#your presently less than friendly historian

[whumpfish]

Some of you don't know your fucking history and it shows

[qqueenofhades]

Hi, I’ve been tasked with researching Richard Plantagenet for a paper and thus far found extremely negative accounts of the king, his religious bigotry being a reoccurring theme (his treatment of Jewish dignitaries attending his coronation and his reasoning to join the third crusade etc)

I stumbled across your wonderful tag for Richard at the weekend and wondered if you wouldn’t mind sharing your informed opinion of Richard and his views on religions ? Your writing seems very well balanced regarding his attributes and flaws. Thanks :)

Oof. Okay. So, a short and simple question, then?

Quick note: when I was first reading your ask and saw "Richard Plantagenet," I briefly assumed that you meant Richard Plantagenet, father of Edward IV, or perhaps Richard III, both from the Wars of the Roses in the fifteenth century, before seeing from context that you meant Richard I. While "Plantagenet" was first used as an informal appellation by Richard I's grandfather, Geoffrey of Anjou, it wasn't until several centuries later that the English royal house started to use it consistently as a surname. So it's not something that Richard I would have been really called or known by, even if historians tend to use it as a convenient labeling conceit. (See: the one thousand popular histories on "The Plantagenets" that have been published recently.)

As for Richard I, he is obviously an extremely complex and controversial figure for many reasons, though one of the first things that you have to understand is that he has been mythologized and reinvented and reinterpreted down the centuries for many reasons, especially his crusade participation and involvement in the Robin Hood legends. When you're researching about Richard, you're often reading reactions/interpretations of that material more than anything specifically rooted in the primary sources. And while I am glad that you asked me about this and want to encourage you to do so, I will gently enquire to start off: when you say "research," what kind of materials are you looking at, exactly? Are these actual published books/papers/academic material, or unsourced stuff on the internet written from various amateur/ideological perspectives and by people who have particular agendas for depicting Richard as the best (or as is more often the case, worst) ever? Because history, to nobody's surprise, is complicated. Richard did good things and he also did quite bad things, and it's difficult to reduce him to one or the other.

Briefly (ha): I'll say just that if a student handed me a paper stating that Richard was a religious bigot because a) there were anti-Jewish riots during his coronation and b) he signed up for the Third Crusade, I would seriously question it. Medieval violence against the Jews was an unfortunately endemic part of crusade preparations, and all we know about Richard's own reaction is that he fined the perpetrators harshly (repeated after a similar March 1190 incident in York) and ordered for them to be punished. Therefore, while there famously was significant anti-Semitic violence at his coronation, Richard himself was not the one who instigated it, and he ordered for the Londoners who did take part in it to be punished for breaking the king's peace.

This, however, also doesn't mean that Richard was a great person or that he was personally religiously tolerant. We don't know that and we often can't know that, whether for him or anyone else. This is the difficulty of inferring private thoughts or beliefs from formal records. This is why historians, at least good historians, mostly refrain from speculating on how a premodern private individual actually thought or felt or identified. We do know that Richard likewise also made a law in 1194 to protect the Jews residing in his domains, known as Capitula Judaeis. This followed in the realpolitik tradition of Pope Calixtus II, who had issued Sicut Judaeis in c. 1120 ordering European Christians not to harass Jews or forcibly convert them. This doesn't mean that either Calixtus or Richard thought Jews were great, but they did choose a different and more pragmatic/economic way of dealing with them than their peers. This does not prove "religious bigotry" and would need a lot more attention as an analytical concept.

As for saying that the crusades were motivated sheerly by medieval religious bigotry, I'm gonna have to say, hmm, no. Speaking as someone with a PhD in medieval history who specialised in crusade studies, there is an enormous literature around the question of why the crusades happened and why they continue to hold such troubling attraction as a pattern of behavior for the modern world. Yes, Richard went on crusade (as did the entire Western Latin world, pretty much, since 1187 and the fall of Jerusalem was the twelfth century's 9/11). But there also exists material around him that doesn't exist around any other crusade leader, including his extensive diplomatic relations with the Muslims, their personal admiration for him, his friendship with Saladin and Saladin's brother Saif al-Din, the fact that Arabic and Islamic sources can be more complimentary about Richard than the Christian records of his supposed allies, and so forth. I think Frederick II of Sicily, also famous for his friendly relationships with Muslims, is the only other crusade leader who has this kind of material. So however he did act on crusade, and for whatever reasons he went, Richard likewise chose the pragmatic path in his interactions with Muslims, or at least the Muslim military elite, than just considering them all as religious barbarians unworthy of his time or attention.

The question of how the crusades functioned as a pattern of expected behavior for the European Christian male aristocrat, sometimes entirely divorced from any notion of his private religious beliefs, is much longer and technical than we can possibly get into. (As again, I am roughly summarising a vast and contentious field of academic work for you here, so... yes.) Saying that the crusades happened only because medieval people were all religious zealots is a wild oversimplification of the type that my colleague @oldshrewsburyian and I have to deal with in our classrooms, and likewise obscures the dangerous ways in which the modern world is, in some ways, more devoted to replicating this pattern than ever. It puts it beyond the remit of analysis and into the foggy "Dark Ages hurr durr bad" stereotype that drives me batty.

Weighted against this is the fact that Richard obviously killed many Muslims while on crusade, and that this was motivated by religious and ideological convictions that were fairly standard for his day but less admirable in ours. The question of how that violence has been glorified by the alt-right people who think there was nothing wrong with it at all and he should have done more must also be taken into account. Richard's rise to prominence as a quintessentially English chivalrous hero in the nineteenth century, right when Britain was building its empire and needed to present the crusades as humane and civilizing missions abroad rather than violent and generally failed attempts at forced conversion and conquest, also problematized this. As noted, Richard was many things, but... not that, and when the crusades fell out of fashion again in the twentieth century, he was accordingly drastically villainized. Neither the superhero or the supervillain images of him are accurate, even if they're cheap and easy.

The English nationalists have a complicated relationship with Richard: he represents the ideal they aspire to, aesthetically speaking, and the kind of anti-immigrant sentiment they like to put in his mouth, which is far more than the historical Richard actually displayed toward his Muslim counterparts. (At least, again, so far as we can know anything about his private beliefs, but this is what we can infer from his actions in regard to Saladin, who he deeply respected, and Saladin's brother.) But he was also thoroughly a French knight raised and trained in the twelfth-century martial tradition, his concern for England was only as a minor part of the sprawling 'Angevin empire' he inherited from his father Henry II (which is heresy for the Brexit types who think England should always be the center of the world), and his likely inability to speak English became painted as a huge character flaw. (Notwithstanding that after the Norman Conquest in 1066, England did not have a king who spoke English natively until Henry IV in 1399, but somehow all those others don't get blamed as much as Richard.)

Anyway. I feel as if it's best to stop here. Hopefully this points you toward the complexity of the subject and gives you some guidelines in doing your own research from here. :)

[absynthe--minded]

How differently do you see elves and humans in eqrly tolkien handling trauma and neurodivergent situations that in the third age when the two races have more time to compare like healer notes and stuff?

oh! oh I like this question.

(disclaimer: everything here is based on my own headcanons. Tolkien clearly depicted mental illness in his works, though it’s more present in LotR than in the Silm, but he didn’t ever diagnose his characters and didn’t go into detail examining their mental states from an academic or analytical perspective except to defend Frodo for breaking under Sauron’s influence)

the first thing I want to say is that I pretty strongly headcanon all of the eldar regardless of ethnic group (and all dwarves, and all hobbits, but they’re not really the focus of this ask) as neurodivergent compared to the average human population. neurodivergence exists in humans too! there are autistic and ADHD humans because we’ve always existed in humanity. but the average human is (sadly) neurotypical, and if you use diagnostic standards meant to find out which humans are ND and turn them on elves, the answer you get is “all elves are ND”. some elves (Maitimo comes to mind in my headcanons) are ND-by-elvish-standards, and learning disabilities and cognitive disabilities also exist in elvish neurology? but there are differences in how these traits manifest.

Elves in the First Age really don’t know much about psychology but it’s not for lack of trying. Even in our world, psychology is a very new science, and a lot is being discovered about it pretty regularly that requires constant updates and development of knowledge. They see trauma as something that causes a mental wound, and that mental wound can be as impactful and lasting as a physical wound, but they’re not really sure how to address chronic illness. Míriel’s postpartum depression was the first real example of their “mental wound” model failing - she not only didn’t get better over time, she didn’t seem to want to. That being said, her death was also a catalyst for elven healers to try and learn from their society’s mistakes, and by the time of Maitimo’s recovery in Mithrim (in BH) you have Endanáro and Amdis saying that he needs to devote time and energy to healing his mind and accepting that he’s not okay. It’s well-meaning, but awkward, and very new.

Elves also struggle for the first five generations or so with the concept of emotional maturity. I’ve mentioned before that Finwë fails as a parent because he and others of his generation based childrearing on what they observed in animals, where there’s support and intimacy and duties assumed by the parent until physical maturity - he didn’t think that Fëanáro might have needed emotional support or that his responsibilities included forming a psychologically healthy space, because he was never a child, and had nothing to draw on personally, and the children who were born in Cuiviénen and on the Great Journey are very different psychologically from his son and so can’t provide much of an opinion on his parenting techniques.

Humans, on the other hand - they start in the same place, but they pick up on things a lot faster, if only because they’ve got generational turnover happening fast compared to the elves. There are a lot more children, since humans don’t have the level of control over their lives that elves do and unplanned pregnancy is a pretty normal occurrence, and they mature pretty quickly and then have kids of their own. Trial and error and passing on knowledge the same way elves do (communally, from one person to another) means it’s pretty easy to get information about basically anything once you’ve got a couple centuries under your belt as a people group.

The thing about neurodiversity is that it’s not really something that was a problem historically in the same way it’s a problem now. If you’ve got a kid who doesn’t talk much but who’s really good at making baskets and never gets tired of it, or a kid who loves to talk and tell stories but who loses track of time and can’t keep a good count on weaving, or who absorbs information about the natural world like a sponge but can’t navigate a social function to save their life? you can use that, in a society that’s not ours! you need craftspeople, and storytellers and historians, and healers and hunters - find a thing this kid can do well and thrives on, and let them loose. (Also, ND people with different circadian rhythms can keep watch more easily or keep different schedules to attend to the animals.) I actually think ND elves had a harder time than ND humans, originally, because elvish society was more formalized more quickly - it’s easier to find out you don’t fit into a box if there’s a box in the first place. (by “harder time” I mean that there was uh. one? one case? of “I’m the head of this family you will have the life I say you have you will be good at what I want you to be good at and you will not question me or defy me.” this was not the norm for elvish society but that kind of thing didn’t really have the opportunity to exist for First Age Atani.)

But time passes, the world changes, and with those changes comes shifts in... well, everything. By the Third Age, elvish healers and Mannish healers have gotten very good at figuring out trauma, though their situations have actually reversed in many ways. Elves are now more or less nonexistent as a settled-agriculture civilization, with Mirkwood and Lothlórien being the only real exceptions (and Lórien is on its way out) while Men have formal, structured, settled civilization. As a result I think you see a lot more trouble in the more formal Mannish societies with neurodivergence, but a lot less potential for trouble in elvendom.

As to notes, though - yeah, actually, I think there would be a lot of time to do comparisons! Most of that scholarship is probably in Rivendell - I think there might have been the beginnings of a psychological-study group in the Gwaith in Ost-in-Edhil, especially because of all the races working together and the chances for comparisons? And their writings probably escaped in bits and pieces, as well as some of the scholars; Elrond would have collected everything he could. Unfortunately, Sauron really killed the spirit of cooperation and interspecies friendliness that existed in Eregion, so I’m not sure how much of that would survive into the Third Age proper. Interested scholars would have to travel to Rivendell, perhaps to interview the surviving scientists, and maybe take some of their findings back to Minas Tirith or Dol Amroth or Lothlórien, perhaps with copies of some of the writing. (How seriously this scholarship is taken is a different matter)

If I were to offer a basic overview of what the average academic might find - I think an elvish scholar from the Third Age would be surprised at how much Mannish civilizations have changed, and they’d be impressed by the breadth and depth of trauma writing from places like Minas Tirith where there’s always a war on somewhere. Meanwhile mannish scholars from Arnor or Gondor would be surprised at the fact that elves write about and study trauma at all - they’d probably learn about Míriel and Fëanáro in history classes and assume that elves just don’t have trauma psychology, only to find out that several thousand years’ worth of academic study has lent a few results. I’m not sure if either side has much to offer the other except when it comes to the intersection of trauma and neurodivergence - ND humans are a lot like “normal” elves, after all, and elvish techniques for addressing and treating PTSD and other related trauma disorders might be more helpful than human techniques. But what humans have works for them, more or less? They’re a lot less rigid and structured and ableist as a society than humans in our world are, even at their most formal. (Plenty of individual humans are still super ableist or rigid or unfair! it’s just not a social norm, and it’s not an institutionalized axis of oppression.)

[raptured-night]

Hello, another question. When discussing Lily you often point out how her friends ended up being her husband’s rather than her own — as an argument proving her social isolation in her last years. How is that? Maybe she had friends but they were killed/neutralized like the McKinnon’s, the MacDonald’s, the Longbottom’s... I recall they get a visit from an old woman in Godric’s Hollow as well. Is there something I missed?

Certainly, I do believe that Lily had correspondents within the Order. However, there is a stark difference between people you’re on friendly terms with and people who are your friends. We see that difference most clearly when we compare Harry’s relationship to Ron and Hermione versus Dean or Seamus, for instance. Additionally, we could compare the closeness of James and Sirius to the friendship shared between Lily and Severus when they were younger, prior to the events of “Snape’s Worst Memory.” This brings me to my primary point, which is that through much of the Harry Potter series Lily is conspicuous for her near absence. Where Sirius, Remus, and even Peter might recollect their memories of James while in the presence of Harry, the first real concrete bit of information we get about Lily (other than Petunia’s accusation that she had been the “favored, perfect child” of their parents) comes from Slughorn --her former teacher-- when he mentioned she had a talent for Potions that he believed Harry shared (i.e. this is also the first occasion where Harry is compared favorably to his mother in the same way he is repeatedly compared to James). Prior to that, Harry mostly just “had his mother’s eyes” and a haunting memory of his mother’s final moments of life --courtesy of the trauma-induced flashback the Dementors provoke-- to go by. 

Importantly, where Harry is able to form connections with the memory of his father through James’s friends, Lily is far less real and far more akin to a symbolic figure of maternal sacrifice (i.e. Virgin Mary) or even something of a spectral/spiritual presence in his life. We learn very little about Lily as a person and it would appear there are no people she left behind who are willing to reminiscence fondly about Lily in the way the remaining Marauders do for James. It is not until the very final book that we get an idea of who Lily may have been beyond the maternal symbology or the spectral pair of eyes she left behind with her son. While this was deliberate on Rowling’s part in order to justify her twist that she and Severus once had a close friendship, this also has the unfortunate effect of leaving the reader with a very limited impression of what Lily’s social life may have been like after Hogwarts. Because Rowling only tells the reader that Lily was popular at Hogwarts and she fails to show Lily having any lasting or meaningful relationship with friends outside of James’s immediate social circle upon leaving Hogwarts, canon does not strongly support an interpretation of Lily as someone whose life was particularly filled with close friendships or meaningful relationships outside of her marriage to James Potter. 

Indeed, the very fact that she seems to have turned to the company of Bathilda Bagshot while in Godric’s Hollow may further speak to her want for adult company. Her letter to Sirius paints an interesting picture, particularly her revelation that James had become a bit restless because Dumbledore had borrowed his Invisibility Cloak and that prevented him from leaving the house. The implication is that when he had the Invisibility Cloak, James may have taken to venturing outside Godric’s Hollow and leaving Lily behind to care for Harry. This is a privilege that Rowling does not seem to extend to Lily, either. Notably, she does not complain to Sirius that she misses the advantages of James’s Invisibility Cloak for herself, she only ruefully acknowledges that James in unhappy being cooped up in the house with her and Harry. The implication is that she spends much of her time confined to Godric’s Hollow raising Harry. Outside of James, who is suggestively more able to leave, it would seem she’s taken to finding what company she can from residents like Bathilda Bagshot who, while canonically a respected historian, is also framed as having become an increasingly eccentric woman who was also many years Lily’s senior and difficult to really frame as a potentially close peer. 

Beyond that, we are told through supplemental information from Pottermore (or whatever it has changed its name to most recently) that James’ behavior at a dinner with Petunia was the final catalyst in Lily no longer being on speaking terms with her sister. Thus, that is one familial relationship that Lily has lost since Hogwarts. Furthermore, while it is certainly possible that she still had her parents at that point, as Rowling seems to have an issue with writing grandparents, we can only make inferences that Lily might have still had the support of her parents and to what extent that support may have gone given they were Muggle and the status quo for Rowling’s world seems to be the complete assimilation of Muggle-borns into wizarding society. Ultimately, outside of Bathilda Bagshot, Lily appears to be cut off from the world except through her written correspondence. One could argue that the necessity of her going into hiding was the real reason for her apparent isolation, yet we still have certain key issues. The very fact that Lily draws attention to James resenting the loss of his Invisibility Cloak draws the reader’s attention to the contrast between his apparent situation during that point in the war and her own (i.e. James has some expectation to be able to come and go from Godric’s Hollow and he has the privilege to be able to do so). 

Finally, the very fact that the first occasion where Harry is presented with an opportunity to read a letter written by his mother and get a better idea of her as a person is because she was writing to Sirius further supports a reading of Lily as not only being more isolated than James but also dependent on his social circle for adult interactions. Notably, she is not writing to Sirius on behalf of James, she is corresponding with him as she would a friend. While we can speculate on all the many possible other people she may have written to in a similar fashion, the fact remains that canon only supplies us with one concrete example of Lily interacting with anyone as she would a friend and that just so happens to be someone important to James. Thus, it is mostly because canon fails to supply us with any strong evidence of Lily having meaningful connections outside of James and his friends that I tend to interpret her later years as being more isolated to James and his immediate circle. 

Certainly, there is room for theories and headcanons about all the many friendships Lily may have had during that period in her life (I love speculative fanfiction that has her exchanging letters with Alice Longbottom, for example) but as far as the books, Rowling tells us very little and what she shows us does hint to a woman who has very limited connection to anyone; is reaching out to her elderly neighbors for companionship while her husband may be spending his time away from the house when he can and who becomes restless when he can’t; has already had her bridges burned due to the antics of her husband with a portion of her family; has already cut ties with her oldest friend from childhood and does not appear to have made any lasting friendships of note --other than the one she had formed with Severus-- that she cared to maintain after leaving Hogwarts; and who is only shown corresponding with one of her husband’s friends as a means to socialize with someone roughly her own age. For all of those reasons, I do tend to interpret Lily as someone whose post-Hogwarts life was more restricted than she may have wanted. As I said, it is possible to read her differently and there are plenty of headcanons that circulate about what her life may have been like during those years but when looking at what scant offerings canon provides us I personally struggle to read Lily’s life during that period as anything other than a little more complicated and maybe a little less romantic seeming than some in fandom might prefer to think. I hope that answers your question and thanks for your ask!

Regards,

Raptured Night

[more-pokeimagines]

Stone Cold Body [06] - Chapter 5

A/N: Once again, I’m so sorry for the long wait. I was really busy with my final thesis and requests for my two writing blogs but I hope you guys are still interested in the series. Feedback is always appreciated!

Warnings: none

Taglist: @piershoesz

Present

Having a prince by your side still felt weird, even after spending a few days with him. Bede was reticent and farouche, only speaking when someone directly addressed a question to him and often looking at you like you were both his worst enemy and the biggest idiot he had ever encountered. His mere presence was enough to make you absolutely furious but the more reasonable part of you knew that you couldn’t just leave him in the lurch, simply because he had no idea about living in the 21st century. As hard as it was, you had to admit that he needed your help.

You had spent the last few days in a small inn in the middle of Wyndon’s old town where Hop had to share a room with the prince because the other rooms had been fully booked, and of course they didn’t get along well. Hop had lost his patience with Bede after a few hours of nerve-wracking silence, and Bede had told him in return that he wouldn’t mind Hop leaving and that he didn’t need a babysitter anyway.

Needless to say that the mood had been up the spout when you met each other the next day to grab some breakfast. Hop shot angry glances at Bede at least three or four times a minute while Gloria tried her best to save the situation by discussing various plans for the day. You, on the other hand, just wanted to stay out of this and focused on your breakfast instead: a stack of waffles with honey, a fruit salad and a large cup of coffee because you were absolutely sure that you wouldn’t survive another day in Bede’s presence without a considerable amount of caffeine in your system.

“I thought about visiting the castle today,” Gloria said and looked around one. Bede showed no sign of interest in her words while Hop and you nodded in agreement. Visiting the castle had been on your list anyway, and you weren’t going to scrap everything just for the sake of peace and quiet. If Bede didn’t want to accompany you he could stay in the inn instead.

“The temporary exhibition about the royal family ends in a few days,” Gloria continued in a conversational tone, completely ignoring the fact that Bede’s face dropped when she mentioned his family. “And I don’t know about you but I definitely want to see it.”

“Sure,” Hop agreed. Next to him, Bede huffed. “I’m not coming with you.”

“Oh, don’t worry, you don’t have to,” Gloria replied and smiled at him. “It probably sounds really boring to you, doesn’t it? I mean… it’s an exhibition about your family after all.”

You took a sip from your coffee. Somehow, Gloria seemed to be the only one who wasn’t bothered by Bede’s behavior. She even managed to smile at him from time to time, and it also didn’t faze her that he treated you like you were some obnoxious bugs that bustled about his head. Instead of arguing with him, like you and Hop did most of the time, she really tried her best to start a normal and peaceful conversation, and while you usually admired her for her talent to adapt to every situation, you wished that she would stop with trying to befriend Bede. He didn’t belong here; he wasn’t a part of your friend group and you really didn’t want him to be here. His presence made things so much more complicated than they needed to be, especially since neither of you could stand him or his behavior. Well, except Gloria but you were absolutely sure that she was just pretending because she didn’t want to make the whole situation even more tense. At least that’s what you tried to tell yourself since you didn’t want to believe that she really had some sympathy for the arrogant and disdainful prince.

When a quiet voice in the back of your head reminded you that he was probably acting like that to cover up his fears about being trapped in another time and having no idea if he would ever be able to go back to his time period, you shook your head to silence the thoughts. That you started to feel sorry for him was definitely the last thing you needed right now. But still… you didn’t even want to imagine how strange the whole situation had to be for him. He had been trapped in stone for so long, and now that he was finally free, he had to discover that the world around him hadn’t stopped turning while he had been accursed.

You watched him from the corner of your eye while you cut your waffles up before dipping a smaller piece into the puddle of honey on your plate. His looks didn’t match his personality. In all objectivity, you had to admit that he was quite handsome, with his slightly curly, light blonde hair and the unusual purple color of his eyes. But the way he acted made it almost impossible to like him; he was presumptuous and unfriendly, despite the fact that the three of you only tried to help him.

“(Y/N)?” Hop’s voice snapped you out of your thoughts, and you turned your head to look at him. “Sorry. What did you say?”

“I asked if you’re ready to go,” he repeated, pointing at your only half-empty plate. “You haven’t finished your breakfast yet.”

You shook your head. “Yeah, no, don’t worry about that. I’m not hungry.”

“Okay.” Gloria beamed at you. “Let’s go!”

*

The exhibition itself wasn’t as good as you had expected. Of course, it was interesting to read more about the Royal family of Galar but a part of you had hoped to find out more about Bede and the reasons why someone had cursed him.

Lost in your thoughts, you stared at his portrait, noticing that the painting didn’t do him justice. The color of his eyes seemed to be much duller than in real life, and some details like the faint smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth must have been added by the painter to make the prince look more approachable and friendly because you couldn’t imagine that Bede was able to smile at all. But you still had to admit his dark grey uniform made him look quite regal and sophisticated.

For the first time since you met him, you fully understood that he had been meant to rule Galar after his father’s death. From the information panels right next to his portrait you knew that his parents had been particularly strict about his education and rarely allowed him to do something for fun. According to the historians, he had spent most of his time with studying the politics and the history of Galar but had never been able to live up to his father’s expectations, no matter how hard he tried to impress him.

Once again, you felt a wave of sympathy for Bede. Surely, it had been hard for him to live with the impression that he wasn’t good enough to be king one day, and you wondered if this was the reason for his dismissive behavior. Maybe he just tried to protect himself by pushing everyone away who tried to get near him. On the other hand, that didn’t make much sense since neither of you had demanded high standards from him, unlike his parents who expected him to be perfect in any way possible.

A bit taken aback because this had been the second time today that you had felt sorry for the prince, you shook your head and brought your attention to the portrait right next to Bede’s. It showed his sister, Princess Carlina, and if you hadn’t known you wouldn’t have recognized them as siblings. Her hair was darker, her eyes more of a blueish-purple color, perfectly in tune with the color of her gown, and her lips curled into a genuine smile. In comparison to her brother, she looked friendlier and less tense but maybe you were just making that up because you knew how Bede acted most of the time.

She had been the one who had encouraged their parents to build the park surrounding the statue but that was basically everything you knew about the princess. Even though she eventually became Queen of Galar after her father’s death, she wasn’t as famous as her older brother, mostly because her husband tried everything to keep her out of political affairs and other government affairs. According to the information panels, she had died young, only a few years after her marriage, without having children.

For a moment, you wondered if she ever learned that her brother wasn’t dead; that someone had trapped him in stone instead. Would she be glad about the fact that you freed him? You definitely weren’t too happy about it but since there was nothing you could do to change it, you slowly started to accept it. In the end, it didn’t matter that much anyway – nobody could force you to like him just because you had managed to break the spell.

With a quiet sigh, you shook your head and turned away from the paintings. As artistically as they were, they didn’t help you with any of your questions. Even though the legend surrounding the prince was the most interesting thing about the Royal Family, there hadn’t been any information about it, probably because his parents tried everything to keep it a secret, and you couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed when you returned to Hop and Gloria who were waiting in the gift shop near the exit of the castle.

“Nothing,” you said when they looked at you in anticipation. “I double-checked every single information panel about our Prince Charming but they don’t mention the curse at all. I guess we have to do some research on our own.”

Hop huffed. “Does that mean we have to spend even more time with him?”

“Well, we can’t just leave him on his own, can we?” Gloria retorted and nudged him with her elbow. “He needs our help to get the hang of this time.”

Hop and you exchanged a glance, silently pitying each other because you had to spend even more time with Bede. But both of you knew that Gloria was right: it would be irresponsible to skip out on him, no matter how much you actually disliked him.

*

Everything was dark around you. Somehow, it felt like you were floating in the void, like there was nothing else around you but thick darkness.

Then, the darkness suddenly lifted, revealing a light so bright that you had to close your eyes for a second. Still, you weren’t sure if your feet were even touching the ground but when you opened your eyes, you found yourself in the corner of a ginormous ballroom. Every inch of the room seemed to be covered in gold, and there were people in beautiful gowns and custom-tailored uniforms and suits everywhere. On the gallery, you could see a string orchestra tuning their brightly polished instruments before they picked them up and started to play. The melody was melancholic and full of longing, making your heart ache for something you couldn’t quite put your finger on.

For a few moments, you found yourself staring at your magnificent surroundings, trying to take in as many impressions as possible. There was something magical about this place; it almost seemed like everything could happen here.

And then you saw him.

He was making his way through the crowd, dressed in a navy-blue uniform that made him look even paler than he already was. In the dim light, the color of his hair was almost silver-blond, and even though you didn’t want to stare at him like everyone else, you kept your eyes glued on him, watching him as he greeted the royal couple. Next to him, there was a girl – his sister, Princess Carlina, and you realized that she looked so much prettier in real life than she did on the painting you saw just a few hours ago. Her smile was contagious; even her strict father couldn’t help but return it when she beamed at him.

Then, the scenery suddenly changed. Heavy fog surrounded your feet, making it almost impossible to see the ground. Right in front of you, you spotted a near-derelict building with tall turrets and shattered windows. The stone walls that had started to crumble in some places were covered in dead ivy, and through the opened gate you could hear loud voices. One of them, you recognized immediately, the other one belonged to a woman.

Burning with curiosity, you slowly sneaked closer.

“They will regret what they have done to me and my family,” the woman said, her voice filled with a mixture of satisfaction and burning anger. “And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“You must be insane when you think that I will be intimidated by your empty words,” Bede replied. He sounded just like he did when he talked to you, a bit presumptuous and cold, almost as if the woman didn’t deserve to be taken seriously. “You and your kind can only lie and betray and hope that nobody notices how reprobated and selfish you are.”

The woman laughed. “Your arrogance will do you no good, little Princeling. One day, you will get what you deserve.”

The scenery changed again. You were still standing outside of the building but farther away this time, and now you could see that it was some kind of abandoned church. The full moon, ominously hovering over the scenery, cast a pale light over everything and made the whole situation even more creepy. Just looking at the church made your flesh crawl. You had no idea why but somehow, you knew exactly that something terrible was going to happen.

Suddenly, the ground beneath your feet started to shake. A terrifying rumble reached your ears, the light of the moon got brighter for a few seconds. The church began to deflate; stone by stone the building collapsed like a house of cards, blowing up dust, and you covered your eyes. Another loud rumble and then – nothing.

*

With a scream escaping your lips, you started up from your sleep. It was only then when you realized that everything you saw had been nothing but a dream. An alarmingly real dream but still nothing more than a product of your imagination.

You rubbed your face, noticing that your palms were sweaty, as you tried to steady your breath and calm your racing heart. “Damn it,” you mumbled, still completely taken aback by your dream. Everything had seemed so real, almost as if you had caught a glimpse of the past, but the next second, you rolled your eyes and quietly scolded yourself for being such an idiot. You had visited the castle today, you had seen the portraits; of course everything had seemed real. And with all the things going on right now, the dream simply had been your subconsciousness’ way to process them. There was nothing magical about it, not even the slightest bit.

At least that was what you tried to tell yourself. A small part of you was still convinced that there was more to it but you refused to listen to the tiny voice in the back of your head. Your life was already crazy enough; you didn’t want to bother yourself with the past as well.

But as soon as you lied down again and closed your eyes, the pictures came back. You still saw the gorgeous ballroom, heard the rousing waltz that the orchestra had played, remembered the argument between Bede and the unknown woman. For a moment, you wondered if she had been the one who cursed him. And – which seemed to be the more important question – why you dreamed about it in the first place. It made no sense; you knew nothing about the things that happened back then which, again, could only mean that your imagination ran riot after visiting the castle today.

You let out a quiet sigh. Not for the first time, you realized that none of this would be a problem if Gloria hadn’t persuaded you to take a photo with the statue. If you had refused, Bede wouldn’t be here; you wouldn’t dream about weird arguments and collapsing buildings. Instead, the three of you would have continued your road trip as planned. Everything would be fine.

Suddenly feeling the urge to scream out of utter frustration, you pressed your lips together. There was no way you were able to go back to sleep, not when the thoughts in your head were running wild. Not when you couldn’t stop worrying your brain about your dream.

Maybe, you mused, it would be best to find someone to talk about it. But you knew that Hop would just shrug it off because he didn’t understand why you were so upset, and while Gloria definitely help you to interpret every single detail of your dream, you weren’t sure if that was really what you wanted. Probably not.

No, you wanted answers. You wanted to know who the mysterious woman was, why she threatened the prince and, probably the most important question, why you dreamed about her and Bede in the first place. It just made no sense, at least not with everything you knew at this point. You couldn’t answer any of your questions. But you knew someone who could.

*

“I need to talk to you,” you said and grabbed Bede’s arm before he could enter the breakfast room. He gave you an irritated look, clearly surprised that you touched him without his permission and actually spoke to him. You couldn’t blame him – usually, you avoided addressing him directly but today, you had no other choice. “Please,” you added, your voice filled with impatience. “It’s urgent.”

Bede raised an eyebrow, staring at you as if he couldn’t believe that you even knew how to say Please, but much to your surprise, he nodded. “Fine.”

You dragged him outside, careful that no one could see you. Although you had no idea why someone would eavesdrop on you and the long-lost prince of Galar, you preferred to better be safe than sorry.

“So,” Bede said and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “What’s so urgent that I cannot have breakfast first?”

You remained silent for a moment. Then, you let out a deep sigh. “I… I had a dream last night,” you replied slowly. “In the end it was more of a nightmare, to be honest.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with me.”

“I saw you. You were arguing with a woman, in an old church,” you explained, although it felt incredibly weird to tell him about your dream. A part of you still expected him to laugh at you and return to the breakfast room after telling you that you were completely crazy but the other part wanted to know if he knew anything about the mysterious woman. “She… she was saying something about a punishment. I didn’t understand everything but she definitely threatened you.”

Bede raised his eyebrows. “Is that so?” He was trying to play it cool but you had noticed how he flinched when you mentioned the old church and the argument between him and the woman. Now, you were sure that he definitely knew something and that it had been more than just a dream.

“Yes,” you insisted. “And I want to know who that woman is and what she was talking about. So, if you know anything about that it would be great if you could just answer my questions without acting like I’m just some stupid idiot who had a nightmare.”

He huffed but you noticed how he avoided your gaze. Instead, he was focusing on something behind you. “Even if I knew something,” he finally said, his voice shaking almost unnoticeable, “I surely wouldn’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t trust you! I don’t trust any of you,” Bede snarled at you. Suddenly, there was nothing left of his steely composure. Instead, he flashed his eyes at you as if you were his worst enemy. “And what is the point anyway? All of this is long gone, and if you ask me, this is none of your business after all.”

“Fine!” you yelled, mimicking his tone. “Don’t tell me! I’ll figure it out on my own, I don’t need you or your help anyway to find out what’s going on!”

“Good luck with that, then,” Bede replied and rolled his eyes. It made you furious that he acted like your dream didn’t mean anything, and you clenched your fists to keep you from slapping him across the face. “Oh, shut up, will you? You don’t need to act like you know everything when you’re nothing more than a scared Princeling who’s too frightened to face his own miserable past!”

There was a long silence then. Bede just stood there as if he was rooted to the spot, his purple eyes filled with utter disbelief and consternation. Gone was the angry look on his face, the tense posture. All that remained was a young, insecure man. And suddenly, you regretted your harsh words.

“Bede, I-“ you started but he cut you off with a wave of his hand before he turned around and stormed off.

You stared after him, still a bit appalled by your fierce reaction. There was no rational explanation for the loathing you felt every time he spoke to you, and you didn’t understand how someone you didn’t even know could drive you up the wall like this. But you were absolutely sure that there had to be a reason for these feelings and for his silence too. And now, especially after his strange behavior, you were hell-bent on finding out what was going on.

Masterlist / Next chapter

[salemorbit]

Hello, can I please get a my hero academia match up if you are still doing them? I'm a gay guy and I use he/him pronouns. Im a ENTP btw. Apperance wise I'm 5'1, have Auburn hair, brown eyes, freckles, and I'm a bit chubby. Personality wise I am a bit of a loner. I have a few friends who I talk to daily but beyond them I rather stay by myself. I am friendly when people decide to talk to me however. I also am not the best with social cues at times and I have embarrassed myself in the past by not picking them up. Once i am someones friend i become much more open however and less of a loner. I asked my friends once what they would use to describe me and they said things like "smart, creative, passionate, knowledgeable". I have adhd and I can be quite forgetful at times and a bit hyper as well. Also, I have a somewhat dark sense of humor. I am really into hisotry, reading, and video games. I tend to go on long rambles to my friends about those things. I even sometimes make long powerpoints/lectures about certain topics like video game hisotry and such and present them to my friends. I have been told I'm an entertaining teacher with my powerpoints/lectures; however, I rather become a househusband or historian than teacher. For a lover I'd like someone who would put up with my rambles on random subjects I'm interested in. I'd also like to be able to just chill out together and have times where we enjoy each others presence and not talk. Id like them just to be able to put up with both the hyperactive bubbly nerd and the loner sides of my personality.

yup yup yup! here you go <3

~~~~~~~

MHA Matchup!

Based on your characteristics, I think you'd do best with.......

Todoroki!

~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~

todoroki is such a listener

he will of course listen to anything and everything you want to talk about

he's in love with the cadence of your voice

todoroki would also 100% go to you for knowledge of most things then

like any question he'd have he'd just text you and be like "pls it's important"

you would of course have your fair share of quiet times spent together, but it's never awkward and todoroki loves those more than anything

y'all definitely have a good zen energy around you

it probably would've taken forever for you two to get together because you're both bad with social cues and stuff 💀💀 lots of external help i'll tell ya that

todoroki is one million percent soft

especially w uuuuu

he would be your checklist for anything to make sure you're on track because the man is just so organized

doesn't mind it one bit because it makes him feel helpful

todoroki also would have some dark and deadpan humor and he's actually kind of funny once you know the way that he tells a joke

he's comfortable enough in your relationship to leave you alone for a bit if you just feel like you want that, but he'll always welcome you back with open arms

he'd just be so respectful i think aw

[mnthpprt]

Chapter 5: First We Feast

[For those who are following my writing, you may have seen it doesn’t quite line up with the game’s timeline. I don’t want it to be exactly the same, but I do want to keep the core of the story. In this version, the events take place in 1894, and the main character is from 2020. Well, a version of 2020 without any of this Covid fuckery. I wanted to make a more realistic MC than the one in the game, whose actions rarely line up with my own. This MC is modern and feisty, and specifically written from the cultures I know best. While it might not be as relatable as most Ikevamp works, I can promise you all it is as authentic as it gets, kinda like a “what would I do” scenario if I was in MC’s situation. On top of that, there are several headcanons applied to the different characters, so if you have any, let me know and I will add the ones I like. Thank you for reading. This is my first public piece of writing so I am thrilled that some people are enjoying it already.]

Le Comte de Saint-Germain returns to the dining room, pulling me out of my thoughts just before the silence gets awkward. It is then that I realize that Sebastian is no longer standing next to me. I did not see him leave. Prompted by the nobleman’s return, all the other men take a seat around the large table. Once everyone is in place, I sit on one of the empty chairs beside le Comte, and look at him for validation. He smiles approvingly, and as if on cue, Sebastian reappears with a cart full of plates that he begins setting on the table.

My stomach growls at the smell. It is supposed to be around 4 in the afternoon - back in the present, at least - and I have ingested nothing but iced coffee all day. As Sebastian serves everyone, I softly nudge le Comte’s arm.

“I have so many questions I don’t know where to begin. Do you think you could...?” I inquire, before being gently interrupted by him.

“Of course, ma chérie, I will answer anything you want to know. After dinner, you can visit my study.” After dinner. Of course. My leg bounces under the table in a poor attempt to get rid of some impatient energy. Meanwhile, le Comte raises his voice, along with the glass of champagne that now sits in front of him. “It has been a while since most of us were gathered together to enjoy the evening like this, and I must say I greatly appreciate it. À votre santé!”

The rest follow his lead and all drink in unison. I, on the other hand, take my time eyeing and then sniffing the bubbly liquid. Though I am less jittery now, I still don’t trust these people. I have no way of knowing whether the mysterious door that led me here is truly impossible to open or if they are deliberately keeping me in this century. I soon conclude that the champagne is safe to drink. I’m sure it all came from the same bottle, so anything that might be in it would affect everyone else too.

I take a hesitant sip, not wanting to drink on an empty stomach. A pleasured sound escapes my lips. This is the best champagne I have ever tasted. Though I am tempted to have more, I decide to try the food first. I have no idea if this coq au vin could be drugged or poisoned, but at this point I am too hungry to care. My eyes go wide at the wonderful taste of the dish, and I dig in. More food follows soon after, which I rest from by taking more sips of champagne.

The rest of the banquet goes on like any other dinner would. I remain silent, my mouth busy chewing, and some small talk can be heard between the residents. When everyone is finished, le Comte speaks again.

“Thank you, Sebastian. What a wonderful meal.” He politely excuses himself as everyone starts to get up, and I follow close behind. “Anaïs. There is something I want to show you,” he tells me once we make it onto the hallway. I nod silently and walk along with him to his study.

Once inside, he gestures toward a large hourglass that sits on the floor by a fireplace. It looks like it was recently turned, the sand falling from it in a thin stream forming a small pile at the bottom.

“This is what measures when the door will open,” he explains, his voice low and gentle, like he is fully aware that he is delivering delicate information. “You are welcome to come in at any time to see its progress. As I mentioned before, it takes roughly a month for all the sand to fall. Sadly, during that time, you will be stuck here, in the 19th century. So will I. The door works in mysterious ways, but even I must abide by its rules.”

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. So this is it. This is the thing keeping me from going home. For something so scary and frustrating, I find it surprisingly beautiful. I wordlessly shuffle closer and look at the lights reflecting off the curved glass surface.

“Comte?” My eyes remain on the stream of sand as I talk.

“Yes, ma chérie?”

“How does this work? How is any of this possible?” I breathe out. I do not expect an answer, for even if he had one, I doubt I would be able to comprehend it. “And the residents, are they really...?”

“Who they say they are? Yes. Tonight you met the real Vincent Van Gogh, the real Isaac Newton, the real Mozart. They arrived here the same way you did, through a time slip. I personally brought each of them back after they died.”

“What do you mean, after they died?”

Before he can answer, someone knocks on the door. Sebastian doesn’t wait to be invited to come in and stand under the frame, waiting.

“Oh? It appears your room is ready,” le Comte changes the topic. “Your belongings are already there. Good night, ma chérie.”

I take that as being dismissed, and I begrudgingly follow Sebastian out of the study, unsatisfied with my answers - or lack thereof. As we walk, a light piano melody floats through the hallway. That must be Mozart. I can’t help but wonder at how happy the music sounds in contrast to his attitude during diner.

We come to a halt in front of an open door. The bedroom inside is elegantly decorated, but ultimately simple, mostly consisting of whites and light pinks. My backpack sits on a plush ottoman by the bed, and my skates, still strapped together, on the floor below it. Next to me, Sebastian clears his throat.

“There is a nightgown on the bed for you. We shall get you some new clothes tomorrow so you have something else to wear. Not that there’s anything wrong with your outfit, in fact, I quite like it, but it might call unwanted attention in this century.” His casual statement surprises me.

“Wait, are you from the future too?” He does not seem fazed or offended by my tight jeans and cropped sweater, and having received a few strange looks from the other residents, I know that there is more than just discretion at play here.

“Yes,” he nods with a smile. “2013. Le Comte mentioned you yourself came from the year 2020, correct?”

“Yeah. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who got literally stuck in the past. A lot has changed since 2013, too. I was just a child, back then. Back then? Can I say that if it’s 119 years in the future?” I notice I have started to ramble and trail off. Sebastian laughs. His presence in this mansion is somewhat comforting, and I am happy to know we have that in common, which makes me wonder. “Sebastian?” I hesitate to ask. “How did you end up here?”

“Unlike you, I came willingly.” I tilt my head as my lips form a quiet ‘oh’. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t that. “I was a historian in my time,” he continues. “I met le Comte while traveling and he invited me here. Of course, having spent my life studying these remarkable people, I could not miss the chance to meet them in person.”

That makes sense. I wonder if he knew then that he would not be able to come back, but from the way he speaks of the experience, I don’t think he minds.

“Huh. Now that I think about it, the only one I don’t know anything about is Dazai. His name sounds familiar, isn’t he a writer or something?” I am familiar with a couple modern Japanese authors, but anything before the 70s isn’t exactly available in the West, even in my time. Sebastian nods.

“He is one of the most important writers in Japan. I see the availability of his work in the rest of the world hasn’t changed much, huh? Lucky for you, I have an English copy of ‘No Longer Human’. You can borrow it any time you like.” I thank him with a smile before he continues. “As for the residents, there are two you have yet to meet that were not present at the banquet. Leonardo da Vinci and Jean d’Arc.”

“She’s here?” I perk up upon hearing the name. It has just dawned on me that staying for a month might pose certain feminine problems, and I welcome the idea of another woman to give me such advice. Sebastian’s laugh warns me like a stop sign before my hopes crash.

“He.” I stare blankly at him, failing to understand what he means by that. He must know what I’m thinking, because he goes on to explain. “Jean is a man. Historical records have a funny way of twisting the facts

“Damn it,” I quietly mutter. Regardless, I am still excited to meet them. I will have to talk to le Comte about my problem, though. It’s not like tampons have been invented yet. “Anyway, Sebastian, thank you for everything. I don’t want to keep you for too long.”

With another friendly smile, he wishes me good night and leaves me alone in my room. I close the door behind me, kick off my shoes and sit on the edge of the bed before fishing my phone from the backpack I brought with me. The screen says 17:02, but here it must be past midnight already. Between the over all shock and the fact that I am a night owl in my present, I wonder how I am going to sleep tonight. Who knew transtemporal jet lag could be such an inconvenience?

There is no signal, which isn’t surprising. Luckily, the battery is still almost full. I wonder how the other residents would react to seeing a smartphone. I doubt advanced technology would warrant the same kind of side eye Mozart gave me for my appearance. And then I wonder how I will get used to the corsets and big dresses that I will probably be wearing for the rest of the month. While I love the aesthetic of the period, I will have to learn to deal with the discomfort and limited freedom of movement.

[zach-bastiaans]

Full Name: Zachariah Bastiaans (Bàs-tì-aans) Gender: Agender Pronouns: He/him Age/birthday: 35 years old, 9th of June Species: Human

Occupation: Activist Family: a father back in Manchester, UK Alignment: Chaotic Good Sexuality: Asexual

Personality

+ Passionate, Resourceful, Loyal, Appreciative, Articulate, Calm, Curious, Generous, Forgiving, Idealistic, Logical, Sympathetic, Steadfast, Warm -/+ Skeptical, Deceptive, Determined, Political, Outspoken,  - Anxious, Calculating, Cynical, Escapist, Fanatical, Imitative, Opinionated, Opportunistic, Single-minded

Background Summary

(full biography here)

Zachariah is originally from Manchester, the UK. He grew up an only child, raised by both his parents until his mother ran away at age four. His father has always been a distant man, treating Zach more like a computer program than an actual child. His role-models didn’t help in making him understand how human behaviour worked, and he went to school clearly socially immature. 

He lacked love, he lacked the ability to truly care about others, and he made up his mind quickly, which rendered him rather lonely growing up. He learned early on that the world was a fucked up place, and that most people really didn’t care about anything that didn’t happen right in front of them. So many issues that were never discussed, that might not even reach the news. And he was powerless to do anything about it. He didn’t want to be powerless. 

So Zachariah dropped out of high school, ventured into London, and took up the banner for those who were unable to. He joined protest after protest, rally after rally, all over the country. Pretty soon his causes and beliefs send him to the US, where social injustice was even more on the forefront than in the rainy country he grew up in. 

Zach was great at what he did. He could hold speeches like no other, he could convince people of his cause just by setting up arguments that were strong and delivered with passion. But he wasn’t well-liked. A lot of people found his participation in so many causes rather obscene, because Zach always went from cause to cause, even if the last one hadn’t been solved yet. Because, much to his own misunderstanding, he didn’t really care. He just cared that others didn’t care either. He thought it was his goal, his place, to make sure other people did find something important. He wanted to open people’s eyes, not necessarily for the right reasons. In thinking that he could show that he did care if he pointed out to others that they didn’t care enough, he might appear like any regular human being.

His latest group didn’t fall for any of that. They kicked him out of the van just as they were leaving a tank stop. Left to his own devices, Zach searched for something new to believe in. PETA drove him to Blackrock. But mystery would keep him there. 

Established Connections

Santíago “Santí” Zevallos (REDWOOD): Santi warned him, something was up with his little crew, his latest group of fellow activists. He didn’t want to believe that. He didn’t see the signs himself, and he kept up the ruse of fitting in for long. Yet, he wasn’t surprised when the inevitable happened. Now, not only him, but Santi too, has landed in Blackrock. Perhaps it’s more than just coincidence. 

OLEANDER (OPEN): Zach has fallen for them, unsure of the situation, of the true feelings this person might harbour. In Zach’s eyes, they’re like-minded people, both here to help. That’s what Zach believes, and it’s going to take a lot of red flags to change his mind. 

ARBUTUS (OPEN): There is one person who might be prone to help someone who wants a lot of information, and it is definitely the local Historian. Could they hit it off and strike up some friendship that is helpful to Zach’s cause, or are they perhaps far more suspicious of an outsider wanting to know everything about Blackrock’s history? 

Jamie Banks (CHESTNUT): Zach has had his run-ins with the law. 

Wanted Connections

The Mystery (OPEN): Zach has been finding Blackrock the oddest little place with a lot of mystery and secrecy. He’s not used to this kind of... town sentiment. With everything that has happened in the town as of late, he can’t help but see a lot of people acting out of the ordinary. YOU happen to be one of the worst, doing things that seemingly crash with Zach’s idea of human behaviour, and he tries to find out why.

The Friend (OPEN): Zach hasn’t had any friends in a long time. He’s always surrounded himself with people who are like-minded, but none of them have sticked around, because he’s never been much interested in these people. YOU are different though, you have opinions of your own, think Blackrock is a shabby town with mysterious, and cannot believe your luck that someone else wants to get to the bottom of it too!

The Fiend (OPEN): Never having been held back enough to share his thoughts, Zach would’ve gotten into Blackrock right away presenting himself as a member of PETA - without actually being a member of PETA - and YOU cannot stand those PETA fellows, nor someone as highly opinionated as Zach. 

The Naive (OPEN): smooth speeches and charming smiles have always worked well for Zach when he participated in protests and rallies, he has a way with words, throwing around facts and figures to help his point in a way that he knows will catch people’s attention. Holding eye-contact with YOU while spinning about the subject has made an impression. And you can’t help it that you believe him completely when he’s edging into the subject of conspiracy theories. 

The Victim (TAKEN by Clover): It doesn’t take long before Zach figures out YOU have a connection to what has been happening around Blackrock, and you’re high on his list of people to interview. But he isn’t sure how to go about this because he also cannot seem to find a way past your defences. 

The Rival (OPEN): Zach is not the only person who knows something is not right around Blackrock, the last few weeks the town has been getting a whole lot more attention, and he knows he has to move fast in order to get the story out there first. To spear-head his cause. YOU are also aware of some great secret, but you would rather completely fail that have someone else get the story out first. 

The Informant (OPEN to Wolves only): Zach is curious to the state of the house on the edge of town, the one where a lot of strange people live - if the locals are to be believed. He has run into YOU under false pretence, because he knows you live there, and he’s hoping to strike up some friendship so he can eventually get some information out of you. 

The Kindness of this Stranger (TAKEN by Hutch): Zach has never owned anything in his life. Aside from maybe that bike when he was fourteen, but since going into activism he has always been at the mercy of the kindness of others. He comes into Blackrock with just a small backpack and some hand-down clothing. YOU take him in against your better judgement. He promises to cook, fix things around the house, and do whatever he can to help, he just wants a place to stay until he can find a way to earn some money. 

The Researcher (OPEN): Zach spends a lot of time in the library, trying to collect all the information he can about Blackrock, or writing down what others have been telling him. YOU are also someone who enjoys putting their nose in a book and sucking up its contents, and sometimes reading in silence together can be a breeding herd for discussions. It might give both of you new insights. 

The Unrequited Love (OPEN): Zach’s kindness and understanding has been misread multiple times for being something ‘more’. He’s not new to it. But he’s often doesn’t notice until it is already far too late. YOU think he might like you, he’s always so kind and friendly, and he always listens. He returns your flirting awkwardly, and does notice when you’ve changed something about you. And you sort of like him too. That or you just really enjoy the idea of that attention. 

The Suspicion (TAKEN by Noémie): Zach tries to hide it, but he does show signs of his odd behaviour, anyone looking well enough can see that he has a fact-based-approach to certain situations, a way of behaving that is systematic rather than impulsive. YOU have seen this kind of behaviour before, and you know while it doesn’t mean that anything is wrong with him, something is off. 

The Love Interest (OPEN): Zach doesn’t really have a good awareness of what love feels like. He hasn’t yet found someone who comes across to them as being a friend either. YOU drive him crazy, because he’s never felt so safe and good with someone before. He notices things about you without actually using his skills of observation. He’s drawn to you in crowds, your presences makes him slightly give up on his cause. Could this be love? 

Headcanons/Development

School -> Zach has always had a thing for books, he loves reading about facts and figures he knows nothing about. He’s not overly-intelligent, but he is curious. Yet, he failed badly at school because he either got into fights with teachers or he just didn’t care about a subject when it didn’t draw his attention. 

Kindness of strangers -> Being an activist in the UK and being one in the US are very different worlds. Where in the UK Zach often slept on people’s couches, could do small jobs to earn some money for food, and would share whatever he brought in on the knowledge that others like him did the same, the US was far less communal. He found a way to deal with it eventually, but it included a lot more random jobs, setting himself aside as homeless or unemployed to be able to sleep somewhere or shower, and less kindness of strangers. He found a crew every once in a while, but part of him still longed to return to the UK, if his task here just wasn’t so great. 

Racism -> Zach has dealt with far more racism in the US than in the UK, which has led him to believe even firmer in that he needs to stay to make things better.

Accent -> despite being Manchester born, seven years in the US has completely destroyed any remaining accent he had before moving out of his father’s place. He had already gotten adjusted to the heavy London accent, picked up some Welsh and Scottish, and it seemed almost impossible not to get rid of his accent as he made the boat trip to the US. Because he stood out like a sore thumb. 

Passport -> Zach still has a UK passport that is bound to expire at some point. He has a fake visa that was gifted to him by someone he helped. Owns no bank-account, and has no actual criminal record - There are ways to get away with a lot of things if you have the right connections. 

Gender Identity -> Zach has never put a lot of emphasis on gender. He discussed the matter over once during a rally, with someone who knew a lot more on the subject than he did. After what seemed like a discussion with a large group that seemingly lasted for hours, Zach found something that he thought would show his opinion on the matter and on how he viewed himself. Not that he’s prone to discussing it with anyone, it’s just something he feels, not something that needs to be established towards others. It just helps him to understand himself better. 

Activism -> Zach has always thought that activism - whether protests or online - are the best way to get attention towards a certain cause. The world is blind to most of the suffering, they want to ignore it, but Zach believes that if many people take to the street and demand attention towards something, people have to listen. Because if people come together and all agree that something is wrong, nobody can ignore them.

Mental State/Lack of Love -> Zach’s idea of caring is either by being kind or by making sure people see what is really going wrong in the world. However, he’s always been fundamentally lacking in love from his home situation, and has undeveloped certain skills that are necessary to create a real connection with people. He thinks he understands, but much of what he does is from copying and studying other people. His behaviour borders on being autistic, but lack of self-awareness plays a big role in it as well. Young people often compare themselves to others, copy the interactions and mannerisms of those closest to them growing up. Zach often spend hours upon hours by himself while his father was at work, trying to read the books his father owned, that weren’t for kids at all. 

Asexuality -> where how he identifies as agender is something he’s okay with, being asexual has always made him feel incredibly strange and unnatural. He’s had sex once, but only because he felt pushed into it. As if having it was some rite of passage everyone was supposed to go through. And it would all make sense afterwards. Only it didn’t. He never called the girl back, and when he next talked about it - after much coaxing from his activist buddies - he learned about the term asexual. Despite now having the knowledge, the term still scares him, as if it means that he’s broken or something. 

[shelikesthosefunnypeople]

Pls explain more abt the ancient history thing b I’m very interested

Hello anon!

I know this was sent in months ago and I should have replied to it then but I’m a master procrastinator and life has been strange (before coronavirus kicked off I was in the middle of preparing for exams). Anyway, I’m happy to answer this.

I made a post in the distant past, basically saying that I think there is a view that history before 1800 is somehow less intellectual and that this is rooted in sexism. That post is here. Allow me to explain and please bare in mind that this is all just my opinion and is based off my experiences.

Apologies for the length.

Firstly, I love history. I’m a complete geek for it. I think it’s important, interesting and with a bit of luck I’ll be studying it at university soon. Therefore, this isn’t a post where I try to claim that actually history before 1800 is superior... because that’s just dumb. History is history and while historians can have personal preferences over which period they find most interesting, that doesn’t make that period “better” than any others. Literally. I mean, everything leading up to the present day didn’t happen in isolated, distinct boxes and all of it is useful to understanding how modern society has developed.

It makes sense that there is a general interest in “modern history”. After all, it is interesting and we have more information about it thanks to technological developments. The 20th century was a time of massive change if you compare 1900 to 2000 - although, I’m sure it’s easy for us to see the difference, seeing as the 20th century wasn’t so long ago in the grand scheme of things and many people who are alive today lived through a part of it. I’m sure people living in the early part of any century probably thought (if they had access to history) that the start and end of the previous century were hugely different. Nevertheless, I agree that the 20th century is quite profound in this respect, at least at the moment. In 100 years, who knows?

The 19th century also offers us a lot more remnants than its predecessors and I think culturally is still viewed as important. Some people have a rose tinted view of the 19th century. In Britain, I’d say it is seen by those of a certain political persuasion (check out Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg) as a time of peak Britishness(TM) and nationalistic pride... although that narrative is simplistic and disregards the suffering of the colonies and indeed the working classes of Britain, who had to prop up all this “greatness”. Anyway, I’m sure if you found a stuffy 19th century bloke, he would tell you how his society’s morality has gone to complete shambles and that he yearns for a bygone era that only really exists in his mind. I guess that’s just what some people always do. Conservatives, eh?

I’ll actually get to the point now.

At my college, there were two history courses available: modern (involving subjects such as the Russian Revolution and Britain from about 1950-2007) and pre-modern (involving subjects such as the crusades and the English Reformation). I took the latter course and was in a class of 18, where there were 13 girls and 5 boys. Generally, the modern history classes were weighted in the opposite way, which simply suggests that at my particular college with my particular year group, boys had a preference for modern history and girls for pre-modern. I would argue that this preference appears to be more widespread in general, but that’s not definite.

The fact that this difference existed is not the problem. The problem is what people perceived this difference to mean.

I was told by a boy (not a nice boy, so not a representation of everyone) who was studying history that the course I was taking was “the gay version”. That, of course, is a puerile insult for 2020 and highlights his maturity level - all history is very, very gay and if you take issue with that then I don’t know what to tell you. Get your head out of your arse, maybe? But anyway... why did he feel superior about studying a different bit of history?

It wasn’t just him. A (male) teacher once told me that the history course I had chosen wasn’t as useful as the other one and that the only use it had was that I could apply transferable essay writing skills to my other subjects. Which was bollocks, might I add. Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t a history teacher.

So, where were these views coming from? Why was the English Reformation - which was basically 16th century Brexit - seen as lesser than the Russian Revolution? The obvious argument one could make is that events that have happened more recently are more important and have more of an impact today. However, without the events of the years before them, would these events have happened either? Does the Church of England not still exist? Do we not have a statue of Richard the Lionheart in Westminster (because we like giving statues to tossers, apparently)?

In my opinion, the answer to this odd hierarchy of time periods lies in gender socialisation and the propensity of people to view history in the same way they view fiction. We know that the traditional male/female gender socialisation patterns are different: boys are socialised to be “tough”, “leaders”, “aggressive” etc. whilst girls are socialised to be “submissive”, “friendly”, “polite” etc. This is hopefully changing now but inbuilt, subconscious biases about the genders and what quantifies masculinity and femininity are still around. There is the stereotype of boys being interested in war due to the toys they were given to play with. Surprise, surprise - warfare in the 20th century alone was vastly different to anything that had come before it and, as I said, due to technology we have more archived about it. I’m not suggesting that only boys are interested in historical war - again, that’s a stereotype. Anyone can be interested in war, 20th century or otherwise. Despite this, I’m not going to pretend there still aren’t those guys who get waaaay into warfare and that their interest and knowledge in history is largely confined to that subject.

And that’s fine! You know, as long as you don’t start worshipping Hitler or anything equally creepy. People aren’t experts on every little bit of history and are allowed to have stereotypical interests.

Yet, that still doesn’t explain completely why “modern history” is viewed as more intellectual, just because maybe it appeals slightly more to men (apart from the obvious that anything men like is viewed as superior in some way).

As historical societies are notably different to our own - especially on the surface - and because there is so much historical fiction that seeks to romanticise it, it is not massively surprising that many people do see history as an extension to fiction. It’s gone, we live in the now, lots of people don’t even believe history matters. The fantasy genre has a habit of adopting historical (often medieval) settings for its tales. It’s an obvious example but Game of Thrones was a retelling of the Wars of the Roses, amongst other things. I think when fantasy is applied to history it makes it seem even less real than it may already and this can lead to it being taken less seriously (though please do watch Horrible Histories or Blackadder and take the piss out of all time periods because humans of every age have been fallible). Of course, it is far easier to romanticise and play around with times that are further from our own because they are further detached and therefore more fantastical. This plays into post-1800 being seen as more “real” and “intellectual”.

Some men who wish to keep women out of the historical circle accuse them of only being interested in history because of “romance” or “fancy dresses” - princesses and knights and fairytales. This is more a low down problem with internet trolls than actual, published historians but the issue still stands. If you view “pre-modern” history through this veil of fiction then it must seem rather childish compared to the stark brutality of the World Wars and the political rise of the New Right in the West. However, conversely, it could also be argued that the nationalism and legend attached to recent warfare makes it equally comparable to a story. Not a happy story but then, Game of Thrones isn’t a happy story either.

I don’t think anyone serious about history actually believes that the romantic, fantastical elements attached to any historical periods are 100% true. Hopefully, most people don’t see them as proof that being interested in a certain period makes you better than someone who is interested in another period. Any period can be romanticised, including the “modern” one - Titanic, anyone? Not to mention the frilly view we have of the Victorians (although that’s not silly because of the Britishness(TM), remember). Actually, using history in fiction and even making fiction about history isn’t even a bad thing and I certainly encourage it. I just think that the truth shouldn’t be conveniently forgotten by those with weird superiority complexes who think that because The Tudors was all about love trysts and fine clothing, the entire period is “girly” and a write off.

What am I saying amongst this rambling mess? The next time you see a girl going through her Ancient Egypt phase, don’t roll your eyes. Not if you wouldn’t do the same when you see a boy with an interest in WW2 tanks. Whichever way people come to their interest in the past is valid (apart from the creepy fascist worshipping I mentioned). A lot of things in our world are gendered when they shouldn’t be; history should be equally open to all and although there is a focus on the past 200 years (just look at the uni modules on offer), that doesn’t mean that if you are interested in the years before, your interest isn’t valid enough.

I hope I’ve managed to explain myself properly and have gotten through how gender plays into this sufficiently. I know this is a very niche thing to have an opinion on and I’d like to stress again that this is just my opinion and you are free to disagree with me. That said, if you send me hate then don’t expect a proper response.

Thanks for the ask!

[luckthebard]

I’ve been meaning to write something about this for a while, but it’s conflicted with my desire to be kind of private on here. This opinion is going to sort of reveal my day-job. But oh well. 

A take from a professional historian:

I don’t think trying to find parallels to Caleb’s story from history is useful, or works very well. Every example I see people throw out (Hitler Youth, KGB, etc.) falls apart if you try to 1:1 it too much. Fascist Europe (and particularly the HY) really isn’t a good parallel for Caleb’s story (particularly the part with Trent Ikithon) - and imo, it’s because the real-life HY was way more insidious and socially damaging and violent than the story we’ve heard in CR.

(As an aside, Liam has also stated explicitly that he wasn’t trying to make that parallel and doesn’t see it as a good one.)

It’s natural to look for touchstones to make sense of fictional stories, but that can backfire when the touchstone starts to supersede what the fiction is actually saying. Interpretations and analysis of the story can start to become more about the historical touchstone, and less about the narrative that was actually presented. What we do know about this narrative is:

Trent Ikithon has a classist, hierarchical way of looking at the world that values power (his own most of all). His “rise above the muck” thinking isn’t just targeting the Empire’s enemies in a xenophobic way, it also devalues imperial citizens as “worthless” compared to people with Trent’s power.

While there’s a lot of Nationalism in the Empire, the kind of extreme indoctrination Caleb, Astrid, and Eodwulf got was done in isolation. Trent’s ideology might be common in the Cerberus Assembly, but it’s also highly likely that the kind of training he was doing with and on these three students was not officially sanctioned - if it was, he wouldn’t have had to do it in such seclusion. 

So, things that are in play when looking at the Empire and Caleb’s story include: nationalism, grooming, abuse, cults, magic, spy work and extralegal violence, paramilitary groups, extremism and radicalization, and magical/medical (unsure of how else to phrase this) experimentation on dubiously willing subjects

Even setting aside the magical part of this fictional story, there’s not really a good historical example that easily fits all the pieces of this narrative inside it. The ones that are thrown around most frequently have to twist the backstory narrative we do know and ignore certain parts of it to make it fit. What this can lead to, in analysis that relies on these 1:1 comparisons, is the reductive claim that: “This story is essentially just fictional [insert historical comparison here], so thinking about it in any other way is minimizing an important historic reality.” It limits the ways in which the fictional narrative can be analyzed and explored.

Tl;dr: I guess the point of this post is your friendly neighborhood historian saying that making historical comparisons to CritRole character backgrounds mostly doesn’t work, and that if we are going to do it we need to be more careful about acknowledging the points of diversion as well as the similarities. 

[shirlleycoyle]

The Fleshlight Is a Portal to the Future of Sex

“It’s quite possible someone’s having sex with me right now and I don’t even know it,” adult performer and director Stoya told me.

Her vulva is for sale on the internet and in stores. Or rather, a rubbery, lifelike mold of her vulva is, in the form of a Fleshlight. The outside of it looks almost exactly like her actual body. The inside is a labyrinth of corkscrew shapes, nodules, and ridges. It’s dubbed “The Destroya,” a name that, nine years after the product launched, still makes her laugh.

Fleshlight manufacturer Interactive Lifeforms LLC has sold more than 75,000 Destroyas and more than 15 million Fleshlights total since the company started 20 years ago. It averages around 20,000 retail orders every month, according to a spokesperson for the company.

At around 1.63 pounds each, that’s nearly 24.5 million pounds of fucktoy floating around, taking up space in closets, nightstands, and under beds around the world.

The Fleshlight is an artifact of the sexually adventurous, technologically innovative 90s, but it’s become the face—and lips, and anus, and lips—of the male sex toy industry. The fact that a disembodied vulva and vaginal canal to jerk off into exists in 2019, the era of #MeToo and grabbed pussies and tabloid uproar over sex robots, shows the often contradictory intersection of sex and technology.

On one hand, the Fleshlight is a portal to new forms of sexual openness, allowing people, even those who think of themselves as heterosexual men, to engage in sex that moves away from old notions of gender and the biological body in general. On the other, the Fleshlight is also the reduction of a person to a replica of their reproductive organs. But 21 years since its inception, Fleshlight, the people who use them, and sex toy experts are realizing that maybe people don’t need an exact replica of a vulva or anus to get off. Sex toys are increasingly taking on more abstract, functional forms, and the future of the Fleshlight and toys like it may rely less on using replicas of disembodied genitals.

Today, the Fleshlight is polarizing even for the people who use it. No matter your opinion of the ubiquitous brand, it’s made an undeniable mark on human sexuality and the world.

Hundreds of years from now, if sentient life still exists on Earth, when archeologists dig up the still-intact bits and pieces of plastic casings containing rubberized genitalia, what will they think of the Fleshlight? Will it be considered an antiquated representation of how society literally objectified and commodifed sexual pleasure, or a turning point in the normalization of sex toys for all people, and our first step into a world where technology is an inseparable part of sex?

The answer, according to people who make them, use them, and are them, is both.

WHAT MAKES A FLESHLIGHT

The original Fleshlight model consists of a 10-inch plastic tube casing with a soft sleeve inside. You stick an erect dick (plus some water-based lube) into one end, grip ridges on the outside of the casing, and stroke the penis inside of the sleeve. You fuck the tube, come in the tube, then (ideally promptly) unscrew the whole apparatus and rinse it out with water (soap could degrade the material) and dry it.

Earliest archived version of Fleshlight.com, captured May 1998

Why the Fleshlight exists is a complicated story that’s become seminal sex toy lore. If the many interviews given by the company’s founder Steve Shubin are to be believed, the Fleshlight was born from his desire to get off while his spouse was pregnant.

In the late 90s Shubin, a former member of the Los Angeles Police Department’s SWAT team, and his wife Kathy were expecting twins. Both in their 40s, the couple was advised by doctors that because of their age and the fact Kathy was having two babies, the pregnancy was high-risk. He claims they were told not to have sex again until after the baby was born.

“I asked my wife ‘would you think I was a pervert if I told you there was something that I could use, sexually?'” Shubin told Wired in 2008. “But the adult store had only junk. Just crap. I thought, I can make something better, and took $50,000 of our savings to start working on it.”

Image from the 1997 patent filing for a “discrete sperm collection” device.

Shubin’s first patent filing, in 1995, was for a “female functional mannequin,” a hard sex doll torso. He called his next invention, which boiled the whole doll down to just the genitals, a “device for discreet sperm collection.” The proto-Fleshlight.

This version of the Fleshlight was pretty similar to what we see on the market today. But the description Shubin laid out in the 1997 patent filing was much more clinical. The product was framed as useful for sperm banks or doctors’ offices.

It also predicted some of the embarrassment many men feel from tucking a sex toy away in their own homes:

While my [sex doll] patent succeeds admirably in fulfilling the objects of that invention, it has several characteristics that prevent it from universal acceptance. When the torso mannequin is used in sperm banks, doctor’s offices, and other public facilities, it is sometimes intimidating to the patient being treated or may have an adverse effect upon the patient’s sexual desire and ability to deposit sperm. […] When the device of my patent is used in the home, or by those who find such a mannequin to be positive in nature, there is the concern that others will still find the object during a casual visit to the home.

The earliest version of Fleshlight.com that’s archived online, captured in 1998, shows a company attempting to carve a path as the first widely-accepted male sex toy by characterizing it as a requirement of virility, manliness, and insatiable sex drive. From an archive of Fleshlight’s “Our Philosophy” page circa May 1998:

The need for sexual gratification is as present and as powerful in a man as it is in the stallion. But where the stallion has no ability to wait, relentlessly pursuing his desire until he is satisfied or restrained, man has the ability to control his desires through fantasy… That release has to be done in a responsible way or we risk our relationships, expose ourselves to disease, take a chance with unwanted pregnancy, or even, in extreme cases, break the law.

The market, and we as a species, were primed for this thing to succeed. Hallie Lieberman, sex historian and author of Buzz: The Stimulating History of the Sex Toy, told me that artificial vaginas and sleeves date as far back as the 1600s—the first being Japanese masturbators made from tortoiseshell and velvet, she said. Artificial vaginas were sold in the U.S. as early as the late 1800s, she said, and Doc Johnson debuted the “pocket pal” in the late 1970s. Pocket pals look a lot like Fleshlights without the hard case around them (therefore, like long fleshy sandworms), and the labias themselves are a lot more realistic-looking compared to Fleshlights’ more smooth, almost cartoonish aesthetic.

Doc Johnson’s “Pocket Pal,” as seen for sale on Amazon.

When Fleshlight hit the market in the late 1990s, sex toys marketed to male customers still mostly consisted of “pocket pussies,” “those disembodied, often clunky looking artificial vaginas—sometimes with fake pubic hair,” Lynn Comella, associate professor of gender and sexuality studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and author of Vibrator Nation, told me. “They were really kind of gross looking and for years, many women-friendly retailers, such as Good Vibrations, refused to carry them because they felt that displaying disembodied female body parts didn’t fit with their women-friendly vibe.” (San Francisco-based Good Vibrations became the first sex-positive, women-friendly sex shop in the U.S. in 1997.)

“Some Fleshlight designs actually depict women’s genitals beautifully, like a more commercialized version of a Georgia O’Keefe painting.”

Since time immemorial, men have been fucking whatever they can get their hands on, whether it be rubber gloves, toiler paper rolls, couch cushions, fruit, teddy bears, etc. A story about a Redditor who jerked off into a coconut, then later had his penis covered by maggots (he did it multiple times with the same coconut), has become treasured Reddit lore. There are also communities committed to exploring upscale DIY masturbators by refashioning Pringles cans, sponges, and building a better Fleshlight.

The Fleshlight arrived in a perfect pro-masturbation societal storm, Lieberman said: On the heels of the safe sex messaging of the 1980s AIDS crisis, in the midst of cultural landmarks like Seinfeld’s 1992 episode “The Contest” which grappled with masturbation both male and female, and as the White House forced Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders to resign in 1994 for suggesting masturbation should be taught in school. In the 90s, masturbation, for better or worse, was discussed more openly than ever.

Shubin couldn’t have happened into a better time to unveil a tasteful sex toy for penis-having people. But the Fleshlight founder’s reputation is controversial: he’s waxed nostalgic in interviews about his time as an aggressive LAPD cop, and the company’s Glassdoor reviews are generally abysmal.

In 2010, Stoya stopped by the Fleshlight headquarters in Austin, Texas before her mold was made, and described Shubin as a “mountain of a man” who normalized the absurdity that surrounded him.

“He was like, ‘We’re having a meetin’ about selling your vulva, in a can, in a box,'” she said. “It suddenly seems so reasonable and everyday when you’re talking, but you get back to regular life and it’s like, Ha, there are like 100,000 replicas of my pussy floating around.”

USER EXPERIENCES

When I went looking for Fleshlight users, nearly 200 people messaged me to voluntarily talk about their Fleshlight experiences.

“It felt a lot better than I thought it would, which kind of depressed me tbh,” one Fleshlight user told me. “Made me miss actual physical intimacy. Hence why I only used it like 5 times.”

I offered all of them anonymity in order to speak freely about their private, sexual experiences, and asked the ones who requested anonymity to explain why they didn’t want to be named. Almost all of them cited some element of social stigma or shame.

The overwhelming majority of these people were male-identifying. Many said they were lapsed Fleshlight or non-Fleshlight pocket pussy enthusiasts—guys who told me they’d been gifted a masturbation sleeve of some kind, years ago, or bought one on a whim, and used it once or twice before casting it aside again. Several cited the difficulty of cleaning the Fleshlight for why they don’t use it more.

At least three cited some hazing ritual in college, or sharing one pocket pussy with an entire group of male friends.

Several described feeling a sense of disgust with themselves after using it.

“Used it like 4 times, post nut clarity hit extra hard, & now it’s somewhere in my closet soaked in semen & dust,” said one person.

Almost everyone who spoke to me said the feeling of masturbating into a fake vagina is nothing like the real thing.

“They’re billed as lifelike, and they simply are not,” one said. “Of course! It’s a chunk of rubber at the end of the day. It’s not a bad thing, they feel good.”

A few men told me that they use Fleshlights due to physical disability, to increase stamina, or conditions that make it difficult for them to have sex otherwise. One said he bought his online when he was 22. Because he has cerebral palsy, finding sexual partners is difficult. A Fleshlight, he thought, would make imagining the experience more vivid.

“It was what I expected, but it was also more difficult to enjoy for me as my hand would cramp from using the plastic container thing it came with for extra suction,” he said. “As a disabled user, it allowed me the freedom and knowledge that sex toys were definitely for me! It helped me deal with some of the loneliness that I was experiencing.”

I also spoke with Dan Cooper, senior editor at Engadget, about his experience reviewing a Fleshlight Launch—the company’s digital product made with teledildonics company Kiiroo, that moves up and down on its own, in tandem with porn scenes. Cooper’s childhood phimosis (a condition that causes over-tightening of the foreskin) led to him needing a medical circumcision, which he said gave him limited sensitivity during sex or masturbation.

“Even as someone who thinks of themselves as sex-positive, I’ve always held the view that Fleshlights were a bit sad,” Cooper told me. “I’d assumed that they wouldn’t have worked with my broken genitals, but it was revelatory how effective (and fun) they are to use.”

A few wives and girlfriends told me why they bought their male partners Fleshlights as gifts. Their stories usually involved buying masturbators as a couple, to use while traveling or in long-distance relationships. Some said they were gifts to use during military deployments.

Karabella, a trans woman and porn performer, told me that she first encountered a Fleshlight in 2012, on her first big production shoot. “I’d never even heard of a ‘pocket pussy’ before, but [the director] pulled out a brand new one and handed it to me,” she said. “It wasn’t exactly inviting when I first slid into the butthole-shaped slit of cold silicone, so I initially started to lose my erection. However, as it began to warm up around me it was increasingly difficult to differentiate between it and real flesh.” Seven years later, using a Fleshlight has become a staple of her cam shows and performances.

HOW IT’S MADE

Beyond what’s publicly available on the Fleshlight website, specific details about the production of Fleshlights are a closely-guarded company secret. No one outside the company seems to know what the soft, skin-like material—trademarked as “Real Feel SuperSkin”—is made out of.

Kristen Kaye, Fleshlight’s Head of Business Development until late last month when she left the company, said that the material “is indeed proprietary.” She told me she believes it is biodegradable, and “made of natural materials, mostly.”

The closest I came to finding the secret recipe for SuperSkin was through the founder of FleshAssist.com, a website devoted to all things Fleshlight and masturbators. A 24-year old web developer who goes by the pseudonym John started FleshAssist in 2014 after years spent frequenting Fleshlight forums. He told me in an email that ever since buying his first name-brand Fleshlight at 20 years old, he was “hooked.”

John told me that SuperSkin, as far as he’s aware, is made from “amorphous polymers,” a mixture of PVC and silicone. It’s similar to CyberSkin, another type of thermoplastic faux-skin material used in lots of non-Fleshlight brand sex toys and dolls (but not patented, like SuperSkin).

“The trick with softer materials is that they will inevitably not feel as velvety or suede-y as harder silicone,” Emily Sauer, founder of sex wearable company Ohnut, told me. “So there is in the development of the product, there is a constant battle between, you know, does it feel too sticky? Does it feel gross in any way? There’s a very fine line.”

“The hand is just way easier. Boner. Hand. Done. It’s that simple.”

Micropores in the Fleshlight’s PVC make their “skin” more realistic to the touch, but also can never be fully, truly sterilized once it’s used. The top complaint I heard from all of the Fleshlight users I spoke to was that it’s too hard to clean to use regularly.

“That’s really gross to me that guys don’t even rinse them out right after, now I’m thinking about it,” Kaye said. “How hard it would be to clean…. If you were to let things dry in there, how disgusting that would be?”

After our call, I borrowed a friend’s (unused) Fleshlight to find out for myself. It’s relatively easy to unscrew the pieces and take apart, and there’s a hole in both ends of the removable soft sleeve to run water through it. As In Bed Magazine’s YouTube review notes, the most inconvenient part of cleaning is leaving it out to dry in the open long enough that you can safely store it without worrying about mold growing in a wet, airtight can—but not so long that your roommates or family stumble across a silicone worm with a vulva on the end of it.

“I think it just comes down to laziness, to be honest,” Kaye said about why people don’t regularly clean their Fleshlights.

According to my very informal online polling, she’s right.

“The biggest annoyance for me was the clean up,” Twitter user and self-proclaimed “vaginal aficionado” @BurlClooney said. Burl first heard about Fleshlight on an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast, which had a partnership with the company from 2010 to around 2012, according to Rogan’s tweets at the time.

“Your semen goes down into a base at the bottom and you should really clean that shit immediately,” he said. “But, I usually just wanted to sleep right away and would leave it until the next day or I would forget until I next used it. It was absolutely fucking disgusting. The cum would turn a weird color and it was so gross to clean out then. However, I mainly stopped due to all the prep work. The hand is just way easier. Boner. Hand. Done. It’s that simple.”

BECOMING A ‘FLESHLIGHT GIRL’

Stoya told me she once fucked a man with a mold of her own silicone vagina.

“It was so like, bizarrely narcissistic, but kind of beautiful,” she said.

She’s featured in one of Fleshlight’s most popular product lines, the Fleshlight Girls. There are also Fleshlight Boys (anal molds), and Guys (dildos), all modeled after real porn performers’ anatomy. Fleshlight currently offers around 45 models of Fleshlight Girls, including Stoya, Riley Reid, Jessica Drake, and Kissa Sins.

“I was laughing and talking a lot, and they told me to be careful, because your asshole actually moves a little bit when you laugh.”

Becoming a Fleshlight Girl is a career goal for many in the industry. Kaye, who led the selection of Fleshlight models, told me that three or four years ago the performer’s popularity rank on Pornhub, for example, would have been a deciding factor. Now, she looks at a variety of metrics—social media following, engagement online, how entrepreneurial and invested they are in their own success.

As secretive as the SuperSkin material recipe is, the process of molding a real vulva into SuperSkin is kept even more tight-lipped.

Fleshlight Girl Elsa Jean told me that the process of getting her custom mold done involved going to the Fleshlight headquarters in Austin and having someone cast a mold of her vulva and anus. Fleshlight models’ genitalia are also photographed using a 3D camera, and the final mold is hand-sculpted by a professional artist to get the details as accurate as possible.

“For my butthole, I had to go into a doggy[-style position],” Jean said. “I was laughing and talking a lot, and they told me to be careful, because your asshole actually moves a little bit when you laugh.”

Once they’re finished making the silicone mold, the models are given the product to check out. When Stoya saw a Fleshlight modeled after her own anatomy for the first time, the first thing she did was text a handful of her former lovers a photo of the silicone vulva. They’d know, she reasoned, if it was realistically accurate. (They said it was.)

“It was a very like, holy shit moment,” Stoya said. “You feel a bit like an action figure.”

Models are paid in royalties instead of a flat fee. The more that sell, the more money they personally make. For Stoya, being recruited for a Fleshlight of her own was a springboard into independence in the adult industry. “It’s what’s enabled me to start independent porn companies like Zero Spaces,” she said. “It’s sold well enough that it gives me the extra resources to do creative things.”

“Having my vagina and butthole on sale for people is actually pretty amazing,” Jean said. “Believe it or not, it was one of my goals when I first started in the industry. It’s as close as they can get to having the real thing.”

The actual objectification—turning a woman’s body into an object—involved in making a custom Fleshlight has brought the company, and anatomically-correct masturbation sleeves generally, some criticism.

“I don’t think it’s objectifying,” Lieberman said. “In fact, I’d even say that some Fleshlight designs actually depict women’s genitals beautifully, like a more commercialized version of a Georgia O’Keefe painting.”

I asked Stoya how she feels about the objectification criticism, as someone who’s worked in the adult industry as an actor, director, writer and business owner. Is the idea that hundreds of men could be fucking “her” right now weird at all?

After all, hundreds of people could be jerking off to her porn right now, too—and isn’t that kind of the same? Not at all, she said.

“People like don’t give a fuck largely about who’s doing the fucking [in mainstream porn], who’s coming up with the fucking, but with a Fleshlight—someone has looked [for me],” she said. “And even if they don’t know who I am, or my work, or care who I am as a person? They’ve still chosen my vulva. And that’s qualitatively different.”

People choose the Stoya Fleshlight because they’ve seen her work, or read something she’s written, or even just read the description on the product page of her persona, she said—and liked what they saw enough to pay $79.95 to fantasize about fucking her.

“That feels really humanizing,” Stoya said. “Whereas seeing one of my videos pirated on Pornhub with a sentence in the description that says, ‘Don’t mention the performers name so she can’t find this and get this removed’? That’s really dehumanizing, and really separates you from your work. With the Fleshlight, it’s the opposite.”

THE STIGMA

As the woman charged with marketing a plastic pussy to the masses, Kaye had a big job. And a huge part of that job, she told me, is overcoming the stigma attached to masturbation sleeves, and the men who buy them. Kaye’s worked in the adult industry—in advertising, consulting, and marketing—for 13 years, but for the last three with Fleshlight, she’s made it her mission to drag that shame out from under men’s beds and bring masturbation tools into the light.

“Unfortunately, for men, there are stigmas attached to using a masturbation device… because for whatever reason, if a guy’s masturbating or talks about masturbating, it’s like they’re not getting laid,” she said.

“For cis-gendered males, revealing you have a fleshlight gives implications that you can’t ‘get a girl’ on your own, which inhibits the positive ramifications of using sex toys,” one anonymous user told me. “In reality, they can help people explore what satisfies them, and healthily masturbating can relieve stress or just clear one’s mind, at least in my experience.”

“I feel like a lot of men feel ashamed or embarrassed for using one, but when you’re having a dry spell or not getting laid often, it’s very beneficial,” Twitter user @g0dsparadise said. “I have given Fleshlights as gifts in the past, I have told my closest friends about it, and I am hoping that one day it becomes very common to own one just because this whole stigma is ridiculous to me.”

Some pointed out a percieved double standard between male and female-gendered sex toys. “There’s an interesting dichotomy,” Cooper said. He attributed it to women’s sex toys being seen as “luxurious” and respected, while men’s typically aren’t. “But it all drills back to the idea that we should somehow be ashamed of sex.”

FleshAssist founder John told me that while the stigma itself isn’t as bad as it used to be, it still exists.

“I saw a comment before that said something along the lines of ‘a dildo looks potent, it shows that a woman doesn’t need a man,’ making it a symbol of female independence and empowerment,” John said. “I think if we flip that around, and say ‘a man with a masturbator shows that he doesn’t need a woman’ it doesn’t have the same resonance at all.”

Liberman said that she has noticed this stigma, too—and that despite toys like Fleshlight in the mainstream, it hasn’t changed much. “I think that’s because men are supposed to be self-sufficient and not need additional tools to get off,” she said. “Their hands are supposed to be all they need.”

THE FUTURE OF FUCKTOYS

It’s possible that the Fleshlight and other toys like it are a decent oracle for the future of sex.

If the analog Fleshlight was a step toward destigmatizing male sex toys, its interactive, internet-connected iteration could help bring virtual reality sex to the mainstream.

Fleshlight’s Launch device syncs automatic, motorized movement with interactive porn content. It’s a Fleshlight sleeve inside a casing shaped and sized like a wine chiller that moves the sleeve up and down in rhythm with the porn it’s synced with.

Fleshlight isn’t the first sex toy to combine porn, virtual reality, and a connected device that syncs the two. Around the time the earliest adult-themed virtual reality films were revealed, in 2015, people started wondering if porn would be the thing to finally push VR into the mainstream.

Sex toys that interact with film and VR open new worlds of transcending what your physical, corporeally-limited body could experience. Companies like Camasutra exist today that scan real humans into avatars for fuckability in virtual worlds. There’s no limit to what you can embody, sexually, in these virtual environments.

“The porn and sex-toy industries have always led the way in technological innovation: from the electrification of the vibrator in the late 19th century to the early adoption of VHS by porn directors,” Lieberman said. “VR and the Fleshlight are just extensions of this trend that stretches back all the way to the printing press and erotic literature.”

She attributes this innovation to a need for something novel. Putting your dick inside a mechanized stroker-bot certainly is that, and Fleshlight, as it chases the interactive trend, knows it.

As our identities become more openly fluid and less binary, so do our toys. Ohnut, another wearable, doesn’t look like anything anatomical at all. Even the color, a pale jade, is meant to evoke a neutrality without being skin-like. Like Kaye, Ohnut’s founder Sauer also mentioned the concept of enhancement. “It’s not trying to replace skin. It’s not trying to replace a person or anything. It enhances,” she said.

Sauer points to Tenga, a Japanese company that’s been making disposable soft strokers and sleeves since 2005, as an example of where the industry could continue heading: Toward a less gendered, more pleasure-centered future of sex. One of their products, the Tenga Egg, is a handheld stroker shaped like a gummy, hollow egg, and they’re sold inside Easter egg-hunt-shaped packaging.

“They’re de-misogynizing the male masturbator,” Sauer said. “[Tenga products] are so delightful, but they’re just as dirty. They’re meant to be thrown away, but they come in really fun patterns. And what’s less masculine than a white egg?”

“I think that sex toys now are moving away from realism: the idea that a person would only want to masturbate with a replica of genitals is kind of going away,” Lieberman said. “People are more focused on both the utility of a device (does it give me an orgasm) and the design: they want something that looks beautiful.” She noted that the Eva II vibrator by Dame, and Unbound’s Bean and Squish are geometric—not dick or vulva-shaped.

Fleshlight is no exception to this trend. According to Kaye, the Fleshlight Turbo, a newer, non-anatomical sleeve, is creeping up in reviews. It looks nothing like human anatomy. It doesn’t even come in “skin” colors—only “Blue Ice” and “Copper.” (However, a helpful cross-section of the Turbo labels where you’re meant to imagine the lips, throat and tongue would be.)

Screenshot via Fleshlight.com

“I think marketing the other stuff—the stuff that’s not like, pardon my French, fucking a rubber pussy—that’s how we’ve transitioned our marketing approach,” Kaye said. “The exact replica of the genitalia? I think that’s kind of getting tired. I see that the younger people are more inclined to get the stuff that’s non-anatomical, that’s a little more discreet.”

“The idea that a person would only want to masturbate with a replica of genitals is kind of going away.”

“There’s more of an acknowledgement that many people don’t fit into the gender binary and our toys should reflect that,” Lieberman said. “I think that gender neutral sex toys are popular now because sex toys always reflect the culture of the time they’re created in; they reflect the current gender norms…. I think this shift in sex toy design to gender neutral reflects both a profit motive and a desire for inclusivity.”

For some companies, this might be an inclusivity effort, but for others, “it’s a response to the fact that inclusivity can be profitable,” Comella said. “A business that de-genders vibrators or ‘queers’ sex toys also expands its potential market reach by eliminating labels that don’t have to be there in the first place.”

But for those who still want the visual illusion of another person, Fleshlight isn’t going anywhere.

“That’s the thing to always keep in mind with the adult industry: It’s the business of fantasy,” Stoya said. “It’s like magic or professional wrestling. The audience who enjoys it comes in, ready to suspend their disbelief.”

Lieberman believes that lifelike sex toys impact our sexuality mostly for the good. If you want the feeling of fucking a penis or vagina or butthole without another person attached to it, that option is available to us, here in the future.

“I’m not sure that our society is that much different for having the Fleshlight in the world,” Lieberman said. “But our society is better when more people are having orgasms, and since Fleshlights provide orgasms, then our society is a bit happier thanks to the device.”

The Fleshlight Is a Portal to the Future of Sex syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[realityhelixcreates]

Lasabrjotr Chapter 15: Callout Post

Chapters: 15/? Fandom: Thor (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: Teen And Up Warnings: Loki is a bigot, mentions of fear of sexual assault, mentions of past death Relationships: Loki x Reader (But not yet) Characters: Loki (Marvel), Thor (Marvel), OFC, Brunnhilde/Valkyrie(Marvel), Spiderman, Ant-Man Additional Tags: Post-Endgame: Best Possible Ending, Loki Needs A Chill Pill, Hey Here’s A Thought: How ‘Bout Ya Don’t Be Racist?, Reader’s Pretty Mouthy For Someone On A Sickbed, Thor And Brunnhilde Are Such Gossips Summary: Life is being very blunt to Loki.

Two days passed before the historians came to Loki with information about the dagger. It was a troll weapon, of a kind once prized as war trophies among Asgardian soldiers during the conquest of Nornheim. They were usually passed town as heirlooms, though only a few now survived.

None of the historians could tell him what family this knife might have once belonged to, nor how it came to be in human hands, if it was a human who threw it in the first place. Their best guess was that it had been lost in the last Asgardian visits to this world, roughly a thousand years ago.

They presented the knife to Loki with reverence, emphasizing how precious it was. It had been cleaned and restored, no trace of blood or dirt remaining. He could see his eyes reflected in the blade.

He’d seen items like this, in the palace’s armory display. Rock trolls had been surprisingly proficient crafters; of stone, crystal, and metals at least. They lacked Asgardian sophistication however, and could not even come close to the capabilities of the Dwarves of Nidavellir.  Still, as a reminder of Asgards first conquest, such items held great cultural importance. He knew just what to do with this one.

A young secretary contacted him on his way out of the library, to inform him of an incoming call on the computer. When he arrived however, there was no one on-screen, only an empty room presumably in the Tower. An alarm was ringing, and a red light flashing. It seemed something had rather suddenly come up.

Loki wondered for a few moments whether he had time to wait or not, when the alarm and flashing light abruptly ceased.

“Mr. Lang, you’re still here?” A soft voice called. “There’s a call open on the monitor, what should I do?”

“I dunno, who is it?” Someone else called back.

“Umm…” A masked face-red, with cartoonishly huge, almond shaped white eyes-took up the whole screen. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve met him before, but he looks familiar. Oh, shoot. The sound’s on. Uh, hi! Avenger’s Tower, how can we help?”

This person’s voice was altogether too young.

“Please tell me you are an intern.” Loki said.

“I’m Spiderman.”

“Man?” Loki repeated, incredulous.

The boy rolled his eyes. Or, at least, he tilted his head and moved his shoulders in the way that comes with rolling one’s eyes.

“Hey who is that?” Another face- this one thankfully adult-shoved into view. “Oh wow! Kid, that’s Loki! He bashed up New York a while ago, don’t you remember?”

The boy shook his masked head.

“But you live in New York!”

“C’mon, it was forever ago! I was like, ten!”

A heavy feeling settled inside Loki. How many buildings had he damaged that day? How many vehicles did he destroy? And all the while, this child had been there, somewhere, his life barely measuring the double digits.

How many people? He’d never found out.

“I am Loki, Prince of Asgard, and…look, is Barton there? He should have some information for me.”

“Just left.” The adult said. “Looks like he left some notes though. I can read them out for you.” He picked up a notebook from the desk. “Ooh. Looks Like Tony left some notes too. I’m, uh…” His eyes flicked from the notebook to the masked boy. “I’m not going to read those out loud.”

“I can hazard a guess as to their content. I doubt he has added anything important. Read away.”

“Alright well, it says here…’Ex-boyfriend, angry and vocal on Facebook. Toothless; cannot travel. No prize’. Huh. Okay. And then ‘mixed opinion news articles, none seems to know her personally. Sensationalist at best.’ Uh, ‘Security video viral; massive debate in the comments. Conspiracy theories. Over four hundred million people have seen Loki get punched in the face by a girl half his size.’ And here Tony adds ‘nice’. And that’s the only one of his comments that’s safe to read.”

Loki frowned.

“What? You’ve gotta show me that video.” The boy said.

Loki frowned deeper.

“And lastly, ‘Second video uploaded by someone called Sofie Snowfox, currently residing outside New Asgard. Shown alive and well, described as “Devoted to Loki.”

Loki perked up at that. Yes, that sounded rather nice.

“Most long-time subscribers positive and supportive, but recent waves of American commenters overwhelmingly negative. Accusations of treason, death threats, unflattering sexual speculation, more conspiracy theories.”

That sounded far less nice.

“I have no idea what this is about.”

“You don’t need to-“

“He kidnapped some lady, but I guess it was supposed to be a good thing. Maybe?”

“What? You stole a whole person?”

“I didn’t steal her, I saved her-you know, never mind. If you have not already been informed of this, you don’t need to know. I have the research I asked for, and I have no more time to waste here. Goodbye, Spiderchild. And also you.”

He ended the call without another word, and stalked away from the computer.

So. Your people had abandoned you. Typical. Thor was so optimistic about humanity, but Loki had seen the rot underneath. While his brother would praise how strong and helpful human’s natural social bonds were, Loki knew how they used those same social bonds as a weapon; to shun, to manipulate, to control.

Now you were outside of that control, and your country had turned on you. Viciously. Predictably.

No matter. You had him now; he would take care of you. He had sworn it, and he meant to keep his word this time.

But that meant that your assailant had to be found. This couldn’t be let go, not if he didn’t want them to feel empowered to try it again. You required some means of protection. And he had just the thing.

He found his way to the equipment stores, speaking briefly to the quartermaster. She was a formidable, battle-scarred woman, but when he explained that he wanted some of the old, busted up knife sheathes to attempt to fix up, she was happy to let him rummage around.

During the exodus, people had mostly just grabbed whatever they could find to bring with them. Unfortunately, some of it turned out to be trash. The quartermaster had been saddled with far too much unusable equipment, and Loki was able to come up with several sheathes that, between them, should provide enough intact material to put together a new one. Loki thanked her, and left with his prizes.

Prince or not, Loki had always taken care to know how to maintain and repair all of his own equipment, even learning how to make certain things from scratch. With the amount of knives and daggers he used, a simple sheath would take no time at all.

He found a place away from anyone else, where he didn’t have to be a prince, and could concentrate on being an artisan instead. A wave of the hand brought him his tools, and he went right to work.

                                                                                  *****

 “So the big mystery about the Jotnar, is that it’s clear from their extensive colonization of multiple worlds, that they used to be a space-faring race. But they aren’t now, and no one knows why or how that knowledge was lost to them.” Brunnhilde explained. The Valkyrie had moved this lesson into your room, where you were still being asked to stay. You had been longing for companionship for what seemed like such a long time, so long in fact, that you were now uncomfortable to have it. You hadn’t gotten out of bed, just sat up with your pillow to lean against. Brunnhilde evidently thought you were injured worse than you actually were, and made no comment about it.

“We’ve encountered them in several galaxies, always slightly different. Thousands, possibly millions of years removed from wherever they originally came from, and an unusually flexible genetic structure allows them to adapt to whatever planet they live on within just a few generations. For instance, here are Aegir and Ran.”

She held up a book, showing you an illustration of two people with deep blue skin, round black eyes, and green hair that was textured like seaweed. They were both adorned with shells, coral, and pearls, and not much else.

“These two rule a world of oceans. They’re pretty friendly with Asgard, and let us build small colonies on their islands. That’s the only land on their planet, and the Jotnar that live there don’t have much use for dry land. They make such exotic alcohol.”

You managed a weak smile. Of course she was impressed with the booze.

“Freyr is married to one of these?” You asked. You still wondered how big they were.

“No, no, these are sea giants. Gerd is a mountain giant. I found a picture of her earlier, give me a second…”

Brunnhilde leafed through the book.

“Are the Jotnar all just named after the terrain they live in?”

“Yeah, basically. They adapt so fully to their environment that they almost seem to become a part of it. So we usually just call them what they look like. Desert giants, and forest giants, and fire giants, and frost giants. All kinds. Ah, here she is!”

She turned the book back to you, showing a picture of a powerfully built woman, whose snowy white skin and hair shimmered with a diamond-like quality. There were long streaks and patches of silver skin on her bare arms that reflected light like a mirror.

“Wow.”

“Yeah, she’s a keeper.  We get along with some of the giants; others not so much. Frost giants for one. Our most recent war involved them. We won but relations are still pretty tense. I only fought in the very first battles of that particular war, but it was only about a thousand years ago.”

“Only a thousand?” You were still constantly startled by the massive age differences between you and the Asgardians. It was hard to comprehend a person who was older than most modern countries.

There was a knock at the door, and Loki let himself in without waiting for very long. He looked slightly excited about something, but the expression disappeared the instant he noticed the Valkyrie in the room.

“Oh, we are learning, I see. It’s good to see that kind of determination, but you shouldn’t overdo it.”

“The cut is almost gone, and I’m going crazy in here.” You protested, cursing the edge of a whine that snuck into your voice. “I thought another lesson would be low effort and give me something to think about.”

Something else to think about. Something other than him, and what he might eventually do to you. Why was he waiting so long? The fear and torment was making it harder and harder to think of anything else.

You shouldn’t think about it. Brunnhilde was here. You were safe for now. Think about giants.

“What is today’s subject?”

Brunnhilde turned the book to him.

“Look, it’s Gerd.”

“So it is. Jotnar? What, ah…what about Jotnar?”

“Different kinds. Sea, and mountain, and frost. Friends and enemies.” You said. He fidgeted a bit, rubbing at his palm. “I just kinda wonder how big they are, if we’re calling them giants. Are they really very tall? I’ve never seen one before.”

The Aesir’s eyes flicked back and forth to each other, as if expecting one another to say something.

“Well!” Brunnhilde said brightly, breaking the increasingly uncomfortable silence. “Why don’t you show her a comparison? With Gerd!”

“Oh that’s easy! Here. So this is Freyr…” He gestured and the image of the man with flowers in his hair popped up. Loki caught your wrist as you reached out. “Still not here.”

Heat crept up your neck. Stupid involuntary reaction! You really needed to get a handle on that.

“And here you are…”

A little image of you popped up next to the other, clasping your hands behind you and beaming happiness. It was adorable. Brunnhilde pressed her lips together to swallow a smile.

“And here is Gerd…”

The shining woman appeared next, easily two feet taller than both of the other images, to scale.

“Wow! Okay that’s pretty big.”

“Oh this is nothing.” Loki said, some of his earlier excitement creeping back in. “Here’s Aegir and Ran.”

The sea giants appeared, even bigger than Gerd.  “And the tricky mason who owned Svadilfari.”

A pale, rocky giant sprang up next. He would have been taller than a multistoried house.

“I bested him in combat, and took his horse. He was of the same line as Sleipnir, which is what gave the fool away in the first place. My Leynarodd is one of only two survivors of that line.”

“Yes, and we all know you’re very proud of that.” Brunnhilde interrupted. “How about you show us a frost giant?”

“How about I don’t?”

“I’d like to see one.” You interjected. Loki seemed to recede in on himself.

“I’m actually pretty sure you wouldn’t. They are hideous, brutish savages. You wouldn’t like them at all.” He said bitterly.

That was so infuriating. You were growing to hate the way he described other races. He was always so nasty about it.

“You know, your highness.” You said, sitting up a little straighter. “You say that about pretty much every race that isn’t Asgardian. How will you describe me to people in a thousand years, I wonder?”

He lifted his chin, mouth pressed thin.

“As a mouthy twit who thought she knew more than I did about subjects she hadn’t even learned yet. I’ve seen frost giants. I’ve fought and killed frost giants. I know about them, and you do not.”

“Then show me!” You challenged. “Because right now, you just sound like a huge bigot, and like a bigot, you’ve got nothing to back you up!”

Brunnhilde quietly chuckled.

“You insolent little-You think you can just sit in the bed, in the room that I provided you, and say such things to me? I am your prince, and-“

“Not mine!”

“-and your benefactor! Are you fed? Are you clothed? Are your medical needs seen to? Yes! You have me to thank for that, me and no other!”

“Now just a damn-“

“If the Bifrost could handle it, I would drop you on Jotunheim right now, and see how you fared, you little ingrate! Here!”

He tossed a little bundle onto the bed.

“I intended to present this to you properly, but I feel no need to waste any more time here. Figure it out yourself, since you know so much.” He whipped the door open. “But before I go, here is Surtr, the largest giant yet known.”

He slammed the door behind him, just as the illusion of the enormous fire giant filled the room and began knocking things over.

                                                                                *****

“So then I had to fist fight an illusory giant.” Brunnhilde said, cleaning grime off her favorite sword. “It was pretty cathartic, actually.”

“What did he give to her?” Thor asked, running a whetstone down the blade of his axe.  Norns, but his brother was bad at this. Scheming, manipulating, planning, organizing, oh yes, all of that and more. But openly caring about someone? Practically hopeless.

“No idea. She was not in a good mental place by the time I beat Surtr, and then her maid came and saw the state the room was in. Poor girl was beside herself. But at least _____ doesn’t have much to get tossed around. Still, the place was a mess, and she was of no mind to even open the thing up and look.”

“If he keeps on like this he will lose all chance of gaining her respect. He keeps moving forward and then taking a flying leap back.”

“Don’t know if it’s just her respect he wants. But this might not be as bad as it seems. For one thing, his wall is thinner around her. The things he feels he has to prove to her are different than the things he feels he needs to prove to us. He’s more open with her, probably because he thinks she is harmless. Now granted, that openness includes childish tantrums, but at least he isn’t closed off and stagnant anymore. He’s moving forward.”

The Valkyrie examined her sword closely, searching for any leftover dirt. Finding none, she dribbled oil onto a cloth, and began wiping the blade.

“For her part; I haven’t seen that fire in her for some time. Something is going wrong there, but I’m not sure what it is. She seems unusually passive, you know, she hasn’t even been asking questions like she used to. I think she might be afraid of something, or holding something in.”

“Because someone attacked her, and we don’t know who or why? I can see why that would be frightening.” Thor set the weapon aside, and began polishing his armor instead.

“Possibly. Probably. I know you don’t like to think of it, but we really do need some kind of prison facilities built. Criminals still exist, and if you don’t want to execute them…”

“Absolutely not.” Thor asserted.

“Then we need a place to put them. Whenever we catch this person-and I’m sure we will- we’ll need somewhere to stash them. If we get to them before Loki does, anyway.”

“Loki knows better now…” Thor began.

“Oh does he? Well that’s great to hear. How many milliseconds do you think he’ll hold his composure where the safety of his ‘responsibility’ is concerned?”

Thor scrubbed until he could see his eye reflected in the bosses of his chestplate, then began checking the scale and chain portions for any captured bits of debris.

“About sixteen. Which is ten longer than he would have done previously, so things are getting better.”

“If you say so. I’m not completely sure this has to do with the attack though. I saw signs of _____ withdrawing in on herself even before then, and just didn’t notice what was happening at the time. I wonder if there isn’t something around here that is bringing back memories of bad times. It’s easy to forget she lived through that damn ‘snap’ just like we did. We don’t know how she lived during that time, or what she went through. There might be all kinds of triggers hidden inside her, and the only way to find them is to accidentally trip them.”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that.” Thor said, inspecting a nick on his helmet. That was unlikely to buff out, but he tried it anyway. “Probably unavoidable though. We’ll just have to be ready, be understanding. Which means Loki will have to get a handle on his temper.”

“We’re just a big bundle of problems each, aren’t we?”

“Part of being alive. Besides, better that we suffer than the alternative.”

“Psh, speak for yourself, your Majesty!”

“I do believe I am.”

Loki stalked into the room, clearly still disgruntled. Noticing what his brother and the Valkyrie were doing, he took a seat of his own, and began seeing to the maintenance of his own weapons. As the minutes ticked by, and more and more daggers piled up, he seemed to grow even more annoyed.

Finally, he slapped one last knife down on the pile. “Thor. Am I a bigot?”

“Oh yeah.” Thor said.

“Absolutely.” Brunnhilde agreed.

Loki made an offended noise.

“You are not unlike a great many Asgardians in that respect.” Thor continued. “I was like that as well, until recently. You remember.”

“I was too.” Brunnhilde added. “The social climate under the previous Allfathers practically guaranteed that. I only unlearned it by spending a thousand years at the ass-end of the universe, surrounded by people of every species, all of us knowing that we lived and died at the whims of a single madman.”

“I had to be stripped of all my power, and then choose to die at the hands of an ancient weapon forged by my own people, while protecting a non-Asgardian species.” Thor said.

“Well, what do I have to do?” Loki demanded. “I’m not going back to Sakkar, and I’ve already died! Where’s my magical personality cure?”

“I mean, it did take me a thousand years.” Brunnhilde reminded him. “And I don’t think ‘depressed, alcoholic, slave-taker’ is really the kind of personality you want to aspire to. “

“Besides, there is little chance of being able to make amends with the Svartalfari, or the Frost Giants, at least, not for quite some time. And I stand by my decision to forbid contact with the Dark Elves. Never again. If any remain, let them be.”

“Agreed.” Loki said. “But that still doesn’t help me. You didn’t see how she looked at me.”

“I did.” Brunnhilde pointed out.

“And you have no doubt regaled my brother on all the details. But that does me no good. I cannot simply stop feeling how I feel.” He paused. “Can I?”

“If you’re thinking about trying any memory or emotion altering spell, I must advise strongly against it.” Thor warned. “I know you can handle dangerous powers, Loki, but even the smallest mistake, and your entire self could be lost.”

“I know that!” Loki snapped. “But if I need to stop, how do I start? To stop?”

“Well, first of all, maybe you could stop describing every other race as ‘uneducated, brutish, savages’ to your only student, who happens to be one of those other races…” Brunnhilde suggested.

“Loki!” Thor scolded.

“Well how would you describe a Frost Giant?” Loki demanded.

“Hm. Fierce warriors with strong ties to an ancient heritage.” Thor said. “I suppose that could be taken to mean the same thing as ‘savage’, but without such negative connotations. It might help you if you just rewrote the propaganda to remove the negativity. That’s all it is, after all. A great many things we were taught about the other races was just propaganda.”

Loki gaped at him.

“Moreover, since the only Frost Giant I personally know is clever, well-learned, and sophisticated, how could I possibly describe them so crudely?”

Loki continued to gape.

“Y-your time among the humans has made you soft.” He whispered.                                                                                

[angstofdestiny]

Brother’s Genitivi letter to an unknown scholar

Dear friend!

Thank you for your letter. Your descriptions of the wonders of Antiva were most enlightening. I find it fascinating that the myth of the Witch of the Wilds appears also there, in such a similar form — it would be absolutely thrilling if we could learn what caused such a similar fairytale to appear in such distant regions as Ferelden and Antiva. I believe there might be some truth to these stories, given that I have met an apostate — I am fairly sure that she was a maleficar as well — who fancied herself to be one. Of course, she was far from the mighty being described in the stories, but let me tell you, the cruelty and mischievous nature was present in her just like in the Witch of the legends.

You would probably ask how did I encounter such a vile character — and accidentally, this leads me to your questions about the Hero of Ferelden. The Witch has been traveling in his company, a valued comrade, if you might imagine! That should give you some inclinations to the Warden-Commander’s character, I believe. I still find it astonishing that King Alistair and Sister Nightingale allowed that despicable man to lead their mission. The only thing I can imagine is that the elf has somehow threatened His Majesty into submission. Was it blackmail, or maybe simply he used his assassin to intimidate the King, I do not know. What did he do to Sister Nightingale — that’s anyone’s guess.

As you can see, I do not have a high opinion of this man. I have met him twice — and the first time was in the circumstances most dire, when I have been captured by the heretics in the village of Haven during my search for the Urn of the Sacred Ashes. He had bandaged my wounds and shared an elfroot concoction, that is true, but his motivations were far from noble. He was looking for the Urn as well, to bring the Ashes to Arl Eamon Guerrin and needed a guide who would lead him to the Temple. Were it not for his quest, I believe he would gladly leave me to die — though I doubt the good King Alistair would stand for it.

He was surly and unpleasant when we went up the mountain. What caught my attention was the coldness in his eyes and the cruel set of his jaw as well as these barbaric Dalish tattoos covering his face; but I was telling myself that this must be a good man, tired with his trials. I did not dare to think what would become of me if the signs I read in his face were true.

Quickly I have noticed, that having such noble people as the King and Sister Nightingale with him, he still sought counsel and company of the assassin — his infamous Crow lover — and the Witch. From the conversations I have overheard I have learned also that shortly before they found me, Commander Mahariel has killed another companion of theirs, an oxman from Par Vollen. At the time I believed what I heard — that the oxman turned out to be too dangerous to keep them company and too dangerous to be let go — but knowing what I know now I think that it was more of a spat between two savages that ended in bloodshed. It would not surprise me to learn that the Warden-Commander put the oxman down motivated only by his thirst for blood.

They went into the Temple, leaving me under care of Sister Leliana — what a delightful girl she was at the time! — who was very reluctant to share anything about Commander Mahariel or his less savory companions. She spoke about him nicely, saying that he was very young and fairly lost in the world of humans, but I could see it in her face that she had a hard time coming up with anything positive to say. Finally, she told me he was really dedicated to stopping the Blight and very good with animals. The latter does not surprise with a Dalish savage, and till today I believe that his dedication to his mission was his only redeeming quality.

The trouble started later, when they left the Temple. They have never told me what occurred there, but they all seemed shaken by the events. Mahariel grew silent and even more somber than before and started to reveal his nature. I swear by Andraste’s Ashes, he wanted to kill me when I talked about opening the Temple to the public. He did not threaten me directly then, but I saw it in his eyes when he argued with me, saying that this would be too dangerous endeavor. Dangerous! As if he cared! There must have been treasures in the Temple he did not want anyone to find, bent on plundering them himself.  Still, he was armed and proficient in combat and I feared for my life, even with the King and Sister Nightingale present.

The road down to the Hinterlands was probably the second most miserable period in my life, just after the time I spent in the captivity. I was free, but I did not feel it, forced to rely on that savage and heathen. It was easy to see how deeply he despised all the humans — the only exception being the Witch, but I think I must agree with that vile man that she was no more human than he was, even if her ears were round. He was perpetually angry, when he spoke, it was all bile and blasphemies. I tried to engage with him in a friendly manner, inquire about his people — both because they are a fascinating topic of study, and because he undoubtedly has a deep connection to their so-called “culture”. The only thing that earned me was even more venom, insults and death threats. After some time I realized that no matter how pleasant I would be, there was no chance of connection. Warden-Commander simply was what he seemed to be — a hateful, cruel savage with only one goal in his mind. And let us all thank the Maker that this goal was to defeat the Blight. Had he been born in a different era, without the threat of the Darkspawn hanging over our heads, he would surely use this vile energy in a less noble endeavor, causing lots of death and misery.

The second time I met him was at his investiture and recognition ceremony. He was still this crude, hateful man I met. He arrived at the royal ceremony dressed in the same savage, worn leathers he wore in Haven, barefoot and flaunting both of his lovers. His only allowance for the ceremony was a Grey Warden tabard he wore over his armor. He did not deign to kneel before the King when his investiture was announced — as the custom demands — and when the good King gave him his boon for his achievements, he looked sour and offended. I did not talk to him that day, but I overheard him — this ungrateful wretch! — to argue with the King after the ceremony as with a commoner, saying that the lands he was given for his people were not good enough and that he found his Majesty’s grace offensive and demeaning.

So, here you have, a honest portrait of the Hero of Ferelden. Unlike how the public opinion paints him, he is a cruel, prideful and petty man, with no sense of gratitude or any social graces. I will not dare to write it in any of the books I am publishing now, that is why you found this character absent from my scriptures. I would be, however, grateful, if you saved this letter and made it public after I meet the Maker, as this may be the only honest accounting of the Warden-Commander Mahariel’s character ever written by a historian who witnessed it first-hand.

May the Maker bless your endeavors,

Yours truly ,

Genitivi

[thewritingpossum]

Historical fiction writers and historians like to talk about the whole "Edward abandoned pregnant Isabella to save Piers Gaveston" thing (which is entirely fake btw) but I think we should focus more on that One Time In Tynemouth when Isabella faced the possibility of an attack by the Scots because, while it's actually an event with very little historical significance, I think it had a tremendous impact on the people directly involved in it, as it seems to have been a major trigger in the deterioration of Edward and Isabella's relationship, which she fully blamed on Hugh le Despenser but it also appears to be one of the rare instance where Hugh was genuinely not trying to fuck her over in any shape or form.

In October 1322, Edward was dealing with the aftermath of yet another failed Scottish campaign, which included Robert Bruce invading back England. Bruce quickly marched toward where the King was at the moment, wreaking havoc as one generally do during a punishing invasion and, by mid-October, Edward was forced to flee, abandoning a whole bunch of his material possessions behind him.

The situation would have already been humiliating enough but it sparked another problem: at the moment, Isabella had been residing at Tynemouth, a little less than a hundred miles away from her husband. While there's no clear indication that Bruce was planning to walk toward this direction or had any plan to take the queen hostage, it's undeniable that Isabella herself believed it and was terrified.

It's always a bit sketchy to try and gage the feelings of people who have been dead for hundreds of years (if anything, it's also risky to try and assume the feelings of living people too so...) but in this particular case, I really do think we may reasonably argue that it was one of the most traumatic event in her life and she entirely blamed Hugh le Despenser for it, accusing him of 'falsely and treacherously counselling the king to leave my lady the queen in peril of her person' at Tynemouth.", which is straight up factually incorrect.

I won't try to debate whether or not she was in actual physical danger, partially because I don't know enough about Robert de Bruce and his military tactics to gage whether or not he may have been interested in taking her hostage (but it honestly feels unlikely, at least in the circumstances...) but we know for a fact that even if Hugh actually did advised Edward to let his wife to rot alone at Tynemouth, that's not what Edward actually did.

We still have a high number of letters showing Edward's concern for his wife and he quickly charged some of his most trusted men with the task to go safely fetch the queen. The problem here is that his most trusted men obviously included some of Hugh's subordinates. Isabella reacted to the situation just as well as you may imagine: she categorically refused to leave with Hugh's men, not under any circumstances whatsoever. I don't think her fear was entirely irrational: she had already gone on her knees to beg for Hugh's banishment and I do think she may have been afraid of him using this occasion to get his revenge.

Now, I'm still not sure if Hugh ever actually intended to get rid of the queen (my opinion on that changes all the time tbh) but even if he did, I'm entirely sure he was not planning to do so here. First, there's the fact that even if some of his men were present, he wasn't there to command them and Isabella had no reason to distrust the actual commander present. Most importantly, Hugh's own wife Eleanor, who had been a member of the queen's household pretty much since she had set foot in England was also present. Hugh was a reckless man who cared very little about who he had to destroy to reach his goals but he appears to have sincerely care for his close family and it's highly improbable that he would have voluntarily put her in a harm way, even to get back at the queen, especially since she was most likely pregnant too at the moment.

The situation must have been incredibly messy. Both Isabella and Eleanor were heavily pregnant (or Eleanor’s case, may have just given birth) and their relationship, that had been a stable and friendly one for years, since they were both little more than children, had probably been deteriorating for some time due to their husbands’ affair. Eleanor probably desperately wanted to escape with her husband's men and Isabella's clear and definite refusal probably felt like a knee kick in the gums.

The fact that two of Isabella's ladies died as a direct consequence of their escape, one of them who was also pregnant and passed away shortly after prematurely giving birth was probably even more traumatic for both of them, as was the fact that the third man send by Edward to rescue the queen was actually caught by the Scots and taken hostage, which had been Isabella’s worst fear since the very beginning

Even if all technically ended well (except for those two poor ladies-in-waiting, obviously) and even if most contemporary chroniclers appear to have found the whole event fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, it’s pretty clear that it worsened the deterioration of marriage of Edward and Isabella, if it didn’t kickstarted it; before 1322, Edward and Isabella spent a lot of time together, even when it was not strictly necessary and we have a profusion of letters from one to the other when they were separated.

In 1322-1323, the time they spent together had shrunk to next to nothing and there's few letters remaining to indicate that they keep contact when they were away from each other. In fact, there's times during those two years when Edward himself was pitifully vague about the exact whereabouts of his wife, which lead me to believe that he had either temporarily casted her away from court or that she herself had decided to stay away from him (probably a mix of the two) and that he was trying to save face.

Now, what I find the more interesting is that I can easily understand the point of view of every person implicated in this situation. Isabella must have felt like her husband had abandoned her and only 'rescued' her by sending her her worst enemy's delegates. The fact that her contemporaries seems to have seen the situation as a non-issue and that even Hugh's worst detractors didn't blame him for anything, for once (the pope himself actually commended him for the way his men had acted...) must have been even more enraging for her.

Eleanor probably felt like her queen and friend had not only gravely offended her husband (and by extension her family and herself) once again but also put them all in danger for no logical reason. Edward was clearly worried for his wife at first but her refusal to cooperate was probably mind-boggling to him at first and then insulting, especially when it become obvious that she was not planning to get over it.

As for Hugh...If there's one thing we know about Hugh's personality, it's that he was very good at making himself the victim in even the situations where he was the most blatantly at fault. Now, considering that he already disliked Isabella before the whole thing, can you imagine how he saw it and what he had to tell Edward about it? It must have been something along the lines of:  "Your wife essentially spat in your face by refusing the help you sent her and claiming you had done nothing useful, she offended me once again and still claimed it was somehow my fault and she also endangered my wife and unborn child, what kind of unnatural, hateful woman would behave in such a way toward her king and husband? How can you take that?" Fuck, he may even have truly believed that.

Now I'm not gonna say it's the one thing that really determined the rest of their relationship (there was already A Lot going on long before that and there was much more to come for all of them) but I do think it was a pretty major element of how things managed to go so bad so fast and I also find it pretty telling that Isabella would later accuse Hugh of forcing her husband to abandon her to mortal danger even if absolutely no one else seems that it was what happened when it actually happened...

[yeahgen]

Vellichor: The strange wistfulness of used bookshops.

obscure feelings drabble prompts

They meet at the cusp of a literary disaster.

“Whoa,” she says, and catches the errant volume of Gray’s Anatomy as it falls from the towering stack in his arms. “Need a little help?”

The shorter boy looks at her blankly before polite acknowledgment flickers in his eyes. ‘If it’s not too much trouble.’

She takes half his books and he finds them a table–which turns out to be half hers as well, since Relativistic Quantum Mechanics: Wave Equations is open next to a page of notes that match the green pen in her hand. Yagen only pauses briefly when she settles into the seat across from him; then he’s back in his own world, diving through meticulous diagrams of skulls and muscle as he jots his own notes.

Hours pass in undisturbed silence. Mid-way through his session, he finds himself needing a reference text on Polyvagal theory and looks up questioningly.

‘Do you know where…’ Yagen trails off and gestures vaguely at his book, which is opened to the cross-diagram of a human brain.

“Medical?” his table partner doesn’t bat an eyelid as she glances at it and answers, “Try 570 or 571. Biology and Physiology.”

He nods and leaves. She watches him scurry off into one of the aisles, thoughts drifting until he suddenly stops at a tall bookshelf and starts climbing.

“Hey, wait, you can’t—” Do that here, her mind finishes, even as Yagen finds the book he wants and and leaps soundlessly back to the ground. 

‘Thanks again,’ he adds as he slides back into his seat. And that was the end of that.

Until next time.

‘Here,’ he offers her a seat at a table two days later, where she’s full of books and lost for her own.

“But that’s yours,” she protests gently.

‘I don’t need a chair to sit,’ he replies. 

“The ground’s cold,” she points out, noting the lack of carpet and his characteristic shorts.

Yagen adjusts his glasses. ‘There are other options.’ Before she can reply, he’s already grabbing his book and clambering up the nearest bookshelf again. He waves at her from above, then buries his nose between the pages. Today it’s clinical microbiology. She shakes her head a bit, but relents and slides into his chair with a small smile.

They settle into a soundless pattern, her helping him, him helping her. They share tables more often than not, but rarely talk, preferring the company of their books. Even the turning of their pages reached a certain rhythm, so she notices when it stops one restless afternoon.

“Is anything wrong?” she asks after Yagen’s been fiddling with his glasses for the fifth time in the past three minutes.

‘No,’ he blurts out first, but then shakes his head. ‘…yes. There’s a book I want to read, but the library doesn’t have it.’

‘It’s either out of date or too old…but it’s written in kanbun style, so I doubt I could find it anywhere…’

She slowly closes her book and looks him in the eye. “Have you tried looking around used bookstores?”

‘A bit, but…’

“I might know a place.”

For the first time since they’ve met, Yagen’s eyes light up: interest, mixed with hopeful anticipation. 

The old wooden building located in a corner of Little Tokyo is an anomaly against the sleek metal cityscape. The inside is covered in dust that thrum softly in time to the steady beats of music from the neighboring shops. When they enter, there’s nobody else inside except for the friendly old shopkeeper who needs three repetitions to understand anything they say. 

His companion ends up leading him through the bookstore herself, helping him pore through the shelves and find an intact copy of the Kaitai Shinsho. 

“Are you a doctor?” she asks, the first question she’s posed in days.

‘Applying to be one,’ he answers. ‘But studying in the meantime.’ The concept of medical degrees or universities were useless to a sword; he’d picked up most of his experience working in the field or supervising the repair rooms. The General had a modest library, but nothing as big as the one at Spirale University. Even the shelves in this bookstore far outnumbered the tomes back home.

‘What about you?’ he asks back, just to be polite. ‘Not a physician, right. A…physicist?’ It’s a word he’s caught once or twice from her books.

“Something like that,” she laughs. “Oh, I think I smell something over here!”

She latches her fingers around a dusty volume and pulls it from the shelf. He comes closer to look, and sees the distinctive classical script on the cover. It’s exactly what he’s looking for, but…

‘Only two volumes, and one of them is missing half the pages,’ he murmurs when they’ve combed through all the shelves–he with his eyes, her with her nose. He’s not disappointed, but it’s an odd melancholy to see a full work left incomplete, the rest of its pages lost to time.

“Sorry about that.” To his surprise, she seems more dejected that him over the loss.

‘No, this is fine. More than fine, actually.’ Yagen flips through the book, eyes pouring over the various pictures and labels. Fortunately, one of the volumes they salvage is the illustrations. ‘This was one of the earliest translations from Dutch to Japanese, so it’s full of minor errors. I wouldn’t use it as a reference book, but it’s nice to have a piece of history.’

“Are you a historian too?” she asks half-jokingly.

He rests the book over his nose to hide a wry smile. ‘Only when I need to be.’

They end up going to the used bookshop for the next two weeks until the owner puts up a sign one day. All Books on Sale, it reads. Closing Shop.

“But why?!” she cries, and the answer she gets is that the karaoke bar next door wants to expand its premises. The shop here is being brought out. “You’ve been here for so long!”

That doesn’t stop progress from marching on, the old shopowner sighs.

“Isn’t this terrible?” she asks her partner next, but he only blinks back.

‘That’s how life works,’ he says. New rulers to replace the old. New shops to take over less popular ones. 

“But once it’s gone, it’ll be lost forever! All those books…all that history, too!”

He blinks again, gaze focusing on her slowly. ‘Yes.’

“And you accept that?”

‘Yes.’

“You found the book you wanted here.”

‘I know. I’ll remember that when the store shuts down.’

“If we do something to change things, maybe raise funds to support it—”

‘It’ll end up closing anyways,’ he briskly cuts her off. ‘It’s been having trouble attracting customers for awhile now.’

“But we can’t just—”

‘We can. And we will.’ He pays for his final stacks of books, then leads her out of the building by the sleeve. The finality in his tone makes it impossible for her to refuse him.

Three days later, the two of them sit eating ice cream and watching the construction crew tear the building down. 

‘It had a good life,’ he says between licks of vanilla. ‘But all lives come to an end.’

“I can’t believe you’re being so morbid about all this,” she sighs as she nibbles on her waffle cone.

‘I can’t believe you tried to buy all the books until I stopped you.’

“I was going to donate them to the library!”

‘Half of them would’ve been screened out and thrown away, anyways.’

“Are you always this depressing?”

‘It’s called being pragmatic.’

“Please be less of a realist.”

‘How about I read you a story?’

She looks at him suspiciously, but relents. “Go on.”

He takes a deep breath before he starts. ‘Sekitsuikotsu is a term for the spine or vertebrae. Rokkotsu make up the ribs, while the sternum is known as the kyōkotsu. Bordering that on top is the clavicle or collarbone, also known as the–’

“What kind of story is that?!”

‘Hm? I’m reciting from my favorite book of the month.’

“The Kaitai Shinsho’s just a glorified medical textbook! A wrong one too, like you said!”

‘I like it well enough.’

“That’s not a story!”

‘It has plenty of history, though. The method they used to choose the words…’

And as their argument draws on, the shop before them gets smaller and smaller until it’s reduced to a pile of rubble at their feet. She feels a hint of regret at the loss, but it’s soon swallowed beneath the sunshine and his low, droning voice. Maybe living in the present isn’t so bad, after all. He seems to be doing just well with that.

[alexamartin1992]

How To Prevent A Neutered Cat From Spraying Fascinating Ideas

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