#trite but needs remembering

[thebibliosphere]

if this is too heavy to answer that's totally fine and you don't have to but

how do you keep going when the world is as awful as it is? it's getting harder for me to find reasons to do that because the US government clearly doesn't want me to live and I can't go anywhere else because I'm broke and disabled and so I just feel trapped and I've been in tears about it for the last hour.

and you've had to deal with so much more health bullshit than I ever have but you keep going and I just... how?

I hope this doesn’t come across as trite but in all sincerity: because I know there are other people out there fighting to keep folks like us alive because even though they don’t know us, probably won’t ever know us, they care for us anyway and want us to survive.

They might seem vanishingly few right now, but you need to remember, hatred is loud because it’s the only way these dipshits can be heard.

The people screaming the loudest right now? Are not in the majority. They are afraid of the progress that has been made over the last few decades and want to drag us back to a world where they feel in control. And to do that they need to be as loud and intimidating as possible because they are not the majority, they know they are not the majority, and that frightens them.

They’re playing a fascist game of chicken, hoping the rest of us will blink first, and I don’t pretend to know what’s going to happen. I won’t pretend I’m not terrified. That the things happening all over the world right now don’t feel hopeless and lost. But I refuse to blink first.

For myself. For you. For everyone.

And I take comfort in knowing I’m not the only one. I know I’m not. And I’m so incandescently furious at the state of the world right now that even just hearing some people speak makes my blood pressure spike so hard I syncope.

The last time I heard the vice president speak, my vision turned literally red then black and I woke up on the couch with a thudding headache and a heart doing its best to escape my rib cage.

But I pick myself up because I have no other choice, I take care of myself. I do what I can to avoid that level of overload. I avoid the news if I have to because there is a fine line at present between being informed and being overwhelmed. And then I go out of my way to be kind and help the people I can because it’s something I have control over and by god if I can make the world better for just one person, it’s worthwhile.

Take comfort in your people. Protect yourself and your community as best you can. Even if sometimes that means letting others comfort and take care of you for a bit.

I’m sorry you’re struggling so hard. But I promise you are not alone 💖

[thankskenpenders]

Thoughts on two specific areas of the writing in Sonic X Shadow Generations

The best new 3D Sonic game in over a decade (or even two, depending on who you ask) dropped late last year. And I didn't write anything about it! Sometimes life happens. Well, I've finally sat down to finish Shadow Generations, and by now everyone has already been singing its praises for three months. This is the rare instance where the entire Sonic fandom, and even mainstream reviewers, are in agreement on something. The level design is the best it's been in a long, long time and the cool factor is off the charts, embracing Sonic's peak cringe era in an incredibly confident way. It's great. If you're even reading this post, you probably don't need me to tell you that. So I won't!

No, what I'm really interested in here is the writing. Because this is me we're talking about. But I actually don't want to talk about the main narrative of Shadow Generations, which is really solid little story about Black Doom trying to mold Shadow into his perfect soldier. No, I'd like to zero in on two other aspects of the writing here: the revisions made to Sonic Generations, and Gerald Robotnik's unlockable journal.

The updated Sonic Generations script

The new package mostly presents Sonic Generations how you remember it. There are some tweaks, but it's not a major overhaul. Graphically, I don't think the game has been touched much, if at all. I certainly can't notice any difference without a side-by-side comparison, despite playing it on a PS5. The most notable update is that the game's script has been rewritten by Ian Flynn.

Naturally, this caught my attention. Generations always had a nothingburger story, so with Ian rewriting Pontac and Graff's lame dialogue there was nowhere to go but up. (I don't like to pin the blame for those games' stories entirely on them, as a ton of it was dictated to them by Sonic Team, but, well, I don't think they're very good dialogue writers.) But it's less a complete rewrite and more like Ian was brought on as a script doctor for some minor touch ups here and there. Many lines of dialogue are completely identical to how they were originally written in 2011, and many others only have slight wording changes. Ian was clearly not allowed to request additional scenes or extend the ones that already existed. He has to match the original beat for beat so that they can reuse 99% of the cutscene animations. Don't expect it to be a whole new experience compared to the original.

Still, I think the new script is an improvement, albeit a minor one. Various things have been tweaked to maintain characterization consistency. Cream calls Sonic "Mr. Sonic" instead of just "Sonic." Instead of calling Sonic "buddy," Rouge uses the pet name "Blue," like she tends to do in things like the IDW comics. Espio doesn't have to remind you in the dialogue that he's a ninja, and he no longer has a line making it sound like he has some kind of soul reading power. I also like that Modern Sonic now actually has responses to what his friends say when he rescues them, rather than being silent like Classic Sonic. They won't blow you away, but they make Sonic feel a little more engaged with everything.

In general, the altered dialogue just seems tighter to me, and some of the more childish or trite wording of Pontac and Graff's script has been altered. Here, let's actually make a direct comparison, just because this stuff is interesting to me as a writer. Here's a couple lines from after the Egg Dragoon fight late in the game, in the original script:

Modern Eggman: Ooooh... I can't believe this! I was supposed to beat you this time. Modern Sonic: Aw, I'm sorry! I didn't get that memo. I beat you every time! [Turns to Classic Sonic] No, seriously, we beat this guy every time. It's like it's our job or something!

This is a simple exchange. Eggman is mad that he lost. Sonic is unflappably confident because he always beats Eggman, and he explains this to his younger self. But the wording here isn't particularly good. Eggman's simple and direct wording makes him come off like a little kid who's mad because his older brother beat him at Mario Kart, rather than a mad scientist who just had his plans foiled. It's making light of the situation.

And I've never liked Sonic saying "It's like it's our job or something!" That doesn't feel like a thing Sonic would say, it feels like a thing an outside observer would say about Sonic. This is a frequent problem with so-called "MCU dialogue," where quips meant to echo the commentary of a casual, somewhat disinterested audience are inserted into the story itself so that the writers can be like "See? We get it. We're genre-savvy, too!" It also just reminds me of bad Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric lines like "Rings! It's like they're made for me!"

And then here's Ian's rewrite:

Modern Eggman: I recalibrated everything! This was supposed to be my time! Modern Sonic: Oh, please, keep dreamin', Egg-head. I beat you every time. [Turns to Classic Sonic] No, seriously, we beat him every time. Our score card's flawless.

Eggman's still mad about his defeat, but the line "I recalibrated everything!" makes it more specific. He put all this work into the engineering side of his latest scheme and got tunnel vision, thinking if he got his creations just right there'd be no way he could lose. "This was supposed to be my time!" also turns it into a time travel pun, which is a bonus. He's still pitching a fit over losing, but it feels more like Eggman pitching a fit, rather than sounding childish.

And then instead of saying that beating Eggman is "like his job or something," Sonic says he's got a flawless score card against Eggman. He doesn't take Eggman seriously as a threat—at least, not to his face. He acts like it's all a game. But he conveys this in a way that feels truer to the character, rather than feeling like the words of a real world observer poking fun at the tropes of the Sonic series.

Is this amazing, A+ dialogue that blows me away? No. Again, it's not a completely different scene from the one we already had. Ian had to fit the beats of what was already there. He couldn't go all out and write an all new story confirming his longstanding headcanon that the Time Eater is a remnant of Solaris or whatever. But the wording here makes the existing story land a little better and feel truer to the characters in subtle ways.

But to me, the main change is that the Sonics and Tailses seem to have a more solid understanding of what's going on with the timeline and the Time Eater, compared to how idiotic they sometimes seemed in the original game. Which is good! No more standing outside Green Hill and wondering why it seems so familiar. Thank god. As part of this, yes, there are a few more references to past games in the dialogue, like Sonic briefly being confused about the fact that they're time traveling without the Time Stones, or South Island and Westside Island being acknowledged as the normal locations of Green Hill and Chemical Plant. Yes, ha ha, insert joke about how Ian loves references here. Look, it's Sonic fucking Generations. It's a game built entirely out of nostalgic references. Just own it! And, again, in this instance Sonic and Tails come off as less stupid when they make it clear that they do, in fact, remember their adventures from presumably less than a year ago in-universe.

Eggman, too, seems to have a better understanding of the powers he's toying with. Where in the original vesion his focus was simply on going back in time to undo his previous defeats and he seemed kind of oblivious to how much the Time Eater was actually fucking up the universe, here Eggman says he wants to use the Time Eater to give himself complete control over the entire timeline. Eggman also makes way fewer references to his own failures and shortcomings. Of course he won't admit that Sonic has defeated him time and time again. To him, he's never truly lost—Sonic just keeps delaying the inevitable total victory for the Eggman Empire.

So, yes. The new Sonic Generations script is better. It won't blow anyone away, but it's better than it was. It's been elevated from "kinda lame" to "fine." No, if you really wanna see Ian flex his ability to breathe new life into old Sonic stories, look no further than...

Gerald Robotnik's Journal

Hoo boy.

The story of what happened aboard the ARK has always been... a bit confusing, to say the least. Fans with encyclopedic knowledge of the script for every route of Shadow '05 may disagree, but it's the truth. We've had all the pieces to understand the story for a long time now, but that info was given to us out of order by a pair of unreliable narrators—Gerald, who became a vengeful lunatic shortly before his death, and Shadow, who was subjected to multiple rounds of amnesia and altered memories. Some of the ambiguity left by Sonic Adventure 2 was cleared up in Shadow '05, but that game also retconned in a bunch of new elements to Shadow's backstory (aliens!) that lead to further confusion. Not to mention the fact that that game had multiple routes and only revealed the truth about Shadow if you sat on the ultimate final boss battle for WAY longer than the fight would normally last. Or the fact that Sonic X made its own tweaks in its telling of the story. Or the fact that none of these things ever had the best English translations. I can't blame anyone who hasn't played those games in two decades for not remembering the truth about these characters and getting some details mixed up.

What we needed was something to piece together all of the info we have into one coherent backstory, told in chronological order. And thanks to Shadow Generations, we have that, in the form of an official journal tying together what we knew from Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow '05, and Sonic Battle into the tragic tale of Gerald's rise and fall.

Ian Flynn was the perfect man for the job here as the guy who started his career by tidying up the mess that was the first 159 issues if Archie Sonic. This is what he excels at: taking disparate bits of weird Sonic lore from multiple different sources, boiling them down to their most interesting elements, and connecting it together in a way that will make the audience see the dramatic potential he's always known was there. Rather than feeling like a cynical exercise in franchise building, going back and explaining things that never needed explaining so that people can add more bullet points to the wiki, he puts a new spin on things that retroactively enriches those past stories. The story here means something to the characters involved and gives us a better understanding of them as people, rather than as plot devices to motivate Shadow.

(And, of course, Ian didn't do this journal alone. He wrote the story, but I also have to give a huge shout out to Evan Stanley, who made the final product. All of her handwritten journal entries, sketches, and "photos" included throughout. The physical damage done to the journal over the course of 50 tumultuous years, passing from Gerald to Eggman to a certain special someone at GUN. The way Gerald's handwriting gets less and less legible as his mental state declines. So much love was put into what could have been a mere text dump in a menu, and it really elevates it to the next level. Congrats on officially getting hired by Sega, Evan, you've sure as hell earned it!)

The main idea the journal conveys is that Gerald was under a lot of pressure from a lot of different parties—GUN, the President, his colleagues aboard the ARK, Black Doom, even his own family—and boy did it get to him. The known incidents aboard the ARK mentioned in previous games are put together here to form a story where everything slowly spirals out of control as Gerald keeps compromising his morals to further his research, thinking he'll eventually find some way out of all this because he's a genius. I won't recap that whole story here (if you haven't already played the game and read the journal entries, I would highly recommend at least reading it on the Sonic wiki), but I'd like to highlight my favorite elements of the story, as Ian tells it here.

1) The Eclipse Cannon

Here's something that never quite made sense in Sonic Adventure 2: why does the ARK have a laser that can blow up the Earth built into it? It was supposed to be a peaceful research colony. Sure, Gerald went crazy and swore revenge on the Earth, but, like... when did he have an opportunity to go back up to the ARK and modify it? Did he have someone else do it? How? The ARK was raided by GUN and shut down! And then they arrested him, held him in prison for an unclear period of time, and executed him by firing squad when he was no longer useful! It doesn't add up. Shadow 'the Hedgehog '05 would give its own answer by introducing the Black Arms and saying that the Eclipse Cannon was always supposed to be a secret trump card against the Black Comet. But, like... we know that's kind of a bullshit answer, right? You don't need enough power to blow up a whole planet just to destroy a comet.

Well, the new journal retains what we already knew, but it paints a much more complete picture.

See, long before Gerald ever made a Faustian bargain with Black Doom, he had already made one with an even greater evil: the military. GUN gave Gerald much of the funding for the ARK, Gerald's personal utopian research station in space, but it didn't take long for GUN to start pressuring him to design them weapons. Gerald tried to get GUN off his back by personally contacting the President of the United Federation, and the President gave him an alternative: how about, instead, you just use your genius brain to figure out the secret to immortality for us, so our soldiers can be immortal? Gerald was initially sickened by the notion and found it completely absurd, like chasing a shadow... but given no other option, the sarcastically named Project Shadow soon began in earnest. (Maria would later put a more positive spin on the name after Shadow's awakening, pointing out that a Shadow can show us the direction of the light, like she says in the game itself.)

Of course, this search for the ultimate life form didn't go very well, and without any results on that front GUN kept hounding him for weapons. Gerald would throw them a bone here and there to get them off his back. His research on Chaos resulted in the Artifical Chaos prototypes, which he worried would be used for warfare but could at least theoretically be used for search and rescue missions in floods, in his mind. But that wasn't enough. So he gave them Chaos Drives to power their mechs. And that still wasn't enough. He's got Emerl. He'll give them Emerl. They're not impressed by Emerl. They'll shut the whole ARK down if Gerald doesn't give them something big.

Fine! GUN wants something big? Gerald builds a huge fucking laser cannon into the ARK. However, as a middle finger to GUN, Gerald makes it so powerful that it would destroy the Earth if it was ever fired at any target on its surface. In other words, GUN now has their ultimate weapon of mass destruction, fulfilling his contract, but they can never actually use it. Oh, the delicious irony. (And also Shadow will blow up the Black Comet with it in 50 years yada yada yada.) Is this perhaps extremely shortsighted and naive of Gerald, to believe that such a weapon would never actually be used just because of the risk? Of course. But hey, that's Gerald for you. And I love this as an answer.

(Also, this, uh, kinda echoes something from real life! Remember the bit in Oppenheimer where he says all nuclear war will become unthinkable, and Edward Teller responds "until somebody builds a bigger bomb"? Yeah, Teller went on to conceptualize a superweapon codenamed Project Sundial that would have been able to kill all life on the planet, as the ultimate deterrent for war. This was never made for obvious reasons, but hey, there's a basis for this sort of thinking outside of heightened sci-fi! There's a whole Kurzgesagt video about this if you're interested.)

2) The Biolizard

The Biolizard is, of course, brought up as the initial failed prototype of the ultimate life form, from before Gerald met Black Doom. We don't really learn all that much about it that we didn't already know, but I just love the way it's framed in the story.

As you can see above, we actually get to see a picture of Maria holding up the cute little salamander that would end up mutating into the Biolizard through Gerald's experiments. (Researchers want to figure out how to replicate salamanders' regenerative abilities for humans in real life, too, so this was a natural starting point for the project.) And then, after it grows to a monstrous size and goes out of control, Gerald has to lock it away in an unused sector of the ARK. He needs to keep the poor thing alive for his research into harnessing Chaos Energy, building life support systems directly into it, but he doesn't have the heart to tell Maria what happened. So it just becomes this first dark secret weighing on his conscience. The Biolizard becomes Gerald's Tell-Tale Heart beating beneath the floorboards of the ARK. I love that.

3) Lost Impact was the breaking point for the ARK

Remember the level Lost Impact in Shadow '05? The flashback level on the hero path where Shadow is running around fighting Artificial Chaos enemies on the ARK 50 years ago? Yeah, that wasn't just a random incident. That was important, as we now know due to its placement on the timeline.

See, Emerl's rampage aboard the ARK that was chronicled in Sonic Battle and Dark Beginnings set off a domino effect. Emerl riled up the Artificial Chaos, causing Gerald to lose control of them. They became violent, and so Shadow had to stop them, as depicted in Lost Impact. The thing is, that incident sent an SOS signal to GUN telling them that shit was going down on the ARK. Gerald didsn't fully understand the trouble he was in and assumed that he'd simply be reprimanded by the higher ups, or maybe face legal action. But, well... the next time he heard from GUN, armed troopers were raiding the ARK.

So Lost Impact was the straw that broke the camel's back. I just really like that detail.

4) Maria

And, of course, there's Maria herself. Maria has often been more of a symbol than a character, this perfect embodiment of everything that's good and pure in this world who gets killed to motivate Shadow and Gerald's revenge plots. But I really like the wrinkles this journal adds to her and Gerald's story, and their relationship. This is the most fleshed out they've ever felt.

For one, the journal leans into the idea of Maria's intellectual potential. The rest of the Robotnik family is all geniuses, after all, and she was proving to be a really bright kid. She excelled in her studies on the ARK, and she even helped design Shadow's jet skates and inhibitor rings. When Maria died, the world didn't just lose a symbolic personification of purity. She genuinely could have been a hugely influential scientist who did so much good for the world. That's what Gerald wanted for her. But we'll never know, because GUN killed her.

Speaking of her family, their presence isn't just mentioned for the sake of fleshing out the Robotnik family tree. It's mentioned that as Gerald struggled to find a cure for Maria's illness through his genetic research, he faced mounting pressure from his family. They didn't want Maria to be up on the ARK forever. They wanted Gerald to hurry up and find a damn cure, or otherwise just send her back home to Earth so she could be with her family again. She'd been up on the ARK for so long that Gerald's coworkers started thinking that she had been born up there. Eventually she gains a baby sister on Earth who she's never met. A rift forms between Gerald's two sons, and he's unable to really deal with it because he's so consumed by his work. There's this sense that the family is falling apart, and that everyone is dreading the possibility that Gerald will never find a cure and that Maria will just spend her final years up in space and die far away from her family, because Gerald just couldn't let go. If that happens, it'll break the whole family. But he can't stop now. So he just keeps working. Curing Maria is the only way to win his family back, in his eyes. It can't all be for nothing.

But my favorite detail regarding Maria is this one paragraph:

Maria is growing into a lovely young woman. It breaks my heart that someone as bright and energetic as her is diminished by disease. There are no visible effects, and I've caught my fellow researchers muttering to each other, doubting her illness. It is infuriating. I find all my reason and restraint vanishes when she's slighted.

This is SUCH a great addition to the story! It's always been true that Maria doesn't really seem all that ill, just looking at her in cutscenes. With this one little comment, Ian flips that issue on its head and turns it into a story about invisible disability. She doesn't act like she's in chronic pain, so she must not be, everyone thinks. And this really, really gets to Gerald, as does the pressure from his family. He's dedicating his whole LIFE to saving her, and they think she's faking it?! It's such a small addition, never referenced elsewhere in the journal, but it adds so much flavor to the story, as does the implied family drama. It grounds Gerald and Maria and makes them feel more like real human beings, rather than being pure archetypes. It's just enough info to let my imagination run wild filling in the blanks.

You also get the feeling that Maria being such a walking ray of sunshine was the only real source of joy Gerald had left in his life before Shadow was awakened, and the only thing keeping him from snapping under pressure sooner. All this stuff just keeps piling on, everything's spiraling out of control, but at least Maria is keeping her chin up, right? It makes so much sense that losing her would make him go off the deep end when it's framed like this.

It's just... man, I never thought I'd care so much about Gerald and Maria. But that's the Ian Flynn touch. After years of less than stellar Sonic writing that seemed to be embarrassed of itself, I'm so happy to have new games coming out that fully embrace the history of the series like this, making its world feel so rich and real instead of just serving as an excuse for a string of platforming levels. I don't even like Shadow '05, but I'll be damned if Ian and the rest of Sonic Team didn't make something amazing by "yes, and"-ing Shadow's cringe past here. Sonic has truly reached levels of "we're so back" never thought possible.

[copperbadge]

Recently I ran across an article about an art center that was doing creative expression classes for people with disabilities. Not that unusual, I've encountered that and trauma-oriented art therapy before, but it was the first time I'd come across the idea since getting diagnosed with ADHD. While the class was aimed more at high-needs disabilities, it occurred to me that I could -- if I wanted -- make non-prose art about being disabled.

Outside of my work in scene design I've never been much of a visual artist because I've never felt I had the combination of "something to say" and "a meaningful way to say it", but I started to question how meaningful and complex I really had to be to just make some statements about having ADHD. I can do it in prose, after all.

So I started thinking about how you would talk, in visual language, about things like time blindness, shame stemming from undiagnosed disability, the shift in behavior that medication can induce. Ways to express my condition to people who don't experience it. I still didn't really know how to build the pieces but whenever I went to an art museum I'd think about how I might do a gallery installation. The centerpiece of my mental gallery was a pair of barcodes, one marked "Neurotypical" and one marked "Neurodivergent".

[ID: An interior view of a small booklet, with pages marked 1 and 2, showing barcodes -- on the left, labeled Neurotypical, and on the right, in slightly weirder configuration, labeled Neurodivergent.]

And then I thought, why not make a zine? Nothing you're thinking of couldn't be put in zine form instead of on a gallery wall.

[ID: The booklet continues to pages 3 and 4; on page 3 is a postage-style label reading AUTISM with up arrows on either side, and on page 4 is a QR code labeled ADHD. The QR code technically should work but it just dumps a block of text I wrote about having ADHD into a browser.]

I grew up with zine culture in the 90s and I always wanted to make one but much like with visual art, I never felt like I had the right kind of thing to say; either I had too much to say or too little, and anyway I wasn't confident that what I wanted to do wouldn't just come off as trite and obvious. But you can make a six-page zine out of a single sheet of paper, so I did: I made Helpful Labels For Strange Brains by idab zines, a division of Extribulum Press. (i--dab is a term for a cuneiform tablet that contains a royal communication.)

[ID: The last two pages feature the same image -- a cereal bowl with a spoon in it, the spoon containing a single Adderall pill. One image, however, is captioned "Wake up. Pour yourself a cup of iced coffee. Fix a bowl of cereal. It's going to be a good day." while the other is covered in a detailed ADHD-style step-by-step process for the same actions, culminating in "It's going to be a day like that."]

I'm pretty pleased with how it came out -- the art all looks intentional and it still has that "taped this together after school" aesthetic I remember fondly from the 90s. And the confines of six pages, each only a few inches square, offers a good structure to keep things clear, simple, and meaningful.

[ID: The cover of the zine, labeled "Helpful Labels For Strange Brains" in a kind of esoteric stampy font.]

Especially nice is that if you wanted to you could just hand out the flat sheet, and let folks fold it into a booklet or not -- there's instructions for folding it on the back of the zine. Additionally I have some sticker backed printer paper so I could print it such that you could literally turn the labels into real labels.

Anyway if you want it, here ya go. You can print it on a single sheet of paper and follow the instructions on the back to fold it. I thought about selling it but I do not have the spoons to do a bunch of printing and folding and shipping.

[qqueenofhades]

I'm not sure I understand what's happening (in a good way, lol). I got an email from ACLU that called Project 2025 'weird and obsessive policy'. Never seen progressives so united on a single style of insult

Listen. LISTEN. I am not only Deliberately Looking At Twitter (tm) today, I am willingly and eagerly doing so. I am refreshing it often. I am eager to see more. @silverbirching and I are sitting at our respective places of work just trading political memes back and forth on WhatsApp and laughing at JD Vance's absolutely can't-make-this-up-it's-so-bad failures. We have been so desperate not to talk about politics all year and we are now doing it, happily, all the time.

And that's because Twitter today is kind of incredible? People are just dunking on Republicans left and right. Republicans are dunking on other Republicans (Liz Cheney bodied JD Vance, to nobody's surprise). Republicans are trotting out tired old talking points/trite old stupid attacks and everyone, everyone, is just going "lol sure. Nice try, weirdo," and posting more pictures of Kamala's ginormous Wisconsin crowds and the even-more-ginormous Michigan rally that hasn't started yet but needed to be moved to an honest-to-god airport hangar since more than 50k people RSVP'd. People are gleefully savaging JD Vance for stalking Kamala at the airport and his sad little Eau Claire warehouse rally (and referencing Four Seasons Total Landscaping) at the same time there are 12k+ people at the Harris/Walz party. People are making Coach Walz jokes and Minnesota Dad memes. People are having fun.

I don't know what's going on. I genuinely don't, but there's just the tiniest possibility that we somehow fell back into the Good Timeline on July 21, and we can stay there if we do the right thing. And wow. Wow. Some of you younguns might not remember Obama's first campaign in 2008, but: It felt like this. And because of how short-notice and impossible this all has been, 2024 is even more incredible. So like. There's real, genuine hope for the first time in a while, and I don't know how, but good goddamn.

[punkitt-is-here]

Hey, a little while ago you reblogged a post which says "If you believe a group of trans people has systemic privilege over another group of trans people, you are transphobic." This isn't a callout post or anything so trite, but I think I really respect you as a person, and so I wanted to ask you to think a little more carefully about that statement:

Does a white trans person really not have systemic privilege over a black trans person? Does a neurotypical trans person not have systemic privilege over a neurodivergent trans person? Does a trans man not have systemic privilege over a trans woman? Do you need to be transphobic to believe that?

Agh, I don't really know why I'm sending this. It just feels like the trans community writ large has been regressing pitifully in its understanding of intersecting axes of oppression, and it's really miserable to see that and not know what to do about it.

Sorry to bother you with this, I hope you have a lovely day.

i think i remember your message from a bit back! meant to get to that, but forgot to. i dont got the post on me, but it seems clear to me from what i remember that it was talking exclusively about gender when it was talking about one trans person having systemic privilege over the other. I think many of us already know that a white person is going to have far more systemic privilege than a non-white peer, and that neurotypical people have more systemic privilege over neurodivergent people. this is true whether or not they are trans. I think the post assumed in good faith that we can intuit this and the post doesn't need a million disclaimers for every power imbalance out there.

And I will say, I don't believe a trans man has systemic privilege over a trans woman, thats the whole posts point! Maybe some do, but I'm sure there's an equal number of people in the reverse situation. Disregarding the idea that becoming a man automatically gives you the same privileges as a cis one, there is an extremely wide, near-infinite spectrum of how gender presentation and gender identity intersect, and acting like all trans people of a certain gender have privilege over another IS transphobic. The posts point, from what i recall, is that its shitty to create little microgroups and assume others are your enemy in a privilege pyramid, because we are all trans and therefore we all need to lift each other up.

I'm not really gonna think on it more because I don't have the post but disregarding the systemic privileges that are factored in aside from being trans is fine because I dont think every post needs to cover every alternative point in the entire world because sometimes when you're making a post you just hope people will intuit the obvious. otherwise, nothing concise would ever exist.

[thursdayinspace]

For today's morning smutlet, I was having feelings about early season 2, because I always have feelings about early season 2 so that's not special. Buuuuut my head was like "omg imagine they'd lost all hope of the files ever being reopened? And they'd decided there was really no point denying their feelings anymore? I mean look at the way they look at each other; THEY'RE IN LOVE YOUR HONOR. Anyway. Smut.

“This is such a bad idea,” she says, but she can’t keep the smile off her face and he can’t remember ever being this happy.

“A terrible idea,” he agrees. He kisses her lips, her nose, her cheeks, her forehead, her lips again. She’s naked beside him on her bed and she’s as gorgeous as he tried so hard not to imagine for so long.

“But why is it a bad idea again?” she asks, and he pulls back, shaking his head, trying to come up with a reason.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “Maybe it isn’t.”

She doesn’t mention work, for which he is grateful, but he knows she’s thinking the same thing he’s thinking. The fact that the files are closed, probably forever, hurts like hell, the fact that they may never work together again hurts even worse, but the fact that they no longer have any reason to deny themselves this makes up for all of it.

“I think I don’t care,” she says, and he agrees. None of it matters. All that matters is her. Them.

Her skin is soft under his hands, under his lips as he kisses his way down her perfect body. She’s wet for him and he’s so hungry for her. She tastes like heaven. Her hands come down onto his head and she lets out a soft, eager whimper as he explores her, licks between her folds, flicks her clit with his tongue, sucks it between his lips. Testing and learning how to draw sounds from her, how to make her thighs clench and tremble, how to make her lose control. It takes her a while but he doesn’t care, he’d do this forever. And when she comes he almost comes with her; the knowledge that he did this for her is almost enough to push him over the edge. Instead, he makes his way back up to her, rests his head over her pounding heart and feels like he could fly.

He waits until her breathing has calmed, until she rolls onto her back and pulls him with her, drawing him on top of her. The metaphor is so trite and cheesy and he never liked it, but he feels it in this moment: sliding into her feels like coming home. She’s tight and hot around him and they’re connected, their bodies following where their hearts went long ago. *I love you*, he thinks, but it’s too soon. Maybe tomorrow. He doesn’t know if he can wait much longer than that to tell her, tell her what he now knows he’s been feeling since last year in Oregon.

Moving in her feels like the most natural thing in the world. She clings to him and keeps her eyes locked with his, and he can see it, he can see his feelings reflected back to him. He thinks he might cry but what comes out instead is a laugh of pure joy and gratitude that makes his head spin. She grins at him and cards her hands through his hair, and he lets his forehead drop against hers and rolls his hips harder, making her gasp and grip onto his biceps with surprising strength. He wants her to leave bruises.

Her legs come up around his waist and he thrusts into her in a rhythm set by need, but he feels no urgency, no desperation, none of the things that squeezed like a vice around his heart these past few weeks.

When she comes a second time, he can’t hold back any longer, and his orgasm hits him so hard he can’t breathe, and it’s release and relief and a gift from her all at the same time.

She falls asleep in his arms that night and he stays awake for as long as he can, not wanting to miss a moment. If he couldn’t think of a reason not to do this earlier, he knows now that they’re never going to be able to stop. Another trite and cheesy phrase he’s heard too often and never liked, but suddenly he understands: when you know, you know. And he knows. He knows.

[yunuen]

as a writer/artist myself i know firsthand how often the moments that you specifically think to yourself “oh *this* right here… this specific beat or choice or turn of phrase is really gonna knock em dead” end up not being what your audience cites back to you as particularly standing out and instead it’s moments that you hardly thought twice about—or if you did you considered them the more trite or uninteresting parts of your larger work—that are unpredictably what especially move your audience. so i’m not sure if this was a line/sentiment that you expected to impact people so strongly when you wrote it or if you just kinda moved through it but i feel compelled regardless to share that i have not been able to stop thinking about “you’re like a fractal” and vik’s explanation thereof as an expression of love and transfixion and wonder. just such a stunning and apt and provocative thought that i’m going to keep turning over in my mind yes in the context of this work and this pairing but also far beyond it. thank you thank you as always for this chapter and the incredible reminder of the unfathomable value of fic and online art communities and the work people contribute to them. hope you’re having a good day

what a fucking nice message. thank you so so much for taking the time to reach out!!!!! in this case i gotta admit i just knew i wanted viktor to say something silly and weird that could then be reworked into something incredibly romantic. basically i already wanted jayce to go "wait what" and i needed the line. i don't remember all my options but i considered using catalyst, prism, magnetic field... i don't remember how i stumbled upon fractal but it seemed the most fitting image for someone tripping balls and i liked the idea of a neverending loop you can't look away from. it was basically the result of googling sciency stuff until i found something that i thought would fit the bill so i feel like i def did not plan this line to cause a stir but i'm glad you liked it!!!!! it's not one of those likes that made me go like "really? this one?" because it did take me a while to get there so it's a result of hard work :)

[inquisimail]

dai love interests' letters to the inquisitor in veilguard, if anyone was curious to see them. transcriptions in alt text & under cut

Amatus,

I'm writing. Again. Yes, the sending crystals still work and yes, you'll be in Minrathous in a few short weeks. But a letter, written in blind longing, is real. It can be touched, and it can be held, when ink and paper must substitute for your skin on mine and my breath in your ear.

I used to scoff at frequent declarations of affection. Trite, I thought. Save them for rare and precious moments. But time and love are no longer things I care to squander, especially not as we race again toward calamity. And so, in each of these fleeting, ephemeral seconds, I will tell you that I love you. Whether penned or spoken, or conveyed by glance or action, I love you. In this moment, and in all the moments to come, for as long as they do, I love you.

I will find you soon.

Yours, Dorian

---

My love,

You have summoned me to Minrathous, and I will answer your call, as soon as responsibilities here in the South allow. I have missed being by your side.

Will these troubles be the last we face? The world seems always to conspire, through duty or disaster, to pull you away from me. I do not resent it. You are dedicated to purposes far larger and more significant than myself. I hope you do not think me a fool for hoping that one day, your only concern will be the color you wish our walls to be painted, or the flowers we will plant beside our gate. I'm partial to carnations.

Yours always, Thom

---

My love,

We are no strangers to duty, or the separation it demands of us. You head for Tevinter, and though I want to go with you, there is work we both must do. I will not falter in the tasks that wait before me and I pray my actions, in whatever measure they can, will keep you safe.

The others see only confidence in my resolve, but you have always known more than mere appearance. I confess to you, and you alone, that I am afraid. I'm afraid of what may happen, that Thedas will face such turmoil as it did before. I know not what awaits us. Yet even in the face of uncertainty, there are two things I cannot doubt and never will. The first is that our paths are never separated long. That I will find you at my side when I need you, as you will find me at yours. I will play my part in this and follow as soon as I can.

The second thing I never doubt is you. Whatever lies before you, trust yourself. Trust your heart as I trust it. It will not lead you astray.

Yours, Cassandra

---

Hey, Kadan,

Not the first time we've marched toward different battles. I know you're keeping the crap from catching fire up in Tevinter. Wish I could be there, but I'll make sure there's a world for you to come back to when you're done dealing with crazy vints and stupid Antaam and whatever other crap Solas kicked up. (Shit, the Antaam. Remember when I was worried what would happen if I went tal-vashoth? That right there!)

I know you're gonna be careful, and you've got Morrigan there. Just take care of yourself. If anything happens to you, I'm going to have to take Krem and the Chargers and stomp across all of Tevinter to come get you. It'll be a whole thing, and you know it'll upset Dorian.

Being apart from you made me realize something else. I spent so long being whatever the Ben-Hassrath wanted me to be. An investigator. An agent. A mercenary sending reports. These past years, since the Inquisition ended, I've been able to be just what I want to be.

And what I really want to be is yours. I like the person I am when I'm with you.

So come back safe.

Love, The signature appears to be a stylized rendering of the Iron Bull's head.

---

(An artistically doodled journal page presumably from the Inquisitor's partner, Sera.)

Keep this as close as I need you. (A drawing of a pile of flowers, with lines like it's moving, an arrow pointing to it labeled "us.")

North again, Mini-wrathus still stuck up its own pucker.

Magiturds are scared of us. They don't even know.

We work with Maevaris, right? She's wow.

So many Friends! Jennies in all the walls!

We kill him this time. He took from us twice! (A drawing of a cracked egg scribbled out, with "can't even joke" in letters that tore the page.)

Still thinking of you sideways.

Never mind the Dalish, here's the Veil Jumpers! Tempest-kin! (A drawing of a tall, shorthaired elf (Sera?) and Irelin brandishing two fingers, backflipping as a tree explodes in runes.)

The memory thing makes my head spin. If that Rook doesn't take it, throw it out.

Tell Morrigan ppbbth! for me.

I'll also tell her ppbbth! She knows why.

Tell them to Stripe. Him. Up. I wanted more books. (More heavy scribbles that tear.)

You meet; I'll keep you safe. Then I'm your time off, and you're my time on.

(The last section has different colored inks, like Sera has returned to it several times.)

New naked names: -Sweet-tits (scribbled out) -Bestest (scribbled out) -Loverly (scribbled out) -Lovey (scribbled out) -My-for-always-and-ever - name's not too long, time's too short. -But "Sweet-tits," though (scribbled out)

---

The top of the letter has been punctured by small, sharp teeth, leaving most of a beloved name and a few sentences too chewed to read.

I fear the puppy started on this letter shortly after I did. I'd start over, but I must send this tonight if it's to reach you. Matters are settled here and I make for Tevinter as soon as possible.

I almost believed chaos might spare us this time. I can't say I wished to see Minrathous before now, but I am eager to see you. I long to see your face and know that you're all right. You are— I've— There's— I wish that I was better at putting into writing all that's in my mind. For now, simply know that I love you. It is the most cherished constant of my life.

The days ahead will not be easy. I know there's much you carry, more than many realize. But whatever you must face, you will not meet it alone. You have my sword, my counsel, my—I could write this list forever when all I mean to say is this—

Whatever you need of me, I am yours.

Cullen

---

My Dearest Lady, / My Dearest Lord,

I have spoken to friends in Minrathous. They offer us their hospitality, not to mention shelter from the worst intrigues of the Archon's Palace. While you're well acquainted with the roving eyes of grand courts, please take care. Tevinter's regard can be the oldest and cruelest of them all.

The family writes the weather back home is beautiful. I do miss our quiet times together.

There is a question I've wanted to ask you for so long. I would like to pretend I have been busy, or it was not the proper time. But, if I am being honest, I only waited because I have been afraid of choosing a poor moment. Please, let me make a promise to you here.

When we return to Antiva, I will ask you, on the steps of the estate, if you will do me a great honor. And I dream you will say yes.

Always yours, Josephine

Postscript: I cannot believe it nearly slipped my mind. Yvette and Lord Otranto send their best wishes, and hope to see us back home in time to welcome their third child.

[jasper-unofficial]

Hi sorry I’m new here. Why do so many people hate scarlet heart? I know nothing about it except that it’s a remake or something. Is it the show itself that people don’t like or something else about it?

hi! no need to apologise hfkdjfkdjd

so the short answer is that we are all queer bullies here who wish to shun cishets.

the slightly longer answer is that we are all queer bullies here who hate that a company is wasting an enormous amount of its time, money, and other resources to produce a series that is not only trite by vurtue of being a cishet romance (<- remember the short answer) but also trite by virtue of being a remake of a remake of a remake. especially because said company could genuinely invest all that time, money, and other resources into either more qls or a bigger production of already planned ones (in the case of gmmtv, this is not a hypothetical "i wish there was more gay media / more gay media with high production value" - this is literally what would happen if they decided to make something else instead of an overproduced cishet romance that's been made three times before).

all of those apply to me, but a more personal answer has to do with the fact that the last time phuwin was busy with a different series while a bl was filming / coming out, it created really unfortunate scheduling conflicts that kept him or often both him and pond out of events and other promo, which is an experience i fear we will have once again with 'me and thee'. on top of that, a number of other actors, who are presumably meant to start working on their own bls soon, are also starring in 'scarlet heart', so i would imagine some parts of their fandoms are having an experience similar to mine, but with their respective actors.

[miniscule-meow]

Chapter One: In Accordance with Duty (Something Unexpected, rewritten)

I've talked about redoing this story for actual years. I'm finally doing it!

Masterpost

Wordcount: ~2.5k

---

It isn’t clear what wakes him from his slumber: the pale morning light filtering in through the thin curtain, the strong calloused hands that hoist him roughly out of the bed, or the shrill scream coming from his bedmate. The question of who to blame doesn’t truly matter. He’s wide awake now- unfortunately.  It is entirely too early for any of this to be happening. It is his personal opinion that all excitement should be reserved for the afternoon hours. This kind of kerfuffle happening at the break of dawn is simply criminal.

The girl… Cathrine? Cassandra? It was something that began with the letter ‘C’, he’s sure of that much. Or, well, maybe it was a ‘K’ name. Regardless, the girl that definitely has a name, yanks the sheets to cover herself.  Their clothes are scattered across the room, evidence of the desperation they had to get them off the night before. He doesn’t have the luxury of a sheet. He’s pulled from the bed and left standing in front of two guards.

Royal guards. He realizes, seeing their blue and gold tabards with the eagle’s crest on the front. That just might prove to be a bigger problem than his current lack of skivvies. He searches his mind for any sort of trouble he might have caused that would garner the attention of the crown.

“Get dressed,” barks one of the guards, and he is happy to oblige, glad that he at least won’t be dragged through the streets in the nude. He staggers to his dresser, pulling on the crooked drawer. The stubborn thing takes a bit of coercion before it allows him access to its contents.  

“Am I under arrest?” He asks, stepping into a pair of pants and fastening his belt.

“The prince requested your presence. You’re late,” the other one huffs, a frustrated impatience settled in his tone.

“Oh, right,” he muses. He knew he had been forgetting something. He remembers now, of course.

The letter is right before him, haphazardly tossed to the top of his worn dresser, below the shattered mirror. He had barely had time to read it before he was called to join in on the festivities of the evening.

“You are summoned to appear before His Royal Highness, Oliver Reihan Alendreas, Crown Prince of Xelith. You will present yourself at sunrise. There will be no excuses. – O”

Right. It's just like Oliver to flaunt his full name, full title. It is a not so subtle reminder of what he has, and what Deckard does not. Now, he's sending guards to drag him there.

Nothing can ever be simple with him.

“The meeting could have begun at a more reasonable hour,” he comments, lacing his boots.

“You deign to say the crown prince is unreasonable,” the guard questions pointedly.

“Nay, just that the hour be unreasonable, my good man.”

---

“My lord,” He enters the room with a sweeping theatrical bow to the royalty before him. Overkill, of course.

The prince is silent for a moment. His polished boots click against the equally polished marble flooring as he approaches.

“Deckard,” he greets him tersely. His nose crinkles in disdain as his eyes rake over the bard.

“I am honored to be summoned into your private chambers.” Deckard straightens with a grin. “It is, of course obvious that I would be chosen to have audience with the heir, being one of the most masterful wordsmiths of this generation and all. What, that I were but a—”

“Must you subject me to the drivel that you call poetry.”

“I was under the impression that I was summoned for the drivel.”

Oliver exhales sharply through his nose. “I need you to write for me.”

“Certainly your handwriting isn’t that bad! You should have a little more faith in yourself.”

“Deckard,” he warns, his tone heavy with fatigue. “I just need a few love letters.”

“Oh? Your majesty,” Deckard gasps, as though he’s been made privy to a royal scandal. “I was unaware you were courting.”

“Don’t be trite,” he snaps, “This is a matter of duty, not frivolous courtship.”

“Ah, that’s exactly what all the romantics love to hear,” he stifles a laugh, clearly enjoying himself. “I should have brought my quill to write down all of your witty one-liners.”

“You are to remain here until your task is complete. You’ll be given quarters in the west wing.” He speaks quickly, as though his goal is to dismiss Deckard as quickly as possible.

Deckard dramatically slaps a hand to his chest.

“You mean to imprison me? To strip me of my freedom- my beloved hovel, with its delightful mildew, and crookedly hung door?”

“It’s quarters, Deckard,” The prince says dryly. “You’re being supervised, not sentenced.”

“The west wing, you say? Are you giving me my old room?” Deckard asks, the infuriating mirth stripped from his tone, this is a genuine question. The prince straightens.

“Well, it only makes sense. Unless you would prefer a linen closet.”

“The west wing will suffice,” he says, too quickly. “But oh,” his theatrical tone is back, as if it never left, “how I will miss the familiar comforts of a leaking roof, and my upstairs neighbors who would serenade the nights away with their drunken arguments. But it is my duty, to the crown.”

“I expect a letter by tomorrow,” Oliver responds, as unamused as ever.

"Do I get to know anything about your soon-to-be beloved?"

"So that you might gossip with the maid staff?" He quirks a brow.

"It's just that it would be quite the challenge to woo a subject that is entirely unknown," Deckard frowns.

“I thought you were ‘one of the most masterful word smiths of this generation’?” The prince smirks, having cornered the bard in his own game.

“Oh, clever. You might be my brother yet,” Deckard concedes, a sly, lopsided grin pulling across his features as he realizes the prince is just toying with him.

In an instant, the prince’s palm cracks across Deckard’s cheek. He staggers from the blow, hand flying to his face. His grin sufficiently wiped clean.

“You will not speak to me with such familiarity,” his voice is boiling. Lethal. “Whatever putrid blood you have flowing through your veins does not grant you the right to address me as such. You are a dog who knows tricks. And you will do your trick, or I will find another mutt who can.”

After a beat, Deckard straightens slowly. His cheek is already blooming red.

“Of course, your majesty.” His voice comes quietly. Not sheepish, but something else. Something raw, restrained.

The prince straightens. “She is a fae noble. A political pawn. Write what she wants to hear.”

“Understood,” is all he says, staring at the floor.

“I’ll have someone escort you to your room.”

And with that he’s dismissed. He follows a guard down to the west wing. It’s been ages since he’s walked through these halls. Not much has changed. The scent of fresh flowers, and floor wax still permeates the air, like it always has. The floors are still polished until you can see your reflection in them. There are still intermittent displays of art, statues, paintings. The curtains are a different color now, lighter for the spring, he would suspect. He walks in silence, down the grandiose, twisting corridors, until he comes to a halt in front of a very familiar door.

His room.

He nods to his escort before stepping inside.

It feels like he’s stepped through a portal to another time. A better time? He isn’t convinced, but it was a time when he still had hope that things could be better. That they would be better.

The door clicks shut behind him, he leans against it for a moment, unable to bring himself further into the room. Not just yet. How odd it is to feel like an outsider in a place that once you called home.

But, he was never truly home here, was he? This stone fortress, this stuffy room, with its patchwork memories woven into the threadbare tapestry of his life. Hardly something he would deem worthy of the title: home. He’s found places more like home in crowded taverns, on stages, with his real family, the people he chose as his family. He's never been on the best of terms with his brother- well, his half-brother.

They don't share too much in common. Their temperaments vary drastically, their interests aren't similar in the slightest. He supposes they have a similar face structure- strong jaw, sharp eyes, broad nose. But the similarities end there.

Deckard is taller, by about a head. His muscle is present, but lean. He could be described as "gangly", on a bad day, and if someone was being rather rude. Oliver on the other hand is not a large man, but he is more broad, solid looking, filled out. He's a man that's trained with a sword, for purposes of protection and bloodshed; not just for playacting, which is all the experience Deckard has on the matter.

Oliver's features are more fair- lighter hair, hazel eyes. He favors his mother, all things considered. Deckard's hair and eyes are both dark as night, favoring his father, much to the chagrin of everyone. It is unmistakable, undeniable who sired him.

When they were younger his bond with Oliver was amicable, but over the years they split apart and the air between them soured. It's not like Deckard ever posed a threat to him. Even as a spare, his claim to the throne is wildly unlikely. The situation would need to be dire, and even then, they could probably find someone else.

He wouldn't want the pressure of it anyway. Leave him with his wine to drink, his songs with which he may earn his coin- for more wine- and his rotating cast of strangers warming his bed. He's content with this life. He doesn't need the weight of a crown on his head and the weight of a kingdom on his shoulders.

He can understand why his family has so much contempt for him. He himself being a messy blot of ink on a crisp white sheet of parchment. He is the smudgy fingerprints on an otherwise clean window. Through no fault of his own, he’s an embarrassment to the crown. His great crime of being born has made him a disgrace. He is a mistake serving as a reminder of other mistakes.

Welcome home.

The room has been left untouched, aside from the routine cleanings to keep the dust at bay.

His cheek throbs, hot and angry. You just had to run your mouth, Deckard. Prodding at things that you know very well are to be left alone. He sighs, chastising himself. Well. That’s all I know to do. He responds in kind.

He glowers at the stillness, the silence already creeping under his skin. He was not made for isolation, he was made for busy streets and crowded rooms. He turns, opening the door. There is no guard posted outside his room; Oliver knows him well enough to not give him a captive audience. But he does know that guards will be roaming the halls at regular intervals. So, taking stock of the situation, He has no one to talk to, but also, nowhere to go. Brilliant. Devious.

He sighs, entering his childhood room once more. He crosses the threshold fully this time. Boldly crossing the room and throwing open the curtains. The morning sun has crested the walls and is spilling a honey-gold light into the courtyard. Lovely view. It almost makes him forgive the day for making him participate so early… almost.

He turns away from the window and approaches his desk. It’s exactly where he left it. Not that anyone would want to move that beast of solid dark wood. His chair sits tucked neatly in front of the desk. It still has that rickety lean to the left about it. It is an odd sight considering how grand and sturdy the desk is. If he thinks about it for too long, he can start waxing about the symmetry of his life and this furniture. Poorly matched but left unchanged… Best not to let himself think on it then, he decides.

There is a stack of papers, quills and ink supplied for him. He’s been well stocked for his assignment. He settles himself at his desk, shifting until he finds the balancing point in the wobbling chair.

Oh, what a noble task to burden his shoulders! The heavy fate of… the crown prince’s love life. Important, the stakes are high. Who but himself can capture the heart of… of some nameless fae noble.

Well. It’s not that names matter all that much. Considering how well things went for him with… Katarina? Claire? …What was it?

Then, he sees a letter resting on the top of his stack of parchment.

He reads:

To His Royal Highness, Oliver Reihan Alendreas, Crown Prince of Xelith, I am writing to you because I must extend my well wishes- in accordance with the terms arranged for us by our courts. May this correspondence find you in good health. Respectfully, Princess Larkspur Aveanna, Daughter of the High Fae

He reads the letter again. This isn’t just a “fae noblewoman” as Oliver had suggested. This is a princess. There are already court arrangements. Possibly a treaty between two kingdoms on the brink of war? Securing alliances? Well, now that he thinks about it, that doesn’t seem important at all, hardly something worth mentioning. Just writing a love letter. Deckard frowns down at the parchment. Though, now he understands why Oliver allowed him to stay here. He wouldn’t trust himself with this knowledge either.

Despite the helpful information, there is not much to go on. It is rather disappointing, as far as letters go. Just the barest amount needed to please the court, and nothing more. Words scrawled in a swirling script and sent off without a second glance. No emotion. Just the icy hand of another stuffy noble.

Well. If that is the case, then she and Oliver deserve each other. They can both sit together miserably and plot the machinations of their courts. What a match that will be. The future is bright. He huffs bitterly.  

His poetic heart wants to believe there is more. Perhaps… Instead of an emotionless noble, here we set our stage with a princess, stripped of her power, left with no voice. And she is cold not because of her callous heart, but because she is afraid.

He can understand that, and more importantly, he can work with that. Now, he has found a direction. He cracks open a bottle of ink and begins to write.

Princess Larkspur Aveanna, Daughter of the High Fae, I hope this season has treated you with greater kindness than the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Much like yourself, I write to fulfil the obligations laid at my feet by others. I was told: “This is duty. Not courtship.” It is a tidy phrase, isn’t it? It is neat, clinical. It is altogether lifeless. I for one, cannot help but lament on how painfully unromantic that is. You must forgive me, dear Princess, but I have always had somewhat of a poet’s heart. It tends to make a mess of such cold, courtly tasks, such as this one. This idea that I must, by rite, go through the motions- sending you shallow sentiments, and heartless niceties- I find frankly abhorrent. If I may be so bold to say, I suspect you might share the same opinion. Your letter was beautifully restrained. Courteous. A well-polished model of diplomacy. I would not be surprised if it passed through a dozen hands before reaching mine. I fear my reply may be less elegant; it is certainly less succinct. My letter, however- and I pray you will forgive me for saying so- is more honest. And so, I offer you simply, the truth of the matter: I do not know you, but I would like to. I will not ask for more than you wish to give. If you are content following the structures set before us- fulfilling the measure of our duty, and nothing more- I will bide. However, if by some chance, you find that curiosity should stir your hand... I would be honored to have earned a reply. Not one sent out of duty, but one written from your own choice. Yours in honesty,

He pauses, with a scoff. "In honesty."

Stars, help this poor princess.

He signs the letter with a name that is not his own, beneath a title he could never hope to hold.

[scramjettracy]

There has been a lot of discussion recently regarding your family, which you yourself engage in on your newly created social media. Especially the legacy you all share regarding your father, Jeff Tracy.

This publication notices a distinct lack of mention of your mother, Lucille. Is there any reason for this?

Hi Anon ‘publication’,

Interesting you should say that - our Mom, Lucille Tracy, absolutely deserves to be known and mentioned just as much as Dad.

Although a little unfair to say no mention - I believe my brother posted a photograph of her the first day we were here.

But you are right, nobody else has yet asked about her. As you have, I will do my best to describe the indescribable.

She was an incredible force of nature in her own right, and although in popular opinion her name was eclipsed by Jeff Tracy the astronaut, Doctor Lucille Tracy (nee Evans) was and still is fairly well known in her field - namely as a renowned experimental astrophysicist and academic author. She was also a fairly handy engineer and a lot of her work for NASA was actually in that field (she kinda treated the various university lectureships she held during various periods of maternity leave as a hobby!!)

So actually the first thing I want to say is go and search her up online - skip past all the “wife of Jeff Tracy” and the “tragic mother of five” stuff and find her contribution to science and our understanding of the universe. She had so much more left to discover.

Her loss was a loss to the whole world, not just to us.

But then apart from having at least three different paid jobs, she also was frequently a solo parent to five children spanning a pretty significant age gap*. I have genuinely no idea how she managed it and remained so good humoured the majority of the time. Our home was always full of laughter. Perhaps there is something in that old phrase “if you don’t laugh you’ll cry” because some of us I believe were rather challenging to parent / keep alive.

On top of all that she was an amazing artist, a musician, and so so SO kind. She loved nature and always insisted we take care of the world around us. And she was adamant what we saw was not all there was - she had a strong faith and never let us forget that none of us was ever going to be (or needed to be) the biggest deal in the universe, nor would ever be alone. I wish I had that confidence… but I still respect it.

Objectively she was WAY out of Dad’s league and looking back, I see now that he knew it full well. And although it was hard to accept at the time, I do understand now why he retreated emotionally when she passed.

It’s been… a long time since we lost her but in some ways… it’s still a sharp painful shock to remember she isn’t here… I can’t just go and run something by her to get her take - she was always so wise and could put a positive spin on almost anything… there’s so much I could have asked her when I had the chance but… well we none us could predict that time was limited. I really don’t know if the things I’d ask now would be so much more worth her time than my silly teenage struggles but she gave that time so willingly.

The worst though is remembering that my youngest siblings didn’t know her as a (nearly) adult - Alan has almost nothing other than what we tell him or show him on video, he was too young. Gordon has some memories of Mommy… but as a person to talk to about grown up worries or share opinions with - I got the privilege of the lion’s share of that and I feel guilty they didn’t.

And yet - it seems trite but she lives on absolutely in my brothers.

John carries her legacy in his love of the stars and his academic brilliance. Virgil carries her gentleness, and her artistic mind. Gordon her humour, her readiness to laugh, the way he brings fun to anything. And Alan has her sense of adventure, her acute sense of justice and her quickness to learn.

So - there we are - all of that and I still don’t feel like I’ve done her justice.

I don’t know if that was what you were after, Anon, and sorry it took me so long to reply. But I thought, hard as it has been to write, she deserved the fullest reply I could manage.

*OOC: insert your preferred gap here, I know mine is larger than most would have it

[lucky-clover-gazette]

kings rising highlights & annotations

chapter 12

indented text is from the book. some quotes have commentary, some do not. some comments are serious, and some are definitely not. most of them will only make sense to people who have read the series. and, like, there are spoilers. so please read the books first if you're interested!

also: part of the reason i'm doing such a close reading is to study cs pacat's style, especially in terms of how she does romance and erotica. there are "craft notes" that might seem weird, like i'm being redundant or restating something rather than analyzing, but those are more things that i want to remember/take away from the writing!

i'm going to tag these longer posts with "sam reads capri" in case anyone wants to read them all at once.

this is a google doc i wrote with overall content warnings for the captive prince series. it's not perfect, but i do think it's important to include.

It was as if some protective membrane had been torn away and everything that he had not let himself feel was exposed behind the rupture.

this is a beautifully written sentence

He had nothing left to hold it back, only this raw, terrible feeling, of being denied family.

it’s interesting how he takes this as being denied family. it’s less of a literal denial, and more of him reckoning with the reality he’s been avoiding for the entire series: his father and kastor were/are incredibly flawed people, and in kastor’s case actively committed/attempted familicide. it’s less the denial of family itself and more the denial of the family he thought he had, and the ideal of family being loyal and dependable. that same disillusionment must have happened to laurent when auguste died and the regent started mistreating him.

In his life, he had known only one parent. His father had been to him a set of ideals, a man he looked up to, and strove to please, a standard against whom he measured himself. Since his father’s death, he had not allowed himself to think or feel anything but determination that he would return, that he would see his home again, and restore himself to the throne.

okay i think i kinda hinted at some mild criticism of king’s rising in my last set of annotations, and a some people agreed in that it seems like she had an editor and was writing to be traditionally published. i think i see that here. i don’t think captive prince or prince’s gambit pacat would have spelled this out here, as clearly as she does. it’s well-written, but also something we could easily understand between the lines. it almost feels less effective this way, although that’s partially because i’m so used to a certain style and approach from the author.

Now he felt as if he stood in front of his father, felt his father’s hand in his hair, as he never would again. He had wanted his father to be proud of him; and had failed him, in the end.

yeah, i’m sorry, but this feels really out of place. both in terms of the writing and the fact that it’s included at all. feels like some editor was like “you need to spell it out for the casual readers who are just interested in the porn if you want the scene to be effective.” the turns of phrase are a little trite and the entire thing just seems so… obvious? maybe i’m being too harsh, but i am curious what others think.

Laurent said, ‘No. I’m not here to—’ He said, ‘I’m just here.’

this is a lovely line. laurent knows damen thinks his presence is a call to action, but wants him to know he’s safe and can just exist. a little bit of a reversal between them.

Laurent, he realised, had guarded his solitude for him. And his people, fearing the fierce, strange foreign prince, had done as Laurent ordered, and stayed out. He was stupidly, profoundly grateful for that.

again with the reversal—similar to what happened after aimeric/nicaise

Before he could, he felt Laurent’s fingers on the back of his neck, a shock of touch that caught him in a tumult of confusion as it drew him forward, simply. It was, from Laurent, slightly awkward; sweet; rare; stiff with obvious inexperience. If he had been offered this as an adult, he couldn’t remember it.

<3 i still think we’re getting a lot spelled out for us, but it’s so lovely here that i don’t mind.

‘Now you are taking advantage of my kind-hearted instincts,’ Laurent said, a murmur into his ear.

:)

He let his lips form a half-smile. ‘You aren’t going to offer me one of your gaudy Veretian handkerchiefs?’ ‘You could use the clothing you’re wearing. It’s about the same size.’ ‘Your poor Veretian sensibilities. All those wrists and ankles.’ ‘And arms and thighs and every other part.’ ‘My father’s dead.’

YEP THIS IS GREAT. love how it takes this swift u-turn away from their usual banter. we know these characters and how they usually speak, so this is effective on its own

The words had a finality to them.

... so we don’t need this! we GET that finality from the way they heavily contrast with the light banter and stop it abruptly with "my father's dead."

His father was buried in Akielos beneath the columned halls of the silent, where the pain and confusion of his last days would never trouble him again.

this might be giving us a little hint of damen almost wanting to be dead himself? in the sense that it would be peaceful, to not have to deal with this bullshit. he hasn't grown up having these kinds of feelings acknowledged so he's unprepared to cope with them now.

‘You thought he was a warmonger. An aggressive, war-hungry king, who invaded your country on the flimsiest of pretexts, hungry for land and the glory of Akielos.’ ‘No,’ said Laurent. ‘We don’t have to do this now.’

laurent doesn’t disagree. the “no” is for “i’m not letting you do this yourself emotionally.” and laurent would know all about torturing himself with harsh realities about dead people during intimate and vulnerable moments, so that’s really saying something

‘A barbarian,’ said Damen, ‘with barbaric ambitions, fit only to rule by the sword. You hated him.’ ‘I hated you,’ said Laurent. ‘I hated you so badly I thought I’d choke on it. If my uncle hadn’t stopped me, I would have killed you. And then you saved my life, and every time I needed you, you were there, and I hated you for that, too.’ ‘I killed your brother.’

this feels a little bit like a summary, but i’ll allow it since they’re having an honest conversation while knowing each other fully for like the first time. do you think this is the chapter that was edited/pitched to publishers first? i don’t know exactly how publishing works, but it does feel just kind of weird

‘What are you doing here?’ Damen said.

i like how we get some insecurity from damen here. we don’t see it often, like this. he is surprised that laurent wants him, even while he is being vulnerable. i’d say it’s a toxic masculinity thing, but in the context of this world it’s more of a toxic royalty thing

Laurent said, ‘I know what it’s like to lose family.’

(as an answer to “what are you doing here?”) i get what this is trying to say, i think. laurent is looking past his anger at damen for auguste and offering him empathy, even though damen caused the tragedy that allows laurent to be empathetic in this case. it still feels… slightly off, though. maybe it’s even the fact that damen asked in the first place. maybe it’s the fact that laurent answered verbally. so much between them has been unspoken thus far, and i don’t see why that needs to change, even though they’re in a more supportive relationship. that can be implicit, too. and that unspoken understanding makes it even more intimate and distinctly Them.

‘Is there no way forward for us?’ said Damen. It just came out. Beside him, he could feel Laurent holding himself very still. ‘You mean, will I come back to your bed for the little time we have left?’ ‘I mean that we hold the centre. We hold everything from Acquitart to Sicyon. Can we not call it a kingdom and rule it together? Am I such a poorer prospect than a Patran princess, or a daughter of the Empire?’

he mentions unification so casually, which is both rewarding to the reader who has been screaming it for chapters but also kind of… annoying? i don’t know, so much of this feels in service of the imminent sex scene. kind of rushed or dumbed down. so much tension has been meticulously built, and they’ve had sex under far less resolved conditions. here it’s almost like there’s a checklist of Things Damen and Laurent Have to Agree On/Share About Themselves Emotionally Before They Can Satisfyingly Fuck For The First Time As Themselves. but like, these bitches are messy. always have been, always will be. and they’ve always BEEN themselves. to just try to quickly resolve and drop the mess feels inconsistent, and makes the execution of the sex less unique and ironically more shallow, maybe

When he made himself look at Laurent, Laurent’s eyes on him were very dark, his voice quiet. ‘How can you trust me, after what your own brother did to you?’ ‘Because he was false,’ said Damen, ‘and you are true. I have never known a truer man.’ He said, into the stillness, ‘I think if I gave you my heart, you would treat it tenderly.’

contrast to what he’s learned about his family—kastor and his father, because the negative things he said about his father as if laurent believes them are also things damen has come to believe.

it’s a sweet line. and kind of insane, given everything laurent has done. but i think it works, because we know damen has been like this about laurent from the start. and we also know its difficult for laurent to believe or accept that anyone would want to trust him with their heart. i wish we could have had this interaction be spoken, but with FAR less of the previous conversation here. start the scene with laurent entering, have them comfort each other physically but unable to speak. or speak around the subject, instead of hitting the nail on the head. then give them this extremely direct moment, and it would be a lot more effective.

listen i’m not saying i’m better or smarter or anything, it is ultimately a matter of taste and i’ve been taking a break from the books. but i have done a VERY CLOSE READING of this series so far, so i feel at least somewhat capable of analyzing it in this way. if that makes sense.

Laurent turned his head, denying Damen his face.

this doesn’t feel like a pacat line. the construction of it does, but i feel like she’d say something far less direct and far more poetic than “denying his face”

Damen could see his breathing. After a moment he said in a low voice, ‘When you make love to me like that, I can’t think.’ ‘Don’t think,’ said Damen. Damen saw the flickering change, the tension, as the words provoked an internal battle. Damen said, ‘Don’t think.’ ‘Don’t,’ said Laurent, ‘toy with me. I—have not the means to—defend against this.’ ‘I don’t toy with you.’ ‘I—’ ‘Don’t think,’ said Damen. ‘Kiss me,’ said Laurent. And then flushed, a rich colour. Don’t think, Damen had said, but Laurent couldn’t do that. Even to sit there after what he had said, he was fighting a battle in his head. The words hung awkwardly, a blurt, but Laurent didn’t take them back, he just waited, his body singing with tension. Instead of leaning in, Damen took Laurent’s hand, brought it towards himself, and kissed his palm, once.

yeah.

He had learned in the course of their one night together to tell when Laurent was taken unawares—taken aback. It wasn’t easy to anticipate, the gaps in Laurent’s experience not mapping to anything that he understood. He felt it now, Laurent’s eyes very dark, uncertain of what he should do. ‘I meant—’ ‘Don’t let you think?’ Laurent didn’t answer.

this is. such an interesting way to bring in previous themes of consent and submission. bc this is by all means consensual, but laurent is almost asking damen to just take what he wants, because his anxiety is so bad that he doesn’t really WANT to be asked what he wants or made to initiate. it's submission willingly given because laurent trusts damen, both in terms of seeing and understanding his weakness here and in taking care of his pleasure. laurent asking outright to not have to be strong in this situation, and trusting damen to treat him well while his guard is down. trusting him with his heart, just as damen has sworn to trust laurent with his.

Laurent’s wariness was not, at this moment, the high walls of the defended citadel. It was that of a man with a portion of his guard down, who was desperately unused to it.

After a moment: ‘At Ravenel, I—it had been a long time since I had—with anyone. I was nervous.’ ‘I know,’ said Damen. ‘There has,’ said Laurent. He stopped. ‘There has only been one other person.’ Softly, ‘I’m a little more experienced than that.’ ‘Yes, that is immediately apparent.’ ‘Is it?’ A little pleased. ‘Yes.’

THIS is lamen dialogue. so much unsaid, and it’s perfect, because we know what it’s all implying.

‘Laurent, I’d never hurt you.’ He heard Laurent’s strange, disbelieving breath, and he realised what he had said. ‘I know,’ said Damen, ‘that I did hurt you.’ Laurent’s motionlessness was careful, even his breathing was careful. He didn’t turn back to look at Damen. ‘I hurt you, Laurent.’ ‘That’s enough, stop,’ said Laurent. ‘It wasn’t right. You were just a boy. You didn’t deserve what happened to you.’ ‘I said that’s enough.’ ‘Is it so hard to hear?’

big moment for damen, realizing he did something to hurt laurent and admitting it. this has been building for a while with his guilt about his father and slavery and everything else akielos stands for. damen has always lied to himself, a lot. he almost treats this scene like a confession.

on the laurent side of things: this is damen admitting he was wrong, but still wanting to be better. i think that confuses laurent, to think that anyone would ever want to treat him well when they’re strong enough to hurt him. also, this is just generally intense for laurent, but he's still here despite his discomfort because he cares about damen.

this entire scene really is just an insane amount of honesty and vulnerability from them both. it's quick to overwhelm laurent, while damen seems to be getting kind of addicted to it and wanting more. which he gets, in more ways than one.

He thought of Auguste, thought how no boy deserved to lose his brother.

interesting line for a guy who ends up almost being murdered by his stepbrother and gets saved by his divorce husband, whose brother he killed, killing his stepbrother

He didn’t understand the forces that moved in Laurent, but some instinct pushed him to say it. ‘My first time, there was a lot of rolling around. I was eager and had no idea what to do. It’s not like Vere, we don’t watch people doing it in public.’ He said, ‘I still get too caught up near the end. I know I forget myself.’

awww :) he’s trying to make him feel less awkward. this is such a setting-transcendent moment. anyone would say something like this, whether in this weird horny semi historical fictional society or any other romance setting. "you're new to this, but so was i. and i still have my flaws."

A silence. It went on too long. He didn’t disturb it, watching the tense line of Laurent’s body.

love the patience here

‘When you kissed me,’ said Laurent, pushing the words out, ‘I liked it. When you took me in your mouth, it was the first time that I had . . . done that.’ He said, ‘I liked it when you—’

he’s so brave for saying this. i’m not being sarcastic. go laurent

Laurent’s reaction to kissing had always been complex: tense; vulnerable; hot. The tension was the greatest part of it, as though this single act was too much for him, too extreme. And yet, he had asked for it. Kiss me.

as always, the way laurent is not a normal romantic interest but still deeply loved and respected narratively makes me feel so happy. gives me hope etc

Don’t think, he’d said, because it was easier than saying, Take me for who I am. He couldn’t bear that suddenly. He wanted it without pretences, without excuses, his fingers curling hard into Laurent’s hair.

love this evolution. damen desperately wants laurent to be here and thinking, and knowing him, and still letting himself want this. again, with the almost addiction to honesty between them. he's getting swept up in it.

‘It’s me,’ said Damen. ‘It’s me, here with you. Say my name.’ ‘Damianos.’ He felt the sundering in Laurent at that, the name an admission, a statement of truth that came out of him, Laurent open to him with nothing to hide behind. He could hear it in Laurent’s voice. Prince-killer.

He wanted it, felt a surge of purely selfish desire as he thought of it, that Laurent knew it was him. That Laurent wanted this with him.

we know. this could have been left out.

It was subsumed, as it had to be, into the act of kissing. His body felt heavy, one form of penetration substituted for another, the tremors in Laurent not that of a single barrier crumbling, but shudders as though one after another were being brought down, each place unexplored, each place deeper than the last. Prince-killer.

so is this kind of meant to conjure the image of damen taking auguste down, right? breaking down defenses, penetration, etc. prince killer as in murderer, but he’s also killing laurent as in like. “lady-killer ;)”

He felt acutely aware that he was half on his back, naked, with Laurent fully clothed, astride, still wearing his polished boots and the high-necked, tightly laced collar of his jacket. It was a sudden, vulnerable fantasy that Laurent might simply get up and wander off, strolling the rooms, or sit in the chair opposite to sip wine with his legs crossed, while Damen was left exposed on the bed.

yeah damen, you WOULD be into that

Laurent didn’t do that. Laurent lifted his hands to his own neck. His eyes on Damen’s, slowly, he took up one of the tight-laced ties at his throat, and drew on it.

the EYE CONTACT!!!

In the dim light, Auguste was between them, sharp as a knife. The scar on his shoulder was the last thing Auguste had done before Damen had killed him. The kiss was like a wound, as if to do it Laurent was impaling himself on that knife. There was an edge of desperation to it, Laurent kissing like he needed it, his fingers clutching, his body unsteady.

it really feels like this should be cut at “wound.” maybe continue with a much more brief “laurent impaled himself.” we can MAKE the connection that it’s like he’s stabbing himself on this figurative thing, but doing it anyway because he wants it. it doesn’t need to be written out, it’s already on the page between the lines! it is SO bizarre to me that pacat's style has changed in this way in seemingly just this one chapter. maybe it's because i stepped away for a while, but honestly i can't see how i couldn't NOT have a sort of sixth sense for recognizing these weird moments given the amount of detail i've put into my analysis and reading. again, your thoughts are definitely appreciated.

He kissed back knowing it hurt him, hurt them both. There was a desperation in both of them, an aching need that could not be filled, and he could feel it in Laurent, the same unconscious striving.

another example of “we don’t need the second the sentence because the first already says it!!” i seriously suspect that this scene was written way more raw at first but an editor was like “you have to make it a lot more clear they both want it/they’re chill with each other over and over again so it’s not too vague”

another alternate explanation could be the chapter's overarching theme of abundant honestly, like almost an overwhelming amount of it, but i still don't think that explains the change in like, craft. there's a difference between characters changing their behavior through development or to make a thematic point, and the narrative itself shifting in how it tells the story. and while damen is kind of going from the extreme of lying to himself about everything to craving this truth, it's still strange to read, and feels like a very intense departure from their previous scenes together.

In a burst of explicit fantasy, he wished Laurent were a pet, or a slave, wished him a body that was not going to require extensive, coaxing preparation before it could be penetrated.

“you like it simple” flashbacks

i think both laurent and damen have moments of wanting this, but ultimately care far more for the more complicated and real parts of their relationship and selves. that was a lot of my chapter 7 analysis re-write. part of what i love about this pairing is that it's really not that much about the sex for them, which is highly ironic given gestures vaguely to the story and world. true intimacy between them has been in their conversations, their little sidequests together and the way they've connected intellectually and emotionally despite literally every odd being against that happening. it's in the way they are equals, and choose to devote themselves mutually, whether it's through despising or adoring each other. anyone can fuck; and especially in this series, almost everyone does. whatever damen and laurent do is wayyy more insane and complicated and interesting and real than that.

He wanted to be inside. He wanted to feel Laurent’s surrender shudder and give way, become total. He wanted no denying that Laurent had let him in, who he had let in. It’s me. His body primed, as though only in one act could this be driven home.

(heads up, i talk pretty explicitly about sexual assault and rape in the following paragraphs)

see, i don’t get how THAT is the ultimate sign of laurent "letting damen in." because anyone could fuck anyone if they’re powerful enough, right? that’s the whole tragedy of laurent, he sees himself as weak because this has been done to him before without his consent. i guess the surrender is in admitting he wants it, which does make sense with how everything has been set up. laurent has been assaulted and harassed and objectified by countless people, but damen is the only one he’s even given enthusiastic consent, so yeah i guess it is the ultimate sign of uhhhh accomplishment, for damen? for lack of a better word. but that still just feels OFF to me. the emotions and the logic of it.

i understand that there is a raw sort of honesty to sex; a body's natural response, fairly disconnected from morality or reason. damen has experienced that for laurent from the very start, and it's gotten him into trouble before. but despite that, he isn't a character who experiences shame about having those feelings, like, ever. the man had sex slaves, after all. he is horny despite the horrors, that's his thing.

i guess where i struggle is in, myself, thinking that the kind of primal sexual honesty here is real or meaningful in the same way the aforementioned emotional and intellectual intimacy are. like, there's something here that just bothers me. maybe it's the way damen is so swept up in the "honesty" of laurent letting himself be fucked, as a totally good and amazing and real thing. i get how damen might feel that way, but it's like, did the regent not also feel those same kinds of feelings, and act on them? if laurent had any kind of bodily response to his own assault, was that bodily honesty his emotional or intellectual truth? is it any different from the bodily honesty damen is appreciating here? this line of thinking is a common way that people convince others that they wanted or deserved their assault. i know damen is like deeply unqualified to understand that, and i know that laurent does want it and damen cares for him deeply, but i guess i almost feel protective of laurent in this moment, with the way damen is thinking during this scene.

all of the terrible people in this series who do so many things without consent, to degrade and disempower others or simply because they think they're entitled to it, are acting on the same primal urges as damen in this scene. what makes damen different from them, the entire reason laurent trusts damen enough to LET him do this, is the fact that damen respects laurent beyond those primal urges, and sees him as a person and not an object. raw sexual desire, by contrast, is just... simple.

i get a little lost here as a reader because, like laurent, i need to intellectualize everything always. i do not like it simple, often to my own detriment, admittedly. it’s hard for me to amend the idea of this like unmitigated desire for sexual honesty/vulnerability with damen genuinely respecting laurent, even though i know he does and that’s literally the entire point, that the two things can coexist and this is romantic and powerful because somehow they do. i can suspend my disbelief while reading this in fiction, but it’s harder to rationalize or understand based on my own experiences, and my knowledge of the real world. trusting another person with vulnerability is horrifying and the series knows it, but is trying to offer a strong rebuttal in the way damen and laurent love each other.

maybe it's just that in this scene, i'm not totally sold. or something.

‘Do it, I told you, I don’t care—’

there is a little part of me that’s like “uh is this what a person who really wants to be doing this would say??” but also i know damn well that i'm projecting so go off king i guess????

maybe i would have been more satisfied by this scene if damen did not fuck laurent here and now. i don't know. this analysis is poor, unobjective, confused and hypocritical. but i'm not struggling with it in a fun or enriching way, like with chapter 7, it just makes me feel kinda bad. so i'm pushing through.

He was inside Laurent. It felt raw and unprotected. He had never felt more like himself: Laurent had let him inside, knowing who he was.

yes. WE KNOW.

Damen’s grip, still oiled, was wrapped around the hottest, most honest part of Laurent.

“most honest part” yeah that pretty much sums up what makes me weird about this scene. the way damen DELIGHTS in the primal honesty of it all, beneath laurent’s carefully constructed defenses. i guess just, its been so nice reading damen being so respectful of laurent’s hesitations and boundaries, and therefore falling for his personality and intellect and genuinely growing to understand and respect him without the promise of submission or sex, so the framing of this being damen finally getting what he REALLY wanted from laurent the whole time is… kind of rough to read. like oh, this is REALLY intimacy. this is the height of it. but it's not. like, at all.

damen is not me, and i get that. but in previous times where damen has done shit i've felt weird about, i've never felt like the narrative has been poking at me to approve of it or feel positive catharsis. but this entire scene is so heavily written to be this great moment of celebration and positive catharsis, for protagonist and reader alike. but what are we even celebrating here? we're celebrating the honesty between damen and laurent about their identities, and the fact that they support each other anyway. given how much baggage they both have about sex, i almost feel like it would be a more effective scene if they DIDN'T fuck. like, laurent just hugging damen was beautiful. that kind of simple comfort, not inherently sexual, was unusual to damen. and therefore impactful. but noooo, the sex is supposed to be the pinnacle, and we made the way for it with some weirdly written overly explanatory dialogue shoved at the start of the scene. to be fair, damen does literally say, 'I still get too caught up near the end. I know I forget myself.’ which is kind of what I've just described happening.

i just don't think i am where the book wants me to be, with how i react to that. it's an odd feeling. i feel like everyone is going to read this and be like "wow she has issues, she's insane, you're supposed to like that he forgets himself and is consumed by his desires." but oh well. i usually don't enjoy the romance genre for a reason.

this series really does challenge my own ability to let simple desire coexist with the proven need to be highly intentional and thoughtful in caring about/interacting with others. it’s hard for me to believe those two things can be in harmony—that you can be honest and vulnerable, and not either be hurting someone, getting hurt by someone, enabling someone else’s self-harm, or hurting yourself.

i suppose some of the catharsis of this scene is that laurent and damen are doing this together, KNOWING they have hurt each other. that they will always have that between them, yet also knowing and trusting that they can and will treat each other well.

it’s just hard for me to see that as anything other than fantasy. it's not honest, it's not real, in the way i've come to understand those concepts both in my personal ethos and the ethos of the series. so this entire scene built around honesty as a theme just kind of falls flat. it’s tragic, really, that damen is so happy about this apparent truth between them when he is unaware of the very blatant and relevant reality of laurent’s history with sexual assault. it’s a powerful scene, but not for the reasons damen thinks it’s powerful. maybe pacat meant for that to be the case, maybe she didn’t, maybe editing made it weird. who knows.

but it is, as i’ve said in previous chapter analysis posts, a nice fantasy. i'm glad if it hits for other readers, and i respect that cs pacat put it here for a reason. maybe someday i'll re-read it and react differently.

[mariacallous]

Trade Wars, Episode V: The Empire Shoots Itself in the Foot. As the world financial markets fail to appreciate his genius, tariff-excreting president Donald Trump has explained it all away by stating that “sometimes you have to take medicine”. Why am I reminded of the bit in Covid where he appeared to suggest that disinfectant could helpfully be injected into the lungs? I guess that was just science, same as this tariffs plan is just economics.

Even so, can it really still be less than a week since a Wall Street Journal poll found 77% of US Republicans thought tariffs would have a positive impact? Ah well. Famously, the American people have a great tolerance for pain. If only one of their kindly gazillionare firms could come up with some sort of financial opioid epidemic to take the edge off the coming agonies.

As discussed here recently, in China, they call Trump “the nation builder”. And, spoiler alert, the nation they’re talking about is not the United States. Perhaps, then, it is not altogether strange and unpredictable that the Chinese have, thus far, failed to fold in the face of the American president’s tariffs, even as Trump threatens to slap an extra 50% tax on Chinese imports as revenge for Xi Jinping’s government having had the temerity to impose a 34% counter-tariff on the US.

“If the US insists on going its own way,” a spokesperson for Beijing’s commerce ministry stated on Tuesday, “China will fight it to the end.” Big talk – but what about Xi’s midterm elections? This could really pile political pressure on – oh right, I just remembered. Presumably a future stage of Trump’s masterplan will be to explain that for too long, the rest of the world has been taking advantage of America because it has indulged them by holding regular elections. Well, NO MORE! The United States cannot be made a fool of by democracy any longer.

Still, as the world burns, we’ve got to take our cheap thrills where we can – so who’s your favourite embarrassingly disillusioned billionaire Trump backer? My current one is Bill Ackman, hedge-fund supremo, who last July publicly endorsed Trump, grandly declaring: “I assure you that I have made this decision carefully, rationally, and by relying on as much empirical data as possible.” Well, flash forward to Sunday, and – whaddayaknow? – the same Bill Ackman could be found explaining that Trump was launching “economic nuclear war on every country in the world”, and that we were “heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter”. Mm. I guess the ONE piece of empirical evidence Ackman overlooked about tariffs was all the many, many, many times during the election campaign that Trump clearly stated he was going to impose tariffs. Can’t believe he’s imposed tariffs. I guess strife comes at you fast. According to Bill, “this is not what we voted for”. Oh dear. Always read the big print, Bill!

Then again, of all the wanky things Trump’s mega-rich backers say about him, the most masturbatorial of all is surely “take him seriously but not literally”. How many times have we had to sit through this trite little piece of wisdom-effect nonsense? But, gentlemen … he has quite literally done the very serious thing he said he was going to do. How to play this wholly unpredictable state of affairs? Tell you what – if any of your companies or the ones you invest in need goods or parts from overseas, why not simply inform your suppliers that you are taking the presidential tariffs “seriously but not literally”, and see how you get on?

The added irony, of course, is that this is happening to members of that special class of Trump big-hitters who think about the Roman empire every day. I wonder which period of it they’ve been thinking of this past week. The good days, definitely! Especially when Trump hit the golf course while the markets were on fire. Take presidential first buddy Elon Musk, who has wimped out of saying anything explicit about tariffs, preferring instead to drag his brainworms on to his own platform again and post a video of Milton Friedman debunking the very notion of trade taxes. Good to see the guy retreating into his clicktivist phase, the period where he – along with everyone else on X – thinks that posting about something is the same as doing anything remotely useful.

Speaking of conspicuously absent friends, though, whatever happened to Trump’s local beta, Nigel Farage? He’s gone rather quiet on the cheerleading front. In fact, given the raging shitstorm, it’s no surprise that all this is playing out as one of the great submarine moments of Farage’s career. He always does this when he’s afraid to front up, eventually emerging with some mealy-mouthed bollocks long after backbone and leadership were required. He didn’t surface in the immediate aftermath of the murder of Jo Cox during the referendum campaign. He had scarcely a soundbite when his much-touted new friend Musk suddenly turned on him and said he didn’t have what it takes as a leader. And now Nigel’s declining to be meaningfully drawn as Donald Trump – a man in whose colon the Clacton MP has spent more time than his constituency – has unleashed destructive turmoil, even though Nigel told everyone he was a very stable genius. Nigel always pulls this trick when the going gets tough, somewhat like the child who imagines that putting his hands over his eyes means no one can see him.

We’ve certainly yet to hear him expand on the real-world implications of the tariffs. After all, speaking of “taking medicine”, health secretary Wes Streeting has this morning said that tariffs could affect the UK’s medicine supply. That, I suppose, would be quite literally – and definitely seriously – “taking medicine”, in that it would be taking medicine away from people who urgently need it.

Of course, Elon Musk isn’t the only wingnut to own his own platform, so let’s play out with a genuine statement posted to Truth Social by the occupant of the Oval Office. “The United States has a chance to do something that should have been done DECADES AGO. Don’t be Weak! Don’t be Stupid! Don’t be a PANICAN (a new party based on Weak and Stupid people!). Be Strong, Courageous, and Patient, and GREATNESS will be a result”. Righto. Last week, Republican house speaker Mike Johnson declared: “You have to trust the president’s instincts on the economy, OK?” Do you trust in the instinct of the man who wrote the above word salad? Or do you, like rather a lot of people, find yourself slightly panican?

[sandsorghum]

3 days late for Valentine's but oh well. I don't know if this is really a proper or full fic, take it as an experimental, extended romantic ramble about Higuruma I suppose(?) I'm insanely smitten with this man >_>

Higuruma's perfectly suited as the protagonist of a whirlwind romance; from his looks, demeanour, proclivities - right down to those carefully ill-disguised vices of his.

Waltzes into a room like so much inclement weather unfurling over the horizon, equally unstoppable, a storm cloud's charisma. A presence which shifts barometric pressures, all that brooding mystique, more the signature of a cyclone or lightning trapped in a bottle.

Nature's favourite paradox - Something rhythmically electric about him, phenomena so familiar its commanding effect is a little eclipsed, the same way we don't really wonder at thunder, or notice a typhoon during the monsoon season.

Overcast irises, analytical scudding. The sort of whiplash wit the most seasoned screenwriters would gnash their teeth over, penetrating candour even without the liquor. They don't know how much whiskey he took to first convince himself he could pull off being "debonair" - or some version of it, whatever that means for him. The devil may care, after all, if he's the one insistent on being its advocate.

Dark and handsome, every woman's type (if that woman was at a bar at 3am on a Tuesday night). Disheveled chic, on a decent evening. Or he'll compel them to romanticize the rumpled effect, on a worse one.

And in those rooms where shadows circle each other and silences tango, with his steadfast irises brandishing a brandy-ripened gleam, they find themselves ever so tempted to pull his lips into a matching shape, to feel his teeth cut into their own mouths like flint.

It's those obsidian orbs, darkness crackling, midnight splintering with forked tongues of lightning, aching for those eyes to peel over them in lacerations and a licking down their throat, swallowing fire and scrying crystalline spheres in tumblers glittering topaz with bourbon drops, to entice the future which blurs into merlot smeared collars and burgundy seared skin.

The ozone thickens, they're coaxed to breathe his smoke. Lungs tarred with his incendiary stare, ventricles paved with ash and asphalt. A speed demon's dalliance, careening too quick to care what's coming around the bend, not when this is how the devil worships her curves; one night and his presence clings to mind, body, soul - Stubborn as blood's claim upon bitumen.

And those without the wisdom to make an earlier exodus will have to drag themselves from the wreck.

Once, someone mumbled against his cheek, "You're nothing so trite as an enigma, Higuruma."

It seemed like a compliment. Perhaps he would have remembered it that way, if it wasn't the final thing they told him.

He could interpret it as true, or true enough - if only as an explanation for the icy spots on his sheets some nights.

Years later, "some nights" turned into nights, and the cold grew past its spot, expanded through the floors and walls of his apartment, then shrunk small enough to make a crevice in his chest. A barely perceptible fissure in a window, a split sill leaking warmth, heat, hunger. Desire diluting into inconvenience, unnecessary pursuits he can't be bothered with. Needs waning into mere wants, or idle fancies. Higuruma gives up first on imagination, then on memory. Fractal tendrils spreading, making rhizomatic ribbons of his heart, hewn with scar tissue crisscrossing thickly calloused roads, his pulse buried beneath a network of welts he can't navigate through. North and South look much the same, the compass twiddles between East and West, whirring on mechanically.

He's noticed the crack now, and everything that spills through it but then, it's always been there, hasn't it? Perhaps he was born with it. Innate as his intellect, his drive, his pragmatism. He's meant to live with it.

"So. No more distractions for you then," you say - and it's an observation, not a challenge, nor even an inquiry. You make it sound so factual, it's almost flattering. But that's not your intention. Higuruma knows that much about you, after all these months of sharing cigarettes, and the odd anecdote.

But then, it's the lilt of your lips, not your tone, that rather suddenly makes him question this auditory trick; why would he equate a logical statement from you about him with praise?

It's an accident, Higuruma is quick to figure; you're always this relaxed around him, your mouth is always this soft with him - he means, always at such ease to part him with soft smiles, as a ray of summer straying unencumbered through the trees, unfoiled by foliage, those dimples of yours dappling against your cheek.

As for the softness of your mouth in a textural context, that doesn't occur to him; You don't seek the clarification, but he makes the correction for himself, in private.

There's a few other things Higuruma doesn't quite notice when he's with you, things that simply seem to slip away; lurid colours, noise, after hours in the office. A few other mysterious disappearances, remarkable for how rapidly they vanish around you, include: his allergies to small talk (previously bordering on neurosis), fifth cups of coffee, his migraines.

It's not as if he's making a conscientious effort to forget the clamouring in his skull, or the leaden rankling weight at the base of his spine accumulating throughout his week; Surly defendants, sullen witnesses, wailing wrathful parents, passive-aggressive prosecutors.

They're all there, proliferating hydras and leviathan problems which leech onto his brain and screech for his attention - but it's strange, how they all shrivel up like slugs on a sidewalk on a summer's day, husks burnt under the brunt of the smirk you flash him, whisking past him in the pantry to sneak a sandwich in his pocket, or an espresso in his hand already automatically stretching towards another alibi.

There are always fresh fires for him to put out (or to be put out by) but somehow, in your presence, all of them burn low, every boiling roiling convolution shoved onto the back of a stove, during the two minute smoke breaks he savours with you.

Matchsticks held up to the magnitude of the sun, there is no comparison. Incandescence rendered invisible, amidst the glow of the cosmos and an orbital burning, bright as the colour of air itself.

Perhaps that is why Higuruma doesn't recognise what's happening.

He's confounded when he realises. Too stunned to be mortified that he wasn't aware of it before. As if it were a piece of fundamental knowledge he should have picked up years earlier - like how there aren't penguins in the Arctic, or that there are eight planets in our solar system.

This should have been equally obvious; Higuruma is in love with you.

For him, it's like noticing that there are two moons in the sky, somehow for the first time. Were they always there? Why didn't he know? What's he supposed to do with this new information?

It's monumental.

No - it doesn't matter.

Not in the minutiae of his day to day, in routines augmenting this warped reality. There's an endless mill of hearings, cross-examinations, plea deals to slog through.

So what if he wakes up in a world askew on its axis, Monday spins into Tuesday spins into Wednesday spins into another mundane month of manslaughter suspects, juvenile delinquents, supercilious plaintiffs, crotchety judges.

You stride by him in the corridors of court buildings, your genial smile flickering in a passing greeting.

There are two moons in the sky.

On a late night commute, serendipity leads his steps to the same subway carriage as you. He doesn't make his way over. You do.

There are two moons in the sky.

Everything has changed, but nothing is different.

(The entire ride, he fidgets with his tie.)

You send him a selfie in the new udon shop he mentioned wanting to visit. The bowl of noodles in frame billowing plumes of steam does nothing to obscure the smugness nestled in the crook of your mouth.

There are two moons in the sky.

Distant satellites, far off in space. They don't affect him. Higuruma's eyes drift shut, phone screen clutched across his chest.

You squeeze into a packed elevator with him one morning, close enough for him to see the dew glistening across your temple while you fuss with your fringe to hide it, and close enough for him to hear you muttering something incriminating about your landlady's cat.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," he murmurs. "Not within my earshot at least."

"That's disappointing," you huff, "I didn't think I'd have to censor thoughts of my wicked impulses around you of all people, Higuruma."

And just like that, the gravity of those two moons slams into him.

He thought it'd been a benign lull all this time, that it could continue to be, that errant tug at the tide every so often, the salt tickle at his ribs. But now he's drowning in this brackish burning and churning in his lungs, waves towering over him with the immediacy of his idiocy that he's only just now realising with alarming alacrity.

He can't fight this.

A whirlpool surging through his chest, salt flaying sinew, buffeted by the twin satellites and their gravitational force, oceans ragged with waves dragged away from the very seafloor, an entire planet stripped down to polished ivory and bleached corals.

He never stood a chance.

He looks at you check your watch and adjust your cuffs, before smoothing a palm over the lapels of your blazer tapering primly over your bosom, then tuck a lock of hair behind your ear. Higuruma's eyes flick to the digital panel indicating the ascent of lift, floor numbers ticking up up up.

Two moons in the sky, they had never been an abstract fact of his universe, simply because he'd been ignorant, or been ignoring them. Considered them insignificant, dismissing the tremors that were aftershocks in truth, ripples that belied the riptide crashing through him with your every gentle glance, the grace of your gaze.

Two moons in the sky, and he'd believed the heavens were irrelevant, deliberate and obstinate with his irreverence. As if sheer will or blind optimism could make a difference to his emotional reality, an epiphany cratering in on Higuruma with a comet's terminal velocity.

Pretending not to notice how he paid attention to every minor detail about you, those mosaics constituting his own mood; like how he found himself seeking refuge in the crinkling corners of your eyes, counterintuitive in his desperation, trying to catch his breath there before you snatched it away again with your laugh, somehow both a zephyr's theft and gift to lift his spirits.

Deceits he can no longer dismiss, conceits which only compounded the consequences, it was both lunacy and reality. A curious blend of bristling scorn at his own folly and humility bubbles up in his chest, and Higuruma barks, a short and sharp burst of sound puncturing the air.

The fellow elevator passengers purse their lips, even as they're shuffling off onto their floors, leaving just the two of you together.

You level a quizzical glance at Higuruma, you didn't think your comment was that clever; An unwarranted reaction, possibly hyperbole, given the standards of repartee you've grown accustomed to around each other.

Higuruma shakes his head, something glimmering in his gaze. It's nothing you haven't seen before, but this time, when the dazzle of the fin darts back beneath the surface, his eyes seem focused, intent.

"Did you like that udon place you beat me to?"

"Oh, yes. The rave reviews got it right for once. Their service is efficient too," you reply, a little caught off-guard by his apparent non-sequitur.

Higuruma nods once, economical with the movement. It's that same singular, deft jut of his jaw which you've observed he's partial to when he's made a key decision, on something he won't ever back away from. Regardless of how it plays out.

"Then I'd like to take you there this Sunday afternoon."

"This Sunday?" you echo, trying to sound like you're not reeling from hearing Higuruma Hiromi has a concept of weekends which goes beyond staying in to huddle over his latest trial transcripts.

"Yes. It's not ideal but I have to meet a client on Saturday."

"Right." There was the version of the workaholic you knew.

"So Sunday's the earliest available date. 1230pm?"

If nothing else, something about Higuruma's unwavering gaze and his forthright manner is familiar enough to you. And it was just a meal. You've had meals with Higuruma before, albeit in front of vending machines, which was stretching the definition a little thin. Here was an opportunity to revise that then.

You respond, "12pm. We should try to avoid the lunch crowd. One of the regulars told me the average time in line is about 20 minutes though."

"It'll be worth it," he states, looking directly into your eyes, and then Higuruma Hiromi smiles at you.

And you can feel it now, with blinding abrupt clarity, that fresh heat blistering your cheeks, heralding the rising radiance of two new suns, splintering your horizon with a permanent glow.

Thanks for reading!

[safeturnip]

words: 1.5k

characters: Grian, GoodTimesWithScar

summary: Grian after the events of Third Life's finale.

additional tags: past character death

prompt: garden

(written for round 1 of mind meld for @mcyt-soulmate-sweepstakes !!)

***

Grian woke up in a new season of Hermitcraft with fading memories of grating sand under his fingernails, the ache of split knuckles, and the coppery taste of blood in his mouth. He was disoriented, reeling, forced to find his footing in a world where life was now a guaranteed certainty and not something to guard and inevitably lose. His heart still remembered the feeling of being torn in half.

Grian barely had to turn his head, and there he was—Scar, it was Scar, healthy and whole, his skin no longer the bloodless grey it had been in Third Life. He was half-turned away from Grian, talking to one of the other Hermits, his shoulders limned by the sun, a warm breeze ruffling the ends of his hair. In the space of an in-drawn breath, Grian was overwhelmed by the desperate urge to throw himself into Scar's arms; press his ear to Scar's chest and feel the steady thump of his heart; hold Scar's face in his hands, see for himself that his friend was alive and unbroken.

But he couldn't—not after what he'd done to Scar. Not after he'd beaten Scar to death with his own hands, some small part of him reveling in the pain and destruction, accepting the victory bestowed upon him at the end with nothing more than a bowed head. He couldn't bring himself to face Scar, watch his responding emotions over Grian's past actions bloom in his eyes in real time.

And so he turned and left.

But Scar kept following him. Grian had just managed to find an area to base at, along the very tip of the island, and Scar was there as well, unavoidable as an incoming rainstorm, already approaching Grian with an arm raised in greeting. Grian braced himself from the oncoming confrontation, but Scar was . . . He didn't bring up Third Life or the desert or his final death. The interaction came and went, leaving Grian with a sensation of confused anxiety. Why hadn't Scar said anything?

It kept happening; Scar would seek out Grian, Grian would prepare for confrontation, and . . . nothing. Scar wanted to talk about the new season, his future plans for his base, anything except Third Life and Grian's betrayal. Grian did his best to take it in stride, waiting for Scar to finally drop the facade, start raging at Grian for taking his life, demand answers from him that he did not have.

But it never happened. Scar just continued having normal, trite conversations with Grian, seeking out his company with easy repetition, a ship coming into a harbour that it didn't realize was unsafe.

It was at a time when he was going through a chest, his back turned, that a hand dropped onto his shoulder, and Grian flinched violently away from it. He spun around to see Scar, dressed in his new three-piece suit that covered his body like a suit of armour, a worried sort of pinch to his mouth, and alive, alive, alive. The hand he'd gotten Grian's attention with was still hanging awkwardly in the air, his other hand braced against the handle of his cane.

Scar met Grian's eyes, and Grian braced himself for the sight of red irises—but, no, here on Hermitcraft, Scar's eyes were their regular green, the colour of a forest brimming with vitality. Scar dropped his hand and his concerned look, his expression shifting back into his customary smile. "Dude, why've you been avoiding me this entire time? Did I do something to you at the end of Hermitcraft Seven?" Scar was laughing a little as he spoke, that familiar cadence that made it seem like anything in life could be gotten through if there was a joke that could be made.

"If I did, you need to tell me what it was; you know how terrible my memory is. It's just like—" Scar made a sliding motion with his hand, completely oblivious to Grian's inexplicable, slow-rising dread "—like water straight through a colander."

And all the subtle niggling suspicions that had been floating in Grian's mind ever since the start of the new season coalesced into a brand-new truth, a truth no less horrible than the misconception Grian had believed before.

Scar didn't remember.

Grian didn't know what he did or said after coming to that realization, but whatever happened was enough to make Scar nod, smile, and then leave with a parting wave over his shoulder.

Right, Grian thought to himself, shoving away the rising distress of realization, so Scar doesn't remember Third Life. That's okay. That's fine! I can—I can handle this. Maybe it was better that Scar didn't remember, that his memories of the desert had been wiped clean from his mind. Maybe it was better that all he knew was the relative safety and peace of Hermitcraft, where he wasn't constantly looking over his shoulder for death to ambush him when he was at his most vulnerable. He didn't need to know about that bloodstained cactus ring, a finale played out for the entertainment of the dead. It was then that Grian resolved never to let Scar know the truth.

So he took those memories of sand and a burning sun, of cactus needles piercing his skin and the hot starburst pain of a fist striking his jaw, and he buried them—six feet under, beneath hard tightly packed dirt.

But this wasn't Third Life, this wasn't the desert, where the ground was dry and barren and unforgiving. Here, things could flourish and grow, could effloresce uninhibited, and that was what his secrets did.

The lilacs were the first to sprout, green shoots pushing out from the dark brown soil, questing tendrils that Grian barely even noticed underneath his feet. They continued to grow, forming fretworks of doorways that led to nowhere, their willowy stems hardening into branches, turning from delicate seedlings into dense, tightly packed shrubs. Grey bark wrapped around their trunks, grey like the colour of Scar's skin when he was on his red life, and from the branches grew oval, waxy green leaves. Buds poked out from behind the patchwork screen of leaves, their petals pressed tightly shut as though to keep something from spilling out.

And all the while, Grian kept up the charade, continued pretending that everything was fine, was normal. He did everything correctly—talked to Scar when it was needed of him, laughed and smiled as Scar showed him the copper-accented builds he'd came up with, furiously struggled against a memory of a sand castle, of cacti and lava bordering a desert. But he managed; he didn't let anything slip, and Scar . . . Scar was happy like this, staring proudly up at his build and his eyes shining in satisfaction, with no knowledge of the bloody demise Grian had led him to. So Grian played at normalcy, complimented Scar's build, and the lilacs bloomed in a rush of hungry, washed-out purple.

Underneath the syrupy floral scent of the lilacs emerged a flood of poppies. At first, they were just a carpet of dull olive-green stems and ragged-edged leaves, barely noticeable beneath the taller shrubs that continued to grow above them. But then the poppies blossomed—an unfurling of deep, deep red, the red of heart's-blood, the red of regret splattered across a burnt-out fortress. Upon their blankets of red lay the poppies' centres, black with yellow stamens; they seemed to track Grian's actions as he pretended and acted as though his actions in Third Life never existed.

And Grian wished he could forget. How ironic that poppies were the flower of forgetting, their red blooms lining the River Lethe, and Grian's memories of the desert were still as clear and detailed as the moment he'd experienced them. Scar came to visit him as he built the roof of his starter house, and all he could think about was how he knew what Scar's arterial blood sprayed hot across his face felt like. I know what the feeling of your bones snapping feels like, he barely stopped himself from saying, I remember the feeling of your trachea collapsing underneath my hands, the way my thumbs dug bruises into your throat. The poppies seemed to taunt him, their centres like dark, watchful eyes.

At some point in time, Grian must have tried digging out the plants, tried pruning the vegetation into something more manageable. But nothing he did seemed to work. The lilacs had root systems that stretched far down into the earth, and no matter how many times he'd cut down their branches, tear off their leaves and flowers, they'd just grow back in a purple rush of cloying, sickly-sweet perfume. And the poppies . . . the blood-red flowers were easy enough to tear out of the ground, easy as peeling away cheap wallpaper, but the poppies grew back so easily. No matter how many times Grian pulled them out of the ground, more soon spread to take their place. It was an endless and futile task.

Everywhere he looked, he saw purple and red and green and grey, leaves crowding his lungs, petals clogging the chambers of his heart, deceptively strong stems winding around his ankles. His garden grew wild and uninhibited, and there was nothing he could do to escape it.

[ifishouldvanish]

For Love (Pt. 2)

SHIPS | Mizrak/Olrox, Past Alucard/Olrox, ...future AluMizRox? RATING | M WORDS | 1,793 [Part 1] | [Part 2] | [Part 3] [READ ON AO3]

- - -

Adrian slipped into the bedroom, keeping his eyes on the silhouette standing by the window as he gently closed the door behind him.

Mizrak turned his head sharply at the sound, and Adrian couldn't help his surprise at seeing the man's eyes glowing red instead of the rich brown they'd been mere hours ago.

He let out a hiss and bared his fangs—and Adrian squared his shoulders, planting his feet firmly on the floor.

One, two, three seconds, and Mizrak lunged towards him.

He had a lot of weight to him—enough to knock Adrian back against the wall. But he held him at arm’s length, letting the new spawn thrash and strain and claw for a bite of him. He'd wear himself out eventually.

The fit of frenzy passed soon enough, and Mizrak seemed to return to the man Adrian recognized.

“…All done?” he asked.

Mizrak's brows furrowed in confusion. Shaking himself, he took a step back. “Alucard?”

Adrian bowed his head slightly. “Mizrak.”

He looked down at the floor and rubbed a hand over his neck, beginning to pace the room. “W-where is Olrox?”

“He's just outside,” Adrian assured, following him with his eyes. “He's given a lot of blood to you. More than he should have, quite frankly. He's very weak.”

“I see.” He frowned, seeming to struggle to remember. “It’s just… I can't—I-I think I need more,” he mumbled guiltily.

“Yes. You do. And you will—” Adrian explained, “for at least a few days.” He gestured toward the bed. “Sit.”

After a beat of hesitation, Mizrak sat on its edge, his toes nudged just right up to the beam of sunlight spilling in from the gap between the drapes and across the rug.

The bed itself was a mess, sheets torn and covered in stains. Paired with the unhealed bruising Adrian had noticed on Olrox's neck, it painted a clear picture: Olrox was less inclined to feed Mizrak, than he was to simply let him devour him.

With a click of his tongue, Adrian grabbed the chair from the writing desk and dragged it over to the bedside. He dropped his weight into it, tugged up his sleeve, and offered Mizrak arm.

For a long moment, he only stared. Wet his lips. Scratched at his scalp and his chin.

“Drink,” Adrian said, already feeling his patience begin to fray.

He darted his eyes towards the door for a moment, and seeming to decide it was alright, finally brought his mouth to his wrist.

Mizrak's underdeveloped fangs made for a messy, painful bite that made Adrian wince. But he watched him feed—watched the hunger melt away into bliss. Watched his shoulders, hiked up as if to shield him from prying eyes, slowly drooping with ease.

Adrian had never let anyone feed off of him before, and he was belatedly beginning to realize just how intimate a thing it was.

Had it felt this way for Olrox? He thought. All those years ago, when he'd saved his life?

He looked away, and Mizrak continued sucking the blood out of him hungrily and noisily—his appetite far too voracious for anything so trite as shame.

Had his own hunger been so plain? Adrian couldn't help but wonder. After all, it had been a hunger not just for blood—but for the man giving it to him.

He'd been in love, but Olrox had not. Not in the same measure. Not enough to run to him the way he'd run to this man now suckling on his wrist. Not enough to look at him that way.

Olrox had saved his life, but it had been an act born out of a warriors’ bond, not a lovers’—the joinings of their bodies over the years a mere convenience, nothing more than a form of mutual masturbation.

Adrian's heart sank into the pit of his stomach, and he could feel himself beginning to get faint. Tempering the ache of resentment in his gut, he gently pried Mizrak off of him. “…That's enough,” he whispered, and tugged his arm away.

Mizrak tried to follow him, his hunger not quite satiated yet. And maybe it was what self-control of his that had remained in tact, or perhaps something more primal—new spawn recognizing some kind of authority in his centuries-old eyes—but he stopped. Pulled away and rubbed at his mouth, smearing blood into his beard.

“I'm sorry—” Mizrak gasped, unable to look him in the eyes, “it's just—”

“Impossible to resist?” Adrian finished for him, wiping his arm clean.

Mizrak nodded, his eyes cast downwards as his shame returned. “Yes.”

“It'll get easier,” he assured, tugging his sleeve back over his wrist.

“Resisting? Or the… feeling? After—” He closed his eyes and started again. “I… feel disgusted with myself.”

The corner of Adrian's mouth twitched into a smile. “…Both,” he said.

Mizrak let out the weakest trace of a laugh. Nodded. “So the two of you… you know each other?”

“Oh, yes,” Adrian leaned back in his seat and crossed one leg over the other. “Yes, I'm afraid your sire and I go back—oh, I suppose it's coming up on about a hundred… forty years? Give or take?”

Mizrak's eyes widened briefly, and he nodded again. Seemed to nod at everything—though Adrian supposed when you suddenly awoke transformed into a bloodthirsty beast, you learned to take things as they came; to not ask too many questions.

“He says you chose this,” Adrian said. “Is that true?”

Mizrak glanced around the dark room warily, either not sure or afraid of the answer. “I… did not want to die,” was all he offered in explanation.

Adrian uncrossed his legs and hunched forward, steepling his fingers. “He… does care for you, Mizrak,” he said. “If nothing else. Take heart in that.”

He wrapped his arms around himself, and gave a slight nod, though his eyes dimmed.

“…Not all vampires are so lucky,” Adrian added. “He certainly wasn't.”

 - - -

Olrox was still curled up on the settee when Adrian returned, gazing longingly out the window. The sun was setting on Paris, twilight casting him awash in pink and orange and gold.

“He's asleep again,” Adrian announced from the doorway.

He rolled his head to the side limply to look at him. “Thank you.”

“So… he did want this,” Adrian said. “Or at least, a part of him did.”

Olrox scoffed. “Couldn't take my word for it, could you?”

Adrian busied himself with putting his gloves back on. “I'll… get you something to eat, then,” he said.

Olrox exhaled warily. “Adrian.”

“Yes?”

“We should talk.”

He gave the tight-fitted leather a final tug past his knuckles. “About what?”

Olrox rolled his tired, sunken eyes and leveled him with an exasperated look. “Will you please just sit down?”

An indignant grunt sounded from Adrian's throat, and he sat rigidly on the edge of the armchair across from him.

“How have you been?” Olrox asked again, putting on a failed attempt at a pleasant smile.

“Busy.”

Olrox huffed out a little laugh. “That's good,” he shrugged. “You always got so insufferable the moment you stopped moving.”

Adrian let the barb roll off of him. “And you?” he asked. “Lead any good revolts in my absence? Rebellions? Violent uprisings? That sort of thing?”

If Olrox felt any shade of insulted at that, it wasn't making it to his face. “Is that really why you left?”

Adrian pursed his lips and looked away. “It was time for me to go back,” he shrugged. “That was all.”

Olrox tilted his head and pouted. “To your dusty library?” He asked, his voice a lazy drawl. “To all the ghosts in your father's castle?”

“I was an interloper in a place I didn't belong,” Adrian said, unable to keep himself from glancing down the hall where Mizrak was lying in their consummated bed.

“Don't be ridiculous,” Olrox dismissed. “They all loved the white wolf.”

“Did you?” Adrian darted back before he could stop himself.

The façade of levity slipped from Olrox's face, and his expression hardened to stone. “You know I… cared for you.”

Adrian closed his eyes, bowing his head slightly in acknowledgement. “Right.”

Olrox sighed. “I wasn't in any position to love anyone back then,” he explained. “So no, Adrian. Not even you. No matter how badly you wanted to be the one to come in and—” he paused to catch his breath, “save me, like your mother did your father.”

Adrian felt a thrum of not-quite satisfaction swell in his chest at those words. Not even you. As though he'd been close. As though he'd had a chance. As though if he couldn't have him, no one could.

But clearly, that wasn't the case.

“So what's changed then?” He asked, nodding in the direction of the bedroom.

Olrox undid two buttons on his shirt, and Adrian could see the how much further the bruising went. “There was a man, in the colonies,” he said. “About a century after you left. A whole fucking century, Adrian. Times changed. So did I.”

Adrian scoffed. “You fell in love with a colonist? Of all people?”

“He wasn't a colonist,” Olrox shook his head. “He was someone like me. Whose land had been stolen. But then… he was taken from me.”

A silence hung in the air, both of them knowing there was no need to go into any more detail than that.

Adrian drew a slow, careful breath. “…When I heard someone had felled a Belmont,” he said, “I knew it had to be you. Could only be you.”

“So you're angry with me, then?” Olrox asked. “For laying a hand on your precious little family of hunt—”

“I've always known you to be a just man, Olrox,” Adrian cut him off. “I trusted there was a good reason.”

Olrox chuckled, a dry, scratching sound. “So you have changed, after all.”

Adrian set his hands on his lap and returned a rueful smile. “I’m going to get you something to eat now,” he said, rising back to his feet and heading for the door.

“Adrian.” Olrox rasped.

He looked over his shoulder at him. “Yes?”

“It’s good to see you,” he said. “And I… I have missed you.”

A century's worth of pain, regret, and longing burned in Adrian's chest, giving off a small spark of hope. “Yes. Likewise.” He said. He set his hand on the doorknob then, but stopped short of opening it. “…And Olrox?”

He lifted his head up from the back of the settee, straining as though it had the weight of an entire world. “What?”

Adrian smiled at him, no longer able to keep all the years of fondness–of love–at bay. “You really do look like shit.”