it would relieve me to just see her again. The answer came easy, “Yes.” I told her. But that would also meant I would be bringing the shadow of dangers closer to her.

“Be done with this chatter now,” Sesshomaru snarled out, his eyes flicked towards me, “Do you not grow weary of these fools?”

Kagome gave out an annoyed grunt. It surprised me when she tackled me in a hug. I stumbled backwards right into Sango. The older female put her hand on my hair, “Take care of your wounds.” She said, giving me a back hug as well.

“My turn?” Miroku asked hopefully, but Sango swatted his hands away.

"We’ll meet you when we are back from the Narrows.” I could tell she still felt as though she was abandoning me, “Once, we get rid of the metal, it’ll be over.”

Sango gave me a reassuring smile, “It won’t take longer than a week.”

I watched my 10th sun set behind them. Faces that were strangers to me a day ago, now felt so hard to leave behind. If the prophecy was right… I knew I wouldn’t even see the end of this week, “Yeah” I said, my voice breaking, “I’ll see you in a week.”

I turned towards Inuyasha but it seemed like I had finally worn Sesshomaru’s patience. Wordlessly, his arm wrapped around my waist, he pulled me against his chest before I could protest, "w-wait a second-" I started but he already kicked us off the ground.

❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧ ❧

I screamed as we launched into the sky, my stomach jumping up my throat. My legs thrashed around helplessly and I scrambled for something to hold on to.

Sesshomaru growled in annoyance, as i dug into the fluff attached to his armour. Wrapping my legs around his waist. It would have been very embarrassing to be clinging to him but we were meters in the air.

I made the horrible mistake of looking down.

I screamed out again, holding him tighter. I was about to fucking die. In the middle of it I must have yanked on to his hair because he growled from the pain.

"Human-" he hissed out, "I'm not going to drop you."

"I don't trust you!" I screamed out, my heart hammering in my chest.

"Scream near my ear again and I will." He growled out.

But contrary to his words, he lowered us, we touched the ground and I leapt into the grass. It was cold like it had been drizzling recently. My body sunk into the smell of moist soil. The exhaustion of the previous days crashed into me. In the moment I had agreed to going back, but what was I doing?

I would be death no matter where I went. The pain, the anger, the fear all of it. My own disgust and hatred for myself burned inside me. I couldn't take it. I felt my shoulders heave, I was so tired.

“Human…” he started but I cut him off.

“Just leave.”

Sesshomaru stilled.

Why did you think you could have a home daughter of the hills?

I shook my head, “I can’t come with you, I can’t go back-“

Sesshomaru stared at the figure, for the first time a faint tremble ran through her body. A strange heaviness settled around him, “Do you not wish to come with me?”

I raised my head to look up at him, against the moonlight he looked unreal, his immortality glowing. So different, too different than me, "It’s not that I don’t want to. I told him bitterly, It’s that I can’t.”

I curled my fingers into fists, “That spider is going to tail me back there. It won’t matter where I go and who I’m with.”

I choked back a sob, “And the fucking truth of the matter is that I’m too weak.”

“I couldn’t do a thing.” I felt the long spider legs curl around my body again, “No matter what I did…” my voice trailed off, I was helpless. too helpless. I shook my head, finally letting the tears run down my face.

“Don’t you see?” I told him, “When he finds me again, I’m still going to be just that powerless against him." Hell rain suddenly pattered down, drenching the two of us, "And I can’t do that," my voice wavered, "I can’t do that to Rin! I won’t!”

“So please.” I told him, biting back every ounce of ego I had, “Just leave me here.”

I lidded my eyes, my heart stopped as he spoke.

"I am not leaving you." he completed. I was more expecting him to rage away, but his tone was that of a parent coaxing some child out of a tantrum.

“Why must you speak as if you hold the entire weight of the world alone?” He asked,

I watched as he crouched down. His fingers curled around my chin as he forced me to look at him, “He had already made an enemy of me.” He snarled out,

“If it is the spider you fear, then know this. To dare and threaten someone under my protection is to call upon an end worse than death.”

“After all, Naraku hasn’t faced you when you’re armed with your sword.” He added, “He should consider himself lucky.”

His fingers dug into my chin, as strange emotion glazed in his eyes,

“Or do you want other answers human?” He asked, his own breath ragged, “Answers for why this Sesshomaru continues to give a useless human like yourself such importance? For why have I not disposed of you already? Well aware of the annoying pests you will be bringing with you now?” He asked, his tone grew more erratic, more frustrated.  

“The truth is I myself do not understand why it is so. I do not understand why the thought of leaving you here seems to enrage me so much.” His eyes glowered, No answers to why the smell of Naraku’s miasma lingering on her body, makes him so angry he wants to shred that spider with his claws.  “So do not test my patience further.” Sesshomaru he said finally. “Is that understood, Wei?”

I nodded quietly. My heart still hammering in my chest. This was weird. This mortal form was making my heart race for no reason.

Maybe it was the exhaustion of it all, that I allowed him to touch me. His arms wrapped around my frame gently, cautious like I was made of glass.

I curled my fingers around one of the horns of his armor, putting my other hand over his shoulder. We leapt up into the sky again and I pinned my gaze on the stars.

❧

Parts: ❧ I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX❧

AHHHHHHHHHHH I'm finally done with this chapter, the next ones are gonna have some more angst get ready.