#what if we were all an amalgamation of different sides of the same coin but the coin has infinite sides

[rugwurm]

back to my roots

[shepard-ram]

The Echo in The Mirror

(Angst?, not a request: Hermit!Reader & Dream Smp/Hels!Reader & Hermitcraft. Both reader and Hels!reader are referred to as "you")

(Context: You are going about your day in Hermitcraft while you're doppelganger lives among the war of the Dream Smp. Until one day you both see the other side of the coin.)

----------

This wasn't your home, these people weren't the family you love so dearly. You knew it the moment you saw- everything yet they didn't look confused that some outsider intruded their server. If anything, they seemed anxious that you were stalking around and observing as if you should know this war torn land.

Because you should you realized, they recognized you.

Or at least some shadow of you. A ruthless twist on all things you, someone who was thriving among the fire and crimson. Someone who was feared by those known as weak and respected by those known as strong.

Someone different, yet still you. Maybe someone you could be yourself if you had the company they were fostered in. The same brutal environment you now had to leave. You needed to get back to your home. Surely the Hermits were worried about you.

A new thought soon sickened your stomach. If you're here, then where would your shadow be?

-----

What was this place? Quickly going to clutch your weapon, only to find you were equipped with nothing but your clothes walked around this- town.

That's the only word that you could use to describe this amalgamation of buildings. Some made in the image of objects and animals, others were just normal buildings. But this clearly wasn't your world.

No, these were made with the talent and purpose that war lords could never gather. They were made with the confidence of people who never had their trust shattered the way your people have.

Yet these people weren't stupid or naive. You could tell in the way they looked at you, they had suspicion from the start. They could tell you were pretending to know what "elytras" were and why you weren't wearing yours.

But they didn't shove it in your face, they still showed you the kindness you never give someone you didn't trust. It made you sick with unease, kindness to someone your suspicious of never means good things.

You were stronger and much less rusty in combat than them, but you could tell they all had a bond so much stronger than the brittle allyship that could be rummaged from the ashes of exploded connections. And lord knows your weren't stupid enough to fight that.

You didn't have a place here, you didn't belong here. They knew it as well as you did. You had to figure out how to get back. And maybe return the person who did belong while you're at it. Maybe not out of kindness, but you do not want to learn how much damage an entire server could do when they all have one enemy.

----------

(Sorry if you expected an actual plot, we talked about this idea over on the discord and I just wanted to properly word vomit it)

[nikethestatue]

Why is Elain’s book the next book?

Because SJM wants to write it. That’s it. That’s the reason. 

She wants to write the Archeron Sister Trilogy. With each sister telling her own story and living through her own story.

She is not writing a Gwyneth Berdara story, before she writes an Elain Archeron story. 

She is not skipping Feyre’s sister for the sake of a secondary character in Nesta’s story. It will not happen.

I am going to venture a guess that Nesta has never been SJM’s favourite character to write, to delve into. Hence, the results were....scattered. She got what she wanted to give Nesta--a sense of purpose, alternative family, Cassian, a healing arc. Nevertheless, I don’t see SJM needed to write another Nesta-centric story, because of course Gwyn is associated with Nesta, and at this point, I feel that they will both remain present, but on the periphery. 

Elain, is different though. It’s the same Elain that SJM claimed would be her best friend. Elain, it seems, is someone SJM actually likes and WANTS to write. 

The same Elain whose story has been in development for years. At least 3-4 years by now, and will be 5, by the time the book rolls around. SJM is not giving up 5 years of planning, drafting, writing, just to switch it, for no reason what so ever.

Elain, who is the only one who still retains her Cauldron powers. Elain, who is a Seer. Elain, who can locate the 4th Trove. Elain, who is connected with numerous Courts--Night Court, potentially Hewn City, Spring Court, Day Court, and even the Human Lands. Elain, who is a mate to a High Lord’s son (technically, TWO High Lords), and who is the object of love and affection to one of the central characters in all the books. That character, just like Elain, is loved by the writer herself. And despite what anyone says, the bottom line is, those two characters are getting each other. Because SJM wants them to be with one another. 

Both of those characters have been intertwined throughout the narrative in various ways, and furthermore, both are still very unknown, to this day. It’s obviously done on purpose. The revelations would occur side by side. As we learn more about Azriel, or Elain, we’ll understand how they are amalgamated within the tale, and how their powers and their backstories, as well as their journeys, connect further. Because they do. Again, arguments aside, both Azriel and Elain are two sides of the same coin--light and dark, death and life, both veiled in shadows right now. 

Btw, as a side note, SJM never brings up male-to-female oral sex without that couple being endgame. Sorry, that’s just how it is. Feysand, Nessian, Elriel--they all follow the same sexual pattern. If he doesn’t want to eat you out, he is just not into you. SJM always places great emphasis on female pleasure and males being wild and hungry for that specific act. If a male is not wild and hungry for that specific act, then it’s a problem. 

Now, people LOVE to bring up Chaol. Well, look, Chaol got his own book!

Sure. But Chaol was there from the very first TOG book, even before Rowan or anyone else. Hence, Chaol, in some ways is akin to Lucien, or even Tamlin. Hence, following this pattern, Lucien will get a book first, before we move on to secondary characters. What’s more, Chaol had a specific task assigned to him, as well as his injury to cure. Chaol already had a built-in story.

Elain, of course, has a built-in story, as well as Azriel. We already know that Koschei has an unhealthy amount of interest in our beloved shadowsinger. Elain is brimming with undiscovered, unrealized powers. We already know that Rhys is primed and ready to use Elain and her power for whatever he needs. We know that she is willing and ready to delve into them, and use them for however he needs her to.

Rhysand is not sending Gwyneth on a mission. Not when she can’t even leave the Library. Not when she doesn’t report to him in any manner. Azriel is not taking Gwyneth on a mission either. These books are still Rhysand’s books--the last book will still be Night Court-centric, dealing with his last brother and his last sister-in-law, and the last (for the moment) bad guy, Koschei, and the last (for the moment) war potential.

Now, what to do if you love Gwyn Berdara?

I suspect that she will play a role in future books. Because, SJM knows that this world is a money-maker for her, and I think that she enjoys writing it. She also sees Gwyn’s popularity. I would vouch that she is setting up a new generation of characters for future books.

The Valkyrie will have to be realized and they have great potential. But, let’s face it, they are not ready. By the time the next book rolls around, Nesta is not charging forth, leading an army. Neither is Gwyn. But, they will. 

Also, since potentially, Gwyn MAY BE related to either Tamlin and/or Lucien, she will probably solidify her role in Lucien’s book. 

Nyx is too young to be of consequence right now, so SJM can’t build any stories around him. Therefore, for future books, she needs a new new crop of characters, which are new, but not too new. Maybe more priestesses? Balthazar? Other characters that will certainly be introduced. They will have further stories to tell, but not before Elain is the main character. Just like Chaol, or Lucien, within the next two book, Gwyn will a built-in story as well. 

This is not a pro- or against- anyone post. It’s about narrative logic. 

This very long post is in response to the same question that I get frequently--why is Elain’s book next? Why isn’t Gwyn’s book next? And other versions of the same inquiry. So this is the answer, as I interpret everything we know so far.

[anicocat]

I've always thought katos intentions with amber were good , even if the execution was poor. But it all falls down bc the script is weak. I just have an impulse to say everything is utter garbage bc the writers screwed up so badly that it's a struggle to isolate single clips for doing a good job when the whole season around it is fallen to pieces

Tbh I think the only relationship that makes some sense in this season is the one between Amber and Kato. On the surface they could be like opposites, Kato is the “perfect”, confident girl, while Amber is the insecure, “imperfect” girl, but in reality they’re the two sides of a coin. 

They want to have the perfect appearance, the perfect family, the perfect everything... They’re so insecure that they thrive under approval and also share the same negative traits (Like racism). I never thought about this tbh 🤔I wonder if Kato is supposed to be an amalgam or extension of Amber. Maybe that’s the reason they thought making Kato the main could be accepted, since we’d already learned to “tolerate” Amber/Vilde, after all, we felt bad for her and her insecurities in S1 & S2 despite her racism towards Yasmina/Sana and her “betrayal” to Jana/Eva. Also, wasn’t Vilde supposed to have her own season? She was even the side-main in Skam España and nobody was against it. 

For those reasons, maybe wtFOCK writers probably thought it would be okay but... They handled the things in a very foolish, insensitive way. 

1. They baited us into believing we would have Moyo season.  2. They put a white character season above two (possible three if they had written a new character) POC seasons.  3. The writing is really bad, making difficult getting to know Kato or feel something for her.  4.  Kato is some new, random character nobody cares about. Also she’s little relatable, since she’s an influencer.  5. They made Kato a really, really mean and insensitive person to the point she seems like some villainess sometimes.  6. After BLM the social/politic climate is different to what it was in April 2020. We’re all more aware and sensible to these topics now. 7. They’re directly tackling racism through the POV of a white person and they’re forcing the POC to teach and forgive her. 8. They’re trying to excuse her racism. One thing is give her some shame or sad story to feel for her, another is trying to connect that to her racism.  9. They’re mocking the fans by hyping up her relationship with Moyo, aware that the fans are angry and upset about this. 

Anyway, I’m sorry I wrote this long testament to your ask Anon!!! But this reflection is giving some sense to wtFOCK actions behind this season... Maybe?  🤔

[everlarkficexchange]

Incubus

Written by: @alliswell21

Prompt 49: He has spent centuries coming at night and sleeping with as many humans as possible, many dying from childbirth with no child to bear, or because his lust overpowered them. He needs to find a women that can live through his lust and birth an healthy offspring and after centuries, he thinks he found the one, the sixteen year old Katniss Everdeen. Dark incubus!peeta Angst Old times. [submitted by @animekpopxx​]

RATED: EXPLICIT for disturbing themes, imagery and adult situations.

WARNINGS: Dark!Peeta; Creepy!Peeta; Stalker!Peeta. Demon!Peeta; Dark!Toastbabies; minor character’s death, Canon compliant violence, Non-con/Rape. Stockholm Syndrome-ish.

TAGS: Supernatural AU; Under 16K words; Smut (Underage!Everlark, non-everlark)

Acknowledgements: Thanks to @animekpopxx for the great prompts, you never cease to inspire with your ideas for stories… sorry if I didn’t completely adhere to all the specifications listed on the prompt.

Many thanks to my amazing beta @wingletblackbird, who’s insights made this story 10 million times better.

@xerxia31 and @javistg for their dedication to Everlark Fanfiction, you keep the creative juices pumping with this events, and I thank you both for that… and thank you for reading my One Shot. Hopefully is to your liking! 

  KPKPKPKPKPKPKPKP

I’m thrusting vigorously into the wet, hot and loose pussy of a married woman who summoned me by name to get back at her cheating husband— who apparently has sired no less than 4 bastards, each from a different woman— by fucking a demon.

  She’s also awake, which is fairly unusual for my encounters, but I couldn’t refuse an invitation such as this when the woman is so willing and eager, and the call comes laced with the delicious odor of arousal.

  The problem is, she talks too much!

  I’ve done my best to tune out her asinine remarks on how big and intimidating my cock is compared to human penises, how much watching my member excites her, and makes her greedy pussy flutter in anticipation; I’ve heard stupid comments like those for millennia from women with the same wicked gleam in their eyes. They think that calling me to fuck them is some kind of thrilling game, as if the stories of how most of my partners don’t survive their first encounter with me, how their bodies can’t take the stress I put on them when I’m really overcome with lust, are mere jokes passed down from generations. But this woman really is testing my patience.

  Everything was alright until she asked a question that enraged me above anything she’s said so far.

  “My lord, is it true you impregnate every one of your victims?” There is that psychotic glint in her beady eyes again.

  I grunt and push away onto my haunches.

  The woman tries to sit up quickly, chasing my retreating form desperately with a pleading apology taking shape in her mouth. She doesn’t get to voice whatever idiotic excuse she was about to spew.

  With a flick of my hand, five silk ropes spring up from the floor and wrap around both her wrists and both ankles; the last one gags her mouth. She whimpers and the sadistic gleam in her eyes finally gets replaced with fear when the ropes pull back her legs bringing her knees level with her ears and her thighs spread wide open to me.

  Without stopping to look at her, I ram into her ass with so much force the legs of the bed groan and break under the punishing pace I’m keeping.

  The woman cries out in terror or pain, maybe both, I don’t care. I don’t stop driving into her until my release is imminent. When it’s time, I pull my cock out of the woman’s rectum swiftly, and spill all my cum on her face, chest, and part of her stomach. I take great care not to let even a drop of my precious seed fall into her reproductive organs.

  I sigh in relief once I’m done.

  The woman strains against her restraints, and moans pitifully. I look down at her tearful face with spite.

  Pathetic.

  Finally, I answer her question, “No. I don’t impregnate every one of my partners. Some aren’t worthy of carrying my offspring.” I stand from the broken bed and give her a disdainful glance, “You should count yourself lucky you don’t rate as a good partner, otherwise I would’ve taken your life, as well as your pleasure.”

  I dissolve into dark mist leaving her in that shameful position, tied up like a hog and covered in mess, to be found by her husband.

  ——

  It is not my custom to glide aimlessly through a human town after I’ve fed my lust, yet tonight’s encounter left a bitter taste in my mouth I just can’t shake off.

  I’ve been cursed into existence with the sole purpose of mating with as many women as there are sand grains by the ocean until one of them births me an heir to… to replace me, I guess, until he too has successfully produced a replacement of his own. Regretfully, I’m still here, after thousands of years, fucking my way through humanity. Not one woman has been strong enough to carry my spawn to term, so the careless curiosity of a self indulgent idiot got to me a little too hard.

  There have been a handful of promising cases, but at the end they just amount to female corpses too weak to bear my child. Every single woman I’ve copulated with either dies in the throes of passion, unable to whistand my consuming lust, or has complications with the pregnancy, either because the creature simply sucks the life force out of the host, or because labor pains put too much stress on their mortal bodies and they just give out with internal organ failures.

  On this depressing thought, I come to the center of town where I would never be if there was any sun in the sky right now. I’m about to turn myself into a small smoke tornado that will project me back to my den for a while, before my night starts anew on the other side of the globe, but a small, hopeless sob attracts my full attention.

  I’m a creature of darkness; therefore I’m drawn to and strengthened  by human pain and calamity. The whimpering continues guiding me to an alleyway, behind a lane of brick buildings, housing an amalgamation of shops.

  I notice three things upon arrival. First, the soft sobbing is coming from a little girl, much too young to be outside alone at this time. Second, it is dark, very, very dark; a moonless night, that should frighten a hardened man, a night in which specters like me come out to play eagerly with unsuspecting humans too dumb to stay safely in their beds. And lastly, this is the loneliest, creepiest alley I’ve ever been to. It’s cold, muddy, echo-y and reeks of death.

  My kind of place, I realize.

  Not at all where a tiny child such as this one should be.

  At first glance I determine the child is frail and almost to the doors of death. A female of around 10 or 11 years old, judging by her skeletal frame. It looks like she hasn’t known the taste of food in quite a few days, and she’s giving up her life in this cursed place.

  It is not in my nature to care whether she expires sitting on the hard ground, against the scraggly apple tree she leans on, or not, but for some reason, I speak to her. Soft and soothing.

  “What are you doing here, girl? It’s dark, late, and scary.”

  Deadened, sunken eyes stare at me suspiciously, “I could ask you the same. But I’m not nosy!” She replies turning her pert nose up at me.

  I chuckle and lower myself to the ground. The little brat is a piece of work! “I’m nosy and I don’t care if that’s rude.”

  The girl cocks her head sideways, slightly curious, not the least bit afraid.

  “I ran out of coin.” She finally says, “I can’t to go back home to my little sister, Prim, without food. She’s so tiny, and her lips keep crackin’ and bleedin’ every time she cries, asking if there’s anything to eat.”

  Normally, humans never see my true form if they happen to get a glimpse of me. They would die of terror on the spot, so their minds only see what they can handle. For women, they see every feature they find attractive in a male, making me irresistible for them, in the very, very seldom instance that they see me while awake. Men, on the other hand, tend to see someone non-threatening, a friend who would never hurt them. I’m not sure what this child sees me as, but clearly she sees someone worth opening her heavy little heart to, because the floodgates of her troubled life seem to have opened up, and she sobs telling me the rest of her story.

  “I can’t remember the last time I ate something that I had to chew with my teeth. My tummy started to ache a few days ago, but I didn’t want Prim to ache too, so I’ve been giving her all the little food we had left. Yesterday, all I found in the cupboards were a few dry mint leaves, I boiled them in water and told her it was soup. I came to the market to sell Prim’s baby clothes, but nobody wanted my ragged wares. I got so dizzy after walking all day trying to sell them, and my arms were so tired, I accidentally dropped the clothes on the mud somewhere yonder; I’m not sure where. I couldn’t pick them up, even if I’d wanted to. I knew that if I leaned down, I’d just kilter over and wouldn’t be able to get up again.”

  She takes a ragged breath and paws the soaked tendrils of black hair sticking to her forehead away.

  “I didn’t wanna die like that in the middle of the street where anyone could see. They would’ve known mother hasn’t been taking care of us. They would take Prim to the Community Home. Children in the Community Home get crushed by sadness and red marks on their faces from angry hands… I couldn’t do that to poor, delicate Prim. But this place here…” her eyes take a glassy quality, and her lips curl into a slight smile as if daydreaming of better days. “It used to be the bakery, before the owners moved away and abandoned it. The smell of freshly baked bread still lingers here, and if I inhale hard enough, I swear I can feel the smells fill my tummy.”

  She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, as if truly she could get her empty stomach filled with the long gone fragrance of yeast and flour that used to permeate this alley before.

  “My belly doesn’t hurt no more,” she sighs, opening her eyes and fixing them on me, “in case you were wondering.”

  My head cocks to the side, staring at her curiously.

  “I stopped feeling the hunger aches without noticing. Mamma’s a healer, I once heard her tell a woman, whose children had stopped crying out for food, that those are actually dangerous times, when the body needs food, when it’s so far gone, it starts eating itself out. But I’m not scared about that… dying here, where bread used to be baked… won’t be so bad, would it?”

  Something tugs at me in the back of my mind. Without thinking about it, and barely feeling anything at all, I conjure up two steaming loaves of hearty bread out of thin air. At first, my instinct compels me to take a bite out of the bread, taunt her, mock her, chop off pieces and lug them over the falling link fence of an old pen, where the odor of some kind of animal still persists, and watch her climb over the muck to devour the soiled bread. But then, my hands move of their own volition, offering the loaves to the girl.

  Her eyes follow my every move, stuck on the delectable food she’s been deprived off for so long, just staring at my gift.

  Suddenly, I’m aware of how cold and wet everything around me is.

  “It’s pouring.” I muse flatly.

  The girl’s eyes tell me she clearly thinks I’m stupid, but my clothes cling to my body uncomfortably, and now I’m aware my body feels oddly smaller than usual. I look down at my arms, realizing I have the arms of a child myself.

  I guess the girl is projecting her age and features on me, like humans do.

  “Take the bread before it’s too soggy to eat.” I grunt in aggravation.

  “I—Are you sure? I couldn’t… I don’t have anything to pay or trade—“

  I shove the two loaves into her lap, and kick off from the ground where I had come to sit, next to her. “Go home.” I command. “Get out of this darkness and this cold rain.”

  The girl looks at the food on her arms with disbelief and awe, then she looks up at me, as if I had given her the moon, the clouds, and her very own star. She murmurs. “Thank you…”

  In a second, she’s running away as fast as her scrawny little legs can take her, while I stand here stunned and confused. There was a strange reaction I got when the little girl’s gray eyes met mine and I could see the most appetizing fire within. I knew the little girl would not only survive, but thrive.

  I won’t ever see the little human again, so what do I care what’s in her future? I melt back into the shadows, already putting the incident behind me.

  ——————

I’m particularly fond of nubile virgins, which probably accounts for how poorly their bodies perform when I impregnate them, but I digress… teenage girls have the softest skin. Their budding breasts, still unaware of the effects of gravity, retain an innocent perkiness I could kill for. But, while all this is true on my normal hunts, one prepubescent human has become a most incomprehensible obsession of mine ever since the night I gave her the bread.

  My girl with the braid and gray eyes is now 14. She had to mature in extreme circumstances, before her time, making her exquisite in resilience and a strength her peers lack. I find myself attracted to her dormant… sturdiness.

  But at 14– in human years— her reproductive system is not mature enough even for a monster like me. She has not the means, nor the skills, to sustain the demands of mating with me, let alone carrying my spawn, so I admire her from afar and more often than I should.

  Tonight for example, I watch her sleep for a short moment, then I let myself slip through the same crack in the window I slithered inside, and go on my merry way to find a more fitting host.

  The girl will sleep untouched tonight, meanwhile I still need to bury myself into a warm, available body.

  —————

  “My name is Katniss Everdeen. What’s yours?” She asks the night a come across her, when she’s stuck on the other side of an electrified fence, in a dark, dark forest.

  “Peeta.” I say emotionless. It’s my given name, although her kind has given me a different, more sinister name I’m not terribly fond of. “Why are you out here?” I ask.

  “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but my papa taught me how to hunt. That’s what I’ve been doing every day for the last two years to feed my family. I come everyday before school, and most days I return even after.”

  “Why come twice in a day?” My voice is flat, but she doesn’t seem to mind it.

  “Well…” She scowls looking at the ground, as her answer comes together in her mind. “My family has to eat, but we also need other things, like paraffin, thread and needles, matches… things for school, soap for the washing. People in town will pay coin for fresh meat, or trade with other goods. It’s a good system.” She states proudly. But then, she looks nervously around, and stutters as if remembering herself. “But you can’t tell anyone about any of that. I could get punished if word got out that I hunt illegally.” Her nose wrinkles in disgust. “Promise you won’t say anything, Peeta.”

  I want to roll my eyes at her, but she’s staring at me with those eyes full of stars and warmth. I have to admit, it felt amazing to hear her use my name. Very few beings even know it, humans can’t even imagine I have an actual name, which suits me, since they fear the one they gave me. It almost rivals the strange pleased sensation I got when her gray eyes widened in pleasant recognition when she saw me approach her tonight. Still, I know not why she’s out here on her lonesome, and I much rather have her go home, to bed, where I have control.

  “I don’t have anyone to tell. And even if I did, I wouldn’t tattle. But why are you here so late?”

  She frowns. “The part of me getting stuck out here is actually unintentional, and happens very seldom.”

  I arch an eyebrow— I had no idea I could use the muscles in my forehead in such manner— and wait for her to elaborate.

  “The fence is a pre-war inconvenience, supposed to act as a deterrent for wild beasts, but is almost never on. Animals know to stay away from town, and people like me get to climb under it to gather apples and berries that grow in the wild. Only a few of us hunt, because it’s still illegal to poach. Today I slipped under the wires at dusk to collect some herbs for mother— she’s got to make half of her poultices and unguents with herbs only found in the woods, mind you— anywho, when I came back, the fence was live.” She shivers, crossing her arms over her chest. “I just have to wait it out. It’ll eventually shut off and I’ll be able to cross back into the district. Prim’s already come by to check on me and knows I’m safe. I’ll climb a tree or something while I wait.”

  I grunt my understanding and shake my head in aggravation. I wave my hand carelessly, and the electric buzz dies instantly. “I think you can come back in again now.” I tell her needlessly. “Hurry up. You never know how long this will last.”

  The girl, Katniss, narrows her eyes suspiciously at me momentarily, but finally shrugs, “As you say.” Then sticks her arm through the links of the fence, holding up her game bag to me. “Hold this for me.” She crawls under the fence and then stands in front of me.

  We are the same height I realize. But then, I grow an extra inch or two above her. The corner of her lips curls up, and I’m certain she’s figured something out about me, I just don’t know if it’ll help or hinder my advances.

  “I’ll see you around, Peeta. Thank you for keeping me company while I was out there. It’s the first time I got caught out at night. It was nice seeing a friendly face.”

  “Mmm. Be more careful next time.” I grunt, and walk away from her.

  —————-

I come back to Katniss’ bedroom for reasons I can’t readily comprehend.

  She’s not very big or particularly pretty; she’s not even ready to copulate! But there’s a certain vulnerability in her subconscious self that calls me to her.

  During the day, she sports the scowl of a thirty year old single mother of two working with only the skills of poaching, handed down to her from her dead father, in order to sustain her family while putting herself and her younger child through school. Of course, she is not really a mother, but everything else is true; so the rest might as well be true also, since she’s had to care and provide for her mother and younger sister for the last two years, taking the mantle of breadwinner all on her slim, little shoulders. Her determination is her own type of brawn in my book.

  I hover above her sleeping form, just studying her face; so sweet and tender, free of the premature worry lines and that perpetual scowl that plagues her features in wakefulness, but then again, it is that intimidating scowl of hers that grants her the respect of any adult she does business with.

  In sleep, Katniss looks more her age. Innocent and soft, like the velvety petals of a rose bud.

  I breathe in the clean smell of her recently bathed body, and wonder if I could just slip my palm up her thigh, just to feel her soft skin under my fingers? But her mother stirs and sighs in the other bed, shutting the thought to Hell.

  My eyes cut to the woman right away, but she’s asleep, just rearranging her position in the sagging mattress next to the one I’m floating over.

  Mrs. Everdeen suffers melancholy. Her emotional illness almost killed her and her daughters; I’m not sure how I feel about her. She’s better now, but the months of starvation and near death have permanently damaged Katniss, emotionally and psychologically, more than she lets on.

  The Everdeens never had wealth or means to afford but the barest of necessities, so when Mr. Everdeen passed, he left nothing behind but a small house with a tiny living area, kitchen, bathroom, and a single bedroom for his surviving family to live in. Another reason I don’t act on my urges to fuck sweet Katniss; the poor thing shares a room with her mother, and more often than not, shares a bed with her little sister.

  Tonight is a rare occasion, in which the sister hopped in bed with the mother, leaving the object of my fascination to battle her recurrent nightmares alone. This only exacerbates the troublesome dreams for Katniss, which aggravates me, since her sleep patterns turn irregular and shallow, making it hard for me to infiltrate her subconscious. She’s more prone to wake up when her mind is occupied relieving the bad days. But I don’t complain much, seeing that while she’s is bed alone, I can leisurely hover directly above her sleeping form, instead of by the side of the mattress like I’m usually confined to.

  I go back to gaze at my sleeping beauty, and decide that this won’t do.

  I have to figure out a way to give Katniss her own room.

  I want privacy when the time comes I can do all things I yearn to do. But there’s still time! Katniss has a couple of years ahead of her to grow and mature. I’ll just bide my time until that glorious future.

  Before leaving her side for the night, I kiss her forehead. I plant a thought there as my lips touch her skin: ‘Don’t pull the covers up too high. Loosen the sheets around your shoulders. Relax your breathing… rest.’

  Then I’m gone.

  —————————-

  I’m inside sweet, beautiful Lavinia, pounding away in glorious ecstasy.

  She’s an absolute delight with a soft, pliable body, with swells and dips in all the right places and shapely legs that go on forever.

  She moans sensually every time I enter her. She clenches her pussy muscles around my cock deliciously, and I lick the perspiration off her pale, luscious flesh to give my tongue something to do.

  For the first time in months, my mind doesn’t drift to fantasies of an older version of Katniss while moving into the designated warm body of the day. I’m thoroughly satisfied, and at the end of the tryst, just when I’m about to pull out of Lavinia’s tight crevice, she seizes, shakes, arches off the bed with her mouth forming an agonizing O, dipping her head back so her auburn hair brushes the mattress beneath and her torso finally collapses on the bed heavily.

  My chest feels the familiar little stir of excitement.

  Every woman I’ve successfully implanted with an embryo has had a similar physical reaction. Some are more violent than others, but it’s always the same and I’m cautiously content this time was so mild on the host… mother… whatever she is to my heir.

  I stay maybe another hour, just staring at Lavinia’s stomach, wishing I could see beyond the skin and muscle, deep into the womb, take a peek at the creature starting to take shape in her tissue. But alas, that’s not one of my many abilities and powers.

  At the first crow of the rooster in the predawn, while it’s still inky dark out there, do I finally see it happening.

  It starts as a small, dark red stain growing on the white linen sheets covering the still sleeping redhead. She doesn’t move an inch, but I know from experience the pregnancy failed. Despite the fact that the girl is still breathing, I can’t help thinking she’s already dead.

  Lavinia’s hemorrhaging fast; the mess covering her clothes and bedding is now reaching her shoulders; her eyes flutter behind her closed lids, and I regret ever putting my hands on her, because now she’s another girl I’ve sent for death.

  I don’t linger to see her last breath.

  None of my partners survive a pregnancy. But the night just began in the other side of world, and my loins call for another lover to replace the child I just lost.

—————————

  Katniss is 15.

  Her dark hair reaches her waist even braided. She hides her budding breasts and the slight curve of her ass, under her father’s old shirts and leather jacket, which are at least 3 sizes too big for her. She’s also taken to wearing  trousers instead of skirts and dresses, but even I’ve grown used to her clothing dwarfing her slight frame.

  The fact her developing womanly figure stays camouflaged serves two purposes; one, is purely practical, people seem to forget she’s a child— female at that— and take her seriously for trades and bartering; the second one benefits both of us, by keeping unwanted male attention from bothering her.

  But there’s no escaping nature, and there’s no stopping puberty. Katniss’ body is maturing nicely, and with that comes torturous growing pains.

  Today was hard for her, I can tell.

  She’s squirming in her sleep, doubled over at her tiny waist with her nimble arms wrapped around her middle. The downy hair at her temple is damped with perspiration, and her sweet lips are pale and dry.

  I kiss the dewy skin of her forehead, murmuring an incantation to numb away her aches. After a few minutes of me trying to soothe her with small caresses, the awful grimace falls off her face, and a relaxed sigh leaves her chapped lips. Her arms loosen, allowing her hands to curl softly beneath her chin.

  Her menses started a few months ago, and they have been rough on her. The cycle wipes out most of her strength, leaving her in cold sweats, dizzy, and unstable on her feet. The reaction really worries me. I don’t want there to be a problem I have not foreseen.

  I lean my cheek against her soft abdomen and whisper an enchantment. Given my nature, I’m not capable of healing ailments, or granting blessings, nor am I allowed to praying to the ones who could help, but I’m allowed to cast spells and conjure old magic, and lastly, I’m allowed to bear certain illnesses in a human’s stead, so I try to take her pain upon myself. I need my girl to be strong and healthy if she’s to carry my offspring in the future.

  I nuzzle her navel for a moment before taking a step back.

  A sharp pain wreaks through me, becoming acute near my groin. I claw at the air as the searing pain pierces through me, and then is gone as fast as it came.

  That’s that.

  I’ve never felt pain before, and I truly hope I never have to suffer it again, but Katniss is resting now, free of deliberating aches, sleeping soundly and peaceful. The unsavory sensations were worth it, just to watch my girl fall into blessed oblivion.

  That should do it.

  I leave her to rest, wiping off tonight’s nightmares from her subconscious as well.

  —————-

  I used to worry that with Katniss’ struggle with starvation and malnutrition, her body would become useless as a vessel. Then the day her first bloods stained her undergarments arrived to my everlasting relief, and that to the added improvement of her hunting skills that fetched her better game, and her gathering double portions of wild vegetables and herbs in the woods, where doing wonders to her health.

  I was delighted to see her filling in her scrawny bones with meat and muscle, and her cheeks get rosier. It’s the best indication that at last, her womb is ready for procreation!

  There’s still the pesky issue of her shared lodgings, so I decided to bide my time until her healer mother gets called to tend an overnight patient, and eager to learn, little Primrose would tag along her mother to help, leaving the house all to myself. Unfortunately, something else happened that I didn’t see coming.

  To my everlasting fury, I discovered her trips to the woods aren’t as solitary as I had believed. It so happens that sweet, capable Katniss, does have a hunting partner, and for some reason I ignored this fact completely until today.

  The fence is electrified again, but this time Katniss has made camp in the branches of a tall, sturdy tree. In a branch below hers, a lanky, older boy made his bed under the canopy, tying a rope around his waist to anchor him to the tree limb, same as her.

  “Hey Catnip, you get some shut eye for now. I have first watch. I’ll wake up when I get tired.”

  “Unless you see something worth shooting!” She tells the boy scowling. “Wake me up right away, Gale. Not like last time you saw a deer and tried to down it by yourself.”

  The boy lifts his hands in surrender. “Alright, Catnip. Whatever you say.” He sounds almost playful. Almost, but then he finishes with a firmer command, “Now go to sleep. I’ll call if I see anything interesting.”

  I feel anger, jealousy, and righteous indignation boiling all over me. I feel my true form emerging, ready to show myself in all my glorious horror, but then I remember Katniss is a mere two feet up above the boy’s branch, and instead of attacking the mortal, I simply explode back to my dwelling, deep in the dark recesses of the Earth.

  Meanwhile, in the human world:

  “Did you smell sulfur?” Asks Gale sitting up straighter on his branch.

  “No. But smelling sulfur out of the blue isn’t a very good omen, Gale. I think we should call it a night, and head back home as soon as the fence is dead.”

  “Yeah. You may be right. We don’t wanna be near any toxic gas leaks, and we know next to nothing about the minerals in the mines yonder.” He points into the dark, in the direction of the old abandoned coal mines that used to be the only source of income to people like Katniss’ family.

  The teenagers descend the tree quickly, with loaded bows aloft, heading in the direction of town, praying the fence is no longer active.

  Oblivious to the angry roar resonating in the empty spaces of earth. Full of vengeance and jealousy.

  —————

Gale Hawthorne gets visited by my female counterpart, the one humans have named Succubus, courtesy of yours truly.

  She does not take his life unfortunately.

  She makes him sick enough he’s bedridden for a week, but he recovers.

  When I confront my demoness comrade, she simply says “The boy is 17, and he’s the sole provider for his family of 5. He’s mother is living enough hell as it is, so I just gave tall, dark and handsome a good ride and a touch at nirvana.”

  I don’t think that was the truth behind her reprieve at all; I’ve seen her take the lives of teens younger than that, who indulge in self molestation a little too much. I believe she let him keep his life as petty revenge on me, for disrupting her other encounters that night.

  The only consolation I have for now is that Gale Hawthorne will have an unexplainable aversion to sex for a few months, which means he won’t pursue my girl in the interim.

  But Katniss is starting to look more like a woman and less like a tomboy. It’s only a matter of time before she gets noticed by other boys. I don’t exactly need my partners to be virgins, but the thought of someone else taking Katniss’ purity drives me into a murderous state I really can’t afford.

  So, tonight, when I slip into the crack of the window to visit her, I dip my hand under her covers, into her threadbare camisole, to caress her supple, soft breasts. I pinch her nipples to erection and watch her react to the sensations.

  I plant suggestive thoughts in her subconscious. She blushes in her sleep and I murmur into her ear reassurances about her beauty and worth, and incredibly, I’m truthful about those.

  I close my eyes to savor the moment. It’s the first time I put my hands on her erogenous zones, and she does not disappoint. Katniss’ breast fits perfectly in my palm.

  “Sleep well my dear.” I whisper in her ear, “Dream of Incubus babies suckling at your tits. That will become your future at some point.”

  ———————-

  I’ve been stalking Katniss for the better part of five years, and still I fail to make her mine.

  She will be 16 in a few days time, and I’ve had plenty of opportunities to lay claim to her body, yet I keep finding excuses to prevent me from going any further than a few caresses on safe places. On nights she spends in the woods alone, I fabricate reasons why I shouldn’t touch her: ‘She’s fully clothed’, ‘A coyote is three miles away and could attack her in her heavy sleep’, ‘She looks uncomfortable on this tree branch; I want her first time to be somewhere she’s comfortable.’

  That last one became obsolete the moment Katniss hiked to a cement shack far into the woods, a place she excitedly canvassed for days, then fitted with a makeshift bed of dry grasses and hay to sleep in. Apparently the place had actually been discovered by her father in his youth, and he shared the place with his elder daughter, a secret location all to their own. Being the sentimental human she is, Katniss only recently found the courage to return without her father, and face the fact that her once happy childhood is gone.

  I blame my lack of progress on a disturbing thought: fucking Katniss in her sleep and leaving her to incubate my offspring after without any explanation, amounts to rape, and although it isn’t in my nature to operate under the moralistic customs of humans, I find the notion troublesome and appalling. I would never cause Katniss such pain and humiliation.

  So I’ve been stalling. Buying time, trying to find a way to make this union less… morbid. More consensual.

  I tell myself this is all for Katniss’ benefit, but the truth is, I think it would be rather nice to be able to look at her beautiful gray eyes while spilling my semen into her womb.

  To my chagrin, I’ve realized that while trying to consort with this girl, her humanity has bled into my very essence. I’m just afraid I cannot conform to mortal morals too long. My sole reason to exist is to procreate and satisfy my ever growing lust. My nature will win at the end, and I fear I will lose her when it happens.

  ———————

  It’s raining a monsoon outside, yet Katniss is sitting on the porch crying quietly into her hands. It’s past her bedtime too, so I’m sure this is something she’s trying to hide from her family.

  I sit next to her on the creaky step before even realizing my physical body has materialized out of thin air of its own volition.

  “Gale, my best friend and hunting partner, kissed me today.” She says without even looking up at me. “I pushed him away and told him I didn’t want to be with him that way. That I never wanna get married and have children. He walked off angry, and now I don’t know what to do.”

  “I’m… sorry?” And I am, I just don’t quite know what it is I’m sorry about, yet.

  “I just don’t understand why he had to go and ruin a good thing!” Her gray, tear-filled eyes find me, and I’m surprised at the fire, anger, and betrayal in her gaze. I’m mesmerized. “Why did he have to go and complicate things that way? Isn’t he happy we are friends? Isn’t it enough we go out into the woods and feed our families together like partners? Why mess it all up?”

  “Because you’re beautiful. Because you’re worth the try. Because he’d be an idiot if he let it pass and never confessed his feelings for you. You are extraordinary, Katniss. You have no idea the effect you can have…”

  “What does that even mean, Peeta?” She demands angrily.

  “It means, men look at you and see someone worthy. Someone valuable. Someone they can’t help but admire and want to pledge their loyalties and affections to.”

  She snorts, pawing the tears off her cheeks. “You’re just saying that because you are my guardian spirit.” She says dismissively.

  “Your what?” I ask in disbelief, astonishment and an edge of offense.

  Katniss rolls her eyes, letting me know she thinks I’m being unnecessarily obtuse. “Come on, Peeta. You only show up on moonless nights when I’m in trouble, to help me with whatever supernatural powers you possess. I’ve known who you are since my friend Madge let me read her father’s old books from before the first rebellion of Panem. People back then believed in spirits and those kind of things. I just found one that fitted your description, and it came up as ‘Guardian Angel’ which mostly protect humans… you don’t have to deny or confirm it, but I’m pretty confident I got you identified!”

  She smiles through her tears. There’s a glimmer of satisfaction and playfulness deep in her eyes.

  I’ve never been confused with a Being of Light before, and to be honest I’m doing everything in my power to hide the disgust I feel at that. At this point, I find it counterproductive to correct her preposterous assumptions, so I bite my tongue for the time being.

  “Katniss,” I sigh, “Many boys are going to like you. You are an incredible young woman. That said, you don’t have to choose any of them, especially if you’re not comfortable. If Gale Hawthorne knows what’s good for him, he’ll come back and apologize for imposing himself on you. Otherwise, you did nothing wrong and you don’t owe him anything. Be sure you are happy and safe. Even… even when I’m around. You have such an incredible power to you. Don’t be sad about any of this. Chin up and be a great example for little Prim.”

  “Thank you, Peeta. You always know what to say to make me feel better.” She reaches for my hand taking me by surprise, and squeezes.

  My eyes fall to our entwined hands, and I marvel at the sight; there’s a fluttering of emotions in my chest. I’ve never felt this way before. I’ve never been touched by a human willingly, in friendship or otherwise. It’s extraordinary to say the least.

  I clear my throat. “You should go inside.”

  I watch her duck into her house, and for the first time since the inception of Earth, I remain frozen in one place for the night without seeking a mate to pollinate.

—————

  Two weeks after Gale kissed Katniss, and they still aren’t on speaking terms. They avoid each other and start hunting separate parts of the woods in different schedules.

  Gale is 18 and can opt for a job at the medicine factory that opened up after the rise of the New Panem some ten years ago. He can also apply for a farming license and get a lot with fertile soil to work. Katniss is still too young to apply for any of that, but she’s old enough to marry.

  I will never understand the arbitrariness of human’s law regarding age of consent. A girl of marrying age, should be a girl of independent working age. But what do I know? I’m just a Being of Darkness; such conundrums are beneath me.

  Yet, I’m standing here in the other side of world, pondering on it!

  She doesn’t own me! If I’m going to obsess over a human, I still want to be me. I don’t want her to turn me into some angel I’m not.

  I don’t want to be a piece in this girl’s involuntary game.

  So, on my sweet, beautiful Katniss trudges to the woods teeming with game and wild herbs, waiting for her clever hands to pluck, either the string of her bow, or the greens off the forest floor; it matters not. Her family will eat better than her many neighbors, who sadly still live in poverty despite the new era of freedom.

  Ugh… curse that resilience and strength of hers! She’s irresistible!

—————-

  It’s late in the evening, the last remaining rays of sun just disappeared in the distance, not quite moonless, but dark enough to make anyone uneasy.

  A greasy, disgusting man spots Katniss slinking away from the dead electric fence, and lunges at her like a fiend. He takes her by surprise, and gets a hold of her game bag, which is quickly discarded carelessly on the ground. Katniss tries to fight the man back, gritting her teeth and growling like a rabid animal, but it’s no use.

  Despite how heavy set the man is, he’s quick on his feet, and has restrained Katniss by the wrists.

  The man reeks of white liquor. His balding head has a few long hairs combed to the side, which does nothing to hide the shine of his scalp. The disgusting creature is talking filth into Katniss’ face when I finally step out of the shadows and stalk his way. He doesn’t see me, too distracted on Katniss… MY Katniss.

  She’s doing everything in her power not to show how terrified, how trapped she is, but her eyes are filling with tears and this miserable maggot is feeding off it.

  The man presses his disgusting body into hers, and she tries to kick him off, snarling a threat that doesn’t reach him. The brute shoves her against a tree; she chokes a small sob back and begs him to stop, while shaking like a leaf. The man laughs, then sticks his nauseating tongue out of his mouth, and licks her face, from her chin to her temple … That’s the last thing I remember cohesively.

  I blink, and the next thing I see, there are blood, guts and gray matter splatter everywhere.

  The ground, the trees, my hands and clothes, everything is covered in gore. The man’s corpse lays shattered on the ground in two pieces ripped straight down the middle, from his head downward.

  I gasp her name, scanning the scene frantically until I see her, huddled up behind a tree with her head buried into her arms that rest on her knees.

  I call her name again, but she doesn’t respond to my voice. She mutters something I don’t catch, so I try to touch her. She yelps as soon as my fingers brush her shoulder, and scoots away from me like a crab running from a seagull.

  “No!” She yells batting my hand away.

  “Katniss—“

  “What are you? You’re no angel at all are you?” She stumbles to her feet shakily. I try to follow but she stomps her feet like a toddler in mid-tantrum. “Stay away from me! Monster. Mutt. Whatever you are!” She takes off running home, snatching up her game bag as she goes.

  The only evidence linking her with this horror sight is gone, so it’s time to cover my own tracks.

  I extend my arms straight, at my sides, I close my eyes summoning nature to me. When the hair covering my arms stand with static and my fingers tingle with tiny shocks of electricity, I clap my hands way above my head bringing down a mighty flash of lighting that scorches the ground and singes the bark of the nearest trees.

  Looking at my handiwork with satisfaction, I leave Panem behind. It’s the last time I stalk Katniss Everdeen, awake or asleep. Anonymity is my gift to her.

  Sure enough, when morning comes, the death of that awful man, gets attributed to lightning.  

——————

Plump, bodacious Delly Cartwright is as opposite in looks and personality to Katniss as humanly possible. I chose her painstakingly for that very reason. Her hair is a mess of yellowish curls that remind me of the majestic mane of a lion. Pretty enough face, with fair skin dotted with freckles, thin pink lips framed by laughing marks and wide set blue eyes full of trust and kindness.

  Delly’s had a sheltered, pampered life, and is very free with her affection. She is engaged to be married come Spring, but she’s by no means a pure, innocent virgin. I go at her like a dog with a bone.

  I’m in the process of covering her eyes with my special heavy sleep scales, to ensure she won’t wake in the middle of our tryst, but I feel the tug overpowering my whole body before I hear Katniss’ voice calling me by my proper, given name.

  Delly stirs in her sleep, while I try to hold on to the bedposts, refusing to answer the summon, but Katniss says my name again. It’s too powerful a pull. My fingers slip off the polished wood and my body pops out of existence in this room, and snaps back into being outside the familiar tiny shack the Everdeen women call home.

  The air crackles around me with electric pulses and a cloud of fog surrounds my body.

  Once the fog clears, I can see the single oil lamp sitting on the porch railing, illuminating the slim figure of the girl I’m trying to avoid with all my might.

  She’s beautiful though. I take her in hungrily.

  She’s standing barefoot on the old doormat that’s seen better days, wearing a white, threadbare nightgown I’ve never seen her in before. An equally threadbare shawl that can’t be providing any warmth in this chill wraps around her shoulders. Her hair falls loose down her back, but she keeps fiddling with the end of a lock she’s twisted around her fingers.

  Her pink lips tremble slightly from cold every time she exhales a foggy puff of breath from her mouth.

  Without really stopping to think of what I’m doing, I glide up the porch steps until I’m in front of her and tighten the shawl over her chest with both of my hands.

  “You’re shivering. You shouldn’t be outside in this cold with so little clothes on.” I try to sound stern, but my voice is too soft and caring.

  Her lips twitch up at the corners. Her gray eyes shine in amusement. “I wouldn’t have gotten so cold if you hadn’t taken so long to show up. I called you over 120 seconds ago!” She admonishes in a tone dripping with sarcasm.

  I narrow my eyes at her, trying to figure her out, but I give it up when her teeth start clattering together. She speaks before I can comment further.

  “Come inside with me?” It’s not really a request, since she’s holding my hand like a vise and dragging me towards the door.

  “Is that wise?” I ask her arching an eyebrow. “I’m not the Being of Light you previously thought I was.”

  She scowls at that, “No, you ain’t. But you’ve still saved my life more times than I care to remember. I owe you, and I’m not very comfortable having a debt so steep hanging over my head.”

  “Consider the balance void, Katniss. It’s safer that way.”

  She purses her lips and tightens her hold on her shawl. “We’ll see.” She pushes the door open and in we go, without hesitation.

  “I spoke to Greasy Sae,” she tells me, as we cross the living room and kitchen area, into the bedroom with the two beds, both empty tonight. “She’s the oldest person in the District, you know.” She states as if that explains anything.

  “There’s a wealth of wisdom in the elderly’s counsel,” I comment looking at her profile curiously.  “What did this Sae have to say?”

  Katniss pulls a chair from a writing desk and motions me to sit. I obey without questioning it.

  Katniss shrugs, “I asked many things, really. Sae talks a lot, and she knows everyone, so people come to her for advice.” She sits on her bed opposite me, yet her eyes shy away from mine.

  “What advice did you ask for?”

  “No advice. Just information.” Her eyes flick to me quickly, then go back to a point over my shoulder. “You know, what you did to Cray… well, it wasn’t subtle at all.” She finally pierces me with a glare, but that only lasts a second. “I mean, you tore his body in half with your bare hands and left his carcass to rot in the meadow. Who does that?!” Another glance, this one I can’t tell if she’s disgusted or terrified. She should be both.

  “I made it appear as if had been a lighting strike.” I protest.

  “It wasn’t storming that night, Peeta. We had beautiful, clear skies the whole, entire week. People knew something supernatural was behind that monster’s death.”

  “He was about to do terrible things to you, Katniss. Have you thought of how scared and devastated your sister would’ve been if something awful had happened to you?”

  “Of course I have!” She interrupts me. “It would’ve destroyed her. Don’t get me wrong, people are happy to see the bastard gone, because he’s always had a history with harassing girls, but everyone is scared now of something they don’t understand and can’t start to explain! The whole district is so shocked they close their shutters earlier, hide their youngsters fiercely, walk in large groups when going places like school or the market. Even at school teachers step out of their classrooms to make sure the students milling around the halls are safe. It’s horrible and traumatic…”

  “Then you know why I had to take care of that predator.” I spit venomously.

  Her shoulders sag, “I know.” The pinched look falls off her face.

  She stands up and walks towards me.

  In a surprising move, she lowers herself sideways on my lap. My arms go around her waist immediately, in case she changes her mind, but Katniss leans her head onto my shoulder and sighs deeply.

  In all the centuries I’ve fucked my way through humanity, I’ve never been this close to a girl before. I do not mean merely physically, but intimately. I’m not sure how to respond and reciprocate the affectionate gesture, so I settle for resting my cheek on the crown of her head.

  “Where’s your family?” I ask.

  “Tending to a birth. Twins. There’s some kind of complication, so mother took Prim to help her. They will be out all night.”

  I accept her explanation with a sound at the back of my throat. After a minute of easy silence, I ask, “Were you satisfied with the information you yielded from Mrs. Sae?”

  “No.”

  She doesn’t elaborate for a few minutes.

  “How did you know Cray was attacking me?” She finally asks shuddering in my arms.

  I scowl. “That kind of evil. It comes from me.” I tell her. “I recognize the ones who maim the soul and hurt the spirit, because that’s my job. That perversion originates from the same darkness I come from, and responds to the same urges I do.”

  Katniss tries to appear unperturbed about my words, but she can’t hide her trembling.

  “Sae said she didn’t recognize any spirits by my descriptions. I tried to remain vague and distant, as if asking on someone else’s behalf, but she was troubled by my questions, and I think she knew I’d witnessed Cray’s disembowelment. I had to stop my inquiry.”

  “I’m right here, Katniss. You can ask me anything you want to know. Isn’t that why you called me here tonight?”

  She shakes her head in denial. “Sae said it sounded like a dark one was protecting his mate, or maybe grooming a prospective mate. But of course, she’d never heard of something quite like you. She didn’t know who or what you were. She couldn’t tell me how to proceed.” Katniss straightens up, and stares into my eyes apprehensively. “I have an idea of how you may like me to pay off my debt to you.” She says blushing violently, averting her eyes and fiddling with her shawls fringe.

  She breathes in deeply, and lets the shawl fall from her shoulders. She takes my hand and brings it to her clavicle; her fingers interlace with mine, to venture under the neckline of her nightgown. Before I can make sense of what’s happening, I brush the soft skin of her full breast with the pad of my digits.

  Katniss presses my fingers to her delicate nipple, and I surrender my will to a human, for the first time in the memory of creation.

  I trace her areola gently, with practiced ease, until the nipple puckers up in response. Her own hand falls away, leaving me to my own devices.

  Katniss shudders a little, clenching her eyes closed. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” She asks me, not quite in accusation, but unsure and fearful

  “Yes.” I tell her. No sense in denying the truth. I lean into her ear to whisper, “Katniss, you should have left that debt alone when you had the chance, Sweetheart.” She shivers in my arms, but presses her torso against my body.

  “This is the price isn’t it?” Her voice wavers.

  “Partially. The price I’m charging is something you already told me you were unwilling do. Now we will have to come to some agreement.”

  “How long have you been touching me like this?” She’s holding back tears, but not stopping the pinches and kneading of my fingers on her flesh.

  “I’ve only done this twice to be honest. I palmed your behind once. Somehow, touching you without your knowledge feels… wrong.” She nods, a stray tear trails down her cheek. I nuzzle the sensitive spot behind her ear. “I’m sorry, Katniss. I’m not a one mate being. I go around the world, taking women such as yourself during their sleep, oftentimes impregnating them with my spawn. It’s not my custom to groom my partners, but everything about you has been different from the beginning.”

  “Aren’t I the lucky gal?” She spits bitterly, yet her breathing is getting shallower and a pretty blush is starting to color her skin from her face to her chest. She’s actually enjoying my ministrations on her breasts. “What makes me so special?” She asks.

  “You’re strong minded. One of my powers is to whisper things into a human’s ear, and plant ideas, orders, images… you’re too stubborn to listen to any of that. I’ve command you to cut all of your ties to that Hawthorne boy at least thrice, but you’ve refused to forsake his friendship and companionship each time.

  “I’ve tried to get you to wear dresses and shifts to bed, but you keep wearing your father’s clothing even to sleep.

  “Every time I try to induce a sexual dream into your mind, you clam up, and never stay asleep long enough to get too far into the dream for it to affect you the way I’d want it to. But, things seem to be changing right now.” I pull my hand out of the neckline of her gown and place it on her knee.

  Once I make to hike my hand up her thigh, Katniss clenches her legs together, whether she’s doing it to deny me access, or because she can’t handle the arousal, I am not sure. I drop my hand off her knee all the same.

  “I can’t take you without your consent, Katniss. That much is clear after my failed attempts at wooing you while unconscious.” I whisper into her temple, dropping a sweet, barely-there kiss. “This ‘grooming’ debacle has happened both ways.” I state. “Katniss Everdeen, you’ve tamed the feared and despised Incubus.” She gasps. I suppose, Incubus she’s heard off before.

  “I’m still a demon.” I say solemnly, “A sex fiend. My nature hasn’t changed, despite your domesticating me. You could reject me right this second, and I’d go away without ever touching you. But, once out of your snaring presence, I’d have to prowl around in search of other women to satisfy my needs.”

  “You’re saying that other women and girls well-being rest upon my shoulders?” She asks looking a little green in the face. “You couldn’t possibly do anything to them without their express permission, would you?” She sounds hopeful, and her eyes are pleading.

  “You’re the only one with power over me, Katniss. I only care for your wants and dislikes. I am yours to command, anyone else is disposable.”

  “How am I supposed to agree to these terms, Peeta? You… you’re- you molest women in their sleep! You get them pregnant against their will and nearly every one of them dies as a result of your encounters with them.” Her eyes fill with tears, but she doesn’t look away from my own. “I never want to have children. But that’s what you want from me, isn’t it?” She murmurs shakily, her body sagging into my chest. “I don’t want to die either. My sister needs me.”

  “Katniss, I’m obsessed with you, because you’re the sturdiest girl I’ve met. You’re a survivor. You don’t give up when you know the difference between death and survival is you. I’ve been investing my own powers on perfecting your body and preparing your internal organs so you’re in top condition for mating, sustaining a pregnancy and delivering a live half human, half demon child.”

  This stuns her a second. “You really were grooming me for years.” She sounds devastated. “I told you I didn’t want marriage, loving a man that could die and take away my will to live to his grave with him. It happened to my parents. I can’t abandon my children to their fate the same way my mother did to me and Prim. You knew all this. I told you all about it before… you still want me to… to—” she chokes back a sob and clams up.

  I’m aggravated with her. I had walked away from her, left her alone, freed her from my presence, yet she summoned me back here because she can’t let some fabricated debt go. I growl lowly, trying to keep my temper under control. She really won’t be able to survive my wrath, and I don’t want to harm her in an angry rush.

  “Since you insisted on calling me here, then I must inform you, you will become pregnant if we mate. That’s a guarantee. But I’m no man. I can’t die. I will never grow sick and time will never age me. My children won’t suffer human needs either. They’ll be strong and capable of hunting their own meals, much like you do now. If you can’t mother them properly, I will take them away and raise them myself. We have little room for negotiations at this point. Mating and childbearing are inescapable if you pursue the debt route.”

  “Kill me now then!” She snaps, trying to push away from me, but I keep her in place with my hands.

  “I will not kill you.” I say it like it is a command.

  “If I refuse to m-mate?”

  “Will you?” I counter. “Mating will happen on your terms. On your time.” My voice sounds gentler now, like it was before. “Then I’ll leave you alone for good if that’s what you want.”

  “You… you would?” She’s shaking all over.

  “My word is my bond.”

  “What should I call you? Master? Sir? Lord?”

  “Peeta. Just Peeta. That is my given name.” I tell her simply.

  “Why me? Why now?”

  “I don’t quite know. I just know you’re the one strong enough to stand the physical toil of carrying my offspring which has caused all the previous hosts’ demise.”

  She nods absentmindedly. I’m surprised when Katniss starts undoing the tiny buttons at the neckline of her gown, and slowly slips off my lap, to stand between my legs. I lose no time pulling the soft material covering her body down her arms, to pool at her feet. I stare at her naked torso and then at the apex of her thighs, drinking in her beauty with relish.

  “I’ve never seen you nude before.” I tell her in awe, rubbing my hands up and down her arms.

  “Let’s do this now. No sense delaying it. It would happen eventually anyway.” She says, shyly.

  She most see the greed and lust in my eyes, because she tries to cover her chest and the curly, black hair covering her sex. I remain seated on my chair, until she starts squirming under my heated gaze.

  “Do as you must, Peeta. Do it quickly.” She says after forcing her eyes back to mine.

  “You need to be more specific, Katniss. Otherwise I’ll stay planted here until dawn slashes me away.” I tell her arching a brow. I burn with desire for her, but I cannot move without her permission.

  She grunts and taps a foot impatiently. I smile at that. She’s still so strong willed even now, and so pure deep down; it’s endearing.

  “Take me, Peeta. Now. Mmm… sexually.” She punctuates.

  I can’t help smirking deviously. I stalk up to her and reach my hand to rest on the curve of her waist, gently pulling her forward.

  “I am going to kiss you now.” I purr into her ear.

  Kissing my partners is unusual for me, but this is Katniss. I take her lips with mine in a searing kiss that burns down my body. I lay her on the bed blindly, caressing her velvety skin tenderly.

  I’ve master the art of masturbating my conquests to assure lubrication, but other than that, I’ve never given thought to foreplay for the sake of pleasing my partners. I’m doing things here, I’ve never done before. Human lovers may be more adept at romancing, but I’m doing my best to pleasure Katniss with my hands, lips, tongue and words.

  I taste, kiss and nip at her skin. I tweak, pinch, knead and caress her flesh; I suck on her nipples and nuzzle the cleft between her thighs. She tenses, melts, and chokes back sounds on intervals every so often, not quite sure if she should resist me or enjoy the sensations I’m evoking in her.

  “Relax, Katniss. Clear your mind. Enjoy the moment.”

  She lifts her head in time to watch me take a long swipe of my tongue along her labia. Her head falls on the flat pillow and a soft moan escapes her sweet mouth.

  “You smell and taste divine.” I tell her while inserting my middle finger inside her warm, wet pussy.

  Finally, Katniss cries out my name, and I swear it’s the most intoxicating thing I’ve ever experienced.

  A second and then a third finger find their way inside her making her bow off the bed. She’s moaning loudly now. My thumb makes contact with a small kernel of flesh I haven’t really paid much attention to while with other women.

  Katniss shouts with the first few passes of my thumb, she begs me not to stop, to “please, please, please, keep doing that!” And I can’t resist lapping at the copious arousal bathing my hand and Katniss’ thighs.

  I’ve made women orgasm before, unintentionally of course. They cum just by the sheer size of my shaft, but it’s never been as extreme as this. My sweet, little Katniss arches off the bed, her shout dies in her throat, and then she falls on her back, convulsing and twitching.

  At some point her fingers tangled in my hair. She pulls on it every time she shudders her release, until she lays still.

  I sit up and catch my reflection on the oval mirror propped on Mrs. Everdeen’s night table, next to the blade her late husband used to shave his face. Both items remain in the same spot they were left at 6 years ago. Young Primrose polishes the reflecting surface everyday, readying it for a father that will never use it again.

  As I take a minute to inspect my appearance, I’m surprised I don’t have Gale Hawthorne features. I’m taken aback at how young and kind my face is. I guess I must be 16 or 17 in her mind’s eye. Blond, wavy hair. Warm blue eyes. Chiseled jaw, defined upper lip and a strong straight nose. I rip off the simple white button down shirt covering my upper body to find lean, defined muscles over a wide set of shoulders that look strong and used to manual labor. My skin is fair with a smattering of freckles and light blonde hair cover my arms. I realize this is what Katniss finds appealing. Whatever she’s attracted to.

  I look down at my trousers, and see flecks of flour on dark brown sturdy material. I find it amusing that she’s dreamt me off to be a baker of all things, but I guess in her mind, it makes sense. I did give her bread in the backyard of an abandoned bakery the first time we met.

  I will the rest of my clothes gone, and it disappears on the spot. I kiss her navel sweetly, and hook my elbows under her knees. When I sit up, I pull her hips towards mine.

  “My turn.” My voice is raspy and needy. Katniss nods, widening the opening between her thighs for me.

  “Will you… fit?” Her voice wavers, her gray eyes watch the turgid appendage between my legs nervously.

  My cock twitches. “I will fit, Sweetheart. Don’t you worry about it.” I assure her sweetly, caressing her outer thigh.

  She nods. “Okay.” She breathes out softly. “I’m ready.”

  Katniss gasps when I run the head of my dick through her wet, swollen folds, and without much ado sink my full, long girth into her in one swoop motion. She releases a breathless, long, drawn out moan once I’m seated all the way in. She’s so tight and warm, I wish I could freeze this moment, here, right now, and live in it forever. Alas, time is not something I have control over, so I give into my need and start moving.

  Katniss keens breathlessly every time I rock into her. She’s digging her blunt nails into the skin of my shoulder blades, after having hooked her slim arms under mine. Her face is practically buried into the hollow of my neck, letting me feel the brush of her lips and her hot breath against my pectoral with every thrust. Having her awake for this was the best decision ever!

  I kiss her sweaty forehead, and bury my nose in her hair. She always smells so good, like lavender and fresh rain. I kiss her temple, and then her cheek; lastly I kiss her lips and she sighs into it.

  “Does it feel good?” I ask her, genuinely interested in her answer.

  She nods faintly. “It feels… wonderful. Different. Strange. I feel so full, like I’m stuffed to the brim, yet I need more of you, of your… hmmm…”

  “Cock,” I supply. “Call it a cock.”

  “Alright.” She breathes out. “I- I think I like the feel of your… cock, in me.” She says rubbing her cheek against mine.

  “Good. Let me know when you get tired, and I’ll finish.”

  She gives me a frowning look. “You can do that at will?” She asks.

  I shrug. “Usually. Sometimes, when I’m to keyed in, I just explode after a few pumps. It’s not very often. But it’s happened.”

  “Well, I don’t want to rush you, but, my legs are starting to cramp up, so…” she winces.

  I chuckled and kiss her mouth again. “Alright, Sweetheart, your wish is my command. I’ll fill you up with my thick cum right away.”

  She’s trying to smile at my jesting words, but I pick up my pace before she can respond, and soon I’m driving into her like a possessed madman. It only takes a few pumps, but it takes almost a full 2 minutes to finish spilling my load into her. My hands aren’t idle during my release though.

  My thumb presses tight, fast circles against her clit, and my sweet, beautiful Katniss starts clenching and shaking with her own orgasm. I nearly mistake her body obviously reacting to my semen because she’s riding her release at the same time as her organs start knitting the embryo of my heir deep in her womb.

  Her body tenses, and breaks out into a high fever. She shivers and her lips turn pale and dry, her skin is ashen and papery, and her eyes are closed. She’s convulsing in my arms, but not in blissful orgasm anymore. Since I’m still inside her, I can feel every one of her muscles contract on my cock, and it is too much for me to bear, I pull out of her quickly and spill a second load just shy of her pussy. I gather her into my arms, and mumbled an incantation into her hair, holding tightly to her.

  I’m not allowed to pray, but that doesn’t stop me from pleading for her life over and over as I sit on the bed with her limp body cradled to my chest. “Please, don’t let her die. Please, don’t let her die. Please, don’t let her die…”

  Fuck! I don’t care if the child lives as long as she does… and I keep rocking her until morning surprises me, and Mrs. Everdeen walks in on me holding her almost dead daughter.

  ——————

  Katniss gives birth to a beautiful, healthy baby girl.

  The child looks completely human with a mop of dark hair on her head and the bluest eyes a child can have at that age. Still, rumors break out of the origin of the child, and people start attacking both Katniss and the babe when things start getting too weird for them.

  Mrs. Everdeen reluctantly accepts her daughter has mated with a demon, and has a very hard time looking her in the eye. I’m sure the fact that she sees me as an exact replica of her dead husband, has to have caused some psychological disturbance for the healer. It must have been unpleasant to walk in on her obviously freshly fucked daughter, limp and unresponsive in the arms of a man that looks just like the father of said daughter.

  Primrose is not allowed to stay in the same room with her sister and niece without Mrs. Everdeen present, and Katniss is livid about it.

  “I’ve practically raised Prim on my own at the age of 11, when you were too sick to care for anyone, least of all yourself! We are all alive thanks to Peeta!” She yells at her mother one day while bitter tears slide down her cheeks.

  Mrs. Everdeen asked Katniss to leave the house, after catching my reflection on the window glass while the baby nursed. The healer can’t stand my presence, let alone the appearance my body takes in her mind’s eye, particularly when I can’t hide my lust for Katniss regardless of the face I’m wearing.

  On top of the obvious, understandable reasons why Mrs. Everdeen wants nothing to do with her oldest daughter, she claims to be afraid I’ll go after Primrose as well, as if I could have the faintest interest in the young girl, when I only have eyes for the mother of my child.

  “Please don’t say that cursed name in this house, Katniss. That monster will be drawn to it.”

  “I can call his name whenever I want, because he’s the father of my child, your grandchild!” Katniss argues. “He has never done anything to harm us. He’s saved my life numerous times, and he’s fed us, and kept our health when he didn’t have to. You’re being unreasonable!”

  “She really is not.” I say in my most gentlemanly voice, as I shimmer into existence in the middle of their room. “Your Mother has reason to distrust me, but to displace her own daughter and brand new grandchild is cruel.” I say turning eyes full of fire to the woman cowering away from me.

  I go back to Katniss and smile, showing her only placid blue when she looks into my eyes. “Do not worry, Katniss. You’re mine to care for, and that I will do. As for your family…” When I shift my gaze to Mrs. Everdeen, my pupils have taken over the blue of my irises, leaving only a pool of empty darkness. “We will figure something out.”

  ————————-

  The babe nurses with vigor, and my favorite time of day is when I sit and watch the evening feedings. My fascination with the baby is offset by my ever growing lust, sparked by Katniss’ exposes breasts.

  When the child is asleep and safely tucked in her crib, I take Katniss to the living room of the grand house I built for her in the middle of the woods. I strip my lover of her clothing, piece by piece and drag her to her own bedroom, where the softest, most comfortable bed waits for us.

  She doesn’t want to be pregnant again so soon, so she bends over and lets me take her in the rear.  By the sounds she makes, I dare say she enjoys it greatly. Her pussy doesn’t stay neglected though; my fingers keep my sweet, beautiful mate satisfied and relaxed.

  I seldom need another body to satisfy me anymore, but until I have a mature offspring to take my place devouring the sleeping women of the world, I’m bound to keep prowling the Earth seeking to douse a dying lust for other cunts; my conquests all fall flat and insipid compared to the vivacious woman I have waiting on me back home.

  I’m not sure when Katniss’ place became Home for me, but it is the place I always return to.

————————

  Katniss starts hunting again six months after the baby is born.

  On the second day, the child sits in her pen while Katniss skins the game. The baby cries and cries until her mother picks her up and sits her on her lap as she works. Katniss shrieks when the child’s chubby hand plunges into the bucket of entrails next to the stool they sit on, and tries to bring the gore to her open mouth. The little girl throws a mighty tantrum, until she’s fed meat from a squirrel Katniss cooked. After that, the baby only wants to feed on game, not on vegetables and milk like normal babies.

  Katniss thinks it’s unnatural to feed a child so young meat, but she wasn’t truly frightened until a few days after the child’s first birthday.

  Primrose visits with her pet cat, Buttercup. Our baby grabs the feline by the tail and tries to strangle it with a choke hold worthy of a professional wrestler. Primrose nervously laughs it off as childlike curiosity and lack of force control, but Katniss knows better. Our child tried to kill and eat Buttercup.

  I knew it was time to take charge of the toddler.

  Katniss cries with guilt, because she now understands her own mother’s fears, but still hands the little girl over to me, to take to my realm. They get to see each other every day, and our daughter loves her mommy to death. They just don’t understand each other’s natures, and know it’s better to remain separate.

  Our daughter’s growth has accelerated in my realm, so she’s now at the level of a 5 year old child.

  “Will she kill humans?” Katniss asks me tearfully one night after my seed is drying between her thighs.

  I lean down and kiss her temple. “She might. She may become a Succubus. She may become something totally different. She’s still half human, darling. Only time will tell.”

  That’s poor comfort for Katniss, so she cries in my arms until fatigue takes over her. I can’t help myself. I fuck her again while she’s asleep, and this time I don’t pull out when my release is imminent. That’s when it happens again. Only this time the reaction is different. Obviously supernatural.

  Her breathing picks up, her mouth falls open, her skin starts to glow. I place my hands on her abdomen, where the glow is more intense. I push my erection inside her pussy, because I want to feel it happening from the inside, and the heat leaching from her walls is almost unbearable. Her forehead breaks into fat beads of sweat, her skin is burning up, and she shivers uncontrollably under my weight. I’m involuntarily cumming again. My hips can’t stay still, so I give in and piston into her at a frantic pace, digging her slim frame deeper into the mattress.

  Poor, exhausted, Katniss, passes out before I can pull out of her. Much like the first time, my mate is in a short coma for the next week.

  I make her mother tend to her like I did the first time as well. This time, Katniss delivers twin baby boys.

  There’s absolutely no doubt at all the infants are my spawn and hold the powers of the incubus. When Katniss holds them, they look exactly the way she sees me: soft blonde curls that fall on their forehead in waves, pleasant blue eyes like summer sky, long eyelashes that brush chubby, rosy cheeks. The boys look cherubic, and she can’t stop kissing them and showering them with attention.

  They’ve won over their grandmother completely as well. When Mrs. Everdeen takes them, the boys look just like Katniss: straight dark hair, gray eyes, olive skin. They have Mr. Everdeen’s chin. But if Prim is the one to hold them, they look completely different.

  The twins breastfeed exclusively, refusing any other nourishment well into two years of age. The boys are cunning, not showing any demonic tendencies, or habits that’ll scare Katniss away. Mommy— as they call her affectionately— is way too fond of them, and barely leaves their side. She’s lost weight and her skin and hair turned brittle, but her children come first all the time.

  They can’t fool me though. I catch them whispering thoughts into their mother’s head, planting ideas and fears she’s never had before, and I know it’s time to take them away when they don’t even try to hide their wrong doing from me, just staring boldly into my face, sporting identical smirks as they sing into Katniss’ ear they’re the only ones that love her in this world; they need her to care for them.

  Katniss fights me over them, until I show her how manipulative the little fuckers are: I’m fucking her in our bedroom while the boys are supposed to be soundly asleep in their own warm beds, instead, they sneak into our room and watch in fascination as I take her hard and fast. They snicker when my hand makes contact with their mother’s romp and I make the curtain fall, revealing their presence after casting a protective block on her mind against the boys’ trickery.

  Katniss scrambles to cover up her nakedness, but the boys ask excitedly when will they be able to do the same?

  I sit them both on my lap— that my mate has hastily covered with our sheets— and lovingly explain to my sons they will have their chance once they reach puberty. And the best part is, I’ll be able to retire!

  Katniss leaves the bed to wrap herself with a robe and watches my exchange with the boys disgusted from a corner of the room. Her limbs are tied into a tight ball, and her distress is palpable enough for the boys to pick up.

  “Not you mommy,” one of the twins clarifies.

  “Mommy belongs to you, father.” Adds the other one helpfully.

  “And she’s too sweet to break.” Explains the other.

  Katniss does not oppose me taking the boys after that.

  —————

  The third pregnancy nearly kills my Katniss.

  The baby’s aura is just too evil for her body to sustain. I conjure up my most powerful sleeping magic and cover her eyes with scales so heavy she stays asleep for three days.

  I take the child from her womb before she can wake up, but the little demoness survives.

  Katniss never gets to see her new daughter, and the child hates her mother so much I have no choice but to send her to the one place that can hold a being as dark as her. Deep into Hell.

  I tell Katniss the baby was stillborn and she never asks questions about it.

  ——————

  Katniss is 25 the day she becomes pregnant for the last time. She delivers a second set of perfectly healthy twins; a boy and a girl this time. Both completely human. Both looking exceptionally normal and nothing like me, except for their bright blue eyes. That trait could’ve come from Mrs. Everdeen and Primrose for all I know.

  I’m so out of my mind with rage, I terrorize poor Katniss by pretty much destroying everything in the house. I accuse her of sleeping with human men while I was away, Gale Hawthorne perhaps, since the babes have that Seam look to them.

  She denies it vehemently, bawling and pleading, so scared for her life, but shielding the newborns with her battered body after labor.

  I push her aside and stride to the crib, ready to smite the infants with a blow of my hand. She falls on her knees begging me to believe her, screaming her innocence, crying out my name pitifully. “Peeta, please, you have to believe me!”

  “Why should I?” I yell in her face.

  “Because… because… I love you, Peeta!” She cries out loudly, hanging from my wrist, my hand lifts her body off the floor wrapped around her delicate neck, squeezing it tightly.

  I see the petechiae forming in the white of her eyes. The oxygen in her brain will soon be too scarce to function.

  But she’s stunned me into silence.

  “No you don’t.” I slam her down to the floor gracelessly.

  Katniss’ tear stricken face looks up. She crawls closer to me ignoring her sore throat and neck. She tugs on my pant legs, pitifully. “I do, Peeta. It’s the truth.” She rasps painfully. “I’ve loved you since I was a little girl. I could never let any other man or being lay a hand on me. I’m in love with you.”

  “Well…” I struggle for something to say. I’m choked up, words won’t come to my aid. “You shouldn’t, Katniss. Nobody loves me. I’m a demon.”

  “And my body is your temple.” She pleads.

  But the imprint of my fingers marring her neck, are a reminder, not even living a thousand lifetimes atoning, would be enough to deserve her. “And look how well I look after my temple!” I speak mainly to myself, my voice dripping sarcasm and regret.

  “I am yours for eternity.” She vows placing my hand on her chest, where her heart is frantically pounding. “I give you my soul. Please, Peeta. No one has ever touched me, but you. I swear on all of our children. The infant twins included.”

  “Katniss! No!” I lament deeply, falling heavily on a chair the farthest away from the crib.

  “No what?” She murmurs, coming to caress my shins, then she massages my knees, and her nimble hands creep up my thighs, making a beeline for the fastenings of my trousers.

  My cock becomes hard as steel in a second. Katniss Everdeen has been the first and only human to perform oral sex on me. The way she falls on her knees to worship my cock with her mouth, and when it is evident my length will go down her throat only so far, her hands join the cult to my phallus and I loose all my faculties, along with my will to lord over her; I become her slave when her sweet mouth is around me, even when she’s the one in the servitude position. It’s one of the many reasons I know for a fact I could never leave her, is one of the reasons I know she’s my one true mate.

  But I ignore my erection and the all consuming need to be in her mouth. She’ll convince me to anything if I let her suck me off, then where will we be? There are more pressing matters than the gratification of my lust to consider.

  “Katniss, you shouldn’t have pledged your soul to me. That was foolish! Reckless. A gigantic mistake!” I tell her pulling at the roots of my hair, soft and silky, the way she likes it. “Now you truly belong to me, for eternity.” I tell her, and finally cup her cheek in my palm, tangling her dark tresses in my fingers.

  “Peeta, I live in the woods. Everyone has shunned me because I’m the Incubus’ whore. No one talks to me, but everybody fears me. I’m an outcast in this place. My mother barely stands to see me, let alone talk to me. My sweet sister is the only person who loves me and my children. In her eyes the kids are just her nieces and nephews despite their dark inclination, but Prim’s reputation suffers every time people remember we’re related, so I’ve been trying to keep my distance from her.”

  Katniss shakes her head sadly, and sits back on her haunches. “I chose you a lifetime ago. I knew the price of being your lover would be steep. I still choose you. Do you still not know this?”

  “Nobody has loved me before.” I mutter sadly.

  “Well, I do. And I will until you take me from this earth.”

  I nod, my mind resolved on what needs to be done.

  “The day the twins are completely independent, living their own lives, happily according to their own expectations, I’ll come for you, my beautiful mate.” I tell her. “Since these babies are human, they belong to you, and you will care for them until they reach maturity.

  “To makes things easier on you and them, no living human will remember anything about me. The children’s father will just be a foggy memory no one can quite recall. You will be safe, and I’ll be gone until time brings me back to you.”

  “And what of me? Do I sit here pretending I don’t miss you? Feeding our children lies about their father?“ She argues scowling at me angrily.

  “Sweetheart, I’m afraid you won’t remember much about me either.” I tell her firmly.

  “Peeta, you can’t! Peeta—“ She tries to catch my arm, her voice is full of anger and betrayal, but my enchantment is already done.

  “Until then… my love.”

  —————-

  The girl with dark hair and blue eyes dances on tip toes in the meadow. The boy with blonde curls and gray eyes tries to twirl like his sister, but his chubby legs can’t keep up.

  Katniss laughs merrily from her spot on the picnic blanket. I’ve never been good at staying away from her, but I’ve made an art of longing from afar without touching her, our the children. This time I can’t resist the temptation, and reach my index finger to brush away the lock of gray hair that has escape her loose braid.

  She shivers at my touch, and gathers her coat around her.

  “Children,” she calls, standing up and already folding the blanket, “it’s time to go home for the evening.”

  “Do we have to, Grandma?” Whines the little girl.

  “Yeah! Woo ve haf too?” Pipes up the toddler.

  “Remember, we promised mommy and daddy we’d come home early enough to take baths.” Says Katniss with a sweet smile.

  The little girl groans and kicks a pebble. Her brother tries to imitate the behavior, but can’t quite get the sass. Katniss rushes at them both, and takes them in her arms for hugs and kisses. The children laugh until they forget to grumble about cutting short their playtime.

  I gave my family new memories. Then I gave the whole district a similar version to complement.

  Katniss lives with our son and his family above the bakery we met at when she was a child. The walls leading up the apartment are covered with family pictures, full of love and happiness. There’s one single portrait of Katniss’ late husband among the pictures: a wide shouldered baker, with a riot of blonde waves on his head, summer sky blue eyes that match his twins’ perfectly, and a sweet lopsided smile that makes his widow’s heart swoon even now.

  “Tell us a story, Grandma!” Begs our grand daughter after her mother and father tuck her in bed.

  “Stowry!” Shouts the boy from his side.

  “Tell us about Grandpa and his watercolors!”

  Katniss laughs, and sits down on the children’s bed. She tells a beautiful story of how her husband used to paint beautiful pictures of flowers and plants for her, how her husband was a painter, and a baker, how he never put sugar in his tea, slept with his windows open, and always double knotted his shoelaces. I stare at my beautiful mate from the shadows, recounting a romance of great bravery, that defeated odds and trials, just to emerge victorious and true.

  I wish her memories were as real as the sweet smile they bring to her face.

  Rumor has it the baker died attacked by tracker jackers. A horrific and tragic death. Nobody wants to think about it, so they don’t. All anyone knows is that the Mellark’s are a respectable, loving family of bakers that had to survive without their beloved husband and father.

  Katniss learned her husband’s trade and passed it down to their twin children. Both very creative and skilled bakers in their own right. The boy married first at the age of 20. His wife is sweet and devoted and had her first baby the following year. The twin sister, decided to stay single and travel the world, learning culinary secrets from other places to improve the business back home. She returned recently with a dog in tow and has been trying to adopt an orphan girl she befriended in one of her travels.

  Katniss is almost 50 years old now. Tonight I’ve come for her. She’s lived a full, happy life reflected in the laugh lines around her lips and eyes. Her hair has streaks of gray all over; wrinkles and soft skin have appear on her face and arms, but she’s as beautiful as the day I left her.

  She’s asleep, and content. I almost regret waking her… but she’s mine, and I’ve missed her. The world is such a lonely place without her waiting for me everyday. Sure, I have my demonic clan to keep me company in the dark realm, but they’re all wreaking havoc on their own now, and fuck it, no other pussy compares to my mate, despite her human age. I haven’t taken another woman since I released the boys onto the world, they’re even more devious and manipulative than I ever was.

  The girls are the truly scary ones to be honest; they can kill any man with precision and never get a speck of gore on their pristine outfits. Deep down I believe it’s because of their mother’s hunting skills and stubbornness.

  I smile fondly at her, while hovering over her bed. I kiss her forehead, whispering the command into her mind. “Wake up, Sweetheart. It’s time to go home.”

  Slowly, her eyes open, and I see the bright gray hue I’ve missed so much all this years. A sweet, soft smile curls her lips slowly.

  “Hi, handsome. I’ve been waiting for you.” She says and accepts my kiss on her lips.

  “The adoption was approved.” I tell her quietly, of our daughter’s last pending matter. “The twins are already independent and have everything they’ve ever wanted. You did a beautiful job raising them. I’m here to collect you, darling.”

  “You look so handsome.” Katniss says “That silver hair suits you, and your wrinkles match my own. I always knew you’d look devilishly beautiful in your mature age. I’ve forgotten how striking you truly are, though.” She says caressing my cheek and smiling. “The children would loved to meet you.”

  “The children know their father loved them enough to give them a good life. They’re happy and have filling lives, It won’t do them any good to know me.” I tell her without self pity. “Now come, It’s time.” I take her hand, and help her up.

  “Oh!” She exclaims when her soul separates from her body. The wrinkles in her hands smooth out, her hair turns black as night and elongates to her waist that shrinks and tightens. She could be 16 again.

  She looks down at her old body lying peacefully in her bed, now an empty shell. Her eyes widen. “Am I dead?” She asks.

  I nod. “You pledged your soul to me, Katniss. It’s the only way we can be together for eternity,”

  “Will I get to see our children again?” She asks.

  “Any time you want.” I promise. “You’ll see and talk with the ones that live with me every day, but the ones we leave here, in the human world… They will feel your presence, but they will never see you again.”

  She looks sad about the news.

  “It’s the way of mortals, my love.” I tell her caressing her face tenderly.

  “It is.” She acquiesces, leaning into my touch, and then kissing the palm of my hand.

  “You gave them a good life and sweet memories to remember you by.” It’s not much, but it’s enough to get her to move on.

  “That I did.” She looks up at me, gifting me with a bittersweet smile. “Take me away, Peeta. I have so many hugs in store from the grand babies to give you.”

  “Then let’s not delay.”

  “You will really be content with me for eternity?”

  “Always.”

[silvergeek]

The Tale of Mister Robert “Bob” Gray.

Full fanfiction is located here.

At this time, dear readers, we must take a moment to break away from our narrative at hand. Because, at this time, we need to focus on a different narrative to understand the current story, the stories we've read, and the stories we will, someday, read.

Pennywise the Dancing Clown came from a story widely known – widely loved. But as it were, the words jumped off the pages of that book and landed in a collection of minds – a hive of thoughts. The named “Robert 'Bob' Gray” became a topic of focus, for so little had been officially written about him. The monster took the name, true as gold, and that was the word of God – or rather... that was the word of the monster's creator, Its author. Beyond that name, not much else was known about Mister Gray, and certainly nothing else was ever, or had ever, been explained.

Bob Gray became the start of a question. “Gray” was a query, a thing of mystery that so many desired to solve. Through readers' own suppositions they did conceive various tales about “Mister Gray” – who he was, what he did, and how he became an urban legend.

Mister Gray.

Bob Gray.

Robert Gray.

Each of those whispers, those quandaries, those theories, those amateur fictions... they led to arguments, debates,and essays – but none of them were one hundred percent accurate.

However...

None of them were one hundred percent wrong, either.

A good story is an amalgam of half stories. Tales pieced together like an epic foil ball, containing only the most compelling bits carefully cherry-picked from the bunch.

So this, dear readers, is the actual, true-to-god, story of Mister Robert “Bob” Gray. Would I lie to you? Me? Your storyteller? Why yes – that's what any good storyteller would do. So, as I'd said in the beginning: If you don't trust me... then stop reading. Are we ready? Let us begin...

  The Tale of Mr. Robert “Bob” Gray (better known as) Pennywise the Dancing Clown

 Gray was a man between the age of thirty and thirty-five, and he was a tall man with sandy-brown hair and striking blue eyes. True enough, his hands were large, his fingers long, and his legs put him around six and a half feet tall. He wasn't a heavy man, but by no means was he scrawny – not at his height and certainly not at his age.

Gray was indeed an immigrant from Sweden who had, at the ripe age of seventeen, sailed over to the northeasternmost region of the great United States of America. He did indeed come over to the land of the free with little else but spare change and a willingness to work – even if it broke his back. Now, understand this... his name wasn't Bob Gray back in the old country. No. His birth-given name was Robert Grå. Just like that, with the funny circle above it and everything, or so the Americans said. Hell, it meant the same damn thing between the languages, but those American types sure relied heavily on everything being spelled out in English. And so... Robert Gray it became – or Bob if someone was feeling particularly informal.

By his twenties, Bob had made a name for himself in the township of Derry, Maine. In so much that he was the man you'd call on if you'd needed odd jobs done. Some farm work here. Some machinist work there. And every year there'd be a carnival that rolled through Derry, as sure as rain. The event lasted through a long, summer weekend, and when it was over, those carnies packed up that carnival like stuffing socks in a suitcase. You'd better believe Bob Gray was willing to help out with the odd jobs at this event. It was only for a weekend, but the coin was good.

A carnie – a real leathery fella – by the nickname of Carnie Ron had been the one who'd personally tasked Bob Gray for the right wages. He'd set Bob to work on various chores like fixing things that went broke and restocking prizes, food, and refreshments as they'd been consumed (maybe once in awhile thieved) throughout the weekend. The downside for Bob was that this carnival only came once a year. A man needed to live the rest of those twelve months. Regardless, he took what he could, worked his duties, and collected pay from Carnie Ron.

It wasn't until Bob's third year that things had changed. One of the carnie hands, not Ron, asked Mister Gray to fill in as a clown – something to keep the younger kids entertained while their ma's and pa's drank themselves loose on cheap stout (which made them spend all the more coin for the rest of the night).

And that's just what Bob did. He put on the clown suit, which was little more than a dingy, old pair of men's pajamas, and caked some white pancake makeup all over his sun-soaked face. Then, Mister Gray took a bit of red paint and gave himself a big, merry smile from ear to ear. He looked just like the Cheshire Cat, if that wicked old cat was ever the clownin' type.

“Hand me all those balloons,” Bob had told that same carnie hand, and – boy oh boy – Mister Gray took to being a clown like a duck takes to water. The kids got a dance out of him, silly voices, crazy faces, and each one of them walked away with their own balloon after they'd begged their ma's and pa's (til they were blue in the face, no less) for the extra coin to buy their very own from the clown. Why, Bob even took a paintbrush to the balloons and signed each one of them, like he'd been peddling out his very own autograph. (As if he'd been anything to anyone at the time, but for that measly hour, to those kids, Mister Bob Gray was like a god.) Before he'd signed his first balloon, Bob had to think of a name on the fly. He saw those coins jingling in the youngsters' hands and it just came to him: Pennywise. Pennywise the clown. The clown that danced, even sang a tune or three, and handed off balloons with his signature and everything.

It wasn't long after that day that Bob Gray got to thinking that he could do this for a living. He could entertain, sing, dance, and overcharge for cheap balloons. (And he could do it more than once per year!) So, with the money he'd saved thus far, Mister Gray bought an old, worn down caravan off Carnie Ron. He'd fixed her up and painted a likeness of his clownin' self across her side. Then he wrote the words, as big and as grand as he could: The Great Pennywise – The Dancing Clown. And, sure enough, that had been Mister Bob Gray's modest source of income for years to come.

What Bob Gray hadn't known was ...that in all that time... he was being watched. (And interestingly enough, he'd been watched by two very different sets of eyes.)

The first, and prettiest, set of eyes that'd been watching Mister Gray from afar belonged to Miss Melody Sharp. She was a provocative young woman with a lean build and a face that could charm the skin off a snake. Her hair was thick and golden and often prettily decorated with some ribbons or another. Her eyes were deep and beautiful, like a pair of sparkling sapphires. One look from her and it could melt any man's heart. (Well... almost any man's.) It was true. Miss Melody was a lovely thing, and even lovelier was her soul. She'd help just about any person in need, no questions asked. Miss Sharp was a kind girl with a gentle touch and a soothing voice. Why, her tone was so pacifying that her own birth-given name didn't do it justice. Yes, just about any man in the Derry township could agree that listening to Miss Melody Sharp speak was like being serenaded by a warm, beautiful song.

Now... don't ask me why... but poor Melody, for some unholy reason, had her sweet heart set on Mister Bob Gray. One could theorize that she took to him because he'd been so engaging in his performances. Perhaps he amused her which had, in some way, bewitched the sweet girl. One could also argue that she took to him because, admittedly, Mister Gray was a handsome man with those unconventionally attractive Scandinavian looks. Oh sure – he was tall and strong and his eyes were piercing blue. So blue, in fact, you could swear that god himself plucked two pieces of the sky and stuffed them right in Gray's sockets on the day he'd come squalling into the world.

So, without a doubt, Miss Melody Sharp had fallen for Mister Bob Gray. Unfortunately – because life just isn't fair, even if you are as darling and as elegant as Miss Sharp – the man could have cared less. She came around after his shows while he'd been winding down back behind the caravan, and it was always the same sad story.

“Evening, Robert!” she'd say with the prettiest smile. “I baked you a shepherd's pie.” And little Melody would approach Mister Gray, often times while he was still in his clown makeup, offering the man some painstakingly handmade gift or another. Poor thing. She went a-courtin' after Bob, day in and day out, never quite getting the hint that he was dead set on remaining a lifelong bachelor.

“Thank you, Miss Melody,” he'd always say, without so much as looking at her. His tone was often quiet, unimpressed, perhaps with a hint of eagerness for her to just go away. Now, there was nothing actually wrong with Mister Gray. Nothing criminal about him. He simply wasn't interested. Some folk balked at his persistent indifference to Miss Sharp, and that's how rumors circulated, but – true as gold – Bob only cared about Bob.

Melody didn't see this for what it was. She persisted in her own way, in spite of his antipathy. “There's a dance at the local hall coming up...” That was her usual line when that time of year came around. “Gee, I'd hate to go alone...”

But of course, Bob Gray, with that thick head of sandy hair sitting on that prominent forehead of his would look down at the hopeful, young woman, clear his throat, and say, “I'm sure you'll manage.” Then he'd turn right back around and stare into that mirror of his as he wiped his makeup from his skin.

Melody had taken Bob for a coy man, which was part of her whole denial over the issue. In spite of his day to day vocation, she was convinced he was shy. And that was the long and short of their relationship, if you had the cheek to call it such a thing.

Then... there had been the other set of eyes watching Bob Gray. These eyes were much different from those of Melody Sharp. These had been the devil's eyes. Eyes from another place – a dark place – not anywhere bright enough to be considered another world. It was like an unworld. A void. Nowhere that any man or woman would willingly go. Perhaps it'd been a place that led straight to hell for all one knew. Hell or death. Or perhaps both.

What is known about the Derry township is that a great evil thrived somewhere at its core. This was an unfortunate truth, one that no citizen wanted to advertise, but a truth with which every citizen was all too familiar. Some said the town was cursed. Others said that the evil bore the town, itself. There was no true agreement on the matter, but, true enough, it had been the same evil that plagued Derry in its later years to come. It was the same evil that eventually caused the Ironworks Factory explosion, the same evil that burned down the Black Spot. Hell, it was the same evil that skyrocketed both the citywide death toll and the headcount of missing children at an alarming rate. This evil... It had a mind. It was conscious. It was self aware. And, regrettably, It took notice of Mister Robert Gray.

For a brief time, It merely watched him. It studied everything about Gray – his daily routine, his habits, his apparel, and his performances. It took to him, you see. It took to his likeness. In a way, It envied Gray – how easily he drew in crowds of people. Gray simply saw them as potential meal tickets... easy coin.

But It...

It saw them as potential meals. Plain and simple.

Bob Gray hadn't been too difficult to drive to madness. No sir. All it took were some whispers in his mind, driving his thoughts to dark places, forcing the man to slowly become unhinged. Gray had begun to question his sanity the night he'd seen himself eat a boy. The creature – It – took to shapeshifting into the very spitting image of Bob Gray. It had strut around, looking exactly like him, right before his eyes, causing the man's mind to snap faster than a stale twig.

“I'm you, Bob!” It had said, dragging around the half dead body of a bleeding and terrified boy. That same boy had earlier been part of the paying crowd that gathered to see Gray's dancing clown performance. Gray screamed, night after night, watching a nightmarish facsimile of himself gruesomely eat away at the flesh and bone of one horrified patron or another.

Tragically, Bob Gray – the man – had become convinced that he, himself, was the killer. Such a thing wasn't true, but try telling that poor son of a bitch that after the terrors he'd been forced to see. Becoming unhinged didn't take long. No sir. Gray's grip on reality had long since slipped clean away and he couldn't live with himself any further. After two weeks of watching the other Bob Gray, Mister Gray fastened a rope up to the branch of a tall tree, secured it snugly around his neck, and promptly took his own life.

The creature... It was delighted. With the real man out of the picture, It was able to take over his appearance, his caravan, and his dancing clown routine. It took over his life. It was the new Mister Robert “Bob” Gray, now. It continued to feed off the patrons who came to see Pennywise do his dance – oh yes – like shooting fish in a barrel. Easy meals – and these types scared real easy, too. It ...Gray... made their meat jump with flavor.

The creature went by Bob's name, who frequently introduced himself as Pennywise, just as his muse (now swinging from a tree) had done. Nothing seemed to be standing in his way to endless meals. No more hunting and starving. No more worrying that he couldn't fill his belly before his long sleep. The whole setup was about as convenient as running a farm.

One day, however, after a few weeks of this delicious convenience, Miss Melody Sharp – oblivious and as innocent as pie – went calling on Mister Bob Gray just as she'd always been apt to do. Melody circled the caravan, peeking around for him, but found that, as it were, he didn't appear to be home. The caravan was, indeed, the man's home. She knew this well. He wasn't the type to stray too far from it for too long. However... without warning – without even a sound – Melody almost jumped out of her own skin when she turned to see Bob Gray just standing mere inches from her, as if he'd noiselessly appeared from thin air!

“Robert!” she'd yelped, raising a hand to her heaving chest. “You startled me half to death. That wasn't very kind, sir.” She chuckled a bit, for there was a part of Melody who had been amused by her own shock, and so her chuckle turned into a laugh. Composing herself, she then beamed a warm smile to the tall man staring her down with intense eyes; a man who sported a grin that didn't seem to sit quite right on his comely face. It looked like the smile of the clown, as if it had been glued, indefinitely, to Gray's lips. It did, indeed, give Melody pause before she continued. “I...” the young woman stammered, “I made you something.”

He stared her up and down – she was dressed in a frilly, sky blue dress with white trim. It was warm that day, so her hair was done up in some fancy knotwork to which only pretty girls like Melody knew the secret method. Gray found her... appealing. Just that brief bounce of shock had sent an appetizing aroma to his sensitive nose – like fresh meat simmering in a spicy stew.

Melody handed him a box. It had been conscientiously gift-wrapped, almost too perfect to tear open. “Go on,” she smiled.

Without a word, Gray nimbly untied the white ribbon around the box, then ripped at the shiny, red paper, peeling it away from the parcel. The box was a simple paper cube, likely something she'd found in her attic. Melody's smile widened as she blushed a little. “Open it up, Robert.”

Gray popped and flipped open the paper flap and looked down. Inside, there was some sort of ivory fabric, pleated and lacy, made from some fancy material or another.

“Here,” huffed Melody, too excited to wait for him to take it out. “Let me.” Miss Sharp removed the item and draped it around Gray's neck. “See?” Ruffs. She'd sewn together custom-made, Elizabethean neck ruffs for the man's Pennywise costume. “I hope you like it.” Still smiling and blushing, she awkwardly looked down.

Gray, he ...It... had never been given a gift before. Certainly nothing intended for the indulgence of his (Its) own vanity. He reached to the back of his neck and fastened the ruffs together, spying himself in one of the makeup mirrors. The ruffs, indeed, looked good. And because Gray looked good, he felt a multitude of good feelings wash over him in that instant. He turned to Miss Melody, clutched her delicate hand, stared into her eyes, and said, “Thank you, Miss Sharp. This is a beautiful gift.”

Melody's blushing cheeks reddened even more. “Will you wear it to your next show?” she'd asked. Some part of her expected Robert to tell her no, rip off the ruffs, stuff them back in that box, and send her on her way.

“Oh yes, Miss Sharp. Melody. Yes I will wear it. I will wear it to every show.” He held her hands a bit tighter, now. Just a squeeze. Then, he let her go.

Melody's heart nearly melted. Meanwhile, Gray excused himself, but unlike in the past, he did so warmly, with a tone that seemed to say, “Oh Melody... please do come visit me again...”

And so... she did. Miss Sharp, bless her innocent heart, did not realize the man called Robert Gray – to whom she'd devoted the remainder of her free time on Earth – was truly not the same man as the one that snubbed her again and again. No. She visited nightly with a foul thing. A skinwalker that had been asleep for billions of years, only having recently awoken within the last few hundred. Thereafter, It followed a sleep cycle of twenty-seven years only to emerge, hunt, and eat on the flesh of Derry folk, before returning to Its rest.

Melody was none the wiser, but she sure was tickled to see Mister Bob Gray hungrily wolf down her shepherd's pie for once in her life. She wondered... did his feelings change for her? Had Robert finally warmed up to her advances? And oh how he wore her hand sewn neck ruffs! Each time she caught his act, he'd faithfully had them wrapped round his oh-so-handsome collarbone. Melody was elated. Robert had finally taken to her.

Now, this is the point in our tale, dear reader, where one might think this wicked creature had depraved plans for the likes of poor Miss Melody Sharp. Did the thought cross Gray's mind to plunge the delicate young maiden into her deepest fears and then proceed to eat her alive? Oh yes! This thought did indeed cross Gray's mind – and more than once, assuredly.

But...

Melody had a certain something about her. Even all the Derry men could agree on that. Perhaps even some of the Derry women, if you can open up your mind and wrap your head around such a thing. Sure enough, that certain something, that unconditionally giving nature of Melody's, well... it was powerful enough to transcend barriers even of the dark, extradimensional kind. People like Miss Sharp don't come around all too often. This dark tale goes to show just how much of a rarity she'd been. Perhaps her certain something failed on the real Robert Gray, but... on the likes of this entity... on this creature... it sure hadn't failed in the least. Gray's ability to probe deep into Miss Sharp's psyche and read her every whim had, unbeknownst to her, enchanted a monster. Not an easy feat to do. Sometimes it was what was on the inside that counted... and in this case, it counted for one's very life.

Gray complimented Melody's shepherd's pie each and every time she'd brought it around, singing the utmost praise to its delicious texture and taste. The animal meat within had been seasoned just right, almost enough to rival the scared, savory flesh of a quivering child.

“They say the quickest way to a man's heart is through his stomach,” Miss Sharp would laugh.

Gray laughed along with her, oh how he laughed and laughed. Sort of a haunting giggle, really, but Melody cheerfully paid no mind.

One night, Miss Sharp came to Gray, very nervous, hoping to ask him the same question she'd asked each year. The dance. She wanted him to accompany her to the dance at the local hall where all of the township would surely be in attendance.

“Will you do me the honor?” she'd asked. “I know, I know. I ask every year, but–”

“What about now?” said Gray.

Melody quirked a half smile. “N-now?”

Gray took her small hand in his, cupping his other hand to her slender waist. “Would you kindly dance with me now Melody Sharp? Out here? Under the moonlight?”

On cue, her cheeks flushed and she smiled. “Of course, Mister Gray.” Miss Sharp couldn't believe it – she had won this man's heart.

Gray pulled her close, swaying gently, leading Melody along with his graceful strides. He rested his chin on the curve of her head as she felt the soothing heave of his chest against her face. For some time their quiet waltz continued, silently but beautifully, beneath the glow of the moon above, until Gray lifted her innocent face to meet his eyes. He leaned downward and gently kissed the young woman on her velvet, soft lips. She tasted as he'd imagined – sweet and fresh. Gray found himself unable to unlock his mouth from hers. Melody pressed against him in her own, eager way – meanwhile her small but firm hands cupped the rugged contours of his jawbone and neck.

Gray lifted Melody from her feet, still embracing, forever trapped in the perfect kiss. And the two eventually found themselves back inside his caravan, clothing off, making love on a bed roll stuffed with down. Melody had never lain with a man in all her life – and as far as Gray knew, she was assuredly his (Its) first, as well. Their lovemaking was raw, but slow, bathed in a soft light provided by a neighboring kerosene lamp.

Gray had hunted the humans... had fed on the humans... but this...

“I love you,” Melody Sharp had whispered against his lips, now wet from her kisses.

It had been a phrase the humans said to each other when their affections had... blossomed. Gray, for all his evil and wickedness, could only hear himself utter those same words back to her.

“I love you too...” Even though this monster had spent centuries playing deadly tricks on people, this was indeed no ruse. The creature that had driven Bob Gray to suicide, stole his life away, and murdered those who paid to see him dance, deeply felt love – of all things – for Miss Melody Sharp.

And as she moaned and panted against Gray as he bucked his hips into her, he resolved to himself that while almost all humans were potential meat – Melody Sharp certainly was not.

Time went on and the two continued their trysts, but as all stories have a beginning, there must come the inevitable end. Whether Melody Sharp knew it or not – she'd trapped the heart of a monster. Not a small victory, which undeniably makes her the hero of this tale. In spite of how everything shall boil down in the end, Melody Sharp was the one who had saved the monster inside of Mister Robert “Bob” Gray.

Now, Gray, for all that he (It) was... had been a cloud of malevolence cast over Derry. Perhaps, Melody did not perish by the wicked creature's hand in of itself – Its influence was still the death of her. Gray's corruption spread like a disease through the hearts of Derry residents far and wide. Murder. Rape. Arson. All accounts of such heinous deeds increased in frequency, namely when the creature's eyes were open.

Gray waited for Melody that night, as he always had each and every night. How he missed her when she was away. But Miss Melody never came to the caravan that night. She'd taken her usual walking path – oh yes – but this time some men had been waiting for the poor girl. They'd been watching Miss Sharp, memorizing her routine over the course of some time. These men knew that the young lady had coin on her and they were, unfortunately, the desperate criminal types in a rush to leave the great state of Maine. Now, be aware they didn't violate Miss Melody – no they did not. As previously stated, they were in a rush. The thoughts had crossed their ugly minds, sure, but the coin was all they wanted. Truth be told, had Melody handed over her purse, then everyone would've walked away in one piece. But Miss Sharp, deep in her gracious heart, was a hero – she was a fighter. And, bless her efforts, she tried to fight off those men, but she lost that battle. She lost it hard.

In fact, it had been in that very moment when one of the men – whose eyes Melody had nearly clawed from his face – stuck his knife deep in her belly that Gray looked up at the moon above and gasped in sync with Miss Sharp's final breath. Those awful men ran off with her coin – they even took her shepherd's pie. All the while, Gray raced across the Derry landscape, moving faster than any mortal man could do. Though he hadn't moved fast enough and, in the end, he found his love lying flat on the wet earth, bleeding red through the center of that sky blue dress of hers.

Gray took Melody in his arms and shushed her as she choked. Blood bubbled from the corners of her mouth and he held her closer, knowing all too well when a human's death was near.

“R – Robert...” she'd managed to say.

“I'm here,” he croaked in reply, his once smooth voice changing under the duress of watching her die. As Melody's life slipped away, all the affection Gray had for her sunk downward, deep into a forgotten place where he locked away his (Its) sensitivities. Gray's affection was replaced with a heavy layer of malice and hatred for Derry. Hatred for the humans. Hatred for their children. Oh how... how... he would make them suffer. Make them scream. Make them into his food forever and always. They took her from him. Miss Sharp could have been the one to quell his urgency to always consume – but not anymore.

Gray hugged Melody's limp, delicate body close and rocked her. He shuddered with grief so fiercely that he began to lose his form. Tendrils inched out from his spine as he arched forward, cradling his love. But... deep down... that affection still lingered. It was still there... somewhere... buried within a monster who wept into the night. Melody Sharp may have died, but her long lasting impression on Mister Robert “Bob” Gray never did.

[aion-rsa]

Frankenstein Adaptations Are Almost Never Frankenstein Adaptations

https://ift.tt/346GA1J

In an age of adaptation, we still don't have a faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley's classic genre novel.

facebook

twitter

tumblr

Mary Shelley's gothic novel Frankenstein is a story constantly being retold — but almost never has it been retold faithfully. In 2015, we got Victor Frankenstein, the latest in screen adaptations bearing the Frankenstein name, but having little to do with the original text. 

This habit of less-than-faithful adaptations of Shelley's work goes back a long time. The history of Frankenstein adaptations is the history of hodgepodge narrative parts continually being stitched, torn, and re-stitched back together into an amalgamation of what has come before. But, when "before" is 200 years of stage and screen adaptations, source material and inspiration bleed together, and the "original" becomes distorted — like a game of temporal telephone. 

But past the narrative convolution that comes with the passage of time, Frankenstein has seemingly always been a text that eschews faithful adaptation. From the very beginning, on the stage and as one of the first films ever made, Mary Shelley's original vision of a man and the creature he created has rarely been its own...

How Frankenstein Came to Be

For those with an interest in English literature, feminism, or the birth of modern science fiction, perhaps the story of how Frankenstein came to be is as famous as the book itself. The basic tale was first written down by an 18-year-old Mary Shelley (then Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) in 1816 while she and lover/future husband Percy Shelley were visiting Lord Byron in Switzerland.

Dubbed “The Year Without a Summer,” the eruption of Mount Tambora had the Europe of 1816 in the clutches of a volcanic winter, leaving the idle group with little to do in the form of outdoor recreation while staying near Lake Geneva. 

read more: The Bleeding Heart of Dracula

Instead, the literary colleagues took to reading German ghost stories to one another, leading to the challenge that they each pen their own ghost story. And thus, one of the first works of modern science fiction was born. Frankenstein, as a full novel, would be published anonymously two years later on New Year's Day in 1818.

Do you Know the Story of Frankenstein?

For those unfamiliar with the source material, Frankenstein is an epistolary novel, told in a series of letters from Captain Robert Walton to his sister, as well as in his journal entries (it should be noted that this narrative framing very rarely makes it into screen or stage adaptations).

Glory-driven Walton is on an Arctic expedition when his crew finds a cold and broken Victor Frankenstein. They pull him aboard, and Dr. Frankenstein relays the story of the monster he created to Walton--the monster he is pursuing across the ice.

It is a story of creation and abandonment and family. The Creature is arguably much more of the heroic, sympathetic protagonist here than Frankenstein, whose sin is not in playing God (though some have made that argument) but rather in leaving his creation alone in a confusing, cruel-to-difference world.

Unlike so many of his on-screen interpretations, the Creature of the novel is eloquent, thoughtful, and — at least at first — inspired by the beauty of the natural world. Later, he uses his gift for language to articulate his anguish, telling Frankenstein, "I am content to reason with you. I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me?"

The First Frankenstein Plays and Movies

If none of this plot or backstory sounds familiar, it’s probably not your fault. (Well, you could read Frankenstein, which is one of those classics that holds up remarkably well.) Most screen adaptations pick and choose what they want from the original material, more often drawing inspiration from the 1931 movie starring Boris Karloff than Mary Shelley.

read more: 13 Forgotten Frankenstein Movies

But a full two decades before director James Whale made the iconic horror film, Frankenstein was already a movie star — in fact, the story was one of the first committed to film. Frankenstein's adaptation to the screen happened roughly a decade after cinema itself was invented, making this self-admittedly "liberal adaptation" from Edison Productions one of the first movies ever.

Video of FRANKENSTEIN (1910 Edison Production) HD

One of the notable changes form the novel in the 12-minute film is a happy ending for Frankenstein and his new wife, Elizabeth (spoiler alert: in the book, the Creature kills Elizabeth on their wedding night, and Frankenstein himself later dies on the ice. Pretty bleak).

Of course, the decision to make Frankenstein into one of Edison's earliest motion picture productions did not happen in cultural isolation. There is an adaptation path to be traced between the publication of the novel and the creation of films like this 1910 classic and the 1931 version.

According to this Film School Rejects article, 1823 — the first year Frankenstein was adapted to the stage — had five separate plays on the stage. It was these early stage adaptations that first introduced the character of Victor Frankenstein’s assistant Fritz, who would later evolve into the Igor we know from so many later movie adaptations. 

The Boris Karloff film actually drew inspiration from a 1927 stage play by Peggy Webling, rather than the novel itself. And, moving forward into the era of such classics like Young Frankenstein or not-classics like the recently-released Victor Frankenstein, one could easily argue that most subsequent Frankenstein adaptations have more to do with James Whale’s 1931 film — and its 1935 sequel The Bride of Frankenstein — than they do with Shelley’s work.

The Most Faithful Adaptations to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Though many Frankenstein adaptations are more interested in the 1931 film or some action-oriented blockbuster (yes, I, Frankenstein, I'm looking at you), there have been attempts at a more faithful version over the years.

Kenneth Branagh took a stab at a faithful retelling of Frankenstein with his 1994 film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The movie does a slightly better job articulating the nuances of the Creature than most other adaptations, but still falls short of the mark. The film also changes the ending in a particularly jarring way, not only bringing the Creature's bride to life, but giving her Elizabeth's head and memories. Yikes.

David Crow makes a good argument on this site that Penny Dreadful's interpretation of the Creature in the form of Caliban is one of the most faithful versions of the character ever brought to screen.

Everything from the Monster's raven hair to his loquacious love for John Milton was transferred to television in tact. However, if you're looking for an adaptation that not only takes on the iconic character, but the full story, I would recommend the National Theatre's stage version undertaken in 2011.

British film director Danny Boyle brought Frankenstein to the stage starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller. The two well-known actors alternated the roles of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature every performance, creating a more literal thematic connection between the two characters. Two sides of the same coin. Two creatures eventually brought down by their guilt, hate, and anger.

The production was a relatively close adaptation of the original novel (with the problematic addition of a rape scene), and was broadcast to cinemas around the world through National Theatre Live, meaning that this adaptation, in some sense, was also a screen one.

However, the performance has yet to be released on DVD and, according to the theater, never will be if the play's creators have anything to say about it. The Powers That Be prefer that the ephemerality of the performance be preserved. One can only hope this means Frankenstein will find its way to cinemas again for more encore performances.

Why Does Frankenstein Resist Faithful Adaptation?

Why is Frankenstein so rarely adapted with a sense of fidelity? One need look no further than the earliest stage adaptation — Presumption: or the Fate of Frankenstein (1823) — to at least partially answer that question. Chris Baldick's book In Frankenstein's Shadow details how the play made great efforts to appease conservative backlash (many found the novel subversive and atheistic).

read more: A History of Frankenstein Comics

The production was nonetheless boycotted by a "friends of humanity" group, prompting the play's management to release the following statement: "The striking moral exhibited in this story is the fatal consequence of that presumption which attempts to penetrate beyond prescribed depths, into the mysteries of nature." 

Furthermore, director Richard Brinsley Peake introduced the Frankenstein's assistant character who "prepares the audience to interpret the tale according to received Christian notions of sin and damnation by telling them that 'like Dr Faustus, my master is raising the devil.'"  

Almost two centuries later, Daniel Radcliffe plays an incarnation of this character designed to explain to the audience how they should feel about Frankenstein's playing God in Victor Frankenstein. 

The Importance of the Female Perspective

As the daughter of anarchist philosopher William Godwin and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (who died 11 days after Mary's birth), Mary Shelley was a fascinating woman, one with much to say in a culture not-so-interested in what women had to say about it. 

One of the reasons Frankenstein so endures is because of its examination of the arrogance of man and the failings of a world without empathy — a theme that, of course, can be explored by anyone, but one that doesn't seem to get a lot of play in works undertaken by privileged white men.

It seems important to note, at this point, that most of the Frankenstein adaptations (though certainly not all) have been undertaken by men who are perhaps less culturally-motivated to consider the more traditional way life is brought into this world. After all, due to the limitations Western society places on both genders, while science has historically been a man's domain, child-rearing has, historically, been a woman's.

Journalist Sady Doyle recently responded to Victor Frankenstein director Paul McGuigan's recent assertion that Mary Shelley's original work is "dull as dishwater," by outlining the convincing theory that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein as a sort of revenge for her sister Fanny (given name: Frances), who was abused for being illegitimate and eventually killed herself, writing in her suicide note: "You will soon forget there was ever such a creature as..."

There are many interpretations of the Frankenstein story — many of them autobiographically-based. This is one of the reasons it is such a good story. But a parent's neglect and the toll it plays not only on the child, and everyone in his life, is certainly a central one. And one that is often neglected in Frankenstein adaptations in favor of exploring the themes of science, nature, and man's hubris specifically in relation to his work. These interpretations are not mutually exclusive, but the latter is often valued over the former.

It is perhaps easy to look at Frankenstein, and its two male protagonists, and to adapt it with little attention to the importance of women and other socially-devalued characters in the story. After all, they are all periphary characters. But they are the characters who suffer the most. Or at least the ones who suffer the most with the least amount of power to change their fates.

Victor and his Creature are constantly suffering, but they have created their own suffering and have many chances to alter their own destinies. Elizabeth and the Creature's female companion are never granted that same power.

The Future of Frankenstein Adaptations

As this Den of Geek article points out, faithfulness does not equate to quality. Some of the most faithful screen adaptations of books are the worst, while some of the least faithful adaptations can become something better. There are too many variables involved, too many possible permutations to make sweeping generalizations. And, in the world of Frankenstein adaptations, for example, Whale's 1931 film remains the classic, one that continues to influence culture in its own important ways.

However, it would be nice to get a modern Frankenstein adaptation that is more readily available than Danny Boyle's stage version and more complete than Penny Dreadful's Creature — if only for all the high school English teachers who need something to show when they are out sick.

Sadly, as far as I know, there are currently no faithful Frankenstein adaptations in the works. What is happening in the Frankenstein adaptation world? Recently, a whole lot of biopics about Mary Shelley. In 2017, Elle Fanning played the author in Mary Shelley, a conventional biopic that told the story of the relationship between the young author and Percy Shelley, as well as the ways in which Mary Shelley felt out of step with her time. The film boasted a female writer, Emma Jensen, female producers, and a female director, Haifaa Al-Mansour (Wadja).

Elsewhere, HBO Max has ordered a series called The Shelley Society from Riverdale/Sabrina showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. The series will depict a young version of Mary Shelley, who moonlights as a hunter of monsters and supernatural threats (including a manifestation of Mary’s own literary creation, Frankenstein’s Monster).

Perhaps a continued interest in Mary Shelley's fascinating life will eventually drum up some excitement for a more faithful retelling of her most famous story. In the mean time, we'll have to make do with what we've got: one of the best genre novels of the last few centuries.

Kayti Burt is a staff editor covering books, TV, movies, and fan culture at Den of Geek. Read more of her work here or follow her on Twitter @kaytiburt.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

facebook

twitter

tumblr

Feature

Books

Kayti Burt

Nov 21, 2019

Frankenstein

Mary Shelley

Boris Karloff

Horror Movies

31 Days of Horror

from Books https://ift.tt/2NhOpee

[papatonyinsandiego]

Non-Verbal Communication, Part Two:  Distancing Mechanisms and External Validation

Part One Can Be Found Here...

Pretty Privilege

In the gay Leather/Kink/Fetish community, just as in any other culture or subculture, there are the “👍 WINNERS! 👍” and the ….losers…  

Are we all sick of that?  I sure am.  My experience is that 100% of gay kinky men are done with being judged on externals that we have no control over.

It’s a primate-ape fact of life that desirable features make us more fuckworthy.  They can also be a trap.  I want to talk about it from the other side.  Pretty Privilege DOES exist in our Tribe.  I have made use of it myself.  

Back when I was young, virile and FINALLY getting a lot of approval from men, I attended a lot of five-star, crowded “elite” parties, both clothed and naked.  It felt GREAT to be “New Meat” and highly-desirable.  

If the gloriously beautiful men around me were bitchy and insecure, then I guessed I would try that on for a while.  I got way too good at it.  I am ashamed of my behavior back then.  A lot of the virtuous acts that I have performed since those days are my atonement for how I fell into bad behaviors for a while.

After a while, though, I noticed something odd.  The vast majority of men in my life had no interest in who was inside the pretty exterior.  I realized that I was just a mobile dildo to that crowd.  

In fact, I got picked-on if I stepped out of bounds in some way.  It was like trying to balance on a tightrope of other peoples’ expectations.  Fall off, and you would never get back on.  It was conditional approval.

The clincher for me occurred after a big fuck-party, when I showed up at Sunday brunch in a Hawaiian shirt, flip-flops and shorts.  My brunch companions refused to eat with me, unless I changed back into full black leather.  That was the last time that I associated with them, and with that subculture.  I happily stepped into a much, much slower lane.

At age 25, I gave up using my privilege at others’ disadvantage.  I chose a different path of seeking real and useful wisdom.

Assertions And Declarations

I assert that I am more than what you can see.  

There are depths to me that are worth knowing.  

I am an amalgam of many flavors, good and bad.

I am not just a single, obvious musical note.  I am a symphony.  

I assert the same about YOU.  There is majesty, worth, and a valuable contribution to the world inside all of us.  I take that attitude with me wherever I go, treating everyone as my favorite brother or sister.  I am rarely disappointed.

External Validation

Being given approval of any kind is delightful, so we work hard to get more of it.  We can spend thousands of hours every year, pumping up bigger and bigger muscles.  We can have our teeth straightened and whitened, along with hair-removal and spray-tanning, $3,000 leather outfits, and darkening that gray beard.

We may have experiences of all of those attributes and many more.  They can bring on flattering and pleasurable reactions, and allow us to “win” on some level.

No matter what, sooner or later, the crash arrives.  Age, sudden disasters, infirmity and gravity work against our following the same path forever.  That’s when we will be needing the emotional growth that we may have allowed to dwindle while we were otherwise occupied.

To this day, I still go to the gym several times a week, but I ALSO work on my social skills, and provide value to my circle of true friends.  My biggest struggle is with humility.  I’m still trying to figure that one out, and I am open to suggestions.

Distancing Mechanisms

The other side of that same coin has to do with keeping others at arm’s length.  Let’s start with WHY we would want to protect ourselves from others.

We are all born perfect, trusting and uninhibited.  We learn to be otherwise, when we receive wounds along the way:  

• “NO, STUPID!  The OTHER way!”  “People think that I’m stupid?”

• “Don’t talk to me, ugly!  Take those big ears somewhere else!”  “What’s wrong with my ears?”

• I’ll give you something to cry about!”  “It’s bad for me to cry?”

These wounds cause us to make decisions that we hang on to, long after they have become obsolete.  We may use ever-growing musculature to keep others at a distance. Or five layers of leather. Or whatever else helps us to keep possibly stressful interactions at arms’ length.

Those same predicaments can also create new, pleasurable possibilities, but we have to be OPEN to that idea in the first place.  

Cynicism protects our tender hearts, but it can also prevent us from noticing when the Real Breakthrough Opportunity shows up.

One decision that I still struggle with can be expressed as “I’m not going to let you reject me.  I reject you FIRST!”  That’s on a very deep, early level, but I am not being driven by it so much any more, now that I consciously recognize it.  Eventually.  I no longer feel that my foot is nailed to the floor, while I go around and around the same problem, doomed to repeat it.  Therapy helped.

I now laugh about my flaws as a personal foible.  At that point, I clean up my mess:  “Oh, there I go again.  Sorry.  I am glad that I caught myself.  My anger does not belong to you.  I’m not doing that any more.  Let’s start over.”

Attitude Queens with a Capital “A”

So when you see that gorgeous man who seems to have everydamnthing going for him, moving through the crowd with a fixed look on his face that says “Don’t bother me,” spare him some loving sympathy.  He is just as damaged as you are, despite external appearances.  He’s just expressing it in his own way.

He’s lonely too.  He is misunderstood.  He struggles with finding unconditional love and deep friendship, just like anyone.

If I see somebody who is broadcasting on that channel, I get right past his defenses, 99% of the time.  I do it by treating him as a good-hearted man, with value as a possible friend.  Like any human being, he is starved for honest respect and affection.

Our Brains React Differently With Objects of Desire

Recent MRI-scan tests have shown that our mental processes change radically when we meet a politician, a celebrity, or a porn actor.  We put them on a mental pedestal.  Star-Fuckers, World’s Biggest Fans and Celebrity Stalkers can be a real chore for someone who just wants to walk down the street unmolested.

Think of the porn actor who is making some extra money as a go-go dancer on an elevated box at a big dance-party.  He has drunks pawing at him like he was a piece of meat.  They are making his privates very public.  No matter how much he can rationalize this (”It’s all part part of the J-O-B”), he can also get pretty tired of it.  Feigning enthusiasm can be a tedious chore.

That's why I always do one, specific behavior with every go-go dancer:  I bring him some ca$h to stuff into his shorts, but I only do it in the area between his hip and his dick.  I am not going for the gold.  I smile in an honest, happy way, look him in the eye, and tap my cheek with two fingers.  He smooches me on the cheek, and throws his arms around me with honest pleasure.  I take that chance to express some honest compliments about his dancing, and then we disengage affectionately.

I gave him a Warm Fuzzy - A moment of sweet, honest human interaction.  As a result, I am loved and respected by that man, forever afterward.  I looked for the good in him.

The Calendar-Signing Party

I attended an event that turned out to be well-stocked with extremely handsome, muscular men.  They were in town to promote a charity calendar, and I was politely interested in knowing more.

After about an hour, a man came up to me.  He was the husband of the calendar’s creator, and he was curious to know more about me.  He had watched me speak to every one of the calendar models, and had noticed that they all dropped their shields around me in seconds, and were at their ease.  They didn't feel the need to be “on” with me. They all hugged me, as their own idea.  I almost never ask for hugs.  I prefer to earn them.

I get a lot of hugs.

The Bottom Line

The point that I am belaboring is that we can rise above our easy and obvious biases.  We can choose to let go of physical external appearance as a point of reference.  Those are just what we can see.  If we open up our own hearts to the possibility that somebody is a good man, then he may pleasantly surprise us.

I am VERY rarely disappointed.

[libertarianbarbarian]

United State Wars Troopers

United Starwars Troopers

   Facts:

- https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Galactic_Empire/Legends#Government_and_politics

 - https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Loyalist

 - https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Galactic_Republic#Organization

 - https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sector_Governance_Decree

 - https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Delegation_of_2,000

 - https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Petition_of_2,000

 -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers#Militarism

 - https://www.amazon.com/Expanded-Universe-Worlds-Robert-Heinlein/product-reviews/0441218830?pageNumber=2

  OPED WARNING

“My grandmother used to tell me stories about the old days, a time of peace when the Avatar kept balance between the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, and the Air Nomads. But that all changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop the Fire Nation.” Oh yeah, I’m going to get that dorky with it today!

So, here’s the spiel, we’re divided as ever. The left hates the right, liberals hate “nazis”, or “fascists”, or “racists” …or whatever the hell it is now and days. But there’s something to be said about coming together. I’m sorry but no matter what news source you look at whether it be CNN, or Newsmax…or Fox News, then you’re inevitably going to come up with one conclusion. We’re divided. The only real thing that you’re going to see is the source of the division from network to network.

I know, I know, you’re tired about hearing all of this bullshit by now. Got it, and I am too damn it…but hear me out on this one. This is classically, no comically standard procedure, and probably something that all of us have seen before. One look at my FACTS section and you’ll know where I’m going with this. I personally thought about it for a moment and started laughing my ass off about the whole thing myself!

So yeah, Star Wars, and Starship Troopers. Something everyone knows, and probably loves to hell. Well if you take a close look at everything you start to see a pattern. Back when “Lucasfilms” came out with the prequels of the series that everyone, except my goofy ass, hated they tried to explain how the galaxy was as fucked as it was. Back in the beginning of everything, regarding the prequels, it was kind of calm and had the normal shenanigans going on in politics. You know, a little corruption here, a lobbyist there, special interests for specific politicians popping up all over the place, normal stuff.

Well the biggest thing that popped up was the clone wars. I understand that it didn’t really kick off until episode II but stick with me on this. There was major upheaval. One man, spoiler alert…if you didn’t already know, Senator Palpatine rose through the ranks to prominence. In the background he was manipulating something that they call “the outer rim”, or a special group of planets in the galaxy that weren’t part of the “Galactic Republic”. Think of like a foreign interest’s type of thing. Not to long after that war broke out between a group in “the outer rim” and the “Galactic Republic” called the clone wars.

Yes, we’ve got little Anakin Skywalker, emotional little shit bag, and Padme Amidala as the protagonist’s along with young Obi-Wan Kenobi. There’s something to be said about the main political shit going on around the same time and the division it caused amongst the masses though. Basically while the “Clone Wars” were going on you still had senators going “rabble rabble” in one big hall that represented their planet and then Senator Palpatine inching his ass in to the Supreme Chancellor spot…or I guess their version of a president? Anyways slowly but surely, he started to use the war itself as a springboard to slowly limit the powers of the individual citizens, then BAM! Out comes the “Galactic Empire” that we’re all familiar with and the still evermore moody Anakin Skywalker now Darth Vader.

Ok, I think we’re all caught up now. The reason why I say that there was a major division going on here that made me laugh is that this all sounds vaguely familiar. Right now, as it is, we have a group of elites in Washington D.C. that are pretty much dictating what and who we are as individuals along with what we say socially. Take a look at the news I’ll wait. Are you back yet?

Alright, the real big thing that I looked in to as hard as I could was what the main doctrine of the Galactic Republic had as its backbone. I couldn’t find it exactly so I had to pull some crime show forensic shit to figure out what the hell was going on, and why was it so easy for that form of government to be broken up. Well looking at it they did have a “constitution”, but from everything I could find it was basically weak as hell. Point one for America right there.

It was nothing during a time of war for Palpatine to just waltz right in and declare himself the Supreme Chancellor. He still had to divide the senate and get them to argue amongst each other. Cause a little chaos here, question the morals of a specific candidate. Ahem…call in to question the freaking Supreme Chancellor Valurum, the guy before him. There ya go, bad guy in office for the movies to continue.

The part that really started to get me laughing though was the way everything was set up after I started to do my research for this blog. They had almost the exact same set up we did. “Office of the Chancellor”, “Galactic Senate”, “Judicial Department”. If you ask me that kind of sounds like the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court. Well I think that one might be a draw…maybe. Hold up, all the power was easily transferable to the Galactic Senate, because red tape. Yup, they put out all this shit that pretty much made it easy for them to grab power from anyone and everyone they wanted to through bureaucracy. As a matter of fact, Palpatine our good old Sith buddy here added more on to it.

One thing that I’m pretty sure everyone else knows, even though we’ve got a shit ton of red tape going through our own government here it’s damn near impossible to do that from any one of our three branches. They try, they always do, but because of the constitution of the United States of America, ahem, “You will fail!” I’m sorry that was just way to damn easy not to do.

So to say that we’re close to but not quiet like the Star Wars franchise is kind of funny. Yes, we are. We’re not exactly like space traveling ninjas that can do some pretty cool looking Dragon Ball Z stuff, nor are our two governmental systems EXACTLY alike, but we have something that they have and it’s political officials causing both division and derision with in our own society.

Palpatine isn’t just one specific person with in our own in real life society. Hell no! Instead he’s an amalgamation of several different things and groups we have going on right now. Social justice warriors, the ones that want to sit there and tell you that we have to accept the what is told to us by their community because no matter the situation they are right and we are wrong and that’s the way we’ve set it up for, I don’t know, millennia now. There’s the politicians that placate to the exact same kind of bullshit that’s been reiterated by the social justice warriors and those who are from the opposite that lets be honest here kind of issue the same rhetoric and year after year slowly increase government power and their paychecks.

There’s also, and you know I don’t like these folks here, big tech. I’m all for a company growing in the free market. I’m all for it becoming a big conglomerate of sorts. What I’m not for is that company monopolizing the market that it’s in, nor am I for that company not obeying the laws of its country of origin. Oh! Yeah almost forgot, here’s the liberal in me if you want to put it that way, I’m also not for these companies blatantly censoring those of a creed, race, political choice, religion, or country of origin. We should all have freedom of speech and be willing to accept the consequences of our actions no matter what caused them. All of those factors and groups are our Palpatine.

One thing that my ass is definitely going to talk about here is the Galactic Republic a little more. If you take a deeper dive in to the Star Wars franchise, you’ll notice something as well. Doing research about the whole Galactic Republic, and then the Galactic Empire there was a promise that further divided people. The promise of safety.

Granted everyone wants to be safe. Hell, I want to be safe, but there’s something to be said about HOW you are safe. Call me heated now because damn this is going to be a touchy one. Are you anymore safer if you relinquish how you are safe? Are you any safer in your very free mind if you have someone forcibly tell you how to be safe? I’m sorry but my answer is always going to be no. As should yours. The Galactic Republic, much like our own government, slowly eroded its own power through bureaucratic policy after bureaucratic policy. Even in the movies you can blatantly see them do this in the few scenes that they hold in the movies. Hell, one of the most famous movie quotes is “So this is how liberty dies…with thunderous applause.”

I’m sorry but there’s always one sure fire way to be able to get people to commit to that, make them afraid then divide them. We see it play out plenty of times a day here in our own country. The news reports things out of context, or completely false on both sides. Legislatures and other government officials will add more laws to try and cover up what we as a nation had as one of our founding documents. Then the radicals from either side will sit there and either fight against it with their utmost or tell the general population that there needs to be more.

It’s not right. Now there is a flipside to this coin. Militarism. And here’s the little gobblety goop that caused me to take pause and add in Starship Troopers to this whole mess. This whole series started off as a book that was written by Robert A. Heinlein. Don’t ask, I don’t know how to seriously pronounce his name. But I’m pretty sure that not many of my readers will know who the hell that is. I’m pretty sure that my readers would know more about the comical movie that was made in the nineties. I sure as hell didn’t know that there was a book written before the movie.

Now I say “Militarism” because that’s pretty much what Starship Troopers is all about. And it sure as hell mirrors other things that are going on now and days as well. The left has been militarized to form groups like “Antifa”. The right now has groups that won’t start a fight, nor are they racist, but sure as hell will finish a fight like “The Proud Boys”. Don’t get me wrong I have no issues with the proud boys, however I don’t think that their answer is quiet the right one. Some of the things that both groups do that could end up looking like some engagement on “Klendathu”.

Basically, though, in the 1950’s this writer Robert A. Heinlein wrote a sci-fi critique of what he believed was wrong with the U.S. at the time. He’d been stated for “glorified the military…Specifically the P.B.I., Poor Bloody Infantry, the mudfoot who places his frail body between his loved home and the wars desolation-but is rarely appreciated…he has the toughest job of all and should be honored.” Cool so he’s a fan of the military right? Well not so fast there. I, as a veteran of the Army, wouldn’t stand for the bullshit in the movies that he put out.

You’re only a citizen if you’ve served two years in the Starship Troopers military. Only citizens can vote. Only citizens have the right to apply for a license to procreate with their partner. I’m sorry but that would be more towards the right side of things. I can’t name a single military veteran that would actually be cool with that. Yeah democrats getting into our highest position in the executive offices would absolutely mean budget cuts. Oh, and that means that they end up drawing back on forces or start kicking out soldiers for the simplest or pettiest of reasons. No that’s not a way to go ahead and start doing things either.

See the thing about Heilein here is that he had a very crazy view on things. He looked at the way that the U.S. was at the time and thought “hey we need to hand out more ass whoopin’s.” I’m sorry what? Yes, that’s right, the guy who wrote Starship Troopers thought that there wasn’t enough corporal and capital punishment now and days.

Now if you said something like all around I might could get around that if we were talking a little less harsh corporal punishments than used to be passed around back in the day. The women suffrage movement should have been an example for just women, but for everyone. We don’t need a repeat of the “rule of thumb” for the next poor soul that fucks up in a way that’s irredeemable to their partner. No, I’m down with corporal punishment if it’s with less severe crimes than the big ones. You know rape, child molestation, man slaughter, stuff like that. I think that we can all agree that child molestation needs to be more punishable than “three squares and a cot”.

But one thing that we’ve shied away from what we use to be, and it caused us as a nation. I’m not suggesting that we all of a sudden put Rico on the stocks and start whipping him. It was negligible homicide, and he didn’t know what he was doing leave the poor kid alone. No, if you really want to keep people together first you have to start with a set of minds that things need to be more punishable than they are. Go ahead and call the child molester out and sentence him to death. It’s been proven that its more cost effective to our jail system anyways, and who in their right or left mind wouldn’t want to protect their own children?

No people, one less murderer is still one less murderer. Make sure there’s a time period where they do a more in-depth investigation to make sure that we’ve got the right guy. Make sure that there weren’t any false allegations handed forward against the person you say is a child molester. But if you’re caught selling drugs to someone that you know are illegal and could get the person addicted then you should absolutely not be a seamstress getting that “three squares and a cot”. No hell no, but the person’s ass to work, make them take responsibility for what they did. Put their ass to work like we use to with chain gangs, there’s plenty of substantive materials that we could use the jail systems help on producing.

Of course, the libertarian in me is going to cry out…right…about…now! There’s something to be said though about repealing other things away. No direct profit for any given company in regard to the labor put for by the “chain gang”. Give the profit nation wide to those we put to labor, have them reap some sort of reward. You commit to A form of corporal punishment and rehabilitate them at the same time. Win, win.

Now that I’m off of my little pulpit there’s something that goes back to topic here. In Starship Troopers there’s one agreement that I can make with author. Some conflicts have to be resolved by force. One thing that I will absolutely agree and disagree with at the same time. We didn’t need to go to Iraq, but we did need to go to Afghanistan. There were terrorists that were wreaking havoc on the whole of Afghanistan and in order for those people to chose for themselves what and who they want to be we needed to weed that shit out. No, we didn’t go there to do that originally. Yes, we went there to get Osama Bin Laden. But it was something that once we found we couldn’t stand for as a nation.

So yes, I agree that if we have an incursion against us, like 9/11, then we have to retaliate just like we did or what happened in Pearl Harbor. But when we find further injustice and the people cry out, well fuck if they ask us for aide then it’s our responsibility to answer. Hell, no should we be looking for “WMD’s”. We all figured out what the ploy was there real quick. Yes, they had a dictator that was gassing them pretty much every day. But the responsibility belongs to those countries around them to take refugee’s and protect them.

So, there’s absolutely an answer to all this division we have…and yeah, we see it all the time in our media. We have to sit on our high horse as a nation and as a people and first cut the division bullshit and then stop being like “Star Wars” or “Starship Troopers” and agree to disagree. I parrot this bullshit all day long and damn near every freaking blog. We need the third party, libertarians, to go ahead and help things along so that the two warring political parties we have right now don’t divide and conquer us. We see this all the time in our movies and books. We have a choice, do we still want looting, rioting, and others reaching across the isle to call each other names and censor them…Or do we want to be like Palpatine and start the first “Galactic Empire” and make everyone fear us?

[monkeyandelf]

The cosmic gardeners who created our humans

Millions of years ago, the Formatierras, the most evolved race in the galaxy, decided that the Earth was appropriate to carry out a galactic-level multi-species reserve experiment, like a cosmic Noah’s ark.

Thus begins this exciting story. The conclusions will be only yours. Let’s continue .. The planet was prepared and began to “sow” a multitude of plant and animal species from different parts of the galaxy. Within the format of the formatierras was the creation of an original and dominant species, built with the genetics of at least three extraterrestrial races, plus the one corresponding to the predominant planet. After many tests and studies it was decided that the root species from where they would take the primary chromosomes for the new species, was that of the great saurians that inhabited the Earth and that perfectly adapted to the planet and its purposes. The person in charge of the creation of the new species destined to evolve as human on the planet was Wotan (take it as a representative subject), creating the original Manu from the genetics of the reptiles that inhabited it. A long time later, Enki and Enlil arrive and create the Lhulu from the Manu for their particular purposes. Then the Lhulu breeds with the Manu and the Lhumanu is born. Thousands of years later Baphomet (take as representative subject), representative of one of the races whose genetics was used to reinforce the root chromosomes in the creation of Manu, enters the scene by signing the pact with Moses. This breed is the Alpha Draconis Reptilians. Then we have Wotan and the Nordics in charge of the creation of Manu, and whose genetics were used for it. On the other hand Baphomet and the Reptilians, whose genetics were also one of the other two used together with that of the formatierras, and in the middle of the Annunakis, Enki and Enlil who returned to manipulate the original Manu to create the Lhulu, and then , as they crossed each other, they began a new race, the Lhumanu. Therefore we have four races as possible claimants of our possession, the Formatierras, the Nordics, the Reptilians and the Annunakis. What is the value of Lhumanu as a unit of Carbon? His multi-species genetics. The inactive genes of our DNA, (the considered genetic garbage), are those corresponding to the species that were used for its creation, and the active ones are the consequence of that extraterrestrial amalgam, we Pasú.

We have the certainty of this story, but we have no proof. Only time will confirm or discard it. Let us now see what Wotan and Baphomet represent in subjective reality. These real and almost mythological Beings, object of adoration and pleitesia, more than specific subjects they represent, energies, civilizations, ideas, paradigms and archetypes, alternative realities and universes of subjective reality. It is as if we were talking about Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill, Nazism and capitalism, the people and the crown, freedom and oppression, the extremes of the same body. Wotan represents the root of civilization, the primitive and pagan, the primary knowledge of humanity, the hyperborean, the closest to the origin. Baphomet represents change or evolution, the modern and Christian, the insubstantial knowledge of society, the southern, the furthest from the origin. Primitive man pure, innocent and wise against the present man corrupted, sinful and ignorant. Both one and the other are still two sides of the same coin, the thirsty masters of power behind ideas. One sharing knowledge in exchange for idolatry, order and indoctrination, the other hiding knowledge in exchange for manipulation, chaos, pleasures and fortune. Lights and shadows of the same body, the matter of the 4 × 4 matrix space. Which would you choose if you had no other option? Undoubtedly to Wotan. How do we understand Wotan and Baphomet from the point of view of energies? For that we have to withdraw to the previous article, to the substrate “e”, the mother space not yet defined by a matrix, where the lights and shadows move before being manifested in the matter. As we said, nothing happens without it having happened before in mental MS and etheric MS. The primordial Merkaba de vaet (0-) is the mother cell of matter and energy, whose charge is neutral, not by equilibrium, but by absence of polarity, that is, it is the only thing in this reality that is not composed of positive charges and negatives themselves. Although its vaet (temporal space angular vector) is (0-), zero vaet (without orientation) and negative in space (lack thereof), it only takes shape and load when they come together, giving space and time according to matter and energy. Since everything is energy, and matter is condensed energy vibrating at a very low frequency, we could also assume that all energy is matter vibrating at a very high frequency. Therefore we can postulate that everything is matter. Following this reasoning, mental MS and etheric MS are as material as this 4 × 4 MS, only outside the range perceptible by our senses. As we need more subtle energies to subsist, such as those produced in our body by food, by the air we breathe, by the sun that warms us, by the emotions and feelings that rejoice us, the lights and shadows also need energies more subtle, obtained, in this case, from the passions of the pendulum ends. A football game releases as much energy from its fans and fans as from a concentration camp in World War II. It does not matter the circumstance or the act but what is obtained by it. How do you think a cow feels in the slaughterhouse, or a bull in the sand? Who consumes that energy produced by stress and released by the animal? Yes, he succeeded, you in the etheric plane. Why? Because you can’t eat a steak or a hamburger the way you eat it in the Matrix Space 4 × 4.

As you will see, everything is relative to the matrix space that you inhabit, be aware of it or not. Every time a ritual is done in the name of Baphomet, either directly or implicitly, the energy released by the participants is consumed directly by it, it is their private banquet. A Catholic mass, a Masonic course, a prayer chain where an image is asked or prayed, etc., etc., etc., are private agapes for the lights and shadows of this game. Wotan feeds on positively charged energies, and Baphomet on negatively charged energies, who defines the charge? Our selves on duty. For example, in a Catholic mass positive and negative energies are released depending on what conscious or unconscious thinking we have at the time of the ceremony. Fulanita asks for Menganito’s health, positive energy. Menganito apologizes for what he did to Zutanito, positive and negative energy. Zutanito went to Mass by obligation, negative energy. In a single ceremony he fed the lights and shadows unconsciously, and the sponsor consciously because he is the representative and intermediary between the producer and the consumer. But as the demand for food is great, because the armies are also great, it is only necessary to possess the selves so that they commit the acts of thoughts, words and deeds that release the energy demanded by both Wotan and Baphomet. Meanwhile, we are drained as piles, and we cannot retain enough energy to nourish our Being and that it manifests freely and fully. If we free ourselves from the lights and shadows, all the energy will remain in us and the path to liberation will be much faster and easier. We cannot get Wotan and Baphomet out of this reality, but we can get them out of our interior. The million dollar question is why does the Do allow them to feed on us? And the answer is very simple, because we allow it for what is stated in the article “letter from an initiate.” We decided to fulfill that role in the game of creation, we decided to continue being lambs and food, so that the pendulum continues to move. Only a few really want to change roles, stop being lambs and become wolves, attentive and owners of their energy and food. Meanwhile Wotan and Baphomet continue to dispute the Lhumanu, not only for the food it generates, but for being a holder of an alien genetic bank rarely seen and something they want since our creation, something so precious to them that they sacrificed their own evolution for to get it. Today, Wotan and Baphomet are no longer strangers and cannot hide so easily within you, because they have known your face and will recognize you when they take hold. The only difference between Adolf Hitler and you is that he was aware of who he fed and who he wanted to feed. Since he could not free a whole race of light and shadow, he could, however, try to give him the best choice within the limited duality. Sean Ser and they will get Wotan and Baphomet to throw them out of their mouths because they will no longer serve as food, they will be able to free themselves in particular, and perhaps tomorrow, the Human race will only feed the Human because they will be vaet (0-) the mana of the Do that feeds to the crystallized Being that lives within the Virya. Read the full article

[yeonchi]

Doctor Who Series 12 Review Part 5/10: Fugitive of the Judoon

Air date: 26 January 2020

The Doctor Who fandom is in further meltdown this week as we deal with further bombshells on top of all the bombshells from the series up to this point.

My spoiler-free thought for this episode: “We’re gonna need David Tennant back at this point to explain what is going on.”

At this point, I have caught up with the last three episodes. Weekly posting of reviews will continue from next week. Spoilers continue after the break. Make sure you’ve watched the entire series up to the end of this episode before you continue on.

That big bombshell

Before the series started, we did get confirmation that the Judoon would be returning. That was a pretty good cover for this episode.

This week, we saw the debut of a new Doctor played by Jo Martin. Talk about representation, amirite? Look, in all honesty, I’m not too worried about this being an SJW red flag over this being something that could potentially rattle the status quo of Doctor Who. John Hurt as the War Doctor did do that, but eventually, we came to understand that it was because of three reasons - there was a discrepancy between the Eighth and Ninth Doctors in that there was no regeneration, Christopher Eccleston was unable to return for the 50th Anniversary and Steven Moffat wanted to explore what would happen if the Doctor used up all twelve regenerations.

On a side note, Jo Martin is pretty good as the Doctor. It should also be noted that she is the first black Doctor in the series (maybe not actually the Doctor depending on how this series turns out). What are the chances that this was done for fanservice because people were expecting a more radical choice for the Thirteenth Doctor (as if Jodie Whittaker being female and a feminist wasn’t radical enough)?

Personally, I’ve never been a fan of Chameleon Arch stories. I think that if you (forcibly) conceal yourself as a lesser species despite having superior powers, abilities and knowledge, then it demeans who you really are and makes you look like a bit of a coward. John Smith put it best in The Family of Blood when he was struggling over whether to open the fob watch and become the Doctor again as it meant that this John Smith wouldn’t exist anymore. In the end, he didn’t stand up and insist on staying John Smith, thus making him a coward either way.

So, upon becoming the Doctor again and learning that 13 is also the Doctor, Ruth (we’ll call her this from now on) surmises that the Doctor is from her future, yet the Doctor doesn’t remember being Ruth. Given the design of her TARDIS and her not recognising the sonic screwdriver, I’m surmising that Ruth is based on the classic series Doctors. Let’s take a look at three possible theories I’ve come up with.

Theory 1: Parallel universe/Alternate timeline

This seems to be the most popular and easy-to-explain theory among fans. It would certainly explain the Master’s reappearance and it doesn’t change the status quo too much. However, Chris Chibnall said that Ruth is “definitively the Doctor” (how that sentence even makes sense I don’t know) and that there is no parallel universe involved, which could potentially jeopardise everything.

The Doctor Who Wiki documents many incarnations and alternate versions (including non-canonical versions) of the Doctor other than those we have seen onscreen. However, the fact that Ruth might come from a parallel universe would be too simple unless it’s part of a bigger thing in the story arc. I’m foreseeing a Dimensional Merge thing going on.

(If Peter Cushing actually ends up being acknowledged as canon or an incarnation of the Doctor onscreen, then I’m going to be pissed)

Theory 2: The Valeyard

The Valeyard, a villain from the Sixth Doctor’s Trial of a Time Lord series, was seemingly forgotten until it was mentioned twice in the Moffat era, during The Name of the Doctor and Twice Upon a Time. The Valeyard is apparently an amalgamation of the Doctor’s darker sides from between his twelfth and final incarnations - in terms of the Doctor’s first set of regenerations, it would technically be between the Tenth (post-Journey’s End) and Eleventh Doctors. However, now with the Doctor’s new regeneration cycle, people seemingly like to stretch it out to after the Twelfth Doctor’s era, so anything goes at this point. It would explain Ruth’s darker side during the confrontations with the Judoon and her willingness to bear arms when the Doctor opposed it.

Theory 3: Pre-Hartnell Doctor

This would be the most dangerous theory because it would drastically change the status quo of Doctor Who. During the Moffat era, the show seemed to reinforce the fact that all and only all of the Doctor’s incarnations up to that point were the Doctor. The child we saw in Listen was basically the First Doctor.

The details of the Doctor’s birth and upbringing are very conflicting because different Doctor Who-related media seems to have their own interpretation of it. The 1997 Virgin New Adventures book Lungbarrow details how The Other, one of the original founders of Time Lord society alongside Rassilon and Omega, would reincarnate himself into the loomed Doctor. I don’t like the idea of the Looms, though, so things might be questionable for me if they are canonised. Chris Chibnall has said in an interview around the start of Series 11 that he had not been able to find a copy of Lungbarrow, but chances are that whatever happens will be even more complicated than whatever I’ve theorised.

The return of Captain Jack Harkness

This was another surprise in this episode. As such, this makes Jack the first companion from the revived era, or more specifically, the RTD era, to reappear in the series. Sadly, the return of Jack Harkness may have been fanservice as well as Chibnall also said that he won’t be appearing again in Series 12. If you’re going to have fanservice in order to advance the story, then the fanservice should be more involved in it, like Rose Tyler in Series 4. With the announcement that the Cybermen would return in the Series 12 finale, I would have expected Jack to return then.

So what did Jack warn Graham, Ryan and Yaz about? He had them tell the Doctor to “beware the Lone Cyberman” and not to give it what it wants. He also mentions that an “alliance” sent something back through time and that somehow because of it, the Cyberman empire is in ruins. What this and/or Ruth have to do with the Timeless Child we have no idea yet, but I’ll be sure to keep watching.

Other general thoughts

Since the term was coined in the 2017 Free Comic Book Day comic The Promise, the fob watch portion of the Chameleon Arch has been known as the biodata module. The fire alarm in the lighthouse acted as Ruth’s biodata module; having it in a stationary location does make it harder for it to be noticed, particularly if perception filters are involved.

In the next time trailer for this episode, I thought that Ruth was Grace. And people say all Asians look the same.

Why didn’t the Doctor ask more questions to Ruth if she was confused at whether she was her or not?

Ruth gives the Doctor five points for guessing how she disguised herself on Earth. We haven’t seen the points system for a while now. For those of you keeping track at home, Yaz is on 10 points (S11E5), Ryan has a gold star, which I presume to be 10 points (S11E6) and the Doctor is on 5 points. Way to underestimate.

Following this episode, the next two episodes are also co-written by Chris Chibnall. Whether they will have more details to build onto the story arc is unknown yet.

Summary and verdict

No tokusatsu references in this episode. There was a big SJW red flag, but that was overshadowed by the story arc. Regardless, Ruth and Jack served as mere fanservice to advance the story and I expect to see them again soon.

Once again, I’ve finally caught up on the episodes now, so we will be returning to the normal posting schedule next week. I didn’t complete all the reviews for the last three episodes all in a day - my mind gets tired whenever I’ve done something big.

Rating: 8/10

Mid-series review

Compared to the same period in Series 11, the first half of Series 12 was definitely more dramatic than Series 11. We had a two-parter reintroducing the Master, a story about climate change and an Edison vs. Tesla episode. I thought there weren’t going to be a lot of SJW red flags, but Episode 3 alone proved me wrong. Still, the SJW agenda is less of a problem for me this year than it was last year (though I’m still going to be cautious).

Here are my ratings for the series so far:

Episode 1: 8/10

Episode 2: 8/10

Episode 3: 5/10

Episode 4: 9/10

Episode 5: 8/10

Mid-series total: 38/50 (76%)

Compared to the mid-Series 11 total of 70%, this is probably the better series for me so far. I think the returning characters and story arc really helped.

Stay tuned next week as I review the sixth episode, Praxeus.

[marymosley]

Ethical Jurisprudence: An Amalgamation of Law and Morals

INTRODUCTION The relation of law and morals was one of the subjects chiefly debated by the nineteenth – century jurists. Morals basically apply to “the broad field of conduct evaluated in terms of its aims, ends, or result.” Four stages in the development of law with respect to morals are generally recognized. First, is the stage of undifferentiated ethical customs which is a pre- legal stage. Second is the stage of strict and codified custom. Third is the stage of infusion of molarity into the law and reshaping it by morals. Forth is the stage of conscious lawmaking which implies the maturity of law, in which it is said that morals and morality are for the lawmakers and that law alone is for the judge.

CONCEPT OF ETHICS Ethics is basically the science of human conduct in the society i.e. the way people behaved, how they are behaving and how they should behave in the society in which they are living. Ethics can be divided into two branches : The ideal moral code The positive moral code The ideal moral code deals with the natural law. Natural law in philosophy, is a system of right or justice held to be common to all humans and derived from nature rather than from the rules of society. It simply means a law which is not legislated or man-made but is purely based on moral principles. The positive moral code is directly related to the conduct of the society at a given point of time. Such morals are based on public opinion of a specific society and change according to the change in opinion.

JURISPRUDENCE Jurisprudence is defined as the study of law and the principles upon which law is based. The word jurisprudence is derived from a Latin term juris prudentia, which means “the study, knowledge, or science of law.” Why there is a need to study jurisprudence? One of the importance to study jurisprudence is its fundamental value. It mainly involves research which helps in clarifying the basic concepts of law. The subject is not concerned with the making of new laws but focuses on the existing laws. It not only focuses on primary legal rules , but also talks about the social impact of these laws. It provides the rules of interpretation, as a result it becomes important to study the subject to understand the significance of laws passed by the legislators.

CONCEPT OF ETHICAL JURISPRUDENCE Ethical jurisprudence is a branch of philosophy which studies law based on its ethical or moral significance. How the law should be in an ideal state is dealt by ethical jurisprudence. It investigates the purpose of law and the way in which that purpose should be fulfilled. This area of study brings together morals and legal philosophy. In German , ethical jurisprudence is known as Rechtsphilosophie and in French as philosophie du droit. Legal philosophy must be based on ethical values so that people could be motivated for an up- right living. The salient features of ethical jurisprudence may briefly be stated as follows: Law and justice are closely related. When we talk about justice, it has an ethical essence in it , and law is a means to attain the ends of justice. Therefore, the objectives of justice can only be fulfilled by law. The manner in which law fulfils the purpose of attainment of justice is one of the subject matter of ethical jurisprudence. The study also differentiates between the domains of law and justice. It emphasizes upon the ethical significance of legal conceptions.

Immanuel Kant and Hegel are considered to be one of the main exponents of the ethical school of jurisprudence:

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)- According to him, ethics and law are not one and the same thing. Ethics deals with the inner life of an individual and law on the other hand , regulates his external conduct.

Hegel (1770-1831)- According to him , the purpose of making of law is to reconcile the conflicting egos in the society. He said that various manifestation of social life including law, are nothing but the result of evolutionary dynamic process. This process operates itself in the form of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. The human intellect sets a thesis, which becomes a salient idea with time. In the course of time, this idea is surrounded by criticism, thus setting up an antithesis. As a result of the conflict between the two i.e. thesis and antithesis, a synthesis develops to reconcile them. This process repeats time and again as a historical phenomenon.

MORALS AS THE BASIS OF LAW

In earlier stages, there was no distinction between law and morals. Thus, we can say that law and morals have a common origin but in the course of development they became different concepts. Though law and morals are not the same ( which could mean that many things may be immoral yet not necessarily illegal), still the absolute separation of law from morality would be unjustified. This concept can be explained with the help of a case study: Queen vs Dudley and Stephens

Facts of the case: The defendants, Mr. Dudley and the victim Mr. Parker along with two other seamen were cast away in a storm on the high seas and were compelled to put into an open boat that had no supply of food and water. After the group had been without food for seven days, and without water for five days, Mr. Dudley and Mr. Stephens (one of the seamen) killed the victim in order to satisfy their hunger. All the seamen fed upon the body of the victim.

Issue raised: Does the defense of necessity permit the killing of one person to save others?

Principle laid down in the judgment: The answer to the issue raised was No! Necessity can never be a defense of murder. No man has a right to take another’s life to save his own .

MORALS AS THE TEST OF LAW

It is said that if a law overshadow morality, it is not a good law. This view was very much supported by Greeks and Romans. In Rome, law to some extent was made to conform to ‘natural law’ which was based on certain moral principles and as a result ‘jus civile’ was transformed into ‘jus gentium.’ Law cannot be completely separated from morals due to many reasons. The conformity of law with morals is a very important factor. When we talk about a community, law plays a very important role and morals have also got an important place. Therefore, law and morals can be considered as the two sides of the same coin.

MORALS AS THE END OF LAW

When we talk about law, one of the most important terms that comes to our mind is ‘justice’. Aim of the law is to secure justice and justice is very much based on morals in the form of rationality, equity, etc. Therefore, morals can be considered as the end of law.

CONCLUSION

What we consider good in any society at a particular time, may become bad at another time within the same society. This may be due to change in public opinion over a period of time. Therefore some laws are required for the enforcement of certain rules of human conduct. Ethical jurisprudence inspects the conduct of human beings and recommend amendments if required in the present law. So, we can easily relate jurisprudence with the ethics.

Author: Aprajita Chauhan, Legal Intern at Legal Desire (June 2020)

Aprajita Chauhan, student of Himachal Pradesh University Institute of Legal Studies, Shimla. Being a law student it is really important to develop certain skills that will be applicable to future career opportunities, one of my leading aspirations deals with it. I always expect to achieve good results from my work. When I think of my goal , I think of a timeframe maybe 3-4 years from now. I will be looking for opportunities to expand my responsibilities within my present role to work towards my goal. My field of interest includes volunteer work as I actively work as a NSS volunteer. Apart from it I consider myself a good learner. To achieve something, it is important that we should be good learners, for when we stop learning, we stop growing. My success mantras are hard work, determination and never to give up on myself as , ” A quitter never wins, and a winner never quits.”

The post Ethical Jurisprudence: An Amalgamation of Law and Morals appeared first on Legal Desire.

Ethical Jurisprudence: An Amalgamation of Law and Morals published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

[chocolatephantomzombie-blog]

BTCTrader

As The Independent stories , Hearn exposed the issues within Bitcoin in a publish on his Medium weblog. Given the open and decentralised nature of the Bitcoin community, its neighborhood borders are extraordinarily versatile and dynamic, in that everybody is free to participate and contribute to the community - both as a passive person or as an energetic miner. Core's reasoning for why this is OKAY goes like this: it's no massive loss as a result of when you hadn't been waiting for a block earlier than, there was a theoretical threat of fee fraud, which implies you were not using Bitcoin properly. Equity based investment allowing rapid trading of each interesting and promising new coin, even within the prelaunch phase. Marc Andreessen has been some of the enthusiastic Bitcoin supporters in the enterprise capital world. He advocates for open-source developers to pay attention to the governance elements of their prospect - a design side Bitcoin has seemingly lacked. It could be a disgrace if you happen to spent all that time growing the software program just to find rebel betting already affords it. He knew that the young apprentice was desirous to follow this arbitrage buying and selling technique. The lowest- peak block in the window is the subsequent block to be validated; if the block hasn't arrived by the time Bitcoin Core is able to validate it, Bitcoin Core will wait a minimal of two more seconds for the stalling node to ship the block If the block still hasn't arrived, Bitcoin Core will disconnect from the stalling node and try to connect to one other node For instance, in the illustration above, Node A will likely be disconnected if it doesn't ship block 3 inside at the very least two seconds. Two blockchain-based mostly good contract use instances—(1) securities trade clearing and settlement and (2) provide chain and trade finance document handling—carry important classes for business and expertise leaders curious about smart contract applications. Pockets API: Construct and modify multiple-deal with-watching and hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallets, usable all through the BlockCypher API. Community members have already started constructing attention-grabbing projects and tools for developers. In such circumstances, there are particular methods that merchants can use to generate danger free returns. Betting arbitrage, miraclebets, surebets, sports arbitraging is a explicit case of arbitrage arising in betting markets on account of both bookmakers ' totally different opinions on occasion outcomes or plain errors. Insurgent Betting currently covers over 70 online bookmakers and betting exchanges. However how Bitcoin might be harnessed to empower marginalized communities and build new technique of solidarity-primarily based finance stays tough to indicate. Sports activities arbitrage three - quite a few web bookmakers supply odds on the outcome of the same event. Many present Bitcoin developers (referred to collectively as Bitcoin Core”), who also run their very own pockets software, hardware or services, have been in attendance. I co-founded India's main bitcoin company, We simply passed 100,000 customers and we're on boarding practically 6,000 new shoppers each month. The nation's economic downfall has led to the expansion of providers like SurBitcoin, which empowers users to transform their bolívares to Bitcoin. Arbitrage tends to scale back worth discrimination by encouraging individuals to purchase an item the place the worth is low and resell it where the price is high (so long as the patrons are usually not prohibited from reselling and the transaction prices of shopping for, holding and reselling are small relative to the distinction in costs in the completely different markets). Biteasy Blockchain REST API supplies you with a handy, highly effective and easy technique to read data from the bitcoin network by implementing the most effective RESTful practices. In other words, the builders of these cash that failed in all probability wished to make some cheddar on some quick coin creation and didn't need to work at creating the foreign money for the long run-something which doomed them from the start. Many residents of nations with unreliable banks or a wildly fluctuating forex will search to do business outside the system in a steadier foreign money instead. In early 2010, the currency was gaining momentum, and so the distribution of the Bitcoin began to extend along with its demand, by November of that year four million Bitcoins had been ‘mined'. Bot buying and selling will not be for everyone because the software program might be tough for inexperienced traders to know. There are tools that utterly automate the work of finding arbitrage opportunities, providing each day lists of products that can be resold at a profit. To counter this talent scarcity, a gaggle of Silicon Valley blockchain startups spearheaded by Koinify and SkuChain have come collectively to create Blockchain College , a bootstrapped 8 to 10 week course about blockchain development, starting early subsequent yr. Combine this Stealth transaction with a blockchain with 3 second block times, one hundred,000 tx/s, 6 different digital asset lessons (worth steady cash, consumer-issued coins, trade backed coins, loyalty tokens, etc.), multi-sig, DPOS, built in governance mechanism and a truly decentralized trade. These modules can be dynamically amalgamated to offer a variety of personalized options, catering to any sort of business requirement, within the ever changing world of monetary buying and selling. That is justified partly by the high level of technical experience needed to correctly assess the proposed changes, but also - extra implicitly - by the truth that the core developers have been entrusted with the accountability of taking care of the mission, on the grounds of their involvement (and, to some extent, shared ideology) with the original idea of Satoshi Nakamoto. The fee that you simply paid for the trial shall be your credit for ordering our software program inside 30 days. The government, nonetheless, could be very eager on controlling the currency most Venezuelans use and that's the reason Bitcoin represents a menace to their controlling policy, even though it's empowering the general public to freely make purchases internationally. Bitcoin is seven years old and it is experiencing many issues that early applied sciences have skilled. It doesn't matter what strategy you employ to commerce bitcoin it's essential to just be sure you have chosen the most effective bitcoin dealer to invest with. In an effort to facilitate wider viewers participation, Scaling Bitcoin events are stay-streamed with remote participation potential through IRC and WeChat for parallel online discussions and the flexibility to participate in reside Q&A. They persistently rank as one of many prime exchanges by buying and selling quantity for the U.S. dollar. The DAO, or ‘decentralized autonomous group', had set out to turn into a decentralized enterprise capital fund based mostly on Ethereum's smart contract code. I talked to several Bitcoin consultants for this story, and none of them could point to a breakout hit. As an illustration, users in developing countries could initially want a physical type to reassure themselves of the sturdiness and security of a digital foreign money. Every week, my team and I do reside market analysis, write in-depth crypto market reviews, and do actual-time trade alerts to show what trades we're taking. Few people who have purchased Bitcoin are experts within the technology, most have bought speculatively, so when worth shifts, because it has performed intensely over the past few years, Bitcoin hodlers hodl on hope. Everybody who contributes to the Bitcoin Core project is considered a contributor. Purchasers are targeted on business process and great builders need to communicate on this stage, as nicely. There are a number of methods to generate income buying and selling bitcoin, most of which is completed when trading this digital currency towards the US dollar (in market phrases this commerce is named the BTC/USD pair ). The primary (and perhaps the best) is to discover a top bitcoin dealer and invest in the digital currency in the same method you'd a physical foreign money - buy low and sell high. Blockstream was founded in 2014 by Bitcoin Core builders Gregory Maxwell, Dr. Pieter Wuille, Matt Corallo, Jorge Timón and Mark Friedenbach, as well as several non-Bitcoin Core developers including hashcash inventor Dr. Adam Back and venture capitalist Austin Hill. Bitcoin exchanges and Bitcoin accounts usually are not insured by any kind of federal or authorities program. At a stroke, this makes utilizing Bitcoin useless for truly buying things, as you'd have to wait for a purchaser's transaction to look within the block chain … which any longer can take hours reasonably than minutes, because of the congestion. blockchain developers guide if a purchaser complains, which normally prevents destructive suggestions and could be built into the cost of doing business. The unique creator of the bitcoin shopper has described their strategy to the software's authorship because it being written first to prove to themselves that the concept of purely peer-to-peer digital money was legitimate and that a paper with solutions could possibly be written. The developer who declared Bitcoin a failed experiment, Mike Hearn, bemoaned the fact that, not solely was the community unable to agree on a means ahead, but that the argument had boiled over into censorship of its most popular dialogue discussion board on Reddit, DDoS cyberattacks meant to intimidate rivals, and a common ambiance of ideological civil war about the correct path ahead. However even the autumn of the Bitcoin Basis didn't appear to significantly affect Bitcoin - in all probability because the Basis was merely a facade that by no means had the ability to effectively control the digital currency. The software gives a possibility to make a guaranteed revenue from chosen sporting occasions without ever risking a penny with sports arbitrage. First bets will take you 2-5 minutes to position if you're completely new in betting and by no means did it before. Its software program, portfolio replace alerts, stop-losses and analyses are based mostly on SEC and different nationwide securities regulators' company filings, current occasions, interviews, corporate press releases, information from market knowledge suppliers, third get together software and its personal opinions and calculations. For Ethereum, the most popular blockchain for smart contracts, this happens roughly every 17 seconds—a far cry from the milliseconds to which we're accustomed while utilizing non-blockchain databases. These charges are adaptively calculated by our API; for Bitcoin, they're often between 2 to 10 cents per issuance/transfer. Waves Platform, versus different tasks in the crypto sphere, is aimed at both superior and novice customers. The growing Internet connection rate, notably in Africa, may even add to the increasing interest in Bitcoin. As compared to different countries just like the US, the UK and China the place the full Bitcoin trade worth is round Rs. 10,000 crore per day, India nonetheless lags at Rs 500 crore (per year) with seven-hundred-800 Bitcoin traded daily. What would occur in the event you and I may simply alternate money without it ever going by means of a bank?” venture capitalist and early Bitcoin supporter Marc Andreessen asked me in a 2014 interview. As introduced on the Bitshares website, Cryptonomex will license the Graphene Toolkit for use with the BitShares (BTS) blockchain. This consensus scheme avoids the potential for brand spanking new implementations to introduce regressions while strengthening defenses against but-undiscovered faults in Bitcoin Core. Jonas Schnelli, a Bitcoin core developer since 2013 and the founding father of minimalist Bitcoin pockets Digital Bitbox, wrote a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal paper about standardizing Bitcoin pockets technology final 12 months. Nonetheless, respected and functioning buying and selling bots might increase trade earnings, if used accurately. Kyle Honeycutt runs a YouTube Channel where he repeatedly publishes bitcoin-associated net improvement tutorials. Creating widespread language and finest-practices for pockets design, without preventing competitors and freedom of wallet designers to innovate, is essential to its users. For storing worth and ease of use, one might choose BitGold because it supplies a handy trade media primarily based on tangible asset (gold). Still, even with all of the rational arguments getting into its favour, Amazon to eBay arbitrage has an air of injustice about it. It is so far removed from the best way people count on a retailer to function, that I doubt it would ever be seen by everybody as an honourable option to do enterprise. We take an in-depth have a look at the inflation fee, or change in the provide, of the core Bitshares token. Another common criticism that is levelled in opposition to Bitcoin is that it might undermine a authorities's capacity to supply essential providers. We're on the lookout for 10 Builders either as contractors or as permeant members of employees. He then pointed to Satoshi Nakamoto and Tom Elvis Jedusor, who's the pseudonymous creator of MimbleWimble and took his identify from the Harry Potter collection, as two examples of the use of pseudonymous identities within the Bitcoin improvement community. In its early days, Coinbase used a Ruby implementation of Bitcoin for some part of its inner blockchain validation.

[beowulfs-booty-call]

I like to share love, so I'm glad it helps. I believe everyone can find love, and generally what you're describing sounds like my beliefs, though I'm much more a hard polytheist than a soft one. As far as Freya? Lots of potential things, but that's most of the basics. I'm glad that you found confidence though. Self-confidence is one of those things I struggle with, but if it helps I also think you look good too. Was more the emotional/mental side I was complimenting earlier though. :)

Ah! Now I understand, I want to apologize then, on my behalf for not fully understanding what you’d meant at the time! (Unfortunately, I answered your ask at around... 2 AM or so in NY time, so, I really am sorry if you got a whole long answer on something completely else!)

That aside, I really agree with your ideas on that. Everyone can find love, and, they deserve it to, as well in the sense of both the word, and well, love.

The reason I steered more towards... Physical love, I’d say, was mainly because I’m still... opening up in the side of emotional / mental side (in terms of Incubus-focuses and their emphasis of course!). On one end of the spectrum, Incubi / Succubi can have emotional sides rather than an erotic focus, but that’s just their actual representation. They’re amalgamation of human desires put into form, one can say, so to speak. The other, is the more commonly known eroticism as to, in some cultures, “mate with a human and create a foul half breed” (which, if I’m correct was more of the older archetypes. Considering Merlin was prophesied as one of their half children, I think it’s supposed to mean that side of the coin, though... I could be wrong in the context of time here..!)

The emotional / mental side of them aren’t really... always seen to people. In some ways, it’s almost nonexistent, but you’re like... What’s the saying?

“Always the bridesmaid, never the bride?”

That’s the sort of life motto you’re “branded” with, to acknowledge, and to understand. It’s definitely something that is sort of a burden to carry, because there’s times I’d fantasize about just a random person I met in a cafe and think, “Boy... What’d I’d do to wake up to someone like them tomorrow morning...” And then... there’d be more perverse thoughts of course and such, but the emotional side, of commitment, of just hand holding, or cuddling on the couch while reading 3 AM fanfics of your favorite characters... It leads you to believe all you’re really good for, is the eroticism, you know?

Of course, that’s only just what most incubi / succubi struggle with for the time being, and, after a while, I shook it off once I got back into stuff like Sailor Moon and of course Amy Rose from Sonic the hedgehog, and really sort of got the understanding of what love really means. I could harp on, on what you already know, but, it was amazing, to say the least. Not just, saying it in a card, or, valentines chocolates (I will, of course, eat them, if offered) but just... Saying it. With meaning. 

Supporting the people you care about, and showing it in your daily life for them. Always being there to understand and help carry them to their potential. It’s magnificent, to say the least. 

And, I’d like to apologize again, if I misunderstood anything as well, but that’s just my opinion on the emotions of the night folk, besides myself. It’s liberating, yet... Chained. You’re led to believe it’s only the physical side of you that’s meant to be charming, that it must be an aesthetic, a pleasure, a masterpiece if you will, but you’re not happy with it. A lot of the sex demons struggle with that. They’ve gotten lust down, charm, wit, tenacity... But they don't have love. At least, they don’t really understand it.

I want to really thank you for the kind words, honestly. While I’m still working up the courage to wake up every morning, look in the mirror and say, “Hey, rise and shine, today’s going to be wonderful. Can you see it written on your face?” I’ve definitely gotten far enough to not look at things as black and white as before. Before... It was like, all eyes are on you, keep appearances sharp, sensual, and walk with a gait that saunters over with power and grace.

...Now, I’m just... Me! To say the least. I wear my favorite outfits here and there, I splurge on myself to treat myself better, and really, just take care of myself. Of course, the reason I work with Venus / love magic best, is because I’ve well, unrequited love in the sense. There’s someone out there I’m living for, and, while I know it’s not meant to be, they’ve taught me a lot about myself, and about the world. Of course, it doesn’t hinder me or anything, but since I met that person, I think I finally understood what I know now about love, not just in the familial sense Parvati taught me, or the Eroticism Lilith exudes. I’m still learning though, like everyone else.

Still, your beliefs sound so... Unique and inspiring! In all honesty? It’s like a breath of fresh air, hearing about that, especially your bond with Freyja! I’d love to hear about the potential things you have there, someday, if it’s alright, since it seems I got the basics down! But, in all seriousness, I suppose looking back on my own, I don’t really “know” what my beliefs could be classified as. I would definitely say a form of soft polytheism, since Hinduism is a huge on the topic, as well as Paganism (at times). But at best? I’ve dealt with many deities and demons, and while I know they’re different in both persona, and context, I’ve always felt, maybe, they’re who we believe to be, whether it is being comfortable seeing the god of the afterlife as the goddess Izanami in Yomi, or Hades in the Underworld, you know? But, at the same time, there’s also lots of questions I find myself asking, to my own beliefs too. For example, 

- Most Ars Goetian demons were at once, angels, the same for the fallen. Beelzebub was considered at one point, the god Baal, and the other, Bael. If that was the case... Does that mean, one can conjure either form and it would in fact, be Beelzebub / Baal / Bael in the context of nature? Would the separate entities acknowledge their other forms? In a sense, yes, when I summoned Baal for questions on politics and power, (What are the two, how can I use them effectively?) he spoke about his “other” form as being the king of flies and filth and that laying others down to build one’s self up is the nature of man. Things like that, besides his er... “advice”, tends to make me reevaluate what I already “understand”.

- Are the cultures we already know, not anglicized, but perhaps, evaluated in different ways for us to comprehend? It’s a more philosophical question, I admit, but it’s definitely one on my mind for some time. One could argue about the Roman and Greek mythos being near one and the same, but it’s not my place to do so (Considering it’s not my culture, nor... Well, my main interest. I’ve been more so pondering the question to some of my friends who do take up the mythos as their life and such, and we like to ask each other these sort of questions to ourselves. Not just to make fun or poke at each others beliefs, but more so to maybe grip some form of understanding of the things we have faith in.

- Who are we, as humans, and to what are the Gods and Goddesses? It sounds rather... rebellious in a sense, but there are times I question things and wonder, if Parvati is primordial and always in the background of things, yet, we can see her work or Vesta, or even Hera in the world, what are we really? Do we have a purpose that exists beyond their scope of things? And,  what are they, in terms of our human understanding? Mothers? Fearsome entities? Intangible concepts for us to acknowledge, respect, and see to answer that through our work as witches and devotees?

There’s so many questions I have for myself, that, while I don’t lay down myself as really anything but Hindu and Pagan, makes me so excited to see others who think differently. There's a lot to wonder and think about, not just about yourself and the subject matter of what your offerings do to please the deities or the demons we bond with in our every day lives.

So, really, thank you so much for taking the time out and having such a wonderful discussion with me here, like I always say, I’m always open to asks and anything you ever need! But also, thank you for letting me think about myself more, not just in how far I came along, but also how far I know I’m going to go, I can only say the same for you, for really getting your thoughts out to people! As silly as it may sound over .txt, but I offer my deepest gratitude and blessings for you to be as content as can be in your life, no matter where you go, anon. 

Go in peace, and may the (I would say Æsir or the Vanir, however, I’m not sure which pantheon Freyja and Freyr would fall under considering the Æsir had Odin’s side, and the Vanir had the twins born under them, until taken under the Æsir as either hostages or honorary members?) deities make life nothing but grand to you, your problems lifting into the air like feathers in the wind, your freedom bound to no one, and your future enshrined with wonder and joy.

[holmesandhouse-blog]

Fanfiction and Additive Comprehension: The Question of Canon

Fanfiction has been a steadily growing medium, to the point that it sometimes threatens producers’ intent for the original text. Through additive comprehension, fanfiction strongly influences how an original text is interpreted, while simultaneously providing an opportunity for alternative representation within the storyworld. This strong influence brings up questions surrounding the concept of canon, and what that means for the audience. This is specifically highlighted in the Sherlock Holmes transmedial storyworld, in which the fanfiction “Two Two One Bravo Baker” by abundantlyqueer has shifted the overall fan viewing of the BBC’s show Sherlock (especially within the narrative of “A Study in Pink”) in regards to both Sherlock and John’s relationship, as well as John’s military experience.

According to Jenkins, “[g]ame designer Neil Young coined the term, ‘additive comprehension,’ to refer to the ways that each new texts adds a new piece of information which forces us to revise our understanding of the fiction as a whole.” The concept of fanfiction arguable arose from that general definition. Fanfiction exists to add new understandings and fill in missing plot holes, which often leave the readers feeling as though the meaning of the original text has been shifted. The fanfiction “Two Two One Bravo Baker” (which will be affectionately dubbed “221BB” for the purposes of this essay) does just this, by filling in the plotholes of John’s military experiences (albeit in an alternate universe in which Sherlock meets him in Afghanistan) and following Sherlock and John’s relationship to a romantic conclusion. As in all fanfiction, there exists a certain suspension of disbelief within the plot of “221BB,” however the author is quick to try and draw her audience into the pseudo-canon by explaining her artistic choices within the chapter-end notes. The first note, reading “[t]he names I've used for the members of John's section are names of men who fought with notable distinction and died at the battle of Maiwand in 1880, the battle in which ACD's Watson was wounded,” (abundantlyqueer, chapter 1 notes) tells the reader that abundantlyqueer has done her research and, similarly to BBC’s Sherlock, is drawing resources from the original Arthur Conan Doyle canon. It’s the second note, however, which truly begins to make the analysis of additive comprehension interesting. The author writes,

ACD's Watson was attached to the 66th Berkshire Foot, which (after a tortuous lineage of amalgamations) ended up in The Rifles regiment. However, in TGG John wears the regimental tie of 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards. There is a point of intersection between the two regiments: in 2009, the Guards’ mission in Afghanistan included supplying reconnaissance and other support to 3 Commando Brigade, which also draws support staff from The Rifles. If John initially served with the Guards and later transferred to 3 Brigade, that would explain the regimental tie and place him equidistant between the ACD and Moffit-Gatiss canons. (abundantlyqueer, chapter 1 notes)

With this additional information, abundantlyqueer complicates the question of the fanfiction’s interpretation. She is explicitly trying to work in both the ultimate urtext (Doyle’s “Sherlock Holmes”) and BBC Sherlock’s canon into “221BB,” while simultaneously convincing the audience that it works. And somehow, it does. “221BB” has, since its publishing, become something of a reference for BBC Sherlock fans wanting to know more about John’s military past. This acceptance of the fan text as “legitimate” additive comprehension is largely due to the meticulous research which has gone into the fiction, and the care with which it was molded to fit multiple canons. This, perhaps, is the most important element of fanfiction. The ability to incorporate canon in a way that would be frowned upon in an “official” production. A final example of abundantlyqueer’s melting pot of canon comes from the author’s notes in chapter six. “One of John’s lines, and the good-humored sangfroid of British soldiers under fire, were lifted whole from the documentary Inside Afghanistan with Ben Anderson, which was also the source of John’s flashback footage in A Study in Pink” (abundantlyqueer, chapter 6 notes). With this, abundantlyqueer is technically lifting text straight from the canon, since the footage is included in episode one of Sherlock. This deepens the influence of the canon (and of the fanfiction on the canon) because the flashback is a point of interest for many fans wondering about the context of John’s canon PTSD. BBC’s Sherlock shows this PTSD, but never explains it further, opting for the air of mystery over examining John’s history. “221BB” jumps on this plot hole with abandon, giving us a scene which fits like a puzzle piece into a specific memory, and allowing fans to further cement their belief in the pseudo-canon of the fanfiction.

This cementing of pseudo-canon and additive comprehension allows abundantlyqueer to then have greater control over other aspects of the fanfiction’s influence on the show. A key element in “221BB” (and in many other Sherlock fanfictions) is the relationship and blossoming romance between Sherlock and John. The fanfiction starts out with the base the audience is given in the show; a complicated deduction of John’s life by Sherlock, followed by “‘[t]hat’s - amazing,’ John laughs. / ‘You think so?’ Sherlock frowns, drawing his chin in slightly. / ‘Incredible,’ John grins” (abundantlyqueer, chapter 1). This scene is immediately recognizable to fans of Sherlock as the original meeting scene of Sherlock and John, and the basis of their relationship. However where the show Sherlock only teases the audience with romance, “221BB” dives in head first. The natural flow of an accredited fanfiction such as “221BB” from casual friendship to romantic relationship is bound to influence audience interpretation of the show, especially when the show is already queerbaiting said audience, complete with meaningful silences and soulful eye contact. In fact the argument exists that “[t]he same-sex partners…are already working and living and fighting side by side, so a sexual relationship is all but an extension of the canon. And if it is inherent in the canon, then a slash reading is not resistant” (Hellekson and Busse 79).  By that logic then, it is easy for the fanfiction’s interpretation to be carried over to BBC’s Sherlock without much fanfare. The relationship is explicit within the pseudo-canon of “221BB” because the setting allows it to be so, and if the characters would have a relationship in one setting, then why not the other?

Much of fanfiction analysis still consists of unanswered questions. For example, if a popular fanfiction such as “221BB” has such a large sway over fan interpretation, is there then a possibility for fan texts to truly influence the canon? Referencing back to slash readings as being additive, “[w]hat happens when slash is considered not as ‘resistant’ but instead as an actualization of latent textual elements” (Hellekson and Busse 119)? If we remember the author’s notes in “221BB,” it again becomes clear that the fanfiction can't be canon in BBC Sherlock, because Sherlock and John just simply don't meet in Afghanistan (not to mention the wonky timeline). And yet the information within the fanfiction is consistent and calculated to make the reader believe it could be canon (somehow in both of the very different worlds of BBC and Doyle’s Sherlocks). So while “221BB” is technically an alternate universe, it could still be used to interpret the urtext(s) under the assumption that the only major change in the universe is the setting, could it not? These are the concepts and questions which complicate the additive comprehension of fanfiction, and they are largely still up for debate. The question of what is “true” canon is a difficult one, and is made more difficult within the Sherlock Holmes storyworld due to the original copyright having expired. Technically, one could argue that all fanfictions are canon in their own universes, but what does that mean for a fan work such as “221BB” which has a large and impactful influence on a meaningful subset of the audience? How much do the producers of Sherlock have to accept, and how much can they ignore without repercussions? In some ways, this question has recently been answered. The most recent season of Sherlock has lost both viewers and ratings, and many critics say that this is largely due to a large subset of viewers being upset that John and Sherlock didn’t end up romantically involved within BBC’s canon. Did fanfiction have a part in this? Absolutely. 

One then has to ask a final question: what about works such as House, M.D., which are undoubtedly influenced by Sherlock Holmes? Is this a type of fanfiction? Does it influence the media in the same way? The relationship between James Wilson and Gregory House has certainly been influenced by the additive comprehension brought to the show by fans who see Holmes and Watson as a couple, and one must assume it goes both ways.

In the end, one thing is certain: fanfiction has a significant influence over how a text is interpreted, and allows for representation which isn’t always realized in the urtext. In some cases, such as “221BB” and BBC’s Sherlock, this results in a lasting impact on the original text itself. This topic will be more and more relevant as fanfiction becomes more and more mainstream, and may force producers to more seriously consider fan interpretations when planning their storyworld. Perhaps someday the “alternative” representations in fanfiction will influence canon representations on screen. One can only hope.

Works Cited

abundantlyqueer. “Two Two One Bravo Baker.” Sherlock fan fiction. Sherlock

Holmes/John Watson slash. Archive of Our Own, 04 August 2011.

Hellekson, K. & Busse, K..The Fan Fiction Studies Reader. Iowa City: University of Iowa

Press, 2014. Project MUSE, 2017.

Jenkins, Henry. "Transmedia Storytelling 101." Blog post. Confessions of an Aca-Fan. 22 Mar. 2007. Web. 2017.

Moffat, Steven, and Mark Gatiss. "A Study in Pink." Sherlock. Dir. Paul McGuigan. BBC. 24 Oct. 2010. Television.

[aion-rsa]

Frankenstein Adaptations Are Almost Never Frankenstein Adaptations

https://ift.tt/346GA1J

In an age of adaptation, we still don't have a faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley's classic genre novel.

facebook

twitter

tumblr

Mary Shelley's gothic novel Frankenstein is a story constantly being retold — but almost never has it been retold faithfully. In 2015, we got Victor Frankenstein, the latest in screen adaptations bearing the Frankenstein name, but having little to do with the original text. 

This habit of less-than-faithful adaptations of Shelley's work goes back a long time. The history of Frankenstein adaptations is the history of hodgepodge narrative parts continually being stitched, torn, and re-stitched back together into an amalgamation of what has come before. But, when "before" is 200 years of stage and screen adaptations, source material and inspiration bleed together, and the "original" becomes distorted — like a game of temporal telephone. 

But past the narrative convolution that comes with the passage of time, Frankenstein has seemingly always been a text that eschews faithful adaptation. From the very beginning, on the stage and as one of the first films ever made, Mary Shelley's original vision of a man and the creature he created has rarely been its own...

How Frankenstein Came to Be

For those with an interest in English literature, feminism, or the birth of modern science fiction, perhaps the story of how Frankenstein came to be is as famous as the book itself. The basic tale was first written down by an 18-year-old Mary Shelley (then Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) in 1816 while she and lover/future husband Percy Shelley were visiting Lord Byron in Switzerland.

Dubbed “The Year Without a Summer,” the eruption of Mount Tambora had the Europe of 1816 in the clutches of a volcanic winter, leaving the idle group with little to do in the form of outdoor recreation while staying near Lake Geneva. 

read more: The Bleeding Heart of Dracula

Instead, the literary colleagues took to reading German ghost stories to one another, leading to the challenge that they each pen their own ghost story. And thus, one of the first works of modern science fiction was born. Frankenstein, as a full novel, would be published anonymously two years later on New Year's Day in 1818.

Do you Know the Story of Frankenstein?

For those unfamiliar with the source material, Frankenstein is an epistolary novel, told in a series of letters from Captain Robert Walton to his sister, as well as in his journal entries (it should be noted that this narrative framing very rarely makes it into screen or stage adaptations).

Glory-driven Walton is on an Arctic expedition when his crew finds a cold and broken Victor Frankenstein. They pull him aboard, and Dr. Frankenstein relays the story of the monster he created to Walton--the monster he is pursuing across the ice.

It is a story of creation and abandonment and family. The Creature is arguably much more of the heroic, sympathetic protagonist here than Frankenstein, whose sin is not in playing God (though some have made that argument) but rather in leaving his creation alone in a confusing, cruel-to-difference world.

Unlike so many of his on-screen interpretations, the Creature of the novel is eloquent, thoughtful, and — at least at first — inspired by the beauty of the natural world. Later, he uses his gift for language to articulate his anguish, telling Frankenstein, "I am content to reason with you. I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me?"

The First Frankenstein Plays and Movies

If none of this plot or backstory sounds familiar, it’s probably not your fault. (Well, you could read Frankenstein, which is one of those classics that holds up remarkably well.) Most screen adaptations pick and choose what they want from the original material, more often drawing inspiration from the 1931 movie starring Boris Karloff than Mary Shelley.

read more: 13 Forgotten Frankenstein Movies

But a full two decades before director James Whale made the iconic horror film, Frankenstein was already a movie star — in fact, the story was one of the first committed to film. Frankenstein's adaptation to the screen happened roughly a decade after cinema itself was invented, making this self-admittedly "liberal adaptation" from Edison Productions one of the first movies ever.

Video of FRANKENSTEIN (1910 Edison Production) HD

One of the notable changes form the novel in the 12-minute film is a happy ending for Frankenstein and his new wife, Elizabeth (spoiler alert: in the book, the Creature kills Elizabeth on their wedding night, and Frankenstein himself later dies on the ice. Pretty bleak).

Of course, the decision to make Frankenstein into one of Edison's earliest motion picture productions did not happen in cultural isolation. There is an adaptation path to be traced between the publication of the novel and the creation of films like this 1910 classic and the 1931 version.

According to this Film School Rejects article, 1823 — the first year Frankenstein was adapted to the stage — had five separate plays on the stage. It was these early stage adaptations that first introduced the character of Victor Frankenstein’s assistant Fritz, who would later evolve into the Igor we know from so many later movie adaptations. 

The Boris Karloff film actually drew inspiration from a 1927 stage play by Peggy Webling, rather than the novel itself. And, moving forward into the era of such classics like Young Frankenstein or not-classics like the recently-released Victor Frankenstein, one could easily argue that most subsequent Frankenstein adaptations have more to do with James Whale’s 1931 film — and its 1935 sequel The Bride of Frankenstein — than they do with Shelley’s work.

The Most Faithful Adaptations to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Though many Frankenstein adaptations are more interested in the 1931 film or some action-oriented blockbuster (yes, I, Frankenstein, I'm looking at you), there have been attempts at a more faithful version over the years.

Kenneth Branagh took a stab at a faithful retelling of Frankenstein with his 1994 film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The movie does a slightly better job articulating the nuances of the Creature than most other adaptations, but still falls short of the mark. The film also changes the ending in a particularly jarring way, not only bringing the Creature's bride to life, but giving her Elizabeth's head and memories. Yikes.

David Crow makes a good argument on this site that Penny Dreadful's interpretation of the Creature in the form of Caliban is one of the most faithful versions of the character ever brought to screen.

Everything from the Monster's raven hair to his loquacious love for John Milton was transferred to television in tact. However, if you're looking for an adaptation that not only takes on the iconic character, but the full story, I would recommend the National Theatre's stage version undertaken in 2011.

British film director Danny Boyle brought Frankenstein to the stage starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller. The two well-known actors alternated the roles of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature every performance, creating a more literal thematic connection between the two characters. Two sides of the same coin. Two creatures eventually brought down by their guilt, hate, and anger.

The production was a relatively close adaptation of the original novel (with the problematic addition of a rape scene), and was broadcast to cinemas around the world through National Theatre Live, meaning that this adaptation, in some sense, was also a screen one.

However, the performance has yet to be released on DVD and, according to the theater, never will be if the play's creators have anything to say about it. The Powers That Be prefer that the ephemerality of the performance be preserved. One can only hope this means Frankenstein will find its way to cinemas again for more encore performances.

Why Does Frankenstein Resist Faithful Adaptation?

Why is Frankenstein so rarely adapted with a sense of fidelity? One need look no further than the earliest stage adaptation — Presumption: or the Fate of Frankenstein (1823) — to at least partially answer that question. Chris Baldick's book In Frankenstein's Shadow details how the play made great efforts to appease conservative backlash (many found the novel subversive and atheistic).

read more: A History of Frankenstein Comics

The production was nonetheless boycotted by a "friends of humanity" group, prompting the play's management to release the following statement: "The striking moral exhibited in this story is the fatal consequence of that presumption which attempts to penetrate beyond prescribed depths, into the mysteries of nature." 

Furthermore, director Richard Brinsley Peake introduced the Frankenstein's assistant character who "prepares the audience to interpret the tale according to received Christian notions of sin and damnation by telling them that 'like Dr Faustus, my master is raising the devil.'"  

Almost two centuries later, Daniel Radcliffe plays an incarnation of this character designed to explain to the audience how they should feel about Frankenstein's playing God in Victor Frankenstein. 

The Importance of the Female Perspective

As the daughter of anarchist philosopher William Godwin and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (who died 11 days after Mary's birth), Mary Shelley was a fascinating woman, one with much to say in a culture not-so-interested in what women had to say about it. 

One of the reasons Frankenstein so endures is because of its examination of the arrogance of man and the failings of a world without empathy — a theme that, of course, can be explored by anyone, but one that doesn't seem to get a lot of play in works undertaken by privileged white men.

It seems important to note, at this point, that most of the Frankenstein adaptations (though certainly not all) have been undertaken by men who are perhaps less culturally-motivated to consider the more traditional way life is brought into this world. After all, due to the limitations Western society places on both genders, while science has historically been a man's domain, child-rearing has, historically, been a woman's.

Journalist Sady Doyle recently responded to Victor Frankenstein director Paul McGuigan's recent assertion that Mary Shelley's original work is "dull as dishwater," by outlining the convincing theory that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein as a sort of revenge for her sister Fanny (given name: Frances), who was abused for being illegitimate and eventually killed herself, writing in her suicide note: "You will soon forget there was ever such a creature as..."

There are many interpretations of the Frankenstein story — many of them autobiographically-based. This is one of the reasons it is such a good story. But a parent's neglect and the toll it plays not only on the child, and everyone in his life, is certainly a central one. And one that is often neglected in Frankenstein adaptations in favor of exploring the themes of science, nature, and man's hubris specifically in relation to his work. These interpretations are not mutually exclusive, but the latter is often valued over the former.

It is perhaps easy to look at Frankenstein, and its two male protagonists, and to adapt it with little attention to the importance of women and other socially-devalued characters in the story. After all, they are all periphary characters. But they are the characters who suffer the most. Or at least the ones who suffer the most with the least amount of power to change their fates.

Victor and his Creature are constantly suffering, but they have created their own suffering and have many chances to alter their own destinies. Elizabeth and the Creature's female companion are never granted that same power.

The Future of Frankenstein Adaptations

As this Den of Geek article points out, faithfulness does not equate to quality. Some of the most faithful screen adaptations of books are the worst, while some of the least faithful adaptations can become something better. There are too many variables involved, too many possible permutations to make sweeping generalizations. And, in the world of Frankenstein adaptations, for example, Whale's 1931 film remains the classic, one that continues to influence culture in its own important ways.

However, it would be nice to get a modern Frankenstein adaptation that is more readily available than Danny Boyle's stage version and more complete than Penny Dreadful's Creature — if only for all the high school English teachers who need something to show when they are out sick.

Sadly, as far as I know, there are currently no faithful Frankenstein adaptations in the works. What is happening in the Frankenstein adaptation world? Recently, a whole lot of biopics about Mary Shelley. In 2017, Elle Fanning played the author in Mary Shelley, a conventional biopic that told the story of the relationship between the young author and Percy Shelley, as well as the ways in which Mary Shelley felt out of step with her time. The film boasted a female writer, Emma Jensen, female producers, and a female director, Haifaa Al-Mansour (Wadja).

Elsewhere, HBO Max has ordered a series called The Shelley Society from Riverdale/Sabrina showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. The series will depict a young version of Mary Shelley, who moonlights as a hunter of monsters and supernatural threats (including a manifestation of Mary’s own literary creation, Frankenstein’s Monster).

Perhaps a continued interest in Mary Shelley's fascinating life will eventually drum up some excitement for a more faithful retelling of her most famous story. In the mean time, we'll have to make do with what we've got: one of the best genre novels of the last few centuries.

Kayti Burt is a staff editor covering books, TV, movies, and fan culture at Den of Geek. Read more of her work here or follow her on Twitter @kaytiburt.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

facebook

twitter

tumblr

Feature

Books

Kayti Burt

Oct 25, 2019

Frankenstein

Mary Shelley

Boris Karloff

Horror Movies

31 Days of Horror

from Books https://ift.tt/2NhOpee