@discjude Thank You! This Is A Good One!

@discjude Thank you! This is a good one!

he lived, served cunt. died. got resurrected, served cunt again. died even harder.

On a boys' night out, on a certain assignment, circa the early days of Fall, a bit after Midas' kidnapping and before Pan's arrival:

James: Well, I'm stymied, lads.

Midas: I second that.

Aladdin: Eh.

James: So, what do we do with it? [referring to the corpse of their murder victim]

Midas: [dully] What. You never got any murder practice in while you worked with Rhian? [mumbled as an aside,] I never trusted him. Too self-righteous but just doesn't strike me as right.

James: [He shrugs.] He wasn't always corrupt. But, I think I may have had a hand in that. Never got the chance to apologize to his brother either...

Midas: Neither of those two deserve an apology! What would Kyma do? Give it an honorable burial?

James: She'd never be in a situation like this with the likes of us.

Aladdin: She's too Good.

Midas: Huh.

James: What would Rhian do?

Midas: Treat us like pawns? Wait, no, that's Brother Evil. Rhian would give us a hypocritical lecture about "morality." He'd never get off his high horse and give up those holier-than-thou delusions of his, not for as long as he lives.

James: [musing] Come to think of it—I never did take well to his magic.

Aladdin: All I know is that we're pathetic. I bet this is something first-year Nevers would get as homework. Or, would it be called field-work? Or target practice?

James: Speak for yourself. [he needles drolly,] You sure you weren't placed in the wrong School?

Aladdin: Nah, 'course not. Besides, murder is against the School Rules. If it weren’t, I would’ve offed you a long time ago.

James: [snidely] Is it? Well that’s just a fine bucket of eels left out to rot in the midday sun, no less. Glad to be appreciated, Laddie.

[Aladdin scowls. Midas smirks and holds back a laugh.]

James: [thoughtfully] Now, what would Rafal do?

All three: [nodding sagely] Burn it.

James: And all the evidence.

⸻

Sometime after the favorite sandwich and broken leg lies that went uncorrected:

Rafal: My ears are burning.

Rhian: Liar.

Rafal: That was uncalled for!

Rhian: Apologies, force of habit. I do ever so wonder why that is. Well, students do gossip, you know. [He dismissed with a wave of his hand, and set down a letter-opener.] You're just overly paranoid, as always.

Rafal: [with suspicion] What do you mean?

Rhian: [while opening an envelope, spoken lightly] Probably, the boys are doing my assignment.

Rafal [narrowing his eyes]: What assignment?

Rhian: [smugly] That's for me to know and you to not find out. I'm not worried though. You're too blind to see what goes on around you in plain sight.

Rafal: Hmpth. We'll see about that. [He covertly tucks a ink-stained, rubber moth stamp into his pocket, and stalks off on his limp, meaning to leave their study by the window.]

Rhian: [calling after him, preciously, saccharinely] Is that a threat?

Rafal: [cryptically, without looking back] No. It's a vow.

⸻

Note:

Please let me know if anyone seems too out of character. I'm not actually that used to writing Midas yet.

Rafal would say that.

Also letter openers. This applies to letter openers too. Almost anything can be an instrument of murder if you stab hard enough.

““Anyone who thinks the pen is mightier than the sword has not been stabbed with both.””

— -Lemony Snicket, When Did You See Her Last?

When your love language is war...

Wow, thank you! This is fascinating, especially the part about the Pen lacking humanity and essentially scoring a zero in the "Human Understanding department." A very apt way to put it.

I could almost imagine the Rule of Three applying to Rhian, Rafal, and the Pen! Even if it tends to apply to trios of humans, usually. Because, any of the pairs would have worked out fine, without a deathly rivalry. Well, maybe not Rafal and Pen. Yet, the others would have been fine: Rhian-Rafal and Pen-Rhian, because they are capable of respecting each other (and Rhian is not the most critical of thinkers). The Pen (and there being a narrative/roles everyone was too-aware of) just interfered, and ruined what otherwise could have been the Rhian-Rafal pair of two.

Also, "possibly artificial switch." You/the prequel fandom should coin that! I often tend to think of the progression in Fall as artificial, and I doubt I'm the only one besides you. It's really the perfect shorthand to explain how abruptly the character development/"mischaracterization" in Fall went awry, methinks.

Hating the Storian is a worthy, noble cause, even if the storybooks wouldn't tell it that way. If you succeed at overthrowing the tyranny of Pen, you'd deserve Nevermore in only the absolute best sense of the word.

Man's Fallibility & Immortality

I found a practically perfect song, by my interpretation, to add to my Rise to Fall playlist. (I haven't cleaned up/updated the playlist fully, so I'm not posting the whole thing yet, but I think this particular song warrants its own post.)

First, listen to the song: Nothing's New - Rio Romeo

Then, what follows below is something of a tragedy-analysis, abstract, meta-thing/omniscient prose narration experiment. I don't know what it is—an outpouring of thoughts. It may strike a similar chord as my narration at the end of Simony and its epilogue.

(Simony was a prediction fic I wrote before the publication of Fall. An extremely erroneous one though. I still think it could work, but oh, how wrong I was.

The direction Soman took the plot in, just, it was unpredictable, even if I did enjoy the book. I still like Rise better than Fall though, of the duology. If Rise had just ended at the point of: Vulcan is dead, Rafal tortures his students, and the brothers gradually learn to trust each other again, that would've been nice and comforting, honestly. But no, substitutes, substitutes, substitutes! On both sides. Drives me insane. Ack! But, I have four, short fics planned that have alternate endings to Rise and to Fall, to make up for it. Well, one of them is so far a little longer, three chapters long.)

If anyone wants me to analyze the actual lyrics more closely, I'm willing to do that too!

⸻

The tales.

They are all the same.

Good winning, Evil winning.

What difference does it make after centuries, really?

Everything probably feels numb and empty after a certain point.

Like nothing matters anymore.

Undiluted apathy after that certain point.

When? I've lost track.

When losses and victories all ring hollow, and all sound the same.

The End.

That's all It wrote.

The sum of lives distilled down to ink and illustrations.

Nothing beyond that. No life, no spark.

What more is there? When nothing will ever satisfy the restless souls, not even an Ending all to themselves.

Just pages that will yellow with time even if the stories themselves are timeless because nothing changes.

Nothing ever changes.

There's no evolution.

Every tale is the same.

It becomes nothing after nothing, not victory after victory, when you're ageless like we are.

And how, if that's how it is?

Why bother?

Why bother at all?

It's a cycle that continues, with or without the brothers.

Ceaseless.

So, why should it matter?

It's the same with or without them.

Their position was always ceremonial.

After a while, anyone becomes tiring. Anyone.

And one person just isn't enough, when you have no one else.

No one else to shield you.

It gets old. The love just... fades, and wears out.

Perhaps, human love can only span for so long, and that's why humans are mortal.

Made mortal, and no one should traverse beyond that.

It always leads to hubris, and then, a fall.

An unnatural fear of death trained into them, when limits were never set, when power was never checked, when they expected to have all the time in the world.

Nothing is built to last. At least, not by the Storian.

It does whatever it pleases.

You can't extend a life past its time.

It will always end in ruin. Isn't that the lesson the storybooks teach?

A cautionary tale.

Again and again, the cycle continues.

Every failed holy-grail of immortality, every spilled cup drawn from the fountain of youth, every cursed head of lettuce, every white snake, every chalice of sleeping draught that led to execution after execution, every baptism that succumbed to primordial wickedness, every impoverished fisherman's hovel?

Why not a tale about two brothers?

One where two are felled.

To caution against mortal greed that even immortality can't peel away.

To caution against always wanting more until you're left with nothing.

Nothing at all.

Just like how you can't truly resurrect anyone as who they once were, you can't revive the soul that a person once was.

And you can't play at being God because it defies the rules of nature.

And all that we know about transience and permanence and how ephemeral everything else is.

Everything but Man, who vies to leave a legacy wherever he goes, at any price, even at the cost of his soul, not life.

⸻

Now, I do wonder if I made anyone emotional? I certainly tried this time around, to be a provocateur like Soman is. Tell me what you think, if you want.

One True King Tagging Announcement & TOTSMOV41 Excerpts

I finally figured out how to fix the visibility on one of my posts that didn't appear in the main tags, and thought this information could be useful to anyone that posts about SGE, particularly The Camelot Years.

Originally, I tagged this post, excerpts from my WIP longfic, titled The One True School Master of Vault 41, using the relevant tag "otk." The fic itself is an alternate continuity of One True King, involving Rafal, Sophie, Agatha, the Wizard Tree, and Dovey's crystal ball. However, I just discovered that all posts tagged under "otk" have been hidden because for some, unknown reason, certain posts under the tag violate Tumblr's Community Guidelines. So, whenever you reference One True King, I'd advise tagging your posts with the full title "one true king," to avoid any issues with visibility.

Furthermore, if anyone reads my excerpts, I'd love to receive any kind of feedback/concrit, or to hear your thoughts and reactions! And, I might be willing to answer any questions you have around the fic, assuming I can avoid discussing major spoilers from my plot.