#trying to do New and Fresh things with the hope and rage aspects in particular in fragments if you couldn't tell

[upward-centrifuge]

Witch of hope save me

Save me sylph of rage

Thief of hope save me

Mage of rage

[fishyfod]

(Slightly) more organized thoughts on the V8 finale.

tl;dr I think the finale had some issues.

I’ll start this off by emphasizing again that this is my opinion, so read something else if you can’t handle negative criticism of RWBY. I say this because too often people in this FNDM can’t handle a difference in opinion without insulting or patronizing others, and I want none of that.

Now, RWBY’s general structural issue is a lack of time to fulfill all their ambitions, and they usually tend to neglect one aspect a bit more than others. In volumes 7 and 8 this proved to be quite a problem, because they wanted to tell quite a complicated story while introducing a fairly large amount of new and returning characters. I very much like the story they told in these volumes, but it must be said that the development and focus on the regular cast, and team RWBY in particular, has suffered for it. It’s not a deal breaker for me personally, but I do think it’s an issue.

So when I saw the finale episode only had about 20 minutes, I figured the best course of choice for RWBY would be to focus on the Atlas-only plots, and leave RWBY & co’s stories for the next volume, which by all accounts seems to be focused only on their character. And credit where credit is due, this is what RWBY decided to do with this finale. This doesn’t really solve the underlying issue that the main cast has yet again been relegated to such a minor role in their own show, but I can live with it.

I still do have a problem with how RWBY’s role in this finale was handled, and forgive me because this might be the least well-explained part of this review. The best way to describe it would be that, though I know I’m watching team RWBY, they don’t feel present in the finale? I struggle to put my finger on it, if it’s more an issue of direction or execution, but something about RWBY’s fight felt off for me.

By comparison, when I think of the episode before, I don’t have this issue. While the way Yang fell isn’t RWBY’s best execution, the reactions of RWBY to that fall worked quite well. There was individual focus on Yang falling, Blake screaming and raging at it, Weiss’s heart breaking into two, Ruby falling into more despair - the tragedy works because of it. I don’t feel the same about the finale, RWB fall almost as if they’re passerby rather than the main characters.

Again, maybe this is just me, maybe I’ll change my mind later. Whatever.

I think Cinder is the one I’m most satisfied with. She seems in character, she acts a lot like she did in her confident state during Beacon, and I did get the impression Salem knows Cinder is lying to her. I admit that I did not expect this direction for Cinder, it seemed like the right spot to have her break free from Salem, but it’s too early for me to call where her arc is going to.

The only nitpick I have with Cinder is how she offed Arthur. I felt like it could have a little more focus? I get that his death is supposed to feel completely inconsequential, but I wish there was just a little bit more there. Again, only a nitpick.

Vine - I think my opinion on Vine’s death is quite unpopular. It felt too last minute, without enough setup. See, while killing Harriet here would have its own set of issues, she was well developed enough where you could actively feel for her, while also expecting a possible death. I can’t say the same about Vine; Vine is only a teensy bit more developed than Elm, which isn’t a lot. He’s making a huge sacrifice, but the lack of character makes him seem expendable by design. It feels like the writers put all their efforts into threatening Harriet’s life, realized last minute that actually they could a lot more with her character (good call), so they shoved in Vine in her place because they still needed a bomb sacrifice.

On the flip side, three of the Ace Ops surviving and proving once and for all they broke away from Ironwood too, with Harriet and Marrow still alive - that is good. I’m not sure what more they’re planning to do with their characters, but it’s preferable to far worse alternatives I can imagine. We’ll see.

Then there’s Penny. sigh

I’m not sure what I can add that P5, bell or cosmokyrin, and probably a few others haven’t already said, but I don’t think it was well written. The whole body-thing in “Creation”, sure, I can accept that was a difference of interpretation. This? This whole, let’s resurrect Penny, develop her immensely as a character, reaffirm her autonomy multiple times over, avoid multiple deaths, only to die like this?

I know the common comparison people make here is with V3, and I can see where people are coming from. After all, Pyrrha and Penny’s deaths were impactful and tragic there, and most people agree that was well written. What’s the difference here? Some differences in circumstance are worth visiting here.

Penny of the Beacon era, lovable character that she was already, was not the most developed character. At the end of the day, most of what we knew of Penny then was in relation to Ruby - we knew Ruby cared for her a lot, we knew why they bonded, so we had setup as to why her death would impact the Fall so much. It works, because it gave enough focus on her for us to care about, but not overly so where the shocking factor of the Fall wouldn’t work.

With Pyrrha, I think we all knew the signs were there at the end of the day. I’d argue that Pyrrha’s very conception as a character lead to her death, she was just slightly too perfect for us not to expect a tragedy to occur. Importantly, her major arc in V3 sets us up to her death - through her conversation with Ozpin’s gang and Jaune, the introduction of Ember and the soul transfer device, killing Penny - by the time Pyrrha dies you’re prepared for it, and it still hurts. Even if the tragic scenario presented (losing Pyrrha because of the soul transfer) wasn’t the one used, dying because she tried defending the use of those powers from Cinder made sense. It was enough of a switch you weren’t bored because you expected everything to go to plan, but it wasn’t too drastic where you felt completely unprepared for what would happen.

The trouble with how Penny’s death was handled here, is in part because they just kept pushing us to the edge, making us worry about one tragic scenario, another way for Penny to die, only to alleviate our fears - only to kill her off anyway in a completely separate way. It happened so often in these two volumes, when we were already fresh off recognizing Penny wasn’t dead in V3, that rather than feeling like an expected death that is tragic, is feels like they toyed with out perception constantly only because they could. When you raise and lower death flags over and over in such a small amount of time, the tragedy you aimed to convey is lost. Perhaps unintentionally, the point no longer seems to be telling a tragic story, it’s only playing this cruel game of perception with the audience. What’s the joke about Jean Grey in x-men, that she keeps being killed off and resurrected so often it’s hard to care about it all? Is this how I’m supposed to look at Penny, RWBY’s Jean Grey?

Granted, I’m not sure that if they committed to one consistent death threat with Penny and followed through, that necessarily would’ve been better. I’m not sure how I’d think of RWBY if she died from the virus, for example. At least, however, I’d be more confident in saying that was a difference of direction, rather than a difficult writing choice to comprehend.

It’s only fitting I’d talk about Winter now, huh? I think you all know my stance about her as a character, I’d argue that she, Ironwood and Cinder were the best handled characters in these two volumes by a fair margin, but the finale leaves me very conflicted about her.

On the one hand, it’s everything I want. Winter’s confrontation with Ironwood is like a mix of Blake facing off against Adam and Yang confronting Raven, and while not as impactful in terms of storytelling, they do deliver on the same fronts. Winter calls out Ironwood for his lies, establishing once and for all it was by her volition she broke off, her conscience that was always better, and there is something poetic about her gaining the Winter Maiden powers to fulfill her goal of protecting others.

...but I can’t separate this from Penny’s fate. And it frustrates me to no end, because I love her connection to Penny, I made comparisons of how it reminds of Bumbleby’s relationship, it drives their characters forward so much, heck, I like that Penny took a part in taking down Ironwood with Winter, in a sense. But because Penny’s death feels so contrived, its connection to Winter almost cheapens the importance of their relationship with each other. And it doesn’t seem quite needed either, since they individually as characters already broke free from Ironwood.

I can sort of see that I am supposed to interpret it as a tragedy, and I do indeed think Winter getting the Maiden powers is tragic for her character (not unlike Spring Maiden!Yang theories), and I am excited to see where this is going. I thought this was the end for Winter’s major impact on the story, but there’s a whole other arc waiting, and Penny’s a major part of it too.

To say I’m conflicted about Winter would be an understatement.

The actual silver lining, for me, is the post credit scene. Volume 9 is an opportunity for RWBY to try and change some of the problem I presented initially. My hope is that by focusing almost exclusively on team RWBY, with Jaune and Neo, and putting less emphasis on developing the settings of giant-tree-land and not over-complicating the plot. Hopefully, this would allow them to focus on developing the main cast again, in in particular addressing some of the main issues presented; notably, the Bees confessing, Ruby maybe reaching her breaking point, Yang’s issues being addressed, and hopefully something more individual for Blake and Weiss as well. Neo is an interesting curveball to throw into this equation, and I have a decent amount of hope with Jaune (although then I remember it’s probably going to be about Penny, and, ugh...).

Yeah, that’s all I have at the moment. If you want to talk about it, my inbox and DM’s are always open. If you disagree with me that’s fair, just give me the minimal amount of respect rather than being an ass about it.

[heliads]

The Artist

After a less-than-perfect meeting with controlling S.H.I.E.L.D. higher-ups, Steve Rogers discovers a small art studio just down the block from the Avengers Tower. He meets a woman inside who may come to mean more to him than he first realizes.

masterlist

Steve Rogers is frustrated. He joined the Avengers, fought alongside S.H.I.E.L.D., made a hundred hard choices and maybe dozens more all so he could protect those he cared about. Those who couldn’t throw up a fist against their enemies. 

Yet now, he’s not entirely sure that what he’s doing is considered good. S.H.I.E.L.D. and the government are fiercely restrictive over what he and the Avengers do, and Steve is sick of it. Steve used to be able to pride himself on his gut reflex, on being able to always do the right thing. Is it bad that he’s not sure he can do that anymore? That when his fists come up bloody, he may be looking into the eyes of an innocent instead of a twisted soldier?

Steve supposes that’s why he snapped today. It was just another mandatory meeting, imposing yet another set of rules on what Steve is or is not allowed to do as Captain America. Steve’s usually controlled calm had cracked, and he had unleashed an incensed rant upon the S.H.I.E.L.D. higher-ups sent to speak to him.

To cool down, Steve had headed out of the Avengers tower, dressed in the ordinary clothes of a civilian so he could blend in. He’s not quite sure where his feet are taking him- down a few streets, turning a few corners. He glances at the shops he passes, not paying much attention to them, until one in particular catches his eye and he stops in his tracks.

It’s a small store, not displaying neon lights or garish decorations. There’s a slightly faded banner hanging in a window, and a larger sign propped up above the door. It’s an art studio, tucked away within the hustle and bustle of New York. Steve knows at once that he has to go in.

The studio itself is like a breath of fresh air after spending years trapped inside. The windows are open, letting in a breeze every now and then. The walls are covered floor to ceiling in the art of its students, with self-portraits and still lives peering out at him from every possible inch of space. As Steve walks past the front desk into the main room, he smiles at the sound of music piping from a stereo in the corner. Jazz, a nice slow song. Maybe Chet Baker.

There are only a few people in the room, working dutifully on their canvases and papers. The room has tables scattered around it, spread over with objects of every size and shape for use in a still life. There are fake fruits and flowers, dusty glass bottles and compact wooden boxes. It feels like home.

Across the room, a woman leans over the shoulder of someone seated at a computer, pointing out different aspects of possible reference images. When she sees Steve approach, she says one last sentence to the searcher before walking over to him, head swaying gently to the beat of the music.

“Hi, welcome to the studio! The name’s Y/N. Y/N L/N.” She looks to Steve expectantly, and he glances back before coming to his senses. “Steve. You’ve got a nice place here.” He gestures around the studio, and the woman smiles. “Thank you. It’s come together from bits and pieces, started a while ago by a friend and I.” The two of them look back at the gathered artists before Y/N turns back to Steve.

“You know, we’ve got an open hour every night from 7 to 8 if you want to drop by. You don’t have to pay or anything, just bring your art and be prepared to work.” Steve smiles at her. “That sounds pretty good. I might have to take you up on that.” Y/N flashes him a grin. “I hope to see you there, Steve.”

After Steve makes it back home, he finds himself still thinking about the woman from the studio. Steve had always enjoyed art, and something about that place makes him want to try again. So, it’s not exactly a surprise that he finds himself standing before the studio door the next day.

He ends up staying the entire hour, and then again the next day. He’s not sure why, but he feels drawn to the studio. The art, Y/N’s company, it all is a happy respite from the responsibilities that threaten to crush him on a day-to-day basis.

A month or two goes by before he realizes he loves Y/N. It’s a slow understanding, but something about her gentle smile and flashing eyes makes him want to spend the entire day with her. Steve hasn’t had the luxury of falling in love in a long time, but he thinks it would be more than alright to fall in love with her.

They’re walking home one night after a date when Steve’s good spell finally ends. It was an otherwise perfect night, the moon and stars casting a net of light across the city. Y/N’s hand is clasped in his, and they’re strolling down the streets peacefully. 

Steve has always taken satisfaction in his good instincts, but the two have been walking for a while before he realizes that the streets are oddly empty for a New York night. The main street is just a block or so ahead, and he starts to pick up his pace a little bit. 

However, it’s too late for this. A man dressed in black steps from the shadows to halt in front of Steve and Y/N, stopping them in their tracks. “Apologies, Rogers. You won’t be going anywhere tonight.” Steve’s jaw clenches, but then he looks to Y/N. “Let her leave. She hasn’t done anything to you.”

The man shakes his head in mock sorrow. “I’m afraid not. She might know something.” The man makes a slight gesture with his hand, and more men emerge from the shadows. Steve curses silently. This is not how he wanted the night to go.

The man extends his hands. “If you come quietly, I can promise you that she won’t get hurt.” Steve just shakes his head. “I know how these promises turn out. We aren’t going anywhere with you.” The man sighs. “I had hoped this would end more easily. Well, have it your way.” With that, the fight begins.

After a while of throwing punches and dodging bullets, Steve begins to wish he had brought his shield with him. Tony always had some way to summon his suit from a wristwatch or phone, why couldn’t Steve have done the same? With a panicked jolt, he realizes he hasn’t heard anything from Y/N. Quickly, Steve throws the man in front of him to the ground and spins around to face his girlfriend. What he sees makes him freeze in place.

Y/N apparently does not need any help, because she’s just finishing off another soldier. Four more lie unconscious at her feet. Steve looks around and realizes that all of the enemy soldiers are taken care of, and he fixes Y/N with a cold glare as he finally understands why she was able to fight off all of the guards.

“You’re a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, aren’t you.” Y/N looks away from him, but mutters one word under Steve’s bitter gaze. “Yes.” Steve shakes his head, feeling anger rush into him. “You’re just like Sharon. Another person S.H.I.E.L.D. planted in my life to keep me docile. Did you ever love me, or was that just another order?”

Y/N’s head flies up. “No, never. I promise you, Steve, I haven’t done anything that wasn’t what I wanted to do. What I feel for you is real.” Steve just scoffs disgustedly. “How am I supposed to believe that? We’re done. I don’t want to see you again. Tell your supervisors that they’ll need another guard.” With that, he walks away, trying not to react to Y/N’s brokenhearted calls.

The next day, Steve stalks up to Fury with the simmering rage of a lion. He doesn’t let the director speak, just confronts him with hushed and furious tones. “How long has Y/N L/N been posted to keep sight of me?” Fury sighs. “I see you’ve found out. She’s already told me about what happened. To be honest, I think you should be thanking her. If it was anyone else, they probably would have been kidnapped or killed by those HYDRA agents.”

Steve doesn’t want to hear it. “That’s not the point, Fury. You can’t keep forcing people into my life and expecting me to be fine with it.” Fury raises an eyebrow. “That’s a strong way to put it. She was just there across the street.” Steve takes a step back, confused. “What do you mean, only there?” Fury looks at him questioningly. “Her only assignment was to keep an eye on you, and be a distant acquaintance that you could trust if necessary. I wouldn’t exactly call that forcing someone into your life.”

Steve nods slowly, then turns to leave. His thoughts are a jumbled mess in his head, but he’s still thinking clearly enough to remember the way back to Y/N’s apartment.

It takes her a moment to respond when he knocks. When she opens the door, she looks more than a little surprised to see him. “I thought we were done.” Steve sighs. “I want to apologize. You weren’t faking it. I talked to Fury, and he said that your assignment never involved getting close to me.”

Y/N nods. “I love you, Steve. I promise. I know the circumstances aren’t exactly great, but I never meant to hurt you.” Steve smiles. “I know. I think the main question is this- will you forgive me for storming out of walking you home and accusing you of being a sleeper agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.?” Y/N laughs. “Only if you forgive me for keeping my status as an agent a secret.” Steve nods, grinning. He has Y/N back, and everything is just as it should be.

[unordinary-analysis]

Episode 159

So apparently “later in the week” means ‘literally next week’ for me digiudgg

Also, I won’t be able to post the day the comic comes out because christmas and all that and family idk so I just want to say HAPPY HOLIDAYS :DD hope you guys have a nice time :))

Honorable mentions:

Very happy that the theory is thriving

I love Arlo with all of my heart and soul there i’ve finally said it

Do we know yet if Arlo knows that Cecile is working with John? I can remember the superhero posse knowing it, but did the info ever reach arlo? Comment if i forgot something lol

I’ve talked about all of the possibilities of a joker impersonator in recent posts, so I won’t go into all of that again here. You see, it’s laziness. I’m sure you guys understand lol.

I literally don’t know how to write this in a detailed way which is why it’s in the honorable mentions, but I just feel that Cecile has to just snap soon right? I’ve been hyped about her character as a whole for so long ugh, I just need some developments

I say “anyways” a lot. Is it too much? lol

Okay, first of all: Elaine:

    Elaine, elaine, elaine, elaine, elaine, you’ve finally done it. You’ve interested me.

    Harsh, I know, but honestly, she hasn’t really been doing much. I thought her character was cool to read a couple of times when she was literally terrified to death of Joker, but now I feel that her intrigue is actually due to her own self if that makes sense? Anyways-

    Moving past the obvious difference in her hair (only because I’ve already pointed that out lol), In this episode, WE GET TO SEE ELAINE IN OFFENSE MODE OEIRHGIWUHIWUH

    I’ve been hungry for some good developments on people’s powers ugh. It’s been dry ever since we saw Isen fight like forever ago. Or maybe Cecile. I don’t know. I just like to see people fighting oof. Anyway, we don’t even get much of Elaine fighting, all we see is like a block and a punch, but that’s not even really the only thing I’m excited about seeing.

    More so than other characters, Elaine has always been this docile type, you know? She’s just there whenever anyone needs healing and whenever someone needs someone to yell at them for being stupid. All Elaine ever is is worried, scared, and submissive. Well, not counting the beginning of the comic because I’m still not over that loss. Her character at the beginning of UnOrdinary? Superb. She was bitchy and yet weak at the same time. Classic combo. Anyways~ ;-; 

    Elaine is usually terrified of something and rarely stands up for herself or anything else, so seeing her stand up for herself, kind of, in this episode was really something to see. It wasn’t something big but, it was just a breath of fresh air to see a defiant side of Elaine. I wonder, is she growing more and more fed up of being weak? Is she done being scared? I don’t even know if she has the power to stop being scared, but, I don’t know. I’m kind of intrigued by the possibility of Elaine just snapping, aren’t you?

My main man: Arlo: 

    It’s got to be so weird going back to school after everything that went down, huh? Yet, the way that the safety of the school is still on Arlo’s mind? Even after he was publicly dethroned and now that everyone is staring at him wherever he goes? That’s the real evidence of what a true leader Arlo was. The best king we’ve seen in the UnOrdinary world I said what i said. And now he’s not even king anymore? Sidfhsiufhsiguh

    And the fact that Elaine went straight to him when she found a problem? It’s obvious that everyone still thinks of Arlo as the king. 

    I’m just in awe that Arlo’s first priority seems to be the school. It really… just helps paint Arlo in this different light. I’ve made countless posts talking about how he is obsessed with order because of the influence left on him by Rei and Rei’s failure, but now that his hierarchy has fallen apart, he hasn’t exactly reacted in the way I always used to think he would. And, yes, this is very late considering how long ago John ruined the hierarchy, but I haven’t talked about it yet I think so I’m here now. 

    I used to think that Arlo loved order so much. That maintaining it was his ultimate goal. I’m positive I’ve said that a few times before at least. But, it’s easy to see now that it goes deeper than that. Arlo really loves his school or at least he feels he owes it something, something that runs deeper than the surface hierarchy. And I’m not even sure if he’s always been like that or if it’s changed over the course of the story. I can’t ever seem to tell, no matter what, if Arlo’s character really has developed, or if I just never saw an aspect of him. It’s infuriating and yet so interesting at the same time…

    Anyway.

    Arlo’s rage is also something I want to touch on. It’s not exactly something new, but compared to the beginning of the story, it’s definitely something much more common recently, even though he usually is able to maintain a cool now as well. In this episode, Arlo punched a wall hard out of anger, which wouldn’t exactly be news for characters like Blyke or John, and maybe wouldn’t be for Arlo either, but I can’t help thinking about how out of character it would be for the Arlo of the comic’s beginning, at the beginning of season one. I feel that anger is something that we’re only being introduced to in regards to Arlo, like easing yourself into cold water, you know? Yeah sure, it doesn’t feel too out of character for Arlo to get so angry he literally decimates a wall, but it feels like every time he loses his cool, it either gets more over the top or it is incited by smaller and smaller things. His tendency to turn to anger is getting bigger. Arlo is angrier now than he’s ever been. 

    But, Just as I just said. I can’t tell if this is a totally new thing for Arlo, the anger, or if it’s been inside of him all along, just brewing beneath the surface, repressed in a way, similar to John. Except John knows what he’s running from. I don’t really know what I’m saying I just really love that uru-chan is tapping into Arlo’s emotions more and more as the story goes on because I can’t tell if they really are new things for Arlo or if they’re finally getting the best of him.

    Wording is hard so I have no idea if that last section makes sense.

    So: summary: I’m currently waiting for some sort of enlightenment on Arlo’s emotional state and character growth because damn

We love our dark king John: 

    So, um. John.

    He’s really something, isn’t he.

    I can never just hate him… no matter what he does… because everything he does is just so interesting. 

    Anyway back on topic. John’s current motives are actually really interesting. I’m not sure if I’ve talked about this yet because to be honest every time I write one of these, I rarely ever go back to see what I’ve already written in previous weeks and I never just remember because once I post one of these, you can bet that it’s out of mind. I know that John really just wants to create chaos. That’s clear enough. He stated basically that Arlo when he said he was taking down the hierarchy. But the thing is, I really don’t get why John is so for chaos? Like? I understand taking down the hierarchy because everything John hates about life, about his life, it really has stemmed from this system, the hierarchy. And finally after Arlo proved once again that the hierarchy could do nothing but hurt him, John vows to destroy it. Makes sense. And when the hierarchy is destroyed, obviously chaos is going to occur. That’s inevitable. We saw something similar with Rei and just basic sense seems to suggest that people do not not know how to function when there aren’t rules to follow. That’s chaos. Got that. But while John’s hate for the hierarchy and motive to destroy it make sense and the natural path that follows that leads to chaos, it’s John’s particular want for this chaos that keeps throwing me off.

    I don’t get why John wants chaos. I don’t get it. I don’t, okay? You know, he was a lot easier to understand when the only things he had going on were a. Lie to sera and b. Take down the hierarchy. But, yay, he’s achieved those things (some more successfully than others), and now..?? Why would John want chaos?

    I’m just repeating myself in hopes of making sense of my own thoughts but I can’t. I really don’t know why John seems so keen for Wellston running itself into the ground.

    So I’m deadass going to leave this here until I can think properly or something iuwfisuhg. I don’t know. It’s kind of late and I have to be up early tomorrow.

Some developments on the imposter Joker theory:

    Yeah, so, this isn’t really a theory aymore. It’s kind of proven now, but still it’s an easy way to refer to the whole situation. Anyway, on my longer post before specifically on this, I pointed out that because it used to be a common belief among low-tiers that Tuesday (back when he still was Tuesday) was Arlo, even though Arlo’s eyes glow blue and John’s glow orange. So: I said that it was likely that students can’t see the color of the eye glow or whatever through the mask. 

  �� This was only supported by this episode because not once does Elaine mention the color of the imposter’s eyes when determining that it is indeed an imposter. She thinks, “Wait a minute…! Something isn’t right here! That’s not John! …. This imposter’s ability level is nothing compared to the real Joker!” And that’s about it. So. Yeah. I think I was right about the eye thing. Not much else to say lol.

        Something else I want to say about the Joker imposter thing is that it really doesn’t matter who each imposter is. We wasted breath trying to think of who the first imposter was and if they don’t keep the same one, it doesn’t really matter. So because this imposter was not the same as the last, I think we can move on from this particular guessing game.

[jackalopingintothevoid]

Lingering

(also posted on AO3)

This is for @jenny-calendar (happy birthday!) since a discussion of her wonderful fic haunted sent this whole thing spinning wildly in my brain. This is much angstier in nature, but y’all know I’m a sucker for catharsis and fluff so look out for that happy ending!

It was a run-down thing, a crappy apartment that hadn’t been renovated since the 1970′s. It was falling apart, but it was cheap, and it was both a necessary step for Janna of the Kalderash-- now going by Jenny Calendar-- to fulfill her responsibility to her family, and also very, very far away from said family.

Her intention had been to settle in and start a new life, while still keeping an eye on the cursed vampire known as Angelus. He was keeping quiet, as he apparently had done for some time, and the few glimpses Janna-- Jenny-- had of him since her arrival in London had been of him looking miserable and filthy in alleyways, catching rats for their blood and avoiding humans like the plague.

She told herself that was good, that there was nothing to worry about from him like this. She tried to hold on the reasoning her family had given, that this was a punishment he deserved, but she was far removed from the original crime and looking at him this way just made her feel pity.

But then, what was more pitiable than a vampire with a soul?

Admittedly, Ja-- Jenny was feeling less charitable than she perhaps would be otherwise, since it turned out this crappy apartment that hadn’t been renovated since the 1970′s had a very good reason for being so.

It was in fact haunted by a violent, screaming poltergeist.

Needless to say, Jenny hadn’t been getting much sleep.

It was terrifying at first, but she wasn’t some hapless muggle. She was Janna of the Kalderash, sworn to watch over a cursed vampire lest he ever lose his soul and end his torment. She’d learned of ghosts and what to do about them in her childhood lessons, and she set her mind on kicking this thing out.

“This is my crappy apartment now!” She declared to the room at large. “And I’m gonna exorcise your ass!”

A silly thing to do, really, and all it accomplished was getting a frankly ancient food processor flung at her head with startling force. But she wasn’t going to let that deter her-- that or the entire drawer of cutlery.

(The cutlery always seemed to be clean and back in the drawer later, ready to be flung out again at a moment’s notice. Whatever this poltergeist was about, it at least picked up after itself.)

It was probably a bit much to hope for, but Jenny tried the standard Catholic incantation first before heading out to track down artefacts for full-on rituals. While certainly a violent poltergeist, this one seemed to restrict itself to throwing things and yelling, which was pretty low-key all things considered. Maybe it wasn’t as powerful as it liked to seem.

“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus.”

“Bloody hell.”

Jerking back, Jenny stared wide-eyed at the human figure standing before her. Tall (6ft, maybe a little more), with ruffled brown hair that curled a little and greenish eyes. An undeathly pallor, scruffy green jeans, thick heavy boots and a striped t-shirt as dated as the apartment’s appliances. The only saving grace of the ensemble was a red check button down with the sleeves rolled back. He was standing with his arms crossed and looked wholly unimpressed.

Jenny pressed her lips together to keep quiet. It was just a simple little spell, a fleeting hope that it would be that easy, and instead she’d incited a visual manifestation for the first time that she’d seen.

“Your pronunciation’s fuckin' awful. Who taught you?”

Immediately, any fear was overwhelmed by indignation. “Excuse me?”

“You ‘eard.”

“I’m sorry, I’m here trying to exorcise your annoying ass and you’re correcting my Classical Latin!?”

“Yeah, I know what it is love, I speak it. Better than you, evidently.”

Oh, she was so not letting this slide. “Oh, of course, I thought you wouldn’t be able to grasp such a complex language considering your lack of comprehension of English up ‘til now.”

The poltergeist’s face twisted into a sneer. A distant voice told Jenny she shouldn’t be provoking him. “I comprehend it just fine when you’re tellin’ me I’m not welcome in my own fuckin’ apartment.”

“Your apartment? I paid money for this shithole!”

“Oh what, you think I inherited it?”

“You’re dead!”

“Fuck you!”

Rather abruptly, the floor seemed to give way, and the next thing Jenny knew she was screaming as the fell onto the floor below. She made it out with a pounding heart, a bruised tailbone and a startled neighbour, but she was slightly more wary when she made her way back into the apartment.

Fortunately, the visual manifestation was gone, and the twerp didn’t make anymore comments. It was back to ear-splitting screams and dodging the usual paraphernalia. It probably wasn’t a good idea to antagonise him again.

Jenny had been remarkably patient with this poltergeist, all things considered. But he’d been fucking escalating. Getting creative, the bastard.

It started small. So small that she didn’t realise until some of it had happened a few times. Her coffee mugs being put on a higher shelf that she remembered, or the coffee itself behind things she was sure she put them in front of. Not life-threatening at all, but annoying as fuck and a hassle every time.

Then the drawers were rearranged. She’d just got used to where everything was, then suddenly she was opening the cutlery drawer and finding chopping boards instead. This was slightly higher on the life-threatening scale, since it meant when all the cutlery went flying her way, it could come from any part of the kitchen.

Appliances turning on and off randomly when she was next to them-- the gas cooker in particular she learned to stay away from. Furniture getting dragged across the floor towards her. Rats in her cereal, cockroaches in her toiletries. She ran through doors lest they slam shut while she was still in the doorway, bought cheap and ate quickly so there was never food around the house he could tamper with. He ripped the curtains violently off the railings, which Jenny had deemed negligible until he started using them to trip her down the stairs. It had, admittedly, been stressing her out.

And then today. Today, she’d finally assembled all the of the various artefacts for a more complex ritual, only to quickly find them all unusable. Not only that, but they weren’t destroyed-- they’d been slightly altered by someone who knew what they were doing, so that the properties she needed from them were no longer viable. And she knew exactly who it was. They’d all been fine when she bought them, but Little Mister “Your Latin’s Terrible” Poltergeist had a frankly alarming number of questionable magical substances, artefacts and occult books on black magic hidden around this crappy apartment, and she was certain that he absolutely had the know-how to fuck up the ritual like this. And what a fucking snobby way to do it!

“Fine!” She’d snapped, furious at the wasted time, effort and money. “Fine, have it your way. No exorcism today! Just let me have this one fucking shower, I swear to God!”

She should have known better.

“YOU FUCKING DICKBAG!!”

Seething, she stumbled out of the shower, cursing in every language she knew, covered in stinking brown sludge. After laboriously getting the crud out of her eyes, she turned to the mirror, still spitting in rage, to try and assess the damage.

What she saw was fresh, red blood. Dripping down the shining surface.

GET OUT

Really? Really? Words didn’t do Jenny’s fury justice at this point.

So instead, she slammed her middle finger under the message, leaving a gross brown smear in the shape of her gesture. Let him clean that, she thought in petty satisfaction.

The neighbour downstairs was very sympathetic. The plumbing in this building was often problematic, but her shower seemed to be working fine right now so why didn’t poor Jenny wash off here?

The water wasn’t hot, but it wasn’t cold and the awful stuff (don’t think about it) was coming off with some effort. God, when she went back upstairs--

When she went back--

When she--

A sob burst out of her, to her own consternation. She tried to keep quiet so the neighbour didn’t hear, but she couldn’t stop the shaking or the tears. She didn’t want to go back upstairs. She didn’t want to have to do battle with what seemed like every aspect of the apartment itself (but was really one dead douchebag). She was exhausted.

On the upside, the water temperature had turned up some. That was kind of nice.

Still, once she was clean, Jenny took a deep breath and headed back to her haunted apartment.

... And was met with quiet stillness.

The stairs creaked when she stepped on them, and she cringed at the sound, but there was no cold feeling or flurry of movement, the stairs didn’t turn intangible or into a ramp or splinter beneath her. No crashes or bangs or flying objects. No slamming doors or ankle-grabbing rugs. No rats, no roaches, no disgusting messes. Her mugs were in easy reach, her coffee unopened and unsullied where she’d left it, the spoons in the drawer they started in. A quick peek into the bathroom proved that he had indeed cleaned up his mess.

She paused outside her bedroom. There was another bedroom, and a tiny cramped study with a mattress on the floor. The study wasn’t completely shut for the first time since Jenny ducked in there to slam the door on her bed charging at her, and it seemed to be sucking the warmth out of the hallway.

He was in there.

Dreading whatever bullshit he was cooking up now, she tentatively peered through the gap in the doorway...

He had visually manifested again, in the same form. He was stretched across the nasty mattress on his front, legs crossed at the ankles behind him.

He was reading.

For a moment, Jenny just stared. But nothing changed; his pale eyes travelled along the pages at speed, but he seemed to be reading at a human rate, if quickly. He turned the page with his hand, not any otherworldly power. While she watched, he shifted position slightly and adjusted his hold on the book, though logically he had no physical body to become uncomfortable. As he moved, dogtags glinted in the light from the half-open door, and a quick look at his wrists showed her a few plain bangles and one black bracelet with silver spikes. There was a burst of brown in his left eye that she hadn’t noticed before, and she thought with despair that the jerks were always beautiful. 

Shaking herself abruptly out of her thoughts, and praying that his interest would stay on the written word for the foreseeable future, Jenny quietly crept into her room, set down her coffee on the nightstand. Then, as she changed for bed, she had a brainwave.

Just as quietly as before, the pulled out the three thickest books she’d brought with her, then crept out and left them outside the study.

It wasn’t a peace offering. More of a bribe. She had no idea if it would work, but if a few books got her a few hours of uninterrupted sleep then she’d happily give them up.

Jenny woke at ten in the morning to a fire in the hallway. At first, she thought the poltergeist had finally run out of patience and intended to kill her. Then she realised it was one of the books she’d left out.

“You know what?” She told the invisible malevolent force, “That’s fair. It’s an objectively terrible book and I only kept it to laugh at it.”

The crackling pages of 50 Shades was her only answer.

Hopefully he liked A Game of Thrones better.

He was quiet through breakfast, and that gave her time to think. She was going about this the wrong way. This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill spirit, this was a poltergeist with ties to the supernatural in life. If she was going to put this dickhead’s soul to rest and out of her crappy apartment, she’d have to figure out the circumstances surrounding his death.

Well, she already knew the apartment had been even cheaper because someone had died here... that was where she needed to start.

It would take a little digging, since it happened a good forty years ago at least. There were various things still littered around the apartment that hinted the death was supernatural in nature, which would certainly up the chances of poltergeist activity, but made it harder to find what she was looking for. On top of that, she didn’t have internet access yet.

Jenny had made a few token attempts to get WiFi into the apartment, but her poltergeist was being particularly aggressive on that front. (She was pretty sure she’d heard the whisper of his voice when she first tried setting it up, and she was pretty sure he’d called it “Star Trek bullshit”)

“God, of all the angry ghosts to move in with, I had to get a stubborn Luddite!”

Her head shot up from the broken mess of the modem she was kneeling in front of, a terrible cracking sound splitting the air after she’d finished speaking. Looking up at the wall above the table she’d put the modem on, she found VACUOUS NEOPHILE newly carved into the living room wall.

Big words for a petty dick. “Stubborn, stuck up snob!”

HI POT, KETTLE HERE

God, that sound was terrible, and watching the wall jankily snap in and out of new shapes was nauseating. But Jenny wasn’t backing down; she was outraged. The modem forgotten, she leapt to her feet, probably kicking a few components under furniture and into cracks never to be seen again (until the poltergeist saw fit to throw them at her). 

“I’m not a snob, how fucking dare you!”

“YOU’RE DEAD”

Quote marks and everything, was he for real? “You are!”

SO I’M LESS THAN YOU?

“Um, yes? You’re literally a disembodied spirit, you don’t belong on this plane anymore! Besides, I haven’t attacked you.”

YOU WANT TO REMOVE ME BY FORCE

“Hi pot, kettle here!”

THIS IS MY HOME

“Well it’s mine now too, poltergit. You’ll just have to get used to it.”

RIPPER

“... Wait, what? Ripper? What does that mean?” Before confusion could work it’s way into fear, voices sounded through the apartment. They sounded like they were coming from inside this room, but they also sounded far away-- more ghostly whispers.

“Oi, Ripper!”

“Ripper, mate, come ‘ere.”

“Oh, don’t be like that, Ripper.”

“Lovely to meet you. I’m Ripper.”

“Ripper...” Jenny whispered. “You’re called Ripper?”

Silence and an unblemished wall answered her.

Ripper. What a ridiculous name-- he probably picked it himself.

She didn’t say anything, though. Pots and kettles.

The ongoing WiFi dispute meant that Jenny had to venture out into the Soho area of London to track down an internet cafe if she wanted to scour the net for what she needed. It was unnerving, walking down roads that seemed claustrophobic despite their size, surrounded by masses of people and penned in on either side by buildings that made solid, unbroken walls in the same way that individual bushes made a hedge.

But she found a cafe with free WiFi surprisingly easily, and set up her laptop in a corner by the window. The computer was pleasantly unmolested by Ripper, but then without any internet she hadn’t exactly been using it in the apartment. She was certain that if his attention was drawn to it he’d take great satisfaction in smashing it to smithereens.

It was slow going. She kept having to go back to the cafe, chasing after hints and getting stuck in digital dead ends.

On the other hand, Ripper was being slightly less of a dick. It turned out he did enjoy A Game Of Thrones and had manifested in various places around the apartment, reading it quietly and not breaking anything. It was disconcerting to turn around and suddenly see him there, all casual and ignoring her. But less disconcerting than fearing for her life on a constant basis. He tended to only get really pissy when she’d been out all day, which was ridiculous because he’d been pretty adamant on her leaving forever. When she was feeling generous, she supposed that if ill-advised people trying to move in were his only entertainment for the past few decades it made a sort of sense.

It also made her laugh, picturing Ripper peering out the window like a sad dog waiting for her to get back, or peeking round the doorway with a plate held above his head, ready to kick off on her arrival.

When Jenny arrived back that afternoon, Ripper was already manifested. He was sat on the ratty couch, and when he turned to look at her he held up A Game Of Thrones.

“Has this bloke written more of these? I gotta see how Ned’s gonna fuck things up further.”

Shifting her laptop bag a little more inconspicuously behind her, Jenny raised her eyebrows. “What makes you think Ned’s gonna fuck up?”

He made a face like that was a ridiculous thing to say. “He’s fucked everythin’ up so far, ‘asn’t he? It’s a tragedy.”

“It’s not--” Jenny cut herself off. He hadn’t sounded mocking. “Like Shakespeare tragedies?”

“Yeah. Hero of the wrong story.”

After a moment, Jenny walked over to the coffee table and perched on it, trying to ignore the unidentified stains. “What do you mean?”

Ripper blinked in apparent surprise, and it took a few tries before he spoke again. “Well-- Othello, for example. His problem was that he was gullible and acted too quickly. If Hamlet had been the protagonist of Othello’s story, he’d have stopped and thought about it first. He’d have picked apart Iago’s lies and actually talked to his wife about it, and probably Emilia and Cassio as well, savin' a lot of lives.”

He wasn’t looking at her now, but over her shoulder, gesturing slightly with the book. “In Hamlet’s narrative though, it goes all to cock because he thinks about it too much and works himself into a paranoid state. Othello would’ve gone right ahead and stabbed Claudius the next morning, which probably would have had its own fallout but a much lower body count.”

Eyes focusing again, Ripper looked back to Jenny, still apparently confused.

Jenny just nodded. “I see what you’re saying. You think Ned’s not the right guy for the job, and there’s no way things’ll end well with him as the hero?” She couldn’t keep the smirk off her face. “A Clash Of Kings is the second book, and I think you’re gonna like it.”

And then, just like that, he was smiling. It was small, and a little hesitant, like he hadn’t smiled in a while or perhaps wasn’t sure if he should be. Jenny realised abruptly that Ripper hadn’t even smirked at her, and now she got to watch his whole face transform into something soft and nervous.

How old was he, when he died? He looked older than her, but not by much, and looks could be deceiving. He acted younger, but poltergeist personalities were tricky things.

“You... like books?”

Blinking in surprise, Jenny nodded. “Sure, I like books. Stories are important.”

Ripper sat up straight, and good Lord his shoulders were broader than she’d thought. “And you like... talkin' about books?”

“Well, of course!” She answered, surprised. “The best stories are stories that breed discussion! Everyone has a different experience when reading a story, they see different things in the subtext and come away with different messages, and it’s great to share that sort of thing. Especially with George R.R. Martin’s series, where there’s so much going on.”

Snorting, Ripper looked at the book’s cover again. “Nicked that off Tolkien,” he muttered, then looked back up with excitement in his eyes. “Alright then, love. What did you take away from A Game Of Thrones?”

“Jenny.”

His smile was more confident this time. “Jenny, then. Go on, have at it.”

The following conversation was... good. It was fun, even when they disagreed, and there was a surreal moment where Ripper described Viserys as “all mouth and no trousers”, but they ended up sharing slang terms and having “a right laugh”.

When Jenny had yawned a few too many times to ignore, she had to extricate herself from the conversation (Ripper legitimately pouted, she couldn’t help giggling). She told him he could grab A Clash Of Kings before she went to bed and found out that he could, in fact, look even happier.

“You got it with you!?”

“Yeah, in my room, in a bag still.” She was about to offer to get it for him, but between one blink and the next, she was alone.

She felt like ice water had been dumped on her head. They’d been having such a good time, chatting and laughing and-- and bonding, sharing thoughts and ideas and she’d been warming up to him, as a person--

She’d forgotten she was talking to a ghost.

When Jenny wasn’t keeping tabs on Angelus, she was in that internet cafe researching. She’d made a little progress, managed to find what she believed was the incident of Ripper’s death in 1976, but she had no names or details. Just a group of young people on drugs, and a tragedy.

(Though there was probably more than just drugs involved.)

But when she got back to the apartment, Ripper was manifested there, book in hand-- only now, he would look up and pause his reading to talk about the book with her. And more; they talked about all kinds of books, and of other kinds of stories. She got him interested in a variety of Netflix shows then tempted him into letting her install WiFi, promising that she could show him all of them and more.

Unfortunately, even when he was willing to learn how to use a computer for his own sake, Ripper’s power didn’t mesh well with the electronics. No permanent damage, but it was clear that he’d be relying on Jenny for his daily dose of sitcoms. (Oddly enough, Brooklyn Nine Nine was one of his favourites. He claimed Jake was the best character because he was a “bloody ‘ilarious div, for a copper”, but after the first episode his face lit up when Holt came on screen.)

But that meant they spent a fair few hours every day sat next to each other, watching Netflix and laughing and talking. She got so used to being near him that she no longer remembered that he was the cause of the chill in the air, or the occasional buffering problems. She even offered him snacks once, only for him to blink bemusedly at the offered food and then at her.

“I’m sorry.” Jenny said sheepishly, pulling the packet back again. “I keep forgetting you’re dead.”

“So do I.” Ripper answered solemnly, and was gone.

"Why are you here, Jenny?”

She nearly dropped her coffee. “What?”

Ripper was leaning his elbows on the kitchen table, his head resting on one hand. The other reached long fingers out idly, stirred Jenny’s coffee without touching it. He didn’t usually do that-- he never used his power while manifested anyway.

“Why’d you move into my grotty apartment and stay? You’re either ‘ere for a fuckin’ good reason or you’re absolutely barmy.”

“Of course I’m barmy.” It sounded even stranger coming out of her own mouth, the r sounding too hard without his accent to soften it.

“Barmy enough to know more than one effective exorcism?” His eyes left the mug, looking straight into Jenny’s instead. The spoon stopped stirring, instead swirling with the liquid but inwards until it stood up straight in the middle. “Don’t pull my leg, Jenny. You a witch or what?”

Sighing, Jenny put down her coffee. Somehow, she’d never expected this conversation. “Mmn, no. I don’t have that kind of power.”

The spoon clattered against the side of the mug, released from Ripper’s whim. “Got a little, though.” There was a pause, and Jenny studiously avoided his gaze. “Run in the family?”

“... Yeah. There was one notable witch at the end of the 1800′s, but I just... dabble. Small stuff, casting bones, minor wards-- stuff like that.”

Ripper nodded. “Gran’s family were magic. Proper magic, powerful. Her sisters thought it was a gift, used it as they saw fit, but her... she thought it was dangerous, needed to be used responsibly, and my father agreed. The second I displayed any magical aptitude, I was packed off to study the worst things the supernatural can offer, so I could spend the rest of my life guarding against them. It was awful... so at sixteen, I ran away and did my own magic, here in my grotty apartment with my fucked-up magic mates.” He laughed bitterly. “Should’ve never left. Should’ve let it kill me.”

Jenny sucked in a sharp breath. Was this it? Was he going to tell her how he died? Was he ready to move on... ? (She told herself it was anticipation, not fear. Ripper was a poltergeist and didn’t belong on the couch watching Netflix with her.)

But those green-with-a-splash-of-brown eyes snapped up to her at the sound, and in the space of her blink there was only Jenny in the kitchen. She felt relieved and disappointed in equal measure.

She couldn’t get the story out of her head. She should have grabbed her laptop and headed for the internet cafe, where she could research uninterrupted by demands for her to check if One Day At A Time had updated, to piece together the mystery of Ripper’s death. It was more than clear that magic had played a part in it, which would continue to muddy the waters, but she had a sudden glut of personal information she previously lacked and should be capitalising on it.

Instead, she sat in the kitchen and drank her coffee. Then she made another coffee, set up her laptop and sat on the couch. He didn’t appear next to her, but the room got colder. He was there.

Jenny took a deep breath. “I was sent here by my family to watch a vampire.” Silence, stillness... but the cold remained. “That witch I mentioned? She was very knowledgeable, and very powerful. After he killed a young woman from our family, she cursed him-- to have his soul returned to him, and all the guilt that came with it.”

The room felt even colder. She wanted to leap up and turn around, to face the phantasm she felt sure was right behind her. She didn’t. “I was sent here to watch him. To make sure he kept suffering. I don’t... he looks so pitiful, out there. Hiding, feeding off rats. But I... what else am I supposed to do? They’re my family.”

Taking a deep breath, Janna shifted slightly in her seat, only to be caught by surprise (every time) by Ripper’s manifestation.

For a few long moments, they sat in silence. “We’re a right pair o’ berks, ain’t we Jen?”

Jen. That was new. “Yeah. Guess we are.”

She risked a smile, and he smiled back.

Jen. She liked that.

She had it. She finally had it. Jenny had to slap her hand to her mouth to keep from shouting in victory and nearly knocked her coffee over. Even avoiding that, some of the other cafe patrons gave her disapproving looks. She couldn’t bring herself to care.

She had it! She knew how Ripper had died-- she even knew what kind of forces must have been involved! All because of a picture... and a tattoo.

It was a group photo from an old newspaper. The image was grainy, and it was only a part of the article from the front cover, not the full thing. But she had a face, a mark, and a name.

The mark was striking, and it didn’t take much to find what-- or rather, who-- it was attached to. Eyghon the Sleepwalker wasn’t well-known, but he and his followers were frequently documented. Easy enough to find, if you were looking, which was probably his M.O. Hell, it was probably how Ripper and his ‘magic mates’ had found the demon too.

The demon that killed him.

It was all in that snippet of the article, when Jenny read between the lines. A young man physically torn apart by his friends in a drug-fuelled rampage... or a violent demonic possession. It seemed unlikely from the rituals she was finding in relation to Eyghon that he could manage multiple live possessions at one time, so it was probably that Eyghon either carelessly destroyed or inevitably burnt out his vessel.

That kind of death, trapped inside your own body while an entity you thought you could control used it as a puppet... no wonder Ripper was a poltergeist, that kind of trauma would give anyone baggage. And it went some way to explaining why he preferred to use corporeal methods of interacting with objects most of the time.

There wasn’t a full legal name, only a first (it had the same first letter and even syllables as the one he went by, dork), but despite the picture’s quality she could recognise Ripper’s handsome face, grinning all lopsided and half-lidded at the camera, probably aiming for cool while totally stoned. The group looked close, all pressed together with arms over shoulders and round waists. A tragedy relegated to a corner of the front page.

The burst of triumphant joy quickly fled, however. Jenny had been hurrying home to tell Ripper what she’d found, only to remember that the whole reason she kept going to that cafe was so that he didn’t know.

But... they weren’t adversaries anymore. She no longer had to fear violence from him, they were... roommates. Weird, unplanned roommates, but still. She spent more time with that dead man than any of her living, breathing, flesh-and-blood friends.

Maybe he’d even be pleased! Happy to leave the burdens of this mortal coil and pass beyond to his eternal rest. He deserved eternal rest, didn’t he? He’d already spent forty-three years bound to one apartment, completely alone-- it would be cruel to keep him trapped there.

Jenny grimaced at the tightness in her chest. It was a result of the brisk pace she’d been walking, she told herself.

Maybe he wouldn’t want to go. He would have to at some point, of course, but he hadn’t finished Brooklyn Nine Nine yet and was still reading the A Song Of Ice And Fire books. Well, the series wasn’t finished, and he couldn’t exactly wait for Martin to write all the books, but he would at least want to catch up with the story so far. At least. And there were so many fantastic scenes with Captain Holt and Kevin still to come, Ripper wouldn’t want to miss that! (She wondered if he’d dated any of the boys in the photo.)

... But both of those depended on Ripper actually knowing that Jenny had done this research, and that was the part she struggled with as she stood outside the building.

Slowly, she made her way inside and up to their door. But already, something was wrong-- the floor, the walls, everything was shaking.

Unlocking and opening the door as quickly as possible, Jenny braced herself for poltergeist aggression.

Jenny said When she was just about five years old You know my parents gonna be the death of us all

... That wasn’t any poltergeist aggression she was familiar with. That sounded like out-of-date music. But it felt like an earthquake. Looking up, she could see Ripper on his back on the floor by a dilapidated record player, eyes closed and oblivious to her presence.

It was an uncomfortable juxtaposition to the unearthly power trembling through the apartment.

Then one fine mornin' she turns on a New York station She doesn't believe what she hears at all Ooh, she started dancin' to that fine fine music You know her life is saved by rock 'n' roll, yeah rock 'n' roll

“Ripper!” She tried to grab his attention, but her voice seemed to be carried away as if by a strong wind, and she realised the line between the rumbling in the structure and the beat of the music was very, very thin. Was he doing this by accident? Somehow, that was more frightening than anything he’d done to her with malicious intent. “Ripper, stop!”

Despite all the computations You could just dance To that rock 'n' roll station

In the end, it wasn’t anything Jenny said that snapped him out of his musical fugue, but her stumbling past the couch and into his space.

His eyes snapped open and the shaking stopped like it had never been, and though the record kept playing the sound was less... invasive. (Less like it was creeping under her skin, into her brain.)

“Hey, Jen! You’re back early.” His smile faded briefly, and he tilted his head where he lay on the dusty floorboards. “Don’t tell me you don’t like The Velvet Underground. If that’s the case you can sling it, and you can take Netflix with you!”

She wanted to argue, like normal. Wanted to tell him that, actually, the music itself was lacklustre but the singing was awful. She wanted to watch him get mad about her ‘slander’, get passionate about the revolutionary progress that music made in the early 70′s, how breaking the boundaries were more important than a classically-trained vocalist, but she couldn’t muster the energy. She just felt cold.

She always felt cold with Ripper. He sucked the warmth out of any room. She had no idea how she’d managed to forget so often, now she was looking at that sallow, drawn face, still shaken by his unthinking power. How did she ever trick herself into seeing the light of life in those pale eyes?

Jenny was clinging to a ghost.

All right All right And it was alright Well, listen to me now And it was alright

Ripper didn’t understand why she was ignoring him. She knew because he kept manifesting in the corner of her vision, confusion and concern on his face.

Jenny kept going out to the cafe, kept doing research. But this time she was researching exorcisms, trying to find something for a poltergeist that could be put into play quickly enough that said poltergeist couldn’t intervene.

He was worried about her, which she knew because he followed her around the house, gently asking what was wrong and how he could help. He made her coffee, even cooked her breakfast, anxiously biting his lip when she took what he gave without comment-- then stared in misery when she stopped taking them at all.

She’d been emailing and DMing her fellow magic-dabblers for ideas and suggestions, learning from the various examples and anecdotes they shared. Slowly but surely putting together a feasible plan to be rid of the spirit that lingered on the mortal plane.

He was angry with her. She knew because he was back to throwing things at her, but always manifested now, screaming accusations and insults. Demanding her attention, threatening to destroy her books, her laptop, swearing viciously that he would tear her apart unless she talked to him.

She couldn’t stand to be in the apartment any longer than she had to be. She was almost grateful for the violence, as it gave her every reason to leave. She spent all her time trying to find accurate incantations and small, discreet artefacts that she could smuggle in her laptop bag to keep from Ripper’s knowledge.

He was desperate, now. He still threw things, still broke things, but they were never aimed at Jenny anymore. He stopped demanding and started begging, apologising and promising to be better, that whatever he did to upset her he’d never do it again. He pleaded with her to look at him, talk to him, anything to indicate that she knew he was there, please, becoming increasingly scared that she didn’t. That he was alone again.

More than once, she found herself staring down an alley or manhole where she knew Angelus to be. He was much older than her, and more deeply entrenched in the supernatural world. If anyone could get rid of a poltergeist, surely he could? She kept chickening out, but she knew he’d seen her at least once-- probably more. He’d confront her eventually.

Ripper gave up. He never manifested in any way, never moved anything or made a sound. Her books were back in her bag in her room, and he didn’t read anything anymore. She could see his shadow in the window when she approached the building, could see it under the door when she put the key in the lock, but although he was there the only clue was the cold.

She was always cold. Especially at night, it was impossible to sleep. Perhaps she could have adapted to the constant chill, but how could anyone rest comfortably with a ghost weeping bitterly in the corner of their room?

Jenny, he whispered brokenly between the sobs, through every hour of the night, Jenny, Jenny, Jenny.

She hated being in the apartment now more than ever. She’d take the violence again, happily. Ripper’s despair seeped into every part of the house and into her, and it followed her out of it, weighing her down with guilt.

Why shouldn’t she feel guilty? It was her fault. She’d thought he’d get bored and sulk, not...

He cried. He cried all night every night, even when he wasn’t in her room she could hear him. He was cold and silent during the day, but she had no doubt that he roamed the halls weeping when she was out as well.

Sometimes the cold would get more intense as he crept closer to her bedside, her back always turned away from the wall to hide her face, and he would whisper her name and quietly bargain with her, as if promising not to comment obnoxiously during Parks and Rec. would make things go back to normal.

He’d even sworn off the music he so loved, if only so she’d talk to him again. And she’d stayed silent and ‘sleeping’ as he choked on his words and retreated to sob in the hall, never knowing that she was crying too.

But... what was she supposed to do? Explain that she’d had some kind of crisis because the person she liked the most in all the world was a dead man? Admit that she’d doggedly caused him all this suffering because he’d spooked her a bit that one afternoon? She didn’t think she could if she wanted to.

Please, he’d breathed into her ear, we don’t ever have to talk to each other again, honest. Just please, please look at me like I’m here. I’m still here Jen, please, I’m still here...

He was right; he was still here. Ripper’s suffering wasn’t going to end because Jenny was discussing books with him. This exorcism was the only way to set him free and let him rest in peace.

But it was taking such a long time just to figure out how to go about it, and she didn’t know how many more anguished, miserable nights she could take. So here she was, wandering London after dark, procrastinating on going back home and feeling guilty for doing so.

Something she sorely regretted when she saw eyes on her from a side street. Trying not to panic, Jenny reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. Realising she didn’t have anyone to call, she faked it, greeting someone who wasn’t there and striking up a conversation in which she made it clear that she was heading home and would be there very soon. That should be a successful deterrent, unless it was a vampire.

(What if it was Angelus?)

She kept up the imaginary chat all the way back to the apartment building, where she chirped a bright, “I’m here!” into the cell and started jogging up the stairs. For the first time in days, Jenny was eager to be back within the apartment’s boundaries.

Just as she was fumbling with her key, strong hands grabbed her shoulders, holding her in place. She hadn’t heard them at all.

Oh, fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck. It was a vampire. It was a vampire and she was going to die. Idiot, stupid, why was she out after dark!?

“Don’t move.” The vampire said softly. “I have some things to ask you.”

“Do you?” Jenny asked, heart in her throat.

Before she could say anything else, the vampire’s grip tightened. “Oh, sorry, you must not have heard me. I’m gonna be asking the questions, alright?”

She didn’t answer. She hated how scared she was, but she was frozen and couldn’t swallow. She was going to die. She was going to die. She was going to die.

“Better.” The strong hands turned her around, and the first thing she saw was the bleached hair and razor-sharp cheekbones. “Now... stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but a vampire with a soul moved into the sewer.”

She knew that one quite well, but still couldn’t get her tongue to cooperate. It felt thick and clumsy in her mouth.

“Proper pathetic he is now, and I knew him before. He was always a pretentious prick, but now?” The vampire shook his head. “Shame, really. Still, means I can go poke him with a stick now and then so I don’t mind that much, but I’ve got to wonder... what have you got to do with him?”

Jenny finally found her voice. “I don’t- I don’t know wha-what you’re talking about.”

She was shoved backwards into the door, sudden and painful. Her shoulders were going to bruise.

He tutted, shaking his head in a disappointment belied by the glee in his eyes. “Dear oh dear... wrong answer, I’m afraid.”

The door swung inwards, and Jenny fell back-- while the vampire hit the boundary of the threshold and had his grip torn from her.

“What the bloody--!?”

“Be gone.”

The vampire shrieked and threw himself out of the doorway as an honest-to-God stake aimed straight for his heart flew just past him.

“I know what you are, demon.”

Fire suddenly sprung up from the floor outside the doorway, forcing the vampire back onto the stairwell. Jenny frantically scooted further back into her home as the vampire stared in shock. “Jesus Christ--”

“You are dust.”

The stairs cracked, and the vampire swore, then was gone with a distant thud. The door swung shut, and Ripper was there.

“What the fuck were you doing out at night!? Do you have any idea how many vampires there are crawling around London!? You could have been killed!”

His voice broke, his face crumpled, and Ripper sunk to his knees in front of her. “Jen-- Jenny-- you- you can’t-- it’s not safe--”

“Ripper.” She choked out, grateful beyond belief. “Only-- only you would just. Have a c-carved stake on hand.”

But Ripper’s beautiful eyes had gone wide, and he was staring at her like he’d never seen her before. “Jenny,” he whispered, intensely, urgently, like a desperate prayer, “Jenny.”

To her horror, Jenny sobbed, and Ripper lurched forwards only to hover awkwardly, just short of touching her.

“Can you--” His voice was thick. “Are you--” A ragged breath. “Jenny. I’m-- I’m here. I’m here.”

Yes. Yes, he was there, and he’d saved her. No one member of the Kalderash would have known if she died today, wouldn’t even have cared, but Ripper was there.

She reached out and grabbed his arm with both hands. He was so cold and she was so glad to feel it. He went as still as a statue, but when Jenny pulled herself forward to wrap her arms around him, she felt him gasp as if he still had lungs in his chest to expand.

Then Ripper was hugging her back, and she wept into his broad shoulder. He was crying too, sobbing her name this time in relief, squeezing her in a way that felt strange and new, but good.

“God,” he choked out, “you’re so warm!”

She would be, wouldn’t she? The warmth of life must be so alien to him, she thought sadly, and she squeezed him a little more firmly against her, finding the chill of undeath not so unpleasant as she’d anticipated.

It felt good to touch Ripper, to feel him solid against her. He didn’t feel alive, but he felt real.

They were on the couch, as they so often were. Pressed together underneath a blanket, the two of them had been pleasantly surprised to find that while Ripper didn’t create heat, he could absorb it from another living being-- which meant that a hot drink, thick wool and some cuddling kept them both toasty.

And Ripper was loving it. He was still a little wounded from the weeks spent ignoring him, and he did everything in his power to grab and keep Jenny’s attention. Now that they were hugging nearly constantly, that was pretty easy to do.

He even crept into her bed, just to lie close to her. She couldn’t deny him, not after the ceaseless, lonely misery she’d put him through. Not when he lit up whenever she rolled over and acknowledged him, like he hadn’t dared to hope.

But they were on the couch when things changed again.

“’Ang about, so ‘Rosa Diaz’ might not be ‘er legal name, that’s what you’re tellin’ me?”

“Might not be. I mean, I have no idea how Terry tracked down her school and favourite teacher if it’s not her real name, but it might be a retcon.”

Ripper frowned. “A what?”

“Retroactive continuity.” His expression didn’t change. Jenny rolled her eyes. “The people making it changed their minds.”

“Oh. That’s naff.”

‘Naff’ was one of those words she hadn’t got a concrete definition for yet, but it was definitely negative. She nodded in agreement.

“What’s a name, anyway? It’s a made-up word with an arbitrary meanin’, like every aspect of language.”

Now it was Jenny’s turn to frown. Ripper loved geeky shit like languages and etymology. He only usually sounded this grouchy about things like technology and Jenny leaving the apartment.

“’Real name’,” he continued, muttering, “Crock o’ shit.”

After a long silence, Jenny took a deep breath. “At birth I was named Janna.”

He immediately swiveled to stare at her, and she met his gaze head on.

The stare-down didn’t last long, to her disappointment. He seemed to get embarrassed, and sheepishly muttered, “Well, that’s alright, ain’t it?”

Ah. She smirked, deciding to have a little fun. “Oh, really? What did your parents name you, Tarquin? Oswald?”

Ripper chuckled. “No, it’s not that bad. But it is a bit...” He bobbled his head, with a faint grimace. Jenny bit back her grin, trying to imagine his legal name in his accent. She thought it sounded quite nice.

Shifting position a little, Jenny plonked her head on his shoulder. For several minutes, nothing further was said. Just when she’d resigned herself to pretending she hadn’t started this and trying again next time, he spoke.

“Rupert.”

“Rupert?” She repeated in surprise, head snapping back up to look at him. “Not Randall?”

He turned cold.

“Where did you get that name?”

Cold and gaunt with eyes like ice, eyes that saw through her. Jenny swallowed around the lump in her throat and lied by omission.

“When... I knew someone died here, then you were here being all... poltergeisty. I-I looked it up. I thought... I thought that was-- that you’d been killed here. And that’s why you were still here.”

Had they misidentified the body? Mistaken Ripper for one of his friends? The thought was like a gut punch. He deserved better.

“Oh, I see,” he hissed, derailing that thought, “you thought I was the victim? Poor li’l Ripper, killed by his friends?” He was still under the blanket with her, pressed into her side; but he was sapping her warmth without keeping it, his unblinking gaze markedly unfriendly. Damn it, she thought, I’d stopped being scared of you.

“I’m not Randall-- I’m not the victim.” He spat, leaning in dangerously close. “I’m Ripper. I’m the murderer.”

For one heart-stopping moment, he stayed there, green-and-brown eyes all she could see. Then he was gone, the lights and the laptop flickering. The cold lingered.

Heart pounding, shaking with adrenaline, Jenny bit her lip hard and fought back her tears. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

He was gone. Jenny didn’t know where he had gone, if he’d moved on or was simply giving her the silent treatment. But it wasn’t right.

She found herself listless, constantly looking for Ripper, waiting for him to appear. She spoke to empty rooms and opened Netflix only to sit there staring at the login screen, waiting for a companion that wouldn’t arrive. She started saying incendiary things to piss him off, but still there was silence.

Was this how Ripper had felt, she wondered? Had he felt an ache in his ghostly chest, a craving for the sound of a voice? She could understand why he’d cried so much.

Maybe he had passed on at last. Maybe he was at peace. Or maybe he was here, lurking beyond Jenny’s perceptions, just as lonely as her.

Jenny should have been pleased. She would have been three months ago, thrilled to be rid of her violent poltergeist. But past Jenny would have easily believed said poltergeist was a murderer. Present Jenny couldn’t.

She threw herself back into research. She could have done it in the apartment since Ripper seemed disinclined to disturb her, but it didn’t feel right. Besides, she’d hardly leave at all otherwise. The fresh air and occasional shafts of sunlight kept her from completely sinking into despair with his absence hanging over her like a shroud.

She had more than a name. She had two. The name of the man who died, and the name of the man who was lingering in the apartment.

The man with pale green eyes (and a splash of brown). The man with loose curls and a long, straight scar on his forehead. The man who dressed punk and talked shit but cooed at Holt and Kevin’s dog and had random trivia facts about foreign flowers. It was so, so obvious to Jenny that his harsh exterior was a front, and he couldn’t possibly have murdered someone, not on purpose. He couldn’t have. He couldn’t even commit to properly being a poltergeist! All she’d had to do to soften him up was talk to him, and she hadn’t exactly been playing nice. He was playful and immature, and he was solemn and lonely, and he wasn’t a killer.

Rupert.

Jenny had just got used to attaching the name ‘Randall’ to him, but his voice saying Rupert played on repeat in her head. Rupert. Rupert. Rupert.

Jenny and Ripper.

Janna and Rupert.

Pots and kettles.

Morgan Le Fuck you gotta be kidding me

Technopagan it’s not that wild, morgan. it was almost 50 years ago and barely made the front page of the local paper. it’s hard to dig things up.

Morgan Le Fuck no i mean i recognise one of the guys in that photo

Technopagan wHAT WHO WHICH ONE MOGRAN

Morgan Le Fuck chubby beard guy. that’s my uncle phil

Jenny ran.

She’d barely slept the night before and had been at the usual coffee shop at opening time. She made it to Picadilly Circus Station in seven minutes, and boarded the underground. Ten minutes after that she was standing at King’s Cross station, waiting for a train to Cambridge.

An hour later Jenny was in Cambridge, running for the law firm on Hills Road.

She arrived at 7:39, gasping for breath, and was told by the unsettled lady at the desk that Philip Henry wouldn’t be there until eight that morning.

Jenny waited.

At six minutes to eight, a man in a crisp business suit walked in, and his face really did look much the same as the photo.

“Philip Henry!” She suddenly cried, startlingly loud after almost twenty minutes of silence. Jenny leapt up and ran to him. “You have to tell me about the murder from 1976!”

Philip was immediately guarded, and usually Jenny wouldn’t blame him but right now she needed him to cooperate. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I follow? Can I ask your name, Miss... ?”

“Jenny,” she snapped, “I thought Ripper was the guy killed but it turns out he’s Rupert, not Randall, and he said he was--”

“Stop!” Philip had gone pale and wide-eyed, and he glanced over Jenny’s shoulder before swallowing and saying, “Why don’t you join me in my office?”

Which, fair, she was on the verge of saying some things that would be very difficult to explain away if she hadn’t already, but for fuck’s sake this was important!

Jenny turned and stormed further into the building, before realising she had no idea where she was going. She grudgingly came to a stop and let Philip catch up so he could lead her.

The moment the door was closed, she was on the attack.

“What the fuck happened!? Ripper said he murdered Randall but I can’t believe that! I’ve been living with the guy and he’s a dick but he’s a sweetheart--”

“Stop, stop, stop!” That successfully cut Jenny off; he sounded mad as hell.

“I don’t know who you are, how you know about that, or what your game is. But I won’t put up with it. Ripper-- Rupert is dead, he’s been dead forty-odd years.”

Jenny threw her arms up in exasperation. “Yes! He is! And he’s been in that crappy apartment ever since! But if he wasn’t the one murdered, then why the hell is he still there? Why does he think he’s a murderer?”

Finally, realisation seemed to be dawning on Philip’s face. She hadn’t thought he could get any paler, but now he was chalk-white. “He’s a ghost...?”

“Poltergeist.” Philip was starting to look like he might pass out. “A real piece of work too, terrorised me for weeks. Then corrected my Latin when I tried to exorcise him, the dick.”

Philip continued to be incredibly unhelpful, stumbling over to his desk and sinking into the nearest chair. Was he shaking? God, it was like he’d never dealt with a poltergeist before.

“I knew someone had been murdered in that apartment.” He was definitely shaking. “I found a photo and part of an article, but I thought he was Randall.”

“No,” Philip said at last, “no that... Randall was before.”

Jenny frowned, shifting her laptop bag further back across her hip. “Before 1976?”

“No,” he said again, not looking at her, “Ripper died after ‘76.”

“Okay,” Jenny said, not hiding her frustration at all, “so tell me what happened!”

Philip took in a deep breath, then let it out in a stressed sigh. Then a knock sounded at the office door, and without waiting for an answer the receptionist opened it and looked in.

“Phil, you’re due for-- are you alright?” She seemed alarmed, and she should be Jenny realised. Philip still looked to be in shock.

“Yeah, I...” Another deep sigh, and Phil slowly dragged his hands down his face. “This young lady is a friend of my niece, and she raced down here to tell me about a family emergency. I’m afraid I’ll need to leave.”

Nodding sympathetically, concern in her gaze, the woman said, “Oh of course, Phil. I’ll let Julia know and we’ll get someone in to cover.”

“Thank you.” Philip answered, then looked at Jenny. “You’d best come in the car with me.”

There was a voice in the back of Jenny’s head telling her that getting into a stranger’s car was a bad idea. She acknowledged it long enough to note that it sounded like Ripper, and smile at how much of a worrywart he could be, then summarily ignored it.

The inside of Philip’s house, when they got there, was... ordinary to the point of dull. All neutral colours and matching curtains, a few photos on a few surfaces and a painting of a seascape on one wall. Nothing indicating magic at all. He’d clearly left it all behind.

He’d been frustratingly tight-lipped in the car, to the point where Jenny had pretty much explained the whole debacle from start to finish in his silence. But she was reaching the end of her tether, and if Philip didn’t stop bumbling about in the kitchen she was storming in after him.

But he did come out, and when he did it was with a tea tray with steaming cups and a little milk jug and sugar bowl, and it was much nicer than the breakfast tray Ripper had cobbled together but he probably would have loved it if he could see it. She let Philip bumble some more, just nodding or shaking her head as he doctored her tea, not trusting her voice as she tried not to think about Ripper geeking out over a tea tray.

After a sip of tea and a heavy sigh, Philip said. “Eyghon. The Sleepwalker. He was... ancient. We would summon him, our little group of try-hards, usually already high on something. We’d take turns, one at a time, to be possessed by him. And it was... incredible. I literally don’t have the words to describe it, but there’s a reason we kept doing it despite the danger.”

Jenny ignored her tea completely, staring at Philip with rapt attention. Finally, finally, she’d know the truth.

“In 1976... it was Randall’s turn. But... the possession didn’t proceed normally. Eyghon wasn’t just inside Randall, he was awake and in control. All of our summoning, our- our worship, had strengthened him. Ripper thought quickly-- he always did-- and managed to get Randall in a position where we could tie him to a chair, buy us time to try and... fix it. Exorcise Eyghon, somehow.

But... we didn’t know how. We tried everything. And you have to understand, not only did we have resources, but Ripper... he was like an occult encyclopedia. But like I said, Eyghon is ancient, from before humanity I think. Nothing was working. It was the first time we were completely stumped even with Ripper’s knowledge and all our books, and that was almost as terrifying as Eyghon using Randall.”

“That’s why Ripper thinks he’s a murderer?” It made an awful sense. “Because he didn’t know how to save him?”

Philip looked decidedly uncomfortable, and took another sip of his tea. “Ah... no.”

He spent several seconds staring into his tea, then said, “Nothing was working, so... Ethan had an idea. A reckless, stupid idea. His specialty. But we had no other options and Eyghon was breaking free, so... those two were the most competent spellcasters, so if anyone could have done it they could. But...”

“But it didn’t work.” Jenny pressed.

Philip made a face. “The Pelleris spell.”

She felt the blood drain out of her face. “That-- that’s not meant for people!”

“It was all we had.”

Jenny was pulled out of her shock by the clink of Philip’s cup as he set it down again.

“We all came away different people... except Ethan. Untouchable, the selfish prick. We all went our separate ways after that. Tom, Diedre and I kept in touch, but not often. Ethan and Ripper just... evaporated, after an argument between them turned violent.”

Christ. No wonder Ripper had issues, something like that... Jenny could hardly wrap her head around it. But it proved her point-- he’d been trying to save Randall, not kill him! That was an accident, not a murder.

“... Four years later,” Philip continued, more subdued, “I got a call from Diedre. Turned out the apartment was still empty, and she went back sometimes, around the anniversary. She, uh... she’d found Ripper.”

Jenny heard herself gasp, felt her heart start to pound in her chest. He had been killed in the apartment! The strap of her laptop bag was biting into her hands and she realised she was wringing it tightly, but she didn’t stop.

“He’d...” Philip swallowed thickly. “We had-- there was this... stash. Under one of the floorboards, probably a few to be fair. Just... all kinds of drugs, magical and mundane. Turned out no one had found it, or just not wanted to deal with it, and he’d... Ripper... Ripper had taken the lot.”

It felt like ice water had been dumped on Jenny’s head, washing over her in an almost-painful prickling wave. Hot tears burned behind her eyes in visceral contrast, and she had to take a few deep, shaky breaths to keep from crying. She’d been so convinced all this time, but Ripper hadn’t been killed at all. He’d done it to himself.

"I... I have to admit, knowing Ripper’s soul is still on this plane is... deeply unsettling.”

Jenny glanced over, and felt an overdue welling of sympathy for Philip. All this had happened to his friends. Finding out that someone he’d cared for, lost, mourned and moved on from was still haunting their old apartment... she couldn’t begin to imagine how he felt. Jenny floundered for a moment, trying to figure out what she could possibly say, but he carried on without waiting for her to speak.

“Eyghon... he didn’t just possess sleeping people. He’d take the dead, though corpses don’t last as long. But...” Philip hesitated, picked up his empty cup and put it down again, eyes anywhere but Jenny. “You don’t just summon Eyghon. You have to-- to mark yourself, for possession. You have to mark yourself as his. You have to give yourself to him. For Ripper’s spirit to still be here... why hasn’t Eyghon claimed him?”

And with that, Jenny felt sick. She’d wanted the truth, thinking she’d be prepared for it, but now came the realisation of what she’d tried to do. She’d been fighting to exorcise him, on and off for months... never realising that she would have effectively been handing him over to a demon.

It’s pretty difficult now, she thought hysterically, to be mad about the shower sludge.

Abruptly, Philip cleared his throat, and suddenly his demeanour had changed noticeably. He sat up straight, shoulders squared, his face set in quiet determination. “I need to try and contact the others. Then we can figure out what to do.”

Still reeling, and utterly at a loss, Jenny just nodded.

It was about twenty minutes past two in the afternoon by the time Philip actually got a viable contact, only for him to realise that Diedre wasn’t going to pick up the phone no matter how long it rang because she was probably at work. This was too sensitive-- and supernatural-- to leave in a voice message, so he recited his number and asked that she call back, then focused on tracking down Thomas instead.

Staring into long-cold tea, Jenny wondered what could possibly come next. Exorcising Ripper was completely out of the question until he was safe from Eyghon, but Philip and Ripper couldn’t even force him from a human host. What could they do to protect Ripper’s soul?

What if it was already too late?

It was too awful to contemplate, but Jenny couldn’t stop thinking about it. He’d been silent, absent, for weeks now. For all she knew, Eyghon could have him already, could have bypassed whatever had stopped him, swept in and claimed Ripper and their last conversation would have been fraught with anger and fear. She would never sit with him, never watch Netflix with him, never see his reaction to the end of A Storm Of Swords. She’d never get to call him Rupert, or argue with him, or cuddle in bed with him, or see his soft, dopey smiles ever again.

Curling tightly into the corner, acutely feeling the lack of him, Janna wept.

The next few hours passed in this lonely, guilt-ridden misery. Philip noticed, but seemed not to know what to do, and simply ignored her. She figured it must be pretty weird to have a random teenager come tell you your old dead friend was a poltergeist and then start crying in your living room.

“Tom!” Philip’s voice suddenly changed from its previous politeness, relief and familiarity shining through. “Tom, it’s Philip Henry... yeah. Yeah, that’s... it’s not a social call. No. No it’s... it’s Ripper. Yes-- yeah, I know, that’s the problem. He’s a... a ghost. He’s still in the apartment.”

A ghost, Jenny noticed. Not poltergeist. She didn’t know what it meant, but she noticed.

After some more talking, Philip gave Thomas his address, so apparently this Thomas person was heading over. Was Thomas the thin dark-haired man from the photo, or the tall blond? She supposed she’d find out.

Almost immediately after Thomas hung up, Diedre called. Philip’s greeting to her was much more subdued, the conversation shorter. He gave her the address as well, and that was that.

“So,” Jenny croaked, trying to pretend she wasn’t sniffling, “what now?”

Philip was visibly startled by Jenny’s voice after hours of her being silent, but he rallied well, returning again to his more composed, determined state. “For now, we’ll have to wait. Once the others have arrived we’ll convene, and figure out a plan of action.”

Awkwardly, he gestured to the couch. “You can, uh, stay on the sofa tonight. It’ll be dark by the time you get back to London.”

Jenny shuddered, remembering the last time she was out after dark in London. “I... okay. Yeah. Thanks.”

God, she hated waiting.

“Have you got coffee?”

Philip glanced doubtfully at his watch. “Bit late in the day for a coffee, don’t you think?”

“No.”

With a sigh, Philip shrugged and took the tray back out into the kitchen.

Resigning herself to yet more waiting, tired but dreading the thought of sleep, Jenny, glanced out the window. Not that there was anything to see.

People walking, people driving. Not many, what with the dwindling light, but a few. Most of them wholly unaware that ghosts were anything other than stories or metaphors. Jenny literally couldn’t imagine living like that-- she’d always known.

She shivered, feeling suddenly cold. She looked back towards the kitchen, hoping Philip would arrive with hot coffee, and shrieked in surprise.

“Christ,” yelled Ripper, startled by Jenny in turn, “that the bloody thanks I get? I come all the way to fucking Cambridge-- why are you in Cambridge!? It’s an hour and a sodding half away!”

Flustered, heart thumping, Jenny blurts, “That’s not that far!”

“Ripper!?”

Blinking slowly, Ripper frowned, then turned about. Philip had come out of the kitchen (without coffee, Jenny noted) and was staring in abject... shock? Horror? It was hard to tell.

Leaning forward slightly, Ripper squinted. “... Phil?”

“... Yeah. Yeah it’s me.”

Still squinting, Ripper slowly looked around the room; at the walls, the carpets, the furniture, the seascape painting. “You married?”

“Uh... n-no. No I’m not married. Why...?”

“Living with relatives? Your sister?”

“...No. Just me.”

“Well then why the fuck is everything--?” Ripper cut himself off, and waved a hand around like the place was a mess.

Affronted, Phil scowled. “There’s nothing wrong with neutral colours.”

“You. You actually just said that to me. What the fuck.”

Jenny tried to interject. “Actually, Ripper--”

“Phil.” He carried on like he hadn’t heard her. “Philip. This place looks like my Gran chose the decor, and she remembers the 30s. What the fuck kind of lobotomy have you had?”

“It’s called growing up, Ripper!”

“Jesus, I didn’t realise adulthood was achieved by surgically removing your personality! Explains a lot.”

“My house is perfectly--”

“Your sofas match the curtains and both of them are beige!”

“STOP!”

Finally, silence reigned as both men sheepishly turned to Jenny. “Ripper, how are you here?”

The question clearly confused Ripper, and he took a few seconds to think about it. “Well... you weren’t home, and it was gettin’ dark. Didn’t want a repeat of the last time,” he gave her a Look, “so I came to get you.”

“That didn’t answer my question.” She said firmly. “How did you come to get me?”

A longer silence. Ripper’s eyes were unfocused. “... You weren’t home. You were here. I knew you were here. So I needed to be here. So I’m here.” He suddenly jerked like an electric current had passed through him, and then pinned Jenny with a cold stare. “Why are you at Phil’s house? How are you at Phil’s house? How do you--” he turned to Phil, “why is Jenny in your tragically bland house?”

Phil immediately looked... wary. Sympathetic but on edge, like he was about to deliver bad news. “Well... she had concerns about, um. A poltergeist.”

That was annoyingly vague, and Jenny made sure to shoot him an irritated look, but it was true. She’d been pretty concerned about Ripper. “Right,” she affirmed, “and it turned out someone recognised--”

Cold, dead eyes. Piercing. Her voice died as well.

“Finally getting shot of me, then?”

“Oh my god, Ripper, are you serious? I was worried about you-- !”

“Yes, you’ve made that clear,” he snapped, “and you tracked down someone who knew me then to do it properly. Well, go on!”

Ripper lurched towards Phil, throwing his arms wide. “Go on, do it! Fucking do it, get it over with!”

“We’re not giving you to Eyghon!” Jenny shouted, furious and terrified. She was shaking as Ripper turned back around, eerily slow.

“He told you, then.”

“Yes,” she answered, filled with urgency, “he told me you tried to save--”

Ripper scoffed in disgust and turned away again.

“You did!”

“You did.”

Phil’s voice was soft, so much so Jenny wasn’t entirely sure what she’d heard. There was a tense silence as Ripper stared at Phil’s gentle expression, before his own twisted in bitterness and guilt.

“Didn’t though, did I?” He spat with such venom that Jenny flinched. It nearly brought her to tears again, to hear how much he hated himself. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and tell him he was a good person, but that wouldn’t work. She felt more helpless now that she ever had when he was trying to drive her out.

“No,” Phil agreed, not unkindly, “but you didn’t kill Randall either.”

Again, Ripper flinched at the name. “I know we were all on drugs, but I’m pretty fucking sure I did, Philip!”

“Ripper.” He was imploring now, carefully stepping closer. “I was there. I saw you. I had our best spellbook in my hands, and I couldn’t find anything that might help. But every time I thought ‘this is it, we’re all dead’, you pulled something else out of that incredible brain of yours. And no, you’re right, none of it worked, but not for lack of trying. I honestly thought a couple times you were gonna drag Eyghon out of Randall with your own two hands. You did everything in your power to get us all out alive.”

Phil was right in front of Ripper now, and although he was shorter the balance between them had drastically shifted. Ripper looked so brutally young.

“That’s not murder, Ripper. If a surgeon loses a patient on the operating table despite his best efforts, he’s not a murderer. You just... couldn’t quite save him. And even then!” Phil smiled breathlessly, looking for all the world like he idolised the restless spirit invading his living room. “Even then, you saved the rest of us. Tom, Diedre and me, we all talked about it months later. How lucky we were to have you there with us.”

Ripper sobbed, and Jenny couldn’t wait any longer. She charged into Ripper’s back, her own tears streaming, squeezing him tightly even as they both collided with Phil, who was completely unprepared. They went down with a shout in a haphazard tangle of limbs, Ripper still sobbing and Jenny sort of laughing but with tears.

He was warm.

Angel had left the country, again.

And it was Janna’s duty to follow where he led.

Which was how she found herself stepping out of an airport into California sunshine. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, basking in the warmth.

“Oh god,” said Ripper, “this is awful.”

Jenny sighed, glancing over to see him hunching in his leather jacket. “Only you would complain about such a glorious day.”

“In a busy airport under a blinding sun, slowly baking? I’d rather be dead.”

She bit the inside of her cheek. It stopped being funny months ago and she absolutely wasn’t going to encourage him by laughing.

Oh, but he had that stupid, adorable grin on his face, eyes twinkling with knowing, and she had to turn away. “You’re literally the worst.”

She could see him reflected in a nearby window, shifting his weight to one leg in a perfectly nonchalant slouch, with an artfully derisive “Pshh,” as he dug out his phone. His brow pinched just a little as he unlocked the touch screen like he’d been practicing, and started methodically doing whatever he was doing with it. Jenny was both surprised and proud at how quickly he’d got the hang of it.

“You texting Phil?” She decided to pretend to check how she looked in the window. Her favourite Ripper was the one who thought she wasn’t looking. The one who stared out of the plane window in awe while she watched over the rim of her book, who tucked her hair behind her ear when he thought she was sleeping. The one who stuck his tongue out a little as he tried to get the phone in the right position for a selfie, then grinned like a dork as he actually took it.

“Yeah,” he said afterward, which by then was true since he was carefully typing a message to go with his selfie, “you know what a fusser he is. And Diedrie’ll wanna know what it’s like here.”

The smile on Jenny’s reflection was starting to look a little too dopily adoring, so she shook herself and grabbed her luggage. “Well, come on slowpoke! If we miss that bus we’ll have to hitchhike, and you might be fine with getting stabbed in the woods but I’m wearing a new dress!”

She flashed him a grin before striding through the crowds with more authority than her tiny from and floral sundress would suggest.

She didn’t see the gentle warmth in the eyes that followed her, or the softness of the smile beneath them. She heard the scrape of bags being scooped off the concrete and the heavy booted footsteps striding effortlessly to catch up with her, but not the sweetly whispered words--

“So the spirit bows before thee To listen and adore thee; With a full but soft emotion, Like the swell of Summer's ocean.”

[soul-music-is-life]

I'm kind of with you on the lackluster Pilot episode of "The Perfectionists". I don't know whether or not I'm into it either. And not because of Emison (I'm more of an Emaya fan myself). I just thought it was cheesy and boring. I don't know if I should keep watching. What about you?

I have actually gotten several asks about whether I plan tokeep watching and why/why not. So I’m going to answer it here and just referback to it if it keeps coming up.

I don’t mind the asks at all. I love conversing, but because of the volume of asks about thisparticular opinion this is another long driveling post, and I’m sorry. You can mute my ass if you’re sick of me. I get it.

First of all OP, thank you for not ripping into me about notliking it. Also, Emaya had my heart. I loved them, too. Maya deserved better.

Second, this is a full-scale look at the show from a critic’svantage point. I watched the first episode twice because I thought maybe I hadn’tgiven it a fair shake the first time because I was in a weird mood. But even onthe second viewing I found a lot more that I disliked than I liked. Lots ofpeople are going to disagree, and that’s fine. Just don’t @ me. I’m legit notlooking for that. I’m just a girl (cue NottingHill music) standing in front her ask inbox asking those askers to love her.

Will I keep watching? I doubt it. Given that it only got a10-episode order and The Pilot wasn’t that interesting to me, I don’t see myselfsitting through it for 9 more episodes. My reasoning is two-tiered. Part of itis disinterest and the other part is the creative aspect of it in the media. Saddleup for my “truths” (I can’t remember who said that. Marlene maybe). I gave it afew days and considered it, and what I ended up with was this:

1) I’m just not into it. For the same reasons you (OP) stated.But I’ll also add that for me…it was predictable. I called the twists longbefore they happened. If I’m already doing that in The Pilot I can guarantee I’dbe doing that as the show went on. I’m like 93% sure I know exactly how it’sgoing to end this season. I tend to do that to myself. Being a writer suckssometimes. Because you see the way things are going to go from the beginning. You just have to decide if you want to go on the journey anyway.

2) While the characters were likable (I was surprised by howmuch I liked Ava), they are a bit one-sided and kind of bland (except I foundNolan’s duality extremely intriguing). There is the argument that can be madehere that they will grow, and I do agree with that. But when I watch a show’sPilot I need to care about at least one character to see what’s going to happenand where they are going to go (In PLL it was Em/Aria for me). None of the characters in TP did that for me (noteven Mona and Alison, which surprised me, because I’ve been super-hype for thisshow not only for them, but for the newbies, too).  

3) The plot (so far) just feels like a rehash of everysingle YA mystery novel/TV show that is hot right now. And I am aware that thisis based loosely on exactly that (Sara’s series), but I think maybe I’ve justbecome desensitized to the same cheesy soap-opera-y murder mystery plots. Or perhaps I’m just desensitized to this particular kind of storytelling. It doesn’tfeel new and different to me and it was very strangely paced with too muchgoing on and not enough time to care about it. It just felt disjointed. Everythingabout the first episode just fell flat for me.

4) And lastly, yes, I’d say there is a tiny part of me…likemaybe…6% that doesn’t want to watch because I’m not about that off-screenEmison drama. I knew it was going to happen and I’m not mad about them beingsplit. I’m disappointed (hears “that’sjust ‘mom speak’ for mad!” echoing somewhere) that the marketing team isusing it for ratings. When you have decent writing you don’t need to play games like that to try andget viewers. It would be one thing to be decisive about what happened toEmily/Alison (Split them. Don’t split them. I don’t care. Just make a fuckingdecision because you’re creating a war between fans and you know it). It’sanother thing entirely to draw it out because you need people to watch and talkabout it.

I am also particularly bothered by hearing the excuse (several times by MK) that “Shay was busy”because Marlene literally planned the spin-off in season 6 (confirmed by bothher and Sasha). It. Was. Planned. I say this as a critic and not an Emison fan: Everything about the way they’ve tried to use Emison to generate buzz was underhanded. And saying shit like that opens the door for people to hate on Shay, and that’s really not cool.

Personally, I think it speaks volumes that the producers felt the need to addthe off-screen drama on top of the really decent plot they already had. Theycould have kept it unproblematic with simple writing choices and less inflammatorycommentary. They could have left the PLL drama in the PLL-verse and given thespotlight to the new drama. I don’tagree with creating old off-screen drama with zero chance of satisfactoryresolution all in the name of ratings. I hate marketing shit like that. It’s acheap amateur tactic and it turns me off.

I think the show could have been something special had theynot marketed it as PLL. But they did, so of course there was a certainexpectation. And of course there is some backlash. Because there are these twoworlds that have nothing to do with each other and so far I don’t feel likethey’ve blended it together well. For me, it was like watching PLL, but with less magic and less chemistry. If I had to describe it I’d say it feels alot like a recipe where you’re just throwing a bunch of ingredients into a bowlwith no idea what you’re making and you’re just hoping it’ll be edible by theend. Rather than focusing on the new universe the marketing team chose to focuson Ali/Mona’s new world and the drama that comes with them. And to me that almost says they don’t have faith that TPwould have been able to stand on its own without the PLL universe. Part of methinks I’d be more interested if this had been a completely fresh start. I wasactually more compelled by the newbies than I was Alison/Mona (though I adorethem, too).

That being said, I really wish the best for the cast/crew. I’llcontinue to watch the behind the scenes games/cast antics. I’ve been a fan ofSasha since I discovered PLL (everything about her seems very sweet and genuine andjust positive all around). And Janel as Mona was one of my favorite castingchoices of all time. In fact, I think my very first PLL post here was praisefor Janel. I’ve been following Sydney since she was a smol lil bean on theDisney Channel (and loved her in Tia’s Mowry’s show “Instant Mom”). Sofia seemslike a sweet girl, and I have enjoyed her other work. And Eli honestly justseems like he’d be a cool dude to kick back and have a drink with (is he evenold enough to drink? Jesus, they’re all babies). I love them all. In fact, I’veenjoyed the fun behind the scenes stuff more than I enjoyed the show. I’dwatch a reality show of them all day. That’s where I’ll get my fill. Watching them being goofy.

Final verdict: No, the show will not be getting my views. I’llprobably just watch the absurdity of Riverdale instead. Cheryl is fucking wild,y’all. And I’m kind of living for mean-dark-snarky Betty. And Sweet Pea is like…myfavorite character ever. My dumb asshole child.

As far as whether or not youshould watch it, I have no idea. I have a lot of people asking me my opinion onthat (which, I’m like the worstperson to ask, please don’t give me that responsibility. I don’t even likebeing responsible in the real world. I literally had a cookie and Cocoa Puffsfor dinner). I will say that if you’re only watching for Emison then I’d changethe channel. Because guaranteed it’s just going to make you rage. You’re not going to get anything out of it. Fill yourevenings with something more pleasant and positive for you.

And be nice to others on social media. At the end of the day, it’s only a show. You like it or you don’t.

[trickyclasspect]

The Extended Zodiac Sign Quiz and the Aspects

I eventually want to make a longer post on this but I just wanted to quickly celebrate the canon definitions of the aspects released on the hiveswap website, and talk about how they affect interpretations and change how we think of the aspects. <this ended up being a lot longer than I intended, putting a cut here just in case>

TIME “They value action over passive acceptance, even if that may not be the wisest or safest choice. Don’t try to tell a Time-bound to sit still and look pretty.”  This is an interesting part of the description, contradicting a popular analysis of Time leaning towards the passive end, the lead up to eventual destruction.  In general the paragraph on Time addresses the physical effect of Time on spacetime, and the universe itself much less than most descriptions out on tumblr.

SPACE “To this effect, they tend to be innovators, concerned with creation and redemption. Catch them recycling the old to make the new, the fresh, and the beautiful.“ “Those bound to the aspect of Space are, as the name suggests, concerned with the big picture. They are patient, masters of the art of wait-and-see” These two also fill in holes that some, including my, analyses miss, the recycling and reusing quality of Space along with the passive awaiting. They don’t have all the Time in the world so to speak

HEART “Forging an identity is extremely important to the Heart-bound, and every decision and action goes toward building a coherent narrative of their own story.” “They are excellent at putting on and taking off masks as the situation calls for them.“ Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. In any other place this would look like a description of our perception of a Mind player, the masks, the narrative, decision making… Time to reevaluate.

MIND “They are very concerned with remaining rational, and they have such a firm hold on the constant conjunction of their thinking that it’s easy for them to see the multitudes of the choices laid out” This small chunk of Mind’s longer paragraph is the closest to fanon. However, it doesn’t show Mind and Heart as diametric opposites, overlapping the two and containing them within the field of decision making and self’s effects on others.

HOPE “Those bound to the aspect of Hope are driven first and foremost by their convictions. They do right for right’s sake, and are quick to come to the aid of anyone they deem to be experiencing injustice.“ “They put great value in the power of the imagination, the ability to dream up a better and more beautiful future. If anyone could dream a better world into existence, it would be one of the Hope-bound.“ Again, super close to the fanon description, adding more on the topic of Hope’s determination factor, the raw willing that comes with that level of imagination.

RAGE “Those bound to the aspect of Rage are bringers of chaos. They posses great contempt for lies or false ideas, including the stability that false ideas can impart. To them, the true is far more important than the good” Also similar, the Rage description highlights other key features of Rage including their equally-as-convicted-as-Hope among others, although it focuses more on the destruction and extremely negative portions of Rage’s analyzed definition, leaving out the harnessing of these strong emotions, even their part in the aspect itself.

LIGHT “They are, above all, driven to learn and understand. They are great alchemists, able to take multiple sources of information and synthesize them into something useful.” “The Light-bound will go after knowledge with a fierce intensity that others may find distasteful. They aren’t overly concerned with laws or norms, either. They often take rules as simple suggestions“ This definition serves the purpose of breaking Light from its box of knowledge through simply knowledge, painting the Light players as more of an active partaker in the search for everything, regardless of any systems in place.

VOID “The unknown doesn’t scare them-where others might see emptiness, they see potential. A blank page, an empty canvas, that’s what the Void-bound live for. They value mystery and the unexplained, and are not particularly bothered by not having all the answers.“ Highlights parts of Void people have missed. Void isn’t nothing. It is the raw potential for something, anything to be there, without negative connotations or biases.

BREATH “Flexible and driven, they leave an impact wherever they go. Like the breeze itself, they are able to sweep others up to carry along in their wake, but also like the breeze, they can be difficult to catch hold of or tie down.” Nothing particularly worth mentioning in the Breath definition, except that its role in heroism is interesting.

BLOOD “Blood-bound are absolutely leaders, but they inhabit more of an inspirational role than a commanding one. They are prophets, rather than generals, giving others the strength and motivation to keep fighting.” Again nothing particular here. Highlights leadership and role in groups more than the actual bonds between people themselves.

LIFE “Deeply empathetic, they have an intuitive understanding of other’s suffering and the best way of righting those wrongs. If you’re poisoned, chances are the Life-bound have something for what ails ya. This applies to both physical and mental suffering, though it might not be a cure you’ll like.“ Mm. Ok. This Life definition defines Life as healing potential, whether volunatry or not. Does not even mention the definition of Life as a force against systematic anything, instead attributing that to Rage.

DOOM “The Doom-bound understand that misery loves company, and they are ready and willing to provide said company. The Doom-bound won’t fix you; they aren’t healers. They are commiserators, aware that sometimes the only thing you can do for a person is let them know that they are not alone in their suffering.” In general it appears that Doom and Life are presiding over the domain of reactions to events that might not be favorable, instead of their roles in systems and the breaking of those- most likely influenced by Sollux and Meenah’s presence respectively. In conclusion, while many of these definitions are different from the ones people have grown to see as fact, these canon descriptions provide a supposedly accurate and interesting approach to parts of an Aspect that have been neglected.

[internetandnetwork]

4 Key Questions to Ask for Successful Content Expansion

The success of your content expansion strategy is not gauged by your constant efforts to produce whatever is trending in the market. Instead, it calls for a comprehensive analysis of the needs and interests of your target audience.

This content writing expansion process has generated an overwhelming obsession with “fresh content” for search marketers today. People are entirely convinced that creating fresh content is the only way to help websites thrive on the web.

But in an already fast-paced environment, the drawbacks of these waves include many marketers hurriedly producing content without really grasping its primary goal.

A couple of years ago, when this blogging craze first hit the market, people started building site blogs merely because it looked like that’s what everybody else was doing at that time. However, this approach also comes into play with other trends in new content genres like infographics. Back then, when infographics were all the rage, people started making them speedily, and yet again, it was only because everyone else seemed to be doing that.

Truth be told, a genuinely effective content expansion entails a level of critical thinking. Think about why content is being produced and what it needs to do to help a business or website? Before hopping on the bandwagon impulsively and blindly following whatever is trending currently, you must try and answer some of these critical questions.

To simplify things a bit, we have presented four key questions that every marketer needs to ask themselves before taking up any content-driven initiative.

#1 WHY ARE WE PRODUCING CONTENT?

The first and most important thing to understand is why you are producing content in the first place. One of the most common reasons why the majority of people do so is to gain more organic traffic.

Nevertheless, keyword-rich content on an authentic website might help SEO objectives but does it still fulfill the site goal?

Content could be produced for many reasons such as to:

Improve social engagement

Fulfill on-site conversion objectives such as sales or lead generation

Build a brand or establish thought leadership

Imitate tactics of the competitors

Well, this is only the tip of the iceberg. In simple words, it is essential and probably best if all the team members involved in the content creation process understand the purpose of the content first.

#2 WHO IS OUR TARGET AUDIENCE?

Once you and your team are clear on why you are producing content, the next thing you need to understand is who are you making the content for?

In case you already have a decent quantity of content and types of content on your website, and you aim to produce extra content to support the existing ones, analytics can give you valuable insights that can direct and guide you.

Make sure to invest a decent amount of time examining your analytics during the planning stage. Check your Pageviews (by age, gender, interests, etc.), review sections, and even your website landing pages.

Are different types of users performing better or worse in terms of bounce rates? Your existing content might not necessarily be a first-touch conversion point, but it can help make users acquainted with your website and kickstart the conversion funnel.

Which types of content perform better when it comes to generating leads or sales on the website? If you are thinking about publishing more videos on your site and observe that particular demographic group(s) are performing better than others, you might want to cater your content to that user group.

Examining this demographic data will make it easier for you to slice and dice data by things such as website sections and mediums to analyze the way existing content performs for multiple user groups.

#3 WHAT CONTENT WORKS WELL FOR YOUR WEBSITE?

By now, you and your team understand why you are building additional content and who you are probably making it for. You also know what content works well when it comes to driving site visits from aspects such as organic search and social media and how well this content retains initial site visitors. However, we are still left with determining the actual purpose of this content.

You will have to spend some more time in analytics to generate more site awareness and conversion potential. If you are producing this content to create a digital ripple effect, you need to check how well the outside world receives it first.

There are various tools that can search and track content. You can use such tools to see which content has performed well for your website in the past. This will let you find out what topics and social properties generated the best social engagement. You can also utilize link-building tools to get an idea of what content acquires the most inbound links.

#4 WHAT IF WE WANT TO TEST A NEW TYPE OF CONTENT?

It is totally fine to test a new type of content. The only time it gets dicey is when you go “all-in” on something just because everybody else seems to be doing it. That’s an approach we would never recommend taking.

However, since this is a new content type you are looking to test, there won’t be any historical data for you to depend on, as we did earlier. The first thing you need to do here is to go to your content tracking tool.

Search keyword topics, and you will be able to see the best socially engaged pieces of content across multiple domains for any given subject. You can also analyze how they performed by content type. Is this keyword genre featuring competitors who excel at blogs, infographics, videos, research articles, etc.? Hopefully, doing so will give you a bit more clarity on the type of content you should ideally approach first.

Once you do this, you will know what content type you want to follow and also have a general idea of what demographic groups are engaging the most with the website. Although you might think that you have keyword topics to focus on now, don’t dive in and get started with it just yet. You need to find out what your target audience is interested in and then pick a keyword genre or topic based on your findings. Survey your existing customers via email, social polling, or focus group surveys and ask questions regarding a specific keyword genre. Just remember you might be limited by your overall budget’s depth, but you can acquire excellent insights on the types of content your audience is interested in seeing.

WRAPPING IT UP

Testing new content opportunities can help you explore new and perhaps better ways of reaching your target audience and engaging with them actively. And well, there is no harm in that. The only mistake you can make here is to blindly follow the digital crowd and impulsively dive into a content expansion strategy. Keep these four questions in mind and make it a point to find answers to these before doing anything else. Spend some time in analytics and find out what appeals the most to your target audience. Use your findings as a foundation for your overall content expansion strategy for the best results. We hope this helps!

Hariom Balhara is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles for Tireless IT Services. Tireless IT Services is a Digital Marketing, SEO, SMO, PPC and Web Development company that comes with massive experiences. We specialize in digital marketing, Web Designing and development, graphic design, and a lot more.

SOURCE : Content Expansion

[redscullyrevival]

I finally saw The Last Jedi and I liked it - what I wasn’t entirely anticipating is that I also really enjoyed it! I will now commence bullet point blabbering about the film below the cut and it shall not be spoiler free. 

I now understand all the raging nerd-hate this movie has been getting - this film aimed to straight up burn this motherfucker down, huh? 

Loved it. 

Personally I was very… underwhelmed with The Force Awakens. It was a fun romp and I loved the new characters and the nostalgic twinge of the familiar but oh boy the entire thing felt far too beholden to the pedestal of A STAR WARS FILM! in slow steady blinking lights. 

The Force Awakens has that octane Abrams pacing but it is also just so damn stiff. So ridged. And obviously deeply afraid to wander off the path. 

I understand that the first re-introduction to such a beloved franchise playing it (excruciatingly) safe made sense; but I was still upset with the final product, with the final choice to deliberately aim to be nothing more than what I’ve seen and felt before.

The Last Jedi on the other hand turns out to be a long, cozy, chat about how A STAR WARS FILM! should be struck down so something new can grow. 

Hallelujah!

The visceral attack this film must feel like to a particular kind of Star Wars fan is no doubt very intense and in all honestly I do have some pity for folks who found this new film to be dismissing the legacy they feel connected to in deeply personal ways. 

*clappy hands*

But oh, I loved it so much!

Every twist and turn, every aspect of this film pushes the anticipated rhythm of A STAR WARS FILM! away; all the momentum the film gains is for the final purpose of rejecting everything easy and expected, for pushing past, well, the past. 

Hot damn, the nerds are kind of justified for once.

The Last Jedi came for them! It went so hard! The more someone had dug themselves into the belief that STAR WARS was a solid thing they knew and understood on a fundamental core level then the deeper the cut would go as the film raged on. 

The anger, the hate from certain fandom circles makes total sense. 

Because this film done changed the Star Wars. 

And it was about fuckin’ time. 

So prepared was I to sit through The Empire Strikes Back: The Remix that the intense gut fans-hate-it reaction the film got opening friggin’ day got me all kinds of delighted, how I saw it such a reaction signaled that this new film would be something actually new. 

And the fresh air of The Last Jedi comes from some pretty drastic subversion of A STAR WARS FILM! It is down right beautiful.

Ultimately, if the choice to change Star Wars was just to grim dark and edge it up then it’d be pretty terrible I agree, but The Last Jedi managed to alter and course correct massive change without breaking the frame of the how and the why and to whom these STAR WARS stories are told. 

I mean, in my opinion anyway. 

I felt the film put a lot of care and love into explaining to the audience what was right and natural about change, explaining that strength could be found in letting go of our nostalgia and expectations and opening up to new experiences in old sandboxes. I felt The Last Jedi was an oddly gentle film that knew it was going to frighten some while igniting others and did it’s best to show it’s good will towards signaling hope and legend and legacy into a shared experience. 

*shrug shrug shrug* YA FEELIN’ ME?!

I know I already have a spoiler warning above the cut but now I am going to really get up in this film and push my eyeball up against it’s eyeball and hey if you wanna see all particulars feel free, but this is now specific spoiler territory, thanks and happy holidays:

I was so enthralled with Finn and Rose’s quest and I was ecstatic when it didn’t work out.

The two went on a space goose chase for a daring rescue mission and got into ruffian escapades and thought on the fly and were brave and funny and were livin’ that STAR WARS life - and they failed spectacularly.

Their mission, their rip’roarin’ escapade, was in fact a brash and ill thought out plan that almost got absolutely everyone killed. 

Precious, lovely, daring, and confident Poe Dameron was a horrible leader. 

His belief in a desperate gamble; his total confidence that he was in the right and the stuffy Vice Admiral didn’t know when to take a risk; the audience knowing his qualities as sure fire STAR WARS leadership was all for nothing and people died for it. 

I said HOT DAMN!

This film made General Organa and Vice Admiral Holdo, two older women who don’t run around with blasters in hand but who have no less twinkle in their eyes the true leaders of the resistance. The true bearers of the spark of rebellion. It was their matured tried and true mentorship that ended up saving them all - not the cocky charisma of a younger good looking man.

Also Leia is confirmed Force Sensitive™ bringing to an end decades long old guard fans bickering and moaning over if she has pretend magical powers or not and why if she did that’d be “not right”. 

(Seeing Carrie Fisher bathed in moonlight was emotional)

And then, oh man, Rey’s parents? Wonderful, soulful, bright and strong Rey? Because she is in a STAR WARS film and can use the force everyone including people who’ve never seen The Force Awakens assumed her parents were a part of the legacy, a part of the grand scheme.

NOPE.

In fact, to really drive it home just so fans can’t possibly be confused, Kylo Ren tells her “You’re nobody. You don’t belong in this story.”

He said that with his mouth words!

But there she is all the same, good old Rey. And she’ll remain. Without being so and so from extended universe’s kid or a character only in some comic book or Luke’s secret child or whatever. 

Rey is just a character made to be there and to use the force because, hey, it’s a STAR WARS MOVIE! We needed someone to be the Luke this time around so why not Rey? 

PS we shattered Luke’s lightsaber and made Rey indebted to jack squat of this franchise. She searched for her purpose and her parents and only found the strength of herself and her own choices. Peace out!

That tickled me senseless, having the cultural institution of STAR WARS being full on assaulted for two and a half hours.

That tickled my pickle. 

The Last Jedi is hyper self aware media, but it was still fun. It was still a good time but it laid down hard and fast with changing the lifeblood of STAR WARS that even I, who is nowhere near as big a fan as someone you could probably hit with a stone’s throw, admit to feeling some uncomfortable chafing at times while watching.

STAR WARS is a legit cultural institution by the way, I didn’t just say that for the fun of it - that’s absolutely 100% true. 

Star Wars as a media, as a franchise, has an ebb and flow of patterns, style, symbols, and motifs that dictate a tonal cohesiveness which designates something as recognizable as STAR WARS.  

What I’m doing when I all caps “Star Wars” is I’m trying to defer attention to the known concepts and ideas of Star Wars media as a whole cultural institution and experience rather than just invoking a cluster of films, only I’m trying to do all that just through the written word.

Star Wars is a film and STAR WARS is all that which defines the franchise as well as our shared cultural understanding of said franchise, ya fell me? That’s how I approach talking about this kinda stuff online anyways. I feel most will understand what I’m doing with the capitalization and all that but hey, now ya know ‘fo sure. 

Anyway

Shit y’all! Luke Skywalker is a funky sore spot huh? Loved that too. 

Lets get to that Kylo Ren:

Kylo Ren’s entire set up is that he ain’t Vader and fuck, ain’t that the truth. But in a good way. Duh Kylo Ren is not Vader, he is a different character. And, now, he isn’t even remotely similar to Vader as a STAR WARS character. 

Everything about Kylo Ren is opposed to Darth Vader; while he gain’s definition with this new film Kylo Ren didn’t even remotely start out as a mysterious villain like Vader originally did. 

We all knew, in that STAR WARS fashion, that Kylo Ren had to be tied to the legacy. We all knew that he had to be tied to the lifeblood of the franchise. And Ben Solo absolutely is. 

We knew this before Han ever revealed it through dialogue and that’s why it wasn’t a big reveal in The Force Awakens. Of course Ben Solo turned to the dark side and is Kylo Ren. Of course. Of course he has some weird Vader obsession, the character needed to emulate Vader so as to take up his mantel in the narrative and in the franchise. We needed a baddie in a helmet, stat!

But oh, look what has happened though, oh man:

Luke Skywalker in a moment of fear almost murdered his own nephew  -because he is in STAR WARS. 

We all know if there are Jedi then there is a light and a dark side of the force; we all know that if you are a master of and a teacher in the ways of the force you open yourself and your students up to a choice; and we all know that fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. 

Kylo Ren being a direct response to Luke friggin’ Skywalker is as far from Vader as you can get but fits just so right within the cleansing fire that is The Last Jedi. 

The hero of the first saga ignited the villain of the next. 

That ain’t very STAR WARS and something tells me that is the biggest kick to the crotch for a lot of folks. 

I, of course, dug the hell outta that choice.

Kylo Ren is actually interesting now. Mischief managed.

The very not subtle social commentary the film was dishing out was a pretty pie to boot. Bit on the nose but hey, ain’t that STAR WARS at least? Didn’t even have to dig this time around, gems sitting right on the surface.  

… Damn, I’m tired. I still have plenty to talk about though. Hmm, well, lets close this out on a different note (and that’s a pun):

The music of STAR WARS is bonkers recognizable. Like, I keep saying Star Wars is a cultural institution that uses motifs and symbols as devices for defining itself, right? Yeah, the use of music in this film is a pitch perfect example of that. 

The Last Jedi seamlessly flows from theme to theme, with specific well known scores highlighting emotional call backs and in-story referenced characters - the use of music is the most traditionalist aspect of this new film (they even shook up the editing this time around - shock and awe). 

Smart though, if they fucked with how STAR WARS did music then even an impassive twerp like me would be pretty upset. 

For my money, the musical score is still the best thing about a good old Star War.  

[queenzufufu]

Youngsters (8/?)

Summary: For the kids at The Rooster teeth care home, life hasn’t always been easy. They’ve come from broken homes, broken families. They’ve escaped with broken bones and broken spirits. But at least now they have a second chance to be happy with a real family.

Well…that’s easier said than done when your family includes a hyperactive midget, an over eager wrestling fanatic and a boy who just can’t go a day without punching something…or someone.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 AO3

“You never act out. You positively explode.” - Burnie

“What about going to the movies?”

“No.”

“What about paintball?”

“No.

“What about a pool party?”

“Do I look six years old?”

Burnie shrugged and pulled a pleading face at Ryan. Alright, alright, no, he did not look six years old.

In fact, Ryan would be turning sixteen in four days. Burnie would say that time had flown by but honestly at times he felt as if he’d known the boy his whole life. It wasn’t unusual to feel that way for a lot of the kids. He put so much of his own time and energy into giving them the best care possible, they had taken over almost every aspect of his existence. Ryan may have only been with them for little under two years but in that short time Burnie had seen him grow and change into the young man he was today.

Even so, the first day, as they always were, was still a perfectly clear memory in his mind. There had been nothing remarkable about Ryan at first glance. Nothing to say he was different from any other child. And unlike most of the others, he had been lean rather than thin when he’d arrived. Rooster Teeth had been his first placement - minus the emergency one he had been placed in for three weeks while social services scrambled to find a long term placement for yet another teenager.

Sullen, as most newcomers were, but Burnie had seen intelligence in his sky blue eyes. Angry too, but that was more than expected and understandable. The boy’s older brother and only living relative had recently died after all.

Once the social worker had introduced him and left the two alone, Burnie asked him the same question he always asked new children.

“What would you like to happen now?”

Usually, the kids would say something harsh in response, something to tell Burnie that they didn’t want to be there and resented being sent.

Ryan had thought about the question.

He skipped the usual instant responses - “I want to go home,” some would plea, or “Whatever, I don’t have a choice,” from the more hardened veterans of the system. And a few times, Burnie had simply been told to “Go fuck yourself.”

Ryan had answered slowly, and he answered the question he knew was intended to test their limits, not settling for the easy, defiant answer. “My old life ended. So I suppose I need to start a new one here.”

Burnie was both delighted and saddened by the answer, though he didn’t let it show. It was great that Ryan seemed so settled with the idea of coming into care, but the wise, incredibly jaded response was not necessarily what he wanted to hear from a fourteen-year-old who’d lost so much. Ryan’s apparent chilled out attitude was a breath of fresh air, but it was tinged with something putrid.

Nevertheless, he had taken Ryan by the shoulder and lead him into the main living room to meet some of the other kids Gus had already assembled there to allow more introductions to be made.

No sparks had lit the air when Geoff and Ryan met. The older boy was easy going and full of mischief, while Ryan was solemn and thoughtful, and they gave each other a searching look that the kids always gave when meeting a newcomer of a similar age, and Geoff stuck out his hand.

Ryan had regarded the open palm with a slight air of suspicion, like he could already see the inner workings of Geoff’s mind and the ways the older boy would continuously find new and inventive ways to annoy him.

At the time though, he had nothing to back up these theories, and the two politely shook for the first - and last - time.

Burnie knew, with all the chaos that came with looking after the kids, and all the trouble they could both intentionally and unintentionally cause, that he sometimes took Ryan’s laidback attitude for granted. Because Ryan, prone to moments of anger as he was, had always given the carers the impression that he could raise himself - that he was grateful for the roof over his head and the clothes, food and other basic amenities he was provided with, but ultimately if he had no other choice, he could do it all on his own.

Maybe, if he’d been less experienced in his line of work, Burnie might’ve mistaken that matureness as a sign he could always leave Ryan to his own devices. But, despite sometimes being a little too thankful Ryan was off minding his own business and not causing any trouble, he kept tabs on the kid as much as any of the others.

There were three main worries that always came to mind with Ryan. One: sleep - the boy didn’t get nearly enough thanks to his insomnia, which was an ongoing battle triggered by the most traumatic moment of the boy’s life. Two: his angry outbursts - while less frequent and considerably less violent than they used to be, he still seemed to be triggered by the most minor of things, petty arguments and nuisances. And three: sometimes Burnie just felt the kid was too much of a loner - that he understood everybody had different levels of tolerance for other human beings but, with Ryan, he could happily hole himself up in his own room for days on end if food and drink were supplied directly to him… which they weren’t. Food and drink were often Burnie’s only leverage to get Ryan to come out and join the living world if he was in one of his really antisocial moods.

So, yes, in comparison to some of the other kids, these worries could be deemed minor in comparison. Burnie, however, had learned no kid was the same. That if Ryan went without enough sleep for too long he was prone to be disruptive in class. That his angry outbursts, while seemingly pointless and occurring for no reason to some people, most likely came for a real place or hurt or frustration. And his antisocial tendencies… Ryan could get scared. Getting close to people could hurt, Ryan knew that very well. Having people you thought you could always rely on to be there for you was dangerous when one bar fight gone wrong could wrench them painfully out of your life.

So he kept an eye on Ryan, like he did with all his kids, although sometimes he felt as if he needed to be some all-seeing, all-knowing God to be able to keep tracks on all of them at all times. He supposed that’s why he hired the most competent staff he could find. And Gus.

“C’mon, you must have some ideas,” he pestered Ryan, hoping to at least get some inkling about what Ryan would like to do.

Ryan threw back his head, groaning too. He was really getting fed up with Burnie’s questions.

“Not really. I’ll just go round Jake’s like normal and we’ll chill. I don’t want to do anything special.”

“Well, it is up to you but let me know if you change your mind,” Burnie insisted, not so quick to give up. “And we’re gonna have to do something at the house even if it’s for the benefit of the youngsters.”

Ryan bit his lip, fighting back a grimace. “Only if you don’t turn out all the lights and sing Happy Birthday to me.”

“Sorry Ryan, I’m afraid no promises can be made on that front,” Burnie said. It was part of his duty as head carer that he makes sure all birthdays were celebrated properly, including the embarrassing family sing-a-long part that most teenagers detested.

Turning a corner into an even more crowded street, Burnie felt his heart leap as he realized he hadn’t done his routine check recently. He spun around quickly, eyes darting around the area, trying to locate one face in particular. “Lawrence? Where’ve you gone?” he called out, perhaps slightly more panicked than he would have liked - I’m a constant presence of calm and composure, I’m a constant presence of calm and composure, I’m a -

The boy abruptly walked into him a few seconds after his shouts, glaring up at Burnie’s suddenly stopped figure. “I’m here, idiot.”

Relief washed over Burnie as he smiled ruefully down at the boy and the utterly unimpressed expression he was giving him. He’d gotten so used to Lawrence dawdling behind or wandering off into random crowds or stores, that he had failed to notice that the boy was literally right behind him. “Oh, sorry, didn’t see you down there.”

Lawrence craned his neck back to glare up at him, putting up his hood again as it fell off his head. “Calling me short?” he challenged.

Burnie regarded him. Judging the pale green eyes to see if it was anger or mischief that filled them more. “Yes. Yes, I am,” he said when he decided that Lawrence was in the latter mood. He could tell his blatant answer surprised the boy, but a few seconds later Lawrence was actually smirking wryly up at him, hopping forward so he was stood at Burnie’s side. The kid appreciated people being straight with him, that was another thing Burnie was learning. He always wanted whatever was in your mind, be it good or bad; he wanted to know what you were really thinking and threw a fit if he thought someone was being coy with him.

“Easier to take people down - can go for the legs. I done it loads before,” Lawrence grinned, and Burnie laughed a little, regaining his composure.

“I’ve no doubt you have,” he agreed. Burnie often thought the boy would benefit from hanging out with James and Adam more. Not only were they of similar age but it would do everyone a favor if Lawrence could burn off some of his pent-up rage in, let’s say, a little backyard wrestling, rather than on, what was more common, household items or household residents.

Burnie was hugely grateful though, that Lawrence was in one of his rare chirpier moods that day, in that he wasn’t being a complete menace. They had a rota for the kids to help with the shopping every other weekend. To be honest, it wasn’t so much their help that was needed, although Burnie did appreciate it, but more of a chance to spend time with them more as individuals or pairs in a very normal, everyday setting. Michael especially loved coming with Burnie on his own. It was the only time the kid would call him ‘Dad’, just so other people would think they were related. Burnie didn’t discourage it, if Michael wanted to call him Dad for a few hours, he was hardly one to say no.

And that day, the most complaint Burnie had when asking Lawrence to go into town with him and Ryan was a long exaggerated sigh and an eye roll. In the car, he had even been quite talkative and, contrary to most kids his age, had been the one asking Burnie questions about himself. “What was your first job?”, “What’s your family like?”, “What’s the worst Christmas gift you ever got?”. Burnie didn’t know if the boy was actually interested in the answers - he doubted it - or if he was just doing it to keep any talk about his own life and feelings away - much more likely.

Still, Burnie welcomed the conversation all the same. When he wasn’t shouting or fighting or in one of his foul, sulking moods when he wanted nothing to do with anyone, the kid actually provided enjoyable company. He was intelligent with a dark sense of humor, and he apparently had a strong view of anything and everyone. With those characteristics, it was easy to think he and Ryan might have gotten along well. But maybe they were too similar on that front, repelling against each other like identical magnets, with Lawrence always being overly competitive to get one up on the older boy.

Anyway, Lawrence had remained in a good mood after Burnie let him choose where they got food. They’d been to a homewares store, and he’d been more than happy to play lapdog, running off to go and fetch items Burnie listed off. For a while, he was like any normal, happy kid out in the town, if a little extra wild, and it had given Burnie a greater sense of hope that they were making groundwork with the boy. Perhaps he had wished for that desired breakthrough too soon.

“Why do I have to go with him?”

“You don’t have to but I’m going to be waiting in line for at least half an hour at this time, so if you’d rather do that…”

Lawrence’s eyes widened in horror at the idea of standing still for so long. “Hell no.”

Burnie smirked. “Thought as much.”

“No one likes a know-it-all,” the boy sang, imitating a voice Burnie knew had been aimed at Lawrence a lot.

Burnie grinned wider still, shaking his head while Lawrence pulled faces. He glanced over at Ryan, who had stayed quiet during the mini argument, head turned away, daydreaming. A passive attitude was what Ryan usually adopted if any argument not involving him broke out, so persistent about not giving a damn it could sometimes rile up the others more. It wasn’t easy though, Burnie knew. He knew in nearly all of those instances, Ryan was using every bit of self-control to hold his tongue, if only in fear of what might happen should he get involved.

He walked over to the teen, placing a hand on his shoulder. “He’s in a good mood. You’ll be fine, but give me a call if you need me,” he assured.

Ryan gave a short nod, in his military disciplined mode, a tactic he engaged when he really didn’t want to do something. But this would be a good thing, Burnie was convinced. If they were going to live together all the kids had to learn to get along at some point. And being the second eldest, he knew and trusted Ryan’s abilities to handle one unruly child for an hour or so.

Burnie also knew that sometimes, he could get things disastrously wrong.

––––

Their task was simple, and it needed no overcomplicating.

Walk to the store, get the food, pick up Ryan’s laptop that had gone in for repairs, meet up with Burnie. Easy, nothing hard about that.

Or at least it would be if Ryan had been on his own, with his own capable self.

“This is boring,” Lawrence moaned for the umpteenth time, as they walked along through the crowds. It was walking, it wasn’t meant to be overly interesting or stimulating, and Ryan knew Lawrence knew that, and he was simply repeating the same phrase over and over to get on Ryan’s nerves. Whatever. Ryan could deal with that. Hell, he’d had to sit next to Jeremy on a forty minute drives while the little boy just sang “bored, bored, bored, bored,” the whole drive.

Anyhow, he wanted to get the shit done as fast as possible.

“Watch where you're walking, you’re gonna end up in the middle of the road if you’re not careful.”

“So? It’ll be quicker,” Lawrence said, pointing to the congested traffic, all the cars having come to a stand-still.

Ryan sighed and quickened his pace, dodging around the slowly moving shoppers.

“Hey!” The small boy bounded after him, having to switch between walking and jogging to keep up with Ryan’s long-legged strides. Dark hair poked out from underneath the hood he’d kept up, even though it was relatively warm and not raining, the dark grey hooded jacket the perfect color to match the effect he was having on Ryan’s mood.

As something to do, Ryan checked the money Burnie had given him, counting out the cash under his breath. He could see in the corner of his eye, Lawrence watching him with interest. “You using all that on food?” he asked after a beat, eagerly eyeing the money.

Ryan paused, not forgetting his money that had gone missing a month or so ago, and he tightened his fingers around the cash. “Yep.”

“Cause y’know, you could like–”

“No, I couldn’t,” Ryan interrupted, predicting where Lawrence was going. “They have strict rules on what is purchased with the budget money and check all the receipts. And anyway,” he sent down a chiding glare. “I would never do that.”

He found himself met with a fierce look. “Cause you’re a pussy?”

Jesus Christ. Ryan swallowed hard. “No, because I don’t want to.”

“I would.”

Ryan carried on meeting hard gaze with equal firmness. “Good thing I have the money and not you then, isn’t it?”

Lawrence considered this and slowly nodded. “I could take it from you if I wanted to. Aim for the legs,” he retorted, making a few fake darts towards Ryan. He threw up his arms when his antics were met with yet another hard glare. “Lighten up Ryan, I’m only kidding.”

He wasn’t, but Ryan didn’t mention anything that could prolong the conversation. They walked on in silence. Ryan shivered as a cold blast of wind suddenly hit them, stuffing his hands deeper into his pockets for shelter. Inevitably, Lawrence soon grew further bored and, to Ryan’s horror and embarrassment, invented a game called ‘Let’s see how many people I can walk into’ as they were entering the ginormous food store.

He tried grabbing him but Lawrence only darted away. He tried glaring at him but it had absolutely no effect, the younger boy only grinning in return. Then he tried ignoring him until he heard someone curse very loudly and turned to see a large gentleman struggling to pick up his fallen shopping and a very shifty young boy hurrying away.

“Lawrence, c’mon,” Ryan said, defeated, and it was his sound of defeat that eventually had Lawrence returning to his side, smug in his victory.

Stay calm, Ryan fought to remind himself. No need to get mad at this little shit.

They headed for the small electronics repair station, located near the back of the store first, Ryan eager to see his faithful old laptop again.

“Did you know that sausages are older than the Bible?” Lawrence asked at one point.

Ryan frowned so Lawrence explained. “Sausages. They came before the Bible. So Jesus and his buddies probably chilled out with barbeque, shooting the shit.”

Ryan’s frown only deepened. “Oh.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Didn’t say you were.”

Ryan growled under his breath as the younger boy suddenly danced across in front of him, almost tripping him up. “Did you know that most bananas are clones?” Lawrence asked as he passed.

“No.”

“It’s true.” Lawrence nodded sagely. “Did you know Hawaiian pizza was invented in Canada?”

“Okay, whatever. I don’t care.”

The boy looked up at Ryan in satisfaction. “You’re just mad that I’m smarter than you.”

“No. I’m not. I just really don’t care.”

“So you admit I’m smarter than you?”

Ryan let out a huff of frustration. “I’m just not gonna listen to you anymore.”

“Aww,” Lawrence grinned, putting on a fake tone of disappointment, and it was such a different attitude to how he normally was that Ryan actually felt a tinge of guilt. It was easy to hate Lawrence when he was acting like a little brat - aka the whole time Ryan had known him - not so much when he was bouncing alongside Ryan like an oversized puppy. If it had been one of the other youngsters asking him questions like that he would have taken it in his stride. Heck, Gavin was famed for his random ass queries and Ryan took them as they came with fondness and humor.

So Ryan decided to brush aside his built up annoyance at the kid and throw the dog a bone. Now that he thought about it, there was one thing about the young boy that had been intriguing him for a while. “Seeing as you’re in such a talkative mood, I’ve gotta question for you.”

Lawrence looked up at him again, green eyes narrowing, silent as he waited for Ryan to expand.

“Your accent. You’re from the south?”

The surprise was evident on Lawrence’s face, a rare moment of open emotion. “You can tell?” he asked, a tone Ryan hadn’t heard before in his voice. Cautious or worried maybe, but also excitement?

“I can hear you’ve lost most of it, but I’m a Georgia boy, got a finer ear for those dialects than most others up here.”

“I’m from Texas,” Lawrence replied, chin high, the statement sounding proud. The moment didn’t last long as he quickly lowered his head, slowing his walk down as he mumbled: “But I ain’t lived there for a while. My first foster dicks only spoke Spanish too, so that was a mindfuck. Kinda mixed me all up, I think.”

Ryan slowed down too, regarding the hood that covered the bent head. “You ever think about going back there one day?”

A sharp intake of breath, as if Lawrence were going to reply with one thing but changed his mind last second. “I dunno. Probably not. There’s nothin’ there for me,” he said instead. He looked up at Ryan again, expression once more unreadable. “Why? You wantin’ to go back to pretty old Georgia?”

“I’ve thought about it… but it’s for the best that I don’t,” Ryan mumbled, voice tight. It was always there, whenever the topic was brought up, and he supposed he only had himself to blame, mentioning it this time.

“Why?” Lawrence regarded him curiously.

Ryan didn’t reply. Couldn’t. It wasn’t that there was nothing in Georgia for him. But none of it was good, none of it was happy.

Jason…

He tried to avoid thinking about it altogether but Lawrence had unintentionally flipped it onto him from Ryan’s own question. The tensions that always crept into his muscles and nerves were a clear sign that he was far from over it, that the wound had barely begun to heal. He just buried it under layers and layers of carefully constructed walls and new memories with his new ‘family’, like an artist starting a new sketch, creating something new and beautiful, but only ever covering that initial hurt.

“Jason? You here?”

If Ryan ever went back home again… he didn’t know what he would do. He liked to think he would stay in control but he’d thought that before, although back then all the hurt and anger had been so much rawer. But Ryan knew, at least for now, he couldn’t trust himself.

“Hey Ty, you seen my brother?”

Really, who could? You come face to face with your brothers killer, it’s bound to make you see red. It had happened once it would probably happen again, and now with the guy out on bail after only two years… Ryan’s fist clenched. Accident or no, that drunken fight had taken away his only living family member. Was two years justice enough in his mind? Fuck no.

“No! You have to let me in! I’m family!”

A light poke on his arm brought him rushing back to the present, and he turned to see Lawrence continuing to gaze up at him, little face still unreadable. “S’alright. You don’t need to tell me nothin’,” he said, glancing up at him, corner of his mouth tilting up. “All got our secrets, don’t we?”

“It’s not like that,” Ryan began, but Lawrence’s words had him halt.

Yeah, we do all have our secrets, and as much as Geoff got on his nerves, Ryan always found himself reluctantly admitting that the guy had a certain skill for being the voice of reason. What Geoff had said, back near the start of term; he didn’t know anything about this kid and the shit he’d probably been through. Just like Lawrence didn’t know about the shit Ryan had been through.

Huh, been living with him for nearly three months and still know next to nothing.

Honestly, all he did know was from what he could see right there in front of him. The things Lawrence couldn’t keep hidden away under layers and layers of his own carefully contracted walls.

And all he saw was a small kid. Just that. A small, slightly rough around the edges, kid.

Ryan knew if Jason had still been around he would have told Ryan to be the bigger man and let bygones be bygones. Or at least take the Geoff approach and not allow anything Lawrence had said or done to affect him personally. To brush it off with a good-natured hand –

“Tell me who did it.”

But he wasn’t his brother and it had never come as naturally to him. And he definitely didn’t want the kid around at the moment, not when Ryan was suddenly feeling so very vulnerable with his emotions. Right now he needed some space, and he searched for the quickest exit he could find - desperately leaping at it when he figured he could kill two birds with one stone.

“I’m going to fucking kill you!”

His body shook hard, like he was physically trying to brush the memories away.

“Lawrence, take this list and get me the items on there, okay?” he fumbled in his pocket for the list Burnie had given him. At the boy’s insolent expression, he even resorted to placing his palms together and leaning over so they were somewhat eye level. “Pretty please?” he begged, batting his eyelids for good measure.

Lawrence grunted out a laugh, giving Ryan a weird look, but he slowly took the paper from him.

Ryan saw the green eyes narrow as they scanned the list for an abnormally long time. He wasn’t sure if the boy had just zoned out or was intentionally wasting time, and he tapped his foot impatiently. “Normal food, huh?” Lawrence asked eventually, peering up at Ryan speculatively.

“Yeah…” Ryan drawled out, suspicious. “What else did you think it’d be?” Too late for a reply, Lawrence was already walking off. Ryan stared after him, torn between leaving him like planned or running after him to make sure nothing went wrong. About to call after him, he thought better of it. Ryan needed his space right now, privacy to wallow in his own thoughts and memories - a solo companionship he welcomed.

It worked - as he knew it would - going about his business, waiting quietly in line to be reunited with his laptop. He was often unsure if thinking about Jason and what had happened to him was healthy. In one sense it wasn’t good to dwell on the dark facts, but surely avoiding the topic altogether was just as bad. Ryan tried to allow his mind to wander there in moderation, and not in large public places.

Afterwards, realizing he hadn’t set up any meetup point, and failing to find the younger boy by just walking aimlessly around, Ryan decided to just wait by the checkouts, relaxing as Lawrence finally appeared, returning with a full cart that was almost as tall as he was.

Ryan smiled, pleased that everything seemed in order - that they could pay and meet back up with Burnie and then head home, where Ryan could go straight to his room and check himself out of reality for a while –

“What’s all this? What –”

“Food.” Lawrence cut in. He was staring at the very point just above Ryan’s eyes, as if he thought the older boy couldn’t tell the difference. His voice was quiet, deceptively calm.

“But more than half of this isn’t what was wrote down,” Ryan snapped, observing the array of food that he knew wasn’t normally on the list.

“I lost it.”

“What?”

“I lost it,” Lawrence repeated, softly.

Ryan glared. “You lost the food?”

“No, you dumbass. The list.” Lawrence sighed, leaning forward on the cart, bored again.

Ryan scowled, one hundred percent not convinced. He loomed over the smaller boy, who looked up at him with dull, inexpressive eyes, not at all intimidated or regretful. No apologies here. “Great. Well, that’s a whole lot of time wasted. Burnie’s gonna be happy when he returns and we’ve done nothing! You think he’s gonna fall for this dumb act?”

The briefest flash of something glinted in the green eyes. “You got your laptop didn’t you? I got food. We’re good,” Lawrence said, a slight more forceful this time.

“No. I did what I needed to do. You’ve just messed me around - as usual,” Ryan couldn’t help adding.

Lawrence laughed then - a harsh, cruel sound. It was far from the laughter Ryan had heard earlier. Then he’d seemed more normal - as cheeky and excitable as any kid his age. But when he stood, hood still up, glaring up at Ryan dangerously - he couldn’t reconcile the two.

Ryan flipped.

“Why are you like this? Do you want me to not like you - is that it?” he demanded to know. “Because you’re succeeding, so congratulations –”

Lawrence tipped the cart over.

It created a thunderous, jarring crash, the produce spilling everywhere, sliding around Ryan’s feet. The older boy jolted backward - for a moment he couldn’t comprehend what was happening, and could only stare at Lawrence with wide eyes, breathing so fast he almost felt dizzy. The look on Lawrence’s face disturbed him more than the action did - his green eyes had darkened so much they nearly looked black, his lips pulled taught into a furious sneer.

“Whatever!” The boy shouted at him, enraged voice echoing around the whole store. By now quite a crowd had gathered from the commotion, onlookers warily watching the scene unfold. “¡Me vale madre!” Lawrence yelled again, meeting Ryan dead in the eye - no averted gazes now.

And Ryan didn’t need to be fluent in Spanish to get the gist of that particular phrase. He tightened his fists hard, pointing a demanding finger at the mess. “Get here. We’re cleaning this up.” The tremors in his body were growing more violent by the second as he felt the control slipping away.

Lawrence stayed where he was, glaring defiantly. Then instead of coming closer, he took a step backward, kicking one of the fallen apples at Ryan, and then another, laughing as he did so.

“Lawrence! Stop it!”

There was no point trying to rectify anything at this point, deep down Ryan knew that. They were both too angry. There was a little voice in the back of his mind telling him to back off, that nothing could be done. Be smart, leave it be. Whatever’s going on is out of your control now. You can’t fix this on your own.

“I’m going to fucking kill you!”

“I’m going to fucking kill you!”

“I’m going to fucking kill you!”

Stay… in… control.

Lawrence kicked another apple at him.

“Get here you little fuck!” Ryan launched like a wild predator, making a grab for the boy with both arms, fully uncaring about what happened to either of them, but Lawrence nimbly dodged, backing himself into a corner. He bared his teeth, sadistically, as Ryan once again lunged at him. Another dodge, a duck, and then a swift and ferocious kick to Ryan’s shin, and he was away, disappearing around an aisle before Ryan even had a chance to catch a breath.

The crowd of onlookers was even larger now and some were saying stuff to him… maybe, he wasn’t really listening. Unwelcome tears of embarrassment and anger pooled in the corner of Ryan’s eyes as he clutched at his throbbing leg. “You - you little shit!” he raged, uncaring of all the prying stares.

It was like his own eyes had blinders on them, narrowing his eyesight to the mess around him, all sounds muffled except for his own pounding heartbeat and heavy breathing. His cheeks and his lungs burned.

Slowly. Breathe slowly.

I need to breathe, I need to breathe, I need to breathe.

He counted to ten in his head, breathing in and out as he did so. He repeated it.

Slowly, slowly the real world blended back into his frame of vision, not that it was any better. Ryan sighed as he heard the crackle of a radio and the man holding it.

Great. Security.

–––––

When Burnie first got the text from Ryan telling him he had to ask for the manager to take him to Ryan, it had put his head in a spin and left him panicked. A whole host of scenarios had rushed through his head, each one worse as the seconds ticked by between him receiving the message on his way to the store and him bursting through the staff doors to find a very sullen looking teen sat in the middle of an otherwise empty row of chairs, outside a door labelled ‘Security’.

“Ryan! You alright? What’s going on? Where’s Lawrence?” Burnie rushed out before Ryan even had time to look up.

When he saw who it was his shoulders slumped, head hanging.

Burnie was quick to take a seat next to him, subconsciously checking for any injuries of clues as to what had gone on. “Well? Ryan?” he insisted.

“I um… lost him,” Ryan said, voice low and flat, folding his arms, and Burnie’s spine went rigid.

Not again.

“You’re joking,” he said hopefully, even though he knew it was futile, confirmed by the helpless look Ryan gave him. “You’re not joking,” Burnie mumbled, running hands through frazzled hair, feeling like he was aging quicker all of a sudden. “How did you lose him?”

Ryan swallowed. He was wary, like he was being tested here, in some way, nervous under Burnie’s close eye. He seemed to struggle with what to say. “Well I kinda got mad and we got into a bit of a fight… but he’d gone and got all the wrong food on purpose and then he tipped the cart over and there was a mess and –”

“And let me guess, you saw red and he ran off,” Burnie finished off for him, already picturing the scene in his head. When Ryan said “kinda mad” he knew that was only half of it.

Ryan squirmed. “Yeah, not before he gave me a good kick in the shin though,” he managed finally. “Left me to deal with the mess too. I tried explaining it to them but I think they best talk to you. Think they’ll be back in a minute.”

Burnie nodded, formulating his next plan of action. “Alright, I’ll do that and, well, we’ll have a look and ask around and then better call the police, I suppose.” He laughed light, because that’s all he could do. “They’re gonna love us by the end of this year.”

“I - I’m really sorry Burnie,” Ryan stammered, bracing himself like he expected Burnie to be angry at him, like he thought he’d let the man down. It was moments like this that made Burnie curse the past events that still affected his kids more than ever. That he could love and care for them as much as possible, and they would return the favor, but they could also still instinctively react in such defensive manners, old wounds easily opening.

“No I – it’s fine Ryan,” Burnie said automatically. Ryan shook his head as if taking on the disappointment in himself he thought Burnie should have.

“Hey, really Ryan,” Burnie squeezed his shoulder. “Don’t worry about today. It’s my fault if anyone’s, I shouldn’t have left you two alone. It was my mistake for stupidly thinking he might actually be behaving today.”

Ryan took in a shaky breath.

“It was me. He was fine with you but with me he didn’t want to listen. He did it just to annoy me because he knew it would, and I fell for it. I should’ve… should’ve just dealt with it until you got back.” He was clearly very frustrated with himself.

“Two things,” Burnie began. “I’m the one trained to deal with kids acting out and two, neither of us really know yet why that kid does what he does. But if I were to guess, I don’t think it was personal Ryan. I think that sometimes it just might be in his nature to act out.”

Ryan raised an eyebrow. “Like I do?”

“You never act out. You positively explode.”

Ryan smiled at his light teasing. “I’m getting better though, aren’t I? I mean… I was,” he trailed off.

“Absolutely,” Burnie assured. “I haven’t noticed that fireball anger in… well, not for a long time. I know you can go into rage mode but it’s often filled with humor these days. Or…” he lowered his voice, “is that just you hiding your true feelings?”

Ryan shook his head adamantly. “No. They’re not out as control as they used to be. Of course, I’m usually still angry for them to occur in the first place, but I’m quicker to find the lighter side of things.” He pulled a self-deprecating face. “It helps that the others just laugh anyway if I start shouting, helps me realize quicker if I’m getting upset over things that no one needs to be angry about.”

Burnie nodded. “But today - today you were so angry because?” he asked tentatively.

“Because he just has that effect, he… he was wasting time, your time. And he didn’t care, he seemed pleased with himself, like I said, he just wanted to make me angry. Guess he succeeded.” Ryan muttered sourly as he ran a hand across his own face, mirroring Burnie’s action from earlier, looking so old and so young at the same time.

“Thank you, Ryan,” Burnie said quietly, breaking the silence. “Thank you for caring about my time being wasted. Though nothing’s ever a waste with you lot, you know that,” he added. “Try not to dwell on today. What’s done is done and besides, I’m proud of you for lasting that long with him. I’m pretty certain Adam or Michael would have tackled him into the cereal stand way earlier.”

A pause. Ryan snorted gently. “Would’ve probably been more effective.” That joke, as small as it might have been, relieved Burnie to no end. If there was one thing he didn’t want to get from today it was Ryan blaming himself for no good reason. The fact that he appeared to be lightening up was good news. “If you’re so proud of me…” Ryan continued after a moment, eyes glinting with mischief when Burnie met them. “Does that mean I can get out of doing something at the house for my birthday?”

Burnie shook his head with vigor, matching Ryan’s small smile. “Hell no.”

If there was one thing you needed to work at Rooster Teeth, it was a bit of that quality “embarrassing dad” factor.

[evolutionsvoid]

Before becoming the necromancer he is today, Ver'Rahl was a simple boy of a different name: Joseph Victorus. He lived with his father, Abraham, who owned and ran a cemetery. He would aid his father in his day-to-day tasks, and always loved the tales his dad would weave around the campfire. One particular tale that stood out to him was the one where his father (supposedly) ran into and fought off a snooping necromancer. As years passed by, Joseph grew curious in the arts of necromancy and began to secretly study its ways. The curiosity started small, with the reading of books and scrolls, but soon grew into a real interest. As he went form a boy to man, Joseph began to grow proficient in the ways of necromancy, all behind his father's back. His secret life was not revealed until his father was diagnosed with a fatal illness. Fearful over the loss of his father, Joseph told him of his studies and believed he could find a way to bring his dying father back. This news did not delight his father, rather it disgusted him. His father wished for a clean, peaceful death and was horrified that his son would want to use such vile magic. The argument turned to an all out screaming match, with Joseph unable to accept his father's coming demise. In the end, Joseph knew that he did not need his father's permission to bring him back, and would wait until his father perished to raise him. His father, though, was wise to this thought and would not let his son tamper with his soul. One night, his father tricked him and sent him away on a simple errand. When Joseph returned, his father had taken his own life by burning himself alive. Joseph was not skilled enough to raise charred bones and ash, and it was clear that his father was gone for good. This act of betrayal enraged Joseph, beginning the madness that would lead him down the darker paths of necromancy. Over the next years, Joseph delved deeper into the dark arts and became a highly skilled necromancer. He robbed his own cemetery for subjects, and even stole a few living ones from a nearby town. Eventually, he reached a point where he believed he could transfer his soul to a new vessel. Seeking to inhabit a stronger, healthier form, Joseph set up an extremely complicated ritual that would allow it to work. The ceremony took months to set up, but he was at last close to his vision. He had secured a recently dead corpse to transfer himself into, one that was much better in all the physical aspects. Everything was going well, until he bungled the final step. In need of fresh human blood, Joseph headed to town to steal a victim. Blinded by his excitement to start this ceremony, he messed up his kidnapping attempts and was soon pursued by the town guard. Leading them back to the cemetery, he faced off against the guardsman and slew one with a hidden dagger. The flowing blood started the ritual, as Joseph was cut down by a hail of arrows. With the complex system in motion, Joseph was sure his soul would be promptly sent to the new vessel, and all would work out. Unfortunately, the fight in the graveyard upset some of his delicate rune work, causing the process to go awry. Infernal energy began to go to the wrong places, while the whole spell began to fall apart. His soul that was trapped within the spell circle began to dissipate, and Joseph lashed out in hopes of pulling himself together before he faded away. His efforts succeeded in patching himself back together, but also pulled in fragments and residues from the other bodies within the cemetery. At last, the ritual came to an explosive conclusion, causing the entire graveyard to collapse in on itself, taking Joseph with it. 

Days later, Joseph awoke in the depths of the ruined cemetery, his ritual successful enough to keep him alive. The mangled process, though, put his soul in a body rotted and warped by magic and other infernal forces. At first he was distraught over his destroyed body, but the powers that flowed through his form banished those regrets. Now possessing a power stronger than he imagined, Joseph felt triumphant in his transformation. As a new beast in a new body, he took on the name Ver'Rahl, seeing this glorious moment as rebirth. Marveling in his new powers, he rebuilt his body from bones and rot. He sought to show the world his presence, when the side effects of his efforts kicked in. The soul fragments he pulled in to save himself infused his mind with dozens of voices. Voices that wailed and wept, last words of dying folk forever speaking in loop. Shards of other minds that gibbered and shrieked, filling his every waking moment with thoughts that were not his own. His attempts to impress the world with his mighty abilities ended up immolating an entire town, as his mind broke down and unleashed a spell he could not control. Weakened and driven mad by the intruding voices, Ver'Rahl stumbled away into the wilds to find a place he could focus. In the end, Ver'Rahl found a dead land that had been ravaged by ancient wars. Taking up keep in an abandoned fortress, he began his work to further understand his new abilities, as well as find a way to heal his shattered mind.             Attitude - Ver'Rahl's attitude depends on the state of his broken mind. When he is calm and focused, the voices in his head grow quiet and muffled. In this state, Ver'Rahl is cruel and unrelenting. He has little care for any life that is not his own, and sees most living things as "spare parts." He is obsessed with his experiments, where he tries to craft new undead or find a cure to his madness. Anything and everything is used in his experiments, always trying out new techniques or using different species. When calm, he can devise cruel plans and come up with horrid abominations. He seeks to become master of the dead, and to tear through the kingdoms in search for the power to heal his mind. He sees himself as a defier of gods and reality, a lone rebel who dares to fight against the natural order of things. All others are mere sheep to him, so he cares not when he warps their bodies and terrorizes their minds. When dealing with victims, he often taunts and mocks them, finding enjoyment in their fear and mortal ways. He enjoys corrupting their words and tricking them, their pain only amusing him further. In some cases, Ver'Rahl has taken the role of a twisted djinn, listening to their pleas and wishes, and then twisting them into a torturous way. The maddened abomination that comes from such cruelty often has no purpose or use, but he finds the whole scenario amusing. While he does seek domination and mental stability, Ver'Rahl's motives for day to day things often have no rhyme or reason. His alien thoughts and endless voices drive him to do bizarre things, and he has even stated himself that he doesn't know why he does some things. And that is during his good days. When irritated or angry, the voices in his head get louder and louder. As his rage grows, the voices tend to scream and mock him, causing Ver'Rahl to break down in a psychotic fit. During these times, Ver'Rahl has little control over his thoughts and actions. He often is just screaming and ranting as he fires necrotic energy wildly. In intense moments, he may unleash spells or summons that he has no knowledge of, which often cause more harm than good. These ungodly spells are beyond his imagination, and he never remembers them when he calms his mind. The creation of Darkest Knight came from one of these breakdowns, and it infuriates Ver'Rahl to no end, as he cannot remember how he made the undead juggernaut. With his unstable mind, it takes very little to set Ver'Rahl off. His tantrums can ignite for any reason, and Ver'Rahl struggles to control his own rage. When growing irritated, he frantically tries to calm himself and clear his mind, as he knows that if he allows the voices to grow louder, than he will fall into another psychotic break.     Relations - Due to his cruel ways and hatred for most living things, Ver'Rahl has very few living friends. In times he may team up with another villain, but these are very short lived and he despises every second of it. His best relations come from his undead minions, who turn to Ver'Rahl as their master and leader. The closest thing he has to a friend is his creation General Nekrosis, who was one of his first sapient undead. The militaristic ghoul follows Ver'Rahl's orders without question and equally enjoys the tortures Ver'Rahl puts his victims through. He also stands as an aid for Ver'Rahl's tantrums, helping his master calm down before he starts causing more damage. When frustrated or angry, Ver'Rahl vents to Nekrosis, ranting to his friend so that he can let the pressure off from his mind. His relation with another undead creation, though, is not so friendly. The mutilated creature known as Haceil Grubtongue is a source of annoyance to him, but Ver'Rahl makes up for that by frequently tearing the fiend apart. Grubtongue was a con man tricked by Ver'Rahl and mutated into a patchwork freak. With that, Grubtongue has nothing but disdain towards the necromancer, even though he is forced to work for him. He often mocks and insults Ver'Rahl, and is always plotting to find a way to escape his clutches. These hardly ever work, and Ver'Rahl just mangles him some more to let out his frustration. Darkest Knight is treated more as a pet than friend, but Ver'Rahl has learned his lesson when it comes to working with him. His recent creation, Vilicity, is a mixed bag for him. At times he may appear super protective of her, treating her like a prized daughter. This is because Vilicity is made of many complicated parts, and takes an ungodly amount of time to maintain and repair. Ver'Rahl does not want to spend any more time fixing her or building new limbs, so he does his best to keep her out of unnecessary harm. Other times, Ver'Rahl is annoyed with her, as her creation was one that took ungodly amounts of time and energy. Ver'Rahl sees her conception as a waste of time, and is disappointed that he only got one undead out of the whole debacle. This drives Vilicity to try and win his approval, which only annoys Ver'Rahl further. Though it may seem he treats her better than the others, he doesn't hide his annoyance towards her existence and has screamed at her plenty of times behind closed doors.     Subordinates - Due to his twisted experiments, Ver'Rahl rules over legions of undead creatures and horrible abominations. With his mutating powers and constantly shifting mind, hardly any of the creatures look similar to one another. Often he will have a star creation that he recently made that will be the center of his efforts. This new creation will be the one he bases his attack strategies on, and often flies into a fit of rage when it is destroyed. Outside of his constantly changing roster of freaks and mutants, he often has Nekrosis, Haceil, Darkest Knight and Vilicity within his ranks. All turn to him for orders and commands, with some being more disgruntled with the whole affair than others. Abilities - Due to the magic overload that birthed him, Ver'Rahl is steeped in necrotic energy. Not only can he fire blasts of it from his hands and head, but his very presence seems to emanate it. Anything touched by his magic is warped and mutated, which causes most of his creations to come out as twisted fiends. While other necromancers can raise simple zombies, anything Ver'Rahl makes will often mutate into some alien being, even when he isn't trying. When fighting, he often relies on rotting, green blasts to destroy his foes, never delving into any other element. His most powerful abilities are the ones he cannot control. When enraged, his crazed mind will unleash devastating spells and create unstoppable abominations against his will. His first mental breakdown caused an entire town to be incinerated in a sea of green fire, and that is one example of many. Ver'Rahl has no say over what happens during his rampages, but they often turn an enemy's victory into a twisted horror show of death and disease. To fuel these magical tirades, Ver'Rahl creates and dons false heads made of bone and mana. These skeletal heads act as a secondary mana pool that he can charge with energy. As he fights or works, the energy within the head will slowly grow, giving him another energy source during complicated spells or destructive rants. In a pinch, he can throw the head at others and detonate it. This is usually when he needs to flee and requires a distraction.   As an undead, Ver'Rahl is not harmed by most injuries that could kill the living. His body hardly feels pain, which keeps him from flinching or reacting to devastating wounds. While foes can tear into his flesh and mangle his body, he still lives and is able to patch himself together. Disemboweling, eviscerating, and decapitating hardly slow him down. If one truly wants to slay him, they will most likely have to burn his body to ash.   Tools - Most of Ver'Rahl's efforts are done by magic and necromancy. He rarely carries weapons with him, though he does have a staff that he will occasionally wield. His time on the battlefield has him mostly relying on undead soldiers. When in his fortress, though, he has a variety of tools and contraptions to aid in his experiments. Cauldrons, operating slabs and various sharp tools are used for mutations and dissections. He often creates undead helpers to aid in his efforts. Creatures that can disassemble corpses for spare parts and simple minded workers who can patch together common soldiers to bolster his forces. When it comes to creating quick and easy monsters, he uses sharp, green crystals that are infused with his energy. A simple jab and twist into a corpse or foe will release the necrotic magic and mutate them instantly. These are used to create quick creatures on the battlefield with little effort, or to power some of his more complex creations.   Weaknesses - While it can be an uncontrollable strength at times, Ver'Rahl's fragmented mind is his greatest weakness. He is already dwelling on the brink of madness most of the time, so it takes very little to set him off. If his plans start to fail, or enemies begin to frustrate, it won't be long before he falls into another psychotic frenzy. During these times, there is little logic or reasoning, which further unravels his plans. He often will lash out and destroy anything nearby, which includes his soldiers or allies. If whipped into a high enough frenzy, he may unintentionally unleash spells that he has no knowledge of and has zero control over. In times, he may summon beasts or entities that he cannot control, adding more chaos to the scene. Taunts and mockery works extremely well against him, but its effects will be unpredictable. His furious episodes are a good way to weaken him, as such erratic spells will drain his energy and leave him vulnerable. As an undead, he is weak to holy based spells and other rituals that may weaken them. Since his body is in a constant state of rot, he is not physically strong and can be damaged quite easily. His arms and hands may be easily snapped off by a strong foe, and strikes can often puncture his putrid flesh. His false head can also be used against him. Since it is a secondary mana pool, destroying it will eliminate a large energy source for him. The explosion that comes from its destruction can harm him if he cannot get the damaged object away from him fast enough.  

[oldadastra]

The Broken Saga

Author note: Like legions of other fans, I’m grieving the death of Carrie Fisher. My heart breaks for her daughter Billie and her and brother Todd, and I recognize that the silencing of Fisher’s unique voice is more important than the loss of the character she played. 

This essay was difficult to write. Parts of it are a grief-filled rant. Parts of it explore my own thoughts about how the new saga can be concluded in a way which fulfills the storytellers’ intent while acknowledging the reality of Fisher’s death, and honoring the legacy she created in the iconic character of General Leia Organa.

Parts of this essay are angry. Because make no mistake, I’m angry.

 The intentional and unintentional breaking of the saga

Return of the Jedi ended on a high note; Vader redeemed, the Empire defeated, the bright promise of the future in Luke’s Jedi and Leia and Han’s love for each other.  In The Force Awakens, the creators chose to break the saga to provide the central conflict of the new trilogy. Lucasfilm and the Story Group took a risk in destroying all the ‘happily ever afters’ of the original trilogy when they began the new stories, and now, in a way they surely never intended, Carrie Fisher’s death has broken the saga in a manner that is irretrievable.

The Hollywood Reporter and other outlets recently published news that Rian Johnson and Colin Trevorrow (director of Episode IX), will be meeting this week (early January, 2017) with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy to discuss the way forward for the story in the wake of Fisher’s death on December 27. In the coming year and beyond, they will work to create a way to bring the new trilogy to the “deeply and profoundly satisfying” conclusion that Trevorrow promised us back in January of 2016, but Fisher’s death has, in many ways, forstalled this possibility. No matter what the creators choose to do, the new trilogy is now, at its core, a tragedy. Despite the fact that principal photography for VIII was concluded in mid-2016,– the pall of Fisher’s passing will shadow it too and may well affect the story Rian Johnson will give us at the end of this year.

“insiders say Leia was to have been a bigger part of Episode IX than VIII.”

- The Hollywood Reporter, January 5, 2017

It will never be alright again

Star Wars has always been a story about hope. Many of us see the new saga as an unwinding, or reversal of the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker. In this light, the opening words of the new saga, spoken by Lor San Tekka:

“This will begin to make things right,”

are resonant far beyond an implied jibe at George Lucas’ flawed prequels. Star Wars has always dealt in archetypes. In essays I wrote about the story during 2016*, I explored a number of different themes I see underpinning the new saga. From my first viewing of The Force Awakens, I believed that the large arc of the new trilogy will be one of homecoming, return, and redemption. As a fan who has spent the past year immersed in the world of the new saga, analyzing the plot, characters, and overarching themes of the new trilogy, reports that Fisher was anticipated to have a large role in Episode IX came as no surprise. All of central themes of the new saga can be gathered under the framework of one of the most ancient archetypal stories of all; The Prodigal Son.

Carrie Fisher’s death has rendered this tale difficult, if not impossible, to tell while remaining true to the characters created in both the original and sequel trilogies.  

Of course Fisher was anticipated to have a large role in the final installment of the tale; what is the return of the prodigal son but a process of coming to terms with the people and relationships one has left behind? The prodigal seeks forgiveness. The prodigal comes home. TFA killed Ben Solo’s father in the universe of the Galaxy Far Far Away. Tragically, Fisher’s death means that General Organa will also be gone before the story ends. From a symbolic standpoint, there is now no “home” to which a repentant prodigal might return.

Unless it was filmed for VIII (and from a narrative standpoint, I have no expectation that it would have been), here are some of the things which will never happen in the galaxy far, far away:

Ben Organa Solo will never see the living face of his mother again.

They will never speak to each other.

Ben will never be able to ask his mother for forgiveness. Nor will she be able to ask for his.

Leia will never see her son in the light again. Never see him whole. Never see him happy. She’ll never dance at a wedding, never hold a Skywalker grandchild.

Lucasfilm and the story group, Pablo Hidalgo, JJ Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan, Kathleen Kennedy - all of them: they destroyed the happy ending of the Original Trilogy, and have left us with this. I weep. I am filled with rage. They have a lot to answer for. Of course no one imagined it would turn out this way, but the storytellers have broken Star Wars in a way that strikes close to its heart, and on some level, no matter what they do, they cannot fix it.

For those of us who have loved the character of Leia our entire lives, this is almost unbearably sad. The storytellers set this particular tale in motion; they took what proved to be an ugly, risky gamble in choosing to tell this particular tale. They have broken the saga, and no matter how they choose to end it, even if they do it well; with sensitivity and courage, they have doomed the new trilogy to some level of tragedy.

Because the terrible reality is that the only honorable, logical, narratively appropriate way to deal with Carrie Fisher’s real death is that in the story, General Leia Organa must also die. This adds a bizarre, free-floating grief to the reality of Fisher’s passing. The destruction of the story – it is another kind of death. For those of us who knew Fisher only through her work as an artist, it is a loss that is bitter, bitter to bear.

“…she burns very bright, and has such a great, generous energy…for that suddenly to not be on set…to have her character; not just her character in the movie, but her character, missing from that very small unit, is a tragedy.”

Adam Driver, speaking of Carrie Fisher, January 6, 2017, with Stephen Colbert

How does the story go now?

At recent conversation around our dinner table, our family talked about how we imagined the storytellers completing the trilogy without Carrie. Most of the ways in which movie makers have dealt with this kind of loss in the past felt deeply inappropriate. It’s possible that our responses are still being strongly shaped by grief – as I write this, we’re only a couple of weeks removed from Fisher’s death in December. Still, I suspect that the views of our average family, consisting of both casual and hard-core fans is pretty representative. Here’s how people felt:

No re-casting.

The Star Wars saga films should not be treated like yet another superhero retread. Carrie Fisher’s Leia Organa cannot be recast to be played by another person. She’s not Batman or Spiderman, a costume to be filled by whatever flavor-of-the-month up and comer is presently in vogue.

No CG.

This is a more difficult question, and a reality it is probably impossible to avoid. With the example of the re-animation of Grand Moff Tarkin (and god, the young Leia cameo) fresh before us in Rogue One, bringing a person back to life onscreen is obviously a newly-emerging reality. Rogue One showed us exactly what that technology can presently achieve, and it is both woefully inadequate to carry the weight of a significant role like Fisher’s, and ethically questionable. Fisher herself was famously outspoken about her unhappiness at being objectified as a fictional character, and railed against the overexposure and exploitation she felt surrounding some aspects of her fame as Princess Leia.  She also understood how important the character was to many people:

“Movies were meant to stay on the screen, flat and large and colorful, gathering you up in their sweep of story, carrying you rollicking along to the end, then releasing you back into your unchanged life. But this movie misbehaved. It leaked out of the theater, poured off the screen, affected a lot of people so deeply that they required endless talismans and artifacts to stay connected to it.

Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist, page 194

In The Princess Diarist, Fisher describes making peace with the fact that Leia is her, and she is Leia. This passage hints at how she might have felt about the possibility of being turned into a computer-generated entity:

“It turns out she matters to me. Leia. I’ve spent the lion’s share of my life…being as much myself as Princess Leia. Answering questions about her, defending her…wondering who I’d be without her, finding out how proud I am of her, making sure I’m careful to not do anything that might reflect badly on her or that she might disapprove of, feeling honored to be her representative here on earth, her caretaker…[it] made me angry and resent it when other people would try to put words in her mouth without consulting me!“

Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist, page 244

Unless Rian Johnson had the foresight to capture footage of Carrie Fisher which could be used for Episode IX, the reality is that some degree of CG work involving Leia is likely to be part of the final installment of the trilogy. As fans, I think we actually have a role to play here by letting Lucasfilm know now, and emphatically, that the fanbase does not want to see Carrie’s Leia turned into a Tarkin-style zombie, that any CG work be kept to an absolute minimum, and that it be avoided altogether if the story can be told without it.

And can it? Could IX reach some form of acceptable ending (if not the “deeply and profoundly satisfying” conclusion described by Trevorrow) even with Carrie and Leia gone?

Yes, but.  

As I said earlier in this essay, Carrie Fisher’s death renders the new trilogy tragic in ways that were probably not anticipated, and now cannot be avoided. Even so, it is possible to wrest some form of peace and balance from this story at its end. Despite my angry grief with the story group and everyone involved in bringing us to this painful place in the story, I have some trust that the storytellers have the skill to do it right.

The reality is that the most straightforward way to deal with Carrie Fisher’s real death is that General Leia Organa will die in the story, and that this death will take place off-screen. To me, this feels like the most honorable and honest way to let the truth of Fisher’s passing become part of the Star Wars universe without resorting to awkward and potentially offensive use of CG or re-casting to complete the saga. But oh, just thinking about it hurts. A lot. Many of us who have spent a lot of time grieving in recent days will grieve deeply again. So be it.

As Carrie noted, Star Wars is a story that misbehaves; it won’t stay on the screen. Our understanding of the characters is unbreakably linked to the people who created them and to our own experiences. 

When news of Fisher’s heart attack first broke, I had the absurd thought that it was time for Ben Organa Solo to stop his descent into darkness and get himself home; his mother needed him. I can readily imagine a version of the saga in which Leia’s death is the impetus that turns Ben back to the light. I can just as easily envision a version of the tale in which his mother’s death is the blow which finally extinguishes the light in him, but I don’t believe that darker path is likely for the filmmakers to take. The redemption of Ben Solo was the most likely endgame of the new saga before Fisher’s death; now I posit that it is the ONLY acceptable way in which the new trilogy can end.

Is there a way to tell the story without CG or re-casting which permits some final reconciliation between mother and son?

Yes, but.

Star Wars is a universe in which the dead sometimes appear to the living in the form of ghosts, and it is possible to envision a version of the story in which Leia appears as a Force ghost. In fact, I would almost guarantee that episode IX will make use of this trope to give both the other characters in the story and the audience some form of closure. It’s a gift of fiction that we are generally deprived of in real life. We’ll have to trust the storytellers to handle this with sensitivity and skill.  

Star Wars is a universe in which people tend not to send letters, but rather use holos to communicate with each other, so some form of CG might be used to permit Leia to send some form of final message to her son. In Rogue One, this storytelling technique was used when Galen Erso gave his message to Bodhi Rook to carry to Saw Gererra. Galen did not know if his message would reach either Saw or his daughter Jyn; but it did indeed serve as his last message of love and reconciliation to his daughter. In a similar vein, a message from Bail Organa to Leia featured prominently in Claudia Gray’s novel, Bloodline. 

Leia, a wartime general, might well have had a “farewell” letter of some kind in keeping for Ben, in the way soldiers who know they might never see their families again have done for centuries.

Actually, we don’t have to invent a message written by the General Organa we met in The Force Awakens, because we know that in Bloodline, Leia composed a letter to Ben at the time their relationship to Darth Vader was revealed. The story so far has not revealed whether this message ever reached its intended recipient. It’s possible that Leia’s message to her son, written long before the events in TFA, might finally reach his hands in Episode IX. 

Bloodline didn’t tell us what was in that message, but we can easily guess: Leia told her son she loved him. She apologized for not telling him the truth of his family history. She asked for his forgiveness. She told him she believed in the light in him.

She told him she loved him.

In one of my essays written in 2016, I speculated that the “mystery box” Rey opened in the basement of Maz Kanata’s castle, in which she discovered the Skywalker lightsaber, was the same box in which Bail Organa’s message was found in Bloodline; a keepsake box from the lost world of Alderaan that belonged to Leia as a young girl.

If my speculation is correct, the box and its contents may have a meaningful role to play in episode IX. As far as we know, the box was left behind after the battle on Takodana, but there’s no reason to assume it was not recovered by Maz and returned to Leia. If it was Leia’s keepsake box from her childhood on Alderaan, it becomes a powerful talisman which the storytellers could use to connect Ben to his mother after her death. In TFA, we catch a very brief glimpse of the objects which were in the box with the lightsaber. I don’t know what the storytellers will do with this detail, but I hope very much that the box did belong to Leia, that its contents were her own childhood treasures, and that the box eventually finds it way into the hands of her son. Maybe Luke will give it to him. Maybe Rey will.

A box of keepsakes and a final message would be a heartrending end to a story which should, by rights, have concluded with Leia dancing at a wedding and living a peaceful life, surrounded by grandchildren, but sometimes even fairy tales don’t go that way. Like life.

With much love to our fandom and our storytellers.

The Force is with you, Carrie Fisher. You are one with the Force.

 * I’ll edit this and add some links to my old metas soon. XOXO