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Good morning to the online learners, my disillusioned college peers trying to crawl to the end of their degree, the ones who love to learn but are constantly thwarted by red tape and bureaucracy, the ex-gifted kids, the ex-not-gifted kids, the textbook pirates, the class skippers, the gap year takers, the kids who stay up late just to experience something that isn’t the work grind, the one-week-at-a-timers, the one day-at-a-timers, the neurodivergent students every institution ignores and overlooks, and everybody who has been and is being traumatized by public or private education systems. Good morning to y'all and y'all only.
Now that I’m halfway done finals week and putting this blog on hiatus till the fall, it seems as good a time as any to present to you just some of the many voices I feel solidarity with:
If any of my mutuals who also do text IDs have the time to make one of these, that would be fantastic. I have a meeting in five minutes so if no one does, I’ll try to make one tonight.
And for all of you, all of you that reblogged this, I’m sending a virtual hug and a reminder:
You have not failed anyone. Our educational systems have failed us, have failed you.And they’ve failed even the best teachers too. I believe in you and I care about your health and safety.
And if this post says anything, you are not alone.
commissioner gordon: Harley and Ivy have hijacked an AM radio station and taken the employees hostage
batman: what are their demands?
commissioner gordon: they haven’t issued any. they, uh.
batman:
[commisioner gordon turns on the radio]
harley: —you gotta walk away, sweetie. His family sounds completely toxic, if not outright emotionally abusive, and he’s too enmeshed to see it.
caller: no, you’re right. you’re right. I gotta do it.
harley: you got this, honey. now, stay on the line a minute, I’m writing down some the names of some books for you and you can get those from Ivy after we’re done. okay! our next caller —
[commisioner gordon turns off the radio]
batman: what station is this?
commisioner gordon: WGTM.
batman: the one that rebroadcasts rush limbaugh?
commissioner gordon:
batman:
commisioner gordon: you know what, i probably didn’t need to call you for this.
I WOULD PAY MONEY FOR RADIO SHRINK HARLEY OKAY?
I WOULD CALL RADIO SHRINK HARLEY OKAY?
“alright, babe, one more reminder that my license was revoked which means i have to tell you this as your friend and not as a mental health professional: you have two options here. one of them is safe, legal, and healthy, and will have lasting long term benefits. the other one is fun.”
reblogging for this extremely accurate addition.
Ivy’s segment is where people call in to ask why their succulent is dying and she yells at them for watering it too much.
oh, VERY good
A few weeks in Selina gets dragged into it, and starts offering advice on caring for cats with special dietary needs and stuff. It inevitably turns into Jackson-Galaxy-esque explinations.
“My cat keeps attacking my feet.”
“How often do you play with him?”
“Not as much as I should, but he has a basket of toys right there where he can reach it.”
“He wants to play with you. Grab a teaser toy or a laser pointer and go nuts. He’ll wear himself out in about fifteen minutes and you can go back to work.”
great, now i actively want someone to start a podcast that’s just in-character episodes of batman villain radio shows
You know, I actually think this would make for a really good Killer Croc redemption storyline
Cause the guy’s whole deal is him lashing out at society for rejecting him because he has a skin condition (ignoring the cannibalism in certain adaptations), which means radio would be perfect for him. People can’t see him, they can only hear him, and I imagine he has a sort of warm scratchy voice that sounds like he chainsmokes and it feels warm like an old wool blanket
Maybe he tells stories, maybe he does interviews, maybe he takes calls, whatever. But he becomes a fixture of late night Gotham, beloved by late shift workers and night owls, and Waylon Jones becomes a household name amongst a decent chunk of Gotham. That way, when he’s eventually outed, people stop reacting like “AAH A CROCODILE MAN” and start being like “hey, it’s our Waylon!”
I just like the idea of Croc being accepted and even loved by the people of Gotham
Plot twist:
The show is sponsored by Wayne Enterprises.
If you ask Bruce in his billionaire-playboy-philanthropist-idiot persona, he’ll tell you talk radio is the fastest-growing communications segment in the country and you’ll be left wondering how the fuck this man runs a successful business.
If you are one of the select few who knows him in his “also I am Batman” capacity, he’ll tell you overall crime has gone down since the villain-run station has hit the air, and also if Harley Quinn can talk someone out of the early stages of an abusive relationship before he—or worse, the Gotham City Morgue—has to get involved, so much the better.
(Also, Ivy sent him a very nice orchid with very clear, vaguely-threatening care instructions, as a thank-you for the funding. Alfred follows them to the letter, of course.)
Shelving this right next to the one where the Riddler gets a YouTube account and/or escape room business.
《忽行》 is a 2016 fanbook of Jingsu short stories by IdoRingo/井户林檎, and I was incredibly fortunate and delighted to be gifted a copy from the author after translating her time travel story in this collection. The title, which I’d translate quasi-faithfully as Fleeting Lives, takes its name from a famous line of poetry by an unknown Han Dynasty writer:
人生天地间，忽如远行客
We are born tourists between heavens and earth, hurrying home from a long journey our entire fleeting lives.
With an allusion like that, you know you’re in for contemplative meditations on existence. Before we get there, let’s admire its beauty some more (see this post for some other lovely fanbooks and the official sales announcement for more photos of this particular book).
Collecting fanbooks is a popular Chinese fandom activity, and writing a report with photos, known as a “repo”, after receiving a book is also a popular activity. Books often come with extras, and in this case, there are four very pretty Jingsu postcards (fanart by 百丽甜, 鲜啤啤, Ksama-X, 独夜舟) and a bookmark:
If you’re interested in printing, the 270 gsm dust jacket has the title (in cursive calligraphy) embossed and author seal foil stamped red. The 250 gsm inner cover is gold ink on deep red with author seal foiled stamped silver. The flyleaf is 120 gsm speckled cotton paper. Interior paper 100 gsm. A5 dimensions. 210 pages.
In short, a very beautiful book.
Jingsu under IdoRingo’s pen are soulmates, an intimate, lifelong-and-beyond sort of thing where schemes and plots don’t much matter compared to the big questions of life. She was no older than sixteen when writing these stories, and her study of philosophy and psychology would permeate through every word. The writing style is relaxed and natural, colloquial expressions peppered with classic Chinese poetry and quotes from her favorite authors, Gabriel García Márquez and Haruki Murakami. Her tales read like conversations, both with the author and yourself; the discursive asides remind me of the way you can spend an hour lying in bed, your thoughts drifting across time and space, the things that you hold true in your life, what you once foolishly believed, your favorite childhood joke, your favorite person.
Here are the stories inside:
浮云散 / Floating Clouds Scatter
没有你就没有如今的我，萧景琰无声哀求他，可否当作是为了我。
My current self wouldn’t exist without you, Xiao Jingyan begged him without words. Can you think of this as for me.
An amuse-bouche of a story. On Mei Changsu, on Lin Shu, glimpses of a whole life and the end, sudden and perfect.
Being-toward-death/向死而生/Sein-zum-Tode, German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s concept that life has no meaning without reckoning with its end, makes its first (and not last) appearance. Another famous thought on death is invoked at the end, 乡为身死而不受 from Mencius’s school, on honor and righteousness being more important than living. How appropriate they both are for someone like Mei Changsu, marked for early death, knowing it, and finding the most meaning in how he gives his life.
千秋雪 / Thousand-Year Snow
他的心就是这样一点一点在淬火中变硬的。坚硬如铁，却致命地易脆易碎。
His heart hardened in the quenching flame like this, bit by bit. Tough as iron, but fatally fragile and prone to shattering.
Snow falls every time Mei Changsu dies, and he wakes up at Meiling. Again, and again.
A time loop story is the perfect philosophical framework for brooding and contemplation. With each reincarnation, Mei Changsu explores the boundaries more, traveling the world with Lin Chen and Feiliu as promised, or pledging himself to Jingyan years earlier, or offing himself whenever he feels like it. There’s no magical resolution from the heavens for this predicament, only changing your own mindset to accept your circumstances.
You think Jingyan never found those clues and hints? He saw them more meticulously than any of you did, but the more meticulous, the harder it is to piece together an unbelievable truth. He saw the truth, but he lived a lie.
Lin Shu and Mei Changsu from Xiao Jingyan’s point of view. Neither lives are long enough for his love.
绍泰廿一 / Year 21, Shaotai Era
你有什么机会失去同一个人三次。
What are the odds you’ll lose the same person three times over.
AThe Time Traveler’s Wife fusion. Mei Changsu finds himself uncontrollably crossing through the twenty years before and after Meiling. Xiao Jingyan is his steady beacon.
Itranslated this one, which is a review on its own. What is a translation if not the original transmuted by your own understanding of the text into another language? The effect of chewing through a time travel story from five and some years ago is like finding my own time capsule—IdoRingo has translated quite a few English Jingsu fics into Chinese as well, and it’s a little like a full circle.
What made me want to translate this story is how personal it is: it felt unmistakably like something only this one person could have written. Some of it is the weaving together of references meaningful to her: besides the aforementioned Márquez and Murakami, there’s Auden’s “Funeral Blues” (superbly translated into Chinese), a romantic line Wang Kai recited, a classic book Hu Ge would later recommend—all possible, even natural, in this framework. But more of it is how she uses the time travel trope not to change the past, but to focus on what’s important in life, culminating in a beautiful causal loop paradox, a line spoken between Jingsu without beginning or end.
I’ll end on thanking IdoRingo/井户林檎 for bringing this book into existence and gifting me a copy—I feel so lucky that our paths could cross like this, the way the Internet links the life trajectories of people oceans apart together in these little slipknots, imaginary yet very real.
How do you depict social class disparities on a personal level, rather than masses of people with very different means and lives and the unwritten rules that divide them? How do you tell a meaningful story staked on these differences?
There are a lot of reasons why Nirvana in Fire is compelling, one of which is the assured way the narrative knows when to be subtle and when to bring the angst and drama, and its exploration of how identity is deeply entwined with social class is a great example of this.
Historical background
Though NiF is a story with a fictional historical setting/架空, it is still grounded in real history, and the choice of the Northern and Southern Dynasties as a very loose background period is no accident. During this time, the ruling class’s stranglehold on society was especially strong. In canon, you see nobles such as Xie Yu/Marquis Ning and Marquis Huaiyi own large estates and their own private militia, which was very much the situation back then. There were a large number of rebellions and unrests led by these aristocrats during this time, and being Emperor was a delicate balancing act to keep them happy but not let them gain too much power.
This kind of background is what a work of fiction generally wants to avoid directly dumping on the audience as exposition; a good period-setting story should stake its narrative conflicts on its historical basis in a logical manner and make the audience feel the conflict. As an example, the nine-rank selection system/九品中正制, the official selection process in use during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, is exactly what’s being discussed in the scene where Xiao Jingyan brings Shen Zhui and Cai Quan over to Su Manor (and in my opinion a good change from book to screen).
In particular, they’re talking about how to choose the selection officials/中正官 who grade candidates to be selected and ranked into positions of the imperial bureaucracy. Instead of the imperial examinations/科举 that many later dynasties use, this system has these selection officials recommend people to become officials and was instituted to replace the previous system (察举制) which had been fully taken over by the aristocracy. At first, the selection criteria of the nine-rank system were the candidate’s family background, virtue, and talent, but this again became corrupted over time by the ruling class to essentially only depend on background and connections with the selection officials. There was a well-known saying back then: 上品无寒门，下品无士族, which means no commoners in the top ranks, no upper class in the lower ranks.
In canon, corruption of this process is specifically linked to the ex-Crown Prince and Prince Yu’s power struggle, each packing the government full of well-to-do officials sympathetic to their own factions. Shen Zhui lists the factors in the process of choosing selection officials, from family background to houses of marriage and mentors, from which it’s clear that ruling class influence is inextricably tied to this process. They discuss whether to go for bold reforms and possible conflict and bloodshed, or something more incremental, and decide on choosing the least corrupt candidate within the pool of eligibility that would not ruffle feathers, essentially trying their best while staying within the bounds of the system.
This scene is also narratively important as the first Jingsu reunion after Mei Changsu was imprisoned in the Xuanjing Bureau and Jingyan discovered painfully that he had accused him of things he didn’t do. Through the class angle, I think Jingyan interprets Su Manor turning him away when he tried to visit earlier as the way a subject would implicitly slap the hand of their lord by reminding them of their place. If Jingyan has no official business to be at Su Manor, if he is only there to make a personal visit and apologize, then he is not there as Mei Changsu’s lord, but as his friend, which Jingyan has no right to be, any longer. Of course, that’s not the real reason (at least, not the only one), but Jingyan doesn’t know that. With these boundary-enforcing interactions, Jingyan believes Mei Changsu wants to remind him that he had erred precisely because he was too emotionally invested in his relationship with Sir Su instead of thinking logically, that the boundaries are there for a reason and he should maintain them.
So what does he do instead of trying to make more personal visits? He brings Shen Zhui and Cai Quan with him on an official visit from lord to subject, one specifically designed to pave a path forward for Su Zhe’s advancement in government, showing that he knows he was wrong and wants to make amends in a useful way without making an explicit apology, which Mei Changsu neither wants nor needs. Mei Changsu receives them warmly yet professionally in return, showing in turn that he has no qualms about continuing to serve his lord and that the past is past.
All in all, I find this scene a good example of subtle layered storytelling that occurs a lot in NiF: this conversation that is about social class on the surface has its underlying structure and place in the narrative also reflecting class differences. It shows how the feudal hierarchy leads to rampant misconduct in government while also warns of the dangers of venturing too far from the rules that are in place.
Mei Changsu’s (class) identities
Let’s now zoom out to the overarching story. Who is our protagonist? Someone once among the most elite of the elite class, who must now take on a commoner identity because of assumed crimes he’s innocent of. Who has to use this identity to navigate the ruling class world again in order to achieve his goals, all the while keenly aware of what he has lost.
Mei Changsu’s complicated identities are all very much staked on his complicated class and status. The result of the official selection system discussed above is that the court is full of those from wealthy, privileged backgrounds, and it would be incredibly difficult for a commoner to wield any real power. So when he lost the possibility of being Lin Shu, he lost the ability to be on similar footing as Jingyan, to even serve him in the open as an official. The Su Zhe identity is a useful cover, but also a way for him to compartmentalize his own roles and separate his Jianghu lord persona (more on this later) from the commoner schemer.
And this commoner mask is an interesting one. With the Jianghu resources at his disposal, he could probably craft an aristocratic identity that would take effort to expose. But he doesn’t, precisely because he wants the enemy to underestimate him as a man frail and sickly, with no powerful family behind him. It’s easier for him to slip through the cracks and act as a weapon this way, not to mention that Jingyan being linked to an unscrupulous aristocratic schemer would have bigger ramifications for his future reign.
So although Su Zhe is respected as a learned man in the capital, it all comes with the implicit acknowledgement that he could never hold real power, and honestly, the nobles are probably relieved by that, since someone like him high up in government would be very troublesome to a lot of them. It makes a lot of sense, then, why someone like Xiao Xuan, a man who is suspicious of factions to his very bones, would so casually tell Jingyan to go get advice from Su Zhe. Because from his perspective, this Su Zhe will never amount to anything, and so he can be tortured, can be a source of counsel, can be anything he needs to be to the court without consequences.
I think this character setup is a great depiction of how class boundaries affect people on a visceral level, the way how they’re often not in-your-face barriers, but rather an invisible, oppressive force that asphyxiates you slowly. Mei Changsu is someone who knows well every corner of the palaces he’s no longer allowed to enter freely and all the people he once joked with but must now bowed down to. This lens explains why he thinks of himself as someone so underhanded and improper when he really isn’t much of a villain in practice: another layer to his self-hatred is that he can only scheme in the dark, because the system does not allow him to serve his country out in the open. Lin Shu would hate this so, so much. His character angst renders abstract concepts into real sympathetic pain in the audience, and to me, this is far more effective than many tired tropes of class conflict. You know the ones I mean: blanket depictions of good poor people and evil rich people, or grubby starving orphans juxtaposed with partygoers eating canapés.
I would be remiss not to say that despite his self-deprecating act in the capital, Mei Changsu is obviously no ordinary commoner. He’s the head of the largest alliance in the Jianghu, but that just makes the contrast between his lord and subject personas even more drastic.
The role of the Jianghu
On my first NiF watch, I found the balance of wuxia and court politics quite strange—besides the first twenty minutes, Jianghu resources that Mei Changsu can conveniently tap to do various shady things for him or bail him out of trouble, and some magical poison business, there is very little actual depiction of wuxia or the Jianghu.
As a genre, wuxia is far more than people doing choreographed fight scenes while dangled from wires: many classic wuxia stories center on lower-class vigilantes with chivalry and honor (the xia/侠 in wuxia) trying to do good out in an unregulated Jianghu where the central bureaucracy has either failed the common people or has no reach; the government is often a background (or foreground) villain. One of the highest aspirations of a Jianghu person, in accordance with Daoist beliefs, is to live as a recluse, free of worldly concerns and one with nature. And so there’s something curious about the framework of NiF, where Mei Changsu and crew are coming in from a seemingly more unfettered existence to bind themselves to capital politics and its rigid rules (the Su Zhe identity also works in reverse: by not operating publicly as Mei Changsu, he’s preserving his reputation in the Jianghu, where people do not look fondly at all upon the government or those who work with them). Through the socioeconomic lens, I read the very few glimpses of the Jianghu as commentary on no matter how much influence you wield out there, no amount of flying magic and secret martial arts can effect real change against the insidious rigidity of the feudal hierarchy.
And so in a story that has almost nothing to do with the Jianghu, it acts as a foil to the bleak truths of the real world. Of course, it’s hardly as if the depicted Jianghu is some kind of egalitarian utopia: Mei Changsu is nevertheless lord of many people who obey him; he took the rigid structure of the army and established his own hierarchy in Langzhou (not saying that this is unusual—the typical wuxia sect is still inherently feudal). In the end, Nirvana in Fire is not a triumphant story of someone overcoming class boundaries: it’s about people very bound to the system who try to make things as good as possible within the lines. It says, even in a corrupt organization impossible to overthrow, there is hope in replacing those in power with better people, and that doing this work is meaningful even though it is difficult and at great personal costs.
After the identity reveal
Speaking of personal costs, a big plot moment that goes against modern expectations because of class identity is, well, the identity reveal itself. After Jingyan learns Mei Changsu is Lin Shu, many viewers thought there would be a warm reunion (and certainly there are a lot of fanfics on this theme). But they are no longer equals, and they cannot go back to the way things were. The reveal does not set them free—it only makes a complicated relationship even more fraught with tension. The contrast between this and his reveals with Nihuang and Nie Feng is huge, because though those two are of the upper class as well, they are not going to be the ultimate symbol and holder of imperial power.
The first time Jingsu is shown on screen together after the reveal, they only acknowledge this fact implicitly: Changsu doesn’t salute as he normally does, and Jingyan takes him to see the cell that once held Prince Qi—a commoner would not be allowed to randomly walk around the imperial prison (notice that it was Meng Zhi who was his chaperone before Jingyan took him, and earlier it was Prince Yu who had explicitly given him permission to visit Xie Yu’s cell).
On that dramatic closeup of Changsu’s face between the bars while he’s thinking about what occurred in that cell fourteen years ago, I can’t help but also see it as a visual metaphor: trapped by his status, he’s someone who appears to walk free but is incredibly shackled by societal conventions at every turn. On the outside looking in.
Mei Changsu’s future
The very next Jingsu scene also cuts to the heart of this conflict, as Changsu says:
苏哲是什么样的人，全京城都知道。身为阴诡之士，行阴诡之术，虽是夺权利器，却终非正途。
The entire capital knows what kind of person Su Zhe is. A cunning schemer with cunning plots, a sharp implement for gaining power but not of the proper path, in the end.
I think proper path/正途 does a lot of heavy lifting here, because 正途 also refers to the way of becoming an official through the normal selection process. So he’s saying that not only is he unfit for office because of the things he’s done, he is also improper because Su Zhe is an outsider to the bureaucracy who cannot have a real role.
This is one of the many reasons why Jingyan so badly wants Mei Changsu to become Lin Shu again: he knows how painful all this underhanded scheming must be for him, and he wants him to have official recognition and power. Sure, Jingyan can theoretically do what he wants as Emperor, but if he elevates Su Zhe against the court and the aristocracy’s wishes, he would be judged as an Emperor with private biases. The ruling class will use rumors of their illicit relationship against him. This is absolutely not what Mei Changsu wants, and he wants to leave Jingyan with this lesson on propriety even though their discussion is of no practical meaning because he’s not long for the world.
And to be clear, I don’t think Mei Changsu is snubbing his commoner identity out of elitism: if class boundaries were not so rigid, I think he could happily live a humble life of service. It is the system that has failed him. And NiF itself is incredibly indignant along with him, that he has to worship at his ancestral shrine in secret, that he cannot be recognized despite having done so much for his country and people, and it wants the audience to be indignant as well.
Most of all, NiF is kind to give him the ending he wants. There’s a great comment I read about how Xiao Xuan tacitly acknowledges Lin Shu’s identity when he lets him go to war as the army supervisor, because a commoner like Su Zhe wouldn’t even deserve to be in army leadership. To die on the battlefield has always been a glorious end in Lin Shu’s mind, but now it is doubly so, because he can finally die serving his country openly, and there is no better ending for Mei Changsu.
my biggest problem with writing nif fanfic is that i can’t decide how to translate 先生. technically it means “mister,” or “sir,” but mister sounds too modern and ordinary, whereas “sir su” sounds weird, because he’s not a knight. he is chief of jiangzuo alliance though, so that may work.
Strong personal feelings ahead, take with a grain of salt.
I hated Sir Su for 苏先生 the first time I saw it, but then I saw Master Su/Su-xiansheng and hated those even more (I have never seen Mister Su, probably because everyone finds it weird). I’m very used to Sir now.
Master Su doesn’t work for me because 先生 does not mean a master of people, and I strongly dislike introducing that implication to something without it. Sir, on the other hand, is a common title of respect to a man, and doesn’t imply knighthood to me. A waiter at a fancy restaurant might address someone Sir the same way they would call one 先生.
As for why I don’t like -xiansheng, well, that’s a more personal reason. In general, I hate seeing pinyin without context. Whenever I encounter pinyin, there’s a primal fear that sparks in my brain from the slow trauma of years of forgetting Mandarin. I instinctively think oh no, I won’t be able to parse this. And without tone marks, I don’t even know how to pronounce it. When an English news article describes some recently coined term in China only in pinyin, I stare at it for minutes trying to puzzle out the characters and fail; when I see a Chinese name written only in letters, I think about how awkwardly I would say it when I meet that person. Pinyin sits in this uncanny valley that I can’t cross.
Obviously, I know what -xiansheng means, but every pinyin phrase pricks me with discomfort when I run across them. So I err on the side of not leaving pinyin in translations, but there are definitely cases where it’s right to use. To ramble on a bit more, I see the purpose of pinyin usage in translation as threefold:
One, to indicate how something is pronounced in Mandarin. For people’s names, sure, makes perfect sense in a typical context, despite the failure of pinyin without tone marks to convey full pronunciation like I already complained above.
But anything beyond that, I think about it. Place names, for example, are often very descriptive in Chinese because we don’t generally name places after people or use loan words for places. Yellow River 黄河, East Sea 东海—why is it superior to translate the sound? What does a non-Chinese speaker gain from reading Huang He and Donghai? They learn how the place name is kind of pronounced in Mandarin (I say kind of, because the average non-Chinese speaker likely doesn’t know actual pinyin pronunciation), when they could have learned something about how Chinese people think of the place. To bring NiF into this, why translate 红袖招 as Hongxiu House/Court when Red Sleeve is so evocative? There’s a piece of information lost there, and the gain, in my mind, is far less.
This brings me to the second reason:
Two, because there’s no easy equivalent in English. For a simple example, units. It makes sense to keep cun 寸, chi 尺, and so on instead of converting to inches, feet, and so on. First of all, because the Chinese people in the Chinese world are not thinking in inches. And second of all, more important to me, it takes the reader (i.e. me in this fictional scenario) aback to see something un-Chinese. The reader might start to wonder, do Chinese people use inches? Was the original written in inches? Or was it in a Chinese unit that you converted?
There’s nothing wrong with something giving the reader pause. That’s what all footnotes essentially do, and I love footnoting. But a footnote pause delivers information, whereas confused pauses like this distract from the flow of the work with no gain. To further avoid distracting from the flow, I sometimes translate units to natural terms, like handspan, instead of something like chi if it’s a moment where I don’t want the reader to pause and learn facts.
-lang 郎 is an example of a title I keep in translation, because there’s no equivalent in English to me. I’ve seen it as Sir or Master, but it’s so far from either of those two (not to mention there already are terms that map to Sir/Master) that I think it should be kept in pinyin. And -lang is just so pretty even in letters, whereas -xiansheng looks like a…pinyin blob to me. I think Sir is sufficiently close to 先生 that the ease of access overrides the difference in meaning.
But wait, you might be saying. This is such a narrow-minded view. What about:
Three, to normalize pinyin words in the global consciousness. So many Japanese words have entered the English-speaking lexicon even though people didn’t have to learn kawaii when cute already exists! I should be doing my part to spread Chinese culture and normalize xiansheng, like sensei has been!
A compelling argument, for sure. It all goes back to the purpose of translation. How much of it is to simply present the work to someone who otherwise cannot experience it, and how much of it is to relay a different way of life and thinking? Should translations be comfortable or challenging? Am I excessively catering to my desire to make things easier for the imaginary reader in my head when real readers may, in fact, want to learn more about the other culture and would benefit from it? And how much of these considerations differ when applied to a scholarly translation of Tang Dynasty poetry versus PWP Jingsu smut (as an aside, the two aren’t actually that different in my eyes because well, there’s a lot of poetry in Chinese fanfiction)? There’s been so much good writing on this subject that you could be reading instead of this post, so I’ll just stop here.
This reason definitely weakens the objection in reason one. Non-Chinese speakers can fit both Donghai and its meaning in their head, as they’ve done with many loanwords. They may even be incentivized to learn Mandarin with more exposure to pinyin, which is a good thing!
Positives aside, I think it’s also important to note that many speakers of a Chinese language don’t speak Mandarin, and they either use a different romanization system or pinyin doesn’t represent their dialect accurately, so pinyin isn’t the be-all and end-all solution. But I think this argument isn’t quite as strong when the original work is by a Mandarin speaker, and this post is already long enough.
TL;DR I use Sir for 先生 in my writing because of my own cursed relationship with pinyin, but I understand and appreciate those using -xiansheng!
Resident pinyin hater back to repent my ways, a little.
There’s another thing pinyin does that I didn’t give it credit for:
Four, to abstract a concept when it would be abstracted for a native speaker.
I didn’t realize this until I had to translate a bunch of palace names. Let’s take Yǎngjū Hall/养居殿 from NiF and look at all the meanings a native speaker might associate with the name:
The literal meaning: 养 = cultivate + 居 = residence. It can be read as verb + noun, as in cultivating your place in the world, or simply noun + noun, cultivation and residence. Maybe you’d translate the full place name to something like Hall of Cultivating Residence, though it’s rather clunky.
The historical reference: this name likely derived from 养心殿, literally Cultivating Heart Hall, official translation Hall of Mental Cultivation, and the real palace hall many Qing Dynasty emperors lived in the Forbidden City. This reference suggests that the verb + noun parsing is more likely to be correct.
The hilarious meme: a lot of NiF viewers find 养居 funny because 居 is modern slang for pig (deriving from pig/zhū/猪 being pronounced like jū in some dialects), so now the name is Pigsty Hall, and the in the sty is, of course, the emperor.
The dirty quasi-pun: yángjù (note the different tones) is yang implement/阳具, or the male member.
The figurative allusion: this name is also quite possibly a reference to Mencius’s saying 居移气，养移体, meaning your residence transforms your bearing, and your cultivation transforms your constitution, or that our living environment and daily habits have a huge influence on ourselves. This would suggest the noun + noun parsing is more correct. It’s a subtle allusion to Xiao Xuan having lost himself on the throne, his place of power and residence corrupting him into a mistrustful and brutal man (great insight from [x]). Names with hidden meanings and allusions like this are extremely common in Chinese.
Of course, most of these meanings are not being perceived when someone thinks of this name. The brain only holds so much information at a time, and it’s very good at abstracting concepts, or else our mental circuits would explode every time we use language, if we constantly think of every single possible definition and association of every word we use.
To me, the most important thing in terms of how the name is perceived is that 养居 isn’t an already commonly known phrase. And so a fluent speaker, upon encountering the phrase for the first time, would likely first try to parse the literal meaning, then probably think about the hilarious pigpen meaning, if they’re online enough. The rest of the associations are probably not as often thought of, unless you’re a big fan of the Qing Dynasty/penis euphemisms/Mencius, especially the last one, which is a big leap. After the initial mental mapping and after Yangju Hall has been mentioned enough times, the name becomes an abstracted blob in a Chinese speaker’s head with a sound and series of characters associated with the practical meaning, the place where the emperor lives. That’s why I don’t think using the pinyin name is the cheap easy way out here, because Yangju Hall is arguably closer than Hall of Cultivating Residence to how a fluent speaker would perceive it once they’re used to the word.
In practice, for translations not restricted by word length (i.e. not subtitles), I like introducing an important pinyin name along with its associated surface-level meaning once, footnoting the other meanings and associations, and then using only the pinyin afterwards. So in this case, something like “…Yangju Hall [1], the Hall of Cultivating Residence, …”
This all ties in with my second point in the previous post: there really may be no easy equivalent in English for a name like this, when there are so many meanings, and none are strong. So I can think of a few things you risk by localizing names like this, even when you do it “correctly” by translating the literal meaning:
Elevating the literal meaning above all else is not how Chinese—a language that has always been heavily implicit, where what’s unsaid is as valuable as said—works at all. The literal meaning can even be the least important, because it’s only a mask for the real meaning. But using the hidden meaning doesn’t seem quite right either: it rather defeats the purpose of, well, being hidden.
Along those lines, sometimes the author intentionally chooses an ambiguous name for effect. To explicitly choose a meaning in translation is to deny the author’s agency.
Look at the official names of places in the Forbidden City: Gate of Divine Prowess/神武门, Gate of Loyal Obedience/顺贞门, Palace of Heavenly Purity/乾清宫…To non-Chinese speakers who lack the cultural background of how things are named in Chinese, it can seem that these imperial names are rather silly and dystopian-sounding, whereas in a language like English, the meaning of most place names is not immediately obvious. This is not such a big problem in ancient fanfiction translations, but very much an issue when translating press releases from the Chinese government, for example, when the difference in the literal and perceived severity and tenor of expressions often leads to translations that sound a lot more evil empire-esque than how a native speaker would think of the original (which is probably done on purpose, at least some of the time).
Does that mean I would keep all place names in pinyin? Definitely not! Consistency is overrated, especially when compared to clarity and accuracy, and when there are so many inconsistencies inherent in any language. There are plenty of place names where the strongest association for a native speaker is the surface-level meaning, and that’s where I think the literal translation is better, especially the one character place names that aren’t particularly valuable to normalize in the global consciousness (point three in the last post), like Tiger Hill for 虎丘 (the fictional NiF place and not the real Huqiu in Suzhou). I think this strikes a good balance between flattening every name with a single meaning and acting as if every single name is too abstruse and profound to be captured in another language. Of course, plenty of names fall in a gray area, and making these decisions is what the translator’s job is.
Anyways, that’s how much I can change my mind after six months. Ask me again in another six.
Because there are relatively few characters in Chinese (around 20k in a modern dictionary) compared to the number of words in other languages (100k+ in English), most characters carry many meanings. This leads to ambiguities if writing were to be fully composed from single-character words, which is why most words in modern Chinese are compounded from two or more characters, and the meaning is synthesized from the individual meanings. Here are some penis-relevant suffixes, in no particular order:
-物 thing
-器 organ/instrument
-根 root
-茎 stalk
-棒 stick
-柱 pillar
-具 implement
-刃 blade (ouch)
You’ll notice that these are all, well, things. This is one typical pattern for making a Chinese compound word: the second character describes the physicality in some way while the first describes an attribute (characters are flexible and can be either prefix or suffix depending on context). Here are some penis-relevant prefixes:
巨- huge (the opposite would be 微 for tiny, but it’s hard to find micropenises in erotica)
硬- hard
阴- yin
阳- yang
性- sex
那- that
玉- jade
肉- meat
凶- violent
男- male
Now we can create our own penis euphemism by mashing any two together. Here are some real quotes from explicit Jingsu fanfic (translations are kept literal here, but I almost always translate every euphemism to cock because it’s the English term I hate the least):
Xiao Jingyan’s yang implement was frighteningly large, even significantly larger than the average Alpha’s. He once joked that this was the might of the imperial bloodline, getting an eye roll from Mei Changsu.
凶刃 = violent blade
只是等到下一个清醒的瞬间，萧景琰已经将他的双腿分开。将那粗硬滚烫的凶刃抵上濡湿的穴口。《踏雪寻梅》
But the next instant he came to, Xiao Jingyan had already parted his legs. Pressed that thick, hard, and searing violent blade against his wet opening.
性器 = sex organ
萧景琰的囊口已经完全开了，里头两根性器探了出来，打在林殊大腿外侧 《四时歌》
Xiao Jingyan’s sac had fully opened, two sex organs emerging from inside and hitting against the outside of Lin Shu’s thigh.
Xiao Jingyan didn’t waste any more time either, grabbing the disinfectant gel conveniently by the bedside, applying it a few times on that thing of his then pressing it against Changsu’s tight opening.
The anatomical term for the penis is 阴茎 = yin stalk, the word that is the closest equivalent of penis. But why is the penis both a yin stalk and yang implement? Glad you asked. Yang is associated with the male and yin with the female, but the very concept of yin-yang is that there’s yin in yang and yang in yin (think of the symbol itself). The penis is a yin part because the privates are the most yin on the body. So you can think of it as either the thing of a yang being, or the yin thing on a yang being—the wonderful duality of the male member.
As you might expect, not all of the possible combinations are actually in use. Like, 阴棒 = yin stick isn’t a thing. Why not? I don’t know, it just isn’t. If you used it in context, readers would understand you mean penis and probably puzzle a bit over why you didn’t use the more common names.
Some of the combinations also mean other things. 凶器 = violent instrument actually means murder weapon in ordinary use. Can it be a penis euphemism during rough sex? Yes, but most of the time it means the real weapon. 那根 = that root is tricky because 根 is a classifier word (a similar concept to measure words in English) for long stick-like objects in addition to its meaning of root, so 那根 is almost always used in conjunction with other words, like that phallic [thing], as opposed to a penis on its own, which would probably be confusing to read. But when the character preceding 根 is something else, like 男- male, then it’s not being used in the classifier context, and 男根 = male root is indeed a penis.
Now that we’ve gotten the explanations out of the way, I searched through the corpus of Chinese Jingsu fics on my computer (around 1000+ fics) to look for all possible combinations of the prefixes and suffixes listed above, tossing out the compound words that don’t mean penis in context, to see what the most popular penises are. Behold the Jingsu compound penis matrix:
Congratulations to our winner, sex organ, and the distant runner-up, that thing. In contrast, the anatomical yin stalk is not very popular, kind of like how penis is not used as frequently as other terms in English erotica.
Okay, so now you have the power to create all kinds of penises. But what’s the correct penis to use in a particular situation? Jingsu smut is, of course, mostly ancient erotica (unless it’s a modern AU), so the tendency is to go for the more literary and euphemistic, and the way to do that is to be less physically descriptive. That thing is definitely more suited for delicate company than meat stick (though some authors happily use meat stick in their ancient settings anyways), and jade/yin/yang penises are also more literary. 玉茎 = jade stalk is, in fact, the traditional Chinese medicine term for the penis and also a literary term, in use for well over a thousand years.
萧景琰取了红帛将梅长苏的玉茎捆扎起来，被白肤衬起来耀眼得很。《梅烬》
Xiao Jingyan tied up Mei Changsu’s jade stalk with red silk, looking quite eye-catching against white skin.
Some more penises
It would be way oversimplifying things to say we’re done now when there are many more methods to form words and penises in Chinese besides our simple algorithm. Let’s first discuss some concepts with English analogs:
A lot of ancient cultures associated chickens with the male member, and we have cock in English. In Chinese, children call penises 小鸡鸡 = little chicken, kind of the equivalent of weewee. You would definitely not use it in a sexy story.
In English you could say he pushed himself inside, and you could say that in Chinese too, with 自己 = self. A relatively euphemistic term.
There’s also little [person’s name], so 小长苏 = xiao-Changsu and 小景琰 = xiao-Jingyan exist. And yes, so does 小小殊 = xiao-xiao-Shu, Lin Shu’s penis. This might be my least favorite one. These are not generally euphemisms you’d see in more…well-regarded erotica.
Okay, now onto the more uniquely Chinese penises. We have some more euphemistic ones:
那话儿 = those words, actually meaning that which we can’t speak of, and penis. 话儿 on its own just means words and remarks in general, but once you add that in the beginning, it becomes a whole other thing (though it can still mean those words in non-erotic contexts). This is one of the euphemisms found in the infamous erotic Ming Dynasty novel 金瓶梅 (Jīn Píng Méi), The Plum in the Golden Vase, so it has a storied history, though it isn’t used much in Jingsu smut at all. 不文之物 = uncivilized thing is also along these lines (之 here is a literary possessive particle). You can also put all kinds of adjectives before 之物 for a more customized penis.
Speaking of adjectives, one thing about Chinese very different from English is that parts of speech are fluid, especially in Classical Chinese where many characters are basically any part of speech. 火热 is fire + hot, but it can be both an adjective, fiery hot, that you stick in front of a penis, or a noun, fiery heat, that acts as a penis itself. So 火热之物, fiery hot thing, is a penis, and here’s an example where just fiery heat is the penis:
He paused slightly, then continued pushing inward. The passage is warm and tight inside, clinging onto his fiery heat as if they were two pieces made for each other, finally tessellating together and becoming whole in this moment.
We also have words with standard definitions that mean something else in erotica:
尘根 = dust root, which is actually a term in Buddhism that means one of the human senses rooting you to the mortal realm, often referred to as the realm of ephemeral dust (尘世). This is a creative allusion, because what else is a penis but a root that traps you in carnal desire and prevents you from reaching nirvana? Of course, whether it’s appropriate for use depends on whether you want to bring up mortality and the illusion of desire when your characters are getting it on. 孽根 = sinful root, or the more fun translation, root of evil, is also along these lines.
At this mere thought, Xiao Jingyan’s utterly untouched dust root trembled upwards, forming a stiff tent in his thin underclothes.
命根 = life root, meaning the source of vitality or reason for living, which is obviously the penis. This one does refer to penis in ordinary use as well, often humorously.
His life root was held in Xiao Jingyan’s mouth and forcefully sucked, as if threatening to extract his soul from his body.
欲望 = desire. Very popular in erotica, not in the dictionary as a penis, and may confuse a first-time fic reader why an abstract concept is being shoved places.
Xiao Jingyan gripped Mei Changsu’s slender legs, letting him wrap around his own waist, and pressed his desire, nearly exploding with need, against that tiny opening, slowly pushing in.
分身 = split body, or where the body parts (and what you do with it to another body). Its usual meaning is to find time to do something else, and this meaning is only for erotica.
At this point, I should say that some of these may have been invented for erotica to get around censorship. The coined words often evolve to become part of the vocabulary of the in-group over time, such that even when there’s no need to censor, people instinctively use the vocabulary to signal, whether subconsciously or consciously, that they’re in the know.
Of course, just because a euphemism is popular, or of proper ancient lineage, doesn’t mean it will be subjectively to your taste. Jade stalk burns my eyes despite being a classic literary term, which probably says more about my Chinese than anything else; someone who’s really internalized this term and isn’t still on the literal level of understanding probably doesn’t mind it at all. Honestly, my original intention was to giggle a bit at all the euphemisms, but now that I’ve stared at them for a while, they all seem…okay to me (except xiao-xiao-Shu, that one can die). Not sure whether that’s a good thing or not.
A bonus last one very relevant to Jingsu, 龙根 = dragon root, just for His Majesty’s penis.
Xiao Jingyan’s dragon root was still buried inside him, his lower body slick and wet, a completely sorry mess, and the two nubs on his chest were being wantonly toyed with again—Mei Changsu really wished he could just pass out on the spot and be done with it.
Here’s a penis alignment chart that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a summary of our findings:
What if I don’t want to make penises?
As you’ve seen so far, Chinese is very good for euphemisms, and you can write the dirtiest smut without mentioning any parts once.
My favorite Jingsu sex euphemism is easily 梅开二度, literally plum blossoms bloom for the second time, which is an idiom meaning reaching the pinnacle again. It’s frequently used to describe a footballer scoring the second goal in a single match, someone finding new love after a failed relationship, or yes, orgasming for the second time in one night. But in the Jingsu context, it can also be literally read as…Mei Changsu “opens” for the second time.
I would write another post on euphemisms for other body parts and sex in general (including the inexplicably many sex puns in NiF canon names), but this euphemism is clearly the pinnacle, and I will not reach it again.
Calligraphy is one of the highest Chinese art forms, and displaying calligraphy in your house is a common thing to do whether you’re an ancient scholar or modern Chinese person with disposable income. As both art and writing, calligraphy simultaneously expresses the meaning of its text and the spirit of the one wielding the brush; as decoration, it imbues the surrounding space with its style and helps you project a certain image of yourself to visitors. Let’s take a close look at all the Su Manor calligraphy in Nirvana in Fire.
Though the calligraphy shown above is probably the most memorable, there are actually a total of five pairs (ten total) of hanging scrolls of calligraphy in the main room of Su Manor, plus the entrance calligraphy to your right as you enter. Here’s a floor plan of the room that I’ve redrawn based on a Chinese fan-made floorplan to highlight where the calligraphy are located, pair A being the main pair (arrows indicate the side you view them from):
Let’s start with the simplest, the four-character entrance calligraphy mounted to the wall, as seen here in wide view relative to the right scroll of Pair A and as a close-up:
If you’re unfamiliar with ancient Chinese writing, it’s read top-to-bottom then right-to-left (Mainland China writing is nearly all left-to-right, top-to-down now, while Taiwanese and Hong Kong print are still mostly in the original orientation). These four characters, 上善若水, is a quote from Laozi, the founder of Daoism, in the foundational text Dao De Jing. The literal meaning is “Water is the highest form of being.” This is meant as an adage for how one should conduct oneself. The next few lines in the Dao De Jing explains it further: water provides for every living thing but doesn’t fight with any; water settles in places disliked by people, so it is close to the way of Dao. One should strive to be like water, content to be humble, to be of reserved character, to be kind to your friends, to speak as honestly as water is, to govern as orderly as water flows, to be as capable as water is, and to wait for the correct opportunity to make one’s move, like water. Only those who are non-confrontational like water will be free of worries (水善利万物而不争，处众人之所恶，故几于道。居善地，心善渊，与善仁，言善信，政善治，事善能，动善时。夫唯不争，故无尤). Mei Changsu is projecting an image of himself as a scholar striving toward Daoist and Confucian ideals, so it definitely makes sense that he would have something like this on his wall (not saying that he wasn’t actually striving for some of those ideals himself, either, but that’s more of a topic for another time).
Now, for the writing itself. This is a good time to mention that there are multiple distinct scripts in Chinese history (more on this later), and these four characters are written in a hybrid style borrowing from seal script (篆书; seal meaning engraving and not the animal) and clerical script (隶书), two of the oldest styles after the very ancient oracle bones script. During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, which NiF is loosely set in, seal script had already been largely reduced to ceremonial and decorative purposes (like all the overhead building signs you see in the show), and clerical script was a popular style of writing (many street banners and writing samples in the show were in this).
So here are the four characters compared to typical seal and clerical script characters from fonts (I say typical because these renderings have been popularized enough to become standard font sets in these scripts, but there are many variations and no one “true” way to write these characters), plus real samples of ancient handwriting that show some of the many extant variants:
Good/善 and water/水 are relatively closer to clerical script while the other two characters are closer to seal script, but because clerical script evolved from seal script, there is a lot of overlap in its early forms with seal script, and the transition isn’t sharply defined.
Clerical script looks so much wider and shorter than seal script (and other scripts, too): that’s not me stretching pictures for no good reason—a popular explanation is that it was due to clerical script originating from writing seal script quickly with a brush on bamboo slips, and the texture of bamboo fibers led to the distinctive head and tails of the horizontal strokes as well as shorter vertical strokes.
Though I’m by no means an expert, I agree with the author of an excellent blog post on NiF calligraphy [1] that this calligraphy really doesn’t look very good. The strokes are crooked and sloppy in unsatisfying ways and the widths vary for no apparent reason. They’re neither like standard clerical script strokes, with the classic rounded and strong head and tapering flared tail (蚕头雁尾), nor standard seal script strokes, which should be balanced and of uniform width and strength. Most of the real samples look noticeably better to me.
Of course, rules are made to be broken, but when you’ve seen enough you get a sense of what’s convincing as a personal style, and what’s not. I have to imagine that Feiliu wrote this while Mei Changsu held his hand or something, and maybe that’s why Su-gege would prominently display this writing.
The hanging scrolls
The calligraphy on the hanging translucent gauze scrolls are all written in cursive script (草书), which is infamously wild and difficult to read if you don’t know what you’re doing (like me). The author of [1] comes to the rescue by saying this is an imitation (临本) of 《自叙贴》, which basically means “autobiographical note calligraphy.” It was written by by Tang Dynasty monk and calligrapher Huaisu (怀素; his name is romanized like this because Huai isn’t his family name—Huaisu, taken together, is his monk name) around 777 CE and is one of the most renowned pieces of cursive calligraphy in history.
(An aside on imitations: It’s quite common to do calligraphy in the style of a great master in order to refine one’s own calligraphy and to gain new insights and appreciation on the original, both in the past and present. There’s no pejorative sense to this kind of imitation unlike what the word might carry in English.)
So here’s the original—one long horizontal scroll that I’ve chopped up into four pieces given the limited page width (go to Wikipedia for the high-res version):
Some things of note:
The actual calligraphy by Huaisu is in the drawn red box, but it only takes up about half of the scroll because there are also extensive sections written in other scripts, not by him—these are prefaces and endnotes (题跋) by later collectors. The four giant seal script characters at the start (top rightmost) of the scroll is by a later calligrapher and says 藏真自序, 藏真 being Huaisu’s courtesy name and 自序 means autobiographical note (it’s a synonym for 自叙). It’s part of traditional Chinese art appreciation for the collector to add to a piece of good art with their own comments, which range from a simple note of name and date to analysis and admiration of the work, sometimes having great literary value in their own right. There are also a ton of stamps (印跋) from different collectors, including emperors, so as to leave their mark. You can tell from the massive number of stamps and notes alone that this is a highly esteemed work of art that passed through many admiring hands.
The calligraphy is in wild cursive (狂草) script, the most unrestrained class of cursive script, one where the writer should be in a fervent, passionate flow state to create an unbridled expression of one’s inner spirit; in highly stylized scripts, this transmission of the creator’s inner mind and emotions to the reader is often more important than what the characters themselves say. Some of the hallmarks of wild cursive that you can see here: hugely varying character sizes and spacings, idiosyncratic ways of writing characters, and characters very connected to each other. Being able to write many characters in one continuous stroke (一笔书) is a state of creativity held in high esteem, like the common expression “to create with one single exhale” (一气呵成). A good piece of cursive calligraphy should show moments of calm amid the dynamism and order in its chaos.
Like the vast majority of calligraphy and ancient writing, there’s no punctuation or breaks. Classical Chinese has certain characters that act as function words (虚词) to indicate where breaks occur. Though Chinese writing is usually punctuated nowadays, modern calligraphy, as a continuation of an ancient art, is still generally not.
There’s some controversy over whether any of the surviving scrolls (there are several copies) are the actual calligraphy by Huaisu himself; many believe that the original is lost, and what we think of as 《自叙贴》 is an imitation by a Song Dynasty calligrapher. Even if so, it’s still a highly esteemed work of art.
Let’s start with Pair A, the most prominently displayed and therefore easiest to figure out. Here’s a full view of the right scroll in episode 18:
Here it is cleaned up and put next to the original calligraphy it corresponds to:
The first line of the scroll on the right starts at the top of one of Huaisu’s lines, but the other lines are broken differently because they’re obviously two differently dimensioned surfaces, and the imitation also ends in the middle of one of Huaisu’s lines.
This is what the three lines say in Traditional Chinese, written left-to-right, up-to-down instead of up-to-down, right-to-left (we’ll get to the meaning later once we find out what all the scrolls):
形恠狀翻合宜人人欲問此 中妙懷素自言初不知語疾 速則有竇御史冀雲粉壁
The last line has one fewer character—as I mentioned above, cursive calligraphy is about expressing your inner spirit and not about making sure the number of characters in each line is consistent, though these lines in the imitation are much more consistent in character size and number than the original.
Now let’s take a closer look at the calligraphy, focusing on the first line of the imitation. Here’s a comparison of the Huaisu original, what’s on the hanging scroll, and the other four main calligraphy scripts:
I chose this order because it’s the commonly accepted order of these scripts being developed: seal, clerical, cursive, regular, and semi-cursive (篆、隶、草、楷、行). Although technically semi-cursive derived from clerical and originated before regular, it wasn’t in wide use until later.
Some things to note:
The one big difference in style is how Huaisu often wrote with a dry brush, but the imitator didn’t. For beginner calligraphers, it’s usually considered important to always load your brush properly so you always have nice full ink. But Huaisu is a calligraphy master, and the dry brush is a deliberate artistic choice that adds to the forceful feeling, as well as a consequence of wanting to preserve the flow of writing many characters in a row and not pausing to load the brush. While there are gradations in ink shade in the imitation, they’re hard to see in normal lightning without all the adjustments in Photoshop.
If you’re curious why 人人 is written 人 and then two dots, in calligraphy you can write the second character of two repeated characters as two dots if they form a doubled phrase together, as is the case here (not sure what the two dots in 此 is supposed to be in the imitation—there are no dots in the character).
It’s not as obvious in this example, but the imitation is less connected than Huaisu’s calligraphy, but losing to one of the greatest master calligraphers in history is not something to feel bad over.
I made this comparison to stress that cursive script isn’t different from modern typography because it’s old, but because it’s an artistic style; other forms of writing with thousands of years of history, developed before and after cursive, are much more similar to modern typeface and readable to modern eyes without training. One of the wonderful things about Chinese is how you can easily read a lot of writing from over two thousand years ago (though understanding the meaning is much harder!).
Now, on to the other pairs, which are all thankfully imitations of the same work. These are more difficult to find since they show up infrequently and at inconvenient angles. This scene in episode 34 is one of the few that shows the top of pair B clearly and the bottom portion of pair A, left scroll (and also a rare occasion of Mei Changsu using the couch):
With this view, I can figure out the excerpt corresponding to the left pair A scroll:
間興來小豁胸中氣忽然絕 叫三五聲滿壁縱橫千萬字 戴公又雲馳豪驟墨列奔駟
From some other partial views and the reasonable assumption that these line are continuous portions of the original, with no characters omitted, the Pair B right scroll says:
向使師得親承善誘函挹規 模則入室之賓捨子奚適嗟 嘆不足聊書此以冠諸篇首 (this end might be a character off, I couldn’t find a view of it)
Left:
似則有張禮部雲奔蛇走虺 勢入座驟雨旋風聲滿堂盧 員外雲初疑輕煙澹古松又 (again, end is uncertain here)
Here’s the new years scene in episode 14, with pair C shown in the back:
From looking at that and some other partial views, I get for the right:
Pair E is the most elusive, and besides some views where it’s fluttering in the background, I could only find any of its text in the same episode 34 scene as above, but unfortunately extremely blurry. I was about to give up and post this anyways, but then I tried a deblurring tool, and what do you know:
The left is the original screenshot from the show, and the right isn’t the best example of deblurring, but you can see how the characters are much clearer now and I can make out key characters like 故 and 英.
(An aside on deblurring, as if we haven’t had enough asides: you can think of an out-of-focus blur as a transformation that takes each bit of focused light from the original source and spreads it by the rules of optics. If these bits of light were randomly smeared out, it would be hard for us to recover anything sensible. But because the rules of optics at human-level scales apply the same way to each ray of light, and we know what they are thanks to millennia of science and math, we can recover the original information if we guess that transformation correctly and apply the inverse. The foreground, which was in focus before, is distorted from said transformation. The author of the deblurring tool I used has a good blog post on this.)
From a lot of fiddling with the tool and squinting:
Pair E right is the one I’m least sure about. I think the first character might be 開, but the other visible characters don’t seem match the corresponding excerpt, and it wouldn’t be next to the left scroll on the original like the other pairs are. I did also watch various behind the scenes Su Manor footage, but none showed clearer views of the scrolls. Rather than risk misidentifying it, I’ll leave it as an unsolved mystery for now.
Here’s Huaisu’s original again (ignoring all the pre- and postscripts), with the portions that have been imitated for the hanging scrolls highlighted:
And here’s the full text of the original with each of the scrolls labeled. As with most Classical Chinese texts, the punctuation was added by modern scholars because it would be quite hard to read otherwise. The full text is also one of the notes written on the end of the original scroll itself in regular script (but without punctuation):
These fragments often start and stop at the middle of phrases and don’t have coherent meaning on their own, but that makes total sense once you realize the calligrapher started each scroll at one of the start of the lines in the original.
What does it mean?
As I mentioned, the calligraphy itself is the more valuable part of this writing, not what the words mean themselves. There are some famous pieces of calligraphy that are also original poetry or prose of high literary value, but this isn’t really known as one of those. But we can’t come so far and not talk about the meaning!
Here’s my translation (consulting [2], [3], [4], [5] for the translation from Classical to modern Chinese) with the portions on the scrolls roughly bolded:
Huaisu is from Changsha and a devout Buddhist since young. When not reciting scripture or meditating, I have a keen interest in calligraphy. I regret not being able to see the marvelous calligraphy works of past masters with my own eyes—what I’ve been able to see is quite limited. And so I took up my book chest and monk’s staff to the west to journey to the capital. I visited with famous contemporary scholars and discussed the intricate art of calligraphy with them, and was able to see many classic pieces that had been difficult to view before. Now my mind is expanded and uncertainties reduced. Though my calligraphy has manyparts crude and unsightly, the scholar officials did not object to it.
Yan Zhenqing of the Ministry of Justice is a renowned calligrapher—his brush is masterful, as are his calligrapher appreciation skills, like the endnote he wrote for my calligraphy. In addition, because the Bureau Official Lu Xiang and Minister Zhang Zhengyan (courtesy name of Zhang Wei), once wrote a poem set to song for me, Yan wrote this preface for it:
“The eminent monk Huaisu is outstanding among his peers. His character is wise and frank, his disposition clear and free. He has admired and imitated the absolute masters of cursive calligraphy for years now, and is famous from the Yangtze River to the Five Ridges. The former Deputy Minister of Personnel Wei Zhi saw Huaisu’s strokes and added encouragement, saying that it is accomplished; the current Deputy Minister of Rites, Zhang Wei, appreciates Huaisu’s wild spirit, associates with him, and introduces him to others. In addition, famous poets who love calligraphy also wrote poems to praise him that often filled whole scrolls.
Cursive calligraphy originated in the Han Dynasty. Du Du and Cui Yuan brought it to an art form; then in late Han, Zhang Boying’s calligraphy stood out among many with its unique beauty. Afterwards there was the father and son Wang Yizhi and Wang Xianzhi who continued the cursive tradition, then inherited by Yu Shinan and Lu Jianzhi in the Tang Dynasty, who not only passed down the oral tradition but taught calligraphy hands on. This continued to Official Zhang Xu of Wu County. Although he’s self-indulgent and headstrong, his wildness and unrestrainedness unsurpassed by others past or present, the method of his brush is and his calligraphy are good enough as models, his way with the brush meticulous and of the highest purity. Zhenqing often associated with him and learned from him as my calligraphy master when young, but my disposition was poor and I was busy with other affairs, causing me to not learn seriously, achieving nothing as a result. Now I wish I could have his instruction again, but it is too late.
Then I saw Huaisu’s cursive calligraphy and it reminded me of my late master’s, how its strokes are bold and unusual, the brush speed astonishingly fast. If we can go back to the past, and this master monk can receive instruction from my late master, then no one would be more suited to reaching the highest level of the art. I can’t quite express my feelings, and so I wrote down these words as a preface for now.”
After this, many words of praise were written, enough to overflow the book chest.
In these include what Minister Zhang of Rites said: “His brush is like a wild venomous snake running in the grass, or like wind and rain suddenly descending upon the room, the whole house echoing its sound.”
Official Lu said, “At first, light smoke shaking millennia-old pine trees, and then, ten thousand knife edges of mountain peaks.”
Wang Yong of Yongzhou said: “Like the withered vines shaken by winter apes while drinking water, like the strong man heaving metal in the mountains.”
Scholar Zhu Yao said: “The touch of brush to paper is like lightning and thunder, flowing ceaselessly; when the character is complete, it flies away like an awe-inspiring dragon.”
For evaluations of my personality and style, there is the Imperial Censor Li Zhou who said: “When Zhang Xu did calligraphy, people called him the mad Zhang. Now Huaisu does calligraphy, and I want to call him the wild monk. Who says ‘wild’ can’t be the successor to ‘mad’?”
Minister Zhang also said, “He Zhizhang of Mount Ji was once famous for his calligraphy, and the mad Zhang was also impressive in his style.”
Imperial Censor Xu Huang said, “If one seeks originality, one cannot be bound by rigid rules. Thin characters are like a parched stream, a brush without ink. Two or three lines written while drunk cannot be replicated when sober.”
Imperial Censor Dai Shulun said, “The hand is led by the heart. This calligraphy is novel, the shapes strange but unexpectedly appropriate. Everyone wants to know its secrets, but Huaisu himself says he can’t explain it, either.”
For evaluations of my calligraphy speed, there are these examples. Imperial Censor Dou Ji wrote this poem, “Across white walls of a colonnade, when in the proper spirited state, he can cry out three or five times and fill tens of walls with thousands of characters.”
Minister Dai also said, “His brush races like a galloping horse, the whole room exclaiming over its impossible speed.”
For evaluations that criticize me for being foolish and inferior, there is my uncle and official, Qian Qi, who said, “You are a lone crane flying far without a companion, a singular cloud in the empty skies. In your wildness you scorn the entire world, but you obtain true understanding in your drunkenness.”
These are all profound words of encouragement that someone superficial like me obviously doesn’t deserve. I only feel more guilt and dread from them.
Written the 54th calendar year, winter, 28th day of the 10th month.
Serious props if you actually read through all that. The short version would be: I, Huaisu, am a humble monk and poor calligrapher, but here are a lot of quotes from these other cool people who say I’m an amazing calligrapher. I don’t deserve the praise, of course.
Have another bulleted list:
There are multiple points of contention in the passage among the translators to modern Chinese, some over the identification of individual characters and some over the meaning. In particular, Classical Chinese being very concise and often dropping subjects makes it hard to tell who the sentences are referring to. I picked whatever makes the most sense to me.
All the mentioned names are still known historical figures, and Yan Zhenqing (颜真卿), in particular, is another renowned calligrapher who has his own eponymous style. That long quote from him was an earlier preface he wrote for the packaged bundle with the poem-song praising Huaisu, with an interlude about the history of cursive stuck in there.
The last quote from Huaisu’s uncle isn’t exactly saying he’s foolish and doesn’t quite read that way either—it’s more a combination of praise, warning, and encouragement. As his senior relative, his uncle can’t just praise Huaisu directly, he has to do it in a roundabout way. Your relatives supposedly dissing you while secretly being proud is definitely a common Chinese experience.
Why are these displayed in Su Manor?
Time for a bit of speculation. Let’s ignore the anachronism of Tang Dynasty calligraphy showing up in a pre-Tang setting, since NiF isn’t supposed to be fixed to a historical period anyways. Wrist strength and agility are commonly considered crucial for good calligraphy, and exactly what Lin Shu lacked after his poison treatment that caused him to change his handwriting from regular script (with a touch of semi-cursive) to clerical script (I’m dubious that clerical script actually requires less wrist to write well, but that’s probably another investigation for another time). Perhaps the calligraphy is a mundane choice, set up to give him the image of a cultured scholar who appreciates the fine arts; maybe Mei Changsu likes the humblebrag text, or maybe, he chose this calligraphy to remind himself of what he had lost, what he aspires to be?
I want to end on some reasons why the cursive scrolls are particularly memorable for the viewer, outside of the universe. Aesthetically, I find them a beautiful design choice: everything in the house is neat and orderly, and the wild and unrestrained vigor of the cursive lends a great contrasting sense of movement in the stillness even though it is, of course, not actually moving. Unlike the most typical presentation of hanging white paper up against the wall, these translucent banners, especially the main pair, are striking spatial elements that have a real presence in the room, like harmonious ghosts.
And most of all, a strong spirit written on a delicate frame is exactly who Mei Changsu is. When the scrolls show up again in NiF2, tattered inside an empty room, barely given a glance by people who have no idea what once existed here, it’s a real gut punch of dramatic irony for the audience (even though it’s totally different calligraphy with different characters and handwriting—let’s call it meta-commentary on how history and memory corrupts).
Revisiting this moment, after I’ve spent a good number of hours with the scrolls, I can’t help but see it in the context of Mei Changsu’s legacy. Even though very few remember him decades years later, what he did mattered, and there are traces of it dispersed everywhere in that world. The act of putting brush to paper is ephemeral, but the piece of art remains for as long as history will allow it; justice is difficult and peace is fragile, but both are worth fighting for.
At the start of this year, I decided to translate a Chinese Nirvana in Fire fanfic to English, which apparently led to a debilitating addiction. Some seven months and 250k+ words translated later, here are some thoughts from someone who decided to just go for it instead of learning any translation theory beforehand.
Translations are often described as a delicate balancing act between faithfulness, clarity, and elegance. Personally, I like to replicate the holistic experience of the reader in a new language as much as possible, plus give tidbits about Chinese language/culture (usually in the footnotes) when it’s not distracting to the emotional arc at hand. In the spirit of not learning any theory, I’m skipping all the framework laying one should probably do at the beginning and going straight to some of my favorite case studies.
Faithfulness: Preserving the aura of expressions
InChief’s Getting Married (Ch. 9), a regional official is described as a 芝麻绿豆官, or a sesame seed and mung bean official, an expression meaning he’s insignificant. We don’t have that in English, but we do have a similar small food that also means insignificant: peanuts. Because peanuts is an informal expression and may be unfamiliar to some readers, I translated it to a lowly official worth peanuts so that even if the reader doesn’t know about peanuts, they don’t have to go look it up to get the point (somewhat ironically, it’s the alternative meanings of common words that often trip readers up more than uncommon words, because if you look up an uncommon word you’ll get the dictionary definition, but if you look up peanuts you probably get…the nuts themselves or the comic strip, neither of which are helpful here).
Translating idioms and expressions are a huge part of translating Chinese because Chinese people really, really love their expressions. You can certainly translate them directly, and I do that both with footnotes and sometimes without, when the meaning is clear. But this comes at a cost to clarity, because when a common expression in Chinese becomes an unfamiliar one in English, the experience of the reader is changed from getting a nice splash of color in the prose to stumbling over a strange turn of phrase, which honestly isn’t all that faithful if you’re interested in preserving the flow of the narrative. That’s why I really like translating a expression in Chinese into an equally common expression in English while keeping something of the character of the expression.
For another example, in the same story (Ch.5), Xiao Jingyan says that Sir Su made him 一见倾心, which the dictionary might say love at first sight. At first sight for 一见 is spot-on, but 倾心, literally tilted heart, conveys that striking kinetic energy of your heart turning upside down or pouring out when you see something incredibly lovely, so I wanted something with more oomph.
Fell in love is a common expression and has the physical element, though I find it a bit too common, such that I don’t even think about the physical part as I read it; lost his heart sticks closer to the heart part of 倾心 rather than the physicality of the action; heart skips a beat orheart gave a lurch are also good, but they’re a bit ephemeral compared to Jingyan’s heart lying there sideways, gurgling. So I translated it to fell head over heels, which has that topsy-turvy funny feeling of love I’m looking for. Chinese uses heart-related expressions a lot more than English, on average, so I don’t think much is lost by removing one heart.
Speaking of love, I try to avoid using love unless the original text specifies 爱 (as another aside, 爱 has somewhat different connotations in ancient times compared to now, but often the author will use it in modern register despite the ancient setting, so you have to distinguish that). There are so many ways to express love in Chinese that I try to do it creatively in English as well. See this key dialog in The Plum Blossom Trials (Ch. 20):
“这样的线，应该绑在真君钟情的人身上才是。” “你怎么知道我没绑在我心仪的人身上呢？”
You can translate both 钟情 and 心仪 as love:
“This kind of thread should be tied on the person Immortal Majesty loves.” “How do you know I didn’t tie it on someone I love?”
But the result is so flat and obscures the fact that they didn’t use the same love.
心仪 is usually in the dictionary as admire, but in English, the verb form of admire doesn’t really make sense as a counterpoint to love, because the platonic meaning of admire comes first for me (perhaps a subject to ramble on for another day). So I went with the more literal meaning of possessing the heart:
“This kind of thread should be tied on the person Immortal Majesty loves.” “How do you know I didn’t tie it on someone who has my heart?”
And I did end up using love for 钟情 instead of a synonym, because one of the loves is already changed to a roundabout expression here, and two different fancy wordings would be overdoing it.
Clarity: Serving word salads judiciously
Continuing the idea of faithfulness not being entirely about the literal meaning, I often think of clarity as its partner, instead of an enemy. Consider this part of a sentence from Entering the Curtains (co-translated with @tofufei, Ch. 2):
文武双全、惊才绝艳的林少帅，霁月清风、温润如玉的梅宗主，“扑通”一声摔倒在地
In mostly literal English:
The Young Marshal Lin outstanding at both literary and martial pursuits, with unrivaled talent that astounds, the Chief Mei like a clear moon and fresh breeze (meaning peaceful and beautiful), mild and gentle like jade, fell on the ground with a plop
This is obviously extremely long and unwieldy. Because Chinese is so concise number-of-characters-wise (though the overall amount of information is the same, of course—one can think of it as packing much of the entropy into the characters themselves instead of long combinations of low-entropy letters of an alphabet), short descriptions in Chinese easily turn into long adjective phrases in English, or what I refer to as a word salad.
Let’s think about why this was written like this. The point of these descriptors is to set up the contrast between the two identities and how unexpected it is for either Lin Shu or Mei Changsu to fall on the ground with a plop. Because those four character phrases are both well-known and relatively shorter in Chinese, a Chinese reader would likely not spend much time reading them in proportion to the rest of the sentence as an English reader would digesting that unfamiliar word salad. To spill a bunch of descriptors might be more faithful on paper, but not in terms of how the reader actually perceives the sentence. So to preserve the rhythm and balance of the sentence, we went with:
The Young Marshal Lin prodigiously adept with both sword and ink brush, the Chief Mei elegant as a fine breeze on the full moon, fell on the ground with a loud plop
I’d argue that this is more faithful and clearer than the literal version, in both cadence and amount of imagery in the reader’s head. Note that the jade reference is taken out in the interest of establishing a parallel between the two Lin Shu and Mei Changsu descriptions: Lin Shu = sword + brush, Mei Changsu = breeze + moon. I don’t usually omit a chunk of meaning like this, but there are truly a vast number of jade comparisons in this fic and believe me, we’re not missing this one.
The exact composition of a word salad depends heavily on context, of course—the same words in different contexts will often be translated differently. Consider this from Chief’s Getting Married (Ch. 5):
我的苏先生，我那温柔清雅、仙姿玉质的苏先生……
Again, the usual superlatives for Mei Changsu. Here Emperor Jingyan is tossing out all the wonderful things about the person he fell head over heels with at first sight, and the effect is meant to be a bit ridiculous. So I dumped it all out without commas like a lovesick person would rattle off a monologue in their head:
My Sir Su, my ethereal gentle elegant divine Sir Su…
I could have gone with immortal-esqueand jade-like for 仙姿 and 玉质, but I didn’t want to disrupt the flow of common adjectives with clunky hyphenated ones.
Elegance: Using new meaning to convey the original meaning
Infuck, is my history circle really trending??!! (aka the forum fic), Mei Changsu, a renowned writer in an alternate history China where Nirvana in Fire actually happened, writes a letter to Xiao Jingyan in Classical Chinese inviting him to a date private flower viewing party:
红梅类卿，相与观否？
In modern Chinese, this would be:
红梅像你，一起看吗？
And in English:
Red plum blossoms are like you. Want to see them together?
But this fails to convey the literary Classical Chinese feel and the implicit meanings of Mei Changsu being 1) a very good writer 2) a very good writer who flirts using his brush.
Comparing your beloved to something immediately reminded me of “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18. And so I ended up translating it to:
Shall I compare thee to a plum blossom? Shall we view them together?
This works for me on multiple levels:
Implying that Mei Changsu is a good writer who has a fancy way of flirting, whether the reader knows it’s a Shakespeare reference or just likes the way it’s worded (but if the reader doesn’t, then, oh well).
The “Shall…? Shall…?” sentence structure mirrors how the original is two phrases of four characters each. I didn’t overdo it by equalling syllables/meter, because the original phrases are not that similar besides the length. I dropped red to make the sentence simpler; it’s also made obvious later that the plum blossoms are red.
Mapping 卿 to thee: both are archaic and intimate forms of you (I almost always translate 卿 to thou/thee when it’s used this way).
Sonnet 18 was also written by a man and addressed to a man, and some cite it as evidence of Shakespeare being bisexual. It’s a cute allusion tucked inside this metafiction of present-day netizens trying to figure out if Mei Changsu and Xiao Jingyan were gay for each other from their writing (among other things).
No translation is perfect, of course. A potential downside is that readers might get distracted into thinking about Shakespeare and wondering whether the original is a Shakespearean reference (it is not). But hopefully readers come away with what I’m trying to convey: in the world of this fic, Mei Changsu is as good, as famous, and as romantic a writer as the Bard.
Yana Toboso writes her characters with their futures in mind and plans events in the story as much as ten years in advance. Following a short discussion with @abybweisse, I decided to make a post covering Grell’s character arc, which will go into depth about how I think Toboso has been rewriting her portrayal and what I see as the character’s future. I want to talk about Grell’s introduction, what Toboso has chosen to focus on since that introduction, what she has discarded, and what I see as her intentions for the future of the manga. This is entirely my opinion, so don’t treat what I say as gospel. I took inspiration from this postandthis post.
Origins (2007; chapters 9-12)
In many ways, Grell is an unusual character in Black Butler. As mentioned in the first post above, she was added to a pre-existing story about a female serial killer (Angelina Dalles) as a supernatural foil to Sebastian to appeal to GFantasy magazine’s shounen demographic. The design for the grim reapers wasn’t even finalized until during the Jack the Ripper story arc, which is why Grell has pointy teeth but none of the grim reapers who appear later do. Because of this writing decision, she runs into the problem of potentially not having a predetermined place in the story, unlike other characters whose arcs were decided as many as ten years earlier.
Right off the bat, Grell is depicted as a serial murderer of cisgender women, one of the oldestandmost common tropes of queer characters in media. Her writing also invokes specific stereotypes of transgender women found in Japanese media at the time but that’s a topic for another conversation. Grell is a thoroughly unsympathetic character in this arc, whose motive for helping Angelina in chapter 11 is explained as sympathy for Angelina’s desire to have children, but is framed in a way that looks a lot like manipulation:
She also kills her partner in crime of nearly three years because she thinks Angelina has gone soft when she won’t murder Ciel, her nephew:
At the end of chapter 12, after Grell is defeated and William arrives to arrest her, Sebastian provides a moral to conclude the story that applies as much to his twisted relationship with Ciel as it does to Grell and Angelina:
Humans are easily tempted. When they are poised on the edge of hellish despair and a spider’s thread of salvation presents itself, they will invariably grasp it… no matter the manner of human.
2008-2010
Black Butler was greenlit for an anime adaptation in 2008, unusually early for a manga that only started being serialized in 2006. The existing story arcs of Black Butler were all adapted into the anime, but because they ran out of material from the manga to adapt, the staff of the anime were forced to write original stories with the same characters. Grell is missing from the manga from chapter 13 to chapter 54 (although… canonically she’s only absent for a little over five months and punished for exactly three), but she reappears only a few episodes after her arrest in the anime.
I’m not going to cover season two because she gets no development in it, but Grell’s character arc in season one of the anime goes like this: after she is arrested by William, she is allowed to return to her job and ends up helping Ciel rescue Elizabeth after she is kidnapped and turned into a doll. Ciel and Sebastian gradually come to see Grell as an ally and she regains William’s trust, as he first allows her to use a death scythe similar to his, and then returns her original, illegally modified scythe to her by the end of the season.
The anime’s character arc for Grell was a good start, but it always felt incomplete. The fact that she murdered Ciel’s aunt and attempted to kill both him and Sebastian is swept under the rug, and this version of Grell feels way more silly and less competent than her manga counterpart. For better or worse though, the anime did help popularize Grell and affected the fandom’s perception of her as a result.
In 2009, while Grell was still absent from the manga, we saw the publication of the manga’s only character guide. There isn’t a lot to go over, but the character guide confirms that Grell was being truthful when she seemed to sympathize with Angelina. It also reaffirms her reason for killing Angelina (the part with the arrow above) and confirms that Ciel grieved at the loss of his aunt.
Return (2011-2012; chapters 55-65)
2011 was an important year for Grell as a character because she finally returned in the manga’s March issue after a 42-chapter hiatus. Chapter 55 starts where we left off in chapter 12: she is still a danger to Ciel and Sebastian, she is still an antisocial character who is unaffected by human suffering, she is still impulsive and hypersexual.
Except this time some things have changed. We’re introduced to Grell’s younger colleague, Ronald, for whom she is a mentor. With Ronald, we get to see her let her guard down for the first time in the manga, and even have fun. Unlike her interactions with William, Ronald never uses violence to persuade her. We also see her competently performing her job as a soul collector, in line with Toboso’s desire to portray her as a capable grim reaper.
Undertaker is the main villain of this story arc, and during its climax, Grell battles him one-on-one. This only lasts a few pages, but it gives us one of our most interesting insights into her as a character and sets up a future conflict between her and Undertaker. In this scene, he attempts to manipulate Grell by pointing out their similarities, and we get our first hint that she can feel remorse for her actions:
Oh…
To wrap up this story arc and bring the reader back home, we get a comedic scene of William coming to drag Grell home similar to the ending of chapter 12, but this time we know there is more to her as a character, which puts her boisterous exterior into perspective.
2011 was also the year the final OVAs of the second season of the anime were aired, including The Story of Will the Reaper in April. This OVA, inspired by the idea that William owes a debt to Grell, is Toboso’s favorite of the OVAs, and she was personally involved in its creation. In it, we meet a younger Grell who is still closeted and coming to terms with herself, and are thus shown a side of her that we haven’t seen before in the manga or the anime. This OVA is the first time her queer identity is treated with any sensitivity, even though it misses the mark sometimes.
2013-present
Grell has another long absence from the manga from chapter 66 to chapter 104. When she reappears in chapter 105 she is with William and once again the manga contrasts her silly exterior with the information about her we are given. This is a way to deliver this information without forcing the reader to feel sorry for her. What we see versus what we hear:
This chapter lays the groundwork for the manga’s next story arc, which is an Undertaker-centric arc. So far, Grell is not a major player in this arc, but we’ve met another of her grim reaper friends, Othello, and learned that she died less than 70 years ago. This arc also promises a rematch between her and Undertaker in the future.
The future?
In future chapters of Black Butler, Grell could remain as a minor antagonist, but since Undertaker is already in the spotlight it’s more likely she’ll continue to work to stop him. She could side with Ciel and Sebastian, but Grell barely seems to remember who Ciel is, while he still responds like a traumatized person whenever he sees her:
Clearly some things would need to change in the story before they could form an alliance. Ciel, never a forgiving person, would have to get used to working with his aunt’s killer. Toboso acknowledges that Ciel and Grell’s relationship so far is not normalized. One thing that could help is to develop Grell’s relationship with Angelina further. In a series of posts on her Twitter from January 2018 (first,second,third), Toboso explains that because the writing on the Jack the Ripper arc was rushed, she hadn’t figured out the details of Grell and Angelina’s relationship but popular fanon convinced her that they were friends. Hopefully in the future this can be explored in the manga itself!
I would also like to see more of Grell’s relationship with her workplace as we learn about the grim reapers. She is stronger than William but lets him mess with her, why? Is he also indebted to her in the manga? Why do William, Ronald, and Othello have so much faith in her? How does she really feel about her job, when she ran away from it? As a side note, I know this fandom believes Grell and the other grim reapers will get backstories but the servant characters are only getting backstories because Toboso planned for them ten years ago, while Grell might not have originally been intended to be redeemed.
Ido want to see her fight Undertaker again, because they have some parallels that would make their interactions very interesting to me: they are both grim reaper deserters but she is weaker than him and got caught. They both became emotionally invested in individual humans. His style is austere, and he doesn’t use an electric scythe, while Grell is a modern, career-oriented reaper with flashy fashion tastes. He is incredibly old, while she seems to have deserted when she was still young (reminder that her death list was still just a stack of paper when she ran away ↴↴↴). Both have a body count.
Maybe then she can finally get her manga cover?
This is a really good assessment of Grelle’s development, so far, in the series.
I’d like to note a few things, though:
In the anime, when Grelle first returns to work, the temporary death scythe is two bonsai shears, but yes that’s closer to William’s averruncator than Grelle’s usual chainsaw.
Othello doesn’t say Grelle wasn’t a reaper 70 years ago, he asks isn’t it trueGrellewas a reaper 70 years ago. And you show above that Yana-san was directly involved with the “Story of Will the Reaper” OVA. Of course, we know there’s an issue with the way that OVA was drawn. It has Thomas’ record saying he was born in 1775 and dying in 1779. There’s no way Thomas was only 5 years old. Maybe add 20 years to that? But that would still have Grelle in reaper training before 1819, around the time that Undertaker destroyed half of HQ. Therefore, it seems to me that Othello is questioning why Grelle doesn’t recall 136649. And that goes back to my posts where I ponder what really happened as part of Grelle’s three months of suspension. Were Grelle’s cinematic records messed with?
Grelle might have been holding those paper clipped files for Madam Red because it was more information than what would usually be in the agenda. We don’t really know whether Grelle already had that Chanel agenda. Then again, it could be that Grelle simply hadn’t bought that agenda yet. It’s really no clear indication of Grelle’s age as a reaper.
I’m also expecting Grelle to have another major run-in with Undertaker, ever since Othello sent that dove back to HQ to request backup.
But ever since Othello asked Grelle for protection in the human realm, I’ve pondered Grelle’s chances for survival. My Mother3 theory has each of the reapers needing to either die or return to their realm. The Magypsies don’t get much character development in the game, but some of them assess their lot in life before they disappear for good.
I don’t expect Grelle to get a volume cover until it’s a volume that has a major showdown between either Grelle and Sebastian or Grelle and Undertaker. I still say it could ultimately end with Grelle’s death, particularly if Othello somehow gets in the way or causes Grelle distraction. If Grelle dies protecting Othello, that might be the most character development we get, since Grelle had previously shown a very selfish personality. It would finally force Grelle to wear Madam Red’s shoes, so to speak, not just her coat.
i gotta say. one of the things i really like about JJ is that Jack like… chose him? like knowing full well that he would be another ego, Jack still created him. with the others, except maybe Anti, I figure Jack was mostly just playing a character for fun, you know? Chase was a funny parody video that turned into a whole character with backstory, Henrik was a goof for doctor videos, and Jackie and Marvin were designed to fit their games or power hours too. I feel like Jack didn’t really have a story for any of them back then, but JJ? Jack designed JJ knowing where he would fit in the story, knowing he needed another character and anticipating that we would immediately get attached to him. Jack picked out everything about him knowing he would be sticking around. I just like that fact about him haha. the chosen one….
Jack, pointing at Marvin, Jackie, Henrik, and Chase: YOU I thought were all going to just be goofers before you dug your little NAILS into my life and the community decided to keep you
Jack, pointing to JJ: YOU are perfect, don’t change, best plot twist boy, I love your outfit and your aesthetic the best, all my uwus, you’re an angel and we’re thrilled you’re here
JJ::D
Jack, pointing to Anti: and I don’t know WHAT the fuck YOU ARE -
Jack:I should’ve left you all in those one-off videos where you were standing.
Marvin, Henrik, Chase, and Jackie all at once: Butycha didn’t!
meanwhile Mark’s like “YOU get created and YOU get created and YOU get created - after this video you’re on your own you little bastards i care about no one but Wil over there and the cookies and creme flavored one but hey YOU’RE CREATED and YOU’RE CREATED aND - ”
Im srry op but the replys r funny as shit-
Lemme also just drop watever tf this style is an gn-
There is an aspect of the Deception Arc in the Clone Wars that is overlooked far too often, especially in posts which exonerate ObI Wan for his actions (most of them, let’s be honest).
What Kenobi did was more that just LIE to Anakin.
He inflicted on him (and Ahsoka) the exact same pain and grief and trauma that the death of Qui Gon Ginn in Episode One bought to him.
For all the fans howl and scream and rage about how much Obi Wan suffered, and make endless GIFs about his “infininite suffering” because his lost his Master and “father figure” - he inflicted exactly that on Anakin and Ahsoka Tano.
Like if you look closely, you can see tears welling up in Ahsoka’s eyes as she cradles Obi Wan’s “corpse”. You can hear the despair and anguish in Anakin’s voice as he calls his name and desperately tries to revive him. Actually, it may have been worse for them, because they were both younger than he was when Qui Gon died. Ahsoka was barely 16 and Anakin maybe- 22? Whereas he was 25.
The fact that WE as the audience instictively know Obi Wan isn’t dead doesn’t exonerate him of this. The characters don’t know. Ahsoka and Anakin both think they have lost their best friend/Master, and the mentor figure who they looked up to. Anakin believes he has lost his BROTHER, the man who practically raised him.
This is exactly the same pain, the same suffering, the same level of torment and trauma that Obi Wan suffered when he lost Qui Gon. He meant as much to both of them as Qui Gon did to him.
So every single time you say that Anakin “had no right” to feel the way he did about Obi Wan’s actions in the Deception Arc, it is exactly the same as saying that Obi Wan “had no right” to feel the way he did over the death of Qui Gonn.
Every time you condemn him for being “selfish” because he was upset and hurt, I reserve the right to deny and minimize Obi Wan’s suffering.
The simple fact that Obi Wan was willing to inflict this on Anakin and Ahsoka, “for the mission” was beyond callous. He KNEW how it felt to lose a beloved Master/Mentor figure in to violence. He knew how it felt to hold him helplessly as he died, to weep over him.
He KNEW how much pain it would cause, but not only did he not show a modicom of sympathy , he judged Anakin for the way they felt. He USED him and Ashoka in the worst way possible.
Your constant attempts to exonerate Obi Wan of all wrongdoing during these Episodes by denying the pain that he inflicted on those who he supposedly loved, and gaslighting them represents everything that is wrong with this fandom.
Just another example of TCW08 writing characters ooc. I forgot about this when I did my post about how the PT was ooc in TCW08, but this is exactly how Obi-Wan was badly written in that show. He would have never done such a thing.
Obi Wan could definitely be an asshole as a master. He had some very problematic training tactics. He was harshly critical, manipulative, dismissive, and sometimes downright emotionally/verbally abusive . He used Padme as bait to lure Anakin into a trap to kill him without her consent, which was messed up. He really should have just put Anakin out of his misery with a clean death penalty on Mustafar, rather than letting him burn alive when he got the high ground, but he didn’t because he was a coward and I think subconsciously wanted Anakin to suffer for his crimes. When they first met, he was a petty and snobby brat towards a slave boy who was 16 years younger than him in TPM.
However, yeah, faking his death to get a reaction out of Anakin to “test him” just seems blatantly and deliberately cruel to the point of feeling like flanderdization of his flaws.
It might actually constitute torture. Mock execution is legally considered a form of torture, and being forced to watch another person being executed or apparently taken to execution actually falls within that remit.
Forcing Anakin to watch his best friend being shot to illicit an emotional response sounds a lot like being forced to watch a mock execution to me. Its a form of pyschological torture, and is illegal in most countries today.
“It was for the common good” doesn’t cut it. I’d like to see the Kenobi stans argue for the use of torture in a Court of Law in those terms. Still, Americans don’t have the best record when it comes to that type of thing.
I’ll admit that I haven’t seen much of The Clone Wars, but the vibe I’m getting from Obi-Wan at the end of the arc when he’s talking to Anakin here about what he did and why he did it is that he’s genuinely feeling guilty about having betrayed his closest friend’s trust, but this wasn’t really something that he felt he “had” to do under pressure from the Council. This was a plan that Obi-Wan independently came up with himself and presented to the Council because of his own selfish ambition to fit in with them and prove himself worthy of a seat on the Council.
This is how he responds when Anakin calls him out, after all.
It is absolutely true that Anakin, Obi-Wan, and the other Jedi recruits are all victims with compromised agency in this broken system under the abusive and corrupt Council, so, while they’re not wholly innocent, they’re also not able to be held fully accountable either. However, in this particular instance, the Council had issues trusting Anakin, but they never put pressure upon Obi-Wan to come up with this plot to betray his trust. This was Obi-Wan’s own selfish ambition to get on the Council by impressing them outweighing his desire to be a good friend to Anakin. Even Yoda and Mace-Windu were skeptical about this plot Obi-Wan came up with.
While it would still be a very shitty thing to do to Anakin either way that he would have still had every right to be angry with Obi-Wan for doing to him, what really makes it nearly unforgivable to Anakin is the fact that Obi-Wan personally made this decision. He’d have still been upset if Obi-Wan was “just following orders,” but he’d have understood it because he, Obi-Wan, and the other Jedi have been constantly groomed under the moral guideline of “right vs wrong” as being completely submissive to the orders of authority figures you work for/trust in “for the greater good” of the cause you serve, no matter the sacrifice. Obi-Wan independently made the decision to be a backstabbing, deceitful, and manipulative bastard to this young man who considered him to be a father figure and a best friend after being raised by him for ten years. Anakin genuinely grew to love Obi-Wan enough to consider him close enough to family,and Obi-Wan repaid him by stabbing him right through the heart in his own selfish ambition.
That’s exactly why that whole line of “I did what I ‘had’ to do” is genuinely an excuse Obi-Wan’s using to mitigate his own guilt in this scenario. I’m not saying he wasn’t a victim of this broken Jedi Order in some ways, too, but in this case, Obi-Wan was the primary one responsible for hurting Anakin because his desire to impress the Council to get in their circle was greater than his desire to be a good friend.
Add to this that Anakin was under an extreme pressure which in the end made him snap. He didn’t just „turn to the Dark Side” on a whim.
Apart from the Jedi training which he started when he was much older than the other padawans, he had a master who didn’t trust him and constantly reined him in; who had no compassion when he felt his mother was dying; the Jedi council openly disliked him and yet sent him on dangerous missions over and over; he became a general responsible for many clone soldiers and lived through one dangerous adventure to the other through years of war; he had to keep his feelings and later his marriage to Padmé a secret; he was saddled with a padawan when he was just 21 or 22 years old; and then he went through the pain of having to believe that the man who raised him and to whom he looked up as to an older brother had died. He still didn’t turn dark. If he did turn to Palpatine in his despair, in the end, one ought not to forget the almost unendurable pressure he had lived under for so long. Obi-Wan added considerably to this pressure, never imagining that one day or another, it might become too much for Anakin to bear.
Didn’t think I’d find myself agreeing with Count Dooku but here I am.
Okay but he’s honestly 100% right.
This post keeps cropping up and isn’t going away, so here’s my response:
Dooku’s wrong.
Yoda absolutely sees all of the evils and wrongs that exist in the galaxy. He sees the corruption and flaws, he has seen them for centuries–but what would someone have him do?
Yoda could have seized control of the galaxy at any time, far more ruthlessly and efficiently than Sidious ever did. He could have seized control of the Senate, whether by mind-control or the point of a lightsaber, and demanded that they stop their corruption and greed and go forth to fight and free slaves and bring all distant, lawless planets of the galaxy under the protection of the wise, powerful, and good Jedi. He could have pulled the Jedi Order away from the Republic, scattered its members to operate in back alleys and impoverished villages on remote worlds, shunning all the comforts and protection that the Jedi became accustomed to…
But he didn’t, because he is not the Sith.
What Yoda does, instead, is speak to children. He trains them from youth to help the helpless and put the needs of others before their own. He teaches adults to heed the words of youth, and ensures that the next generation will retain the wisdom that he has found. He watches them and raises them again and again–and most importantly, he grants every being around him the freedom to choose.
Not once has Yoda ever demanded that a Jedi remain in the Order. No Jedi is a prisoner–Dooku and Ahsoka were both allowed to leave, and when Anakin was considering abandoning the order as a child, Yoda gave Obi-Wan the freedom to follow his student, if he chose. Even when Luke Skywalker, the next-to-last hope of the galaxy, chose to hurry away from his unfinished training and rush into certain death, Yoda let him go. He could have picked up the ship and sunk it back into the swamp, he could have overpowered Luke and forced him to remain, but he did not–not because of complacency or corruption, but because he would never force his own will upon someone.
Dooku’s belief stems from a desire to control and find perfection. He can’t accept that people will make wrong decisions and hurt others while remaining unpunished–Dookuunderstands what the galaxy needs, and so it is Dookuwho will determine what is right and what is wrong. His resulting actions–actions that Yoda could have taken at any time–resulted in the slaughter of trillions and a war that ripped the galaxy in two before locking it within the iron grip of Darth Sidious. He earned the name “Tyrannus” because he believed that people could be made to follow morals and ideals by force.
Yoda has smelled the stench of corruption for almost nine hundred years, but he has never ignored it. He has simply never allowed it to spread to him, and fought to keep those around him from being corrupted in turn.
I can’t believe this has to be explained but there is a world of difference between enforcing your will on someone and offering help to disenfranchised people. You can’t set the Jedi up as protectors of freedom in the galaxy, then do fuck-all to achieve that end, and after all that claim that you’re doing the right thing.
And in the case of slavery, the Jedi wouldn’t even be going against the “will of the people” or whatever if they worked to end it, because slavery has been made illegal in the Republic. Slaves’ freedom is more important than their masters’ wills! And what about the slaves’ wills to be free? What argument are you even trying to make with this line of discussion?
(And let’s not forget that Dooku did fuck-all to help the slaves of Tatooine either. Dooku wants power, he doesn’t want to help anyone but himself).
And this is exactly how a young, good-hearted young man brought about the doom of the galaxy.
For a start: Star Wars has a long history of villains saying the truth. It is Vader who discloses to Luke who he really is, it is Maul who tells Ahsoka that Anakin, the Chosen One, is the key to everything, Kylo Ren telling Rey about Luke’s failure which brought down his temple. That Dooku is a villain does not mean he’s wrong. The Sith are outsiders in a world where the Jedi are seen as the heroes not only because they do bad things but also because they see and speak about the Jedi’s failures. (For the record, Kylo wasn’t even a Sith.)
The problem with being a Jedi fan is wanting to see the world in a black / white pattern. The Jedi are not evil but having good intentions doesn’t mean that you can’t sometimes be wrong. When Luke decides to throw his saber away before Palpatine and to forgive his father it’s not the Jedi thing to do, but it’s the rightthing to do.
The Jedi pretend that compassion is essential to their lives. We see them again and again in situations where they could have acted out of compassion but chose not to, claiming it was “for the greater good”.
I wrote a long meta about this some months ago: compassion must be taught and lived by. Yet the Jedi are taught not to have attachments, and as they do not learn to feel compassion for individuals, they do not learn to have compassion for groups - like slaves or populations at war.
It’s easy to say “What were they supposed to do?” Anything is better than sitting in your ivory tower saying wise-sounding words, or fomenting a war for years with the conviction that once “your side” has won, everything will be all right.
No, the Jedi can’t go out into the galaxy and solve all problems on their own, but the problem is that people expect them to. The oppressed people in the galaxy look to them as the “keepers of peace and justice in the galaxy” and are let down over and over. They and their fans see them as invincible, all-wise heroes and overlook their many failures.
Being a Jedi ought to mean giving people spiritual solace; to teach the ways of the Force; to encourage people to help each other. But they don’t. Their attitude is like “Just listen to us or be like us, and everything will be all right”.
One of the things that always irritated me about the prequel trilogy is how the magical spark of the classic movies was missing. One of the reasons for that was the fact that the Force is hardly even mentioned and is only used to make things float or trick people’s minds from time to time. It is a power tool, not an all-encompassing energy that keeps everything together. The Jedi use it, they are not guided by it.
Anakin, the son of a slave, was taught by his mother that all evil in the galaxy comes from people not helping each other. Just watch Clone Wars: Anakin does so as long, as far and as much as he can. One of the most frustrating aspects of his Jedi career is that all he does to ensure that people are safe and well is so little acknowledged by the Jedi. He is not “Jedi enough” for them. They try to restrain a young man who acts out of love for his fellowmen. I don’t know where to start emphasizing how f***ed up that is.
No one expects the Jedi to solve all problems in the galaxy. No one ought to. There are billions and billions of people and they’re only a few thousand people. They neither can nor should help everybody.
But they ought to teach people to do the will of the Force. The Force keeps people together because everyone has it inside of them, whether they’re Force-sensitive or not. The Sith corrupt this energy by tearing people apart, either by killing or by disseminating distrust and encouraging conflicts.
And the Jedi don’t see that. They don’t preach love and forgiveness and altruism or serve as a good example. They swing their lightsabers against the bad guys - that is, provided the politicians they serve agree. And these are the good guys?
No, the Jedi are not evil. But if you ask me, they’re a bunch of fools. Including Yoda, never mind his wise-sounding words. If compassion is what leads you, dear Yoda, you ought to show it at least once in your 900 years of life. Even if you did, it didn’t change much - the Order you were responsible for so long failed and was erased anyway.
Star Wars is not the story of the “Jedi superheroes”. Its origin is the Skywalker trilogy, with Anakin / Vader as the central character. The same person used to be a great hero and then turned into a terrible villain. That couldn’t have happened if the people around him, the place where he grew up and was educated wasn’t flawed somehow. His fall came at the same time the Republic fell and the Jedi Order was obliterated. And we knew all this before the prequels hit theatres.
In the prequels or in Clone Wars it is never outright said that the Jedi are failing morally, but it is often shown. They’re not the heroes merely because they’re cool and aloof and, as we know, “boys don’t cry”, so Anakin must be a whiny sissy and deserve what happens to him.
Please spare me the “coolness excuses everything” discourse and open your eyes. Who excuses the Jedi is biased. I don’t want to trample on anyone’s hero worship, I want to point out that things can and should be done better than they did.
Sad update everyone, Tama recently passed away… An estimated 3,000 people, including railway officials, attended Tama the cat’s funeral on Sunday, days after she died of heart failure aged 16. [x]
For those who haven’t read articles about it, the local shrine elevated her to a god. She’s now the Eternal Stationmaster and patron god of the station.
Beautiful.
Now I’m crying thanks
and a new cat was hired right?
yep! her name is Nitama (essentially ”second tama” or “tama II”) and she served under Tama as an apprentice before being appointed her deputy
she works very hard
Everytime this crosses my dash, I reblog. It is the law.
Law
I’m crying at 11pm over train cats
Nitama, already now a mature cat (born 2010), has a protege named Yontama (fourth Tama, b. 2016). There is no information available for either the physical befellment or tragic self-disgrace which has removed Santama from contention.
^Nitama majestic, and below with Yontama
Yontama.
a legacy
okay but actually what happened to santama (or sun-tama-tama, which is her name because it’s a pun on santama) was that she was basically sent to train for the position in okayama and they liked her so much they refused to send her back
“Sun-tama-tama” (a pun off of “Santama”, lit. “third Tama”) was a calico cat sent for training in Okayama. Sun-tama-tama was considered as a candidate for Tama’s successor, but the Okayama Public Relations representative who had been caring for Sun-tama-tama refused to give the cat up writing, “I will not let go of this child, she will stay in Okayama.” [25]
As of September 2018, Sun-tama-tama is working as the stationmaster in Naka-ku, Okayama and appears occasionally on Tama’s Twitter account.
Every time I see this post there’s new info and it gets better
You are only allowed to scroll pass this after you pay tribute to the great Tama Station masters.
The shrine of Tama Daimyōjin (Great gracious deity Tama), next to the Kishi station where she worked.
Nitama presenting her yearly offerings to Tama Daimyōjin on the anniversary of Tama’s Death, June 23 (The offerings are presented by the company president, as Nitama is a cat and thus can’t hold the offerings herself) (Not pictured, but also present, Yontama)
you cannot pass without reblogging guys. i’m sorry, i don’t make the rules.
You can’t not reblog a goddess. It’s just what’s so. :)
So, fun fact- the manga Noragami has an arc where the main character, Yato (a minor kami/God that is down on his luck but trying to make it big time) goes to a council/conference for all the Gods in Japan.
And they are announcing the winner of the “up and coming god” award, and of course, Yato thinks it’s him.
“The Witch, like the faerie, was a feared bringer of contamination, and a divine healer bringing salve from a land flowing with milk and honey. It is this very ambiguity that originally made faeries and Witches both so unpredictable and fearful to the average hedge-bound mind. The process of remov- ing this ambiguity, infantizing faeries and making Witches into kind herb wives, has been the process of defanging and declawing the Otherness, a breaking up of a whole. It does nothing to readdress the imbalance created when Witchcraft was made the black repository of all undesirable faerie characteristics, but instead damages both sides of the divide it creates. Of course it is not actually possibleto declaw the Otherworld, we only ever neuter our own awareness of it.
In Italy the mistress of the magic witch mountain, flowing with milk and honey, was called “wise Sibillia.” It was said the ancient sibyl of mount Cumae had taken refuge in a cave at the crest of the Appenines. In Reductorium Morale (c. 1360) Pietro Bersuire wrote about her Underworld paradise entered through a grotto in the mountains of Norcia, a region famed for its Witches. Nearby was a magical lake fed by water from a cavern. Whoever stayed longer than a year could no longer leave, but remained deathless and ageless, feasting in abundance, revelry, and voluptuous delights.
Sibillia was regarded as Goddess of the Witches. In Ferrara people said “wise Sibillia” led the cavalcade of Witches in their flight. At the end of their feasts, she would touch all the bottles and baskets with her wand, and they would quickly refill with wine and bread. They would then gather the animal bones into their skins, and at the faerie wand’s touch, the animals recovered their flesh and returned to life.
This archaic-sounding tradition of a faerie woman inside a mountain hitting dead animal bones and reanimating them is suggestive of the themes of initiation. Just as the faerie Witch’s bones are taken or counted and put back in, and the Witch is resurrected from a death-like sleep where they have journeyed beyond the grave, so the animal’s bones recover from death due to faerie magic.
But true to the archaic ambivalence we’ve discussed above, Sibylla is not only associated with golden wands and beautiful paradises, but with a half-serpent body and ordeals that involve being covered in snakes and even having to have sexual intercourse with them. No matter what country the narratives of faerie come from there is never any making it to the land of milk and honey without a harrowing of hellish proportions first, but in some areas the faerie creatures contain more obviously archaic mixed natures. Sibillia is one of these beings. We will encounter Sibillian traditions of the Craft later in this book, as she appears both in the English Robin Goodfellow faerie traditions as Sib, and as the faerie Sibylla in Reginald Scot’s grimoire of faerie magic. From the Sibillian mountain and the Witchcraft associated with it we can see that in Italy Witches and faeries were very closely connected, just as they were elsewhere. The fairy mountain was the place you went to learn your magical arts.
One of the most striking ritual connections between the faerie seer and the Witch in Britain, as opposed to the continental examples, is the “all that lies between these two hands practice,” which we find originally in faerie material and later as a British Witchcraft initiation posed in the trial records. As early as Robert Kirk we hear of the faerie seer putting one foot under the foot of the one to be admitted to the secrets of faerie seership and the other on the head whilst looking over the wizard’s right shoulder, thus sponsoring them with their own power.]
We see a similar ritual repeated in trial records of the Wincanton Coven who supposedly adopted a kneeling version of this posture at their initiations. The woodcut of a Witch in this position is drawn from Joseph Glanvill’s Saducismus Triumphatus. But the traditions of Witchcraft and faerie were often quite chronologically parallel rather than one developing off another, as Kirk admits to the fact that the posture has an “ill appearance” which implies the surrender of what is between the hands, suggesting that he already knows that such postures might be used in relation to the Devil. We have already said that Robin Artisson, whom Alice Kyteler was devoted to, was a demon by the estimations of the times but most likely also a kind of faerie. In many cases the true “religion” of Witches, if they could be said to have religious feelings that come through to us from the records, is toward their familiar spirit, who was sometimes but not always associated with the Devil when they were probably often a devil.
The Witch’s faerie familiars present us with a scene of great variety. The faerie Witch Bessie Dunlop seems to have maintained a business-like platonic relationship with her faerie familiar Tom. John Walsh of Dorset mentions working with faeries as though going out to the faerie mounds were a natural part of Witchcraft, but he never mentions a deep bond with any of them. But there are many other than Alice and her Robin who do, such as Isobel Gowdie’s sexual passion with her “devil” and Andro Man’s ongoing relationship with his Faerie Queen and almost worship for Christsonday who sounds angel-like. Ann Jeffries not only experienced romantic love with her faerie man but was bravely defended by him when she was threatened and Thomas the Rhymer was treated with affection by his Faerie Queen at the very least. Alison Person, also a faerie Witch, had an almost religious devotion to a deceased cunning man who now lived among the faeries, one William Simpson, who she said protected her from the worst intensities of the coming and going of her faerie visions by warning her when they were afoot. And Isobel Haldane, a Scottish Witch, acquired her powers after she was saved from an unwanted faerie abduction by “he that protected me from the faerie folk,”’ who was himself a faerie.
In this way a traditional abduction and blighting narrative was transformed through the agency of “he who protected me” into an initiatory ordeal from which the person emerged a Witch of power. Her devotion to “he who protected me” was no doubt almost religious in its intensity. Yet despite the obvious correlation between Witches and faerie familiars those intent on painting Witches as pure evil were loath to associate them with faerie seers. Even King James with his almost pathological fear of Witches claimed in his Demonologie that “those people whom spirits (faeries) have carried away and informed they were thought by the common folk to be the soniest [wisest] and best of life.”
Emma Wilby has taken note of this religiosity that Witches often felt towards their faerie familiars:
“[The witch] Alice Nokes (1579) claimed, when reprimanded before a church congregation, that ‘she cared for none of them all as long as Tom (her familiar) held by her side.’; … an unnamed Cambridgeshire witch (1653), being 'on the point of execution. declined to renounce the faithful friend of threescore years (that is, her demon familiar) and ‘died in her obstinacy.’
If there could be said to be an observable religious impulse behind historical Witchcraft it is not the Pagan fertility religion of early Wiccan and Neo-pagan projections, it is the animistic faith shared with faeries, and sometimes the worship of particular powerful faeries. It is a religious faith both infaeries and the knowledge, shared with faeries and perhaps given by them, that the stars and all things in life have spirits in them from the largest to the smallest and many microcosms are in each with everything moving forever in cycles. The Faith that there is an inalienable sanctity in the relationships between those that mutually nourish each other, including the relationship between a Witch and familiar spirit.
Other examples of the theme of mutual nourishment can be found in relation to the powerful hobman and witch-devil, Robin. We have already mentioned a "Robin” familiar in relation to Alice Kyteler and her Robin Artisson but this name for the witch-devil reoccurs elsewhere, including in the Robin Goodfellow story and in Somerset during the trial of the Wincanton Coven.
The “Robin” of the Wincanton Coven appeared to the principle Witch ten years before the trial as a handsome man, and later as a black dog. He promised her money and pleasure in this life if she would provide him with some of her blood that he might suck it, thus giving her soul (as in virtue rather than spirit) to him and observe his laws. This she did, pricking the fourth finger of her right hand between the middle and upper joints. He gave her a magical sixpence in return and vanished.
Although the Wincanton trial involves plenty of maleficium and they don’t directly make references to faeries, interpreting their “Robin” as a faerie man, much like Robin Artisson, has other support within the evidence. The Wincanton Coven were those who claimed their initiation involved placing everything between their two hands and thus mimicking the logic, if not the exact posture, of the faerie seer posi tion. After her pact with this mysterious man Elizabeth Styles was fed “bread and wine,” much like the sacrament Thomas the Rhymer engages in.
This simple act might seem common enough but this repast that we’ve previously called the host also carries echoes of the “faerie food.” The provision of food by faeries is given as a sign of great love from a faerie man to a woman he has impregnated. One very potent story to this effect is that of the birth of Robin Goodfellow, fathered by the Faerie King Oberon (or Obreon in older sources) upon a mortal woman. As a sign of his love for the human mother of his child he continuously feeds her. Mutton, lamb, pheasant, woodcock, partridge, quail, a never- ending supply of food is laid before Robin Goodfellow’s mother by her faerie lover. He also provided her with fine wines of many types.
The Wincanton Coven received very similar faerie food from their Robin, including a wide variety of meats and fine wine they discuss frequently, presumably because such high quality victuals would usually have been far out of their price range. At their Sabbats the Coven’s “devil” Robin, “the man in black,” would “play on a pipe or cittern” and they danced. This image of Witches dancing with a man called Robin whilst music plays is very evocative of the famous image of Robin Goodfellow, a book poster from the 1600s called “Robin Goodfellow and his mad japes” and further suggests we consider these “Robins” to be the same powerful faerie patron.
This pattern of a faerie man piping for dancing Witches is also seen quite vividly in James Hogg’s poem The Witch of Fife, where Hogg writes this particularly evocative piece of poetry about the experience of a Witch (1835) which I have transcribed outof Scots English and into standard English for ease of reading.
“And then we came to Lommond Height
So lightly we touched down;
And we drank from the horns that never grew,
The beer that was never brewed.
Then up there rose a wee, wee man
From beneath the moss-grey stone;
His face was wan like cauliflower
For he had neither blood nor bone.
He set a reed-pipe up to his mouth
And played it bonnily
Till the grey curlew and the black cock flew
To listen to his melody.”
He then speaks of how all the animals answered the faerie man’s piping and faerie, Witch and animal dance until dawn. Later in the story (which she is relating to her husband) they fly on their hemlock as far as Lapland, were they find the local faeries all in array, for the “geni of the north” were keeping their holiday. Hogg then writes:
“The warlock men and the weird women
And the fays of the wood and steep,
And the phantom hunters all were there,
And the mermaids of the deep.”
Here we see faeries, Witches /Warlocks, the phan tom hunters of the Wild Hunt and mermaids linked together in a Sabbat narrative, which is so explicitly a Sabbat narrative that it involves the Witches ending up in the arms of the Warlock men, but like many faerie Sabbats no diabolism occurs. Although they do learn how to “throw the faerie stroke,” but here it is unequivocal that Witches are learning their skills from faeries who are not labeled demons. If we consider these links between the “Devil’s piper” or the “Devil as piper” as a faerie man, then the figure of Robin Goodfellow is strongly suggested by Style’s “Robin.” What we have in the form of Robin Goodfellow, or Puck, is a particular faerie figure who is connected over a wide area with teaching, piping or having an off-sider who pipes for Witches, and even possibly animal charming.
Just as there was a Puck (the other name for Robin Goodfellow), there was a Poucca of Wales, a Puca of Ireland and a Bucca of Cornwall, the alternative “Robin” as the name of a prominent faerie man might have been equally widespread in Britain and Ireland. Even the Welsh prophet and conjure man Black Robin (Robin Dhu) exhibits some Puck-like qualities suggesting he may be connected withthis figure. As of course does the English Robin Hood with his leveling trickster qualities and his almost exclusive Mary worship. If Robin is indeed the name for one well-known tutelary faerie who teaches Witches—not just the “white” ones—then the link between faerie familiars and the genesis of Witchcraft is quite explicit.
Given how clearly we can see British and Irish Witches learning their skills from faeries, it must have been very familiar to our forebears when they heard the “Watchers” had been the ones to teach Witchcraft to mankind. It seems increasingly obvious why the connection between faeries and fallen angels would have been forged and remained strong in Old Craft traditions, long after the threat of church persecution diminished. Dual faith observance, it seems, may have been about more than hiding the Craft in plain sight, but also to do with intrinsic intersections between certain aspects of the two stories, particularly between the Faerie Faith and some of the apocryphal material.
Given that the earliest testimony about a deep committed relationship with a familiar is Alice Kyteler’s “demon worship” of Robin Artisson, it might behoove us to more deeply explore demonology and whether we find any faerie-like characteristics in prominent demons. We have already noted earlier that Reginald Scot’s work draws together both faerie beings and demons without really specifying too much difference between the two. Like the powerful hobman Robin/Puck, the faerie woman Sibylla mentioned by Scot or as Sib by Shakespeare, lives inside a mountain teaching Witches all the way over in Italy and yet also emerges in England and Scotland.
Some faerie entities were so powerful that they had numerous Witch familiars and were linked to more than one location. Here the line between “faerie” and “God” or “Goddess” becomes very blurred. But in the Faerie Faith, which seems to display a continuous sliding scale of power, rather than clear distinctions between human, faerie and God, this is not to be thought unusual.
The Testament of St Cyprian the Mage by Jake Stratton-Kent discusses how the Goetic tradition and its demon-teeming grimoires are influenced by Witchcraft and folkore relating to the Wild Hunt. His reference to the Hunt is particularly interesting after Hogg’s poem and his phantom riders participating in the Witch’s Sabbat.
There are also many famous witching animals like toads, owls and black dogs among the forms the grimoire demons take and plenty of references to objects from European folklore, such as the hazel wand. So whilst demonology certainly overwrote the witchcraft narrative in certain ways, the realm of faerie and folk sorcery also colonised demonology in return, as Paul Carus explored in his History of the Devil, quoted above. Many of the darker faerie attributes—those connected with the Underworld, dark elf, Wild Hunt, nightmare or winter hag figures—became attached to demons and then back into Witchcraft.
The picture that begins to emerge for the intuitive observer is not a history with a universal “white sabbat,” associated with faeries and full of goodness and light, overcome later by a “black sabbat” imposed from above via demonology and persecution. What we see instead is the suggestion, the smallest echo, of an early Faerie Faith replete with all the characteristics of both, layered on by emerging demonology that was itself already colonized by folkloric sources. It seems as if the so-called “white sabbat” of faerie magicians that Henningsen postulates is actually just a different layer of Otherworldly experience, the “black demonic sabbat” having its place in relation to initiatory ordeals in particular and the dark elf beings who preside over such powers.”
It’s ME returned from the void to throw more good doctor fic at y’all before I retreat beneath my troll bridge once more. This one features Morgan and Audrey because they don’t get enough love so I have to give it to them. And I will.
Title: Raw Nerves
Summary: Morgan’s RA causes her to make a mistake during surgery that rattles her. She goes to Audrey determined to resign, and confesses her newly diagnosed RA. Audrey has other ideas. Canon compliant up to 3x15.
Excerpt: : ‘“You did that today. You were ready to give up on all of your ambitions, on the thing that you have worked for, set aside your pride, and all your hopes for your own future in order to do what you felt needed to be done for your patients. I’m proud of you.”
The shaky smile that lit Morgan’s face at that was both heartening and depressing. Heartening because it was obvious that it meant something coming from her; that she carried enough weight with Morgan for her pride to matter. Depressing because it was obvious they were words she’d rarely heard.’
Audrey paused, about to enter her office, and turned to find Morgan hovering outside it, hands clenched tightly into fists at her sides, looking tense.
“Doctor Reznick, can I help you?”
She was fairly sure she could. Audrey knew an ambush when she saw one. Reznick had been waiting for her to get back and after the events of the day, she wasn’t all too surprised to find her here.
Taking a deep breath, Morgan said shakily, as though she was having to force out every word, “I would like to remove myself from the residency program. I no longer think that I’m capable of dealing with it.”
Audrey blinked. It took a lot to surprise her. She’d been a trauma surgeon for the better part of twenty years. She’d seen every ugly, gory, messy piece of humanity; both inside and out. This surprised her.
“I wanted to thank you for this opportunity,” Morgan continued. She had now clasped her shaking hands in front of her. It seemed to be taking every bit of composure and grit she’d built up since starting her residency to get through this. “It’s been an honour working with you, Doctor Lim. I learned a lot.”
She only just managed to choke out the last word. Then she stood almost defiantly, head held high, back almost painfully straight, and gave Audrey a slight nod.
A beat of silence followed this emotional pronouncement, both women staring at each other as the moment swelled. Audrey burst it. She’d never been one for dramatics. That was firmly Neil’s department.
“Come in here,” she said, nodding towards her office, stepping inside and then holding the door.
Morgan remained standing stiffly, eyes glassy, a muscle feathering in her jaw as she fought to control herself.
“Please,” she bit out, finally, “Don’t make this any harder than it already is. I don’t want it to be drawn out, I don’t want to be processed, and fill out paperwork. I don’t want you to hold my hand and tell me I’ve done a good job and I should be proud of myself, and that I shouldn’t think I’m weak or whatever other managerial bullshit you’re required to spout now as my chief. I just…I just want to go. Please.”
That last word undercut the strong defiance in the rest of her little speech.
Audrey was unimpressed.
It had been a long fucking day. She was tired, she was sore, she was pissed off. She wanted to go home, open a bottle of beer, and put on one of the gardening shows she taped and would never reveal to anyone outside of her bad-tempered cat that she watched willingly.
“Morgan,” she said, emphasising the word with as much ‘I don’t have the energy for bullshit right now’ tone as she could muster, which was a lot, “I’m not asking you to come in and have a cup of tea with me as your mentor or friend. I’m telling you to get into my office as your chief of surgery. Do you understand?”
“Okay,” Morgan said, finally.
She stiffly moved into the room and Audrey hurried her on with a wave of the hand before closing the door and tilting the blinds. The hospital was designed in a very open, minimalist style with plenty of glass walls and doors to let in the light. It was great for her plants, but she had never liked the feeling of existing in a fish bowl, with passersby able to ogle her whenever they felt like it.
Audrey moved behind her desk and sat down, gesturing Morgan towards the chair opposite her. She sat slowly, still looking a little thrown. Clearly whatever she’d expected Audrey’s reaction to be, it hadn’t been this.
She leaned down and rummaged in a drawer for a moment before pulling out a box of tissues, which she nudged pointedly across the desk.
Morgan stared at them then, with a touch of her usual arrogance, said, “I haven’t cried in front of another person since I was eight.”
“Maybe you should,” she observed mildly, steepling her fingers in front of her, reminding herself irresistibly of her first chief of surgery.
Morgan blinked incredulously, the context of the situation temporarily lost to the situation, “This? From you?”
Audrey raised her eyebrows.
“I just mean,” Morgan amended, forcibly softening her tone, “That you’re not exactly the most…Emotionally frivolous person I’ve ever met.”
She smiled at that. Emotionally frivolous. She had to remember that. Neil would get a kick out of it, she was pretty sure, and immediately resolved never to let him hear it.
“Fair,” she conceded, “But I’m not devoid of emotion; I just control it. There’s a difference. And I also know when controlling and holding everything back is no longer the best course of action. Sometimes you need to let a wound bleed before you can patch it up. So-” she pushed the tissues closer still to Morgan with the aid of a pen.
Morgan drew the box to the edge of the table in a small sign of acquiescence, but didn’t take one. Well, miracles took a little bit more work than the impossible, she’d take what she could get.
“You have been the most obviously ambitious and driven resident at this hospital from day one,” Audrey said bluntly, leaning forward, hands clasped once more.
She didn’t see the point in beating about the bush. Not this late in the day. And not with Morgan. Straight talking was a trait they both shared and appreciated in each other.
“Tell me why you want to leave now. Without any mention from me or Doctor Melendez. And more importantly, without any kind of fight.”
“I could have killed that boy today,” Morgan whispered shakily.
“You didn’t,” Audrey pointed out.
Confronting your own mortality was hard enough. Confronting the fact that you were fully responsible for another human being’s mortality was something else. Even the hardest, most reserved and arrogant surgeons she’d ever worked with had met that beast and been shaken by it. She sure as hell had.
“I could have,” Morgan said, more forcefully. Her voice broke back down to that of a frightened child realising how small they really were in the face of the world for the first time again as she added, “That scares me.”
“Good,” Audrey said bluntly.
One of her previous mentors had observed that, with her scalpel, she had all the true delicacy that a surgeon needed. With her words, however, she could somehow have all the subtlety of a scalpel. She figured there were times for scalpels, and times for sledgehammers, and that was just how she was.
Morgan looked up from her focused contemplation of her own hands looking shocked. Audrey rather liked being able to produce that effect in her. In any of her residents. It was good to challenge them, push them out of their comfort zones, tease something new from them.
“We’re not superhuman,” she went on, when it became clear Morgan wasn’t going to be able to find a reply to that. For once. “You fucked up. It happens. Surgeons are trained to achieve perfection every single time, with every single thing that they do. That’s because when we don’t people can die.”
“Well I definitely fucked up today,” Morgan whispered, shuddering.
She stared down at her hands again, as though she could still see the mess she had made stained upon them. That might linger for a while. Audrey hoped it did. She still had blood on her hands after years of scrubbing. If she ever lost that she’d leave this profession she loved and never come back.
“You did,” Audrey agreed. No point sugar-coating it. “That’s the fact of the matter. The big secret that everyone knows about surgeons; and no-one wants to admit. That mistakes can happen. We’re flawed. We’re human. Shit’s going to happen.”
Morgan shook her head slightly.
Audrey knew that feeling. She had believed she could be perfect. She had believed she could get through all her surgeries flawlessly and never make a mistake. She’d believed that herself. When it had all come crashing down it had nearly crushed her.
There were a lot of make or break moments on the road to surgery. This was usually one of the first. How did you deal with your first big error. What did you do when you realised how easily you could kill someone? A lot of people couldn’t handle that kind of responsibility.
Med school was all about saving lives. Helping patients. Doing good. Beating the odds. Changing lives.
Residency was when the real world kicked back in. That was when you remembered that the harsh realities hadn’t disappeared while you were buried in books. And that those who had the power to save lives; equally had the power to lose them.
“You fucked up,” Audrey said, drawing Morgan’s eyes back to her, “But you handled it. You put that boy’s life in danger with your mistake. Then you saved it. He’ll go home tomorrow with his parents and his life will change for the better because of what you did today.”
“It could so easily have gone the other way. His parents could be going home right now making funeral arrangements because of me.”
“But they’re not. That’s also because of you. A monkey could nick an artery in the middle of surgery - anyone can do that. Not everyone can handle the situation afterwards. That’s the difference,” Audrey said.
Morgan blinked. Audrey enjoyed the effect of her processing the rollercoaster of that little nugget of advice for a moment.
Then she said, more seriously, “If we kicked out every resident who made a mistake during a surgery the world would very quickly run out of future surgeons.
“I don’t want to leave because I made a mistake,” Morgan said rigidly, her jaw clenched, that same feeling that she was having to force out every syllable back in her tone again, “I want to leave because I should never have been able to make that mistake in the first place.”
The deep breath she sucked in to compose herself shook audibly in the quiet of her office. Morgan hesitated, then reluctantly yanked a tissue from the box in front of her and proceeded to twist it between her hands, fraying it.
“I should never have been in that OR today. I shouldn’t have been in one for a while,” she finally got out, with the same aura of a person relieving the darkest sins of their soul in a confessions box.
“Why not?” Audrey pushed.
Sometimes you had to apply a little pressure, cause a little pain, to get to the root of a problem before you could yank it out and stitch up the wound.
Morgan stared at the tissue she was now shredding between her fingers without really seeing it. Audrey was impressed with her steel as she managed to swallow, actually look up with her head high, when she spoke next.
“A few weeks ago you noticed that I was…Shaky during the tracheal surgery. I told you that I hit my finger with a hammer while I was hanging a painting at home…”
Morgan closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. The words were barely distinct when they came, but they came. For that Audrey commended her more than anything she had yet seen from the young woman.
“I lied to you.”
The admission hung heavy in the air for a moment, both of them hearing it and processing the implications, the enormity of this moment in the life of Morgan Reznick.
“The truth is,” Morgan said, her whole body shaking along with her words now. “The truth is that I-” She broke off and reached for another tissue, having successfully crumpled the first into a mulch of confetti in her agitation. She used this one to dab at her eyes which had started shedding tears against her concrete will. “The truth is that I…I…”
“You have rheumatoid arthritis,” Audrey said, gently.
She’d heard enough. Morgan had done enough to convince her she was ready to tell her the truth and trust her with this most vulnerable new aspect of her existence. She wasn’t cruel. She was a mentor. She was there to challenge, and push, but also to guide and assist where she was needed.
Morgan stared at her, eyes wide, every other emotion forgotten for a moment in the face of her shock.
“How did you know?”
Audrey gave her a rueful smile. “You told me that you hit your hand with a hammer, Morgan. I’ve never seen more perfectly manicured hands in my life,” Morgan gave a small watery smile, staring down at them. “No cuts, no bruising, no marks whatsoever,” Audrey said, shaking her head. “In future if you’re going to lie to my face, at least put some effort in.”
Morgan huffed a soft laugh at that, dabbing her eyes. “To be fair I was under a lot of pressure.”
“Well I’m glad you stitch better under pressure than you lie,” Audrey observed.
“That’s why I became a surgeon and not a lawyer,” Morgan joked. Then her face crumpled and she had to bite her lip hard to stop herself crying. Audrey was about to reach out to her when she coughed and said, with forced composure, “How did you know it was RA, though? It could have been something else, something other than what I’d said.”
Audrey sighed heavily. “I’m not an idiot, Morgan,” she said flatly. “You have a family history. I have eyes. And you decided to confide in Glassman who, for the record, lies even worse under pressure than you do.”
“He promised me that he’d give me a chance; that he wouldn't’ say anything to anyone,” Morgan mumbled.
“And he didn’t,” Audrey admitted, “Not until I implied that I already knew and then, well…” she trailed off with a shrug.
“So…So how long have you known exactly?” Morgan asked, now frowning slightly.
“A few months or so,” Audrey replied calmly.
“So you’ve just been waiting for this,” Morgan said, gesturing stiffly, “Ever since you figured it out?”
It was obvious she was trying to control the anger and frustration Audrey had known this would provoke in her. She was largely failing.
“Yes, I have,” she said evenly.
Morgan scoffs, shaking her head. Audrey sat up a little straighter and prepared herself with the rebuttals she had worked out for this eventual confrontation. Morgan surprised her however, “Then why didn’t you just fire me on the spot as soon as you found out? Why did you let me keep going on as a resident when you knew I was…Compromised,” she spoke that last word as though it left a bad taste in her mouth.
Audrey leaned back, considering her. She’d expected an angry tirade about why she had let Morgan continue in pain and fear all this time without reaching out to her. She wouldn’t at all have blamed her for asking that; it was a valid question. She’d spent a long time weighing the pros and cons of each option.
She took a moment to adjust to the altered trajectory of the conversation, then said carefully, and honestly, “I wanted to see how you handled the situation. That’s part of being a good attending. If you dive in the second one of your residents makes a mistake, or encounters an issue, and fix it for them, they’ll never learn or grow. Neither will you. You’re always learning in this job and anyone can have an idea you would never have thought of. You miss those opportunities if you’re too quick to assert what you think is right onto a situation.”
Morgan nodded stiffly, and Audrey softened her tone and added more gently, “It’s not easy. And this is not a decision that I took lightly in any way. But…You received a setback. I wanted to see how you recovered. And you did. The same way you did today in surgery. You dealt with it before it became a problem that I had to intervene in because you no longer cope with it yourself.”
“So you just…You used it as a test?” Morgan said, sounding hurt and betrayed, in spite of herself, Audrey knew.
The relationship between an attending and a resident was a lot more intimate than someone who hadn’t experienced it could ever understand. There was a lot of trust, that went both ways. But especially from the residents. Their attending was someone they could look up to, someone they knew would have their back, be in their corner, but who also made all the decisions in their day-to-day lives.
It was a relationship with a big, natural power imbalance, and it was difficult to negotiate from both sides.
Audrey loved it. She loved being able to teach, being able to learn from her residents. She loved being able to guide, and train, and help her surgeons thrive. And she thought she was suited to it.
She’d met attendings who worked the way Morgan assumed she had. She’d had them use those tactics, and play those games, with her. And the betrayal cut deep.
“No,” she said, voice still gentle, “This isn’t a game, Morgan. This is your life, your career, your dream. I get that,” Morgan looked up at her, a kind of desperation in her eyes, seeking that validation, the validation of someone who understood her and her love for this job.
“But you didn’t say anything,” her voice wasn’t as accusatory as it had been a moment ago, but there was still an element of distrust in it.
“No, I didn’t.” She took a deep breath, wondering how exactly to explain herself, “Being a good surgeon is about more than knowledge or skill-”
“You have to care,” Morgan interrupted, with thinly veiled sarcasm.
Audrey smiled, thinly, “We all care, Morgan,” she said wryly. “Maybe not as openly as someone like Claire, or as abstractly as someone like Shaun, but no-one does this job if they don’t care. That’s a given. I don’t care what anyone says, how aloof they appear, how emotionally frivolous,” she caught Morgan’s eye and they shared a small smile, “They care.”
“I do,” Morgan mumbled, a little unnecessarily, but she could be forgiven under the circumstances.
“You can teach surgery,” Audrey said, “You can teach technique, and medicine, and even how to cope under the kind of pressure situations we face. But you will never be a truly great surgeon if you can’t be aware of your own flaws and manage to overcome them.”
Morgan swallowed, and Audrey was sure she felt this was going to go in the direction of ‘your RA is a flaw you can’t overcome, so you can never be a great surgeon’. It wasn’t. She was kind of offended Morgan still expected her to go that conventional route. Audrey was many things but she tried, as a rule, to never be conventional.
“ You have to be able to take yourself out of the equation. You have to be able to make decisions beyond yourself - to ignore your own feelings, your own beliefs, and judgements. Your hopes and dreams, and demons, all need to go inside a little box in your head that you throw out of a window every morning before you come to work. You have to be able to do what is right for your patients, no matter what it costs you, or how hard that might be.”
She saw a faint spark of hope rekindle in Morgan’s eyes, and endeavoured to tease it into something stronger, bring back that fire she was known for.
“You did that today. You were ready to give up on all of your ambitions, on the thing that you have worked for, set aside your pride, and all your hopes for your own future in order to do what you felt needed to be done for your patients. I’m proud of you.”
The shaky smile that lit Morgan’s face at that was both heartening and depressing. Heartening because it was obvious that it meant something coming from her; that she carried enough weight with Morgan for her pride to matter. Depressing because it was obvious they were words she’d rarely heard.
“This really wasn’t a test?” she whispered the words as though they were a question, but both of them knew it wasn’t. Not really.
“Life is a test,” Audrey said, frowning slightly at how unfortunately philosophical that had sounded. “This is just something that you had to face during the course of it. It was a choice you had to make. It’s a choice that every resident will have to make before they qualify. Or they won’t. It’ll come from different places, and affect you all in different ways…But it always comes.”
“So if I hadn’t done this…If I hadn’t come to you and told you the truth…”
“If you hadn’t been able to make this decision I would have made it for you,” Audrey relied brutally. “But today you showed me that you could. You have the self-awareness and understanding to put aside your ambitions, and your dreams, and your fears and admit when you can’t do something.”
“I’m sorry that I didn’t come to you sooner,” Morgan said, slowly. “Both in the sense that I feel guilty for lying to you by omission for as long as I did…But also because I think it would have made things a lot easier for me.”
“Being a resident is tough. It’s competitive and it can be cutthroat. Showing weakness or vulnerability to your superior is tough, too. Especially as a woman. Especially as a woman with a newly diagnosed disability.” Morgan flinched slightly at the use of the word, but didn’t challenge it. “I get it,” Audrey said, nodding.
“That day you confronted me in the locker room - you figured that I’d made a complaint preemptively to try and protect myself…It just made me so sure that if I came to you about any of this…You’d fire me on the spot,” Morgan admitted quietly, addressing the mess of tissues still clutched in her hand.
Audrey sighed heavily at that. “I know,” she said ruefully, “But I had to impress upon you that certain tactics weren’t going to work with me, and that you’d only cause more harm with them.”
“I understand,” Morgan said, nodding, “But…You knew then, right?” She nodded. “I know what you said about seeing how I coped and having to make decisions but…Why didn’t you just come out and confront me then and there? Force me to deal with it, to make the choice then?”
“I considered it,” Audrey said honestly, “But I decided that forcing this out of you before you were ready wasn’t going to be very productive. I didn’t want you to feel like I was another odd stacked against you in the hand you’ve been dealt. I thought that the likelihood of you responding was low, and that the chances of you turning defensive and lashing out were pretty high.”
“You just…Let me struggle alone,” Morgan said, her face becoming more closed as she said it.
“Yes,” Audrey admitted quietly.
It hurt to say. It hurt to hear. But it needed to be said. She wasn’t going to lie and deny that she caused pain. She just had to lay it bare and hope it had been worth it.
“Why?” Morgan breathed. She knew. They both knew. But Audrey understood why she had to ask. “Why didn’t you help me?” she said, voice breaking. “I- I needed help.”
It took all of Audrey’s self-control not to flinch at that.
“I know,” she said, as gently as she could. She reached across her desk and gently squeezed Morgan’s clasped hands. She waited until she looked at her to add, “BUt you couldn’t ask for that help. You couldn’t admit to needing it. Before today, you wouldn’t have been able to accept it, either, even if I had tried to give it to you.”
“You couldn’t have known that,” Morgan accused, shaking her head and pulling back.
“But I did,” Audrey said quietly. She had to proceed carefully, now. Her scalpel was balanced precariously in the middle of a network of raw nerves. One wrong move would do irreparable damage. “We know our residents a lot better than they think we do. A lot better than you all probably want to think about,” she added musingly. “But I also know,” she went on, before Morgan could interrupt, “Because I’ve been where you are now.”
Morgan looked startled, “You have-” she began, and Audrey swiftly intervened to correct.
“Not exactly where you are,” she said, and Morgan deflated a little. “But you still remind me of myself when I was a resident.” Morgan looked up again, head cocked slightly to one side, looking genuinely curious now.
As a general rule she tried not to reveal too much of herself to her residents. Her personal life was hers. She wasn’t the most fiercely private person at the hospital. But there were lines, and boundaries, and in her experience it was best to be careful when crossing them. This was one of the times she felt it would be a benefit to share her experiences as a person, not just a doctor.
“I was underestimated, too,” she began, “I was smart, driven, ambitious, and talented.” There was no point denying your own worth to anyone; least of all yourself. “I was also the one they waited on to fail every day. I was the one they wanted to see fail. And so I had to be twice as good every step of the way to prove them wrong.”
Morgan nodded, a small, unconscious thing, Audrey’s words resonating with her.
“For me ‘they’ were my superiors in the program - dusty old white men who felt challenged and threatened by very existence in their hospital.”
“With good reason,” Morgan muttered.
She blushed, telling Audrey the words had slipped out accidentally. But she smirked, pleased. “Quite,” she agreed.
Neil had confessed to her over drinks that he was never sure how she’d restrained herself from breaking bones in their chief’s body on more than one occasion. She told him she’d satisfied herself with breaking all of his records in surgery instead. Which she had. Repeatedly.
She took a breath and softened as she returned to the task at hand, “Your ‘they are your family. And, more importantly, yourself.”
Morgan glanced up at her, apparently both wanting, needing her to go on, to understand…And also terrified that she actually might.
Audrey went carefully, slowly, “You need to prove to yourself that you should be here. You need to know that all the bridges you’ve burned, all the opportunities you’ve turned down, all the things you’ve sacrificed, all the fights that you’ve had…You need to know they were worth it.”
Morgan met her eyes then slowly, tremulously, she nodded.
Audrey smiled sadly and continued, “Living every day under that kind of pressure..Eventually it breaks you.”
Morgan shook her head in disbelief, “I find it hard to imagine you ever breaking.”
The smile Audrey gave her this time was rueful. She would have loved that to be true herself, but she knew damn well it wasn’t.
“Oh believe me, I broke,” she said with a humourless laugh. “It wasn’t pleasant. But it forced me to finally ask for help, and to acknowledge something about this job it takes a long time for most residents to realise.”
“That we aren’t invincible?” Morgan said quietly.
Audrey understood that feeling, too. There was a rush to surgery that she had never been able to replicate. Not with her bike, not with sex, not with anything. Knowing that you had saved a person’s life; that they would be dead without you…It could very quickly go to your head, make you believe that you could do anything.
Coping once that bubble burst and the dam it had kept on the real world crumpled and it all came rushing back in was tough.
“Yes,” she agreed, “But it taught me that we don’t exist in a vacuum. No matter how good you are, no matter how many things you can do, no-one can do everything alone. No matter how much they might want to,” she added, correctly interpreting the wry look on Morgan’s face. “And we’re human. Holding yourself to impossible standards every day is only going to truly change one person - yourself.”
Morgan blinked, surprised. “But you did change people’s minds, didn’t you? You proved yourself to your superiors - all the men who thought you couldn’t do this job. You proved them wrong.”
“I did,” Audrey said, “But it didn’t change as much as I thought it would at the time. Everyone else will think what they want to think, regardless of what you do. Their thoughts won’t affect how you do your job. Destroying yourself trying to prove a point to them will.”
“This is all very inspiring and everything, Doctor Lim,” Morgan said shakily, staring down at her hands again, “But there’s a major difference in our stories.” She raised her head and looked Audrey in the eyes when she said, “You didn’t have a chronic incurable condition eroding away your nerves.”
“No,” Audrey agreed gently, “But I had to deal with a lot of prejudice - which, believe me, can be just as chronic, painful, and incurable as rheumatoid arthritis. Not to mention the effect it has on the nerves.”
Morgan managed a weak smile at that, but it quickly faded as she sobered once more, shaking her head, staring down at her hands again with a look of such betrayal in her eyes it hurt to watch.
“It’s not the same,” she whispered, tears forming again, despite her obvious attempts to hold them back.
“No,” Audrey said again, and Morgan looked up at her once more. “BUt they’ll say the same thing to you that they said to me,” she told her. “The same thing that they said to Murphy. They’ll tell you that you can’t.”
“And they’ll be right,” Morgan interrupted with a hysterical note to her words now.
“They don’t get to decide that,” Audrey cut in firmly. “You do. You proved that to me today. If you know what you can’t do, if you understand your limitations, then you know what you can do, and you understand your own capabilities.”
“And that’s enough?” Morgan said, with obvious disbelief.
“It’s enough for me,” Audrey replied.
She’d made her decision on this. One of her friends from med school had specialised in rheumatology and they’d had a lot of late night conversations and dinner meetings about this. The condition was damaging, but it was also variable, and relied a lot on the individual’s understanding of their own well-being and function day to day. She’d decided that if Morgan could prove she could master that, she still had a place at this hospital on her team.
The visible relief that flooded Morgan’s body seemed for a moment to sweep away every bit of pain she was in. Her eyes brightened again, and for the first time in weeks, Audrey felt that fire from her again.
“It will not be unconditional,” she said quickly. She didn’t want to ruin this moment for Morgan, but at the same time she had to establish boundaries. “I will trust you. If you tell me that you can do something, then I will let you do it. But I also need to know when you can’t do something, or if you’re unsure at all.”
Morgan bit her lip, and Audrey thought she could sense the reason for her hesitation, so clarified.
“It doesn’t have to be a big deal. I don’t need you to come in here every morning with a neon sign detailing where you’re at on a pain scale. We can work a system between us - but I do need to know.”
“Of course,” Morgan said. She was nodding eagerly now, sitting up straighter, perching on the edge of her seat, looking alive and intent, ready to do whatever it took to be a good doctor.
“And you’re to keep seeing your rheumatologist regularly,” Audrey went on, “I would like to be kept up to date with your progress, your meds, any new symptoms. If things get worse, if they get better. I’d like to know your options.”
“Alright,” Morgan said, though she looked a little more uncertain.
“This is not something I can force you to give me,” Audrey clarified, “It’s your choice to divulge those things to me, and it’s your right to keep them from me, but it will help me, which will help you, if I understand as much about your condition as I can.”
“I’ll forward you over all of my notes tonight,” Morgan promised, a spark of defiant resolution in her eyes that Audrey decided against challenging.
“I also think,” she went on, tone softening as she knew how this was likely to be received, “That you should tell the team about this.”
Morgan balked visibly at that, which Audrey understood. The competition the program fostered between them all was good, and generally healthy, producing good results, but it made it difficult to confide weaknesses. This was something that frustrated her, as understanding the weaknesses of your coworkers was as important as knowing their strengths.
She raised a placating hand, “Like I said, it’s not something I’m going to force you into. I know that it’s hard, I know that you don’t want to, but I think that it might help.”
“I don’t want them to treat me differently,” Morgan said quietly.
“I know. But you should be,” she started. “You have a disability, Morgan,” Audrey said, as gently as she could while not sugar-coating the facts of the matter. “That’s hard to accept, I know that. But it does change things. And it means that some things will have to be changed in order to manage that. Accommodation is not a bad word, and having team members who understand what you’re going through and can support you will not make you weak, or less talented, or less deserving of a place among them.”
“I know,” Morgan said, “Logically I know all of that. It’s the same advice that I would give to a patient in my position reacting the way that I am but…”
“But emotion is the death of all logic,” Audrey said with a sigh, “Humanity throughout history has struggled with this. I don’t expect you to come up with a solution for it in an afternoon.” Morgan relaxed at those words. “But I do think you should at least consider what I’ve said,” she added firmly.
“I will,” she promised in turn.
“Alright then,” Audrey said, pushing her chair back and getting to her feet. She could almost taste the kiss of the fresh air on her skin and she was ready to embrace it on her ride home.
“Morgan remained sitting, looking a little shell shocked by the abrupt end of their meeting. “You’re…You’re really not getting rid of me?” she said, as though she felt stupid asking but couldn’t stop herself.
“No, I’m not,” Audrey said with a small smile. “Not unless you want to tell me right now that you don’t think you can contribute anything to this team anymore. That’s the only reason I would have for letting you go. Are you going to tell me that?”
“No,” Morgan said defiantly, also getting to her feet. “I can. I will.”
Audrey smiled. “Good. Then go. Do.”
Morgan actually smiled. It had been a long time since she’d seen that expression on her face.
Audrey stepped out from behind her desk and moved towards the door. “Then I think we’re done. Good night, Doctor Reznick.”
Morgan smiled and marched briskly to the door, which Audrey was now holding open for her. “Good night, Doctor Lim,” she said formally, giving her a small nod.
She moved to walk out of the office, hesitated, then, in a sudden rush, turned and pulled Audrey into a quick hug.
“Thank you,” Morgan breathed in her ear, squeezing her a little more tightly than was strictly necessary, “I promise I won’t let you down.”
Audrey recovered from the shock of the move and patted Morgan on the back a few times until she released her.
“You’re welcome,” she said warmly, “And I know you won’t.” Morgan nodded again, looking confident and renewed. “See you tomorrow,” Audrey said with a smile.
I am back. I am back with middle-aged ship smut fic. It’s like I never left. Tho this time it’s Lim/Melendez flavoured. And the way I see this ship is: Neil worships the ground that Audrey Lim walks upon and she permits him. Good shit. Continue reading for approxmiately 6.5k more words of that good shit.
Title: A Rush of Bourbon to the Head
Summary: Post 2x09. Neil and Audrey meet together for bourbon and start 2x10 waking up next to each other in bed. This bridges the gap.
A fic in which: -Audrey says the word ‘fuck’ a lot -Neil looks adoringly at Audrey -Bourbon is drunk -Fucking is done -Heart to hearts are had.
Teaser:
He smiled, then reached out and gently covered her hand with his own, “You’re a great surgeon, Audrey,” he said warmly, “And you would have made a great chief.”
“There is a lot of wisdom in this bourbon,” she teased, squinting down into it to avoid the burning intensity of his gaze.
“You found any, yet?”
“I might have,” she said, mouth a little dry, still not sure if what she was thinking right now was wisdom or insanity. Maybe a little of both.
On days like today, heading in to Crowley’s bar felt more like coming home than her own place. There were few problems, she’d found, that couldn’t be improved upon by mulling them over with a glass of bourbon.
She didn’t bother looking for Neil, just wound her way through the familiar layout of tables and chairs with the same surgical precision she applied in the OR until she found him at their regular places.
Surgeons could be a surprisingly superstitious lot. She had never subscribed to much of it herself. But there were certain constants in the universe you just didn’t fuck with. Like the perfect spot in your favourite bar, deduced over years of careful experimentation and testing.
Collapsing into the chair beside him, she signalled for another two bourbons with some curt hand gestures, then shrugged off her leather jacket. It felt strange to wear it without her helmet in tow, or her Ducati, for that matter. But it had felt stranger not to wear it at all.
“I was never gonna confront Andrews,” she said bluntly, without so much as a ‘hello’ to warm things up first. She had been stewing since Andrews’ announcement, and had worked out exactly what she wanted to say to Neil. No point beating about the bush. “I was playing you. But damn if you didn’t actually make it work.”
She didn’t add what they both knew – that if she had confronted Andrews, it was unlikely he’d have reacted with anything other than resentment towards her for challenging him.
Neil shook his head. “It didn’t work for anybody,” he pointed out, flatly. “He played us both. He set us against each other.”
Audrey sighed, looking away from Neil. That was true enough. All those years of working, of grafting, of giving her blood, and sweat, and soul to this job, and that conceited bastard was just going to ‘retain his title’.
“I think you were right,” Neil continued, pulling her out of her bitter thoughts” She looked up and met his eyes again, sipping at her drink. The familiar burn was oddly soothing, purging some of her anger.
“Even if you were just bluffing,” he paused and she raised her eyebrows at him. He’d always had a penchant for the dramatic, even when they’d been residents together. And he’d never known how to just spit something out, he had to take his time, mull it over, let the moment build. “We need to stand together.” He nodded to himself.
“Where was that wisdom two days ago?” she demanded, unable to keep the distinct note of indignation from her voice.
If she was being fair, it probably wouldn’t have made any damned difference. There was no greater power in heaven or earth that could match Andrews’ sense of self-importance. But she wasn’t in the mood to be fair. Nothing else in life bothered, why the fuck should she?
Neil gave her a small half smile and raised his glass, “Still in the bottle.”
She huffed a soft laugh and they both sipped at what passed for wisdom these days.
People called Neil arrogant, but that only showed how little they knew him. He came across that way, and he could be an ass at times. But his heart was generally in the right place, and he had the rare ability to be able to back down and admit he’d fucked up. She appreciated that.
It made it hard to be mad at him. Since she wanted to be mad at something right now, she might still have ended up taking things out on him. But it had been a long day, and she knew that he was just as upset and angry as she was. Time to stand together, follow her own advice. Even if it had been mostly bullshit at the time.
“What other pearls of genius are in there?” she asked.
“That remains to be seen.”
“Well, I for one am curious to find out.”
She made to signal to the bartender to fill them both up again. Drowning one’s sorrows was a time honoured tradition, and she approved of tradition. Whenever there was bourbon involved, anyway.
Neil put a hand on her wrist, though, stopping her. “Aren’t you on shift tomorrow in the ER?” he asked lightly. There was no judgement in his voice, just practicality.
“I know my limits,” she replied, honestly. “If we’ve reached yours I can order you a water instead,” she offered sweetly.
He laughed, “Not even close.”
There. He still had a little spark of fire about him every now and then. She could see it sparking in his eyes, that light of challenge, of competition kindling there.
When they had been residents she’d had better things to do with her time than compete with Neil Melendez. She only had to prove herself better than she had been the day before. Once they had matured into surgeons at the same hospital, though…Well, a little friendly competition with a colleague had never done anyone any harm.
It had kept them both at the top of their game. It had pushed them, and driven them, and it was fun, dammit. He hadn’t been wrong when he’d called her out as an adrenaline junkie in the OR. She was.
She lived for those thrills – the wind tearing through her on her bike, nothing between it and her but leather and skill. The intensity of a difficult surgery, catching a life in your bare hands and snatching it back from the brink of death.
Sparring with Neil gave her the same high, the same rush, the same thrill. It kept life interesting. The only thing she’d ever truly feared was being bored, and he certainly prevented that. In a number of intoxicating ways.
“Good,” she said, grinning at him.
They both knew she could drink him under a table. And a second. And occasionally a third. That had stopped being a competition years ago. Now it was just the subject for gentle teasing.
“Although,” Neil added, as she made to catch the bartender’s eye again, “The residents are probably going to be here in about,” he checked his watch, “Twenty minutes, give or take.”
She groaned. “I will never forgive you for telling them about this place,” she growled at him.
“It’s a good bar,” he said defensively, with the gall to laugh a little as though anything about this was even remotely funny.
“It’s our bar,” she countered, “This place is more holy than my OR.”
“I was passing on our legacy!” he insisted.
“You were giving away our closely guarded secrets – that’s a capital offence. Ten years, Neil. Ten years we’ve been coming to this bar undisturbed by work and you just open the door and bow in our residents? What the fuck.”
“How about I get us a bottle to go and we head back to mine and find out what’s at the bottom?” he said with a soft smile.
“Nice deflection,” she admitted.
“Must be those great leadership skills shining through,” he said, grinning. She glowered darkly at him. He had the sense to raise his hands in a gesture of surrender. “It’ll be quiet, no residents, and I’ll even let you pick the background music.”
A very good offer. Damn him but he knew her too well sometimes.
“You’re on,” she said, raising a finger, “On the condition that you’re buying.” He raised his eyebrows at her, “On account of you being an apple,” she said, pointedly.
He laughed at that, “Deal.”
She waited outside while he settled and came out to meet her. His sharp eyes scanned the parking lot as they started to walk through it then he said, “I don’t see your chariot have death anywhere. Does this mean you’ve finally sent it to the scrapyard where it belongs?”
She scowled at him, “The Ducati is at home, thank you,” she replied in slightly clipped tones.
He raised his eyebrows at her. They both knew it was her pride and joy, and that she’d rather cut off her own hands than willingly scrap it.
She grimaced. He was going to find out anyway, but damn…
“Technically,” she grit out reluctantly, “My licence has been suspended.” She paused then amended firmly, “Temporarily suspended.”
He laughed at that, as though he was begging her to stab him, “What? What the hell did you do?” he asked, automatically assuming she must have done something to deserve this. The fact that she technically had didn’t make it any less galling. “No, wait, let me guess – you were going way too fast on your death machine in pursuit of an adrenaline high?”
“They couldn’t prove shit,” she muttered darkly.
“Apparently they could,” Neil said, sounding entirely too amused by the entire situation.
“I’ll tell you what I can prove,” she snapped, rising to his bait even though she knew this was exactly what he was fishing for, “That judge was a power crazy bitch and when I’m through with her she will beg me to take her back in time so she can stop her former self from attending law school so she never has to deal with me.”
“Nice,” Neil said, grinning, “You talk to her like that, too?”
“Only after she kept me waiting at the back of her courtroom for six hours because I took one two minute phone call from Murphy and Reznick about a patient,” she snapped. “And I’ll have you know I was very polite,” she added.
“Oh I bet you were,” Neil said, insufferable smile widening as he let them into his building and held the door for her.
“Six hours, Neil. Six hours,” she said, stepping in before him and turning back to look at him, eyes flashing.
“You called her out in the middle of her courtroom and you’re surprised she threw the book at you?” he said, leaning past her to press the button for the lift. “What would you do if a patient called you out like that in the ER?”
“I don’t know, but I probably wouldn’t gouge their eye out and then lock them in a closet for spite, because I’m an adult,” she said, shaking her head.
“She put you in a holding cell, didn’t she?” he said, with the balls to sound amused as he locked himself into a confined space with her for the duration of their ride up to the top floor.
“For nine hours.” He snorted. “I saw things in there I can never un-see,” she said, leaning against the wall, Neil watching her, still smirking, “I learned things about humanity that almost made me quit medicine.”
He laughed at that, the sound bursting from him. He had a good laugh. Full, and genuine.
Another mistake people often made about him was assuming he was serious. He could be. And about some things her eighty three year old aunt had more levity. But he had a good sense of humour, mostly, and they’d always been able to talk about things like this without worrying about it coming back and biting them on the ass one day. They were competitive, but they weren’t bastards about it.
“It’s not funny!” she snapped, even though his laughter was infectious and it was taking all of her control not to crack a smile with him.
“It kinda is,” he said, his smile fond and affectionate, “Especially when I imagine you having to take cabs all over the city.”
She groaned and rolled her eyes, “They drive like old women!” she hissed at him, “I could walk faster!”
He laughed again and she whacked his chest and stalked out of the lift as the doors opened.
“Just get that damn door open and a glass of bourbon into my hand before I murder you,” she ordered.
“Yes ma’am.”
***
Twenty minutes later, with a glass of bourbon in hand, and her choice of music accompanying their evening as promised, Audrey was decidedly calmer, and was feeling reflective again.
“Did you mean what you said in Crowley’s?” she asked, turning her head to look at where Neil was sat next to her on the couch.
He was doing what passed for sprawling with him - legs extended out before him, shirt wrinkled, posture relaxed. She sat next to him with her legs curled up under her, shoes kicked off, comfortable here after all the time she’d spent with him over the years.
He raised his eyebrows at her, inviting clarification, “About us working together,” she said bluntly.
Neil considered for a moment, taking an exaggerated amount of time to sip at his drink. “I did,” he said, finally, “We’re better that way – better doctors.”
She nodded, thoughtful, “A little healthy competition between us has historically been a good thing, too,” she pointed out. “It pushes us. That also makes us better doctors.”
“True,” he agreed, “But only when it pushes us in the right direction. Pushing us apart, the way Andrews was doing, is not helpful.”
“Agreed,” she said, toasting those words with another drink.
They were quiet for a moment, Neil tracing the rim of his glass with the tip of a careful finger, “I didn’t mean what I said to you in the OR – about you being too much of an adrenaline junkie to handle the job.”
“You don’t think I’m an adrenaline junkie?” she teased lightly, too taken aback by the sudden sincerity, the light of genuine regret in his eyes as he looked at her, to think up a more serious reply.
“Oh I do,” he said, with a wry smile, “But I don’t think you would let it compromise you as chief. We all have our vices in this job – we need them to survive it. But you’ve never let them rule you. You’d have the board eating out of the palm of your hand in less than a month.” He drained his glass.
She scoffed, “Try less than a week,” she said, tone light and playful.
Neil laughed again, “And obviously your stunning humility would be a great asset, too,” he teased, leaning forward and lifting the bourbon from the table, refilling his glass.
She held hers out, and he wordlessly topped her up, too.
She idly studied the delicate tattoo on his neck that his movement had revealed. More idly still, she imagined tracing it with the tip of her finger, and had to fight a sudden mad impulse to do it right then and there.
Where did that come from?
There had been tension and attraction between them before. They were both attractive people, they could admit that. And they were close. They had flirted with the idea on more than one occasion.
But they’d always had other partners – or other priorities. The prospect was exciting, intoxicating. She’d be lying if she said she’d never considered what it would be like. She knew he had, too. The way he looked at her sometimes, as though he wanted nothing so much as to peel her out of her leathers and experiment with the delights of human anatomy on a far more intimate level than usual.
She started, jolting herself from those thoughts. Sometimes she could be an adrenaline junkie. Sometimes those impulses could even be dangerous. Maybe there wasn’t as much wisdom to be found in a bottle of bourbon as she’d assumed when they started this.
Leaning back into the couch away from him, she found herself saying, “I didn’t mean what I said, either.”
“You don’t really think I’m a shallow poser who’s just interested in a shiny new title?” he asked, eyes twinkling.
She groaned, covering her face with a hand. It sounded so much worse when he put it like that.
“No, I don’t,” she said, keeping her tone uncharacteristically gentle, taking care not to let his levity pull her away from the sincerity of her own guilt over that confrontation.
She reached out and laid a gentle hand on his arm. He looked down at her hand, at the contact, and only looked away when she spoke again.
“I know that you care,” she said, quietly, “I know that you want this for more than the title, and the advancement, and the prestige.” She gave his arm a squeeze. “You’re a good man, Neil, and I know you would make things better.”
Feeling a little awkward she withdrew her hand and took a large gulp of her bourbon. She wasn’t good at this shit. These gentle heart-to-hearts seemed to come so naturally to him, the sincere advice, the tender understanding. It felt sometimes he could draw that from a stone. Meanwhile she was the stone.
A lot of the staff, the nurses in particular, said that her brusqueness and aloofness were responses to the pressures of the job, that she couldn’t let herself be soft or she would collapse.
A lot of what the staff said in general was bullshit, but that particular nugget took the cake.
This was just who she was. It always had been. Straight-up, practical, composed and in control at all times. She didn’t know any other way to be.
She wasn’t a robot. She still felt, still hurt, still sought out these quieter moments even. She just…Had never been great about showing any of that.
Neil was watching her with such a kind, gentle look in his eyes that it made her want to rip his shirt off and kiss him breathless.
She controlled that impulse by toasting him with her glass and adding bluntly, “I stand by what I said about you being an asshat, though.”
He smiled, then reached out and gently covered her hand with his own, “You’re a great surgeon, Audrey,” he said warmly, “And you would have made a great chief.”
“There is a lot of wisdom in this bourbon,” she teased, squinting down into it to avoid the burning intensity of his gaze.
“You found any, yet?”
“I might have,” she said, mouth a little dry, still not sure if what she was thinking right now was wisdom or insanity. Maybe a little of both.
He raised his eyebrows invitingly.
“Are you fishing for compliments from me, Melendez?” she demanded, rather than offering up exactly what kind of wisdom the bourbon had imparted to her.
“You wound me,” he said dramatically.
“You are a great surgeon, too, Neil. You don’t need me to tell you that,” he looked expectantly at her. She rolled her eyes and added, “And yes, you would have made a great chief.” He smiled knowingly at her, waiting for the quip he knew was coming. She decided not to disappoint him, “Just as long as you always had me there to steal great ideas from.”
He laughed again, that full laugh of his, eyes crinkling at the corners.
“You are never going to let that go, are you?”
“Nope. It’s going to be in your eulogy,” she said, grinning..
“You think you’re going to outlive me?” he said, eyebrows raised, “With your mechanical ticket to an early grave? Even on temporary suspension, it’s still going to get you before anything gets me.”
“Then in that case I’m sorry,” she said loftily.
“For what?” he said, still laughing.
“For your future self - bereft, and lonely, and oh so bored without me.”
He smiled, but sobered enough to say, with all that aching sincerity he had, “I would be.”
“Hmm, the bourbon’s talking again,” she said mildly.
“I think it’s still being wise,” he murmured.
She paused, swirling the last of hers in the bottom of her glass, considering, “That assessment is currently under review,” she said finally.
“Why’s that?”
She met his eyes. He was playing a dangerous game, teasing this out, leading them onwards. From the look on his face, he knew exactly what he was doing. Bastard.
“Because,” she said, voice measured, “It’s encouraging the adrenaline junkie and giving her terrible ideas.”
“Hmm,” he mused lightly, leaning in just a little, his shirt shifting and revealing the tattoo once more. She knew his sharp eyes didn’t miss the way hers darted down to it. “It’s making the shallow poser very interested in hearing them.”
She leaned in to him, drawn in, as she always had been, by that intensity, that single-minded focus that right now was fixed entirely upon her. “You sure about that?” she breathed, close enough to feel the heat of his breath on her lips, as welcome and inviting as the burn of their bourbon.
“Only one way to find out.”
She kissed him.
It started out as a gentle thing, hestiatant, testing, still half-convinced that they were talking about completely different things and he would pull away from her the second their lips met.
He didn’t. He parted his lips in invitation and she answered enthusiastically - enthusiastically and not at all gently. That had never been her style.
He smiled against her mouth, slid a gentle hand into her hair, coaxing her closer. He was always so damn tender. So careful, and precise.
She didn’t want careful and precise. She wanted hot and heavy like the bourbon she could taste on his tongue. She wanted him to want this, to need this as much as she did. She wanted him to lose that self-control for just a second, to stop being a doctor and start just being human, so painfully human with all of their raw vulnerabilities, and wants, and needs, and instincts.
Just when she started to feel his restraint slip, he drew back, breathing hard.
She met his eyes, still half-afraid she would find regret in them.
“Interesting,” he said, nothing but heat in his gaze, “I think it merits further testing to establish its full potential.”
Cautiously, he leaned in and kissed her back.
Maybe it had been too hasty to expect him to rip her clothes off at the first kiss. There was a lot of history between them, a lot of respect, a lot of trust. They had to be sure. Very sure. Lines were being crossed as she took his tongue in her mouth and sucked. Lines they hadn’t crossed in over a decade of knowing each other.
They broke apart again after their latest testing clash.
Sure. They had to be sure. They had to do this carefully, if they were going to do this at all. They should talk about it, firmly establish what was happening, plan this like they’d plan a surgery.
He looked up and she met his eyes and found such certainty in them that for a moment she forgot how to breathe. She had never thought that he would look at her like that, with so much raw lust it seared.
Fuck being careful. Fuck planning. Fuck lines and boundaries and history. Fuck thinking.
Before she had fully processed what she was doing, she had grabbed the glass of bourbon from his hand and shoved it towards the table along with her own. The glasses slid to the edge of the table, one nearly toppling.
Neil leaned forwards to fix it, but she was already crashing into him, momentum pushing him back against the couch cushions. She settled into his lap, straddling his hips and leaning down to kiss him again.
How had she gone so long without doing this? How had she survived ten years without ever knowing what it felt like to kiss him? How could she go another ten years without spending every second with his lips on hers, his body against hers, the heat of his skin scorching her.
Problems for another time, she decided, as he moaned softly into her mouth, and she gave up on having another coherent thought again that wasn’t solely focused on how to make him do that again.
He drew back a second later and she growled faintly in displeasure. Then she forgave him as his lips found her neck and set to exploring until he found a spot that made her arch into him. Once he found it, she slid her fingers into his hair, holding him in place. He took the hint and kissed there until she tugged sharply on his hair, cutting him off with a gasp.
“I don’t intend to be gentle with you,” she warned him, breathing heavily.
“I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
She smiled and dipped back down to kiss him. Contrary to what she’d just said to him, she was gentle. She knew what she wanted from a partner in bed, and emotionally investing in a fuck wasn’t exactly her style.
But this was a little different. This was Neil. She figured after a decade of history, he was entitled to a little bit of special treatment from her. But only a little.
Neil lifted her from the couch without warning and she broke the kiss, startling, legs tightening around his waist, frowning down at him in disapproval even as he put a hand on her back to steady her.
“You good?” he asked, pausing and suddenly looking concerned.
She huffed irritably, blowing hair from her eyes, “A little warning would be nice,” she grumbled.
He smirked at her, leaning in and kissing that spot on her neck he’d identified earlier, “I thought you liked living on the edge,” he teased.
She growled and squirmed slightly in his arms, “Get on with it, Neil,” she growled.
“You’re very bossy, you know,” he observed.
“I warned you.”
“I’m not complaining,” he said, evenly.
A lot of men did. She found it…Intriguing that he was so seemingly comfortable with all of this.
She draped her arms around his shoulders and leaned in, kissing her way up his neck, following the line of his jaw until she reached his ear. She dragged his earlobe between her teeth until he groaned then hissed in his ear, “Bedroom. Now.”
He laughed bt obliged, managing to kick the door shut behind them as she began unpicking the button’s on his shirt. A surgeon’s delicacy came in handy in all sorts of other places in life, she’d found.
She studied him with an appraising gaze, eyes lingering on the tattoo on his neck and chest, fingers tracing delicately over it as she’d fantasised about previously. Then she found herself pressed up against the nearest wall, his lips on hers, earning a soft, approving growl in the back of her throat.
“Was that too-” he began, drawing away a second.
“I don’t want to be made love to, Neil,” she hissed, sliding her knee between his thighs and pressing herself against him, “I want to be fucked.”
He shivered slightly, and she revelled in that, pulling him against her. Cocking an eyebrow she started slowly picking apart the buttons on her own shirt, wondering how long it would take him to intervene and speed up the process. She was wagering by four buttons. He made it two.
His fingers were deft and practiced as he slid her shirt off of her shoulders and dropped it onto the floor at their feet to pool beside his own. He took his own time studying her, eyes trailing up and down her body, a look in his eyes that suggested he was planning something filthy to do with every inch of it.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured absently.
She startled him by laughing, “We’re not in high school, Neil, you don’t have to butter me up with empty compliments.”
“I meant it,” he breathed, with such sincerity that she shivered.
He was so earnest, so genuine, so eager to please. She was going to wreck him.
“Then prove it,” she breathed.
He put his hands underneath her and lifted her into his arms again but hesitated briefly, “You good?” he asked again, but there was a slight note of teasing in his voice.
“I’d be a lot better if you got on with it,” she said pointedly.
He carried her towards the bed, but she stopped him, suddenly frowning slightly. “Are you?”
A broad smile spread across his face before he covered it with another kiss, “Never better.”
He lowered her down gently onto the bed and then moved over her. He dipped down to kiss her again but she stopped him with a hand on his chest.
“I don’t intend to work under you here, either,” she said pointedly.
He smiled and nodded before relaxing and rolling obligingly onto his back. Damn, if she’d known he was going to be this eager to please she’d have fucked him years ago. And kept on fucking him for that matter.
She straddled him and ran her hands down his chest, stopping at the waistband of his trousers and starting to work them open, but he caught her wrists gently in his fingers, eyebrows raised.
“Don’t I get to have a little fun with you first before we dive in to you fucking me senseless?”
Well, at least he was prepared.
“What did you have in mind?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
In answer he coaxed her out of her trousers, leaving her in nothing but her underwear then tugged her further up the bed towards the headboard. She settled in front of him and watched him idly run his fingers over the front of her underwear, brushing suggestively over her in a way that made a muscle feather in her jaw.
“Neil,” she growled.
He laughed again, “So impatient,” he teased, “You’re a surgeon, Aud, you’re supposed to be able to maintain your focus and control even under the most testing of circumstances,” his fingers deftly nudged her underwear aside, pressing against hot, slick flesh and she hissed sharply.
“We’re not in the OR right now,” she reminded him, “But if you want I’ll go get a scalpel.”
“I want you out of these,” he breathed, tugging suggestively at the scrap of fabric between them, “And in my mouth.”
She actually groaned softly at that prospect. Lifting herself up she helped him tug off the last of her clothes then hovered over him, one hand braced on the wall behind him for leverage.
“Are you sure about this?” she asked, a little breathless.
In answer, he pulled her down onto his tongue.
She gasped softly, anchoring herself with one hand on the sturdy wooden headboard. At this rate, they were going to find out exactly how sturdy it was.
She let her eyes slip closed and rocked her hips against his mouth. He had definitely done this before, and she was glad she’d let him. She hadn’t needed it, not with ten years of friction and anticipation along with their rather intense session on the couch. But she wasn’t going to dissuade him from focusing all of his attention on her if that was what he wanted. It would’ve been rude.
With a soft hiss, she threaded her fingers through his hair and tugged gently, guiding him to exactly where she needed him. He was good, but he was unfamiliar with her body. Anyway, she liked steering.
She caught his eye as she shifted him into a better position and didn’t miss the twinkle of amusement in them that clearly said: You’re bossy.
She raised her eyebrows in a challenge and he smirked against her, giving her exactly what she needed.
His eager obedience said enough: I like it.
Her back arched as he finally found the right rhythm and she gave his hair a short, sharp tug of approval which earned her a faint groan. If he was expecting shrieks of delight and repeated exclamations of his greatness in return he was going to be disappointed.
She was rarely vocal in bed - unless it was to give instruction, but he seemed to be doing just fine with the little guidance she’d already provided.
Neil didn’t seem to have expected anything else, and read her reactions eagerly in the changes of her breathing. Once she was panting, rocking into every movement of his mouth, nails scraping at his scalp, he knew she was close, and he didn’t disappoint.
“Don’t stop,” she snarled, holding him in place, even as she felt herself coming against his mouth. “Don’t stop.”
Mercifully he did as he was told, licking and sucking at her through her orgasm, tipping her into a second which finally coaxed a soft, hoarse, “Fuck,” from her.
Trembling, eyes still closed, she allowed Neil to place his hands on either side of her waist and help lower her back down over him, straddling his waist again.
Once she had control of her body again she dipped down and kissed him, tasting herself on his tongue.
“Not bad,” she said, grinning and breathing heavily.
He smirked back, one hand behind his head, the other rubbing slowly up and down her spine, looking entirely too pleased with himself.
She leaned down and kissed him again, “You have too many clothes on,” she grunted, pushing the last of his clothes from between them.
He didn’t object, and settled back down comfortably in place beneath her, eyes drinking her in like she was a particularly fine bottle of bourbon.
“Do you have-” she began.
“Top drawer.”
She leaned over, feeling him brace his hands instinctively on either side of her waist to stop her tumbling from the bed. She came up victorious, condom in hand, and tore the wrapper off with her teeth before easing it down onto him, enjoying the soft, hissing intake of breath it prompted.
“I hope you have as much self-control in bed as you do in the OR,” she purred lightly, sinking down onto him and enjoying the way he arched into her before she pushed him back down onto his bed. “Because I’m not nearly done with you yet.”
“I think I can manage,” he said, his muscles tight, but his expression composed. For now. “Can you?”
She grinned at him, “Just try to keep up.”
He did. Mostly. He held onto her hips so hard she felt sure she’d have bruises, and gasped her name so often it started to sound like a prayer. But she came again, after dragging his hand in between her legs with a short, brusque command, and allowed him to follow just behind.
She slumped forwards, panting, head braced on his heaving chest, back bowed, eyes closed, breathing in the scents of sweat and sex that mingled in the air. Her body trembled, and she made a soft sound of pleasure in the back of her throat as he gently dragged his fingers up and down her spine.
Finally, she pushed herself off of him and collapsed down onto the sheets next to him, breathing hard, pushing her sweaty hair from her eyes.
She glanced to her right and found him watching her, eyes twinkling.
“Did we really just do that?” she said, staring up at the ceiling, pleasure still quivering through her.
“I think we did,” he said, sounding entirely too pleased with himself.
She’d have whacked that smug smile off his face with a pillow, but she felt too boneless and satisfied to expend that much effort right now.
“God we are such a cliche right now,” she said, shaking her head in mock-disgust, “Friends for a decade, then we get drunk and screw each other. We’re setting a terrible standard that men and women can’t just be friends with each other.”
“I’m going to be honest with you, I’m not that bothered right now,” he said.
She laughed a little breathlessly, “No, me neither,” she admitted, still grinning like an idiot.
“Besides,” he said, reaching over and stroking her shoulder, “We’ve always been more than friends.”
“Coworkers?” she ventured slyly, knowing damn well that wasn’t what he meant.
“Family,” he said sincerely, then grimaced as he clocked the look on her face.
“Nice sentiment,” she said, managing to prop herself up on an elbow to face him, “Terrible word choice under the circumstances.”
He shut her up with another kiss, which she melted into, still smirking. “You know what I meant,” he said as he drew away.
She drew in a deep breath and nodded, “Sure did.” She cocked her head slightly, smiling, “Are you this corny with all the people you fuck, or do you reserve it for family?” she said, laying a mocking emphasis on the last word that caused him to throw a pillow at her face in retribution.
She tossed it back at him, laughing. Then hauled herself up into a more dignified sitting position. “Are you good?” she asked, frowning slightly as she peered down at him, “I know I can be a little-”
He took her hand and squeezed, quieting her, “I’m good,” he reassured her, that sincere warmth in his voice again, “We’re good.”
“Good,” she said, nodding slightly. Then she took a deep breath and said, “I guess I should get going then.”
“What?” he said, looking taken aback, “Audrey, we’re not in college - I’m not kicking you out two minutes after we come,” he said, looking at her as though she’d gone mad.
“You sure?” she said, not wanting him to build up any false expectations here, “I’m not exactly the ‘stay over and eat breakfast together in the morning’ kind of woman.”
“Did I fuck your brains out so much you’ve forgotten how long I’ve known you?” he demanded, causing her to roll her eyes.
“Cute.”
“I just mean,” he said, smiling and reaching for her hand, threading their fingers together to stop her pulling away, “That I’ve known you a while, and I figure I know what kind of woman you are by now.” She stared down at him and he smiled gently and said, “Stay. And sleep. That’s it. If for no other reason than to avoid taking another cab.”
“You do know me,” she grumbled, flopping back down beside him and pressing a lazy kiss to his lips. “Fine,” she said at last, “But I’m not spooning you.” He snorted with laughter. “And I sleep on this side of the bed,” she added firmly.
“Okay. Is that all? Or do you have a full terms and conditions package you need me to sign first?”
She threw her pillow at him and he wisely let it hit the stupidly large, smug grin on his face.
“Yes, I do,” she said, tartly, “It says ‘stop being an asshole’.”
He laughed again as she prised herself reluctantly from the inviting warmth and softness of the bed.
“Where are you going?” he demanded, pushing himself into a sitting position.
“For a shower, relax,” she replied, snatching up his shirt and draping it around her shoulders as she padded for the door.
She had just opened it when she heard him shift behind her, as she knew he would.
“Would you like an assist?” he asked quietly, stepping up behind her and sliding his arms around her waist, nuzzling gently at her neck.
“I would never say no to a second pair of hands.”
He grinned and she slipped her hand into his and tugged him out after her.
