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valcalico · 4 years ago

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Athena and Ares

(Just my thoughts on them and their relationship)

I have a lot of feelings about these two. They have a very complex dynamic, where they don’t really like each other, but they can’t work without each other either.

Athena provides rationality to the cruelty of war. She is the strategy and logic behind it. The objective. One might say she represents the generals, and the politicians and the main heroes. Basically the big players.

And Ares? He’s the opposite. He represents the emotion associated with war. He is the bloodlust and the desperate fight. Where the battle is thickest, where there is no room for thought, and when its pure survival instinct that drives you, that’s Ares. He represents the worst parts: the blood and the violence and the cruelty. He is accompanied by fear and terror (Phobos and Deimos). One might say he is the god of soldiers.

So they need each other. If they actually worked together, they’d be one of the dangerous forces ever, even in god circles. But they don’t. Not only because of how differently they view the world, but also because of deeper nuances in their relationship.

Athena is beloved. She is Zeus’ favourite child and his right hand goddess. The people love her. She is the patron of one of the most powerful, influential cities, Athens. She is highly respected everywhere else too. A protector of heroes and a friend to humanity.

Ares, on the other hand, is disliked by many. Zeus says he is “the most hateful of all gods” and says he would have thrown him into Tartarus if he wasn’t his and Hera’s son. (Its in the Iliad) (This part always makes me sad poor ares) He is highly respected in Thrace and Sparta. But Athens dislikes him and worships him out of necessity only.

Even in modern times, Athena is considered a feminist icon and badass lady, while Ares is labelled a brute.

Most people know this. So why did I just type out all that? Cause context is important when delving into the myths.

So first of all, let’s debunk that last point I made. In the ancient myths (and I’ll try not to include romans esp. Ovid), it didn’t work that way at all. Of course it’s important to keep in mind that ancient Greece was very misogynistic. But still, Athena was not feminist at all. Her being a “masculine” woman (mostly) was what made her so acceptable to Athens and she was regularly used to shut down other women. Also:

(The actual translation of this scene was circulated a while back. So you’re probably familiar with this. Also I’m not saying this to offend any worshippers of Athena or anyone who admires her. There are a lot of bad things in greek mythology and Athena’s internal and external misogyny is probably the least of my concerns. Plus if the greek gods did exist, i believe they change with the society, so they will no longer be Like That in the present day.)

Ares, on the other hand, was incredibly feminist, especially for that time. He surrounded himself with women he loved and respected. (Aphrodite, Eris, Enyo, etc). His lovers were often famously women who challenged the status quo (Otrera, Cyrene). He was regularly show to be a good father to all his daughters, immortal and mortal. (Harmonia, Hippolyta, Penthesilia, Alkippe). Also:

If that isn’t the coolest thing EVER-

Anyway, I won’t delve deep into that (well, any more than I’ve already rambled about it).

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, we can get to the hypotheticals.

I headcanon that despite ALL the evidence to the contrary, they maybe don’t despise each other completely. I see them having more of a love-hate relationship.

The thing is, gods are very contrary creatures. Zeus and Hera’s fights shake the world one moment, and in the next, they are as loving as any. Apollo is smiling and singing in one moment and skinning a satyr alive in the next. This complexity should be given this relationship too.

Like I said above, they need each other. Both general and soldier are equally important in war. And I don’t think you can completely truly need someone and hate their existence at the same time. (There are exceptions)

This scene in the Iliad really got me thinking:

If you take the scene at face value, this is probably not something to think too much about. Its Athena going to Ares, insulting him a bit, and taking him away from the war.

But its more than that. First off, Athena goes upto Ares and can calmly convince him to listen to her. Second, look how she frames the question. She says “shall we” which i think is pretty important. Athena doesn’t need to worry about Zeus’ anger or his rules, as she shows later on in the Iliad, and before, during the Rebellion. Both Athena and Ares knows this well. So why does she also need to withdraw? She can make the point without adding herself to the equation. She can also fairly easily run him off the battlefield like she does later. But she doesn’t. And there isnt any hostility from Ares.

Instead, they go together, away from the battlefield and...sit down near a river bank? Basically relax as much as they can? That doesn’t sound like a hateful relationship.

There is also the fact that Ares was going to join sides with the greeks (aka on Athena and Hera’s side) until Aphrodite convinced him to join her instead.

Its clear from this that Ares doesn’t really have much of a stake in this fight. He doesn’t care much about the greater objectives of the war. The only thing that can convince him to take a side is the people one the sides. He fights for the people he cares about, not for any greater good. He easily changes his loyalty because of his love for Aphrodite. He frequently gets into fights to save his children. He goes against Diomedes partly because of how he wounded Aphrodite. All of this means that he cares for Athena too. (And for Hera ofc). Maybe he doesn’t care for her as much as he cares for Aphrodite, but its not really fair to expect him to.

I like to think they genuinely do care for each other a great deal, they just kinda suck at showing it. Maybe that changes as time passes. I can see Athena being quietly protective of Ares (maybe she makes up an excuse to send him away during the Rebellion because she knows he will be in danger otherwise). I definitely think she felt a little guilt (guilt, not regret) at stabbing Ares, seeing as it wasn’t really fair. Ares didn’t know she was there.

I also think that Ares, who spends a lot of time with awesome women and is very fierce in standing up for them if the need arises, will be the one who calls her out a lot of the time on her misogyny or hypocrisy. Athena also has a habit of suppressing any “vulnerable” emotion. She likes to keep all her guilt, sadness, fear, hurt, and regret all locked up tight. I feel like Ares is one of the few people she lets a few of those emotions out around, even if she still tries not to. And in the lighter moments, in private, maybe they joke around a bit and laugh, too.

Okay, now for the heavier bit. While i do think they care for each other, there is also a lot of resentment there. A lot of it, unfortunately, comes from how they are treated by their peers and elders. They like different people, they are liked by different people and they are liked to different degrees. Let’s talk about 3 of the main players.

1) Zeus. Does this surprise you?

I do think Zeus loves all his kids. He doesn’t like some of them, but he does love all of them. And he isn’t as bad of a father as everyone thinks. People have discussed that better so I’ll not rant about it here.

All that aside, he definitely has favourites. Athena is his favourite child (Apollo, I think, being his second). And this favouritism is SUPER OBVIOUS. Its like none of the rules apply to Athena, which is weird considering Zeus isn’t forgiving of those who defy his authority (did someone say Prometheus?)

Ares, on the other hand, is on the other side of the spectrum. The one Zeus dislikes the most.

We can see how this affects them in several instances. The most notable is probably in the Iliad, after Athena deceitfully stabs Ares and forces him to flee to Olympus, injured.

Ares calls Zeus out on his favouritism. He says that gods weren’t allowed to fight each other and if it were anyone else, they would have been punished. He says Zeus always does this, always lets Athena get away with everything, and that he needs to start getting his daughter under control.

Zeus doesnt like this too much and basically tells Ares to stop whining and that he isn’t much better when it comes to destruction. He says Ares is the most hateful of all gods and loves bloodshed. He says he would have gotten rid of him if he weren’t his son, but seeing as he was, Zeus cannot bear to see Ares in pain. He then gets Ares healed.

I can definitely see how this kind of blatant favouritism from someone who should be better to Ares would affect him. Ares is the firstborn son of Zeus and Hera. He should be getting a lot of respect, as per ancient standards but instead, he is overtaken by his virgin half sister from Zeus’ previous marriage, and many bastard half siblings.

Athena being able to break rules left and right, and Ares having to be nervous about even toeing the line will cause distance between them.

This in addition to his position as a god of civil order is a reason that i think he wouldn’t want to break any rule until he deems it absolutely necessary, like if someone he cared about were in danger.

I can totally see a situation where both of them try to help a hero but Zeus orders them not to. Athena then wants to break the rules, but Ares is very hesitant about doing so. Athena convinces him, either by taunting or by calmly urging him, to go along with it. They get caught but only Ares gets punished. Ares can then truly show Athena the difference between her and everyone else.

Remember when i headcanoned earlier that Athena sends Ares away during the Rebellion? That ties into this. She knows that if they get caught, ares could get into trouble whether or not he did anything. I expect Ares will be furious about it when he returns and finds out what happened though, thinking it was just to get him out of the way, until its revealed why she did it. Then he’ll probably be super awkward.

2) Poseidon

The equal and opposite force to Zeus.

Well, maybe not equal, but quite close.

Lets start with the canon. Poseidon HATES Athena, despises her completely, and he frequently clashes with her father too. They worked together one (1) time and as a result, Athena wasnt punished while Poseidon was enslaved for years. Then there is the fight for Athens, the whole epic of the Odyssey, and so on.

Meanwhile he and Ares are actually shown to be close. Other than the Halirhothius incident, they are pretty chill. Poseidon is the one who vouched for him after the Net Thing With Hephaestus. Poseidon is also pretty cool with Aphrodite and they work together occasionally.

I think Poseidon thinks of Athena as this bratty kid of his brother, who is constantly working against him. You know that one annoying cousin you have who you try to avoid during family reunions because you KNOW you will clash? This is that, but a thousand times worse.

Meanwhile Poseidon really cares for Ares, and Ares takes fatherly affection from anywhere he can get it. Poseidon maintains a good relationship with both Aphrodite and Ares. He is closer with Aphrodite and doesnt love Ares quite as much as Zeus loves Athena, but he still cares a lot.

3) Aphrodite

It is no secret that Athena hates Aphrodite. Even when Athena warns Diomedes not to harm any god, she says Aphrodite is the exception. Athena, along with many of the other Olympians, see her as nothing but a silly, flighty, hysterical goddess.

On the other hand, Aphrodite and Ares are known for their intense love for each other, from even before her arranged marriage. They have a lot of kids together, and are shown to be close with all of them. They each have like one story of jealousy/one story where they are at odds with each other, which is pretty good for such a high-profile couple (Aphrodite curses Eos and Ares kills Adonis). They are there for each other, like in the trojan war, when Aphrodite was wounded and Ares gave her his chariot to go back to Olympus. He also changed sides very soon, just because Aphrodite asked. Athena complains about this too.

I think I wouldn’t be far off in saying that Athena is definitely resentful of how close they are, and how much sway Aphrodite has over her brother.

While Athena definitely doesn’t see eye to eye with Ares, and disagrees with his domain, she still sees him as a War God. One of her kind. And she just doesn’t see how a War God can go for someone like Aphrodite. Basically, she doesn’t think Aphrodite is, for lack of a better term, good enough for Ares, seeing as she is a Love Goddess.

Ares, on the other hand, does not want to hear anything like this. He is fiercely defensive of Aphrodite. He defends her warlike aspect (Aphrodite Areia), while everyone else tells her that she has no place in the battlefield. He sees Aphrodite as more than what people have labelled her to be. Which is why I believe (other than Eos and Adonis), they have one of the healthiest open relationships in greek mythology.

This can definitely cause animosity between Athena and Ares, because of Athena’s scorn and Ares’ temper. It can also increase the conflict between Athena and Aphrodite.

Maybe as time goes on, Athena can start seeing Aphrodite as having more depth. I certainly hope so. While they wouldn’t be best friends, I don’t see why they can’t learn to get along. This could also strengthen Athena and Ares’ bond. As long as people don’t insult her or lay their claim on her domain of Love and Beauty, Aphrodite is often very supportive. I truly think Aphrodite can help Athena overcome her misogyny, with Ares.

In conclusion, Athena and Ares have a very complex relationship. They do not simply hate each other, and neither do they have the most loving relationship. But they do care for each other. But strain can often be put on their relationship from their relationship to other people as well. Hopefully as time passes, they can overcome that, and have a healthier relationship, instead of sharing a good moment and then proceeding to fight each other for the next 500 years.

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fourangers · 3 years ago

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Hi Fourangers,

First of all, I love your blog so much. It's like going through a history back when Naruto Manga chapters were released weekly and your reviews were so Golden, Hilarious and spot-on. Am a new fan though (especially an SNS fan), I just got into this fandom only this year. I don't know if you'll answer my ask, but I just wanted to try and ask you few questions and I pray that you might answer me....

1. Since you've written in a post that you were active in the eastern part of the fandom, How was chapter 698 received in Japan? Because this is the chapter I inherently realized they both love each other. Yeah, I was too late but somehow whenever they interact with each other in previous chapters I always find them to be 'Weird' for just to be friends. Chapter 698 is just blatantly obvious that they love each other. Considering Homophobia and Shounen genre, I have no idea how it was perceived over there back then in 2014.

2. Which scene made you to ship SNS?

3. As an SNS'er how do you feel about the ending, where everyone was married off when they were just 19 just to make some shitty sequel??? As a new fan, I felt betrayed and It would've been perfect if they had stopped at chapter 699, leaving an open ending.

4. How do you face with the accusation about Naruto and Sasuke as brothers and we, SNS'ers are Incest shippers??? I don't care about that Indra and Ashura thing. But Naruto himself told he considers Sasuke as his Brother couple of times. And in Chapter 699, Sasuke acknowledged, 'He finally understood what it meant'.... It's the only thing that confuses me and I don't even have an answer!!! Plus, Kishi himself gave an interview that he based Sasuke on his Brother... I really wonder how he gave such an interview when he literally made them wear necklaces with each other's faces.

5. How was Naruto and Sasuke's sexuality perceived in the fandom back then??? Man!! Kishimoto just made lot of comic reliefs on their sexuality by making Sasuke on Sai jutsu, Naruto not interested in Icha Icha but making Reverse Harem no Jutsu, Naruto was angry when Konohamaru made Boy on Boy jutsu whereas he had no problem with him doing it. LOL. And all those homoerotic posters. What do you think about their sexuality, personally??

6. Why did Kishi had to develop their bond as Soulmates with some unintentional or intentional romantic undertones, if he was eventually going to pair them up with girls??? He easily could've gave many such romantic tropes to other girls and keep the bond between N and S as purely friendship or brothers. It still would've made sense.

7. Final one, Was Naruto really Nosebleeding when Kurama made a joke about Sasuke's kiss in Chapter 572???? We had a lot of heated discussion with other shippers where they claim that it was just a splotch of snot.

Sorry for the lengthy ask....... I am so eager to know your answers and I don't want to spam your ask box by sending multiple asks.

Thanks 😊😊😊

Hey yo! Welcome new SNS fan! I'm so glad that you joined us and I'll try to answer as best as I can. I'm not very active here on tumblr (except browsing lol) but your ask was such a delight to read.

1. I honestly don't remember. I think I didn't follow the japanese boards until the eventual 699-700 disaster. People were craving for reactions and I was curious about it too lol. And well...it's been years, I doubt I'll be able to find the reactions from that time. Imo, most readers don't care much about pairings, they just wanted to read about power-ups and abilities and the basic Naruto Vs Sasuke. Though there are some backhanded jokes about how gay Naruto is for Sasuke.

2. Hah. It's going to be very anti-climatic but it was when Naruto and Sakura were eating in Ichiraku Ramen. Naruto just used Rasenshuriken against Kakuzu and he busted his arm. Sakura was healing his arm and her attention was focused on Naruto. I used to be a NaruSaku shipper so I thought "Oh hey! This is the moment that Naruto would have a candid romantic moment!" But nope. He talked about Sasuke. And I was already getting suspicious about Sasuke's feelings towards Naruto ya know? And the whole "SASUKE IS MIINEEEEEE" in Orochimaru's lair. It was that moment I thought "you only have Sasuke in your head don't you, Naruto?" and started shipping SNS.

3. Hooo boy was I surprised when it was suddenly revealed that they had the basic heteronormative, boring marriage with bunch of clones of themselves. Everyone thought that it was almost like a bad fanfiction come true and some thought that it was fake. It was a pandemonium lolololol. I also thought that it was too lame to be true and lo and behold, when it came true I was floored. And then whenever Kishimoto threw new material, I got insanely pissed off because S*arada and B*ruto becoming pairing material is ok because they are a girl and a boy, and then they paralleled with Naruto and Sasuke which are only FRIENDS because they are both men. ARGH. Open ending was what Kishimoto planned from the very beginning but wrote a sequel to earn more money.

In that aspect, I made peace with it because of the whole anime/manga industry. I learned that, as a mangaka, you don't earn a lot of money with selling books, but rather with merchandise and profiting with sales right. And that guy have a family to raise, have two kids (which is hilarious about how B*ruto movie is his self-insert story), he needs a steady income. Also, I read reports about how anime studios are so poor and animators don't receive a decent income not to mention they are overstaffed and tired, and B*ruto is a good money cow for them to earn money so they can invest later on other anime they have more passion about it. So even though I hate this story with a strength of thousands suns, they are putting meal on people's tables and making them pay rents. I'm ok.

4. Lemme roll my eyes because in the Last movie they said that Hinata is related to Kaguya and so is the Uzumaki and Uchiha clan so they are all related woo hoo. But in the aspect of brothers because reincarnations bla bla bla, didn't Naruto himself said that he's no longer that brother, he's himself? Hmm...I gotta re-read it. One day. Maybe. lol. But I'm sure that he said "Sasuke is not my brother but I'm sure we'll understand well as friends" so there. Honestly, there are a lot of interviews out there and a lot of them are fake, so I'd always take the interviews with a grain of salt lololol. I do know from artbooks that Kishimoto wanted to create Sasuke as a rival-esque character and that was it. As he was developing Sasuke and Naruto's relationship, since he liked the whole yin-yang concept, whenever he wrote Naruto's story, Sasuke's was developed at the same time as his shadow.

5. I can tell from Naruto Forums (I used to participate back in that day) MOST of the non-shippers thought it was gay as hell, but you know...it was a relic of that time. While they thought it was gay, they didn't put too much thought about you know? Because it was shounen, and we knew that it was a joke that it couldn't be taken seriously. Of course, in the SNS fandom, we did make more analysis and there were a lot of instance when Naruto and Sasuke's sexuality was questioned. Some other non-shippers also thought that Naruto was totes gay for Sasuke (including a IRL friend).

Imo, Naruto is definitely bisexual in my view. Sasuke I think he's asexual or gay. He's attracted to Naruto, but mostly because of his connection to him, not because of his physical attributes, so yeah...asexual. Or Pansexual. Sasuke is more complicated lmao. Imo, Naruto could be pansexual too, come to think about it. Yeah, I guess both being pansexual can be valid.

6. He developed Naruto and Sasuke being soulmates from the very beginning, that was proven in his comments in artbooks and in the manga. He probably created with the intention of making it purely platonic, going beyond physical ties. Then he shot himself on the foot by drawing Naruto thinking about Sasuke on bed, talking about how Sasuke is cool, meanwhile Sasuke waxing poetic about how Naruto saved him. What gives? Lol. Yeah, I think he got too enamored writing their relationship that he didn't have time to write romantic ones. What I noticed that Sakura's popularity never was really high, so I could see some editors putting their fingers all over it and making her less relevant. Also, Kishimoto didn't know how to handle her, so when she got her time to shine was the whole fake confession disaster. Coupled with Kishimoto sexism and, in his words (Kurenai's flashback), women are useful to spout more babies, women was never really relevant in his story, unfortunately. Even Kaguya who was technically the big bad boss, was never really fleshed out in comparison to Madara. So the null het romantic moments it's not because he wanted to elevate SNS moments, it's more about how he's incompetent about it. It's either Hinata slowly elevating to a relevant status because forced interaction (Pain's sacrifice and Neji's death) or Sakura being obligated to be pining over Sasuke because she's a girl. It's even more painful to see that, if we ignore B*ruto, both girls are shown to be just talking with their kids and dusting shelves, basically being housewives, even though thorough the story (especially Sakura) it was implied that both of them have much more potential than being their husband accessories.

7. It was a splotch of snot. I can confirm myself lol. Whenever the chapter is out and fans would scan it to scanlate it, the editor usually would amp up contrast to max. So usually the lines get much more thicker than usual, when you read the official release which gets straight from the source, you can notice how the lines are more delicate.

Oh lol...but then we also have a lot of controversy about translating style. THAT one is a whole new can of worms to open.

Man I had fun answering your questions! Please send more :P

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cheri-translates · 4 years ago

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[CN] Gavin’s Reflection of Beauty Date (Eng Translation)

🍒 Warning: Detailed spoilers for a date yet to be released in EN! 🍒

Phone call between Gavin and Mr Keller before the date: here

Candlelit Night Collection: Kiro // Lucien // Victor

Trivia regarding the name of the date:

This date is called 惊鸿照影来, which is part of a couplet from “Shenyuan”, a poem by Lu You written in the Song Dynasty

Rough translation of the full couplet: Alas, the green water under the forlorn bridge / Once reflected the charming face of my beloved one!

It was inspired by the poet’s own love story, where he was forced to leave his wife because his mother didn’t like her. Even so, their love never ceased. Ten years later, they met again in Shenyuan Garden (which was also the place he first fell in love with her). Lu You inscribed a poem on a stone wall, conveying his anger and sorrow towards their separation. A few days after seeing the poem, she died from depression :’<

“Shenyuan” was written later on as a memorialisation of his undying love. It conveys how revisiting old places makes one remember past lovers and sentiments

[ CHAPTER ONE ]

The date begins with MC and Gavin having a rehearsal for the sequel of the “Three Lifetimes” play

The audience had a deep impression of them in “Three Lifetimes”, so Mr Keller wrote them into the sequel as second leads

In the play, the town looks forward to the marriage between Lady Su (the female lead) and Swordsman Bai (Gavin)

But Lady Su is in love with Swordsman Bai’s friend, a scholar (the male lead)

Meanwhile, Swordsman Bai is in love with the character MC is playing (a high-ranking palace maid and a close friend of Lady Su)

After the rehearsal, Mr Keller gives them suggestions on how to improve, and tells Gavin to gaze at MC and hold her hand during a particular scene:

Gavin: ...all right.

[ CHAPTER TWO ]

Once the rehearsal is over, Gavin is a sweetheart as always, bringing water and a few bananas over to MC with this face:

Gavin: If it isn’t enough, I can get a few more?

MC: There’s enough, there’s enough.

Su Xuan, the actress playing Lady Su, tells them to change outfits for the photoshoot:

Su Xuan: I’ll help you put on some make-up first, then marry you off beautifully to your Mr Gavin. Come, close your eyes.

Without giving me a chance to explain or argue, she skilfully helps me with my make-up, as though she’s really helping a sister prepare for her wedding.

Su Xuan: Mm, that’s more like it.

She pulls me to my feet. After looking me over carefully, she tilts her head and smiles at something behind me.

Su Xuan: What does the groom think?

Before I have time to react, Su Xuan pushes me lightly, and I fall into familiar arms.

Gavin: Pretty.

Gavin, who has walked out of the changing room, is also wearing a matching set of red wedding attire.

The colour, which isn’t typically found on him, suits him unexpectedly well.

His easy-going independence has been toned down, replaced with fiery passion.

Gavin: What are you looking at?

MC: This outfit really suits you.

MC: ...very handsome!

Gavin: [coughs] ...you look very pretty in red too.

Gavin’s ears have a tinge of redness. He rubs the back of his neck, his eyes containing insuppressible surprise and warmth as he looks at me.

Su Xuan: All right, you two “newlyweds” can appreciate each other after the shoot! The photographer this time is quite picky.

As she speaks, she pulls our hands together.

The both of us stop talking, perhaps due to the dry air around us, or the warmth surfacing in our eyes.

Gavin holds onto my hand tightly.

[ CHAPTER TWO: A flashback ]

Location: Outside Lynn’s Kitchen

By the time Minor and Gavin leave the noodle shop, the sky is mostly dark.

Only traces of the sunset glow faintly from behind the tall buildings.

Minor: It’s so difficult to get tickets this Chinese New Year... I’m always struggling during this part of the year, and spending the New Year’s alone here is too cheerless. Gavin, what are your plans? Eh... why am I even asking - you’re definitely spending it with Boss.

Gavin is the same as always, letting Minor ramble on at his ear.

Only when he hears the final sentence does a corner of his heart feel a light tug.

Gavin: Mm. I promised to help Mr Keller with her.

Gavin smiles faintly without even realising it himself.

Minor: Huh? ...even though I find this method a little off, it’s not bad I guess! Boss has been asking everyone in the office what dishes they usually make for New Year’s. It made me curious... so you two are spending New Year’s together!

Minor’s words cause Gavin to recall the few memories of “spending the New Year’s” he has.

New Year’s should be a festival of celebration. There was a time when he looked forward to it.

It’s just that afterwards, this day gradually became no different from a normal one.

That is, until the girl reappeared in his life, drawing the link between this day and warmth.

It made him start looking forward to it again.

Minor: Bro Gavin? What are you thinking about? It’s rare to see this look on your face... I got it!

Minor makes an exaggerated expression, predictably receiving Gavin’s neither hard nor soft punch.

Gavin: Minor, are there places selling New Year goods near her home?

Minor: Bro Gavin, you want to... buy New Year goods?!

Gavin: What’s wrong with that?

Minor: Nothing nothing nothing...

Gavin: ...your smile is a little nauseating.

Minor: I’m just happy! Then again, as compared to preparing in advance, there will be more of an atmosphere if you pick them out together!

Gavin: Makes sense.

Gavin nods, quickening his pace slightly.

Minor: Bro Gavin, where are you headed to next?

Several images flash across his mind - a warm light in the living room left on for him, a table with the home-cooked dishes he mentioned liking, and the girl waiting for him on the sofa, hugging a pillow.

Gavin: Home.

[ CHAPTER THREE ]

The photoshoot turns out to be more difficult than MC expected

Photographer: You must imagine - you two are about to elope, so it has to be dynamic! And yet have a tinge of... hesitation and worry! You’ve got to feel it! Change your pose!

MC and Gavin struggle to understand the photographer’s abstract descriptions

MC suggests they pretend to chat while sitting on the grass

MC: ...the weather is getting cold. Does Sparky need to be sent for maintenance?

Once the words leave my mouth, I’m filled with a sense of regret. This topic is too forced...

Gavin seems to be stunned for a moment, then the corners of his lips lift gently.

Gavin: Mm, I have plans to do so. We can find a day to go together.

MC: Ah, okay!

Gavin smiles, lifting his hand to tuck stray tendrils of hair behind my ear.

His amber eyes, which are filled to the brim with smiles, hold my blinking and grinning expression within them.

Photographer: Very good! That’s the right feeling! Could the both of you try lying down? Girl, close your eyes and lift your head slightly.

MC: ...all right. Like this?

I follow the photographer’s instructions and lie down at Gavin’s side, closing my eyes.

In the darkness, a familiar warmth encases me tightly, allowing me to have a peace of mind and lean into his arms.

We are very close to each other. His unique scent entwines with the reed grass that has been dried by the sun, reminding me of the summer we spent together. A breeze brushes past us.

It makes one want to draw even nearer.

Photographer: Very good very good. Can the man include some movements to add on to the idea of newlyweds interacting?

Gavin: ...uhm.

I hear Gavin’s breath halt for a moment, as though he’s deep in thought.

After a while, he seems to have thought of something, and he laughs softly.

Gavin: MC, don’t move.

Right after he finishes speaking, I feel a lock of hair near my ear being lifted gently.

I don’t dare to move a single inch, nor dare to open my eyes. I leave myself entirely to Gavin.

The frequency of my heartbeat increases, and a numbness travels from the roots of my hair to my spine. My hair seems to be gently held in his palm.

Gavin: ...let me know if it hurts. I’ve never tried this before.

Even though he says this, his actions are cautious and tender.

All I can feel are the slight vibrations from my hair, the lock of hair ascending and descending along with his fingers, and then falling by my ear again.

I purse my lips tightly, frantically trying to control my rapid breathing. I’m afraid that I might accidentally ruin this ambience.

The shutter continuously sounds. The photographer seems to be saying something again, but I can no longer hear him clearly.

Next to me, Gavin’s breathing brushes against my forehead and the tips of my hair. The breath, which carries a certain warmth, feels like a light kiss.

Even though this is just a photoshoot, I wish time would give us this moment for a little while longer.

The words he said during the Qixi Festival last year surge from the depths of my heart, and once again gather in the centre.

I can’t help but feel that even if our destinies entangle and cross, and fate only allows for fleeting meetings, we will ultimately accompany each other at the very end.

In my ear, the sound of his heartbeat is akin to him giving me a definite answer. One after the other, regular and resolute.

Photographer:

Gavin: MC, we can get up now.

I open my eyes slowly. The past few minutes have felt like a small, beautiful dream.

In Gavin’s hand are locks of our hair tied together with a red string.

Noticing my gaze, Gavin clear his throat unnaturally.

Gavin: ...when the idea of “newlyweds” was brought up, I could only think of this.

[Trivia: In Chinese culture, one’s hair represents one’s self. During a traditional Chinese wedding, the couple would each cut a lock of their hair and tie them together. This is called 结发 (”joining of hair”). It symbolises the couple becoming one flesh and blood, and how they would be connected forever... T^T]

I nod, not daring to meet his eyes.

His short sentence channels layers of emotions in my heart, converging into unstoppable ripples.

In a most straightforward way, his unembellished words leave a long and sweet aftertaste in my heart.

MC: Let’s go over there so the next group can use this place...

Gavin: Hold on...

Without waiting for Gavin to finish, I’ve already sat up. Only when I feel a light tugging sensation do I realise that my hair is still tied to Gavin’s.

MC: Ah-

Gavin: ...does it hurt? Don’t worry, I’ll untie the knot.

Gavin’s voice, which carries within it concern, is very close to the top of my head. In the next second, the strands of hair that are pulled are immersed in a tender warmth.

Gavin: ...I might have tied it a little too tightly.

MC: Let me try...

Gavin agrees with a sound, cooperating by bending down slightly to make it easier to untie the red string.

I try pulling at the end of the string, but the knot refuses to budge.

Gavin: ...

MC: It does seem a little tight... could it be a dead knot?

Gavin seems to have leaned in a little closer. Perhaps it’s just my misperception, but he seems even closer than he was during the photoshoot.

His temperature and breath make my face feel increasingly flushed. I focus on the knot in my hand, hoping he wouldn’t notice my flustered state.

MC: N-next time, don't tie it so tightly! Or else I’ll leave it to you to untie.

I pretend to be angry, wanting to break the atmosphere that makes my heart go into a frenzy.

Gavin: All right, I got it.

When I hear his voice in my ear, I know fully well that my attempts are futile.

When the red string is finally released and falls to the ground, I release a huge sigh, yet feel an inexplicable emptiness in my heart.

It’s as though my fate with Gavin has become untied.

They get called back to the rehearsal

MC: We should go over then.

Gavin: ...hold on.

Gavin pauses, then takes the red string from my hand.

In a slightly clumsy manner, he uses the string to tie a knot at the end of my plait.

Gavin: This is also considered joining of the hair.

Gavin looks at me, his eyes clear, as though he has seen through all my emotions.

Gavin: Let’s go.

While he speaks, he takes my hand and we leave.

I hold onto Gavin firmly, the red string on my hair swaying gently along with our footsteps.

We will never miss each other again.

[ CHAPTER FOUR ]

At 8pm, the play finally begins

On stage, MC is supposed to read a letter to Gavin

But when she opens it up, she realises there’s nothing on the letter even though her script is supposed to be on it

Gavin notices that something is amiss, so he steps in to calm her down while pretending everything is normal

MC starts reciting her lines based on memory, but starts panicking in fear of ruining the play

Gavin then takes the letter from her and pretends to read from it, reciting her lines perfectly

The First Act of the play comes to an end, and there’s an intermission

MC decides to thank Gavin properly after the play is over, but Su Xuan suddenly looks for her:

Su Xuan: MC, are you free now? Pass the silk ball to Gavin! I don’t know why, but the prop hasn’t been brought over yet.

MC: Okay! I’ll go now!

Thinking of the little time left, I grab the silk ball and run towards the other end without much thought.

In the next scene, Gavin and I are supposed to enter the stage from different sides, which is why I have to cross through the entire backstage to reach him.

The silk ball is an indispensable prop in the next scene. Also... I have a “thank you” to say to him in person.

With this in mind, I quicken my pace, and find a familiar figure afar off in the busy backstage.

MC: Gavin! I’m over here!

I stand on my tiptoes and wave at him, thinking of ways to reach him even faster.

Hearing this, Gavin raises his head. After seeing me, he immediately weaves through the crowd and walks towards me.

People are moving to and fro. Our eyes only have each other, and we go against the flow of people, walking towards our only focus.

Staff: Prepare for the second half!

When I’m only a few steps away from him, the countdown for the second half of the play resounds.

MC: Gavin, this is for you!

In my desperation, I lift my hand. The silk ball flies in a slightly shaky arc, landing steadily in Gavin’s arms.

[Trivia: In Chinese culture, the silk ball (绣球 - ”xiu qiu”) is used to symbolize love. Giving it to someone reflects the giving of one’s heart. If a woman is in search of a fated life partner, she will toss the ball high into the air in a crowd. The person who catches the silk ball would become the person’s husband]

MC: Gavin, about earlier...

Staff: MC? What are you doing here? Go back, we’re about to start soon. The snatching scene is next, and it’s very important.

MC: Please wait! I haven’t finished what I wanted to say...

The staff doesn’t give me a chance to continue, and pulls me to the other end.

I turn my head towards Gavin, and I have no choice but to swallow the words of gratitude I couldn’t say to him in time.

Gavin: [unintentionally sexy whisper] Wait for me.

Gavin stands in place and looks at me, mouthing those words to me.

The bell from the venue rings, and the noise from the audience gradually dissipates.

Staff: The Second Act! Begins!

[ CHAPTER FOUR: A flashback ]

Location: Gavin’s home

MC: “It’s good, and I doubt the lady would refuse, but...”

Gavin: Are you still looking at your lines?

MC: ...Gavin? Why are you here!

[Note: I have no idea why MC asks this since the backdrop is of his own house LOL]

Gavin walks over with a blanket in his hand.

MC: The rehearsal is the day after tomorrow, so I’m trying to make use of my time to familiarise myself with the script, especially the scene where I’m reading the letter. Even though I should be able to read straight from the letter on the actual day, I think it’s better to memorise it just in case... Gavin, why don’t you accompany me in going through the lines!

Gavin nods and sits beside me. After covering me with the blanket, he takes the script from my hands.

Gavin: From here?

MC: Okay!

Gavin and I go through the dialogue. Places I usually get stuck at become miraculously smooth.

Without realising it, we’ve gone through the entire script.

I flip through the script, marking out places requiring additional attention.

MC: I feel like Mr Keller has taken reference from the personalities of the actors when writing the lines. I keep thinking that the lines sound like what you would say.

While speaking, I let out a yawn.

Gavin: If you’re tired, rest. We can continue tomorrow.

As the year draws to a close, there are more things than usual to settle at work. And when I come home, I’d have to familiarise myself with the script. It’s natural that I’d feel fatigued.

MC: You don’t have anything on tomorrow?

Gavin: I don’t have work tomorrow, so we can practice our lines.

MC: That’s great!

A warmth gushes out of my heart. I shift closer to Gavin, sharing half the blanket with him. We look at the script together.

MC: This is so much warmer!

Gavin: ...do you still want to look at it?

MC: Mm, let’s look through the letter scene again. “If you lack medical knowledge... attach some... scattered silver... I hope to do my best...”

The words in front of me gradually become blurry and distorted. After a certain line, I lean on Gavin’s shoulder in a dazed state, giving up on my fight against sleep.

Gavin: MC? Are you asleep?

The girl, who loftily said they would look at the script together just a few minutes ago, is now leaning softly against his shoulder, sleeping peacefully.

Gavin doesn’t wake her up, and simply covers her with a jacket. He flips to the first page of the script, quietly reading the girl’s lines, and memorising them.

The city is asleep, but the room filled with the breath of two people is still illuminated with a tender light.

The all-knowing stars in the night sky are silent, and will guard the small world belonging to these two people.

[ CHAPTER FIVE ] The curtains are drawn slowly. I once again step onto the stage, following the script.

In this scene, Gavin will snatch the silk ball, and I will hand it to the male lead so he can bring his beloved home.

For the scene to be more realistic, the actors are allowed to walk around spontaneously.

As such, I have to run past various settings, weave through the crowd, and finally reach the stipulated spot.

MC: Swordsman Bai?

Panting slightly, I stand underneath the embroidery building, looking for Gavin.

[Trivia: In ancient times, women who were more socially well-to-do would do embroidery in embroidery buildings.]

The sense of deja vu blurs my perception of the boundaries between the play and reality.

A strong wind arrives as promised. Following the glint of a sword, a path forms in the crowd, interrupting my thoughts.

Gavin is dressed in red. One hand holds onto the silk ball, and the other sheathes his sword. He walks straight towards me.

Gavin: Trivial matters held me back, and I seek forgiveness from the lady.

The corners of his lips are curled into an open smile. His eyes are wilful and tender.

The setting of the blue sky, the red silk in the surroundings, and the startled magpie birds surround Gavin, who is donned in wedding attire. It makes one unable to look away.

At this moment, he finally stands before me again.

The crowd and the noise of the world - they no longer have anything to do with me.

Gavin places the silk ball into my hands steadily.

Even though I know this is a script, and that it’s part of the plot, I can’t help but feel that the red silk ball in my hands is akin to a solemn promise.

A greedy thought even flits across my mind - maybe it’d be good if the story ends like this.

On stage, the silk ball is finally handed to the scholar. The lady takes the silk ball and holds it with her lover.

Under the embroidery building, Gavin suddenly takes my hand.

Gavin: Perhaps this may be abrupt. MC, are you willing to marry me and become my wife?

MC: ?!

Was there such a line in the script?

I look at Gavin with confusion.

Gavin doesn’t say a word. He stares straight at me without a hint of evasion.

There are so many emotions within that pair of eyes, leaving me unable to make sense of them. I have no idea what to say.

Off-stage, the audience erupt in thunderous cheers.

I glance to the side. Mr Keller, who has been watching the entire play, nods in my direction, signalling that I should continue in my role.

My confusion dissipates when I see Gavin’s amber eyes, which are filled with deep, tender emotions and lingering affection. There is even an undercurrent of questioning and anticipation.

It’s as though the answer I give would be an entrustment of the rest of my life.

My heart beats loudly in my chest, feeling like it would leap out from my throat in the next second.

MC: I... I accept.

I blush and respond, not even sure if my words are loud enough to be heard by the audience off-stage.

However, every single word is heard by Gavin, who has received my feelings.

With a gentle laugh, he wraps an arm around my waist and lifts me up.

Gavin brings me up the embroidery building to stand alongside the male and female leads.

At the end of the play, there is thunderous applause from off-stage. There are even a few audience members who are fully immersed in the story, sending us their blessings.

In the midst of the applause, I tilt my head and lean towards Gavin’s ear, speaking softly.

MC: Gavin, just now... I don’t remember seeing such a scene in the script?

Gavin: Mm, it was impromptu.

MC: Why didn’t you tell me beforehand? I even thought...

Gavin doesn’t respond further, only smiling at me.

Facing the cheering audience, the four of us bow and thank them for watching, as though worshipping the vast sea of people.

After the play, everyone involved in the show gathers together to celebrate over dinner

MC: Gavin, thank you so much for today! It’s a good thing you saved the show! Back then... I really didn’t know what to do.

While I speak, I raise the drink in my hand, clinking it lightly against Gavin’s.

Gavin: You were looking for me just now to say this?

He raises his drink, making up for the delayed clink.

MC: Yeah. I wanted to thank you properly, but time was so tight that I couldn’t find the chance. Come to think of it, how did you know my lines...

Gavin: When we were rehearsing lines together, I just memorised them as well.

Gavin lowers his head and takes a mouthful of food, maintaining his usual casual attitude. Noticing that I’ve been watching him, he rubs his neck in slight confusion.

Gavin: Um... is there something on my face?

I immediately shake my head. A warm wave of emotions overflow from my heart. Countless words of gratitude are lodged in my throat, but I feel that no matter what I say, it would not be enough.

In the end, I silently fill a bowl of soup for him.

At the table, everyone is eating and drinking merrily, and the atmosphere is warm.

MC: After spending so many days with the crew, thinking of how we might not have the chance to get together like this again makes me feel quite reluctant to part with them.

I lean against Gavin, looking at the lively crew around us.

MC: Gavin, I suddenly thought about something from my childhood. My dad used to be busy producing programs, and would bring me to the recording site to spend the New Year’s. The site was always busy, but no matter how pressed they were for time, everyone would sit down together and have an especially sumptuous dinner. Once I grew up, I also started spending my New Year’s working. I still remember that the warm ambience back then was the same as right now.

Gavin: Mm, I can imagine. I used to spend New Year’s with my teammates, and it was very lively.

MC: Even though it’s not at home, it’s still a different kind of fun!

Gavin: Since we’re on this topic, [coughs]...

Gavin seems to have something very important to say, but he takes another sip of his drink and stops.

I blink, waiting for him quietly. I can vaguely guess what he wants to say.

In the end, he seems to become determined. He clears his throat and turns his head to look at me with a serious expression.

Gavin: Over the next few days, if you don’t have anything else planned....

Gavin: Spend the New Year’s with me at home.

His tone is light, but the look in his eyes tells me just how solemn this invitation is. Even the tips of his ears turn an unnatural shade of red.

I am very certain that, to the both of us, these words are the most precious and serious treasures from the deepest parts of his heart.

MC: Okay.

I nod heavily in response. Since a very long time ago, this answer has not changed.

The corners of Gavin’s lips turn up slightly. Those eyes, which always have an undercurrent of emotions, look like a glacier that has melted in spring, tenderly melting into a warm current.

Gavin: I’ll pick you up then.

MC: Mm!!

The way his lips are curled upwards is as though all the uncertainties in his heart have found a most potent answer.

I find myself smiling along with him.

MC: I recently learnt how to make a few New Year’s dishes, so we can try them.

Gavin: All right, I can help. My skills... have improved.

I freeze for a moment, making a sudden realisation.

MC: Have you been practicing in secret? Looks like teaching you how to cook was a wise decision.

Gavin: ...I occasionally tried to.

MC: I’ll have to check the results of my teaching this year then!

Gavin: No problem.

Gavin smiles, nodding his head with some measure of seriousness. He suddenly thinks of something.

Gavin: Oh yes, do we need to buy things like spring couplets?

MC: Mmhmm, we also have to buy the character “福”! It will only feel like New Year’s when we have these things pasted.

[Trivia: During the Chinese New Year, households paste an inverted red coloured square with the character 福 (“fu”, which means auspiciousness, blessing or happiness) on doors, walls, etc. to usher in such tidings]

I continue talking, listing on my fingers the items I want to purchase.

In my memory, my aunties’ fierce interrogations don’t seem that long ago. In just a blink of an eye, a new year has arrived.

[Note: She’s making reference to the Spring Festival Date!]

This time, we can leave our time to each other.

In a place belonging only to us, flipping open a new year’s calendar together.

The atmosphere at the dining table is just right. The sound of clinking glasses and celebration comes in waves. No one notices this small corner.

We clasp each others’ fingers quietly.

Our pulses, only separated by a layer of skin, call out to each other in the language of warmth.

I’m so lucky to have you by my side.

#mlqc #mlqc cn #mlqc spoilers #mlqc gavin #SOFT GAVIN #pardon the one billion screenshots of Gavin I included in this

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ravenclaw-questions-gone-writing · 4 years ago

Text

Outline # -1 Abandoned Lore (Trinity)

@fanfics-and-fangirling

I have learned my lesson, I will be writing these on Google docs and then copy-pasting onto Tumblr. While I am on GD, I figured I might as well open the docs I used to write the actual fic. Man, I went through a ton of hoops to get where I am. I will be using the most coherent ones for reference.

I can literally track my thought process as I went through writing all the different versions and I still have no idea how tf I went from this to dropping a flaming papermache whale on Ra’s Al Ghul. And I will die mad about it. Which means more meticulous notes in the future I guess.

Also, I’d like to apologize for how long it took to get this out, I have no sense of time whatsoever and as always, there’s a lot more than expected. This was 7 pages long

Original Ramble Post

Like most of my stories, the MC is an OCI - reincarnator brought into a fictional world they once watched. (Because I am obsessed with that trope.)

I now find the original name I had for her cringy and out-of-place given these are norse gods. So, from now on her name is Lokka, which is the female version of Loki

There’s a whole ass backstory about the transition of godly names and power I won’t go into. Just think Thor and female Thor kind of thing I guess. She’s basically seen as a spare Loki but it’s also a respected position.

Was tempted to name her Sigyn since Marvel doesn’t care about actual norse myth relations. No, Idc that there’s a canon Sigyn.

If you’re curious, the original name was Aradia. Yes, like the queen of witches.

MC is an asgardian, the daughter of the librarian in the royal palace and a blacksmith

She managed to get an apprenticeship under Loki and is occasionally taught by Frigga. She also learns under Eir when both her royal teachers are busy.

Lokka found her way into the central plane, probably having found it’s location from Loki’s notes and is unaware that it’s unstable.

So, Lokka is in the central plane, having the time of her life exploring new lands when she stumbles across a crying Marinette who is very lost

Unlike Lokka, Marinette does not know where she is or what is going on. She literally just tripped into a portal and has no way home.

Lokka takes Marinette under her wing and promises to help her find a way home

Problem is, she doesn’t know which of the three universes Marinette is from.

Even if/when she finds out that the girl is from MLB-verse, she still wouldn’t know which one that is because she has no reference to which world is which. Only that Marinette is probably not from Asgard.

At this point, she is unaware she lived in Marvel, she just knows Asgard is Norse Mythology.

So they continue to wander the central plane, Marinette ends up picking up a card guardian for a pet, accidentally becoming a cardcaptor.

Marinette has trouble pronouncing Lokka and Lokka gives Mari permission to call her Cosette (pre-reincarnation name)

Meanwhile, Ra’s sends Damian and Talia into the Central plane for combat experience and resource gathering.

Ra’s might be 700 years old, he might have access to the Central plane but he sure doesn’t know about magic or how it came to be or the current state of it. He might know something’s off because all the inhabitants have been increasingly on edge and the weather’s been stranger than usual but he didn’t deemed it important

Notably, he has never seen anyone other than those who he’d sent in himself in the central planes (CP, from now on bc I am getting tired of typing the entire thing out) so as far as he knows, the CP’s only entrance point is under his control.

Talia and Damian, who’s still going by Hafid, go hunting for resources and training

They separate for a bit for individual hunting/training time

Marinette and Cosette (Lokka) stumble across Damian’s camp

Misunderstandings occur, Damian fights them, more accurately he fights Cosette

Cosette tries to protect Marinette while also making sure not to harm her opponent

It was harder than she expected considering her opponent was a child

Asgardian training pulls through and she is able to do both

Damian’s tied up, Marinette is confused, and Cosette does not want to deal with this

Negotiation time

Marinette can’t speak Arabic, Damian doesn’t know french, and Cosette has all-speak

This means Cosette’s sitting there, having to repeat everything the kids say to each other for translation’s sake

also misunderstandings before the kids realize allspeak is a thing

Cosette is stuck with two kids who don’t like each other, one of which barely puts up with her so she does what most adults do when kids are too troublesome

Distract them: she does magic tricks with actual magic

Damian+Marinette are fascinated, Cosette accidentally gains two magic students

even though she’s still learning herself and all she has for guidance right now are Loki’s and Frigga’s notes

So, the trio end up travelling together

Damian demands Marinette should at least be able to fight so they train her too

They also figure out that Marinette and Damian’s worlds are not the same.

Cosette drills some value of life, basic morals, and feminism into Damian’s head

Marinette and Damian (Hafid) have trouble pronouncing each other’s names

They chose nicknames for each other from Cosette’s bedtime stories

Marinette is obviously angel or Tenko

Damian is gets Kabane, the name of a half demon

Kabane later changes to Kasane, protective blade

Yes, Cosette was/is a weeb and yes, they still mispronounce names which defeats the whole purpose but at least they kids don’t notice now even if Cosette is cringing every time they

They run into another card guardian and this one goes to Damian.

Cosette does not pout about this, it would be very immature

One training montages, several fights, a couple language lessons, and an abandoned (and Cosette-raided) house later, Cosette gets to the part of Loki’s notes where she figures out that the CP is collapsing in on itself and uh-oh

She tells the kids the gist of it but they’re too smart, ask all the right questions, and end up figuring out the important parts of situation that she’s trying to keep from them

Cosette is both impressed and a little put out, mostly impressed because not only did they figure out extremely complex magic, they also mostly remained level headed.

Marinette wants to rescue the card guardians and for once Damian is backing her up so Coestte gives up the notion of returning home and they go collect the guardians.

Remember, DC and MLB universes are closing in on each other

MCU is drifting away

If they don’t collect the guardians, Cosette would have the time to just drop them off at their world collection points and head back to hers

After collecting a couple guardians, they end up finding Talia and explain the situation to her.

Talia joins the gang, she may or may not be plotting a marriage

They raid a couple more houses, collect the 54 card guardians, and complete the power transfer ritual (replacing the Yue’s trial because the cards are the guardians)

The cards end up latching onto the three kids.

Marinette gets the Mistress title, Damian gets Sun Guardian, and Cosette gets Moon guardian.

Originally Cosette was going to be the mistress and Marinette the Moon guardian but because of the way I’ve decided magic works in this world - explaining that will need a whole other post - if Marinette is the moon guardian and gets the Ladybug miraculous, she will - for lack of better word - get sick and possibly die... or not.

Y’know what, it made sense at the time. But now that I think about it, we’re going back to the original idea.

Cosette’s the Card Mistress, Marinette’s the Moon guardian and Damian’s the Sun guardian.

Spoiler alert: that is a plot point for tropes-verse.

The completion of the ritual breaks puts CP deteriorations in high acceleration

Damian and Talia get into their circle, Cosette and Marinette in the other

Damian doesn’t have any cards bc he doesn’t want his grandfather trying to get to them. He and Talia agreed Ra’s would only know about the CP’s destruction. He does, however, have a CP beast that they picked up.

CP beast: magical creature that was born of CP’s magical residue or smth

Damian’s looks like a Teddiursa (Teddy bear pokemon) it is not

They have a notebook from a raided house detailing CP’s deterioration for proof

Cosette goes with Marinette because she can’t make it back to her universe and in the event that Marinette’s also from Cosette’s universe, she won’t be alone

They separate with the promise of meeting again.

At this point, I have had several differing ideas

They all go into DC world because they aren’t sure of Marinette’s world

Child trio goes into MLB world and Talia tells Ra’s Damian died

Everyone goes into MLB and Ra’s finds out about the collapse when he tries going in himself and finds out he can’t and just assumes they died

Y’all, I’m starting to see why I can’t do one-shots…

One of the things I forgot to mention in the rambling post is that while Marvel-verse was pulling away, it also messed with the time regulation thing, a day in the Maribat-verse will

Time in CP was very messed up

Kind of assumed readers could piece it together but I figured might as well make it obvious and straight up say it

MLBU: Cosette and Marinette arrive safely

Marinette is delivered home and Cosette has to figure something out

They find out Marinette has only been gone for a week

Marinette has some separation anxiety for about three days

Cosette slowly realizing this is an MLB universe and having a crisis

Cosette gets adopted by the Dupain-Chengs and starts working at the bakery

I have not figured out ages for Cosette

MLB goes like most Maribat fics pre-gotham because I’m lazy

Will likely be adjusted if I ever actually write this fic

Except Cosette steps in when things got too far and Paris has 3 heroes

Cosette is the known as the Sorciere or Lokka

Her uniform is just her asgardian armor

Good but misguided Adrien, Cosette probably adopts him too

Love square goes platonic and Cosette is glad this rom-com is over

Magic tutoring continues

Cosette is neutral with Fu and fascinated by the miraculous

You remember those ghost interactions? Those are filtering in

One of the first things to merge is the internet, because it doesn’t have a physical body and it’s just waves of information

News and discoveries between the world are being swapped

Given what I remember from DC and dimension travel, it wouldn’t be surprising if they figured out universes were merging.

The news about JL and Paris’s situation are causing all kinds of confusion

Cosette beings looking for information on Damian

As the physical world begins merging, there’s pockets of space where you can slip from one world into another; not quite portals but close

Eventually the trip to NY became a trip to Gotham because their plane slipped between planes (sorry, I saw the chance and I had to take it.) but yeah, that happened.

There’s quite a few details I’m forgetting

DCU: Damian and Talia arrive ok and report bare basics to Ra’s

It has also only been a week

Ra’s is displeased to find them back until they report the state of the CP

There’s the whole coup not long after and Damian is sent to Bruce

Damian is much more innocent looking when he’s bringing what appears to be a teddy bear with him

It’s name is Abd and it has grown wings by now. Actual name pending.

He gets teased about it, but under Cosette’s teachings, he has learned the virtue of patience, underestimation, and getting revenge with a side of entertainment

He does not try to kill Tim either

He also has to make the choice of bringing Abd with him as Damian or as Robin

He choses to make a side company for WE making toys based off creatures from the CP so Abd wouldn’t look too out of place

It takes two weeks for the bats to realize there’s something off about the Abd

They are convinced it’s haunted and Damian is very entertained

Abd only moves in daytime when no one - Damian excluded - can see it

Movement can expel magic that interferes with recording tech

Alfred is the first to figure it out and surprise, surprise, he has some magic books for Damian to learn from

It’s from the Wayne family library and they just assumed the language was lost to time. At least three are from Alfred’s own family.

Bat brothers spend the next 6 months trying to convince Damian his magical pet bear is a haunted doll.

Damian sort of getting along with Poison Ivy because his Sun magic is very compatible with plants and they love him

On an unrelated note, the plants seem to refuse to attack the new Robin

Damian randomly, unconsciously humming to songs Cosette and Marinette sang

Damian just vibing with the magic users of JL and Teen Titans

No one took him seriously at first but he pointed something out during a conference

“Robin, stand down and let the magic users handle this” - Green Lantern, probably

Constantine who actually knows what he’s talking about “No, no, let the boy talk.”

The plan was twice as efficient after Damian was through with it

Now Constantine’s trying to adopt Damian as an apprentice, he’s failing bc the bats are protective and possessive of what is theirs

Reminder that Damian brings Abd with him everywhere and he’s still getting teased about it from anyone who is not a bat (still convinced the thing is haunted)

The only thing the magic users have picked up about Abd is that he’s a magical construct which could mean a number of things but they brush it off as just a doll.

No one is prepared for the thing to come to life, multiply in size, and start spitting ice, sleep sand, and illusions. (Hiccups bubbles and can also turn into a cloud.)

They are also not prepared for the thing to quadruple in size and for Damian to ride it like a horse into battle. Reminder that Abd has wings and can fly.

Confusing talk about what’s going on in Paris and some other parts of the world

JL slowly figure out the universal merger that Damian already knows about

Damian is not impressed, it took him and Angel about 2 hours as 9 year olds

Somehow, Damian still has the ice prince image, less demon spawn though, that goes to Abd

Time moves on and one day, a plane from the other world arrives in Gotham

There’s a bit of confusion but it’s not exactly the first time something like this has happened at this point

WE steps up and offers jobs and a tour and all the usual Maribat plans (not just for the kids but all the other people on the plane)

Given the merger of the internet, MLB class and crew have some idea who the Waynes are and they accept.

Estimated about 6 months for full merger so people from MLB world are kinda just stuck there until then

Lila literally cannot lie about knowing the Waynes personally but she sure can lie about other things.

Dick and Damian are sent in to monitor the group

The reunion is awkward given they can’t freely interact and are not supposed to know each other.

While Dick is talking, there are just wide eyed staring between Marinette, Damian, and Cosette. With something a little extra between Marinette and Damian.

Cosette is torn between laughing and groaning at another rom-com trope coming in fast.

She ends up filming it bc blackmail is always good to have

Adrien is confused and quite frankly, he’s really just there to cover for them

The tour begins and about five minutes in, the trio breaks off and exchanges stories and names.

Cosette hears about Batman and has a dawning realization of what this world is, mentally nopes out, later digests that they are going into Maribat verse

Starts checking off Maribat tropes they’re coming across bc she might as well have fun with it

They continue to meet up

Batfam thinking Damian somehow managed to get two girlfriends

Damian choking on his breakfast when it is brought up

The girls are invited to dinner and Damian is just dying inside

Cosette blatantly hitting on all Damian’s brothers in the first 5 minutes

Damian screaming internally while Cosette cackles

Dick is awkward until he realizes it’s a joke, Jason plays along, Tim has an awkward bean crisis

Tim x Cosette? Maybe.

Cosette does that sit and repeat thing at least three times out of habit

Batfam gets full explanation about how they met and everything

I have played with the idea of Cosette getting fear gassed a couple times and Idk how it would go tbh.

That’s as far as I got with this version, so shenanigans ensue

Pretty sure they used the cards and magic throughout even if I didn’t mention it

Absolutely would be useful for being in two places at once

I later changed so the merger happens and then Paris’s heroes meet the Justice League

Damian immediately recognizing Cosette but not Marinette bc magic

still effective but weaker because of Damian’s magic type

He later recognizes Marinette later when she pulls off a move he taught her way back in CP

Nickname confusion for everyone else

Cosette vs Constantine on who gets to teach Damian magic

Damian goes to Paris. They beat Hawkmoth and then go to Gotham.

Also had a general idea of a plot with LoS that never got fleshed out past existing

If we’re going for the rebound version: Cosette reunites with Thor and Loki during the Avengers movie

Also, poor Heimdallr. He probably had a lot of headaches with the universe crash

Accelerated merger because of the convergence in the dark world.

I wanna go with 2012 Avengers towers shenanigans. + Loki and his sort-of but not really daughter

Cosette vs Antman, shrinking/growing, science vs magic.

And then there’s the whole Ironman vs Batman vs Arrow rich boy fight

Hammer x Luthor or Hammer vs Luthor?

Also, Cosette just staring at her home universe in betrayal and being insulted she didn’t think of it earlier because classic Nordic myths had Loki as Odin’s brother and not his son among other things but still

Fight against Thanos is a bit anti-climatic when you give a gremlin murder child magic and a sword that can through anything, including magical artifacts.

this baby boy can and will fight God and Cosette’s not really the kind to hold him back

If I actually wrote this, a lot of things would probably change because I’d actually have to put more thought into logistics and how things work

#Maribat #Daminette #multi-crossover #Ven's ideas #Ven's rambling #Abandoned Lore #Ven's idea outline #feel free to ask questions #maribat x CCS #mlb x dc x marvel x ccs #I gave up editing #I only have vague recollection of what is actually written here

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officialinuyasha · 5 years ago

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Analysis on Sesshoumaru and Rin's relationship

Sesshoumaru and Rin's relationship to almost all in the Japanese fandom as romantic when Rin comes of age for that time period. Not only do those fans see them as what Americans call it a "Canon" couple but they are well aware of poly-amorous relationships widely accepted back in that time and era. Like how Inu no Taishou (Touga-Ou) had two wives. Where Sesshoumaru's mother was well aware of the human wife and was unphased nor appeared to be jealous. Only hinting Sesshoumaru's taste in humans (about Rin) like his father with Izayoi.

Western Culture VS Eastern Culture

Atleast 20% of the American fandom in my group while it was closed (that means members only) voted SessKagura when I ran the poll in 2019. It was 64 votes and Sesshoumaru romantic with adult Rin had 126 votes.

In a Fanpop poll SessRin had 61% and SessKagura had 39%

While I ran the poll again in 2020 as public and shared it across multiple Western fan groups which is less genuine data I had to check each profile to ensure the votes were genuine (haters tend to happen in any given anime coupling) They are able to vote even though they weren't members. This time I specifically labeled it "Romantic" or "Parental". The results within just a few hours were what I had expected. The romantic portion still surpasses the parental choice.

American Fandom VS Japanese Fandom

The American fandom majority is mostly accepting of Rin being with Sesshoumaru of age. However, the fraction that is more towards him being parental is far more than what the Eastern fandom thinks.

Two administrators of a 13,000 plus members group called Sinosphere (Eastern culture) have both spoken to me about the differences in views.

One stated (Esther Xiao) "I have never heard of this issue ever until I joined the American fandom. I've known about the gift that Rin recieves at the end of the series as an act of courting."

The second admin Hiroyuki said the Japanese viewed Sesshoumaru and Rin easily as a couple of when of age. Courting being much differently than Western and the fact of it's time period.

"Contemporary courtship in Japan is more subtle than dating in the United States. The blossoming of a relationship from friendship to marriage can take years. The relationship begins as friendship, with dates taking place only in public places, typically with groups of friends present. Public displays of affection are frowned upon. The next stage is dating only as a couple, which is done discreetly. Women typically withhold displays of extreme affection and proclamations of love until she deems her suitor is sincere. When the relationship enters the stage of magkasintahan, which means the status of boyfriend and girlfriend, the couple typically makes an announcement to friends and family members, with the suitor asking for parental permission to pursue the relationship.

The man typically brings gifts when visiting the family.”

Source: https://datingtips.match.com/courtship-japan-13196896.html

Sesshoumaru stops by to visit Rin and Kaede, often giving her gifts. The kimonos are gifts representing courtship. Kaede’s is Rin’s family

An extra unaired episode was released on an audio CD only in Japan when you pre-ordered the Final Act. Where Sesshoumaru proposes to Rin. It takes place right after the Final Act’s last episode and it’s called “The Day After Tomorrow”

Rin, are you finding life in the village okay?

No one is bullying you, right?

Are you wearing the kimono that I gave you last time?

If you ever find yourself in danger, sad or depressed, no matter when, as long as you call this Sesshomaru, I will instantly run to your side.

Even if we are far from one another, as long as you call my name, I will immediately fly to you. If not shouting, you can whistle loudly or silently.

There is no distance between us, our hearts are tied together. The power of trust will win over any fear. And that affection between us is also what makes our hearts more abundant and enriched.

Therefore, you can just be yourself right now. There is enough time for me to look forward in you finding your feelings for me. Prior to this, take care of yourself……

About the CD - No, it does not have a Satire label on it from what we looked at. It just says Asatte which means Day After Tomorrow. If you want to consider it bloopers that’s up to you. But yes, the producers and animators ship them. It is an officially licensed disc.

"Canon"

To Westerners, Canon was a term invented by the Bible.

"a collection or list of sacred books accepted as genuine" To Westerners nothing else is canon except Manga.

In Japan, including the Dragon Ball Z timeline and continuity - Westerners argue that anything in their perspective that is canon is law and real/what happens. The creator of the series himself, Akira Toriyama never used these terms when it came to GT, in fact anything Westerners argued "Canon". Akira Toriyama would state that it would be apart of a side story.

"If you are able, along with me, to enjoy watching the original Dragon Ball's grand side-story Dragon Ball GT, you will be pleased."

Source: https://www.kanzenshuu.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5411

Still very much considered genuine by the Japanese just in a different continuity.

In Japan, Canon is not a term used. If something happens in an anime series it still happens regardless separate reality or not based on storyline. Unless a creator decides to make something in the future that erases the event from a timeline.

Even when Akira Toriyama was re-desigining Broly to fit into the Super series, here’s what he had to say -

“I went ahead and watched the movies from back then, and I felt this could be quite interesting once I rearrange some things. I got right to work trying my hand at a story that incorporates him into the Dragon Ball Super series.”

Source: https://comicbook.com/anime/2018/07/09/dragon-ball-super-movie-broly-canon-akira-toriyama-anime/

Star Wars Canon arguments...

Here's where American perspective on Canon fails. If a creator sells of the rights for anyone to use their character in an agreement they are allowed to twist the perspective on story reality. Disney bought the rights to Star Wars and the creator has absolutely no say whatsoever. Disney decides what is "Canon" and what isn't. That is why Americanized "Canon" is solely based on perspective.

Let's be real here, if something is officially licensed and approved it is still apart of continuity in one way or another no matter how you slice it.

Westerners and Easterners see the world differently

Source (Thanks Mod Esther for supplying)

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7882-westerners-and-easterners-see-the-world-differently/

“There is plenty of anecdotal evidence suggesting that Western and East Asian people have contrasting world-views,” explains Richard Nisbett, who carried out the study. “Americans break things down analytically, focusing on putting objects into categories and working out what rules they should obey,” he says.

By contrast, East Asians have a more holistic philosophy, looking at objects in relation to the whole. “Figuratively, Americans see things in black and white, while East Asians see more shades of grey,” says Nisbett. “We wanted to devise an experiment to see if that translated to a literal difference in what they actually see.”

The researchers tracked the eye-movements of two groups of students while they looked at photographs. One group contained American-born graduates of European descent and the other was comprised of Chinese-born graduate students who came to the US after their undergraduate degrees

Each picture showed a striking central image placed in a realistic background, such as a tiger in a jungle. They found that the American students spent longer looking at the central object, while the Chinese students’ eyes tended to dart around, taking in the context"

By rules that some Westerners are raised to follow when it comes to Sesshoumaru and Rin: If you save someone at a young age they are automatically considered your child regardless by blood. Rin was only with Sesshoumaru for one year and with Kaede for three years.

They are also not thinking of the Japanese culture or time period.

Nisbett hopes that his work will change the way the cultures view each other. “Understanding that there is a real difference in the way people think should form the basis of respect.”

Respecting the time period and Japan's culture. Kagome teaches us that in the series.

In the series Miroku proposes to many young girls even Koharu when she was age 11 in Chapter 147 and Episode 41. But she comes back as a 14 year old.

At first Sango and Kagome were mad thinking Miroku was perverted with her when she was 11. But he tells them that nothing happened between them. They believed him. Sango was also furiously jealous of Koharu!

Kagome states "Things were way different back then.” Stating her respect for the time period and culture.

Ayame was the same age as Rin when Kouga proposed to her when she was 8 years old. She grew up, and they got married.

InuYasha is 200 and Kagome was 15. She became 18 then they married.

Rumiko Takahashi’s Fire Tripper - There’s time traveling back in forth from Feudal Japan to Modern Era. The boy Shu was brought in with her family and the girl was sent back in time with him where he thinks that’s his little sister. Then as she’s older she’s back in time once more, he wants to make her his wife then realizes she must be his little sister. But she says they aren’t because they are not related by blood. They get married. Pretty much an the same type of pairing.

Age of consent in Japan.

As you know Rin is 8 years old when she is first introduced into the series. 3 years go by and she is 11. Had been living with Kaede for 3 years since Naraku had been defeated. InuYasha states that it's up to her to decide on "what she wants" in the final chapter.

In the proposal Sesshoumaru states that there is enough time for her to decide.

Age of consent in Japan is 13

https://www.ageofconsent.net/world/japan

Back then once you hit puberty that was your adulthood. The world was a much more dangerous place and you had to mature, fast.

The audio episode is officially licensed and produced by the same staff that made the anime but that isn't the only supporting evidence we have that it's accepted by not only the creator and producers.

We actually have the official Adult Rin design.

The character designer and animator for the InuYasha series posted these official artworks of Adult Rin and Sesshoumaru

Rumiko Takahashi wrote strict rules to the animators to follow for each character on what you can/cannot do with them. One of them being, Kagome's skirt must always be covering her underwear.

When you work for a company and produce things you must represent the characters properly so you are not sued. There are rules Rumiko Takahashi gave the animators to properly represent her characters.

To the Japanese, and many Easterners. Sesshoumaru and Rin, InuYasha and Kagome, Ayame and Kouga maturing together - Falling in love with eachother is not an issue.

To a fraction of Westerners it’s led to hate and dis-respect to the time period and Japanese culture. However, even if you don’t like it - Shouldn’t mean you should disrespect one another over it.

Just to answer any questions. Yes I like Kagura and Sesshoumaru, or Adult Rin and Sesshoumaru, Kohaku and Rin. But I can care less who he or she ends up with. I don't even care if they really did end up being father and daughter figure. But from how I see it right now from what we have Kaede adopted Rin. If that's different I'm absolutely accepting of it. I also did tons of research, polls, and asked real Eastern Sinosphere members about how they feel and think about it!

All we know right now for fact that the production team like them as a couple and the kids are half demon.

What do I not condone is the name calling and the people who go out of their way to attack others. I think it's absolutely wrong to hate on eachother over a series we should all be family about. I don't go out of my way to search people's blogs to attack them. There are ships I don't like but I never go and attack them for it. Why would I take away from THEIR happiness?

I hope that clears anything up. Thank you for reading!

#inuyasha #sessrin #sesshomaru #sesshoumaru #rin #inukag #kouga #anime #manga #japan #japanese #rumiko takahashi

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needtherapy · 4 years ago

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soaring, carried aloft on the wind...continued 20

An arranged-marriage story for Xichen and Mingjue, in another time and another place.

The Beifeng, the mighty empire of the north, invaded more than a year ago, moving inexorably south and east.

In order to buy peace, the chief of the Lan clan has given the Beifeng warlord a gift, his second oldest son in marriage. However, when Xichen finds out he makes a plan.

He, too, can give a gift to the Beifeng warlord, and he will not regret it.

Part 1: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 Part 2: 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 … HOME

It’s complete on AO3 here.

Notes: Check the tags if you’re concerned about the pairings ;)

For translations of the entirely fictitious Beifeng language, you’ll have to scroll to notes. I’m only going to translate something that’s not clear in the text. Sadly, there’s just not any other good way to do it on Tumblr!

Chapter 20 Now

Xichen could not have guessed that the Ikarahu would throw a festival in an army encampment in the middle of a war. It seems so dangerous for so much of the army to be distracted. And yet here he is in the transformed sparring arena, surrounded by hundreds of people eating spicy meat grilled in huge open pits, drinking the sweet Ikarahu ale, dancing in pairs and circles, and singing boisterous, noisy songs. Any watching scout could see that there are brightly striped flags, strands of bells, and colorful lanterns looped over ropes suspended between posts around the outside of the arena. Xichen suspects the lanterns mean this festival will extend long into the night, and he tries to squelch the nagging concern.

After all, it is a party. It’s supposed to be fun.

Xichen had helped Huaisang hang lanterns for what felt like years, and Huaisang had explained that the festival was called Hatapi, a celebration of the ahuti’s birthday. The ahuti was considered a valued ruler as well, and the Hatapi was a chance to thank them.

“But really, it’s just an excuse to eat and drink,” he’d said, completely seriously. “Who doesn’t love that?”

When Xichen had asked how he had time to plan a festival, Huaisang had just laughed and said it was a yearly event, which gave him plenty of time.

“Right now Hatapi celebrates my mother’s birthday, but it used to be my grandfather’s birthday. And before that, my great-grandmother. It’s always celebrated on the birthday of the ahukau’s spouse,” Huaisang had winked. “Eventually, Hatapi will be on the eighth of…”

Xichen had slapped a hand over Huaisang’s mouth and refused to let him finish that sentence.

Even after Huaisang’s descriptions, Xichen hadn’t fully expected the sheer chaos of the day. It’s riotous and loud and full of surprises. There have been strength and skill contests all day: sword fights, hurling giant logs, foot races, even a surprisingly early drinking contest. Every winner gets a trophy and an enthusiastic clap on the back from Mingjue, and it pleases Xichen that it’s hard to tell which the winners prefer.

At the moment, Xichen, Qingyang, and Guangyao are watching the last contest of the day, the mounted archery competition, which Xichen has to admit is spectacular. More than fifty of the finest archers in the Ikarahu cavalry are riding without saddles or bridles in a tight circle, bows drawn, shooting arrow after arrow into bales spaced around the outside of the circuit. The judges, including Huaisang and Mingjue, are on the other side of the arena, both standing on horses, presumably for the vantage, which raises questions Xichen has never thought he would ask.

Guangyao sniffs. “It hardly seems like a challenge. They’re just riding in a circle.”

“Huaisang says the second half is more impressive.” Qingyang shrugs. “There are bonus points for style, but I don’t know what that means.”

They know immediately when the real competition begins. One by one, the riders take a circuit of the arena, making impossible shots as they stand on their horses or cling to the bellies of their horses or drop to the ground and bounce lightly off their toes to turn backward or dangle across the side of their horses to shoot from under their necks, hidden from view, all while galloping full speed. Xichen has simply never seen anything like it. He’s not sure there even is anything like it.

“My mother would have loved this,” Qingyang sighs, softly enough that Xichen almost doesn’t hear her above the din around them. “She missed the galio of her homeland more than anything else, I think. I’m sorry she never went back to Ikara before she died, but I’m glad I had as many years with her as I did.”

His own mother’s death is still a sharp pain in his side, but Qingyang doesn’t seem as unhappy as Xichen would expect. She looks at him with a wistful smile, one that seems to want to share this memory, so he ventures to ask, “When did she die?”

“Two years ago, before the Ikarahu came,” she answers, and Xichen squeezes her shoulder. So recently. He is amazed that she’s willing to talk about it.

She smiles at him, a bravely crooked tilt, and Xichen suddenly wants to tell her. To tell someone. Maybe sharing the pain will release it. Holding it tightly certainly has not.

“My mother died when I was twelve. Of a wasting sickness,” he says, and Qingyang makes a sympathetic noise. “I have always wished I had more time.”

Qingyang nods. “There is never enough, is there? I will always want to see her face again or hear her call me a-Yang. She was an artist too, and I was fortunate to work with her for years, until her fingers were no longer agile enough for fine details. The only comfort is that she didn’t have to…” Qingyang exhales sadly. “She didn’t have to know why I left Lanling.”

Guangyao is quiet and seems to be caught up in watching the last rider, a slim, short man who rides the circuit in constant motion. He is nearly a blur, bouncing off the ground, sliding under the horse’s belly to pop up on its other side, slinging under the horse’s neck, flipping backward, and somehow still shooting arrows. The crowd roars when he takes top honors and Mingjue bounds over to present him with the prize, a huge gold bowl filled with water that the man shares with his horse.

“My mother is dead too,” he announces, the words slicing cleanly through the noise of the crowd.

For once, Guangyao doesn’t seem to be trying to hide the emotion in his voice. He sounds as though he has been brutally stabbed in a wound that had not yet healed. When Xichen looks at him, there is such animosity on his face, his eyes narrowed to slits and his jaw clenched so tightly, Xichen can almost hear his teeth grinding together.

“Since you didn’t ask,” he says, his lips flattening into a tense slash. “I was seven when I found her. She wrote that she was sorry, as though she had something to apologize for.”

Xichen reaches out instinctively to slide his fingers around Guangyao’s tense hand, wanting to erase this terrible tragedy, this horror that still haunts his friend.

“Aitapaho, Qingyang, Yao-ti!” Mingjue’s booming voice interrupts, and Xichen jumps as though he’s been caught peeking at something forbidden, as though he’s been caught doing something forbidden.

Mingjue kisses Xichen firmly, with all the enthusiasm of a man thoroughly enjoying his life, but not before Xichen sees the quick, appraising look Huaisang gives him and Guangyao.

Guangyao sees it too, and laughs, the sound higher and more strident than usual. “We were only bonding, Oringa’anhu Ikira. Over stories of our dead mothers.”

He takes a deep, bracing breath as though he will say something else, something even worse, and Xichen is suddenly afraid of what it might be. Guangyao seems like a mirror about to shatter and slash whatever might be near it.

Huaisang grabs Guangyao’s wrist and interrupts him with a teasing grin. “Guangyao, you were wrong about the winner, so I am claiming your forfeit. You are required to learn the next dance. Ani?”

Guangyao frowns. “You didn’t tell me his horse was a galau, so I think you should forfeit,” he argues, but he lets Huaisang pull him toward the dancers.

Mingjue laughs and kisses Xichen again. He tastes like winter mint and joy, and Xichen lets it distract him. Mingjue can always distract him.

“Come, aitapaho. We will eat and drink and dance!”

Only part of that sounds enjoyable, and Xichen shoots Qingyang a pleading look, but she laughs at him too, shooing him away cheerfully as Titakau joins her. Friendship is not what it used to be, he thinks. He will have to get revenge later.

There is no reason he should not be able to learn this foot kicking, jumping, spinning dance, Xichen thinks crossly, but he is growing increasingly irritated with the frequency his feet get caught together, and he trips, falling against Mingjue, who only catches him with curious, roving hands. Finally, Xichen throws up his hands in exasperation.

“Ahoraho, I am going to watch,” he yells over the music, singing, and shouts of laughter.

In answer, Mingjue grabs Qingyang’s hand and drags her into the circle where she, Xichen notes enviously, picks up the steps almost immediately. Titakau silently hands Xichen a bottle of ale and he takes a drink.

“Roka iko auha em koni,” she tells him sympathetically, “Pia ei sakona auha em ga. Et taka ti eta engati hako.”

She’s right about that much. It is fun to watch. There are two lines of dancers, one on the inside, one on the outside. The two circles turn, flicking their heels in the air, kicking forward and backward, spinning from the inside line to the outside line, changing partners and changing back. It seems random and reminds Xichen of spinning maple seeds that flutter from the tops of trees in gusts of autumn wind.

Xichen catches sight of Huaisang, whose face is alight with mirth, and Guangyao, who looks—not quite angry anymore. Begrudging, perhaps. Huaisang leans in to say something and Guangyao rolls his eyes, but his expression softens. Huaisang tips his head back and laughs, suddenly spinning Guangyao toward Mingjue who catches his hand smoothly, exchanging it for Qingyang’s. Mingjue’s grin is impossible to resist, and a smile, one with dimples that reaches his eyes, settles on Guangyao’s face, and he shakes his head with a reluctant laugh. Mingjue’s face, which Xichen knows so well, shifts just slightly, from watchful hawk to satisfied cat, and he ruffles Guangyao’s hair as the song seems to finally end.

Xichen wonders. He wonders if Huaisang and Mingjue worked together to coax Guangyao out of his bleak mood. He wonders why. He wonders if there is something else here, a more complicated set of steps here than Xichen can comprehend.

As the night wears on, the crowd grows ever larger, including nearly every member of the Ikarahu encampment. Ale flows freely, the food tastes even more delicious grilled over huge open fires, and Mingjue convinces Xichen to try dancing again. It does not go any better than his first try, and in retaliation, Xichen trods on Mingjue’s toes. This is also unsuccessful, as Mingjue merely stops dancing and wraps his arms around Xichen, kissing him until his knees are weak and he forgets the whirling, swirling tumult around him.

“I’m ready for bed,” Xichen whispers to Mingjue.

Mingjue tightens his embrace and rests his forehead against Xichen’s. “After fireworks?” he asks hopefully.

Xichen nods, unable to resist the sweet, boyish grin. He traces one dimple with his thumb and Mingjue inhales, turning his face to Xichen’s palm. Xichen slips his fingers over Mingjue’s ear, into his hair, down the strong line of neck, and Mingjue sighs.

“Or now,” he says, voice husky, and Xichen chuckles.

“Now,” he agrees, taking Mingjue’s hand and leading him back through the crush of people where they run directly into Huaisang and Guangyao.

“Anakau! Xichen!” Huaisang hands Mingjue a bottle. “You have not toasted our mother with me! It’s tradition!”

Thwarted, Xichen can do nothing but take the bottle Guangyao offers him and raise it.

“Di ika gati,” Huaisang and Mingjue say the obviously familiar words together. “Sika galio, em inga oduna!”

Shaking his bottle at Guangyao and Xichen, Huaisang repeats the whole thing again, to long life, swift horses, and blue skies, until they join in.

Huaisang and Guangyao finish their bottles, and Xichen hands Mingjue the rest of his. He already feels lightheaded, and he doesn’t want to be drunk.

“What is your mother like?” Guangyao asks, surprising everyone. He looks like he regrets his words, though, and tenses as if preparing to run. “Does she enjoy this festival?”

Huaisang furrows his brow and answers the second question first.

“She endures it because my father loves it. Truly, she is the most generous person I know and the most terrifying.” An unconscious smile tilts his mouth. “She’s clever and stubborn and ambitious. She is not a soft mother, but she is wonderful. She would have been an exceptional ahukau, but she doesn’t like…” he looks at Mingjue for confirmation, “Being in the front of the room?”

“She is called Kiri’anata,” Mingjue offers. “It means…” He wiggles one hand and uses his other hand to move it around.

Huaisang laughs. “It means Shadow Hand,” he fills in, and Mingjue nods agreement.

Guangyao looks unusually confused. “It is known that she rules from behind your father?”

Huaisang shrugs. “They rule together, as partners. It’s not one or the other. They’re necessary to each other.”

Xichen can’t imagine what it must be like to have parents who love and respect each other. Who value each other.

He looks at Guangyao, who is staring at the ground, his expression a wholly neutral, blank mask Xichen recognizes from wearing it so often himself. Like now, when he is trying not to think of the treaty that forced Mingjue into this relationship or now, when he is trying not to think about what it means that Mingjue is the crown prince of his country and he is only Xichen.

“She is loved for who she is,” Mingjue adds, threading his fingers through Xichen’s.

“She is,” Huaisang agrees. “All the good and the difficult. Sometimes so difficult.” Huaisang’s eyes dance, and he laughs lightly, but he is watching Guangyao’s pensive, unchanging expression.

Huaisang is always watching everyone, Xichen thinks. Whatever he’s looking for, whatever it means to him, it’s too great a mystery for Xichen to puzzle out today. There is something else he would rather be doing.

“We’re leaving,” Xichen announces and turns, pulling Mingjue behind him. He looks back once to see Guangyao finally look up and meet Huaisang’s eyes without flinching.

The fireworks begin just before they reach Xichen’s tent, and the explosions reverberate through him, numbing his fingers and toes. Mingjue slows, intending to watch, but Xichen pulls him on, tugging off his coat before they’re even in the tent.

“Xichen,” Mingjue murmurs, cupping Xichen’s face in his hands, gentle as always. “What was your mother like?”

It isn’t what Xichen expected, but he says the first thing, the easiest, truest thing.

“She was beautiful.”

Xichen pauses and thinks. He seldom talks about his family. He rarely even talks about his former home. It has seemed like a necessary separation of the two halves of his life. And until now, Mingjue has never asked.

Xichen chooses this, too. He can not have a future without sharing his past.

“She told us stories of monsters and heroes. Stories of carp who became dragons, tigers who granted wishes,” Xichen says, smiling at the memories. “We played the guqin together. She was a healer. When we were boys, she taught my brother and I how to befriend the rabbits in the woods, although my brother was always more patient than me. Only the bravest rabbits would let me feed them.”

Mingjue laughs. “Ani, you are very fearsome, my bright heart.” He kisses Xichen’s forehead softly, lingering in the embrace. “Huan, will you tell me one of these stories?”

What can he do but agree? Xichen undresses Mingjue, and Mingjue undresses him, and they lay together in bed, legs tangled, Mingjue’s head on Xichen’s shoulder. Xichen tells him a story of a magical carp who granted bigger and more magnificent wishes to a man and his wife until the last wish was too greedy, too selfish, and the carp took everything away again.

“Tiras mau, Ahora’ipa,” Mingjue says drowsily, and Xichen smooths a hand over his hair and down his shoulder, listening to the sound of his breathing even out into sleep.

Love is such a surprise, he muses before he, too, falls asleep. It is a wonderful and perplexing surprise. Whatever their future holds, if he were to repeat the past, he would gladly pledge his heart and life, his honor and obedience to this man again, even if only in a treaty and not a true marriage contract. It is enough. Xichen curls deeper into the safety of Mingjue’s arms feeling lucky to have this much of him, his love and affection, and he will not wish for more, in case there comes a day he wants too much, and it is all taken away again.

Notes: Ahuti = The ahuti is the consort of the ahukau. It's gender neutral (as is ahukau). Roka iko auha em koni. Pia ei sakona auha em ga. Et taka ti eta engati hako. = I don't dance either, and I grew up with it. It's fun to watch, though.

#the untamed #cql #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #nie mingjue #lan xichen #nielan #soaring au #nie huaisang #jin guangyao #sangyao #cql au #mdzs au #Kristina writes tiny stories #complete on ao3 #forgot I hadn't finished this!#whoops

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emsartwork · 5 years ago

Text

Winx Timeline/Show Changes Masterpost

PRE-HISTORY

Great Dragon and Shadow Pheonix create the universe

Great Dragon and Shadow Pheonix create life on planets.

Great Dragon and Shadow Pheonix burn themselves out, leave remaining power on Domino.

STONE/METAL AGE

People develop stone weaponry and are hunter/gatherers. Magic is not used or understood.

People use small amounts of magic move into metal manipulation and farming societies

NEOMAGIC ERA

People develop magic techniques, cultures with sustained peace have more technology than warring planets.

Magic splits into categories.

Obsidian formed from massive dark spell. Realix also formed as a result of cast of power.

Ancestral witches born.

Lord Darkar kills to possess the Shadow Flame, is thrown into Obsidian.

Omega Planet becomes deserted due to Obsidian radiation.

First Fairy transformation(Arcadia Clariel of Magix)

MID MAGIC ERA

Lord Darkar Emerges mutated, is defeated and retreats to Obsidian again.

Ancestral Witches begin search for Dragon Flame.

Most planets have a united monarchy now.

Danix transformation created and Earth unified under Dana.

LATE MAGIC ERA

Lord Darkar emerges again.

The Wizards of the Black Circle start to gain power.

Morgana Takes the throne of Tir Nan Og

The Wizards of the Black Circle “vanish” Neverland, including inhabitants.

Ancestral Witches begin to work with Lord Darkar

Acheron begins collecting things into his book.

The Wizards of the Black Circle imprison Tir Nan Og.

7 Ancestral Fairies create the Mythix Wands and defeat Acheron.

Ancestral Witches create Valtor and begin conquering planets.

Ancestral Witches put a cruel fairy on the throne of Eraklyon.

Ancestral Witches turn on Lord Darkar, sending him back to Obsidian.

Morgana escapes the imprisonment and searches for other fairies, slowly losing her memories.

MODERN ERA

Erendor Becomes king of Erakylon.

Bloom(+winx+boys+other characters about the same age) is born.

Seige of Domino: Politea betrays Daphne, Ancestral witches attack Domino. Ancestral Witches defeated by Oritel and Marion and all pulled into Obsidian. Valtor defeated by the company of light. Domino cursed, Oritel and Marion captured, Daphne killed and spirit is tied to Sirenix. Bloom receives Dragon Flame and is sent to Earth.

PRE SEASON 1 EVENTS

Faragonda becomes headmistress.

Roxy is born.

Morgana returns to Tir Nan Og.

Sky and Diaspro are arranged to be married.

Flora meets Helia.

Sky and Thoren are attacked.

Flora’s mom gets remarried.

Aisha finds dancing.

Musa’s mother dies.

The Trix start their search for the Dragon Flame.

Stella starts dating Brandon and is expelled from Alfea for reckless endangerment.

SEASON 1

Stella’s spacecraft gets attacked and crashes on earth.

Bloom starts to attend Alfea and gains magic winx.

The Winx club is formed.

The Trix identify and steal the Dragon Flame from an emotionally vulnerable Bloom.

Bloom follows Daphne’s spirit to Domino, discovers her past.

The trix launch an attack on Magix. Bloom and the winx(+red fountain and alfea and cloud tower students) defeat them.

Trix imprisoned in the Ohm correctional facility for magic users.

NOTE: only Stella and Brandon are dating as of this season.

BETWEEN SEASON 1 AND 2

Lord Darkar emerges from Obsidian in the chaos of the Trix, sets up underground.

Begins searching for the codex pieces.

Lord Darkar kidnaps the pixies. Aisha tracks them down.

Professor Avalon is hired by Alfea for the coming semester.

SEASON 2

Aisha rescues Piff.

Lord Darkar imprisons the real Professor Avalon.

Lord Darkar breaks the Trix out of prison.

That mess in Downland happens.

Bloom and Sky officially start dating.

Lord Darkar recognizes Bloom’s Dragon Flame.

The winx escape with the pixies and rescue Brandon from Downland.

Flora meets Helia again but doesn’t remember him right away.

Lord Darkar gets the red fountain codex piece, the cloud tower piece, the alfea codex piece and then the Pixie Village Codex piece.

Charmix is earned in the wildlands of Magix.

Timmy and Tecna start dating.

Flora and Helia are skirting the edge of dating.

Bloom is kidnapped and turned to Dark Bloom.

Darkar, Dark Bloom, and the Trix enter the Realix, the winx follow.

Bloom is turned back to herself BY ALL HER FRIENDS NOT JUST A FLIPPIN BOYFRIEND.

Defeat Darkar with Charmix convergence and he returns to Obsidian.

BETWEEN SEASON 2 AND 3

The trix escape from the realix through soul convergence(witch thing) and are sentenced to Omega.

Radius and Casandra start dating and become engaged.

SEASON 3

Valtor is released and attacks Andros, Aisha returns to deal with it.

Valtor manipulates Casandra and Chimera, leeches off of Radius’s core/connection to the second sun.

Bloom and Valtor’s dragon fires resonate.

Aisha and the girls go to Andros

Aisha loses her sight, but regains it through Enchantix.

Valtor manipulates Diaspro, now specifically targeting Bloom.

Stella earns Enchantix by saving her father.

Valtor takes Cloud tower and attacks Alfea.

Musa earns Enchantix by saving Galatea.

Faragonda is turned into a tree.

Winx go to Lynphea and Flora earns her Enchantix.

Flora and Helia start dating.

Fargonda is healed.

Omega portal on Andros unstable, Tecna closes it and earns Enchantix.

Bloom goes to Pyros and forces Enchantix, she cannot miniaturize or use fairy dust.

Nabu shows up.

Winx minus Bloom get the water stars.

Valtor gives the Trix Disenchantix.

Valtor is defeated by Bloom punching through the ancestral’s magic and taking back the dragon flame spark in him. He is re-imprisoned on Omega.

Nabu and Aisha start not-not dating(aka they go out and spend a lot of time one-on-one but aren’t calling it dating).

BETWEEN SEASON 3 AND SOTLK

Bloom begins her search for her parents.

Locates Hagan.

SECRET OF THE LOST KINGDOM

Girls find Hagan, who made the sword Oritel wields(it’s also connected directly to Marion’s core magic which is how she like, “possess” it).

Winx minus Bloom graduate from Alfea.

Bloom is sad on earth but less time is spent on that than in the movie lol.

Bloom talks with Daphne in her dreams again

Daphne has spent the last two seasons searching for the lingering connection to their parents and has managed to re-ignite it.

This triggers the witchs’ spirits in Obsidian and they pull Mandragora out of stasis and send her out to find the source.

Bloom turns 21, party, group leaves for Domino.

The whole Roc thing is unnecessary but Musa is my fave so it stays.

Library

Book of Fate is a book of collected Prophecies from Magic users of Domino.

Riven is stung by Mandragora’s insect and a sleeper spell is placed on him(can’t be detected unless active).

They don’t go to pixie village as they can literally just go to Obsidian without a random key.

The sleeper spell in Riven is activated, trying to keep everybody out of Obsidian but being familiar with mind control he manages to resist it enough to send the girls through to obsidian before he loses control.

Musa stays behind, protecting the boys from Mandragora while they talk Riven back to himself.

Musa is still injured but by Mandragora, Riven latches on to this long enough to deck Mandragora and remove her hold on him.

The rest of the Winx push through the horrors of Obsidian and find their way to a small patch of stability where the ancestrals have tied their spirits.

The girls are drained, and eventually only Bloom is left standing because of the dragon flame.

Daphne manages to conjure her own spirit and “possesses” Bloom’s body, they take the sword and are able to stab the objects the ancestral witches’ spirits are tied to, defeating them for the time being(they’ve been in Obsidian long enough to have mutated into something more than spirits tho).

Look I’m sorry I love Sky but he doesn’t save the day, the prophecy about the king with out a crown was translated from ancient Dominian and “king” was a gender neutral term and actually refers to DAPHNE. WHO IS THE RIGHTFUL RULER OF DOMINO WITH HER PARENTS OUT OF THE PICTURE.

Together Bloom and Daphne pull their people back onto the planet and heal a small portion of it(the planet continues to recover as people populate the areas again)

Bloom’s enchantix is complete now.

The ancestral witches’ leave obsidian as part of the pull, and are drawn to the trix because of their blood connection

MAGICAL ADVENTURE

yes it takes place before season 4.

Bloom and her parents re-establish Domino and begin to rebuild.

Sky goes to help, and asks to begin courting Bloom, who misinterprets this as a marriage proposal and she’s not happy about it like in the film, ok like she is happy but is also like “UMMM. I HAVE A LOT GOING ON RN IDK ABOUT THIS SKY” but she accepts and the media run with the story.

Bloom and the Winx return to Alfea as esteemed alumni to welcome the new freshmen.

Trix attack, and steal the magic compass from the Alfea Vaults.

They find the Tree of Magic in Pixie Village and begin setting up for their spell.

Sky tells his father about his Courtship with Bloom, who expresses his guilt over Domino(he doesn’t forbid Sky from marrying Bloom because Erendor isn’t an asshole he’s just traumatised lmao).

Sky and Erendor plan to tell the Domino Royal Family about what happened.

Oritel is, understandably upset by his friend breaking a promise, and when Sky tries to explain Eraklyan Courtship customs to Bloom, Oritel lashes out and overreacts, banishing both Erendor and Sky from Domino.

Bloom thinks Sky broke up with her, and in classic Bloom fashion runs back to Earth

She’s joined by the rest of the Winx shortly.

The Winx go to Eraklyon to figure out whats happening and Erendor tells them about Havram

the Winx + the boys want to fix the city and figure that would at least help Eraklyon even if Oritel is still upset.

The trix finally have their spell ready and bind the tree of magic before destroying it

Binding the greater population’s magic usage through the tree’s connection to them(they leave their own magic intact somehow).

However, the ancestrals warn them that there’s a secondary source for the tree of life.

The ancestrals harnessed the Tree of Life’s power originally to threaten Erendor, wrecking the old capital city of Havram with a blast of magic.

The blast took root in the city and is still there.

The Winx lose their magic on the way to Havram, and start freaking out(Nabu is also freaking out but the rest of the boys are p chill with it since they don’t use magic anyways).

The Trix and the Winx+ find the sprout at the same time and in the process of defending/evading the trix’s magic, Icy hits the sprout and sends a shockwave through to the original tree, rejuvenating it and releasing the binding spell.

Oritel shows up after processing his emotions and saves Erendor.

The Ancestral’s are enraged, and forcibly possess the Trix.

The winx transform and fight, eventually using a combo of Dragon Flame, Oritel’s sword, and convergence to push the ancestrals out of the trix and finally destroy their spirits for good.

The trix are sent to prison again.

Oritel and Erendor apologize to each other and become friends again(brotp 4lyfe yo).

Sky explains everything to Bloom who fully understands Ereklyan courtship/marriage now and is MUCH more comfortable with the situation.

Havram is still kind weird and won’t be Eraklyon’s capital, but with the sprout/ancestral magic gone there’s less unstable magic and people can move back or restart their lives there.

SEASON 4 BEGINNING

Musa and Riven have started dating.

Aisha and Nabu are official.

The winx are invited back to Alfea to speak at a special seminar(they’re not full time teachers but Faragonda proposes the idea to them for the future).

Wizards of the Black circle finally rejoin Earth after taking a break and detect fairy magic lingering in Gardenia.

Wizards of the Black attack Bloom at Alfea.

Her dragon flame prevents her magic from being absorbed into the circle.

Faragonda tells the Winx about Earth’s true history(Bloom didn’t know, but the rest of the winx kinda knew a little)

Bloom insists they go after them to stop them from harming Earth anymore.

Faragond suggests they go to the Tree of magic to see if there are any allies they could find already on Earth.

The tree has faded flowers (The imprisoned Earth fairies and Eldora who has hidden herself from magic detection), and a new bud (Roxy).

The winx aren’t able to find the current location of the magic users so they set up in Gardenia and find jobs through Bloom’s family connections,

Flora and Stella start making magic trinkets and such on the side to sell online.

WORLD OF WINX SEASON 1

Neverland had been pushed into a warped pocket dimension by the Wizards of the Black Circle when they launched their first attack, and has begun to fall apart and mutate.

Bella Tinker, the Major Fairy of Dreams, connected to the source of dreams, subconscious mind, and night, on Neverland(sister source to Tir Nan Og’s), is desperate and operating in a complete mental break.

She begins using her dream abilities to seek out people with weird “talents”(remnants of magic) and pull them into Neverland so they can maybe help her.

She can’t transfer them through to Neverland physically, but she steals their consciousness, this process turns the person’s magical potential into “dream dust”.

She eventually leeches enough dream dust from her victims to create a few hourglasses that can allow a Neverlander to manifest in the real dimension for a limited amount of time.

This makes gathering more dream dust easier as when the person’s consciousness is pulled through to Neverland some of it gets left behind irl.

The Winx get internships for a talent/human interest show that and they begin searching earth for people that stand out in the hopes it will lead them to the last magic user.

Tecna(in HR and tech) notices that a few of the applicants to the show start to drop off the radar, she does some digging and finds out that all of them have gone into mysterious comas.

The Winx begin to suspect a magic source of these issues.

They get Tecna to select Anabelle partially as a ruse because they can actually monitor her in Gardenia.

Unfortunately Anabelle goes into a coma, the winx are the first to find her, and she is surrounded by a fine golden dust, a figure is collecting the dust before running off.

The Winx follow, and are very unstable in the pocket dimension.

They are unable to rescue Anabelle’s consciousness, and when the hourglass runs out of time, they are forced back into the normal dimension.

This happens a few times.

Each Winx earns Dreamix by forging a true connection with someone’s “dreams”(Bloom with Annabelle, Tecna with Naoki, Stella with Sophie, Flora with Vincenzo, Musa with Madelyne, Aisha with Silke)

most of the other events with Bloom and Jim happen same as in canon except Jim is way more sketchy.

Silke fixes their hourglass and the winx are able to enter Neverland without being unstable.

They defeat Bella, who retreats to her magical source.

Jim stays behind to gain power and his crew, and the Earthians are returned to earth with only minor mutations.

The release of so much potential magical power makes the walls between Neverland and the Magix Dimension much thinner, allowing some of the Neverland inhabitants easier passage to Earth.

Outsiders however still cannot enter Neverland without suffering mutations and deteriorations(unless they have dreamix or unconscious magic skills).

SEASON 4: THE REST OF IT

After the WOW show ended the girls need new jobs to pay rent and shit(Stella is on a firm allowance, Bloom’s kingdom is still super broke, and Aisha’s assets are mostly in jewels that don’t translate to earth lmao)

They’re still hiding their fairy identities.

Flora uses her nature magic with stuffed animals to create small “living” fairy pets(they’re just plushies being moved around by plant bones and stuff) and the girls start selling them online(like etsy) along with other magic trinkets.

The other girls also get jobs and they eventually have enough to pay rent on a small shop with a few rooms above it.

They start a magic shop full time and are selling the plant-plushes full time, offering other services as well.

Carmen (background character in the show more important in the comics) approaches them at this time to help Tecna manage the website part.

Bloom and Andy reunite and are invited to the Frutti Music Bar.

Bloom and Roxy start talking and become friends.

The specialists arrive and find the winx.

Andy (who is hella gay) and Bloom are fairly affectionate and Sky gets real jealous.

Musa is talking music with Marc and Rio but Riven is hella insecure and gets irritated as well.

The wizards show up and they fight over the wrong girl.

Riven gets a job at the mechanic

Timmy gets his IT support job

Helia gets a HORRIBLE haircut and regrets everything.

The thing with Mitzi happens, Brandon and Stella fight briefly but make up.

Tecna reports someone downloading a ton of the plant-plushes.

The girls paint their apartment with Roxy, Andy, Marc, and Rio.

Sky and Riven become upset again because fragile masculinity.

The girls finally realize Roxy is the fairy they’re looking for and try to convince her to believe in magic and all.

Roxy is like “the fuck are yall ON im noping outta here so fast” but also weird shit is happening to her so she’s like “what if?????”.

The wizards find her and try to force her into the black circle.

Roxy, scared out of her mind is knocked out of the circle by Bloom, who knows her Dragon flame protects her.

Roxy runs, Artu leads her to safety and she adopts a cat, she also has a vision of Morgana urging her to trust herself and the fairy girls.

Roxy emerges from hiding and tries to go home, but Artu is replaced by Duman who alerts his fellow wizards.

The winx, severely beaten, send an emergency call out to the specialists, who show up and manage to keep the wizards away from Roxy for a little while.

Roxy, cornered and scared, sees what she thought was her dog turn into Duman who grabs her, the real Artu attacks Duman but is knocked to the side.

Roxy releases Panic Magic forcing Duman back and Bloom rushes in forcing him further away from Roxy.

Roxy puts her absolute trust into Bloom at that moment and Bloom gains Believix.

Bloom is able to really deal damage, the winx are refusing to give up, and the specialists are ready to rip them to shreds so the wizards mount a tactical retreat.

Roxy accepts her heritage.

Roxy investigates her photo’s looking for clues, finds the farm.

Winx go to farm followed by wizards.

Batson is trying to restore the farm to a working level after it had been left abandoned for several years.

He doesn’t want the winx there, but Flora forms a tentative friendship with him through plant talk.

The Wizards attack, Batson is protected by Flora.

The winx send Roxy into the barn to hide, the horses inside are unsettled and she unconsciously uses some of her magic to calm them, alerting the wizards who set fire to the barn and orchard to trap her.

Batson freaks, and runs into the barn to let the horses out.

Roxy finds a small trap door in the floor of the barn and opens it, her touch sparks off the white circle which begins glowing and she runs outside, summons birds and insects to attack the wizards who can’t penetrate the shield the white circle is creating and they retreat.

Batson is about to pass out but Flora comes in and shields him from the flames.

Batson is in tears, all of his hard work has gone up in flames.

Flora sits down and talks with him, reminding him that nature is enduring, and seeds that are cared for will always grow.

Flora can’t do anything about the barn but she does restore Batson’s Orchard, Batson is hopeful and puts his faith in her magic and Flora gains Believix.

Musa sings with Andy and his band and they all receive a card from Jason Queen.

Musa starts to spend a lot of time with the band practicing for their auditions.

Nabu and Helia try to help Riven work through his feelings.

Sky and Bloom talk and make up.

Roxy is possessed by Nebula through the white circle and tries to go after the wizards.

The winx end up fighting Roxy and the girls who are using Enchantix use the fairy dust to remove the effects of the white circle from her.

The winx start to be local heros in Gardenia.

Mitzi Sally and Darma are recruited by the wizards early and are used as spies.

Riven can’t move past his insecurity and lashes out at Musa after her audition.

Musa decides to break up with him.

Musa and the band start training with Jason’s company, and the friendships Musa forms with the band only makes the situation with Riven worse.

The wizards try to capitalize on this by setting a fire in Gardenia while the band is hard core practicing because they’re concerned Jason will drop them.

Musa uses her singing spells to reach and protect the band who place their faith in her and she’s able to earn believix.

Aisha is concerned Nabu is withdrawing from her.

She meets with Cindy(minor character in the show bigger in the comics) who is interested in working at the shop.

The girls hire her but Cindy’s (abusive) boyfriend Gregory is hanging around the store causing issues.

Aisha tells him to leave but he gets angry and pulls Cindy out with him, Aisha chases after them.

She interferes before Gregory can hurt Cindy and just fucking decks him(because Aisha).

Cindy breaks up with Gregory and spends the night with the winx.

Aisha confides in Cindy about her worries about Nabu, but Cindy assures her Nabu sounds wonderful.

Aisha encourages Cindy and tells her she deserves someone better than Gregory.

The wizards of the black circle try to capitalize on the situation again and they grant Gregory power.

The shop is attacked and Aisha protects Cindy.

When Gregory corners them, Aisha tells Cindy to run, but Cindy has had a little boost in her self esteem and wants to protect her new friend.

She displays a small burst of magic, which distracts Gregory.

Cindy puts her faith in Aisha and she earns Believix.

Nabu proposes and all is well.

Roxy is kidnapped and transforms for the first time in front of her dad(he remains aware of their fairy activity the whole time).

That weird fight at the train station happens.

Weird thing with the tiger cub doesn’t happen.

Mitzi Sally and Darma are tired of being minions and try to leave the wizards, who don’t take that kindly and force them to start attacking people(Mitzi might be a bitch but she’s not evil).

The other girls take on Sally and Darma, who don’t have a lot of animosity towards them anyways.

But Mitzi, in her controlled state, is just projecting all her rage and jealousy onto Stella.

Stella manages to relate and empathize with Mitzi’s need to be liked and removes the Wizard’s spell with her enchantix dust.

Mitzi trusts Stella to catch her as she falls and Stella earns Believix.

Tecna hides the white circle in the shop’s computer.

Carmen accidentally activates the same program and is transported to the virtual world.

The wizards transport themselves in as well, and go after Carmen assuming she knows something.

Tecna receives an alert from an alarm in the shop that the magic signatures of the wizards were registered.

They rush back and are planning to pull the white circle then lock the virtual world to trap the wizards but Tecna realizes Carmen is inside too.

Tecna volunteers to go get her and the white circle while the rest of the group delay the wizards.

Tecna grabs the circle and finds Carmen and explains vaguely what’s going on.

Carmen, who is not stupid and has realized the programs and technology that Tecna uses could not possibly be from earth, demands the truth.

Tecna is about to comply when Ogron shows up.

Tecna says she can’t explain now but she will later, and hands Carmen the white circle and tells her to run.

Carmen doesn’t completely know what's going on but despite this she puts her entire faith in Tecna, believing she has complete control over the virtual world and will fix everything.

Tecna gains Believix and subdues Ogron. She goes after Carmen and the wizards and the rest of the winx show up at the same time.

The coding Tecna used can’t handle the volatile magical energy in one space and begins to corrupt, Tecna realizes they’re out of time and just transports them all out before the file becomes irreparable.

In the shop with the specialists and Roxy potentially using the white circle the Wizards flee.

Riven makes some steps towards being a better person.

The girls form a band(Musa lead vocals+guitar, Aisha drums, Tecna on Synth, Flora on keys, Stella on a weird harp thing occasionally but mostly stage outfits and contacts, Bloom manages the schedule and does all the graphic design).

The girls go to Tir Nan Og, unlock the Earth fairies.

Morgana wants Roxy to join them and continually pesters her telepathically.

The winx’s believix aren’t able to match the Earth Fairies using Danix.

Faragonda contacts the Ethereal Fairies and they deign to intercede.

The earth fairies begin to systematically remove all of the binds the wizards placed on the natural sources of Earth, releasing ambient magic back into earth and greatly diminishing the wizard’s magical reserves.

Diana also attacks major cities, turning them into urban jungles, this is the most present threat to humanity so the winx tackle her first.

Bloom and Tecna use Sophix to defeat Diana and rejuvenate her source, Diana joins them.

The wizards approach the winx in surrender and are taken to Sybilla.

Aurora begins to slowly freeze the Earth over, demanding the Wizards be given to them.

Stella and Musa use Amorix to function in the cold.

Bloom fights Nebula.

They return to Sybilla.

Morgana, convinced by Roxy, accepts the Wizard’s surrender and promises a fair trial and sentencing.

The Winx minus Flora and the Wizards minus Duman travel to Tir Nan Og.

Flora returns with the Specialists and Duman to Gardenia, she tries to heal him, but his magic is too unstable and the whole fight thing happens

Duman is killed, but he mentioned something about the wizards’ schemes before he died, leading Flora to accept Aterix, and pull him back to life.

She compels him to to tell them all what the plan is and then they all rush off to Tir Nan Og.

Morgana has put on the black circle ring, it self destructs and turns into a magical black hole(like a tiny obsidian).

Nabu, as the only practiced male magic user, absorbs all the magic in the vortex, he is unfortunately unable to expel the magic fast enough causing his core to break and Nabu dies.

Aisha is understandably distraught, and uses Aterix, trying to get him back.

In the commotion the Wizards manage to grab Duman, and Flora after they realize they’re connected and escape to Omega.

As things die down Nebula holds her whole rebellion and traps Morgana in the Mirror, and the Winx realize Flora is missing.

Aisha is trying to interact with Nabu, and is in denial about his state of suffering so she defaults to anger and joins Nebula in hunting the Wizards down.

Meanwhile, the wizards have managed to force Flora to de-transform, leaving Duman in his resurrected state.

Roxy is able to sense Morgana through their telepathic(and familial) connection and frees Morgana finally being revealed as her daughter.

Morgana is weakened and promises to care for Nabu, and they pursue the fairies and the Wizards to Omega to rescue Flora and talk Aisha down from murder.

Flora(mistakenly) isn’t considered a threat by the wizards so they just kind of leave her to freeze, not realizing she has put a special pollen on them that acts as a slow poison.

Flora is found by the winx and they manage to talk Nebula and Aisha down.

The wizards attempt to run again but Flora’s poison has left them dissorinted, powerless, and unable to escape being frozen for eternity(including Duman) by the ice snake thing.

Roxy pulls Nebula with them, being able to connect with her after feeling her rage and pain during the brief possession.

Aisha, still in Aterix, returns with a clearer head, and recognizes she can’t leave him Nabu in a constant state of suffering, so she removes the Aterix spell from Nabu and returns him to his natural state.

Aisha takes Nabu’s body back to Andros.

Morgana appoints Nebula, Diana, Aurora, and Sybilla as joint regents and tutors until Roxy has been sufficiently trained to take the throne(Roxy privately thinks this is a big yikes).

The winx decide to stay and help Earth adjust to magic and continue their band, but leave the Love and Magic store to Carmen and Cindy.

WORLD OF WINX SEASON 2

The whole thing with Venomya is about the same except for the fairy reveal so I’m not gonna mention it.

Wendy Darling was Bella Tinker’s wife, their son was Peter Pan(and the rest of the Lost Boys).

Wendy was a non-magic user outside of Neverland when it vanished, and in trying to rescue Bella and the boys, Wendy pushed her untrained magic too far and the blow back caused her to short circuit and slowly lose her memories and distort what was left of her magic(similar to Morgana).

She did manage to somehow pull Peter out, with serious memory loss and he was in a coma for decades.

Wendy looked after him the whole time, moving them around to avoid suspicion.

When Peter woke up he and Wendy created lives for themselves but are haunted by the feeling that something is WRONG.

Wendy is currently using the alias Matilda or “mattie” and has disappeared, Peter has no memory of Neverland or magic but keeps his name and is studying art at the school in Paris.

Jim likes the power he has on the Isolated Neverland, and wants to permanently get rid of Bella so he can have the place to himself but knows he’s not powerful enough.

He starts attacking natives of the island, and blaming Bella (who is technically still in power but has retreated to her source).

The inhabitants of Neverland begin to reach out to the winx, who are starting to gather some fame world wide as fairies and a band.

The winx enter Neverland, and Jim tells them his version of what’s happening, then tells them about Bella’s past and that maybe her family could be hostages could talk some sense into her.

The winx agree, and leave to visit Morgana to see if she knows anything about Wendy.

Morgana tells them she found Wendy immediately after she managed to pull Peter out but none of her other family members.

Morgana offered to take Wendy and Peter to Tir Nan Og, but Wendy rejects her offer and leaves, saying she’s going to protect her son on her own.

Morgana doesn’t know what happened to them after that as she set Tir Nan Og up as a sanctuary and was then imprisoned.

Bella forms Vertigo.

The Winx try to search for Peter, using variations of Peter Tinker and Peter Darling.

Tecna gets a hit on a Peter Darling but the information is in a census from the 1600’s in London so the girls head out there to get a look at the actual paper to see if there is any more information.

They find a short message written by a suspicious authority figure next to the name noting that Peter Darling moved to Paris to live with his “Aunt” shortly after the census despite not registering any family members.

Vertigo has been wearing Bloom down the whole trip and attacks/is defeated.

Bloom’s Dreamix seems to start evolving/mutating after this.

The girls move on to France, to find the aunt.

Banshee begins to layer whispers into Musa’s music, leading her to become jumpy and irritable.

Jim gets a message out to the girls that he and his crew are being attacked(in reality Jim has trapped the alligator man and provoked the Crocodile man and is getting the Winx to take care of his own mess).

In France Musa breaks off from the group trying to get some alone time to cure her bad mood.

Musa ends up in Notre Dame drawn to a choir practice, she starts talking with a stranger there who is sketching the architecture and people, she compliments his work and they begin a light conversation before he stands and says he has to go as he’s late for a night class.

Musa sees that his notebook has Peter Darling and a school name written on the corner but the choir becomes sharply off key and distorted, Musa grimaces in pain and he leaves before she can say anything.

Musa tries to go after him but every sound she hears is distorted and painful, she tries to call the other girls but only leaves a short message before Banshee launches one of her screams at her.

After the girls take care of the alligator and crocodile man Aisha hears from Tressa about some weird readings concerning the ocean gate.

Aisha says it's possible the gate had been used but the guardian would know, Tressa says the guardian hasn’t reported anything.

Aisha asks Jim if Neverland has any merfolk trapped on the island.

He says they did, but they disappeared recently.

Musa defeats Banshee, Her Dreamix also starts to change.

Bloom and Stella welcome the others back and hear about the mermaids disappearing and Peter being in Paris at some school.

Aisha is concerned about the mermaids as Neverland could have mutated them badly, so they prioritize that, following the trail of magic the merms have left behind.

Fountain thing, then to pool party.

Stella confronts them but is triggered and has a panic attack as the merms manipulate the crowd into laughing at her.

Aisha quickly gets a message to Alligator and Crocodile to scare the crowd off, leaving the merms to flee, eventually they are caught/saved and believe the winx are trying to help them, Aisha sends them to Andros to get them physical help and merfolk community.

The winx focus on finding Matt and Stella suggests they start with the Fashion school where they already have contacts.

Some of the winx go to Neverland to help the pirates.

Stella is still fragile and helps people around the school trying to get her confidence back but she and Aisha get into a fight which just makes Stella feel worse.

Stella visits Nadine and Sophie and hears about Matt, but the lights in the room go out and Nadine and Sophie suddenly start to ridicule Stella and then ignore her, like she’s invisible.

Stella rushes out to try to find Aisha and Tecna but it seems like no one can even see her.

Aisha and Tecna find Stella crying in an empty class room and try to get her to calm down when Obscura attacks.

Stella defeats Obscura, and her Dreamix starts to change.

Peter is kidnapped.

Flora rescues the Pirates with the help of the nature on the island and they all return to help track down Peter and his kidnapper.

Peter is rescued and tells them he has no idea where his mother(wendy) is, as she disappeared almost 30 years ago, only leaving him a small wooden puzzle.

Peter takes them to his apartment to let Tecna analyze the puzzle, where the winx see that he has been painting the same woman over and over again.

Stella asks if he’s in love with her.

Peter laughs and says no, explaining he doesn’t know why he keeps painting her but feels like she’s important.

The winx explain everything about Neverland and his mother and try to use magic to help him memory return, Peter quickly becomes distraught and confused, his memory and the truth are fighting in his brain.

Peter lashes out with a small wave of magic.

It hits the puzzle Tecna is messing with and unlocks it.

Peter quiets and picks up the piece of paper from inside the puzzle.

Peter reads the paper aloud and is pulled through a portal.

Peter flashes to several locations, the spell fizzles and he’s in Neverland.

Bella sees him and almost recognizes him, Peter sees her and tries to call out before being pulled back into the portal.

He’s finally dropped into a ravine with a small shack a few yards away.

Bella is confused, angry, and terribly sad, but can’t remember why.

She redirects her emotions into creating another Nemesis and names it Petra.

Peter approaches the shack as he’s surprised by his kidnapper, the kidnapper triggers some kind of trap, creating a rock/tree monster and he flees with Peter.

The winx try using their spells to find him individually but the trail of magic left by the spell is all over the place.

Flora decides to focus on the wooden puzzle, tracing its origin and how it was formed.

Her spell finds that the magic that created the puzzle is currently active, and it reacts with her spell, pulling her through the same portal until she materializes next to the rock/tree monster chasing Peter and the kidnapper.

Flora disassembles the rock/tree monster, and trips the kidnapper as he tries to flee breaking his amulet.

Peter tells Flora about the shack, but before they can investigate Petra attacks.

Flora defeats Petra and Stella appears having used the ring of solaria to teleport her to Flora, they return to Paris before anything else can attack them.

Flora’s Dreamix begins to change.

Aisha is suspicious of Peter, claiming he knew about the puzzle and was trying to run away from them.

Peter says it was an accident and he knows nothing about magic.

Aisha decides to train him magically so he isn’t a danger to the rest of the group.

She has zero mercy on him during their first training, and Peter calls her an Iron Maiden.

Bella takes this and creates Metalica, based on every harsh, impatient part of Aisha.

The girls think maybe Jim should train Peter, and see if they can get him an audience with the queen to explain everything.

In Neverland, Jim reminds the girls he doesn’t use magic, only magic items (a lie) and suggests they try to find the witch, Tiger Lily.

Tiger Lily says Peter will never have proper control of his magic unless he finds his memories, which were absorbed into his Compass when he was pulled out of Neverland.

Peter claims he lost that compass when he was pulled out but Tiger Lily gives them an image of it she found through scrying.

After the group returns to Earth, Aisha demands they all go to towns closest to where Neverland used to be to look in antique shops for the compass even though everyone is tired and Tecna is trying to find the thing online.

They try most of the day but are exhausted and Aisha claims she’ll look on her own.

Metallica shows up, and Aisha attacks her. Metallica seems to be destroyed and Aisha reports her success to the rest of the winx.

Metallica shows up again but is defeated this time and Aisha’s Dreamix begins to change.

Flora reminds the Winx about the Shack in the ravine, and they go there,

Tecna doesn’t let anyone go past the boundary line until her spell detection has finished, and places green footprints on the ground, instructing the winx not to step outside of them.

Peter does but nothing happens.

They get into the shack and find Wendy.

Wendy is not in a good place mentally or physically because of her magic blow back, but the winx are able to heal some of it and greatly ease her suffering.

Peter asks Wendy about his compass, Wendy isn’t super coherent but she sold it to someone after “the horrible thing” happened and it was while Peter was still “sleeping”.

Tecna decides to narrow her search to auction houses, but her tech is glitching out, she blames it on the location and says she’ll try again later.

They eventually find a record of a compass being sold to a Sebastian Park in London just a few years ago.

Tecna has been having sparks, overloads, and error messages galore and is starting to lose it a little as they make their way to Sebastian's Estate.

Sebastian isn’t taking any offers on his pieces right now but is happy to show admirers his collection.

The winx get trapped inside due to electrical malfunction, and Virus finally reveals herself, infecting the rest of the winx, and attacks Tecna.

Tecna defeats her and her dreamix begins to change.

Sebastian is a good dude and gives the Compass to Peter and the girls as an apology.

Peter regains his memories and his magic is immediately less troubled.

They return to Neverland, with Wendy who stays with Tiger Lily, and join forces to beat Bella’s Nightmare back.

Peter and Bella meet again, and Peter finally recognizes his mom.

Bella breaks down, her memories and magic still all jumbled, but she stops fighting, the winx explain that with Bella’s help they can probably restore Neverland to Earth.

Jim, seizing his opportunity, takes Wendy captive, proclaims himself king, and demands the winx leave Neverland as it is.

The other inhabitants side with Jim, rejecting Bella’s truce and not knowing he caused most of their problems.

Bella doesn’t remember her but knows Wendy is important and surrenders, she’s caged in the lagoon.

Peter wants to fight Jim and get his moms back.

He has to flee into the forest as the winx are forced out of Neverland.

Peter rescues Bella, but faces off with Jim.

The winx convince the pirates, alligator, crocodile, and tiger lily that Jim is the traitor.

Peter, aided by Bella, rescues Wendy.

Jim flees and corrupts the source of Neverland, trying to hurt Bella.

Smee finally stands up and pushes Jim into the corrupted source, killing him and removing his magic from Neverland.

Neverland is restored, along with Wendy and Bella’s memories.

BETWEEN SEASON 4 AND 5

Roxy applies to Alfea.

Sky gets the Heart of Eraklyon.

The trix are Imprisoned for underwater crimes of an unknown nature(???).

SEASON 5

the wishes basically don’t exist.

Tritannus attacks at the coronation, gets thrown in prison.

Oil leak.

Sky loses the pendant.

Winx can’t stay underwater long enough to get all the oil.

Oil mixes with a wild magic source flowing up from the ocean floor, gains semi-consciousness(plant or algae like) and begins pursuing a stronger magical signature; the ocean gate.

Phylla tries to stop it but the viscous nature of oil and the magical properties it gained make it very resistant.

Flows through, Tritannus absorbs it, and the tangential wild magic from earth mutate him into Monster!Tritannus.

Sky is being distant and superstitious about the pendant.

Tritannus removes the binds on the Trix’s magic, steals Phylla and Lemmy’s magic, and heads to earth with trix + mutants.

Winx fight them but are having trouble underwater, Aisha recognizes her cousin.

Winx go to Alfea with Roxy, Krystal is introduced, the Winx ask Faragonda about water powers.

Faragonda tells Bloom about Sirenix, but advises she talk to Daphne first.

Daphne is hesitant but tells Bloom about the Elementix Compendium, a book she hid in the Alfea archives, but she refuses to help them find it.

Winx start to look for it, Trix attack, Sky gets amnesia. Krystal tries to heal him, can’t.

Timmy and Tecna are trying to organize the archives to find the Elementix Compendium, Trix curse Tecna’s phone and she turns into a robot.

Tecna is un-cursed and finds the Elementix Compendium.

Tritannus begins to hunt for Daphne.

The Trix head to earth to grab more power, the winx follow to protect Gardenia and Diana(major fairy of nature) warns them a special flower is about to bloom there.

Trix and Winx chase the lilo/Macy over gardenia, Flora saves Macy and regains confidence, Trix get powered up.

Winx can’t open the Elementix Compendium, Faragonda explains Harmonix=befriend one each of the elemental companions and tells them to go to Graynor(on planet Magix) to speak with an Ethereal who might be able to help them earn Harmonix quickly.

Find creature of the rainbow mantle=cheat code to Harmonix.

The winx earn Harmonix, open the Elementix Compendium, where they can kick start each of the quests(usually the quests are started by the elemental companions).

They start the sirenix quest= get a pearl(each girl needs a pearl this is not a group project).

There’s a pearl on almost every planet with a riddle for finding each, the girls decide to go for the ones on their home planets, the Elementix Compendium has the riddles for some but not all.

Search for shimmering shells, Aisha bonds with Lemmy.

Aisha gets Pearl of Self Confidence.

Head to Royal depths, Stella bonds with Illirus.

Fight at toxic waste dump Sky gains a little memory back.

Stella gets Pearl of Chance.

Riddle for Melody’s pearl, go to melody, Musa gets turned into mutant seal, bonds with Sonna and reverts.

Musa gets Pearl of Ingenuity.

Tritannus captures Daphne.

Tecna solves Zenith riddle, data bridge castle, bond with Lithia, get Pearl of Empathy.

The Christmas episode doesn’t happen its dumb.

Tritannus is torturing Daphne and send the trix to threaten Bloom.

Riddle for Lynphea, Flora bonds with Desiryee, gets Pearl of Compassion.

They head to Domino, Bloom bonds with Serena, gets Pearl of Courage.

Phylla found the heart of eraklyon a while back and has been passing it around the selkies, Desiryee has it and shows it to Flora.

Tritannus sends the Trix to attack Domino, Icy freezes Marion and Oritel, Daphne breaks and promises to tell them everything in exchange for her parent’s lives.

Bloom and Co. return and send the Trix packing before they can shatter Marion.

Sky regains his memory and proposes to Bloom with the Heart of Eraklyon.

Sky warns Bloom about Daphne.

Faragonda tells the Winx where the Source of Sirenix is(because she already KNOWS why wouldn’t she just tell them).

So they head there as Tritannus + Trix are doing the same thing.

Tritannus “steals” the Source, fights with the selkies and Bloom but escapes.

Winx heal the source of Sirenix, pearls are accepted and the girls get Sirenix.

Tritannus, with the stolen selkie powers, rips Daphne’s Sirenix from her, splitting it between the Trix.

Tritannus and Co. enter the Infinite Ocean.

The Ocean’s Center(emperor's throne) needs three crests from the Pillars to be activated.

Tritannus steals the Pillar of Light’s crest, winx come to fight him, icy takes a hit for Tritannus.

Aisha has King Neptune’s Sword.

Pillar of light is fixed by Stella’s sirenix Spell and a group convergence.

Nereus and Tressa are rescued from the mutation spell.

Diaspro is appointed prince regent liaison, she is still bitter towards Bloom, but takes her job seriously only acting on Erendor’s orders.

Daphne warns Stormy and Darcy abt activating the Ocean’s Center.

Daphne contacts Bloom via dream abt the Alfea Wellscape, get “map” of infinite ocean.

Garbage island on Earth is cleaned up.

Tritannus sets the Devourer on the selkies, winx beat it.

Royal assembly happens but the alliance ultimately fails.

Musa suspects Riven is cheating on her.

Tritannus takes the Crest of Balance

Stormy and Darcy control the Singing Whales.

Musa frees them with her Sirenix Spell.

Tritannus activates the Crest and needs to refuel, Stormy and Darcy plan to double cross him.

The Pillar of Balance is fixed.

Daphne tells Bloom to destroy the Crest of Control before Tritannus can get it.

Winx destroy it and stabilize the Pillar, Tecna uses her Sirenix Spell.

Timmy and Tecna go on a date.

Flora feels insecure about Helia and Krystal.

Tecna + winx go to Zenith to talk to King Cryos.

Tritannus is enraged without the crest and begins to attack and pollute the Pillar of Control.

Technology on Zenith goes haywire, Tecna rescues King Cryos and convinces him to join the alliance.

The selkies restore the damage to the Pillar and Tritannus leaves.

Stormy and Darcy leave Icy and Tritannus.

Daphne tells Bloom what’s going on.

Riven surprises Musa with a song.

Stella talks to her parents about how their fighting is affecting her.

The magix dimension alliance is finally agreed to.

Diaspro asks to be removed from Prince Regent Liaison as its negatively affecting her.

Flora finds and uses the Breath of the Ocean and her sirenix spell.

Roy and Aisha bond.

Krystal apologizes to Flora and Helia reassures her of his love.

Tritannus attacks Politea’s cave, the winx show up with Nereus, Tressa, and selkies to fight.

Nereus is hurt but healed by Aisha’s sirenix spell.

Tritannus steals Politea’s sirenix and the ancestral witches’ magic that was in her and escapes to activate the Ocean’s Center.

Tritannus uses his trident to channel the power of the Ocean’s Center and goes magic mad.

Icy is rescued by Stormy and Darcy.

Bloom destroys Tritannus’ trident with her sirenix spell.

Daphne’s physical body is restored by a winx sirenix convergence and Sirenix is returned to normal.

BETWEEN SEASON 5 AND 6

Mystery of the abyss happens just before the finale of season 5 but I honestly don’t care enough about this movie to detail it.

SEASON 6

Daphne is having issues with being physical again, Faragonda suggests to have her join Alfea Staff as a way to help her gain confidence and purpose again.

Selina passes the cloud town entrance exam.

Trix return and are powerful enough to be categorized as enchantresses, use soul convergence to over power Griffin and turn her into a crow.

Selina joins them somewhat reluctantly and uses a story from the legendarium to make the school fly.

Winx visit Lynphea with the specialists, meet Nex and Thoren.

Cloud Tower is attacking Lynphea college, Winx find the source of the flying spell, try to attack, but the legendarium just absorbs their magic and binds their cores and they’re knocked back.

Bloom has to hastily spread her power to her friends or else they’ll die without their core magic.

Her dragon fire re-ignites the other girls’ cores and they continue to try to rescue the students at Lynphea College but are forced to retreat to Alfea.

Cloud tower stays over Lynphea college.

Flora sets out on her own to save Miele, and her core metabolizes the dragon flame as she pushes to help her younger sister, spontaneously transforming into Bloomix.

Bloom goes to Domino to help with the coronation and recoup.

Selina sends a swarm of basilisks after the Winx at Alfea

Stella and Aisha use water and light to reflect all the Basilisk's stone gazes, effectively saving all of Alfea (roxy manages to find a rooster because roxy and keeps herself and her dorm-mates safe individually), pushing their cores far enough to metabolize the dragon flame and earning Bloomix.

Faragonda, Daphne, Stella, Aisha, and Flora stay to defend Alfea, but Musa gets an emergency message from Galatea at the Royal Auditorium and convinces Tecna to come with her to help.

The pandemonium sprites are wreaking havoc on the entire school, and Musa starts to loose it after a while because of her sensitive hearing.

Tecna quickly analyses the school and finds the primo spot for sound to carry and calms Musa down long enough for her to start singing.

Tecna pushes the pandemonium sprites back to let musa sing as much as she can, Musa pushes through her panic and the chaotic noise to send and layer her own song into a harmony that destroys the sprites.

their cores metabolizes the dragon flame and they achieve Bloomix.

Diaspro is attending Daphne’s coronation as part of the Eraklyon Royal Party.

Thoren is friendly with Diaspro, which makes Sky a little suspicious of him.

Bloom is a little delirious from magic fatigue and is starting to panic when the Trix attack.

The winx+Daphne+boys are handling the trix and legendarium creatures.

Diaspro tries to calm a panicking Bloom, but she doesn’t trust her and runs off deeper into the Domino Castle.

Disapro grabs Thoren, the only person who hasn’t had a bad experience with her in the past few years, and convinces him to help her find Bloom and take her to the lowest level of the castle.

Sky and Daphne see them with an unconscious Bloom and freak tf out.

Thoren hesitates to throw Bloom into the vortex as Sky and Daphne are yelling at him, but Diaspro knocks Bloom out of his arms, falling into the flames herself as well.

Bloom’s magic is regenerated by the flames and Diaspro evolves into Enchantix.

They both fly out and Diaspro explains that she did her homework before attending the Coronation, and knew she had to get Bloom to the vortex after recognizing the advanced symptoms of magic fatigue in Bloom.

Sky apologizes to Thoren and Diaspro and Daphne thanks them for helping Bloom.

Bloom and Diaspro come to a mutual respect and try to be on better terms in the future.

The Winx return to Alfea to ask Faragonda about the creatures and power of the Legendarium, but Faragonda only knows its a powerful book from Earth and suggests they look for the Lost Library of Alexandria.

Daphne uses this as a teaching opportunity with some of her students and comes with the winx, not knowing three of them have been possessed by the Trix.

The winx find the library, mummies attack, defeat the mummy, have to deal with the Sphinx, Selina is threatened by Acheron and she enters the crumbling library to steal the Diary.

Bloom finds her and is really confused.

Selina lashes out and they fight for a little before Selina drops the diary and Bloom grabs it before escaping the library.

Diary leads them to China, meet Lu Wei who tells them a little about Faragonda’s favorite flower.

The Trix possessed students cause problems back at Alfea, and Selina shows up, lying to Bloom that the Trix captured her and forced her to do things.

Bloom shows Selina around, Flora is attacked in the greenhouse while Selina is distracting Bloom, almost poison her, but Roxy breaks the spell on Griffin who reveals Selina and the possessed students.

Bloom feels guilty and betrayed and goes to rest on Earth, trying to figure out what happened with Selina.

Is looking at childhood keepsakes and realizes the field they used to play in is full of the flower they’re looking for.

Lockette followed Bloom to earth and Selina sends the vampires after the pixie and Bloom

Bloom sends Lockette back to Alfea through one of her portals to get the Winx while she leads the vamps on a chase.

The winx teleport to Earth using the Ring of Solaria, and help Bloom escape the vamps for a short while.

Bloom tells them what she remembered, but they can’t lead the vamps to Eldora and sunrise is still long off.

Stella gets distracted by the Fashion show while the rest of the group is figuring out what to do.

Winx are captured.

Stella dusts the vampires, rescues the girls, and shows in the fashion event.

In the morning they go to Eldora’s cottage.

The trix follow and attack, but Selina is hesitant to attack her mentor even with Acheron berating her.

She summons the easiest to defeat ghosts in the book as a compromise.

Eldora agrees to help with Selina and the legendarium, but says she can’t do much with out her Mythix wand which holds her Core Magic.

The Winx go to Tir Nan Og to ask if Nebula knows anything about the wands.

Since being freed the Major fairies sensed and found each of the wands trying to find their old friends, Eldora can immediately use hers.

The trix use a soul convergence and an item from the Legendarium to attack the Winx, and Selina uses the cover to try and steal a spark of Bloom’s dragon fire.

The winx defeat the Trix and the wands react to the presence of the legendarium, each choosing one of the winx.

Each time the Legendarium absorbs a magical presence it leaves an anchor in the location, so the Winx go to Calavera to enter the Legendarium World through the anchor point there looking for the Emerald Eyes which are an item instrumental in forming the Legendarium and should help seal it.

Trix enter after them, Selina sets the Pirates on Calavera, Winx pull the eyes from the book and defeat the pirates irl.

Next is the Silver Quill, Winx+boys+Eldora head up to Fearwood to enter the Legendarium from that anchor point.

Selina applies the Snow Queen persona to Icy, and the werewolf curse to the people of Fearwood.

Icy kidnaps Helia, Flora rescues him while the rest of the winx fight off the wolves.

The winx remove the legendarium spell from the people and rest a little before trying to enter the Legendarium world again.

Helia is harsh, cold and aggressive, and Daphne uncovers a frozen shard in his heart left there after Icy threw him into the legendarium world.

Icy shows up to attack again, and freezes the townsfolk, the winx are trying to get everyone to safety but Flora goes right for Icy, she’s knocked down but uses her Bloomix to melt a portion of the forest and get it to fight with her, defeating Icy and all her active spells.

The sliver of ice in Helia’s heart had the Silver Quill in it.

They combine the eyes and the quill, and only need one more item for the legendarium key.

The golden scroll was hidden in the story of the Labyrinith.

Stella is called back to Solaria before they have a chance to get it, and Darcy curses Stella’s Crown and Mirror.

Stella shakes off the mind control with the help of her friends, and goes after Darcy who has retreated to Earth, trying to prevent them from getting the scroll.

Stella defeats Darcy and gets the scroll.

Legendarium key is formed, Trix cloak the tower and Legendarium signature.

Winx go to Zenith to get some tech.

Selina summons frankenstein’s monster who kidnaps Tecna, Stormy attempts to block Tecna from leaving the legendarium.

Musa and some students have been working on a musical protection spell and are almost ready to put it in place, when Selina sends the Sea Witch to steal Musa’s voice.

Selina places the voice in Rumplestiltskin’s collection but the Winx track and find the anchor point, agreeing to trade the legendarium key for Musa’s voice for a short time.

Musa and her students put the protection spell in place at Alfea.

Not being able to do anything against the new protection spell, the existence of the legendarium key, and about to be discovered by tecna’s gizmo, Acheron pushes Selina to duel Bloom, in order to get the spark of dragon flame.

Selina also releases three major fairies from earth as a distraction.

Acheron is released, betrays Selina and the Trix.

Eldora has found the infinity box, and traps Acheron in it.

The winx deal with the fall out from Acheron, while Eldora trades Acheron for the Legendarium Key.

Eldora gives a damaged Selina the key and forgives her for everything she did.

Selina locks the Legendarium, makes up with Bloom, and returns to earth with Eldora.

Thoren and Daphne don’t get married but come out as an official item.

BETWEEN SEASON 6 AND 7

Faragonda asks Roxy to help form the educational side of the Alfea Natural Park. Alfea Natural Park prepares to open to the public.

SEASON 7

Winx are invited to visit the Park pre-opening, Kalshara in bird form comes and kidnaps the last digmole.

Faragonda recognizes Kalshara and tells the winx+roxy how they were classmates in the past and that she had something to do with the digmole’s disappearances in the past.

The winx earn Chronix, Roxy receives a Stone of Memories tied to Bloom, which allows her to follow the winx into the past with out earning Chronix herself.

The winx go back in time and eventually resort to taking all the digmoles before Kalshara can get to them, bringing them to the present.

They also discovered Kalshara’s goal is to control all wild magic and is trying to find the manifestation of the fairy animal’s source, said to be a fairy animal itself.

The digmoles, through Roxy, are able to tell the girls about the source and that some fairy animal types are given a riddle when they’re formed, and pass the riddle of the creature with the first color of the universe on to them.

The winx try to find it in the park, Brafilius steals Roxy’s stone of memories.

The winx go to the past to find the cry cries, Brafilius follows them.

Aisha bonds with Squonk and transforms into Faunix when the girls return to the present with Squonk who has revealed the cry cry is not the animal the girls are looking for.

Roxy has been keeping an eye out for where Brafilius and Kalshara might target next.

The girls go to Lynphea where Kalshara has manipulated a natural source into a wild one, the winx aren’t able to reverse it but they do get all the magiwolves out of the area, Flora bonds with Amarok and obtains Faunix.

The winx go back in time again with Brafilius following them, to see if the Quillcat is the fairy animal’s manifested source.

Musa bonds with Critty and obtains Faunix.

Brafilius fails to get to critty so Kalshara kidnaps the cat.

The winx find Kalshara and Brafilius and free the rest of the fairy animals,

Stella bonds with Shiny.

Roxy learns the sumatran tigers are in danger and defeats the poachers herself, starting a campaign against poaching on earth.

Brafilius and Kalshara head to Zenith to capture a techuirrel, thinking they’ve been around long enough to be the animal the riddle was talking about.

The winx follow, Tecna repairs Zenith’s core as much as she can and bonds with Flitter.

The girls are noticing that while Faunix gives them the ability to withstand wild magic and defend against it, they can’t fix much if the source is wild magic.

Faragonda starts to prepare them all for earning Tynix.

Roxy’s animal telegram system reports a threat to a panda sanctuary on Earth.

Roxy heads to earth to deal with it and Bloom tags along in-case it’s Kalshara(and because she feels useless).

Bloom bonds with Elas and in Faunix is able to defend against his over-done exposure to wild magic long enough for him to become stable again(fairy animals aren’t immune to wild magic and if exposed again after first forming can suffer consequences).

The girls form their Fractix bracelets.

Roxy gets animal messages about Kalshara and Brafilius threatening dragons on Pyros.

Kalshara has damaged the source of natural magic on Pyros, turning it Wild, she demands to know the winx’s information or she’ll destroy the source completely.

The winx can’t defeat her in Faunix but Kalshara leaves after wrecking the source.

The winx then have to transform into Fractix for the first time to fix the source’s flow of wild/natural magic.

Brafilius pulls the same stunt in Paradise Bay hoping to please his crazy sister.

Kalshara and Brafilius head to the Graynor ruins, figuring the creature of the Rainbow Mantle(from season 5) has every color on it, and its powerful enough to be the fairy animal source’s physical form.

The winx follow, and use their Fractix powers in combination with the Creature of the Rainbow Mantle and are finally able to actually defeat Kalshara in a head-to-head battle.

Kalshara wrecks a few sources on earth and send Brafilius to annoy them while she buys them more time to find the fairy animal source.

Kalshara finally finds a connection to Wild Magic in the Ying Yang Diamond.

In doing so, She accidentally frees the Trix from an eternal slumber spell placed on them by Acheron, Kalshara has enough fairy animals held captive again that the Trix each find one their core resonates with.

The trix take advantage of this, transform into Faunix, and steal the diamond from Kalshara.

The winx bring Faragonda her bonded Digmole back.

The trix show up at Alfea to take revenge on the winx, using the diamond to corrupt the heart of Alfea.

The Winx are able to fix it by going back in time with chronix for information and they defeat the Trix with Faunix.

Kalshara shows up with Brafilius.

Brafilius gets his hands on the diamond which reacts badly to the mismash of wild magic in his body and and it drags him to Swan Cave which is thought to just be a normal cave on Magix.

The Winx and Kalshara follow him, and have a brief not-quite-alliance to get Brafilius out from under the diamond’s control.

But Kalshara seizes it from him and uses it in combination with her wild magic, summoning the Fairy Animal Source to her.

All of the winx’s fairy animals (plus a couple other) appear in the cave and merge together, forming a monstrosity that looks something not NOT swan like.

The Infinity Swan, as Bloom nicely dubs it(every one else calls it the infinity THING), smites Kalshara, informs the winx it should not be formed again, consumes the Ying Yang Diamond and bursts into its separate animal components.

Later when discussing it, the winx discover each of them saw the infinity thing as a different color (and the riddle was functionally useless as color is all subjective tecna informs them) but agree the infinity thing was a being never intended to exist and that the ethereals probably separated it the first time it formed.

Brafilius stays with the fairy animals in Swan Cave for a while, while Roxy and Flora work on finding a cure for him.

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baldwin-montclair · 4 years ago

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Baldwin’s Nightingale (Part 16)

Characters: Baldwin Montclair/OC

Timeframe: After the S1 Finale, TV Show canon MOSTLY with some S2, Shadow of Night and Book of Life.

Summary: With Baldwin hunting an intruder around the environs of Sept Tours, Alisha spends time with her tenants, step-daughter and the various creatures at Sept Tours.

Tag requests: @christi14 @poemfreak306 @pookie-cleary @hofficoffi @stormyheart326 @simplytimeless @wonderlander594 @madamquacklemore @thereadersmuse @livia-valerie-rown1793 @kynthiamoon @she-who-is-named-katie @ordinarymom1 @fuzzyflowervoid @raspberrypierocketeer @maybelightning @lady-lazarus-declermont

The Story So Far

———

Alisha changed quickly, the long dress no longer seeming appropriate for the situation.

Instead, she pulled on some jeans, a vest top and a warm sweater, hoping to quell the chill settling into her bones. She also exchanged her heels for some ballet flats.

The roaring fires and many guests downstairs did nothing to banish that same chill.

“Three ways in,” Marcus was giving orders to his Knights as a very attractive man approached her.

“Madame de Clermont,” he gave a slight bow, “not the best time for introduction but I suppose it is out of my hands. Fernando Gonçalves.”

“It is nice to meet you, even under the circumstances,” she looked around, “I have to apologise, I’m still getting caught up on my in-laws, I’m sure Baldwin mentioned you-“

“You’re sweet to say but he most likely didn’t. I’m not a de Clermont, not by blood anyway.”

“Oh,” she pondered before realising, “so, you’re mated to one, like me?”

“Yes, my darling Hugh, rest his soul.”

Alisha nodded solemnly.

“From what Baldwin’s told me, he was very special, and loved by a lot of people. I wish I’d had the chance to meet him.”

“As do I.”

“Fernando,” Marcus called, “first watch south door.”

“Yes Seigneur.” Fernando called to Marcus and gave Alisha a respectful bow before attending to his duties.

“You changed clothes.” Ysabeau commented with a hint of disapproval.

“Restrictive dress, high heels, not good in a crisis.”

“You will be nowhere near any sort of action, I guarantee it!”

“Maybe not but I want to help the people here and it’s much easier to do so like this.”

“What is your directive, Madame?”

Ysabeau asked the question but it was far from a request for orders and more a test.

“Alright,” Alisha nodded, thinking, “We have a wedding feast already prepared, lets skip the fancy table settings, get everyone together around the table and fed, at least then they’ll be in the same place and accounted for.”

“It’s what I would do, which is why I have already arranged it,” Ysabeau gave her an approving glance.

“And the boy who lost his father, his mother, where are they?”

“In the sitting room.”

“They probably won’t feel much like eating but they should still have something, just in case.”

“I agree,” Ysabeau gave a curt nod, “which is why you will bring them some food, talk to them.”

“Me?”

“You are Madame de Clermont-“

“Not to them, they know you and they trust you. Those people have lost someone they love, it’s not the time to subject them to me and my training wheels. I don’t have your way with people.”

“You don’t, that is true. But, they already have one of me, they do not need a copy. Besides, you too have known loss recently, be you, be honest and connect with them.”

Alisha nodded, reluctant, but resigned.

“I’ll need a translator.”

“Your tenants are extremely well educated,” Ysabeau answered with a hint of offence, “they will understand you.”

“Alright, I’ll go see what the kitchen-“ Alisha stopped when Marthe approached with two plates and holding a bottle of wine under her arm.

“No need.” Ysabeau stated.

———

As their tracker, Baldwin, backed up by Verin, took to hunting the killer from the site of his crime. Gallowglass and Stasia secured the perimeter to ensure there were no potential problems.

Freyja was charged with control of the immediate environs of Sept-Tours.

Baldwin was easily the strongest in the family but never the fastest, which is why Verin was taken aback when he sped from her, towards something he sensed that she did not.

By the time she made it to his side, the offending vampire was on his knees, snarling and struggling with Baldwin’s arm around his neck.

“He’s infected by the rage,” Verin stated plainly, the black appearance of his eyes betraying his affliction.

Baldwin sank his teeth into the creature’s throat, searching through it’s memories.

He saw the murder of his tenant, some deer and a sheep but nothing beyond.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Verin admonished when Baldwin dropped the vampire on the ground.

“What is it?” Gallowglass asked as he joined them in the clearing.

“We know nothing about the disease or how it spreads and you fed on someone that you know had it?” Verin was yelling but Baldwin didn’t say a word, instead, he walked to the small stream to wash the blood from his hands and face.

“I can sense your wife,” Stasia stated plainly.

“Aye, but there’s no way granny’s letting her leave, nor would she even make it out this far.” Gallowglass answered with a frown.

“And it’s not just from you,” Verin told Baldwin as she stood over the dead creature’s body and noted a strip of material tied around the arm, “it’s coming from th-“

Baldwin’s hand was on her wrist before she could touch the fabric.

Instinctively, she growled but the deeper, more commanding one she received made her bow her head slightly, breaking the eye contact, retracting the challenge.

Baldwin released her and she stepped back, away from him.

“What is that?” Gallowglass asked when the tense moment subsided.

“It’s Alisha’s but she brought no clothes from New York, I purchased a new wardrobe for her. Whoever sent me this message was in her home.”

“You fed on him, did it not tell you anything?” Verin pushed.

“Just the shepherd, some animals, everything before that is blank.”

“Could that be a temporary side effect of the rage?”

“Or magic,” Stasia suggested.

“Possibly,” Baldwin shook his head, none of what he was sensing made sense, “and since I do not know this dead creature, I assume he is not the person sending me this message.”

“He was mad with the sickness, most likely turned and set loose.” Verin added.

“If we were to create a list of potential grudges we would be here a while!” Stasia retorted.

“None of those are particularly new,” Verin reminded, “we need to ask ourselves why now?”

“I assume you have a theory on that, sister?” Baldwin’s words dripped with warning.

“Not one I’m inclined to share.”

“Wise decision,” he turned back to the dead creature, “we can ponder the possibilities once we secure the borders and make sure he was alone.”

“Whoever dropped him here, they could be on a different continent by now.” Gallowglass pointed out.

“Trust me, there isn’t a piece of land on this earth that’s safe for them.” Baldwin assured.

“Well this one is neutralised. At least you can return to your wedding evening.”

Baldwin shook his head.

“We’re not nearly done. Every inch of this place must be secure.”

“How?”

“Four quadrants,” he decided.

“That was a game,” Verin rolled her eyes, “one of father’s misguided attempts at fostering family unity.”

“I’ll take the first quadrant,” Baldwin ignored her protests, “Gallowglass two, Stasia three and Verin Four.”

“I suppose I asked for that.” Verin complained at the seasonal muddiness of that section.

“Not at all,” he determined, “we do this four times, by the end, we will each have searched every quadrant so that if one misses something the others won’t.”

“Thorough.” Gallowglass agreed.

“Excessively,” Stasia added, prompting a glare from Baldwin.

“We have tenants, guests and family here,” he corrected, “even this measure does not completely reassure me.”

“We must first dispose of this poor creature.” Gallowglass suggested, trying to break the tension.

“The furnace.” Baldwin responded without a thought.

“That’s for animal remains.” Gallowglass answered quickly.

“He killed a tenant for no reason, what is that other than an animal?”

“A pawn, a victim, you can’t-“ Gallowglass grabbed Baldwin’s arm when the older vampire turned to leave but quickly found himself face down on the forest floor with Baldwin’s knee on his back and the other trapping his arm.

“This is not a democratic process and I do not know what fanciful notions any of you may be entertaining, but my marriage has no bearing on how I intend to lead this family. Any comments?”

Verin had many, it was obvious from her expression. Still, he did not begrudge her thinking them so long as she was not careless enough to voice them.

“Good,” Baldwin stood and offered an arm to help Gallowglass to his feet, which he accepted, “Verin and Stasia will get started on their areas, we will dispose of the body.”

Gallowglass voiced no objection a second time.

———

Alisha?” Marcus placed a hand on her shoulder, shaking her from the silent reverie she shared with the fatherless farm boy.

His mother was still asleep as she sat holding his hand in comfort.

“Marcus,” she excused herself for a moment, letting him lead her from the boy to the window, “is everything okay?”

“They’re doing the final sweep now.”

“Did they catch the killer?”

“It was never about catching him, you realise that?” He reasoned and she nodded in solemn understanding.

“Did they stop him?”

“They did,” he answered carefully, regarding her with concern, “are you alright?”

“I’ll be better when they come back, and really,” she glanced at the bereaved family, “nobody has suffered more than they have.”

“I’ll stay with them.”

Marcus greeted the boy with familiarity, they clearly knew one another and she left them to talk.

By the time she rejoined the gathered guests, all talking amongst themselves, quietly at first, then louder until recriminations and accusations were passing between them.

“Miyako,” Alisha was grateful at seeing the familiar face, “they’re scared and confused, where’s Ysabeau?”

“On the ramparts with the witches, she told me to fetch you this.”

Miyako handed Alisha the violin case, the one left in Baldwin’s tower. As his daughter, she obviously had access to it.

“What is this?” Alisha looked at the sheet music Miyako handed her with the violin.

“I have no idea,” the vampire shrugged, “it was on top of the instrument, I assumed you placed it there as a choice.”

Alisha shook her head with a smile, either Marthe or one of the de Clermont’s other servants could have subtly left it whilst cleaning, a request.

“Do you require accompaniment?” Miyako asked.

“You would...play with me?”

Miyako looked momentarily offended.

“Grandfather was very strict about our learning music, he believed it instilled discipline and patience. I may not have your instinct but I can play several instruments more than moderately well.”

Alisha smiled widely, tamping down the urge to hug the other woman, partly to make it easier to hide the tears of heightened emotion pricking the corner of her eyes.

“I don’t doubt that, and I meant no offence, I’d be honoured to play music with you.”

Miyako nodded and took her hand, giving it a light squeeze.

“I know Grandfather had a cello here somewhere but I’ve been unable to find it. I suppose I will have to play second with the viola.”

Alisha followed after until a thought occurred to her.

“Wait,” she stopped, “what instruments does Baldwin play?”

Miyako shook her head and kept walking.

“That is his secret to tell!”

———

“Quadrant clear!” Stasia reported with palpable irritation after meeting up with her other siblings, all finished and waiting.

“It would have been much easier without the heels!” Gallowglass teased.

“Then the search is complete,” Baldwin confirmed before Stadia could respond to her Nephew, “but now the hunt begins.”

“Do you intend to hunt down those responsible tonight?”

“No,” he glanced in the direction of home, “but be assured that you will each be notified when I decide on the action that is to be taken and you will share nothing more than the fact that we stopped the culprit. I won’t worry Alisha unnecessarily, not until I know more.”

“A bit early in the marriage to be keeping secrets.” Verin poked.

“I could say the same to you in reverse, does Ernst know all of your secrets?”

Verin fumed in silence.

“I thought not,” he turned back to Gallowglass, “go back to Sept Tours and bring my wife to the Chateau, we will be spending the next two days there.”

“And what of us, are we to remain at Sept Tours, awaiting your command?” Verin asked spikily.

“No, you can leave whenever it pleases you sister.”

———

Backlit by candles, Alisa Montclair performed for her husband, the same music she played when she first felt his presence.

This time, however, instead of sensing his gaze in a crowded concert hall, he was propped up against the pillows in their bed wearing just his dark pyjama bottoms. She stood illuminated at the foot of the bed through the thin gauze of the four post bed it was a much more intimate setting than a crowded concert hall.

Wearing just an ivory coloured and very thin silk slip, she was very much aware that he could see so much more than a human could, the candles highlighting her every curve in the silhouette of the candles.

Never had playing been such an erotic experience for her.

When the song ended, she performed a curtesy in response to his soft clapping.

“That was beautiful my darling, thank you,” his voice was thick with emotion and desire.

“You are very welcome, my Lord,” she put the instrument away and approached the side of the bed, “if it pleases you, it pleases me.”

She crept towards him and straddled his lap.

“You please me,” he sighed in contentment, “and not just because you’re beautiful and talented. You demonstrated tonight that you are ready to assume the responsibility that comes with being Madame De Clermont, as well as Mrs Montclair. I understand you played for our guests as well, accompanied by Miyako.”

“Who told you?”

He lifted his phone from the bedside.

“Don’t worry, I only wanted to show you this. You can be rest assured I will be switching it off for the duration of our time here together.”

She settled into a seated position between his strong thighs, his chest reminded a cool marble statue, immovable.

He lightly rested his chin against her shoulder and pulled up the video on his device.

It was of her and her step-daughter, playing together as the crowd was silent.

“Who took this?”

“Marcus, he sent it to me, I’m sorry I missed it, you play so well together” he mused, lightly kissing her shoulder and continued up her neck.

“She’s very talented,” Alisha grinned in memory of Miyako’s revelation, “so what instruments do you play?”

He sighed in resignation, switching the phone off and placing it back as promised.

“Piano, Harpsichord, Organ-“

He was cut off by her burst of giggles.

“Organ?”

“Yes, why is that so funny?” He smiled, happy to hear her laugh.

“No reason,” she shook her head.

He growled a little, but she could easily read it as a playful, exasperated expression.

“Alisha,” the stern tone that drove her wild was back as he lightly nipped at her neck with his teeth before soothing the area with gentle suction.

“It’s just,” she gasped at the sensations he was firing within her, “you already enter a room like there should be organ music playing in the background, I didn’t realise you could compose your own theme song.”

His chuckle was low and she felt the deep rumble of it in his chest.

“Are you calling me dramatic?” He murmured quietly against her ear.

“Big yes,” she nodded, involuntary shifting in her position due to his uncanny ability to make her laugh and turn her on at the same time.

A slight groan erupted from his lips as she realised that her fidgeting was having a direct effect on his own arousal, judging by the sudden bulge growing against her tailbone.

“What else?” She asked, armed with this new knowledge she targeted her innocent squirming to very slight and easily denied stimulation.

“What else what?” He asked in confusion, his breath a little more stilted than before.

“What else do you play?”

He didn’t immediately answer but the reason for that was clearly the diverted blood denied to his brain to feed a hungrier organ.

Just as sudden, his hands on her hips instantly stilled her movements. She took in a sharp breath, realising just how much self-control her husband had.

“I can play one more instrument,” he started, clarity returning to his words, as one of his hands drifted up from her side to ghost up her chest and clasp her breast through the thin material, radiating his granite coolness on the sensitive area.

“W-what’s that?” She asked, her ability to move and tease him hampered by his arm braced across her torso.

“Guess,” he teased, his finger tracing circles around her puckered nipple as he continued to nip and lick at the skin on her throat.

She realised too late the Venus trap she had fallen into and now she was under his complete control, her body practically bared to his whim.

The slight inhale from Baldwin told her he had sensed the wave of arousal that washed over her upon realising her predicament.

“Um, flute?” She whimpered.

“No,” he answered gently as his free hand settled on the inside of her thigh.

“Is it a wind instrument of any type?”

“Cold.”

“Percussion?

“Colder.”

“Reed?”

“Arctic,” he grinned, his hand gently and slowly inching its way up to its target and building anticipation as it went.

“There aren’t any more.” She argued, with a shudder of excitement as he neared his target.

“You’re forgetting the most obvious one.” He directed her vision to the violin case with his hand, loosely around her neck.

“Strings?” She gasped.

“That is the one you forgot but this instrument is so rare it belongs in no classification. The music she makes when you touch her just right...”

The slight mewling gasp she let out upon his fingers tiptoeing lightly over her panties made him smile.

She understood his meaning instantly, he could play her as well, if not better, than she could play her own violin, and he did, his fingers diving, dipping and playing her body like an expert musician stopping only to relieve her of the slip.

“I want you see you, all of you, take them off,” he ordered, “and lie down.”

His tone had the edge of command and it made her desire stronger.

She shimmied her way out of the underwear and lay on her side beside him, trying - and failing - to look sultry.

“I have seen you naked already sweetheart, why so shy now?” He teased, making her blush more pronounced.

“Because you were also naked,” she retorted, “and you were too occupied to study me.”

“Do you think I haven’t already committed your every peak and valley to mind,” he ran his hand down her waist and over her hip, “I have, I wager I could draw from memory your every freckle, especially this one.” His hand rested on her buttock and he pulled her to lie on her stomach.

She felt the slight playful nip of his teeth on the flesh under where his hand had rested.

“Baldwin!” She squealed in between giggles.

“Apologies,” he kissed the spot and continued placing light kisses up her spine, “so plump and inviting I couldn’t resist.”

“Hmm, charmer,” she accused, folding her hands beneath her head and glancing back at him.

In the candlelight, the rich copper tones of his hair were more obvious and the style was less strictly managed and more wild than usual. Between that and the darkness of his eyes, he was a vision of feral beauty, equal parts terrifying and magnificent.

“I‘m not as fragile as you think, you do know that?” She asked, hoping he understood her meaning.

“Vampires play rough sweetheart.” He warned, placing a tender kiss between her shoulders.

“I trust you,” she turned and captured his lips with hers.

He hastily joined her in complete undress and immediately she was enclosed in soothing coolness. It was a welcome contrast to her passion inflamed skin yet did nothing to quell her desire.

She yielded easily to his claiming of her, this time, however, the fit was more challenging on account of their position and she gasped at his fullness within her.

“Do you need me to stop?” He asked and she shook her head emphatically.

“Don’t you dare!” She moaned.

Accepting her answer, he slid his hand down between the mattress and her body, slowly building her arousal as he gradually increased his tempo.

Alisha was lost in a myriad of ecstatic sensations, between the spot within her that he somehow manage to reach every thrust to his ministrations upon her clit.

When he enclosed her throat in his hand to better access her scent, he felt her breath catch as his senses picked up a wave of pheromones from her that urged him forward. A subtle change in her scent intrigued him, something beyond her sweet apricot aroma. It was both unknown yet familiar at the same time.

“Baldwin,” she moaned, the very sound seeming to him more holy than any sermon or choir he had ever heard.

She was almost at her end, he judged from the way she tightened around him. He too would not be long after.

“You are bound to my will, remember?” He murmured low against her ear.

“Always!” She turned to look at him and he kissed her deeply, feeling her melt into him.

“My will,” he answered, “is to feel you come apart in my arms, can you do that for me?”

She nodded mutely as he kissed her neck, nibbled playful at her earlobe.

“Oh God,” she gasped, signalling how close she was to the edge.

“That’s it,” he coaxed gently, “just give in, I have you.”

Her movement was extremely restricted and yet, she felt unbridled, free and for the first time in a long time, safe.

Baldwin held her tight to him throughout her climax.

“You changed my life.” He kissed her temple with tenderness of which no-one could imagine him capable, and took his own pleasure.

After several seconds of quiet contemplation, he withdrew from her and rolled over onto his back. She was the first to let loose a satisfied sigh.

“So, I changed your life?” She grinned, moving to rest her head on Baldwin’s shoulder as her hand closed over his heart, still beating faster than his usual vampire rate.

He chuckled lightly.

“You never fail to surprise and impress me little nightingale.”

“To be fair, you did most of the work, next time I get to ride you like the stallion you are.”

“Noted,” he peered down at her, tucking her hair behind her ear, “and I meant your studies.”

“Huh?”

“Mi hai cambiato la vita,” he grinned, closing his eyes, “you don’t have to be modest, your grasp of Italian is commendable, and yes, you have changed my life.”

The drop in her stomach was made more pronounced by the way his relaxed posture grew more rigid. She realised that he hadn’t spoken the words in English and she had been too out of it to differentiate.

“Alisha,” he sat up, bringing her with him, “vampire’s are programmed to sense panic, it’s how we identify prey. What did I say that upset you?”

She averted her gaze, no words came to mind.

He framed her face in his hands, giving her no choice but to look at him.

“Alisha, tell me what’s wrong!” His tone was calm, gentle even, yet she knew he was not leaving this without an answer and with his senses, a lie was not an option.

She had to concede that the choice was made for her.

“Baldwin, there’s...” she took a deep breath, “there’s something you should probably know.”

——

PART 17

#adow #a discovery of witches #adow baldwin #adow baldwin fic #baldwin’s nightingale #adow fic

38 notes · View notes

jq37 · 5 years ago

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The Royal Report– A Crown of Candy Ep 9 Safe Harbor

Out at Sea

We start this week on the recently commandeered La Fondue, milk raining down on our exhausted and injured PCs who are still reeling from Stilton’s betrayal. Most of Annabelle’s crew are even more badly injured so the PCs are forced to help sail the ship in a group skill check which 4/6 of them pass for a group pass. The gang watches the surviving enemy ships sail away and Jet considers blasting them with canons but the La Fondue doesn’t have artillery. Jet also asks Annabelle if maybe, now that they’ve saved all of their lives, they can break protocol and bring them to Candia instead of the Dairy Islands, a question she doesn’t answer at the moment.

(Edit: Wait! I should have called this section Sweet Life on Deck! Dangit! They better be on a boat again so I can use it!)

Most of the group start to fall asleep, understandable considering they’re living through the longest day of their lives, but Theo takes a second to talk to Cumulous first. He asks about Cumulous’s backstory and learns that the Spinning Star monks used to be able to teleport all over the place with teleportation circles made by Lazuli but, without her around to tend to them, they’ve been breaking down and are now unstable and dangerous to use. Him using one to get to them was a big risk and he really only made it because he’s one of the strongest monks. Additionally, as alluded to before, Candia being at war with the Concord released him from certain vows which allowed him to join the fight. They also bond over being the #1 and #2 Archmage Lazuli stans (or actually maybe #2 and #3 as we’ll find out soon) and Cumulous who is either really into magical weapons in general or magical weapons made by Lazli or a little of both gets emotional over Battlepop like he did over Sourscratch a scene before.

The next day, there’s a funeral for the one sailor Annabelle lost in the fight. Ruby ties the milk-silk handkerchief from Primsy to her collar in solidarity. Speaking of, Primsy shows up--still injured from the attempt on her life--and invites everyone not to tea, but to a parlay. Clearly affected by the recent events, she declares that she doesn’t recognize the excommunication of Amethar and questions the church’s position on witchcraft considering all the witchcraft her Candian allies used to save her. She’s also pretty chill about the whole Stilton thing considering.

Primsy says she’ll help them but first wants them to fill in the gaps in Brie’s brief letter. Amethar explains about how he was excommunicated for still officially being married to Katherine Ghee. During an aside to this conversation, he drops what I naively thought was going to be the headline news from this episode: Caramelinda was engaged to someone else before marrying Amethar--Lazuli! It was for political reasons in part but also a love match and when Lazuli died, she ended up getting married to Amethar to at least maintain the alliance. Anyway, Ruby asks if Cara knew about Ghee and Amethar says no one knew except Jack, Belford (the priest), and Ghee herself (plus his sisters but they’re all dead). Annabelle and Primsy question whether Amethar didn’t try to have the marriage annulled and he says that he did right after the war but she couldn’t be found. Annabelle says that there are a lot of little islands she could have run to in the aftermath of the war (a smart move considering the target that would be on her back) and says that Dairy ships have a better chance at finding Ghee if she’s still around so she’ll help arrange that.

They have a little convo-detour about various plot points:

Primsy asks how the Pontifex knew to ask Jack about Ghee in the first place. Ruby and Jet suggest she used magic or maybe found something in the files Ciabatta claimed had no Candian secrets.

Annabelle questions the fact that Plumbeline would name Ciabatta as the successor right before having to swear on the Book of Leaves. That seems to indicate that either she’s not working with the Pontifex or the Pontifex wanted to specifically and publicly rule out Ciabatta as a possible candidate.

Also, we learn that ex-communicating Amethar doesn’t take away his right to rule as Emperor. The Pontifex doesn’t have that authority, at least not on paper. But, as Ruby points out, she effectively has the authority by power. Still, if they can get the Book of Leaves and confirm Amethar was named emperor, that’s a huge point in their favor because he obviously wouldn’t declare war on Candia as emperor so the war would be without proper authorization and a violation of the Concord pact.

Theo and Amethar speculate that the Pontifex doesn’t actually want to name a new emperor and want to just “provisionally” (but really indefinitely) fill the power vacuum herself.

Anyway, Primsy reaffirms that the Dairy Islands are with Candia all the way and they continue to sail. They have 18 days before they land and Jet uses that time to finally read the rest of her banned book. You’ll remember that she already read about the first thing--the Profidian Heresy--which was an old, now heretical belief of certain members of the church that the Hungry One was as strong as the Bulb. We get a little bit of new info on that: One person who believed that doctrine and was later killed for it was a Veduit Priest (fight me Brennan) named Bartholomew Brocolpatch who was a mentor to a young Belizabeth Brassica.

Onto the second term--the Ramsian Doctrine (did not clock the Gordon Ramsay reference until it was mentioned on Adventuring Party). It is a full, end times, Revelations, Ragnarok type thing. Ruby helps with this because she speaks Bulbosi (which is like Candian Celestial or church speak). Basically what it says is that the Bulb can’t win until the Hungry One devours the world and the Hungry One won’t devour unhealthy souls (Ruby translates “healthy” from the Bulbosi phrases “farm to table” and “locally sourced”) so in order to bring about the end of days, there needs to be a destruction of all the trash people or, phrased differently because the word for people and food is the same in Bulbosi--the junk food.

Even knowing what happens later in this episode, this still might be the thing I'm most mad at Brennan about.

Cumulous later calls a meeting of all the Candians and drops a little more exposition on them. He says that the reason that Candia has magic and the other kingdoms largely don’t is because his order of monks curates and tends to the magic of the realm while other kingdoms neglect their sources of magic. He also says that the church’s power comes from others not having it. After Ruby mentions that she sees Lazuli on a semi-regular basis through her magic, Cumulous drops the bombshell that his power comes from the Hungry One--though he doesn’t worship them. It’s just like a power source. They also discuss Jet’s research on the end of days stuff and Jet thinks maybe the move is to spread as much junk food as possible to delay the apocalypse.

Homecoming

After a long time out at sea, the gang arrives at Port Syrup at the mouth of the Cola River. As they sail in, they see three sunk Imperial warships and that the port is heavily defended. Clearly they got the memo. And we quickly see who gave it to them when Brie and Manta Ray Jack run up to meet them! Amethar is super happy to see his friends alive and they also confirm that Cal made it out and so did basically everyone except the Swirlies (RIP). The Jawbreaker castle--Castle Many-Licks--is under siege but it’s very hard to break into and it seems like most of the rest of Candia is doing OK.

Brie thanks Ruby for her help in finding Manta Ray Jack and then confirms Amethar/Theo’s suspicions that the Pontifex is ruling in the absence of an emperor (she says that until Candia is back in the Concord, technically, there can be no emperor). He also swears to duel Liam who truly cannot stop putting his foot in his mouth (this time about the church and a *very* confusing..complement?), after the war.

Amethar and Cumulous have a quick aside where Cumulous once again says that his mission is more to protect the magic of Candia than them specifically. It just so happens that, right now, those two things are pretty aligned.

As they make their way back to Castle Candy (w/ their Dairy Island friends), the citizens are pretty stoked to see them so it seems that war with the Concord has not lessened the populace’s love for their king. They take a pit stop and get a war update. The mountains are full of Imperial soldiers and random marauders plus there are reports of “Long Live the Queen” written in Imperial soldier blood on the side of a mountain which isn’t ominous at all. Also, there’s a call for all the help they can get to defend Castle Candy because an army from Comida is coming. Ruby tries and succeeds in communing with Lazuli who sends her a vision: to help Castle Many Licks troop-wise, they’d have to leave Port Syrup defenseless basically which would be a huge strategic loss. Meanwhile, the army coming to Castle Candy is full of discord so there’s a better chance at being able to muster (not mustard) troops there and be successful. The Dairy peeps say they’ll help as well and leave for Lacramore--except for Brie who holds down the fort in Port Syrup and Jack who goes with them to Castle Candy.

They make it there, at like 4am and Carmelinda is there to meet them, full weeping in relief at her daughters’ safe return. Cal is also there (with fancy new pants) and very happy to see Amethar. Caramelinda is less happy to see Amethar and you can clearly feel the tense conversation they’re gearing up for. The girls want to stay but Cara lays down the mom hammer and starts lecturing them. They all try to stealth away (non-daughters included) but Cara goes Full Mom and hits a Nat 20 to eyes-on-the-back-of-her-head notice. She stomps her foot and traps them all in caramel, demanding they all stop messing around and go to bed. Theo Messages her to give a quick word in favor of the girls and their maturity and battle prowess which Cara acknowledges.

Cal gets acquainted with Cumulous while Amethar follows Cara into their chambers for a convo that had me feeling like *I* was in trouble. She’s emotionally overwhelmed in a kind of understated and detached way as she talks to Amethar--she’s again openly weeping but not really about him. She doesn’t expect much from him. Him never telling her and hoping the problem would go away like a child makes sense. But his sisters knew which means Lazuli knew and never told her which hurts a whole lot more because, “Lazuli I loved with all my heart and this is just politics.” Ow. Amethar promises he’s going to do better. She doesn’t seem convinced as she leaves the room.

Later (Note: I’m not 100% clear on the timeline since Siobhan says when they wake up but it seems like it’s still dark in the next scene), Ruby takes the “For Candia” note from Lapin and brings the rest of the PCs to the Sugar Plum Fairy’s standing stones to have a little funeral. Liam finds a peppermint seed and puts it down for Preston. Cumulous is also there and has the urge to meditate while everyone goes back to the castle.

Rocks Fall

Ruby and Jet see, as their mom walks out of her study, a piece of tearaway lingerie in her desk as she locks the door behind her. And it’s not Jet’s. You know the girls gotta investigate that and Ruby, of course, gets a Nat 20 to pick the lock. In fact she doesn’t have to pick it. She approaches it with an air of mischief and it yields to her, opening without her even having to break out her thieves' tools. They find a letter from Lazi Fierce (interesting name choice) of Lazi Fierce Lingerie who apparently has been spying on them for their mom since they were little (which is funny considering she seemed outraged about their buying lingerie in ep 1). The letter also cryptically refers to something she’s keeping hidden in the attic of her shop and that she needs to leave and she doesn’t know when she’ll be back so if Cara needs it, she should go get it. Much like Siobhan/Adaine stealing that book in S1 of Fantasy High, there is no way the girls were gonna get that info and *not* follow up on it. They grab Liam and go.

With a 25, Ruby easily picks the lock and...we cut to Cumulous.

As he’s meditating, the Sugar Plum Fairy appears to him in a traditional, cutesy form. Cumulous sees through the glamour and asks what she wants. She says she wants the magic of Candia safe, same as him and says she would owe him a boon if he brought the royal family (who she needs safe) to the Great Stone Candy Mountain. She says there’s safety there for them and Candia’s magic. Maybe not in the way Lazuli planned but this is a better plan. Cumulous says he’ll think about it.

Calroy finds Amethar and takes him to the ramparts of the castle to have a guy chat and also talk strategy. As they get up there, Amethar sees that there’s a ton of soldiers in tents out in the fields. And then he feels a knife in his back. Brennan asks for 3 Con saves.

Water dagger.

He takes 34 points of damage (about half his HP) and is paralyzed as Cal starts to monologue about how he’s always hated Amethar for being so lucky. Fifth in line and somehow makes it to the throne while he’s stuck having to wheel and deal for everything he has. He reveals that he had Rococoa killed when she found out he was selling weapons to Cersians AND that the tents in the field aren’t all Candian tents. Some of them are Ceresians. He got Stilton interested in Primsy. He set up the cheese ambush. He worked with Alfredi to get the water daggers to Kerradin. He told the Pontifex about Ghee (he was in that conversation you’ll remember). He *also* says that, in her younger days, the Pontifex had Citrina (who he claims to have actually liked) killed in the street by Vegetanian knights.

“I wonder if they’ll call you Amethar the Unfallen after this.”

Boom, Amethar is sent over the castle walls.

Jet, Ruby, and Liam are in the attic and they see a gleam of golden light from a chest where something is clearly being held. Brennan makes everyone roll Initiative as they walk in and Liam sees four shapes in the room move, all masked, dressed in black, and holding water-steel daggers.

Ally scrambles for combat dice--because this is a STORY episode what is HAPPENING--and attacks for, in total, 67 damage to one guy who smells of sourdough and does not drop. He hides and Ally, in a burst of realization, puts together that it must have been Ciabatta, something confirmed by Brennan’s coy smile as he rolls a million dice.

Emily and Siobhan hold hands and brace for whatever’s coming.

Ruby is hit by a dagger and Jet, it seems, is hit by two (since she takes 6 saving throws to Ruby’s 3). Ruby takes 49 damage (down to THREE) and Jet takes 53+51, dropping her and poisoning her. She has to make a death save with disadvantage (bc of the poison) which she passes.

Ruby wants to stay and fight but Liam and Jet insist she run so, visibly distraught, she casts Invisibility on herself and runs for Theo. Liam casts Rope Trick, grabs Jet, and brings her into a little pocket dimension with him. Ciabatta takes off his mask and tells his men to find them and they say, “Yes Imperator.” They leave. We’re out of combat.

But Jet still has death saves to make.

Nat 1.

That’s two fails.

Liam tries to make a DC 15 medicine check to stabilize her or at least give advantage but fails.

She rolls again.

Nat 1.

As she lays in the Rope Trick, bleeding out, Liam trying his best to stanch the wound, Jet feels a glow on her Locket of the Sweetest Heart. Ruby feels the glow as she sprints over the bridge back to the castle and as she reaches the other side, the glow extinguishes.

“Tell Ruby I love her,” Jet says to Liam, not from her body, but standing above her body. “And tell her she did the right thing.”

The spirit of her aunt Rococoa shows up to ferry her to the other side.

“Good job soldier. You got her home. Ruby’s gonna be alright. Work’s not over. There’s plenty we can do from this side. You ready?” Oh, hell yeah she is.

Which brings us to Theo who is in the castle, looking for other knights, when he finds Sir Toby in his room, butchered. The door is slammed and locked shut behind him by some of Cal’s men who taunt him about eating Toby’s corpse to survive. But Theo isn’t just a brawn guy. He’s the ward of Archmage Lazuli. He casts Knock and the door flies open.

Cumulous hears shouting from the castle and runs towards it immediately.

And Amethar is still falling.

Brennan says he has the time to make 3 checks to come out of paralysis. He comes out of paralysis on his first turn and, as is mechanically useful and narratively appropriate, goes into a rage. As he falls he thinks about Ruby doing that slick aerial arrow shooting last ep and Jet stabbing that dude with him during the ambush. He sees a point of light across town cross the bridge and go out and he *knows* Jet is dead. If he wasn’t raging before, he’s raging now. He falls and takes 72 points of damage, halved to 36. He’s still up. Amethar the Unfallen, yet again.

The sounds of war erupt and that’s where we end our ep.

Safe harbor my ass.

In Memoriam

Oh, Jet.

I’ve known this was something I was going to have to write for ages now. I’m honestly only surprised this wasn’t the first one. Jet has had a date with the Grim Reaper for ages now and it was just down to confirming the date and time.

The moment she said, “I go on top of the carriage and lay myself perfectly to protect Ruby,” she might as well have started picking flowers for her grave. Her willingness to throw herself in harm’s way to protect anyone she held in any regard without the slightest hesitation was always going to be her downfall. A noble end to be sure, but still an end. And it sucks that, if she had to die, she didn’t die in a blaze of glory in battle, but she made the most of her senseless death. She died, telling Ruby to run, wishing she could have done more to save her, telling Liam to make sure she knows that she’s loved and that she didn’t abandon her, she did the right thing. Not a single thought for herself, only for her sister.

Jet, who never wanted to be queen and now never will be.

Jet who longed for war and fell right on the cusp on the biggest one in years.

Jet who was forced by circumstances to step up and did so every time.

I didn’t include her last exchange with Rococoa in the recap because I wanted to use those lines here.

Her aunt says, “I have bad news. If you thought the adventure was gonna end, it’s not.”

“Well,” Jet replies with a slight smile, “if you thought the adventurer was gonna die, she definitely fucking wasn’t.”

The Bastard Jet Rocks. RIP.

1 Million Years Dungeon

That damn cake bastard and his stupid fancy pants. I KNEW it I KNEW it I hate that I’m right but I KNEW IT.

Not that it was a crazy puzzle as a viewer. In a story like this there *has* to be a traitor to the king and for someone to be a traitor, they first have to be a friend. And Cal has been *real* friendly. Brennan thought he could throw us off the scent by saying that Cal was is his DMNPC, as if we don’t already know he’s the enemy. That’s just more evidence for the pile baby! I SEE YOU VILLAIN.

But damn if it didn’t still hurt when it happened. After what he’d just been through? That’s just insult to injury, or vice versa I suppose. And in a story ep???? Brennan?????

Wild that he waited 20 years to off this dude and then monologued his entire plan and didn’t wait to make sure Amethar--the famously Unfallen--was dead though.

Anyway, absolute BASTARD MAN (and not in the cool Jet way). I need him DEAD and I need that to happen ASAP.

(Also, this is more on Brennan but full-circling Lou’s “shit/piss” running joke with a MURDER ATTEMPT? That’s an extra year dungeon my guy.)

Sunnyside Up

“You’ve struck me. Why have you done this? It was wee and gentle but you've struck me nonetheless.” I love Primsy with my whole heart.

The “slam down big style” line was, like, moderately funny when I first heard it but every repetition in and out of game made it exponentially funnier.

“If we have to follow the rules, you have to follow the rules!”

“Everyone needs to stop making sworn enemies. We already have enough.”

“I sentence you to death.”/“No let him do it.” and then his, “Later.” So good.

It didn’t *end* funny but I maintain that that the, “There’s a *war* going on,” back and forth between Jet and Ruby was gold.

This isn’t actually from the episode but everyone roasting Brennan with full lies when he gets up to use the bathroom in the Adventuring Party is one of the funniest things Dropout has ever put out. Also, Murph taking Brenna’s cookie story and Murphing it is very good. Just watch this week’s AP, even if you don’t usually.

Things I’m Concerned About

Going into this battle ep, Ruby has THREE HP and Amethar has FIFTEEN. Like I know Rococoa said Ruby would be OK but I hope that has some mechanical effect because IDK ABOUT THAT.

Is Lady Donetta w/ Cal or was she just a pawn, like Primsy?

Also, idk if this matters but I can’t shake the thought that Cal murdered the Swirlies. Like it’s very probable that they just suck but the thought struck me.

Don’t love that it seems like Cal is going right for Cara this ep. Hopefully Theo (who Big Brained on that clutch Knock) can help her out and, if not, it looks like she has some skills of her own. I’m pulling for her.

How out the window is the format? Like, I’ve been concerned about a random combat ambush for a while now--partially because of the genre and partially because of how story heavy the tourney ep was. Things have been bleeding through already and now, at the halfway point, it seems like a plausible time for Brennan to fully throw the rulebook out the window and be like, “Game’s changed y’all.” They didn’t roll for initiative at the end of last ep. I wonder if that’s logistical or somehow relevant (like, are they going *right* into combat or not).

AHHHHHHH, OK, Jet’s death. As much as I felt it coming, ouch. And not just ouch for me Ouch for everyone. I am so worried about how this is going to break Ruby specifically. Like, poor Cara--she *just* got her daughter back only for her to die in her old stomping grounds because of a letter *she* had--poor Amethar--he’s outlived his firstborn who he saw safely through battle and loved more than anyone besides his other daughter, just like he outlived all his sisters--but Ruby? This is going to CRUSH her. She egged on the sneaking out. She ran instead of staying to try and help (correct move but total guilt trip). She’s never been alone before. I know we’ve all been kinda tense for whatever that, “Family is vulnerable,” line from Siobhan in the trailer is but man I’m *so* much more tense now. I wonder if she’s gonna take a class tweak like Liam did (I know he had more of a reason for it but still curious).

(Also, Theo who’s whole purpose in life is protect the Rocks family having Jet die and Amethar almost die in one night? RIP to that dude’s mental health.)

Note: I recognize that there’s a theory floating around that Cara set up what happened as an ambush and is evil but I refuse to consider that and if that makes me boo boo the fool in two episodes, so be it.

Seriously though, Concerned about whatever that “Long Live the Queen” stuff is. Like it could be referring to Cara but it could be referring to someone else entirely. Either way, sketchy.

Lol also the health food-pocalypse. That’s a thing. Extremely wild that that’s not even close to the headline of this episode.

I may have trusted Lapin by the end but I do *not* trust the Sugar Plum Fairy. Whatever’s going on with her and Cumulous? Do not vibe.

Ciabatta better be toast by the end of this show. This isn’t a concern. This is my Denny’s order. Toasted Ciabatta with a side of dice I can pour down Brennan’s throat.

Five More Things

So, Emily’s new character. I have two thoughts. One (and this was suggested to me by @buck92) is that she’s playing the Queen’s Champion--Ser Amanda Maillard who’s been mentioned twice--once in the first episode by Theo and Sir Toby and once this episode as part of the war effort (leading troops south). A named character doing important things but with no art sounds like a possible backup PC. Also, Emily getting to play this cool knight who Murph’s character is slightly jealous of would be A Dynamic. The other strong possibility is the Sugar-free chocolate warlock Brennan mentioned in episode 1 when they were on the way to Comida. I thought they were gonna get jumped by that character and they weren’t which makes me think that’s a PC too. It would also make Emily 3 for 3 on warlocks!

RIP to all of us who made the Bread Wedding joke before the season started. We were right, but at what cost.

Ruby talking about how it doesn’t matter what she does because she’s not next in line and then having Jet suddenly die and instantly becoming crown princess has painfully Big Amethar Energy.

Also, a nat 20 to break in and find the letter and then two Nat 1 death saves? The dice REALLY wanted Jet dead. Addendum: Almost forgot! Liam *just* learned Twinspeak! Like, off. What a narrative hand-off having that happen right before Jet died. It was like written in the stars.

It’s just a little moment but I loved Cara including Liam in her lecture with a little, “You are included, Liam.”

One More Thing!

This has been circulated a bunch already but I still wanted to shout out this very good video edit by @breadddie! It hit me real hard man.

Also, I don’t think I can link this properly without tumblr getting mad at me but this animatic with Amethar’s Fall set to What’s Up Danger on Twitter is excellent!

Edit: Here’s a link to an ask where I link to the animatic! Novatank is the artist’s @ btw.

#a crown of candy #a crown of candy spoilers #dimension 20 #dimension 20 spoilers #the royal report #man there was so much in this ep I'm sure I didn't capture all my stray thoughts but that's ok!#this is a recap if you want thoughts on s/t I didn't mention for some reason hit me up!

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dabistits · 5 years ago

Text

To talk about Twice and villainy is to talk about class and criminality (III)

Masterpost

Class in BNHA

Returning to my earlier point that BNHA should be read alongside the social concerns of real-world Japan, I want to note that these events almost surely affected and remained within Horikoshi’s awareness. Horikoshi was born in 1986, and thus lived through the economic downturns of the 90′s and 2000′s as a child and young adult. In 2010 when Sugimoto’s article was published—not in the least the first of its kind—Horikoshi was 24 years-old, more than old enough to remember the public discourses about Japan’s kakusa shakai. In 2008, only two years earlier, an award-winning film dealing with the financial struggles of a Tokyo family, Tokyo Sonata, was released, and 2012 saw an infamous starvation case involving a family that made international headlines. In 2014, BNHA began serialization. Without speculating on the political leanings of the author himself, it seems remiss not to posit the likelihood that these events and the atmosphere they engendered can be connected to Horikoshi’s writing and the kind of story he intends to tell. While BNHA isn’t what I’d necessarily call class-conscious, the ways it delves into class is noticeable even outside of Jin’s backstory and are worth a discussion.

If not exactly class-conscious, there nevertheless seems to be an awareness of class in BNHA. Not even our heroes are able to fully escape it, and in 1-A, there are small distinctions drawn between the experiences of more wealthy students and ones that are less well-off. For example, Yaoyorozu Momo wows classmates with her stately house, brings expensive furniture into the dorms, and exhibits naïve joy at shopping at an outlet store; Todoroki Shouto’s family home was shown to be a large, traditional residence, and a secondary house has since been built on the income of his formerly abusive, currently estranged father. Both students come from established hero families, and both were admitted to U.A. based on recommendation. On the other hand, Uraraka Ochako comes from a working-class family, and explains that a big part of her decision to become a hero is to support her parents’ business. She’s also been shown to be amazed at U.A.’s dorm facilities, and has frequent jokes made about her thriftiness in bonus material. When it comes to villains, these issues manifest with much more distinctiveness. Aside from Jin, a couple members of the Shie Hassaikai also bring up issues of class and exploitation when they explain their decision to join Overhaul: one was indebted, and the other had his Quirk exploited by an unethical boss. When Overhaul found them, they were “rotting away on the streets.”

On another level, BNHA is certainly hierarchy-conscious. As I’ve brought up before, many of the antagonist groups we see are strictly hierarchal, and more importantly, the lower-ranking members are often commanded to live and die according to their leader’s desires. From the members of the Shie Hassaikai to the Meta Liberation Army, we continuously see them lending their bodies and Quirks to the causes of their superiors, only to be discarded at the most opportune moments: Overhaul directly uses one of his followers as a meat shield, and the Meta Liberation Army decides to put their members in the path of danger, just to steal some glory from the LOV. Geten, from the MLA, has no qualms about enacting such wide-scale destruction that the members of his own organization get caught in the crossfire.

It seems relevant to mention that Yotsubashi Rikiya “Redestro,” the wealthy CEO of Detnerat and successor to the revolutionary Destro, makes his official appearance in the series through an advertisement, a medium tied to the capitalist drive for production and consumerism. Advertisements can also be understood as a medium for misrepresentation, an idealized image created to maximize sales, and sure enough, Redestro’s friendly façade gives way when he kills his assistant, Miyashita, for a mildly disparaging comment about Destro’s ideals. Before the murder, Redestro asks Miyashita whether he has a family or a significant other, making sure that his absence will not be missed, but the pointed question also seems to work as a stand-in for the invisibility of those who “serve” the rich, who can be discarded without hardly a blink of an eye. Miyashita, despite his proximity to wealth and to the wealthy, despite being on all counts a hardworking, model employee, remains expendable in the eyes of his boss. Furthermore, this act of violence occurs not in the supposedly crime-ridden streets—it happens in a swanky office building, where both killer and victim are supposedly working in civilian capacities. It suggests that hierarchies are not something that only belong in the villain world, but that these cycles of exploitation and expendability proliferate throughout society down to our offices and homes.

Quirks as determiners of worth.

In fact, home is where we bear witness to one of the greatest feats of exploitation: in the marriage between Rei and her abuser. Of course, the greatest foundation in this dynamic is patriarchy, wherein the woman is treated like the property of her husband, but there’s a subtle twist in this arrangement thanks to the introduction of Quirks. Rei’s marriage was not simply considered an “arranged marriage,” but specifically a “Quirk marriage” meant to strengthen the Quirks of the following generation by choosing a suitable partner. The Quirk marriage between Rei and her abuser was facilitated by his wealth and fame—acquired through his work in the line of pro heroes—therefore placing a price tag on her Quirk and on her person. I consider this to be an indication of the commodification of Quirks—“commodity” meaning roughly, in the Marxist sense, something that can be “bought or sold” or “exchanged in the market.”

Of course, the horrific thing about purchasing Quirks is they are attached to humans. Quirks are genetic mutations, and are stated in-text to specifically be biological attributes; without a human with the appropriate genetic mutation, a specific Quirk doesn’t exist. If the past serves as any lesson, it’s likely that as Quirks (and the humans who wield them) began to be seen as increasingly valuable, the ruling class soon caught on to the fact that Quirks needed to be controlled, regulated, and diverted to serve the interests of capital. Thus, Quirk regulations were born to prevent a potentially cataclysmic disruption to the means of production, as were pro heroes—a superpowered arm of law enforcement to deal with superpowered criminals. Contemporarily, heroes are largely those whose Quirks are considered the most valuable, and they’re paid for wielding said Quirks in defense of the rule of law; in other words, they sell their Quirk-wielding expertise. While Quirks themselves can’t yet be bought and sold (at least not on a wide scale), the humans attached to them can be.

This leads to yet another societal dysfunction. Because some Quirks are considered more valuable than others, and because Quirks are attached to persons, some people are considered more valuable than others. This comes through even more clearly in the original Japanese word for Quirk: 個性 (kosei). Kosei can be translated as “individuality” but also as “personality” or “character,” e.g. she has a strong personality (kosei), [source] a meaning that inevitably implicates the human behind the personality. But in the world of BNHA, a strong kosei no longer simply means a strong personality—it can also mean a strong Quirk. In the linguistic realm, personality and Quirk have become indistinguishable, and this has two effects: one, Quirks are presumed to influence personality (as in the cases of Toga and Shinsou), and two, that which makes us individual, our personalities, has become entangled with Quirks-as-commodity. That is to say, one’s kosei determines one’s worth under capitalism.

Of course, people with “good” or “valuable” Quirks (and thus presumably “good” and “valuable” personalities) are funneled into law enforcement and encouraged to uphold the status quo—the very status quo which increases their chances of gaining wealth, fame, and prestige that they can then pass down to subsequent generations. However, the policing class must justify its existence—if there is no crime, then there’s no need for policing. In one respect, this “need” is manufactured by criminalizing poverty (as discussed above), and other harmless acts (such as drug possession), and by creating the adverse, alienated conditions in which violence is not considered only necessary, but normal for both the policing class and those who are policed. Under the classification of value, however, there’s another easy scapegoat: people with “bad” or “worthless” Quirks.

While no Quirk is explicitly criminalized, there are many Quirks that carry a stigma, including the likes of Transform and Brainwash (whose wielders are regarded with suspicion for fear of “bad” personalities); some Quirks walk the line between “criminalized” and “stigmatized” altogether. Consider the Quirk wielded by the indebted member of the Shie Hassaikai, which allows him to transfer any object on another’s person into his hands: the Quirk is called “Larceny.” The naming is telling; it draws a direct link between indebtedness/need, and theft as a crime and as a kosei. With some people presumed “destined” for crime, and those presumptions becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy as they’re shut off from opportunities for advancement, law enforcement is endowed with legitimacy. Heroes and villains become two sides of the same coin—one unable to exist without the other, both socially-constructed categories to perpetuate the ruling class.

#bubaigawara jin #jin bubaigawara #bnha meta #the exhaustive meta about i love twice

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quaintqueer · 4 years ago

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I don't know what you think about labels, maybe you are the kind of person who watches shows like Marie Kondo where they organise people's houses and put sticky labels on everything so that you can easily identify the contents. Maybe you're the kind of person who does not like to be labelled or stereotyped. Maybe you prefer to be just yourself.

I have had a very complex relationship with labels and identity. You could say that I started off on the wrong foot. My mother went to a Baptist church on Sunday morning and a Charismatic/Pentecostal hands-in-the-air, shouting and screaming, spiritual warfare kind of church on Sunday night. And my dad had his Holy Communion as a kid and then went to mass on Easter and Christmas. So to begin with my labels were numerous and incongruent which did cause some issues for younger Zoe.

And I want to share with you about where God has led me through the understanding of this topic. I am not entirely sure where to start and I'm not sure how vague to be here but let's just say that at least the draft will be an explicit and partly chronological one.

12 year old Zoe I went to church most Sundays with her family and she was very very lucky to have a wonderful Christian friends in her life and at this point the label attached to her as a daughter was the unproblematic child and at school she was the sweet and friendly member of the God Squad or Singing Christians depending on how you asked. But those were the kind of labels that existed around that time.

What happens though to 12 year old Zoe is that she falls madly and instantaneously in love with her best friend. And almost immediately she thinks ‘am I in love with this girl? that must make me gay.’ And being a part of the circles that I was in a fairly conservative Christian family and a fairly conservative Christian School with Christian friends in that Christian school, I said ‘absolutely not. I don't want to have to deal with that.’ I was never hateful towards gay people in general I just thought I just didn't want to deal with it myself. My mum and I had had conversations about it when the plebiscite happened, and whenever we spoke about it, it was very much about ‘the gay people’ as opposed to anyone we knew or loved, let alone a Christian person, and so this whole gay thing wasn’t really thought about. Ao a few times over the next 2 or 3 years so I would ask, ‘am I in love with this girl’ And I always concluded ‘no no no you can't be in love cos you're not gay’.

By the time I’m about 14, I’ve been awoken to all different kinds of social justice movements, I took sociology, I’m going to save the world. THe labels I proudly wear are things like left wing, passionate, an ally to many different communities, in particular the lgbtq+ community.

Zoe at one point goes ‘frick frack, I'm definitely in love with this girl’. and because of the way that this world really loves labels, this was completely synonymous in my mind with being gay. My first response was probably because I'm bisexual so now that is an importand confusing label Zoë is wearing. I have somewhat fond somewhat mortifying memories of sitting on the Shinkansen, the bullet train, from Tokyo to Kyoto next to my dad doing every single ‘Am I gay’ quiz I could find online. Throughout this trip to Japan, I’m really testing the waters and every single younger woman I saw I was like ‘Is she cute? Am I attracted to her? Would I kiss her?’ and so that experience made me very nervous because I had still grown up with the mindset that if people were gay it was ok but they weren't Christian. And I was a Christian, so I just ignored it really. And this turned into a time of me hypersexualising sll of the boys that I had ever thought I had a crush on. I can quite confidently say that I didn't actually have a crush on many of them, I just thought that that was something that I should do. So there was a lot of ignoring this feeling.

We then reach year 10, 2020, a glorious year. In the first Lockdown, I finally caved and downloaded Tik Tok. The thing about Tik Tok is that it comes with its own world of labels, and I really would enjoy the kinds of conversations about what side of Tik Tok you are on. I loved that your For You Page automatically gave you certain labels to wear as a Tik Tok user, and I loved that those applied to real life. I quite quickly ended up on gay Tik Tok, among other things. I was also very firmly on Black Lives Matter Tik Tok, on disablrf Tik Tok, on Indigenous Tik Tok, so on and so forth. But much of my content was about the lgbtq community and this opened a ahole can of worms. I, at this time, carried a lot of shame for my attraction to women. For a bit of a backstory, I had been so severely heartbroken by this girl - not by her own intentional actions, I think that she was never going to feel about me the way that I felt about her and that was not her fault - but I was so seriously heartbroken that not only did I hold this moral shame but also this like emotional shame of my attraction to women. I felt like it was not a good thing morally and it didn't feel good emotionally because I had to still been really hurt about this girl and I have never really gotten over that. So for the first time on gay Tik Tok, I saw queerness and same-sex attraction as a positive thing not only in terms of ‘hey look these are women loving woman relationships that are working well’ but also ‘whether or not you're dating someone, queer identity is good for you and it's fun to talk about’. And as a type 4 on the enneagram, I love to feel special - not to say that I fabricated these feelings or that any queer person is queer for attention - but I think a big part of me felt validated or special because of my feelings and my queeness. It was like a new club that I could join. And so the labels that 15 year old Zoe wears largely consisted of queer. We had it dropped bisexual a little bit because at this point I was not sure if I like men at all and so we identified as queer or sapphic or bi or lesbian or gay - many of these words along with the left wing, Pro Black-lives-matter, pro-feminism, pro-lgbtq+, anti-colonialist anti-capitalist etc. etc. And I don't want to demonize any of those things - they are not at all negative things, I'm just painting a picture of the different labels that I wore.

Through out starting to come out to my friends and existing for longer periods of time not only on gay Tik Tok but now really searching all through the Internet for more LGBTQ+ identity - as I tried to confirm my traction for women, as I tried to decide about my attraction to men, about what label I should wear, and what it's like being in the LGBTQ+ community different, spaces where we interact, different identities and labels and experiences of queerness. So I really tied myself to this identity and it is I think so much because of the way the world sees labels as I said and so my first response was ‘well if I like girls I must be gay and if I'm gay I must identify that way and that has to be the most important thing about me’ because all the people I was seeing online really loved being gay. They were proud of their identity in their queeness. In the world as much as I think that we like to think we’ve got this ‘your sexuality or your gender identity doesn't matter. Gay and straight and bi and pan and whoever you are, we’re all human’, I think it often the world does like to draw those lines on both sides. Within queer communities there was - obviously ironically and satirically - this heterophobia honestly. (I'm joking!) But there was a real pride in this identity of whichever specific label you wear as well as the wider lgbtq plus label which led me to believe my sexuality was who I was. And that proved really quite awkward because I knew that my church and my family and many of my Christian friends believed that same sex marriage and romance was sinful. Because of the strong connection between my identity and my sexuality, if my sexuality was sinful, that meant that I was inherently and completely sinful and I didn't like that. It wasn't a fun feeling. After all of the years of learning about God’s gift of grace to us, kind of I lost in the crevices of my mind and whenever I thought about God I was met with feelings of shame and fear and dread and resentment sometimes even anger and I grew to be so despairing.

Eventually I tried the various progressive Christianity movements that teach that ‘God doesn't actually say the being gay is a sin, the Bible is pro queerness and don't even worry about it, God made you exactly the way that you are and he loves you the way that you are, go forth and have that lesbian relationship that you so desperately want’. But that never really sat right with me. It brought up other questions of ‘well if the current translation of the Bible says things like marriage is between a man and a woman, God made man and woman, any sex outside of marriage is sinful, or even the parts that say that ‘homosexuality is sinful, or man lying with man in certain translations, is sinful what happened to that part of the Bible?’ And of course I heard the response about how at the Bible was written by man and not by God and that it is fragile and can be manipulated and basically King James ruined the whole Bible when he wrote that translation and you don't have to listen to it. But that really didn't work for me. If that part of the Bible had been mistranslated how could I know that the rest of the Bible hadn't been mistranslated? If words like homosexuality weren't in the original text and they had been added there or mistranslated how could I understand the words like grace and love and hope and patience and kindness and peace and righteousness and holiness and justice? What if they were mistranslated? What if the whole Gospel was not how it was written in the Bible because the Bible was man-made? Pretty immediatelyI decided I couldn’t really understand a Christianity where homosexuality is not a sin because Christianity is written in the Bible and the Bible says that quite clearly. I believe that the Bible is directly the Word of God, that it is perfect, that the way that it is translated - obviously different translations vary - but that it is right from God’s mouth so imediately was like I can't believe in it Christianity where homosexuality is not a sin and so I've got to pick Christian or Gay.

And I didn’t want to choose Christian because I had this point has grown quite fond of being gay and I mean, I was truly just attracted to women, right, like I wanted a girlfriend and so I tried really hard to ignore God. I was still going to church, twice or three times a week and all that, and I could not shake the existence of God. I knew God existed. I knew that He created the world, that He was good and that they was the thing called sin that separated us from him. I knew that sin led to death. I knew that He had sent His Son to bridge the gap between himself and sinners. I knew that Son was Jesus and that He died on the cross and he rose again and I knew that if you believed in him you would spend eternity with God which was a really good thing. I could not shake those feelings, all those beliefs, and I absolutely praise God for that. I'm so beyond grateful that God did not leave me, even when I hated him and resented him and felt so much anger towards him. Praise Jesus!

All this left me thinking, well some people could go to heaven, but God hates me because of my feelings. He does not want me part of His kingdom if I'm gay. I can't ever go to heaven because I'm a sinner, and sinners don’t go to heaven. I truly don't know where all my years of learning about the grace of God had gone. This led me to a really distressed position, probably one of the lowest ever my mental health had been. I was just not coping and I ended up being kind of forced to tell my mum. I don't really want to say too much on this part of the story but by the middle-ish end of year 10 I ended up coming out to my mum and she told my dad, ‘cause I refused to do it myself, and then I got a therapist. Finally, now that my mum knew, I could ask her what I had so desperately wante to ask her - if she could please buy me some books about being gay and Christian. And so she did. And I slowly but surely started to read them, I started to read my Bible more and I started to really search for what it meant to have faith trust in God’s grace and not in your own work, not in your own actions or thoughts or words. The first book I got in particular was really hard to read it was based more on specific Theology and not on personal experience and I needed that foundation in what God really said because I had just had conversations with my mum and she had reminded me ‘God is real and he loves you and he sent his son to die for you and that is an option for you as much as it is for anyone else, your queerness does not separate you from Christ's death and resurrection’. There is a wonderful bible verse that became very important to me at this time. Romans 8, the very end of the chapter, says ‘for I'm convinced that neither death not life neither Angels not Demons need of a present or the future and or any Powers neither height nor depth nor anything else in All Creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our lord.’ So with this in mind, I decided that I could trust God and now I just needed to learn how. so I worked away through different books, through different parts of the Bible, praying really hard, searching online and asking really hard questions to some really awesome Christian women in my life, and asking God to reveal to me exactly what he thought about me and about queerness and so eventually we get to the present moment. I by no means know everything that I wish I knew, but now I can say that I wholly trust God with my next life - I trust that he has the power and the strength and the holiness to overcome even my sin which sometimes feels like the biggest there is. and I trust him with this life - that life with him is so much better than any lesbian affair I could ever experience.

I want to personally apologize to any one who the church or the world has ever made believe that they are somehow exempt from God’s love because of who they are or what they've done or how they’ve felt. That is false. There is no one that does not sin, no one that is not inherently separated from God. And there is no one who is too far from Jesus' power to be saved from that sin. God is bigger than your sin, I promise you.

I want to take this time to mourn for the lives lost and the joy and peace forfeited because of the way people who claim to know God treat queer people. I'm sorry if you have been made to feel less than because of the church. In the process of overcoming of guilt and shame that I have felt over the year, one more verse that I found really important. 1 John 1 says that ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.’

So for me, I don't identify with my sexuality. I don't want to say that I'm straight now, that's not really true. but my sexuality is not what makes me who I am. I am a person fearfully and wonderfully made by God and I am a daughter of God in Christ. I am not ashamed of my feelings. I do think that it is worth mentioning that an attraction or a desire or an impulse is not the same as a sin. The Bible tells us that Jesus himself was tempted in every way and the Bible also tells us that Jesus is blameless and never sinned. And so I think it's worth the clarification that same-sex attraction or anything like that is not sinful itself and also that being gay is never worse than anyone else's sin, and it is never ever bigger than God.

I just want you all to know that there is nothing that you have done that makes you exempt from God’s love for you, to know that he is trustworthy, that the Bible is trustworthy, and I encourage you that your value is inherent as a person made in God’s image and that with Jesus, you can have identity in his son alone. When he sees you, he sees the goodness and perfection of Jesus if you believe in him.

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