Jeanne lets out a yawn as she readjusts her hat and crosses her legs. Today was a mental health day for the two so that meant no fighting, no chaos, no nonsense.
The knight looks to Otto who looked completely and utterly content with everything. Literally under the watchful eye of his partner he felt for once in his life he could drift off into a peaceful sleep free of worry.
"......." Tiebreaker looked at his pilot resting in the palm of his hand with curiosity but also with a kindness that can't be explained. Using his other massive metal hand, the golem gently reaches down and touches the redhead's head.
Jeanne could only smirk at the display, "You know, for a giant war machine you're actually pretty sweet. You know what? I'm in a good mood. Have a serenade on me. It's quite the honor to hear my musical talents so feel free to be impressed." She boasts pulling out her bass guitar from...somewhere.
"......." If Breaker could roll his eyes he would.
🎶"Looking to the sky I can see the white clouds."
"I look to the ocean and watch the shimmering sea."
"To forget about fighting and the pain."
"To forget sorrows of yesterday."
"Feeling the winds run against my face."
"I dream of my homeland and my dear family"
"To be back at home to the warmth of my mother."
"I wish to go back and see that someday."🎶
"...Why is it whenever I am showing my talents no one is ever here to witness me?" Jeanne says to no one in particular.
The knight would like to continue her conversation to no one but is quickly interrupted by the incoming giant wolf fox coming right at them.
"Oh you gotta be kidding me-THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A MENTAL HEALTH DAY!" Jeanne yells out holding up her bass.
"GAO!" Tiebreaker reacts quickly to Wolfie's advance putting the arm holding Otto and Jeanne close to himself while holding the other arm out in defense. Breaker was already running the numbers in his head. The mech had a multitude of weapons that could easily put this nuisance down...but would his pilot approve? The best course of action Breaker deduced was to stay on the defensive for now.
The giant wolf-fox bears down as swift as the wind. Trees bend and snap behind him, and his claws dig up the grass by their roots. He picks up speed as he grows closer, mouth open in what could be mistaken for a hungry grin. Finally, he leaps with a bark that can be heard from inside The Music House, half a mile away, paws outstretched in what could either be an attack or a hug, and starts--
--Licking…?
"Hello!" he says cheerfully. "Hellohellohello! Where are you from? Are you Voltean, by any chance? They make the best automatons! I think you'd like to meet them. It's just that sometimes the people over there can be…kind of…dry? It's so weird being an artist and going there--every time I try to talk to people there about my work it's like they've all just rediscovered what art is. But I didn't mean to insult you if that's where you're from! You know the one art form they always nail is architecture. Every time I set foot in a Voltean city it just blows me away--"
Unlike Wolfie, Felix and Wilhelm have noticed the two people who the giant automaton is carrying
"Hello, you three!" Felix calls to the robot and his companions, trying as hard as he can to make sure that his usually quiet voice is heard all the way up there. "Sorry about the disruption! Our friend Wolfie's just a little…excitable…"
"Yeah, he's super rude and likes to charge at people whether they like it or not!" Wilhelm also shouts. "He was literally just charging at my brother Felix here who's scared of big dogs--"
"Oh for God's sake," Felix says to his brother-in-law. "That was entirely unnecessary…Could you be more diplomatic?"
"It's not rude if I'm telling the truth," Wilhelm grumbles.
In the chaos, Felix notices the instrument in Jeanne's hands. He wants to ask her about it--he's intrigued by any other musician--but he's also distracted now by the sight of Wolfie sniffing all over Breaker, looking like he's about to go in for another round of slobbery licks.
“You gotta be shitting me right now, Franz.” If someone in his world had heard this conversation, they would have assumed the worst about him, but Fryc was starting to expect anything from these two.
He opens the gallery on his phone and scrolls through to a photo of Kanae smiling victoriously after one of her swimming competitions, alongside Sousuke and her girls. Then he gives the phone to Franz.
“Here’s my landlady with some of her schoolmates. I’m pretty sure they’re not mythical creatures.” Well, Kanae could turn into a force of nature when she got pissy but otherwise she was just a normal teenage girl thrust into a very peculiar situation. He then turns to Wilhelm, still rained on. It’s really fucking funny, he should try that on Wagner when he got home. Little shit deserved a swirly of some kind.
“Well, miss landlady and Sousuke have talked about youkai before, but Hamamatsu is pretty peaceful and the urban legends are rare.” The Classicaloids themselves should have been some sort of real urban legends but they blended in way too well with the other people. “I have heard of Polish urban legends before, though.”
Well, now Franz feels like an idiot. Of course--if this was in fact a universe where all nonhumans had been killed, this had to be a universe in which Japanese people, and perhaps all other Lundai people by extension, had not yet uncovered their draconity. He feels stupid for not having assumed that earlier, completely unaware that he’s still being fucking stupid for not realizing the actual truth about where Frycek is from…
“I’m quite pleased to see that fellow Lundai are alive and well in your universe. Though I suppose nothing can be done about the rest of the nonhumans that might have existed there, it’s a pleasure to know that not all of us have gone extinct. I hope that, when the time is right, the Lundai of your world can live openly as the draconic peoples that they truly are, just as we do. And if there are in fact some urban legends surrounding Hamamatsu, I hope that the nonhumans living in Japan can one day live openly as well.”
Wil is enjoying this too much. It’s almost as though he can forget being rained on!
“Polish urban legends? Are Poles also a mythological species?” Wilhelm jokes. “Just kidding!”
The server calls out their table number, and Wilhelm rises to grab the food. He leans over the tray on purpose to get all the drinks wet--even when being punished for being a pest, he has to keep being a pest himself. He shoves the catmint brownie in his mouth--the stuff works on dragons as well as cats--and hands Chopin’s sopping-wet drink to him with a wink and a shit-eating grin.
“That’s my son, ever the troublemaker,” Franz sighs. “Anyhow. If nonhumans are considered myths in your world, what of your magic? It makes me wonder what mundane people think about the fact they live alongside magical Classicaloids. If you have had to hide your magic to survive. One reason why nonhumans are targeted in our world is because the majority of us are magical in some way, which humans see as a threat. But, I take it perhaps your world is not so harsh on magic, as you have just used it openly here--” he gestures with a sly smirk to Wil--“and most people who try to hide their magecraft would not use it under any circumstances, most definitely not when they are simply annoyed. I would know. I hid my magic so in my previous life…”
Johannes and Wil both share a trait: struggling with eye contact. As a fae changeling (who were historically IRL associated with autistic children), Johannes has some behaviors that are shared with autistic humans; one of these traits is that sometimes he doesn’t make eye contact. Nowadays he’s a lot better at making eye contact, because fae tend to grow out of not making eye contact as a kid, but sometimes when he’s not interested in a conversation or preoccupied with something else you can catch him very blatantly staring out in space. Wilhelm, for his part, has ADHD, which causes people to struggle making eye contact.
In addition, both find asking them to make eye contact triggering as fuck because they were both abused the shit out of as children for their eye contact struggles. Wil’s mother got tired of his not making eye contact because she saw it as a sign of “attitude”; she would grab his face in her hand so hard that it bruised and yank his head back around to face her if she caught him staring off into space while screaming “Look at me!” or “Look at Mom!” Sometimes she would also backhand slap his cheek so hard that the force would turn his head to face her. The abuse that happened to Johannes was more subtle, yet no less tiresome: multiple of his foster parents would stop talking and stare at him judgmentally when his attention flitted elsewhere, and he would hear the phrase “look at me” in a demanding and condescending tone over and over again, 10-15 times a day, multiple times in a single conversation. The two brothers even share the same trigger with the phrase “look at me,” with Wil also being triggered by the phrase “look at Mom.”
"In the past, Eitr Vyrms possessed the ability to transform themselves into different morphologies of dragons. This ability seems lost in the modern day, save for the Pure Ouroborus descendants of the current LOAD, Me. A weaker form does exist in the modern day, coming in two main forms. The first is an Eitr Vyrm's dragon’s physiology shifting slightly to new environments as time goes on. The second is a brooder influencing what an egg will hatch out as beyond ancestry."
"Sounds nice," the 12-year-old Wilhelm huffs--his initial fear at Landilizandra long forgotten by this point. "I'd be a lot more interested if I were a dragon."
"You know, you are so fucking rude considering the fact that this dragon could cosmically squash you like a bug," his older brother Johannes says. "She's the ruler of the multiverse, and she likes you enough to notice you and give you her knowledge! Stop backsassing her before she decides she likes you better as lunch!"
"Oh, you're one to talk about being rude! Didn't you call Mom a slut that one time because you found her practice pole for pole dancing?!"
"…………"
"You are WAY TOO FUCKING YOUNG to know what either of those things mean!"
His eyebrow raises and his voice lowers, teeth gritted slightly. He’s starting to get frustrated. “What the hell do you fucking mean no Japanese people in Japan?” He could swear he has seen quite a bit of Japanese people, including in the house he was living!
Fryc takes the phone from Franz and scrolls slowly through it, trying to absorb the information. Most of it was familiar, the dragon-related bits being a little too much though. He gives the phone back.
“I mean, if you think it’s lonely, you should switch places with me and live for a week in that house. You’ll forget about loneliness real quick.” The mental image of this Franz and Wilhelm (who severely reminded him of Wagner but he almost managed to successfully forget that) trying to live with his roommates was seriously funny. They were too somber right now to even consider a joke.
What the hell do you fucking mean no Japanese people in Japan?
That’s it, any reasonable person would have thought. What if there had been no nonhumans in your world to begin with? But Franz’s braincells seem to all be directed toward his prodigious imagination today, which means that this conversation can only get even more cursed.
“So, us Lundai haven’t all been killed where you live…” Franz says. “It’s rather interesting that you refer to fae as myths, and yet Japanese people seem to be part of your everyday reality. Perhaps the Japanese people of your world have not rediscovered their draconity yet, and so they flew under the radar as humans. Or perhaps, instead of Lundai people not being dragons, is it that we have been mythologized despite our existing? Are Japanese people simply one of the mythological people who Europeans do believe exist, and somehow haven’t eliminated yet? Or is it more that you personally believe they exist?”
On Wilhelm’s side, the gears in his head have started to turn. He did see Frycek looking at his phone to fact-check a piece of info, and it doesn’t seem to have cleared anything up on his end…Maybe Frycek’s phone is still feeding him information from his universe. But if comparing the two phones would clear things up, why would he suggest that? This conversation--and the multiversal mix-up that he’s starting to sense--is far too entertaining.
“The Ryu could be a myth in your universe, huh?” he says trollishly. “Well, I like that a lot better than the thought of all of us Lundai being genocided. Know any good urban legends about Asian people? I’m sure my fellow Lundai would find them quite amusing…”
“Franz, I have seen some truly brainrotting takes on Twitter at times. I have seen discourse sparking from a single photo. I had to remind myself that not everyone knew what a Classicaloid was and people would have thought I’m fucking bonkers for using my full name to yell at people insisting Tytus and I were just guys being dudes. But never, ever since I came back I have seen whatever you just said there.” Fryc shakes his head. Thanks for fucking nothing, old man.
“Asperion? That’s…….huh?” He takes out his phone to look the name up. Some sort of esoteric club nearby (in Japan at least) but that was about it. He decides not to insist. This whole shit was way too wild already.
“Well, as a kid in Poland in the 1820s, I liked reading fairy tales featuring some sorts of non-humans, but all the adults insisted they were not real and just some sort of metaphors. Later on no one actually talked about that again. I like believing in urban legends though, adds some spice to life. Wait, that’s off topic, sorry.” The cloud moving in his direction didn’t freak him out, instead he pulled out the baton, but it moved right back to where it was before he managed to take control of it.
“Man I don’t know what humanocentric enclaves are you even talking about? I was born in Poland in 1810, died in France in 1849, reincarnated in Japan some 167 years later. These are the places, that I know, make of this what you will.”
Never has he ever…He must be new to this universe, then. Very new. Combined with the fact he reacted so strongly to the mere sight of nonhumans, he must never have set foot in Sanctura, Asperion or Unima at all. Franz narrows his eyes, hardly believing what he himself has heard; a lesser man, upon hearing such things, would have assumed that yes, Frycek was going insane, that their version was the truth, not this strange visitor who claimed to be Chopin. What he said about his childhood in Europe made no sense. Even the most violently bigoted of the European Narsean Church, which sought to stamp out the existence of nonhumans all across the globe, would have at least acknowledged that nonhumans did, in fact, exist.
But what’s this? He was born in Japan?! Wasn’t that part of Asperion, though--and a part of it teeming with nonhumans as well? Well, there were all manner of nonhumans everywhere--Japan being full of kitsunes, tanukis, shinigami, tengu, you name it…some being far more visible in human society than others, but with humankind solidly in agreement that they do in fact exist. His behavior has been so in line with one who has never come to this universe, and yet he seems as though he’s telling the truth…
A dark idea spreads like ink across the landscape of Franz’s thoughts, almost too painful for a hybrid such as himself to contemplate. Ever one for passionate emotions, he feels his eyes growing misty at the thought of the anguish and terror that he assumes must have swept through Frycek’s version of the world, one which no nonhuman--for all their awesome power--seemed to have escaped…
“Something terrible must have happened to the nonhumans of your universe. A long, long time ago,” he muses quietly. “I am so sorry.”
Even the troublemaking Wilhelm looks solemn as he puts the pieces together in his head right now. So the humans--they rose up against the nonhumans--and every single nonhuman across the world was--and for generations it was covered up--or perhaps, the ancient sin was long forgotten--and then every human went around thinking…
“All of them?” His voice is barely louder than a whisper, as he looks first at his father then at Frycek with a grieving horror beginning to grow in his eyes. “Every last one?”
“They have to have been, right?” Franz looks at Wilhelm, then back at Frycek. “It’s the only explanation as to why you’ve lived in several countries where nonhumans clearly exists, and yet you were raised to believe that they didn’t. No nonhumans in your universe? Were you raised in a Japan without Japanese people, then? The Ryu, I mean…It sounds unfathomably lonely.”
He pulls up a Wikipedia article of his own, and shows it to Frycek--the Wikipedia page on “Lundai people,” and scrolls to a section that lists Chinese, Japanese and Draconid people (among others) as being subspecies of a certain species of dragon shifters. In this list are the draconic name that each people calls themselves, with the Japanese people calling themselves Ryu. As though Frycek has never met a Japanese person in his life, Franz clicks on the link that says “Japanese people” to go to the Wikipedia article on them, and hands the phone to him as a reference. Apart from painting a history of the Japanese people interwoven with multiple species and peoples from other worlds, it also refers to them as dragons multiple times throughout, with a whole section about the biology and magical abilities of their draconic forms.
Franz and Wil sit there in a rather somber silence, both contemplating the colorless existence of a world in which people like them--the Lundai, the first children of Uroníteo--had long since been extinguished. No Chinese people. No Draconids. And none of the many people they knew and loved as well. No Wolfie (a dire kitsune), no Tonyo (a Zufelin), no Odario (another Draconid), no Johannes or Minona (both fae)…
Good job, you two. You not only made this conversation even more wild to Frycek, you also just made it way more depressing than it had to be.
Well, he should have expected some sort of modification from the 1800s to nowadays (hell, how was the Liszt he knew a woman?) but that explanation really cleared nothing up for him. “Good for you, beloved. Still doesn’t fucking help.”
He looks around, wipes a chair and sits down, an eyebrow raised in Wilhelm’s direction as the little man orders the things at the front. Then at Franz again.
“What the hell are you talking about? Modified memory? I guess it could have been modified if I listened to like….a fucked up version of Nocturne no.2 but I didn’t?” What on God’s green earth is going on here?
“Am I going insane?”
“You’re not going insane,” he says as he sits down with Frycek. “There’s actually been quite a bit of online discourse as to whether Chinese people are humans or dragons. If you aren’t on social media a lot, you might not have heard of it, although there’s plenty of discussion about it in the real world as well…Personally I’m of the opinion that we’re dragons, but I digress.”
That was very helpful, Franz. You totally cleared up all of friend’s reservations on the topic and definitely managed to assure him that he’s not losing his mind. More to the point…
“I did have questions about your origins, in any case. This must be your first time visiting modern-day France--or anywhere else in Asperion, really. What did they tell you about nonhumans where you’re from? It’s highly unusual for someone to say they stopped believing in nonhumans that have very clearly existed since the dawn of time--more unusual, still, to mistake nonhumans for humans dressed in costume. Even among the isolated human-only enclaves, I believe…” He puts a hand to his chin.
“Were you raised to think that humans are the only species that exist? The human-only enclaves tend to be…excessively humanocentric--” a very civil way of stating the fact they were incredibly bigoted against anyone who wasn’t human (or white)--“but I didn’t think it was to this extent.”
“Oh, what the hell,” Wilhelm huffs. “Who cares about all this multiverse crap? You know what I just realized? I don’t have to put up with this shit over here. You dun fucked up when you decided it was rain you’d curse me with. Guess what, I’m Chinese too, and Chinese dragons have powers over rain! Get ready to get your ass blasted with a whole world of wet!”
He points at Chopin, and the rain cloud leaves his head and begins to cross the table over to poor Frycek, hail beginning to pelt from the cloud in anticipation. But as it gets halfway there, Franz cocks his head at Wil, sending the raining cloud--along with the hail--right back.
“Don’t worry,” Franz says teasingly. “We’ll get you dried off as soon as you get home.”
Fryc exhales deeply, but the little cloud stays where it is. “I guess? I mean, that was a lot of information that was just not true, or I guess in my experience wasn’t.”
“The ol’ Franz I knew was a lot of things, but not like…a mythical creature. Neither was Tytus. Or anyone really! We stopped believing in fairies and the like around the age of 14! What’s next, you’re gonna tell me George was like…half demon or something? She got the accusation quite a bit but I can confidently say she was fully human and our mistakes were fully human, that’s why shit went down.”
He turns to Wilhelm. “Beet survived a couple of days like this, you’ll be fine.”
“Well, actually, about George…”
This situation is getting weirder by the minute. He has Chopin’s playing, and he’s connected enough with the identity to bear his name, but none of their memories are lining up! Something must have happened to make him forget, perhaps some sort of arcane magic from one of the human-enclave pocket universes surrounding the Three Worlds…And something just doesn’t feel quite right about that explanation, but it’s the only one he has. Still, though, if Chopin’s memory has been modified, he’ll have to keep an eye out. The man might need help.
“I can hardly see how one can stop believing in fairies when it’s always been quite clear that they exist,” he says. “Perhaps your memory has been modified, but I can assure you, everything I mentioned about our past is true--and that even though George was accused of being half demon, having such heritage isn’t a bad thing. You are right, though, that in my past life I was not a dragon shifter. I am in this current life, however. I’m half Chinese.”
Thanks a lot, Franz. That really clears things up.
Meanwhile, Wilhelm has turned around in a huff and, in a fit of impatience, is now ordering at the front.
“I’d like to have a double shot Sereyan espresso and a catmint brownie, please. My father will be having the spiced chai tea latte, and our friend here wants the Black Dragon fruit tea,” he says, still pissed at the rain pelting down on his head.
Did this little shit seriously just order for everyone without asking? He so did.
Franzi had…some horrifically abusive parents. Take everything about my mother and multiply it by about 100000. Here is a list of things that her mom did to her that now trigger her:
The phrases "work while work, play while play," "study while study," "time is tight," and "time just ticks away." These are all things that her mother repeatedly said to her whenever she saw her going off-task. (Franzi often wanted to compose music in non-classical genres, or to explore novel- and poetry-writing, which her mother saw as a waste of time--and so she would often say these phrases whenever she caught her daughter scraping out a few minutes of free time trying to do something other than classical composition, study, or piano practice.)
Grabbing things from her without asking her permission, especially food or electronics. Her mother would often grab food off her plate when she thought Franzi was eating "too much," in order to get her to keep her weight down. In addition, she would often grab Franzi's phone out of her hands, or other objects that she deemed to be distractions.
Entering a single-person bathroom while she is in there for any reason or attempting to carry out a serious conversation with her while she is in the bathroom.
Being asked to do any form of work during time that she has specifically set aside for relaxation, or being approached with any conversation topic of a serious nature when she is trying to relax. Even asking her to write a quick work-related email that takes 30 seconds or asking a simple question about availabilities in her work schedule is triggering. This is because her abusive mother would frequently intrude on the very limited free time she had every day (usually an hour or less starting in middle school) between piano practice and studying to lecture her or ask her to do work-related things.
Telling her when she can or can't eat. Her mother would often hold her hostage to studying or practicing piano by telling her she couldn't eat meals until she was finished.
Raising your voice at her or otherwise getting upset with her for making simple mistakes.
Being put on a ketogenic, vegetarian or vegan diet. Her mother tried forcing all of these on her (and really, the entire family) at various points in her life.
Another thing you should know: Franzi is usually a really chill person who can tolerate a lot and who doesn't drop people easily. But due to these triggers, there are a few lines she draws in the sand where she will cut someone off immediately if they break certain boundaries. If you take food from her without asking her first, she will drop you. If you raise your voice at her or otherwise express disgust at her for making a small mistake, she will drop you. She wasn't always like this because it was hard for her to say no to people who she cared about, but now these two things are hard and completely inflexible boundaries because she sees them as red flags that indicate the same sense of entitlement and lack of consideration that her mother showed to her on a constant basis.
As if Das Judenthum in der Musik weren't enough reason to hate him already.
You know the thing about bigots is, they're hardly ever bigoted against just one group. And when it comes to Richard Wagner, this is not just me assuming: if you go on his Wikipedia page, you will see that apart from his infamous essay "Judaism in Music," he wrote some very nasty things--both published and unpublished--about interracial marriage. So, in my original fictional setting, it would hardly be out-of-character to assume that Wagner would have been racist toward a fictional people group who in my lore is incredibly stigmatized in Europe: the Draconids.
Here's how that all went down.
tw racism and antisemitism because of course this is richard wagner we're talking about
Wagner's view of the Draconids could be summed up as follows. He could perhaps be characterized as partial toward the Tenkinur Draconids, the more isolated people from the floating mountains--historically, Wagner did write an unfinished opera about Buddhism and was fascinated with it, so a fascination with an Asian-coded people isn't out of the question. However, he was nothing but spiteful toward the Chikyinur Draconids, the diaspora Draconids who were enslaved in many Asperian Western, Disparan and Sancturan countries, and who were regarded as just as hateful as Elds (the Jewish-coded people in my original setting) and Roma. Nevertheless, he envied the Chikyinur one thing (which he also found fascinating about the Tenkinur): all German and Scandinavian Draconids, whether Tenkinur or Chikyinur, knew the hidden Norse lore that had been lost to Europe when the Christians Narseans decided to wipe out pagan religions and replace them with their own. Wagner, who in this setting had been part of a fictional nationalist movement of Norse Pagans who sought to reclaim their lost religion from Narseus, was hungry for the lost lore that only the Draconids knew--and which they certainly weren't sharing now, because they were currently at war with Europe. So he tried to find a way in. And it wasn't pretty.
In this setting, Wagner was 1/16 Draconid. And like every entitled white guy would, he tried to use this ancestry to get access to Draconid communities--both on the ground and in the floating cities--in order to get ahold of that Norse lore that wasn't accessible in Europe, both for his own practice and for his operas. What he thought would help was the fact that this was enough Draconid blood for him to be able to be historically declared a Draconid under the "hot rock" test--where one was made to swallow (the crueler and Narseus' preferred option) or touch a rock laced with dragonsbane, and if it burned you, you failed the test; you had enough dragon blood in you to take the Draconids' dragon form and be a Draconid. But it didn't help at all. Because the hot rock test is not how Draconids define their identity; it was merely a European invention designed to weed out any element of draconity in white communities. Due to how much the Draconids have mixed with other populations, there are a fair amount of people with no Draconid community ties who are maybe like 0.5% Draconid who would still fail the hot rock test because while less Draconid blood means you're less likely to be able to take their dragon form, the chance is always nonzero if you have even a single drop of Draconid blood. The hot rock test was designed not as a true marker of Draconidness, but rather to target people with even a sliver of Draconid heritage as well as actual Draconids because Narseans wanted to enslave or remove all draconic "impurities" in their society. At the end of the day, Wagner was still just a white guy who was only capable of thinking in terms of what the Draconids could do for him instead of the other way around.
Nor is blood quantum a determining factor in whether someone is Draconid or not. However, even though there are plenty of 1/16 Draconids running around who are accepted by the Draconid community, Wagner still wouldn't have been accepted. This is because Draconid identity is family- and community-based, so to reconnect, Wagner would have had to find any living Draconid family he still had left and go through an entire process with them before demanding their knowledge. The process isn't impossible even when you just have 1/16 Draconid blood due to Draconids' longer lifespans--you may very well still have your great-great-grandparents' family hanging around somewhere to accept you back into your ways and teach you. But Wagner didn't even want to put in the effort because he felt himself entitled to the Draconids' knowledge, and so of course they rejected him.
There are other reasons why he was rejected as well. I don't know how many of you read this part of my carrd on @talesofthechosen, but the Draconids and the Eldonai have been tight as hell ever since the Eldish prophet Ashira married a Draconid and spawned a thousands-of-years-long bond between the two peoples. So, many Draconids were understandably skeptical of this man, a well-known antisemite, suddenly claiming to be one of them and asking for their knowledge. Still, no people are a monolith, and some might have thought that by exposing him to their culture, he might change his mind about his shitty, shitty views. So he would have gone to cultural events held by the Chikyinur, the descendants of enslaved Draconids that he so despised, and pretended to be civil. Then he would have shown himself as the racist he was, someone totally beyond saving.
He and his longtime friend Franz Liszt were once invited to a Draconid festival celebrating the coming of spring. There was music, dance, ceremony, and good food for all to be had. People of all ethnicities--especially those also incredibly oppressed by Europeans--were welcome there, so Wagner opened his visit with "why are there [g-slurs] here?" and it all went downhill from there. Try as he might to hide what he really thought of the Chikyinur, his knee-jerk reactions said everything to them. He grimaced at the "primitive" music and dancing. He involuntarily gagged when he tried insect dishes, whale and seal for the first time. He reached out to touch regalia without permission. He asked random people for lore bits or other cultural info, asked new people when some made it clear he had not earned that information yet, and looked visibly bored and uninterested when the Chikyinur talked to him about anything other than what he came here for--including stories of their suffering and giving him other facts about their culture. He then left in the middle of a ceremony because it was getting late and he was tired (not to mention bored), which is the peak of rudeness since you're expected to observe respectfully until the ceremony is over; even Liszt, who did historically have his 19th Century White Guy™ tendencies, was soundly embarrassed on his behalf. When Liszt saw him next, he vented about having "wasted his time" with this "raner nonsense," "surrounded by Elds and [g-slurs]."
But Wagner wasn't done. Having failed to procure any information from the diasporic Draconids, he decided to go to the floating mountains to try his luck with the Draconids there. Contact between the floating mountains and the diaspora was few and far between due to the war, and Dick Wanger took full advantage of that to go be racist to those in the floating mountains knowing they'd have no advance warning. He even roped Liszt in, guilting the poor man much against his will, saying that he needed Liszt's powers of invisibility and flight (both of which he had naturally as the Archchosen of the Angel of Death) to help him escape in case the Draconids decided to kill him. Liszt did not want to go. He was like "dude these people are literally at war with Europe, maybe you as a white European citizen shouldn't be knocking on their door just to do research for your operas?" To which Wagner tried the one argument that he knew would always work on Liszt: He told his friend that he was conducting this research for the future of music, and Liszt going there to prevent his death would be a great service to music's future. So in the end, Liszt went.
Unfortunately for Wagner, try to hide himself though he might, his own racism and sense of entitlement snitched on themselves. The Draconids didn't even let him get to their archives; the city guards stopped him at the gates. They predictably refused to let him in, on account of him having been a white citizen of a white country who had not yet taken the proper steps to reconnect with the community that he was so brazenly claiming distant family ties to. And Wagner not only asked but demanded they make an exception for him, because he was writing four grand music dramas about the Norse gods and was thereby seeking Draconid Norse lore in the service of art. After several more minutes of this complete outrageousness, the Draconids decided they'd finally had enough, and they would make an example of this upstart German composer and the disrespect he showed their people by killing him. That was the invisibly hidden Liszt's cue to grab Wagner, turn into a giant bird (the Djedists' Angel of Death, Kaima, takes the form of a bird which is totally not a reference to Yveltal nope nothing to see here), and get the fuck out of dodge…
Wagner's shitdickery toward the Draconids doesn't end there. But before I get into all that, I would like to say one thing that just underscores how awful he was--not just to the Draconids, but also to his friend. Liszt, throughout his life, had no control over his magical powers besides repressing them, because of how much he feared and abhorred them. He was a devout member of the Narsean Church, after all, and while he had no idea how evil Narseus truly was and didn't participate in the church's cruelest acts, he did echo the church's belief that it was immoral to use magic if you weren't a Narsean clergyman and recoiled from his own magical nature. He would sometimes subconsciously use his ability to turn invisible or otherwise pass unnoticed through crowds in order to escape the attention of his rabid fangirls, but he had most certainly never used his ability to take Kaima's bird form before Wagner had requested him to in order to help save him--and he had also never used his invisibility ability consciously before. So when he got back down to the ground, he was stuck 1) invisible and 2) in bird form because he didn't know how to change back. And he was stuck like this for a MONTH. He canceled all his piano masterclasses and had Wagner write all his friends and family that he had come down with a mysterious illness and couldn't see anyone because of it, because how are you going to explain to everybody at a time when use of magic outside the Narsean clergy was punishable by death that you turned into an invisible giant death bird and were now stuck? Shit got so bad that Liszt thought he'd have to fake his own death because he believed he was stuck as said invisible giant death bird forever. Fortunately for music history he was not, but he set boundaries with Wagner for the first and only time in his life, telling him he'd never use magic for Wagner or assist him in his Draconid-related endeavors ever fucking again. Getting shot at by arrows and then being unable to do anything in human society for a seemingly indefinite period of time was not fun.
Anyway. Where was I? Oh, yeah, Wagner's shitdickery toward the Draconids doesn't end with his little trip to the mountains. Because the thing about Wagner is, he holds grudges and hangs onto negative emotional experiences like a motherfucker. And as soon as you do anything to incur his envy, you will face his wrath. Boy, he was jealous of the Draconids for having access to all that juicy Norse lore that he did not, and furious that they had not seen his artistic purpose and refused to cooperate with him. And so he penned a second poisonous essay under a second poisonous pseudonym titled "The Draconids and the Norse," accusing Draconids of stealing Norse mythology from Germans and deliberately hiding it from them across history to weaken the German people and make them lose their way. Because of the longstanding historical and cultural ties between the Draconid and Eldonai communities, Wagner also accused the Draconids of being the accomplices of a broader Eldonai conspiracy to deprive Germans of their heritage--who, by the end of his incoherent ranting, had clearly become the focus and main villains of his conspiracy theory, turning his essay from a depraved rant against the Draconids into a second depraved rant against the Eldonai (as if the first one hadn't damaged his reputation enough). Unlike "Eldonism in Music," this essay wasn't discovered as written by him until long after his death. But its impact cannot be denied: it is a common canard in white nationalist circles today that Draconids stole European mythology from European pagans and hid said mythology when Narseans destroyed paganism in Europe, all in a hundreds-of-years-long conspiracy with Eldonai to deprive white Europe of its vital ethnic spirit.
The end.
…………
…………Did you really think that was going to be it? That Mister Richard "In my later years I would go on random rants about Jewish people in the middle of perfectly ordinary conversations" Wagner would stop being an ass to people just like that? NO! Let me tell you, even AFTER his death he was still causing problems. In spite of having been nothing but racist and extractive toward the Draconid people, Wagner in Art's court had the nerve--the absolute NERVE--to request that when he was reincarnated, he would be reincarnated as a Draconid, but only one with a very small percentage of Draconid blood, like 1/8 or 1/16 so that he wasn't too Draconid, just enough so that he could have access to the lore he didn't know about with the rest being "pure" German. And Art, caring nothing about race politics and only about whether someone made good art or not, would have absolutely agreed--anything for her favorite artist who was also totally by this point her lover! Uroníteo, the god and father of the Draconids, told her that reincarnating Richard Wagner as one would be a very bad idea. But Art quite disrespectfully reminded him of his limitations: she told him that while she couldn't reincarnate Wagner directly into Draconid society, she could do whatever she wanted in terms of reincarnating him as someone with Draconid blood who was born outside Draconid society. (Uroníteo's limit is determining reincarnations of souls within Draconid society, because with how much the Draconids got around, he'd be micro-managing the reincarnation cycles of most of humanity if he were allowed jurisdiction over anyone who had a slight amount of Draconid blood.) By the time she was looking for someone to put Wagner's talent in, Wagner had offended her by saying he could make art better than her, so even if she knew she was putting Wagner's soul in someone along with his talent, she wouldn't have given a shit about his requests for reincarnation. But by pure coincidence, the one person who she deemed worthy of carrying Wagner's talent was a Draconid born outside Draconid society--just as she had envisioned.
Richard Wagner's last act in a long line of racism (fucking finally oh my god)? Being racist to his own reincarnation. See, the thing about having a strong connection to your past life is, sometimes they show up and talk to you like the Avatar's past lives do in ATLA and LOK. Richard Wagner often showed up in Wilhelm von Blumenthal's life in that way--and oh my god, the shit he would spew. Some of it was intentional, some of it was unintentional, but on the whole it left Wilhelm thinking Gods, I wish I could have, like, a normal conversation with my past self like my fellow Classica do instead of having him spouting his unhinged racial theories half the time he talks to me. The irony seems to have been lost on Wagner that Wil was a Draconid, exactly how he had asked for, and yet he was showing such hostility toward someone born in similar circumstances to those he had requested to be born in himself. That is, until Wilhelm banished him from his consciousness in an epic battle where he asserted that he was his own person now and he wouldn't be held back from having the future he deserved by a shadow of the past that desperately strained for a control it knew it had already lost. And he succeeded. After that, Richard Wagner's racist ass finally shut the hell up like it should have done all along, never to be heard from again.
a character can be as perceptive and insightful and intellectually curious as you can possibly imagine the fucking second they show signs of being a little rowdy or boisterous or just generally being cheerful and physically fit they instantly get slapped with the “dumbass” stamp because the faceless masses of general fandom trends still haven’t progressed beyond the immovable jock vs nerd dichotomy i guess
[image description: loose line art of two ribcages. A string connects the fourth ribs to each other. Between the ribs and over the string are the words, “I felt it here.” /end id]
The wave of mental anguish from the boy washed over her like a wave, his unspoken apologies ringing so loudly in his mind that she had to tamp them down to allow herself to speak. She fought the urge to snort out a bit of smoke at the abuse she sensed he suffered at the hands of his old caretakers, sensing the boy would assume it was directed at him.
The conflict and anguish he felt regarding his identity, both in this life and the last, would be something she should work on. She had raised too many eggs and hatchlings, and seeing another one in pain ignited a flame in her chest.
“I was not lying when I said I wished to discuss your opera,” she said, her voice gentle as she smiled with as little teeth as she could manage. “I’ve never been one to beat around the bush if I don’t have to. Why don’t we sit for some tea, or coffee if you prefer, and start things slowly.” Instinctively she curled her tail around him and thrummed, as she would with any distressed juvenile.
He flinches as her tail sweeps toward him, in spite of her comforting words; even after living with Franzi he still hasn’t gotten used to people reaching toward him for hugs instead of slaps. The vibration of her thrumming sound quiets his nerves somewhat; it reminds him of the purring of his mother’s cats. He wants to lean against her side to feel the vibration, just as he rests his head on the cats to hear how deep their purr motors go, but he doesn’t know if it will offend her…
He’s still a live wire, waiting for any indication that this might be some sort of a trick. He doesn’t dare ask if she forgives him for his transgressions, in case the answer is no--he knows it’s a realistic possibility and some part of him feels it’s what he deserves, but he still dreads to hear it. However, after a short while, at least his tears subside.
“If that’s what you’re here for, then…” He swallows. “I would like to have tea. I’ll have Mom bring some out here.”
Just a few minutes later, Franzi brings out the refreshments. She’s the mom that thinks of everything: Five kinds of expensive Chinese tea--cinnamon oolong, jin jun mei, aged white peony, even one with a hearty peach fragrance--and a high-end chamomile, because she can so tell he’s nervous. Seal jerky that Wilhelm had (albeit with some reluctance) prepared with his grandmother. There’s even a little picnic blanket for Wilhelm to sit on--Landilizandra too, if she could shrink to fit.
“You two enjoy yourselves!” she says, with a pure, motherly smile.
Wilhelm looks back up at Landilizandra, and then gets on the blanket. He avoids the seal jerky, but pours himself a cup of the chamomile tea and drinks it.
looks @ this post like…god damn my poor boy is so traumatized like he’s so hypervigilant about being judged and punished for things he did wrong he can’t even have a normal conversation with someone in landi’s position who likes his work without suspecting ulterior motives
In universes ruled by dragons, Landilizandra like to gain the permission of those dragons before she involved herself with the world. She didn’t have to, no Draconic Law as greater than her own, but she liked to respect the wishes of those whose homes she was entering. It was the polite thing to do, if entirely unnecessary.
In these Three Worlds, the Draconic Rulers were unfortunately indisposed, and the wishes of the usurping Divine weren’t worth entertaining. But Uroniteo, one of the last surviving children of the Eternas, was happy to fill in for his parents and offer her free reign over the realms, a blessing she intended to take full advantage of.
She enjoyed her time with the Wild Dragons the most, as she often did. But she found Half-Tamed enlightening to the interspecial politics of the world. There were Dragonfolk here as well, creations of Uroniteo meant to serve as a bridge between Humans and their Feral Kin. She had spent time with them as well, being welcomed by most for her status and power.
During a trip into one of the cities, she discovered a young composer was crafting an opera about the tribe of dragon riding Vikings she had read about during her research. Curious, she decided to pay the composer a visit.
She heard the arguing as she waited outside, thrumming with mild amusement at the young man’s impudence. When it became clear that he would try to run, she used magic to relocate herself to the other side of the house, meeting him at the back.
Her forked tongue slid out of her jaws, tasting the air and the fear radiating off the young one. She watched him, cocking her head to the side as her pupil’s widened slightly, the left eye before the right, which seemed slower to adjust. A rumble echoed in her chest at his question.
“I heard about your new opera,” she said. “I wanted the chance to meet you myself and discuss it.”
She wants the chance to meet him and discuss his new opera. Of course that’s what she says. Part of Wil is inclined to believe her, but that part is quickly drowned out by the part of him that’s still the scared little boy cowering under his parents’ belt, still the terrified child for whom even the slightest misstep could turn a pleasant conversation into a painful beating, or an unhinged rant about how Draconids were a filthy, parasite-ridden slave people and how the rebels in China wanted to take over Europe. It always starts innocently enough, but with someone of ill intent, it’s only ever a matter of time before things go from great to bad to worse…If she’s like that too, what reason does he have to trust her?
“Is that really it?” he whimpers. “What are you really here for? I know I haven’t been the best person--”
He thinks about everything he has to apologize for, and immediately realizes: Is she omniscient? If so, did she know about his conversation with his mom? Oh, fuck, he totally called her names and everything--
“I’m sorry I was transphobic. I’m sorry I didn’t want to see you,” he says. “I’m sorry I called you a weirdo…”
The rest of his apologies remain stuck in his throat, though each one strains ferociously to surface. His tears flow more freely as the emotions overwhelm him, rendering him even more unable to speak. I’m sorry I hated being a Draconid. I’m sorry I kept denying I was Chinese. I’m sorry I spent hours in front of the mirror staring at my eyes and wishing that my pupils weren’t pointed. I’m sorry I filed down my nails until they bled because I was so afraid of them turning into claws. I’m sorry for swearing at my grandma when she tried to teach me my ways. I’m sorry for telling my new mom she wasn’t really a dragon, just LARPing as one. I’m sorry for thinking Chinese opera sounds like screaming along to cymbal crashes. I’m sorry for acting like Wagner would…
Wagner. The thought of that life so unfortunately attached to his sends the tears pouring out even more, for the old man’s sins against dragonkind had been even worse than any he had committed in this life. Not yet the activist he would grow to be, and not yet a denier of the notion that he is that horrid man, he hardly thought about the life before. But standing before such power, he feels for the first time the weight of Wagner’s legacy digging deep into him the way that he’s sure Landilizandra’s teeth will dig into his throat--and the floodgates of guilt open with his tears.
I’m sorry for demanding lore from the Draconids. I’m sorry for that horrible essay I wrote saying that the Draconids stole Norse mythology. I’m sorry for claiming descent from a Dragonbonded Dreking chief without any real proof. I’m sorry for all the mistakes in this current opera that I wrote while in Art’s court and that my mom made me fix. I’ve done so much in both my lives, I don’t know how you could forgive me--I don’t even know if I deserve to ask that when you kill me, you make it quick…
But even as all these apologies spring to mind, he feels a churning frenzy at the mere thought of going back on his deeply held beliefs. He knows that what Wagner did was wrong, but how is he even to apologize for all the sins of his current childhood when he still wants to commit them? Because he does hate being a Draconid. Because he doesn’t want to be Chinese. Because he can’t resist standing in front of the mirror and trying to assure himself that his eyes are a normal-colored green with a normal pattern in their irises, and that his pupils are perfectly round. Because the thought of not filing down his nails and watching them grow into claws terrifies him. Because unlike his mother, he doesn’t know if he can trust a bunch of Chinese rebels who (he thinks) want to destroy Europe on whether the Chinese people are dragons. Because he does think that Chinese opera sounds like screaming along to cymbal crashes. And because of course he thinks there are only two genders, and he is definitely his gender assigned at birth and not the other--totally and 100% a boy, without an ounce of femininity in him, nope, nothing to see here…Like two dissonant pieces of magical music played at the same time competing for dominance, the perceived need to repent to save his life and the force of his true feelings to the contrary clash inside him. Not once in all the noise does it occur to him that the dragon goddess before him is actually, legitimately interested in getting to know him and the opera he is about to stage. Instead, in the midst of it all, a new melody, a new strain of thought emerges: Is there a way he can avoid his fate?
“Landi…Landilizandra…” he chokes out. “I know I’ve been trouble. Is there anything--Can I--”
Is there anything I can do to save myself? he wants to ask, but he’s too overwhelmed to speak.
He doesn’t even realize that due to the innate ability of a Draconid to connect with the dragons around them, he sensed her name.
He doesn’t even manage to process Franz’s last question, the information in his head swirling violently. This was real? These two were half dragons? What was that about Tytus? What was all this???
He steps away from the two of them, barely registering Wilhelm’s comments. There was a stingy remark on his tongue addressed to him but that didn’t come out.
Instead a baton pops out in his hand, seemingly from thin air.
“W nicości tworzę muzykę!”
The music starts pouring, literally starts pouring as the roof opens up and the rain gets in. The people (or better said non-people) in the coffeeshop run out, surprised, and the owner comes out of the back, making it very clear that he will not tolerate extreme meteo conditions here. Chopin hears that, especially since said owner was very loud, and makes a brusque move.
Now a little black cloud is raining on Wilhelm, like a cartoon character. It would be really funny, but there’s a cloud in his own head, too.
His magic? At a time like this? The Chopin he knows can sometimes be of a rather frail temperament, but to summon magic with a deliberate spell when one is so distressed--that seems so unlike something that his Fryderyka would do. Around him and Wilhelm, the patrons of the café slowly file back in when they realize the rain has stopped (though somewhat to their dismay, as they realize their seats are wet). The servingpeople have already busied themselves with small towels trying to clean up the water, offering apologies to all for the sudden disturbance, while the owner glares daggers at Frycek--and while Franz stares blankly for a bit, dumbfounded at the strange response.
Yes, Wilhelm had a part to play here. But apart from Wil’s little interjection, it was a perfectly normal conversation. What else could have gone wrong…?
“Are you all right, Frycek? You seem quite shocked.” Yep, he clearly still hasn’t fully registered that this guy is from a universe where none of the things so casually mentioned in their conversation were real.
“Yeah, what the hell was that for?!” Wil cries, with the rain pelting down on his head. “Now look at me! I’m soaked!”
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