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cake-writes · 5 years

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Compromise (Part Nine)

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Story Warnings: Mom!Reader, Dad!Bucky, Ex-Relationship, Co-Parenting Drama, Slow Burn, Angst, Fluff, Separation Anxiety

Summary: You didn’t want to trust him again, because every time you did, Bucky broke your heart just a little more. Deep down, though, you wanted to get along with him. You wanted to be amicable. You wanted your daughter to know her father. You’d always wanted that. It just required a compromise.

Part Eight / Master List / Spotify Playlist

Lunch was the most uncomfortable ham and cheese melt you’ve ever had.

That’s not to say you didn’t like the diner. Kitschy and quaint – a real hole in the wall, really, and although you’d lived right around the corner for the last two years, you hadn’t even known it was here. If you were being honest, though, you probably would have given it a pass even if you had known. With worn-down tables, cracked red vinyl booths, and chipped mugs filled to the brim with terrible coffee, this wasn’t exactly the kind of place you’d ever take your young daughter.

That said, when you were single and childless, it would have been right up your alley.

Dives were a dime a dozen in New York, but you had your favourites. This one in particular reminded you of a place you used to frequent before, but more so after you started eating for two, especially when Bucky used to indulge your pregnancy cravings. In lieu of flowers, he often brought home your usual order from the little diner down the street: a couple of ham and cheese melts that the two of you shared over Netflix binges well into the night.

You liked the melt from here, too. And the greasy fries.

What you didn’t like was the tension.

This wasn’t a date. Bucky had made that perfectly clear. He didn’t want it to be a date, because he wouldn’t have said ‘no’ to begin with. Right? All he wanted was— well, you weren’t sure what it was he wanted, exactly. He’d invited you out for lunch, but you couldn’t figure out why. To help with your strained co-parenting relationship, perhaps, or did he just enjoy your company?

No way. How could he, when you were so standoffish and nasty all the time?

Some part of you hoped that he still did want to spend time with you, but you pushed that idea right out of your mind. It was more important for you and Bucky to get along for your daughter – to work as a unit, a team, even if you weren’t together.

Right?

The problem was that you missed being together. You missed him.

You missed the twinkle in those gorgeous baby blues when he told you how much he loved you; missed that stupid, smug smile on his face when he teased you; missed the gentleness he offered you, the warmth, the affection. Even if his love was long gone, yours certainly wasn’t, and as of late you’d caught yourself daydreaming about what could have been.

What if you hadn’t ended things?

Where would your little family be?

Would Winnie have a little brother or sister?

Even when things were rocky way back when, you still thought about Bucky, longed for him, maybe even needed him sometimes. As independent as you were before the two of you got together – and after, especially as a single mom – you could definitely get by on your own, but it was nice to share your life with another person. It was nice to have someone to come home to.

When he was there, anyway. He usually wasn’t. Work kept him away.

You were better off on your own.

Right?

Toying with the last half of your sandwich, you found yourself sneaking glances at Bucky from across the well-worn table. Staring at his phone, he seemed lost in thought, brows furrowing as he read the messages he’d just received. He’d been happy to ignore them until the fourth chime; it would have been important, unfortunately, and he’d apologized for even pulling it out at all.

Work.

You certainly didn’t miss that, but today, you didn’t mind. You were just happy to spend time with him. And you were happy to see how far he’d come. Therapy at last; who would have thought? Bucky had taken great strides to better himself, and he’d changed in a lot of ways. Improved.

Soft chestnut locks fell into his face, which he absentmindedly blew out of his eyes as he typed out a response with a quickness you’d never seen. Two years’ experience with modern day technology had apparently upskilled him quite a bit, not that you cared right in this moment because you were more focused on how stupidly attractive he was.

You wanted to run your fingers through his stupid, messy hair. Wanted to brush it out of his stupid, handsome face. Wanted to kiss him and tell him how much you’d missed him.

Stupid to think any of that at all, but you did it anyway.

Your eyes trailed down to the tight, moisture-wicking black t-shirt on his body, which accentuated strong, muscular arms – arms that he’d wrapped around you too many times to count – arms that had always made you feel safe, despite the fact that one of them was cold and hard and dangerous.

Dangerous, but not to you. Never to you. A couple of red marks and bruises, nothing more, and only when you asked him for it. Or begged.

The sudden memory sent a pleasant shiver down your spine.

His thick, callused fingers typed away at the screen, but you knew firsthand just how dexterous they could be. A completely appropriate thought for such a harmless setting, to be sure, and you felt your face start to heat up as your thoughts went down a path they absolutely shouldn’t have.

“It’s Nat,” Bucky said, then, startling you out of your daydream, and your eyes jerked up to his.

“What?” you asked hoarsely.

“Natasha.” He waved his phone just a little to indicate what he was talking about, before he set it to the side. “She wants a debrief.”

Right. The mission. The one he’d just returned from.

“It’s fine,” you told him as evenly as you could manage, heart pounding within the confines of your chest. It felt like you’d been caught fantasizing about him, caught red-handed, but he didn’t seem to notice. “You don’t have to explain.”

You’d never expected him to share work details with you, and you still didn’t. Curiosity was human nature, but you didn’t need to know. That wasn’t what mattered, anyway; what mattered was that he never used to be around because of it.

Now he was.

“I know I don’t have to,” he said, casually reaching over the table to steal a couple of your fries. He’d already eaten all of his, along with the rest of his food. Bucky had always been a fast eater; that hadn’t changed, at least, and neither had his familiarity with you in such a casual setting.

You liked it.

Still wanted some paybacks, though, so as he went to shove your fries into his mouth, you reached over and snatched the pickle off of his plate. He’d saved it for last, because James Buchanan Barnes had always loved a good dill pickle. That hadn’t changed, either.

Fries just inches away from meeting their untimely death, Bucky froze, as if he only happened to realize just now what he’d done. The guilty look on his face told a different story, however.

“Give me the fries or the pickle gets hurt,” you warned.

“Hey,” he pleaded half-heartedly. “Come on, you’re not gonna eat ‘em all—”

“Fries,” you repeated, inching the pickle closer to its demise: your mouth.

“Okay, okay! Here.” Bucky held them out to you – a peace offering, or maybe he was just kissing ass. He’d always been good at that, hadn’t he? “Damn. Forgot how much you love your fries.”

You, of course, did what any normal person would do. You took them right out of his hand. Except, unlike any other normal person, you used your mouth.

Your lips brushed against his callused fingertips, accidental contact that felt like pure electricity. It made you remember all sorts of things the two of you had once done behind closed doors – things you absolutely shouldn’t have been thinking of in this particular setting, or at this particular moment.

One-track mind. Especially today.

Why?

Even you heard his sharp intake of breath.

Emboldened, not to mention empowered by the stunned expression on Bucky’s face, you licked away the salt from your lips. “Guess we’re gonna have to make sure you don’t forget again, huh?”

Then you took a bite of the pickle, as if to make a point. What point that was, you had no idea, and it didn’t matter anyway. This was all just a confident façade, a front meant to hide the racing of your heart.

You watched his surprise give way to something a little darker – a certain look that matched your memories tit-for-tat and had your panties sticking uncomfortably to the apex of your thighs.

“You’re playing a dangerous game, sweetheart.”

His voice, low and rough, set your body on fire.

Oh, this was a dangerous game.

You loved it.

“I don’t know, Buck,” you drawled, eyeing the pickle. “Two years is a long time, isn’t it? Been awhile since you stole some of my fries.”

Then you turned your attention back to him.

Teasing, yes. Dangerous, absolutely.

You were flirting. Why, oh why, were you flirting? Nothing good would come of this, but you couldn’t stop yourself. He’d changed. This wasn’t the same Bucky anymore. Deep down, it was still him, just a better version, a fact that was becoming more and more evident the more time you spent with him.

Your nerves went haywire as Bucky studied your face; his eyes traced every dip and curve and feature, and when you worried your lower lip in between your teeth, his focus lingered on your mouth for a few seconds longer than necessary.

Tense in the best way. You loved that, too.

Then he cleared his throat and looked away.

“You… You go ahead and have it, doll. I’ll get the check.”

Rejection. That’s what it was. Pure and simple.

What the hell were you thinking? Of course Bucky turned you down. Not that your intentions were obvious, anyway; you didn’t even know what you wanted from him, so how could he? How on earth could he know that you’d been longing for him like an idiot?

You’d been daydreaming not just what could have been, but what could be.

Except it couldn’t. Not really.

Your relationship was over. It would always be over. The two of you had already come to an agreement that your daughter was more important. Her safety. Her stability. Winnie didn’t need parents who argued and couldn’t stand each other. She needed good role models. She needed love, and this was the best way of ensuring that she got it. Better to love her separately and do a good job parenting her than the alternative.

Right?

So what the hell had gotten into you?

Maybe you’d flirted because the future wasn’t set in stone, and you had hope. For some stupid reason, you hoped that he felt the same way, that he wanted this too, that he missed you just as much as you missed him. And that was worst part of all, because you already knew he didn’t.

Two years was a long time. He would have moved on by now, just like you should have.

You hadn’t. You couldn’t.

How idiotic.

“You’re quiet,” came Bucky’s voice from your left, soft but playful. “What happened to all that sass?”

His gentle ribbing pulled you out of your reverie, and that was when you realized that the two of you had just made your way back past the playground in the park. Despite your embarrassment, the sun was still shining, the kids were still playing, and the parents were still around, still watching, still together.

Not like the two of you.

Ever the gentleman, Bucky had insisted on walking you home after paying for your meal. His invitation, his treat. And you’d thanked him, of course, but for the entire walk back you’d been ruminating over the fact that you made a fool out of yourself.

“I’m tired,” you lied. In reality, you were wide awake. Too awake. “I had some trouble sleeping last night. It’s hard to turn my brain off sometimes.”

That, at least, was the truth.

His soft laugh made your heart ache. “Yeah, I know the feeling.” Then he paused, likely to consider whether it was appropriate before he finally offered, “Anything I can help with?”

You met his eyes, then – such a stunning blue, a reflection of clear blue sky and far too genuine – before you quickly turned away, shoving your hands in your pockets. A nervous tic, maybe, or a defense mechanism.

A barrier.

A wall.

“No,” you responded, even though you desperately wanted to say the opposite, “but thanks.”

Rejection. That’s what it was. Pure and simple.

“Sure,” was all he said before an awkward silence came over the two of you, and you only vaguely noticed when his hands slid into his pockets, too.

Interlude #3

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky x you #bucky barnes

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haberdashing · 3 years

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I Am Destruction, Decay, And Desire (4/?)

Martin finds out that Jon’s going to meet with Jude Perry and acts to intervene. It goes… poorly.

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4

on AO3

Martin had never been a fan of the old idiom that time heals all wounds. In his experience, if time made you forget about certain wounds, it was only because newer ones took precedence. That being said, however, by the time Martin returned to the cafe where the life he’d known had ended just twenty-four hours ago, his mood was as least somewhat better than it had been the previous night. He still was all too aware of what had happened, but it didn’t sting quite as badly as it had when it was fresh.

He still had a purple smudge on his finger that had not in fact washed out during his bath, or rather his mostly-unsuccessful attempt at the same, but that was... fine. It would be fine.

Martin had made a point of being on time to the meeting he had arranged, but even so, he saw as he had arrived that both Jon and Jude had beaten him to the punch, having taken a seat at opposing sides of an outside table.

Jon was wearing the same ridiculous fluffy pink coat as he’d worn the day before, though if it was especially chilly out Martin couldn’t feel it, and Martin felt a pang as he got closer and saw that it was still visibly stained where his waxen hand had brushed against it.

As Martin approached the table where Jon and Jude sat, he found that that same coat he had fixated upon was apparently the current topic of discussion.

“Look, I lost my normal coat, and i-it’s cold. Some of us actually feel it, you know?”

Martin’s stomach sank a little further at that confirmation that it was indeed cold out, that he simply couldn’t feel the cold anymore, that that was yet another sign that he was no longer human. (Even if it was kind of amusing to watch Jon get so indignant about that coat, of all things...)

“You wouldn’t shake my hand.” There was a strange grin on Jude’s face as she spoke, a grin matched in intensity by Martin’s growing certainty that this conversation was going to be... well, simply “uncomfortable” was probably a best-case scenario, now, wasn’t it?

Martin pulled up a chair and sat down between Jon and Jude; Jon glancing his way for a moment before returning to staring at Jude, and Jude nodded vaguely in his direction but didn’t otherwise acknowledge him. That was fine, though. There were worse things to be than overlooked.

“Well, no, I’m not stupid! I saw what happened-”

Jude’s grin only got even wider as Jon spoke, and evidently he noticed, as he switched conversational tracks quickly enough.

“L-look, will you stop that?”

The wild grin turned to biting laughter, though only for a brief moment. “Oh, alright. Ah… I hate explaining jokes, but, um… Imagine you’re, um… a butcher, and one day an injured little lamb walks into your workshop, and strides right into one of the mincing machines, but when you go up to it, knife in hand, it shakes its head and tells you ‘I’m not stupid’. Do you get why that’s funny?”

“Right.” Jon didn’t sound the least bit amused even after the explanation, but honestly, Martin didn’t exactly blame him. “But no more abattoir metaphors, please.”

“Suppose it’s not really me, is it? Would you rather be a really stupid piece of firewood?” Jude’s grin and the playful tone in her voice suggested that she was amused enough by her own jokes for the three of them.

And then Jon just... plunged ahead, asking questions about names and dates and places that Martin by and large didn’t recognize; perhaps it had been foolish of him to assume that Jon’s research, Jon’s search for answers, would have stopped just because of a little thing like, oh, being on the run for murder. In hindsight, Martin knew Jon well enough that he really shouldn’t have been surprised that the man kept searching for information come hell or high water, kept seeking out danger even when he was already knee-deep in it.

Really, the surprising part was that Jude actually cooperated, more or less. Sure, she protested, she threatened, but she also answered Jon’s questions in the end.

(Some might have found it even more surprising that Martin managed to remain little more than an onlooker in the conversation, but not Martin himself; he was too used to it, too used to being overlooked and underestimated, and honestly, given the circumstances, he didn’t much mind not being the center of attention at the moment.)

“Yes, yes, I understand, you could easily kill me, I’m at your mercy...” Jon barely blinked an eye at Jude’s latest not-so-veiled threat, a reference to a statement Martin actually did remember and a man who ended up horrifically burned because of the events within it. Martin doubted anyone else could sound quite so bored when being threatened with agonizing pain and disfigurement by a woman who had already proven that she could easily make good on such threats if the mood struck her. “So... why haven’t you done it?”

“We’re in public.” Jude, for her part, seemed more amused with the situation than anything else, the grin on her face sneaking its way into her voice once again.

“Well-” Jon started to say, but Martin interrupted before Jon could finish the thought.

“That didn’t seem to stop you before, now, did it?” Martin didn’t bother hiding the aggravation in his voice--it was one thing to discuss weird happenings Martin wasn’t privy to without including him in the conversation, but ignoring the events of yesterday, ignoring the very relevant fact that Jude had burned him in a setting every bit as public as the current one, went a bit too far for his taste.

Jude tilted her head to one side, and both she and Jon looked Martin’s way for a long, silent moment; Martin couldn’t read the look in Jude’s eyes, but Jon’s contained something like guilt, or perhaps pity.

“I was a bit careless there, wasn’t I?” The upbeat tone of Jude’s voice was only slightly dampened, far from the apologetic tone her words might otherwise have signified. “I shouldn’t have given you time to scream. If I moved fast enough, I could-” Jude turned her gaze back at Jon as she continued to speak. “-reach through your chest like runny wax, and hold your heart while it cooked, and no one would even notice.”

“Right. R-right.” Jon finally sounded at least slightly affected by Jude’s threats rather than just bored of them; perhaps it was the graphic nature of this one that did the trick, or perhaps being reminded that Martin was now living proof that Jude’s threats weren’t empty ones was enough to make the seriousness of the situation start to sink in. “So why don’t you? Does your ‘god’ not want you to?”

“...mmm, hard to say. When I look at you, I feel that burning liquid pain, eager to flow out and purify your rotten carcass...” Jude glanced over at Martin, and her gaze looked almost conspiratorial, like she was expecting him to be in agreement, but all Martin felt upon hearing that was a bit sick. “But I feel that a lot.”

“Oh.” Jon looked a bit peaky, and if Martin had to guess, he felt at least as ill as Martin himself did upon hearing the graphic details of Jude’s desire to burn and destroy. “M-more or less than normal?”

“Hard to say when every nerve ending’s on fire. Hard to tell degrees.” Another glance Martin’s way, looking for something in him that wasn’t there. (Or wasn’t there yet, at least--Martin thought back to Prentiss’ statement, how she could recognize that something was wrong before becoming little more than a worm-filled husk. Maybe that’s where he was now, in the in-between period, no longer human but not yet monster.)

“Third degree, maybe?” Jon muttered, the words probably meant mostly for himself rather than for the benefit of his conversational partners, but Martin still snorted with amusement, though Jude looked more annoyed than amused (apparently in her mind, she was the only one allowed to make jokes in this conversation).

“Sorry, sorry, it was a...” Jon trailed off before finishing his sentence, and when he started speaking again it was to start on another train of thought. “I have a god too... right?”

“Is that another joke?” Jude’s wry grin was back, despite the fact that what Jon had said didn’t strike Martin as a joke, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that any laughter in response to it would have to be at his expense.

“N-no, I... I’m new to this. Everyone keeps calling me ‘Archivist’, like I’m special, and that... that I serve the Eye. Trying to kill me for it.”

“Yes.” Jude leaned back a little in her chair.

“S-so... i-it’s like your ‘god’, right?”

“Oh please, your god is nothing!” Jude wrinkled her nose, apparently disgusted by the mere thought of comparing the two “gods” on equal terms. “The Eye, Beholding, Ceaseless Watcher... whatever you call it, that’s all it does. It watches and knows, sitting bulbous and comfortable in the ignorance of infinite knowledge. I serve a reckoning, a surging tide of destruction and pain.”

Martin could feel his pulse racing as Jon breathed, “The Lightless Flame.”

“The Desolation. Blackened Earth. The destructive, agonizing heat of burning flesh and land scoured of life. The light, the comfort of fire stripped from it, leaving nothing but the terror of its approach. When it triumphs, it will leave The Eye a burned and shriveled husk that sees nothing but its own agony.”

Jon spoke up again, starting to get into yet another tiff with Jude by the sound of it, but Martin wasn’t really listening as the two went at it, too preoccupied by dissecting the information Jude had just given him about the “god” she worshipped, the power she had pulled him into serving by force.

Martin rather preferred the term Jon had offered up for it to those Jude had given; lightless flames could still provide warmth if one didn’t get too close, after all, while desolation, blackened earth... those phrases spoke only to landscapes with all the life in them stripped away, spaces emptied by force of any comfort that might once have been found there.

The mere thought of it made Martin’s stomach turn a little... and yet, part of him wanted to agree that their “god” was the better one, the stronger one, destined to reign superior, even if all it could cause was destruction and pain.

Martin hoped, distantly, that he hadn’t reached the point where all he could cause now was destruction and pain.

#tma #tma au #tma fic #tma fanfic #avatar martin #avatar martin blackwood #desolation martin #desolation martin blackwood #desolation #the desolation #the magnus archives #the magnus archives au #the magnus archives fic #the magnus archives fanfic #personal #my writing

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sparrowofsong · 4 years

Text

The Water Damage After The Storm

What a Nightmare! - Prologue

Summary: Ethan (Deceit) has been rather reclusive after recent events, the details of which are a mystery to the other sides. Worried for his well-being, Patton attempts to talk to him and find out what’s going on. He does get a few hints, but they’re really really not great.

Characters: Deceit and Patton. All sides are sympathetic for the whole story.

Warnings: Vague-ish flashbacks with mentions of violence, blood, abuse, and general Bad Things of that nature. Refusal to eat (lmk if i should tag as eating disorder, not sure). Let me know if there’s anything else I should add!

Word Count: 1k-ish

Author’s Note: GUYS. I DID IT. I FINALLY STARTED THE AU I’VE BEEN GOING ON ABOUT FOR T W O M O N T H S

For those who haven’t been putting up with my sporadic concept art and constant excited rambling – What a Nightmare! is an AU where Dealing With Intrusive Thoughts never happened. Deceit and Remus came up with a different plan that,,,, worked! Let’s see how this goes!

Ethan kept his eyes down as he begrudgingly followed Patton into his room, taking a seat at his table. He stared at the small plate of cookies in the center, able to watch Patton sit across from him in his peripheral vision, but refusing to look directly at him.

Why couldn’t they just leave him be? He’d been just fine with spending the last week alone, savoring the silence he’d gone so long without. If he had it his way, he’d still be doing exactly that. It was better than having to face them.

“Would you like one, kiddo?” Patton sounded tentatively hopeful. “I made them just for you.“

He gritted his teeth and forced himself to glance up at him for a second, hoping he could manage to scan his face for any signs of underhanded trickery without-

please no fake evil not real not real beat stab push bruise blood break pain lies lies lies anger fear danger please dont hurt huRT HURT HURT

-regretting it.

Ethan squeezed his eyes shut, his heart racing as he tried to maintain his composure. He couldn’t stomach a cookie if he tried.

Eventually, he found it in him to respond.

“I’ll pass.“

There was a pause. Silence was more unnerving when he wasn’t alone.

“You… you haven’t eaten in months, kiddo. Not even after you woke up. You didn’t touch anything we sent to your room this whole week.“

Or rather, the spare room they’d created. Everyone had agreed to leave Ethan’s room be after they found him, and he didn’t exactly protest after coming to.

“I understand that you don’t want to talk to us, or see us, and that’s okay. I’m sure you have a good reason.” He took a deep breath to steady his voice. “But I can’t just let you starve to death in there. You’ve gotta regain energy somehow.“

“Is that so?” Ethan scoffed, back to staring at the table. “Pray tell, Patton, when did you suddenly start caring?“

Taken aback by how easily his resentful words slipped out, there was a moment’s pause before his eyes widened in alarm.

dont you fucking dare please youve done enough sorry sorry pain pain blood too much let me go please no no no sorry sorry ill be better ill be better please no please please nO HURT HURT HURT HURT

He immediately snapped his head towards Patton, watching with learned vigilance for annoyance, anger, malice, spite – any potential sign of dangerous intentions.

Decidedly ignoring the sting of regret, Patton sat perfectly still as Ethan observed him. He didn’t dare risk heightening his fear, though he had no clue where it came from. That was why they were there, after all. No one knew what had happened, and with each day Ethan refused to see them, refused to eat, refused to do anything but sit alone in the spare room, their concern grew. Together, they came up with a plan that would, hopefully, get him to open up. Even if only a bit. They just needed something to work with so they could figure out what to do.

So, they brought him to Patton’s room and let the two chat for a bit. Among other things, his room caused them to think and talk about the past, and they’d hoped it would help Ethan do just that. It almost seemed to be working, too; that was the most in-character he’d sounded since the court hearing! However, as Patton watched his fear steadily increase, he was starting to wonder if this was such a good idea.

After a few tense minutes, Ethan realized that, at least for now, no harm would come to him. It wouldn’t have taken this long before. He didn’t completely let his guard down, of course, but he let himself relax a bit, dropping his gaze and continuing to watch Patton from the corner of his eye.

Just to be safe, Patton waited a few more minutes before he broke the silence, answering the question ever so softly.

“I started caring when you helped me remember that I should.”

no no no no knife dead body blood accident cant move get help my fault my fault weak useless murderer monster punish pain sORRY SORRY PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE NO HURT HURT HURT HURT HU RT

“Oh, by all means, let’s discuss exactly what I did to you that day.” Ethan gritted his teeth, trembling hands clenched into fists as he desperately tried to control his rapid, shallow breaths. “It isn’t like I’ve been forced to dwell on it every single day for… how long did you say it was? Seven months?“

Patton winced. This was the most he’d told them about the ordeal, sure, but it was obviously a sore subject. It looked like their plan had a few flaws. "Sorry, kiddo. We don’t have to talk about it. If nothing else, though, I do wanna make sure you know it wasn’t your fault. And I’m not angry, or upset, or anything like that. I know it was an accident.”

Ethan opened his mouth to protest, but stopped dead in his tracks once he fully processed the statement. “…How? How can you possibly be that sure? How much do you even… What do you think you know about any of this?"

"If I’m being honest, not much. We know next to nothing about what happened after we’d forgotten. There’s a few scraps of information about before that, a few details we’d noticed, but…” Without thinking, he reached for the cookies in the center of the table, unintentionally extending his hand towards–

danger danger grab shove beat stab trapped pain lies lies lies break sharp broken broken gold blood hELP PLEASE STOP STOP PLEASE SORRY SORRY SORRY HURT HURT HURT HURT HU RT H U R T

“NO!”

Ethan cried out in alarm, recoiling with enough force to fall out of his chair. Patton jerked his hand back as he rebuked himself for his carelessness, stubbornly gripping his chair to refrain from helping Ethan up. It was now abundantly clear that it would do more harm than good.

His broken facade of composure now thoroughly shattered, Ethan kept his eyes locked on Patton as he picked himself up and backed away. Every step of his retreat was agonizingly slow; despite knowing he could actually escape this time, he still refused to risk further aggravating the perceived threat.

Patton, however, was not aggravated in the slightest. He was horrified.

"I don’t think we’ve got the whole picture at all."

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artemis-entreri · 5 years

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[[ This post contains Part 7 of my review/analysis of the Forgotten Realms/Drizzt novel, Boundless, by R. A. Salvatore. As such, the entirety of this post’s content is OOC. ]]

Genre: Fantasy

Series: Generations: Book 2 | Legend of Drizzt #35 (#32 if not counting The Sellswords)

Publisher: Harper Collins (September 10, 2019)

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Additional Information: Artwork for the cover of Boundless and used above is originally done by Aleks Melnik. This post CONTAINS SPOILERS. Furthermore, this discussion concerns topics that I am very passionate about, and as such, at times I do use strong language. Read and expand the cut at your own discretion.

Contents:

Introduction

I. Positives I.1 Pure Positives I.2 Muddled Positives

II. Mediocre Writing Style II.1 Bad Descriptions II.2 Salvatorisms II.3 Laborious “Action”

III. Poor Characterization III.1 “Maestro” III.2 Lieutenant III.3 Barbarian III.4 “Hero” III.5 Mother

IV. World Breaks IV.1 Blinders Against the Greater World IV.2 Befuddlement of Earth and Toril IV.3 Self-Inconsistency IV.4 Dungeon Amateur IV.5 Utter Nonsense

V. Ego Stroking V.1 The Ineffable Companions of the Hall V.2 Me, Myself, and I

VI. Problematic Themes VI.1 No Homo VI.2 Disrespect of Women VI.3 Social-normalization VI.4 Eugenics

VII. What’s Next (you are here) VII.1 Drizzt Ascends to Godhood VII.2 Profane Redemption VII.3 Passing the Torch VII.4 Don’t Notice Me Senpai

Note: This was written before the unveiling of the final book’s title. As such, the predictions are outdated.

What’s Next

While Timeless inspired confidence I haven't had in Salvatore for a long while and made me hopeful for the future, overall, Boundless hammered my heart back down into my stomach. Whereas Timeless felt like Salvatore actually had some degree of emotional attachment to what he was writing rather than making a bid to have his characters stick out in Forgotten Realms lore, Boundless backpedaled from this quite a bit. He has some solid turns of phrases in Boundless, but unlike the ones in Timeless, I wouldn't have remembered them if I hadn't specifically noted them down during my reading. In Timeless, we explored more than the constantly-revisited areas of Menzoberranzan, Gauntylgrym, Luskan and others, delving into Ched Nasad. In Boundless, we're back to Menzoberranzan, and furthermore, with most of the action happening in the same area of Menzoberranzan, specifically, in and around The Oozing Myconid tavern. This is reminiscent of how basically all of the action in the city of Helioglabalus during The Sellswords trilogy is condensed to one area, around the cul-de-sac Wall Way. The small but interesting bits of detail that we were treated to in Timeless about characters that we're so familiar with already, such as Jarlaxle, Malice, and the rest of the Do'Urden family, did not continue in Boundless. Gone too is the Realmsian feel that Timeless achieved, for Boundless feels very much like a standard Salvatore insular and tweaked Forgotten Realms. Boundless hammers the lore-rich and location-rich Waterdeep into something with fewer dimensions than Salvatore's current timeline Luskan. While the scenes from the past are still more interesting than the ones set in the present in Boundless, they don't hold a candle to their counterparts in Timeless. There was heart in Jarlaxle and Zaknafein's past in Timeless, and it felt as though it was something that Salvatore had thought about for a long time. By contrast, in Boundless, those scenes feel rote and rehashed, cobbled together from half-formed ideas. Those scenes only manage to not be sleep-inducing because they don't focus on the Companions of the Hall. While Timeless seemed to take a break from the disagreeable conclusions made in the novel preceding it, Boundless is right back on that track again.

All of the above is pretty bad, but things may even get worse. There are in fact many indicators that suggest some of my darkest fears concerning this franchise will come to pass, and I sincerely hope that's not the case. That said, much of what I say in this section about what might come in the future are speculatory. They are extrapolations based on what I've learned from reading almost all of the over three hundred novels published for the Forgotten Realms, D&D sourcebooks through the editions, and talking with Ed Greenwood and other creatives who have officially worked on the setting.

Drizzt Ascends to Godhood

Boundless still doesn't tell us where Zaknafein's soul had been. It isn't specifically stated, but I think it's fair to say that it definitely wasn't with Lolth, otherwise, she wouldn't send one of the two souped-up version of the Retriever after him. One could argue that Lolth might've done so because she is fickle and chaotic, but there's fickle, and then there's impractical. Bringing something as powerful as Salvatore's Retriever is supposed to be would tax her no small amount, and even a goddess of chaos, especially one whose resources are already spread thin warring with other demon lords, would not do something that's simply foolish. So, Lolth didn't return Zaknafein, and Yvonnel knows that she isn't getting spells from Lolth but she doesn't know who is granting them to her. If Salvatore weren't obsessed with erasing Eilistraee, the obvious answer would be that the Dark Maiden is looking after Yvonnel. That would be the most logical in-universe explanation, but as far as Salvatore is concerned, Eilistraee doesn't exist unless using her as the subject of ridicule and denigration. Eilistraee's brother Vhaeraun is similarly ignored, but at least is spared the dismissal that Salvatore places upon Eilistraee. It's possible that Yvonnel is getting her spells from someone in the elven pantheon, for aside from Eilistraee and Vhaeraun, the drow pantheon doesn't have any other non-evil members. While some of the Dark Seldarine might want to help Yvonnel simply out of spite for Lolth, that's also unlikely, because it's been clearly stated that Zaknafein was in a good place, and in the realm of one of those evil deities would not constitute a good place. But, it seems unlikely to me that someone from the elven pantheon is granting Yvonnel spells, for while Salvatore doesn't erase their existence, he doesn't acknowledge them either. A person who only reads the Drizzt books wouldn't know the existence of even Corellon Larethian, the patron god of all elves, including at one point the dark elves who were turned into drow.

So who, then, is granting Yvonnel cleric spells? It might very well be left as a mystery forever, but what I suspect and fear is a rather convoluted scenario. Specifically: Drizzt, the god of goodly drow in the future, is granting the spells to Yvonnel in the present. Sounds crazy, right? I totally agree, but sadly, despite how many D&D creators warn about how bad of an idea time travel is in D&D, it's not implausible, and in fact, many things hint at the possibility, especially in Boundless. First, there's Drizzt's strange disappearing act at the end of novel that I discussed earlier. This could very well be him ascending to godhood. Second, it's been building up throughout the novels that Drizzt has become a beacon to all male drow, including a maverick like Jarlaxle. In the Realms, the power of belief is what grants gods power, and it is so strong such that races like the kuo-toa have believed gods into existence without there even being an individual to elevate with that belief. Drizzt, as represented by Salvatore, certainly would have enough "followers" to elevate him into demi-god status at the very least. Furthermore, Salvatore has demonstrated an eagerness to do everything possible to his golden boy, and while Drizzt himself, if he were true to his character, wouldn't want to be a god, making him into an actual god is getting pretty near the only good thing that Salvatore hasn't done to Drizzt yet.

What has me the most suspicious that this is where Salvatore is going is the talk between Quenthel and Sos'Umptu about a "spark", one that "resided in Zaknafein before Drizzt". The word "spark" is often used in Realms material when referencing godly essence, for instance, Chosens are imbued with the sparks of their gods, mortals ascend to godhood when a divine spark is passed onto them, etc. The mention of the spark that father passed to son happens amidst a discussion between two very powerful priestesses of what was pre-fated and the intervention of higher powers. It feels very much like the Child of Prophecy scenario in the Naruto franchise, with Zaknafein being the parallel of Nagato and Minato in that his superiority marked him as a potential candidate to fulfill a great prophecy, but ultimately he failed to do so and the responsibility is passed onto the next worthy candidate, in this case, Drizzt. I'm not fond of this possibility because it's completely unnecessary and uncharacteristic. The only reason for Salvatore to elevate Drizzt to godhood is to further erase Eilistraee, to write his own name over the tapestry some more, and I suppose to garner more money from unthinking sycophantic fans who lack the ability to critically examine anything. Drizzt as a god would also be superfluous, for what he'd stand for is already covered by Eilistraee, with what she doesn't cover instead handled by Vhaeraun's portfolio. It isn't uncommon for gods' portfolios to overlap, but those overlaps are more like the intersection between circles of a venn diagram rather than a nigh-total eclipse. I suppose Drizzt could be the patron god of sanctimony, melodrama, preachiness and self-congratulation, but those traits hardly deserve a patron god. Realistically, if Drizzt is to be wedged into the drow pantheon, what would happen is that he would weaken the already goodly forces there. People of the Realms are polytheistic, but many have a main god that they worship, and with that taken away from existent gods, so, too, is the power they get from their followers' belief. At least it's consistent with how Drizzt is written, if not how he is supposed to be, for him to, yet again, be a damaging force to true good.

Profane Redemption

Salvatore seems to have this notion that Artemis Entreri needs to be "redeemed", and his definition of redemption is to become similar to Drizzt and the Companions of the Hall. It's as though he only knows how to write one character archetype, and seeing how he forces all of his characters down the same path, I honestly don't know if Salvatore simply can't write other archetypes, or doesn't feel like he should out of some sense that there is only one "correct" way for people to be. The idea that Entreri needs to be "redeemed" at all is questionable. What, exactly, does Entreri need to be redeemed for? For killing many people? Certainly, this is a sin, but Drizzt and the Companions of the Hall have killed many more, and yet they are celebrated heroes whose every action is unquestionably right. One could argue that Drizzt and the Companions only killed the "bad guys", but by whose definition are "bad guys"? Salvatore's definition of good versus evil is as inconsistent as his work is with itself, and comes from a position of privilege. We're told that Entreri never killed anyone unnecessarily, so really, is he deserving of the same fate as the old lecher, who at best was a child trafficker, and at worst, a child molester? Salvatore apparently believes so, with how the adjudicator "demon" possessing Sharon subjects the two to the same fate. I'm not arguing that Entreri did nothing wrong. He was absolutely a villain. Whatever his reasons might be, he did murder people. He did kill innocents for his personal gain, for instance stealing the life force from passed out drunks in alleyways to heal himself. He does have sins to atone for. However, what troubles me is Salvatore's stated reason for the need to redeem Entreri in an interview during the release of Timeless:

Artemis Entreri surprised me quite a bit in the Sellswords trilogy, in Road of the Patriarch. That was supposed to be the end of Artemis Entreri. Road of the Patriarch was the perfect redemption, that redemptive moment where you could have hoped that Artemis Entreri ended on the right track. But after I wrote the book I got so many letters from people who had gone through similar traumas that Entreri had gone through when he was kid. They said, “You can’t end it here. We have to see him redeemed.” I got dozens of letters from people saying, “Please continue this character. This is personal to me.” And I was like, well, maybe I’ll learn something by continuing with this character. And I did. That’s a good thing.

What I came to realize about Artemis Entreri is that a driving force in him was why he couldn’t look at himself in the mirror without self-loathing: it was guilt. And it was guilt over things that had been done to him, not things that he had done. I don’t think I ever understood that until after I put him on the road of redemption.

I am honestly not sure what to think regarding Salvatore's claim that people who had gone through similar traumas as Entreri wants to see Entreri "redeemed". Young victims of physical abuse, sexual assault, parental neglect and betrayal have not done anything wrong, and while Salvatore is right about people that go through such horrors carrying guilt over what happened to them, I'm skeptical about whether Salvatore correctly understood his fans. My own background falls into that category, and I've interacted with others like me as we desperately tried to make sense of why the universe apparently deemed we deserved what happened to us. With the internet bringing greater connectivity between people, I found countless others like me, and have managed to arrive at a point in which I at least logically believe that what happened to me wasn't deserved. What I know from my own experiences and what I've learned from others differ so much and so consistently from Salvatore's recount that I can't help but wonder if some words got crossed with him. With people like me, "redemption" isn't what we fundamentally want. We want our scars to heal and we want to do it at our own pace, in our own way, to feel valid even though we have trouble fitting societal norms. Trauma victims are often misunderstood and dismissed because they are different, and really, all they want is for that to not happen. Salvatore's "redemption" of Entreri is to make him more like the very social-normative Drizzt, which is the opposite of what a trauma victim would want. In reality, a trauma victim who is being pressured to conform to another's perceived notions of normalcy, like what Drizzt does to Entreri, would react very badly to it. Furthermore, traumas, especially childhood ones, don't simply go away through the performance of some deeds, or even a great amount of deeds like helping others, which those privileged enough to have never experienced abuse at the hands of another seem to believe is the key to salvation. Traumas go away only with the passage of time, and the presence of people in one's life who understand the individual and accept them for who they are, who try to help them be the best version of themselves rather than the best societal model of a person. It's only normal for victims of trauma at the hands of others to resent and distrust people as a whole, and their traumas tend to be exacerbated by being told that they won't recover unless they help others, which often translates into, "I need to help those who will hurt me" in a trauma brain. Salvatore represents Entreri as having gotten past his childhood traumas because he received some degree of fulfillment from helping the people of Port Llast. Furthermore, Salvatore makes it appear that Drizzt's influence in Entreri's life is what led him down the path of "redemption", but realistically, what Drizzt has done is push Entreri to be like him. The reality of what should be happening is actually very damaging to Entreri. If Entreri isn't self-aware enough of what he truly wants, which is the case for a lot of trauma victims, he might be going along with Drizzt, even earnestly, because he's led to believe it'll help him feel better. The thing is, each person's recovery from trauma is unique, and has to come from within; following someone else's path more often than not leads to more damage, especially when it's the path that someone who doesn't bother to understand them lays out for them, as is the case for Drizzt with Entreri. If Entreri is self-aware enough, he should be resisting Drizzt, but he doesn't, which suggests it's the previous example, and that in turn has a lot of dark and problematic undertones, with one standing out in particular: Drizzt's behavior is abusive towards Entreri.

While many were unhappy with the way that Road of the Patriarch concluded, especially back when it seemed to be the last that we'd see of Entreri, it was, in so many ways, a much kinder treatment of him than what's being done in continuing his saga. Over seven decades of enslavement by the Netherese would've deepened his trauma and made them more difficult to dislodge, but Salvatore doesn't seem to understand this at all. It would be less cheap and contrived, not to mention less invalidating, if Salvatore had Entreri's issues cured via magic or psionics. By espousing the belief that anyone can be "fixed" through a set approach, or needs to be "fixed" at all, Salvatore damages more than his own character, he helps spread an idea that will further hurt and invalidate real trauma victims. Sadly, things don't seem like they will get better. The artificial "development" forced onto Entreri in Hero was so depressing to me that it made it hard for me to read anything for almost two years. Timeless was a break from that, and indeed seemed like Salvatore was abandoning that tack, but Boundless dashed those hopes thoroughly. Entreri gets caught as a result of putting others before himself, and while it's conceivable that he'd save Dahlia before trying to escape, him doing the same for Regis without a second thought is a Drizzt characteristic, not his. Furthermore, he'd saved Regis before saving Dahlia. Without intending it, the events that Salvatore creates are actually an accurate metaphor for what happens to a damaged individual who is made to believe that another's path is their own: they unsuccessfully see it to completion, and get themselves mired in greater suffering.

What appears to await Entreri in the future, as suggested by Boundless, is pretty disheartening, to say the least. As we see in the case of the old lecher, "Sharon"'s cocoon, in addition to killing its victims, apparently ensnares the victims' soul and damns it to an eternity of suffering. Furthermore, that cocoon apparently also informs the victims the reason why they are thusly damned. I can't help but feel that the cocoon is more than an analogy, I suspect that Salvatore is employing it as yet another cheap and lazy character development device. By the end of Boundless, Entreri has realized that his agony will be an eternal one, and is due to his many victims. I suspect in the final book, Entreri will be saved from the cocoon, but he'll emerge as a redeemed butterfly, changing the last of his non-conforming ways and becoming another boring good guy Drizzt clone. His reasons for doing so might be due to his realization in the cocoon that he'd have suffered for eternity unless he changes, which Salvatore could pretend is more in line with Entreri's character. However, the entire thing is incredibly artificial. Whatever "demon" possessing Sharon is doesn't exist in FR lore and was made up solely to use as a cheap plot device. Furthermore, the "demon" just randomly finds Entreri and Dahlia. Its own affiliation with the Margaster plot is that it happens to possess a Margaster child, but otherwise, it wasn't an obstacle to a specific goal. It was just sort of there. If there was a situation in which the conflict of judging good versus evil was relevant, then the creature could've been a meaningful obstacle. For example, if Entreri or any other character on a path to "redemption" exposes how the kind of judgment the creature passes is flawed and arbitrary, and then manages to make a step towards overcoming that internal conflict, that would make Salvatore's definition of "redemption" more palatable. As it is, it's just really random and being shoved down our throats. The fact that Entreri doesn't casually toss about the word "friend" like he does in Timeless is little consolation if Salvatore is indeed using the cocoon how I suspect he is using it. Entreri the redeemed butterfly would be truly a tragic and terrible closure for his character, or any character for that matter.

Passing the Torch

The title of the next book hasn't been revealed yet, but I've got a feeling that it will be "Endless". Thus far, "Timeless" and "Boundless" both suggest something without constraint, and "Endless" would fit this as well as following the -less format. I'd like the Drizzt books to end with the Generations trilogy, but it seems unlikely with the name of the trilogy, and even more so if the title of the last book is indeed "Endless". I do wonder if perhaps there's more truth to Salvatore's words that the legend of Drizzt is over and that a new era has begun. He might not have been successful with that in Timeless, nor was he with the endless amounts of tedious recaps in Boundless, but the allusions to the Stone of Tymora series, as well as "Generations" for the trilogy title, makes me wonder if he intends to pass his legacy to his son, Geno. Catti-brie is very pregnant and will give birth soon, so perhaps Salvatore means to pass the torch down to his next generation as his characters do the same. Geno's writing style as displayed in Stone of Tymora wasn't anything to brag about, but there was at least a refreshing quality to it. Furthermore, Geno has shown himself to be what his father isn't, a true ally to LGBT+ folks, through actions such as posting publicly in defense of fans who ship same-sex characters of the Drizzt series. While Entreri doesn't need to be redeemed, the Drizzt books certainly do, and perhaps Geno is the one who will bring that redemption. I certainly hope so, for as it is, I'm back to dreading a reality in which the Drizzt books are the only Forgotten Realms novels that we'll get forever.

Don't Notice Me Senpai

I've been very critical of Salvatore, but I don't hate him. What I'd really like is to respect him, but as his work currently is, I'm unable to do that. In my review of Timeless, I wrote, "I suppose it wouldn’t be fair to Salvatore to completely attribute all of Timeless’ writing improvements to his editor(s). He had to be willing to listen, to accept that what he’d written could be improved". Boundless did backpedal quite a bit, but perhaps he did listen. My significant other has long suspected that Salvatore reads my long ramblings that I doubt anyone reads, for there have been some really startling coincidences between how his writing changes and the stuff I point out in my reviews. I'm not exactly nice about Salvatore, so I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't read my criticisms of him, as he's always seemed really thin-skinned. Still, it is a bit scary how things line up, and really, he doesn't have to like me, he can even hate my guts, but if he did indeed decide to even read one of my articles about him and his work and took some of it to heart, I'd completely redo my evaluation of him. To give a few examples of the coincidences, in the past, I'd mock him quite a bit for how often he'd use "six hundred pounds of panther". This has wholly disappeared. I'd criticize him harshly for gratuitous lesbian sex scenes, which have also disappeared. I pointed out that he'd failed at making Timeless an appropriate starting or restarting point due to how much it ties into so many past events that aren't explained, and Boundless took explaining the past to a ridiculous level. I criticized Salvatore for how "magnificent" is used in Timeless, and it's greatly improved in Boundless. I'd chastised his weird use of "fashioned", and it doesn't appear at all in Boundless. These are just some of the many coincidences, and ultimately, I do think they are coincidences, even if the amount of them and how well they line up freak me out more than a little.

On a final note, since I'd berated Timeless' cover art, I wanted to note that the cover art for Boundless is an improvement. The artist has changed, Aleksi Briclot did the covers for the Homecoming Trilogy as well as Timeless, but the artist credited with Boundless' cover is "Aleks Melnik/Shutterstock". I can't help but wonder what happened. Boundless' cover seems to have abandoned the attempt at Sumi-E, which I described as, "if you're going to appropriate my culture, at least do it justice". There's still a wispy and abstract feel to the cover of Boundless, but there's no longer that pseudo brushstroke work. I don't personally care for the art style, but I have no strong feelings about it either. I'm not too worried about my brutal honesty having had any affect on Briclot. While I felt the cover for Timeless was only slightly less of a travesty than the novel preceding it, I have a great deal of respect for Briclot as an artist. His technical skill is solid and his attention to detail is superb. Briclot's Artstation portfolio shows pieces from major franchises like Thor: Ragnarok after his work for Timeless, so most likely, he's too busy with higher visibility projects to bother with Drizzt anymore.

If you've made it to the end, congratulations and thank you for tuning in! As always, I'm happy to discuss your thoughts and feelings about these books, but fair warning: in case you haven't garnered from this piece, I'm far from an unconditional Salvatore fan. I care deeply about the world as a whole, and would love to share with you its beauty. I care deeply about doing justice to the characters, but am not above goofing off with them. My views are my own. I am not affiliated in any way with Wizards of the Coast or HarperCollins.

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Come Join the Clown, Eds (Part 1) - Eddie Kaspbrak (IT 2017)

Prompts/Plot: 7 - “Oh, fuck. What’s that?” “It’s a shoe.” Anxious and equally neurotic Eddie Kaspbrak has a plan to ask Y/N on a date but a lost shoe, a colossal storm and a killer clown walk into a bar and cause nothing but trouble.

Warnings: Swearing

A/N: The flashback obsession isn’t ceasing any time soon so that time warp is acknowledged. Mentions the fact that Mike has a Dad (really not sorry) cause I like to allude to the book where I can. Everything in italics is a thought. Kenduskeag is pronounced KEN-DUH-SKEEG

Words: 4326

August 1989 - Eddie’s POV

The American Elms of the Barrens were bending and swaying violently in the warm August wind.

“Come on, Eddie Spaghetti,” Richie mocked from his place on the bank of the Kenduskeag. “You’re just working yourself up.”

I scoffed at him, disappointed. “I’m not working anything up, Richie. I just-”

Beverly placed her arm around my shoulders, pulling me into her side. “You’re just nervous.” I looked up at her, defeated. She smiled back at me. “We’ve all felt like this, Eddie.” She assured. Like an idiot? I thought. “Richie’s right. You’re just working yourself up.”

I scoffed again, pulling away from Bev. “But I-”

Stanley stepped into the discussion, promptly cutting me off. “Look, Eddie.” He began. “We’ve been through every possible scenario. If you stutter, you know what to do. If she faints, you know what to do. If a bird shits on your shoulder and you puke on her, you know what to do.”

Richie doubled over and cackled hard. “That one’s my favourite!” He roared “Can we do that one again?”

“Buh-b-beep beep, R-Richie.” Bill defended. The trashmouth fixed his glasses and resorted to snickering through his teeth. I was still terrified, and the six of them could see it, especially Bill. “Stan’s r-right.” He continued. “Wuh-we’ve been through e-everything. N-nuh-nothing can go wrong.”

I shook my head. “Plenty of things can go wrong, Bill.” My heart felt like a roaring steam engine and the more I thought about Y/N the closer it came to crashing off the tracks. “Murphy’s Law, Bill. Something always goes sideways.” I looked down at my shoes. My mother’s voice droned on in my head. Be careful, Eddie. She cooed coldly. You know how much bacteria builds up in that water, Eddie. I took a subconscious step away from the river and looked up. “How do I even begin to ask her out?”

Stan let out a heavy sigh, Richie pretended to die of boredom, and the rest of the Losers shared wary looks before Ben spoke up. “How did you feel the first time you saw her?” Everyone turned to Haystack Hanscom, who was trying his best not to look at Beverly. The flurry of confused looks from the Losers cued him to explain. “When you talk to Y/N,” He spoke quickly, nervous that if Beverly looked at him for too long she would come to loathe his pudgy physique. “Just tell her how she made you feel the first time you saw her.”

Everyone agreed, nodding their heads and mumbling mmhmm. It was easy enough to remember that day. It was June. I was scared. She saved my life. It had always been that simple, but the more I thought about it the more the minute details came back. How the sun hit her jeans, how the wind caught her hair, how she made me question everything my mother had ever drilled into my head and how much I loved her for it.

June 1989 - Eddie’s POV

“Bill, you don’t want to go in there.” I grimaced. Bill, standing at the opening to one of the Derry Sewage runoff pipes, was more than happy to wander into the cesspool of bacteria. Bacteria leads to staph infections, Eddie, and what do infections lead to? “Death” I whispered out loud.

Bill cocked his head back towards me. “It’s just water, Eds. It can’t be that bad.”

I shook my head at him. “Grey water. Greywater.” He furrowed his eyebrows, confused. I scoffed. “All the piss of Derry has to collect somewhere right? Well, welcome to the circus, Bill.” I’m not sure what I was expecting from him. If I were standing in a river of bacteria I would scream, vomit and faint, probably simultaneously. Bill, however, was fearless. He simply scrunched his nose, hiked-up his jeans, and began to venture deeper, and he would have followed those shitty tunnels to China to find Georgie, if it weren’t for the roar from the Belch Huggins’ TransAm. Even from Kansas St—the dirt road that surfaced well above the Barrens—it was deafening, but it didn’t compare to the low, gut-wrenching growl of Henry’s voice.

Belch had stopped the car next to the guard rails, allowing Henry to lean out of the passenger window. “You’re lucky we don’t come down there and make you drink that piss water, fuckers!” He barked. Henry had managed to push himself so far out that I nearly laughed, picturing him falling out and eating shit as he tumbled down the steep hill. The only reason I didn’t have a chuckle was that Henry looked furious and—despite that being his default mood—if he chose to push himself out that grimy window, we really would be drinking piss water.

Bill quickly made his way out of the sewer, but tripped over a half-hidden root and tumbled into a puddle of thick mud, sending Henry and his gang into a howling fit of laughter. Victor flashed the bird and Henry pulled himself back in before Belch tore up dirt, flying down Kansas Street. Bill pushed himself up, letting out a sigh of disappointment as he surveyed his mud-caked outfit. I took a step towards him but a squeeze in my chest reminded me of my debilitating condition.

I know the signs. I’ve had so many attacks that they’ve become second nature, like an itch. Unlike when I was seven, I no longer have to react, I just scratch. I raised my aspirator up to my lips and pulled the trigger, awaiting the acidic pang and rush of fresh air, but there was nothing. I tried again, squeezing harder. Nothing.

Panic hit me like Belch’s TransAm. The itch was unscratchable. The empty aspirator rolled from my hand, making a small sploosh in the Kenduskeag before the current carried it away. My knees buckled as I doubled over, crashing to the mucky ground of the Barrens, choking. I tried to shift my weight and sit down, but at that point my limbs were nothing more than fleshy sandbags, weighing me down and wasting my fleeting breath. I felt Bill’s arm on my back, rubbing frantically as if he was trying to wash my asthma off. I’ve already tried that, Bill. I thought. It’s no use.

His voice sounded muffled and distant, way beyond the point of recognition, or more importantly, understanding. I forced my eyes open so that I could look around and make sure I wasn’t sitting at the bottom of the river, though my vision was so blurred with tears and my lungs were so desperate for oxygen that I don’t think it would make a difference if I was. Bill stepped in front of me and grabbed under my arms, softly yet urgently, helping me sit against a rock. I threw my head back, opening my airway as much as possible. Warm, June air rushed into my lungs, but my bronchi had closed to the size of pins so it wasn’t getting far. I squeezed my eyes together, forcing tears out. This must be how Richie feels, I thought. Poor kid needs fucking coke bottles to read his cereal boxes.

I looked up at Bill, who had knelt down so that his face was only a foot away from mine. He was trying to mouth something, but between the tears and his stutter I couldn’t figure out what he was saying, though I managed to make out the words “help” and “Keene’s”. Shit. I yelped in my head. Bill was going to Mr.Keene’s for another inhaler. Please, I begged silently. Fuck, Bill. Please don’t go. The thought of being alone in my state only made me hyper-aware of the growing pressure in my lungs. Please don’t leave me alone, Bill.

A twig snapped behind me and Bill’s head shot up. I looked over my shoulder, trying to ignore the thumps from my racing heart, and promised that if I saw Henry and his Gang standing behind me I’d drop dead without a second thought. Though it wasn’t Henry, or Belch, or Victor or Patrick. It was a girl, and she was beautiful. Her eyes kept darting in between Bill and I. Her eyebrows were furrowed in confusion.

“What’s up with him?” She asked. Her concerned expression didn’t match her nonchalant posture. Her hands were stuffed in the back pockets of her jeans, which were coated at the bottom in Barrens mud. I noticed how clear her voice sounded, compared to the bleak murmur of Bill’s.

“A-a-Asthma attack.” He managed. My ears, which had been useless a mere minute ago, finally seemed to hear, Thank God, and Bill sounded scared. “I have to get him another aspirator but I don’t want to leave him alone.”

There was a sudden gust of wind. It flowed through the girl’s hair, pushing it over her eyes. She raised her hands, dragging them through her hair and tying it all back in a sloppy bun, revealing her face. “I’ll stay with him.” Though I still struggled to breathe, the tears no longer clouded my vision. I stared at Bill, waiting for his reaction. He began to speak but she cut him off. “Don’t worry,” She assured, offering half a smile. “I’ll keep him company. You better go get that inhaler.”

Bill looked at me regretfully but forced a smile in an effort to convince me that everything was going to be ok. Noted and appreciated, I thought. “Hhhhhhh.” I wheezed. Now go get my fucking inhaler, please. “Ghhhhh Hhhhh” I wheezed again.

Bill smiled for real this time and pushed himself up, uselessly wiping his hands on his mud-caked jeans. He took several quick steps down the bank. “I’ll be b-buh-back.” He looked at the girl and nodded his head in thanks before taking off in a sprint down the bank. He turned sharply, cutting up the hill towards Kansas street where Silver was tied to the guardrail.

As his footsteps faded, the girl stepped around me and took a seat on a rock. “Can you tell me your name?” She asked. I wheezed, cursing whatever God fucked me over with this pretty girl by giving me the World’s Shittiest LungsTM. “Know sign language?” I shook my head, causing her to chuckle. “Yeah, me neither.” She began taking her shoes off, which were covered in a thick coat of dark brown, half-dried mud. Next came her socks, which were just as dirty. She shuffled closer to the river, slipping her feet in. The wind picked up again, rippling through her shirt and tugging at the loose hairs that weren’t collected in her bun.

She looked at me and smiled softly. “How are those lungs doing?” My mind shifted back to my breathing. There was less strain on my chest now. Less stabbing pressure when I inhaled. The shock was gone, instead giving way to curiosity—as well as appreciation—for this beautiful yet mysterious stranger. I managed to shrug my shoulders. “Good,” She chuckled. “Nearly dead is still better than dead.” Her motto took me aback to the point where I found I was looking at her in a whole different light. I began to notice the small, wild details that I had otherwise ignored. The wisps of hair she didn’t bother to tuck in her bun, her mismatched, muddy socks, her unpredictable mannerisms. This girl embodied a sense of freedom that—with my mother looming over my shoulder—I’ve never known.

She stood up, rolled her jeans halfway up her shins, and stepped into the river. “I really shouldn’t be taking my shoes off.” She remarked, and as if she could feel my confusion, she began to explain why. “The reason I’m here is that I lost a shoe.” Her voice took on a tone of fear that was not only sudden, but—given her other careless nature—completely out of place. I looked up at her with uncertainty. “It was about a month ago,” She continued. “I can’t even remember why I was here.” She trailed off, looking down at her feet. Bluish-greyish water from the Kenduskeag flowed past her calves, lapping at her skin. She looked back up at me, smiling now. “Guess it’s a good thing I came down today, huh?”

I could feel myself smiling for the first time in forever. I was so encapsulated in trying to figure her out that I had forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. She continued on, and suddenly I saw what she was doing. While scanning the riverbed, she had distracted me with her anecdote. Calming me down. Allowing me to breathe.

“Yeah,” She endured. “I don’t remember much from that day. But I remember being scared.” She turned to face me, slipping her hands back into her jean pockets. “You’re scared, aren’t you?” I closed my eyes in embarrassment, but there was something about this girl that I could trust, so I nodded my head. “Can’t blame you.” She encouraged sullenly, before switching her tone and chirping out, “I’m just glad I was here.”

I continued to watch her as she scanned the river bed. She swept her feet along the muddy bank in small arks as she told me stories. Sometimes she would thrust her hands in the water, though she only ever pulled up rocks and mud. Her final plunge, soaking her arms well past her elbows, brought up a dead fish. We both gagged. She tossed the fish back in the river, shook her wet arms, and wadded over to my side of the Kenduskeag.

She wiped her hands on her jeans and sat down beside me. “How’s the breathing?” She checked.

I smiled, easily. She took in my calm demeanor and smiled back at me. It was a proud smile. You should be proud, I thought. Before today, nothing but my aspirator could calm me. It was my only lifeline, until she came along.

I realized suddenly that something was missing. I glanced at her neck, hoping to find a necklace that would give me the answer, but there was nothing. I had to use my Shit LungsTM.

“What’s your name?”

Her eyes widened slightly, surprised to hear me talk, and then she chuckled. “Yeah, I guess we never exchanged names, did we?” I laughed with her and shook my head. “In my defense,” She continued. “You were dying.”

We laughed with each other, hard.

“It wasn’t that bad.” I managed in between cackles.

“‘Wasn’t that bad’ my ass!” She howled back. “I was scared for you!” Tears brimmed her eyes as she bent over and laughed, clutching her stomach.

Suddenly, Bill threw himself through the bushes fourteen feet down the river. He was trying to yell as he ran over, but between his stutter and the state of his lungs—which, ironically, seemed worse off than mine—we couldn’t understand a word.

He skidded to a halt beside the bank, his sneakers leaving trenches in the mud behind him. He bent over to breathe and with his hands on his knees, he raised his head to stare at me. The longer he looked, the more confused he got.

He drew in a long, painful breath and spoke in airy breaks. “I gu-“ Wheeze. “got your-“ Wheeze. “muh-“ Wheeze. “hedication.”

He pulled a full aspirator out of his back pocket and tossed it in my direction, though his aim was off by a foot or two. Instead, the girl caught it at waist level. She walked over, popped the cap off and handed it to me. “Here,” She smiled. “One for luck.”

I put the inhaler in my mouth, squeezed the trigger, and pulled a breath in. The metallic pang was comforting in its familiarity, though this time it seemed different. This time, the salbutamol sulfate didn’t provide the same sort of sanctuary—of comfort. The girl standing in front of me did that perfectly well enough. She was looking at her hands, inspecting her fingernails and the dirt that resided under them. I wondered what she was thinking. She looked up at me and smiled.

I could feel the blood rush to my cheeks in a wave of heat as I looked into her eyes. I felt as if I had climbed to the top of a mountain and could now sit and bask in the expanse of the view; the blues and greens and yellows sprawling outwards forever.

She turned towards Bill and spoke with relief. “Now that Wheezy over here has his meds,” She turned to me, grinning. “Wanna grab some ice cream?”

I became aware of the sweat on my back. I pinched my t-shirt, pulling it off my skin, and stood up. For a moment, the world went black as the blood in my head rushed to my feet. I almost fell over.

The girl was at my side instantly. One of her hands held mine, the other laid across the sticky t-shirt on my back. “You alright?” She asked.

I told myself to nod my head. The girl chuckled and let go of my hand, pulling herself away. I figured it was the wind, but a lack of heat—of heat and comfort—grew as she pulled away.

I dove my hand into my back pocket and pulled out three dollars. “If we get ice cream,” I managed. “At least let me pay for yours.”

She chuckled and nodded simultaneously. “I’d be honoured.”

Another wave of heat; more blood rushing to my face. I pictured the way the wind would catch her hair as we walked up Kansas towards Costello’s and- oh shit, I interrupted myself as images of a blue TransAm flashed through my head. I spoke out, “What if we see Bowers?”

Bill’s face became grey. I could tell he was imagining what Bower’s and his gang would do to us if they caught us on a backstreet. Three kids, alone. He looked up towards the road where Silver had churned up gravel less than ten minutes ago. You never assume the gang’ll be trouble when you’re speeding down the street at Mach 4 on your bike, but at walking speed there were a million opportunities to be antagonized. I began to picture opportunities one through seventeen when the girl let out a startling cackle.

Bill and I stared as she laughed. “Fuck Bowers” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not worried about him.” Bill and I exchanged nervous looks, but she continued. “He’s a paper kid, a phony. If you stand your ground, a light breeze’ll make the poor thing crumble.”

Her audacity took us both by surprise. She and her thoughts were so genuine that her mentality seemed tangible, as if one could hold it in their hands. I felt myself staring at her. My eyes darted around her figure, trying to find physical proof that she was real. This mysterious girl—the one who had so promptly stayed with a stranger in order to save his feeble life, who held more courage in her entire body than I in my left hand, who was unafraid of Henry Bowers and the danger his gang possesses—could not be real.

She moved. For a second I felt a sense of relief—as if my eyes had finally proved that she was angelic; above a physical form—until she took another solid step down the bank. “Come on, you two.” She began. “I think it’s best to get you to Costello’s.” She turned her back and continued to walk. Bill and I followed promptly, though it wasn’t until we reached the market that I finally learned her name. The name.

August 1989 - Eddie’s POV

“Y/N,” I began “will see right through this bullshit plan.”

The Losers scoffed collectively. “Eddie,” Beverly pleaded. “We’ve planned this for days. There’s no way this won’t work. There’s no-” The crackling of bike tires on gravel sounded from above. We all looked up in anticipation, and there, smiling from behind the guardrail, was Y/N.

“Hey!” She yelled down. “It’s been two days. I almost forgot what you dorks looked like!”

All eight of us let out a laugh, under which Ben whispered, “Ok. We all know the plan. Play your roles for Eddie’s sake.” The Loser’s gave a quick nod before dispersing throughout the small stretch of Kenduskeag bank, doing our best imitation of ‘nonchalant’. Ben and Stan made their way up the hill towards the road.

We all knew what they were going to say, even before Y/N asked where they were going. “Ben found an amazing book on the indigenous birds of central Maine.” Stan cooed.

“We need to pick it up before anyone else does,” Ben concluded before they turned and continued up the hill.

Y/N furrowed her eyebrows in confusion but continued to make her way down to the bank. Beverly gave her a welcoming hug before conveniently looking at her watch. “Oh no,” She faked. “It’s three o’clock.” She looked up at Mike and Richie. “We better go help your dad before he comes looking for us.”

Mike nodded harshly. “You’re right.” He turned to Y/N and managed a reassuring smile. “Those cobs won’t husk themselves.”

Richie turned to Y/N, who became more confused—to the point of frustration—and apologized. “Sorry that we have to leave so early, Y/N.” He lamented. You could tell from the tension in his neck that he was trying to hold back his classic Tozier grin. “Mike, Bev, and I agreed to help Mike’s dad with the corn and if we’re late we’ll only get paid two cents per cob.” Mike and Beverly nodded mechanically. “And besides,” Richie continued. “Who wants to-”

Beverly grabbed his arm. “Come on, Tozier.” She demanded. “You can stay and chat or you can get paid.” Richie turned one corner of his mouth up in defeat and made his way up the hill. Y/N’s head followed the three as they trudged upwards.

Once their figures had been shrouded by the brush above, Y/N turned around to face Bill and I. “So,” She chirped optimistically. “Guess it’s just the three of us.”

Bill glanced at me, but fix his seemingly regretful eyes on Y/N. “Just the tuh-two of y-yuh-you, actually.” Bill held up his black-banded watch. “Spuh-heech therapy in an hour.”

I expected Y/N to shrug her shoulders and let Bill go, but instead, she furrowed her eyebrows; unconvinced. A knot conjured itself in my stomach. “I thought you had speech therapy Tuesday nights.” Y/N questioned. She then looked at me, waiting for confirmation of the obvious.

The knot twisted itself into a tight wad of anxiety. My jaw locked, forcing me to shrug my shoulders and look to Bill for guidance as I so often found myself doing. Bill could lie much easier than I could, even with the stutter. “Wuh-we can’t m-muh-make it this Tuesday,” He fibbed. “Huh-had to r-ruh-reschedule.”

Y/N loosened her expression, shrugged her shoulders, and let him go with a breathy “If you say so, Bill,” who spared no time making his way up to Kansas street. Have fun at Costello’s, I bleated in my head. The market was the meeting spot. The Losers would be collecting there soon, to share ice cream and How-Will-Eddie-Fuck-This-Up theories, no doubt.

“You know, Eddie,” Y/N chuckled. “You’re all terrible liars.” The knotted wad of anxiety in my gut exploded in a mess of fiery terror. I could still hear Bill’s feet shuffling over the loose gravel above. Ok, Bill, I screamed internally. Time to come back now.

“Where are they meeting?” She interrogated.

It felt as if my brain had been disconnected from my body, rendering all functions useless. “Costello’s.” I blurted.

Y/N chuckled under her breath. “If you wanted to spend some time with me,” We made eye contact. My heart exploded. “You could’ve just asked.” I was completely frozen. I took on the facade of a mouse playing dead, hoping and praying that she would get bored and leave, allowing me to slip away and read my comics under the safety of my covers.

Y/N bent down and picked up a smooth, grey rock. It was half the size of her palm. She dusted it off briskly, then turned her hip towards the Kenduskeag. Like an expert, she bent her knees, cocked her elbow back, and launched the rock over the surface of the water. I counted four skips.

The plain astonishment that filled my chest seemed to bring the feeling back to my limbs. My eyes scanned the bank around my feet for a rock like Y/N’s, but could only manage to find one that was much less flat. Rather than facing Y/N and her captivating yet quizzitive eyes, I bent over and picked up the rock. I did my best imitation of her stance and whipped the rock towards the water. It hit—and sank—with a single sploosh.

Y/N let out a whole-hearted cackle. Surprisingly, I joined in and laughed freely at my own defeat. The anxiety in my gut had diffused into a weightless thought in the back of my head until I looked up. A new worry tugged at the back of my head as I stared up at the darkened mass of Derry sky. The greys churned and writhed like a vicious blanket of black and white undertow. My eyes swept from the sky to the brush of the barrens. The wind had begun to pull and rip at the elms, bending them at angles that made me nauseous. The grey wash from the clouds had turned the water of the Kenduskeag inkpot black.

I turned to Y/N, whose face had adopted a tone of concern. She was mimicking my actions; looking around, taking in the red flags. The storm was just beginning—it hadn’t even begun to rain—but the onset of omens had been so sudden, we knew the worst of it was coming fast. It was going to swallow Derry whole.

I posted this ages ago ad only now realized that something failed in the posting process so here we are.

Part 2: https://fans-of-fiction.tumblr.com/post/178871324310/come-join-the-clown-eds-part-2-eddie-kaspbrak

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unnaturalcuriosity · 5 years

Text

UnnaturalCuriousity’s Rules Post {For Mobile Users}

{icon art by @stoplickingthingsweird}

B A S I C ✪ R U L E S

Things to Know

🔬 Please respect my rules and boundaries. I will give polite warnings if someone breaks a minor rule, but if it's obvious that you're blatantly disregarding what I've said here and/or are breaking serious rules, then that shows a lack of respect. Therefore I reserve the right to take action by directly confronting you and/or ending further interactions IC and/or OOC.

🔬 Since Dr. Kantalo’s job is to know a lot about other alien species, and she is meant to be a highly intelligent character, she will know in depth information about canon alien races from Universe 7. (Saiyans, Namekians etc.) This will include things like what makes them weak in combat. (For Saiyans it’s having their tail pulled unless it’s been trained. For Namekians it’s whistling.) If your muse is an OC whose backstory includes any contact with the Planet Trade Organization/Frieza Force, it would make sense for her to learn/know moderate to advanced information about your OC’s alien race when we interact. However, in order to avoid making you feel like I’m godmodding/metagaming I will ask permission OOC to mention such details and plot with you before using such information in a response. If having my muse know things about your OC muse’s race that comes from your about page and headcanon posts bothers you, please let me know and we can come up with reasons for why she wouldn’t know them in that great of depth. Know that having Dr. Kantalo possessing knowledge about your muse’s race isn’t the same as knowing their personal history/background. Not unless we plot for them to have some existing relationship prior to the start of our first thread. 🔬 If you are a personal blog following me because you are interested in my original characters and the content I publish here, all I ask is that you don't reblog asks that involve my RP partners and don't reblog our roleplay threads. That's considered rude in the RPC as it can interfere with our activity feed and our ability to track threads. I would also prefer if people didn't reblog my headcanon posts that are specific to my roleplay portrayal of my muses. Reblogging posts of artwork done of my OC is fine, so long as you don't erase the credits of who drew it and you don't try to claim credit for making my OCs. 🔬 If you'd like to draw my OC/s I would be thrilled to see it! You can submit it or post the artwork and tag this blog (and if you want to my personal blog, @raxceni). Make sure to credit me as the person who owns/made the OC/s you drew. 🔬 I am 18+ and so is my muse. Topics that are Safe for Tumblr but are still better suited for a mature audience from the past and present are tagged as #lemon goodness or #touch of citrus if it's questionably mature. Past and present content that I believe needs a trigger warning are tagged with #tw; _____ for possible triggering content. If you have specific triggers let me know and I’ll do my best to remember and accommodate. {Trigger Warning Tags Master Post link} 🔬 I will never hold it against a person if they want to unfollow me or drop me as a roleplay partner for any reason. If you wish to speak to me about the reasons why, you may do so but please be civil. 🔬 I consider myself a Continuity Queen™ which means I remember things and want to keep relationships and serious rp threads consistent. The little things are important to me, but not to the point where it interferes with enjoyment of roleplaying. If your muse is struggling to interact with mine, you can talk to me about do-overs and re-plotting. I may discuss ways we can salvage the relationship with what we’ve already done, but if that doesn’t work out doing things over is fine. (But it must be communicated to me!!!) A do-over that won't guarantee that they'll get along the way you or I want though. If I see you trying and putting in effort, I'll return that effort on my end. Likewise, if you notice any inconsistencies in our thread on my end, let me know and we can correct the issue together.

Mun Activity & Selectivity

🔬 I am selective for this roleplay blog due to time. That means I’m not going to roleplay with anyone I’m not following/mutuals with. I’m a busy/easy to tire tired person that tires easily due to some health issues I’ve been dealing with since 2018. I also run two other rp blogs. I won’t force myself to roleplay with people I don’t feel a strong enough interest with in terms of their muse, roleplay writing style, etc. I will always encourage people to talk to me, but know that it won’t guarantee anything. It’s nothing personal if I choose not to roleplay with you. Not everyone is a good roleplay partner for each other, and it’s not about being “better” or “worse” than someone else. I don’t mind telling you why I’m not interested, but don’t be rude or try to force interactions. 🔬 I ask that nobody tags me in serious roleplay or IC interaction threads without speaking with me first and getting my consent so we can plot things out. (Unless I reach out to you first IC or OOC.) Especially if we aren't following each other. Mutuals can send IC interaction asks if I reblog memes. If non-mutuals ignore this rule I will not respond to the starter and I may even block you because you haven't taken the time to read my rules or notice my header information that clearly states that this blog is selective. 🔬 If we start to/continue to roleplay together please be patient with me and keep in mind that I will be slow to respond to our threads. As you probably know I run two other canon muse blogs, and they are fairly active. You can always come talk with me about our thread/s and plot with me to give direction to our thread/s that engages both our muses mutually. If you feel like a thread got lost and/or it's been awhile since we last spoke or I last responded come talk to me. You can check if I'm keeping track of a thread by visiting my {Thread Tracker link.}

Unacceptable Roleplay Etiquette:

🔬 Various types of powerplay, godmoding, force shipping, etc. 🔬 Toxic behaviors and attitudes (like jealousy) that cause problems for yourself and others. 🔬 Muns projecting themselves into their character so much that muse = mun. 🔬 Muses and/or muns who are under 18 approaching me and my muse for shipping and/or smut. 🔬 Using me and my muse for any reason that isn’t for IC plot that’s planned. 🔬 Muns assuming that muse = mun and treating me poorly because of it. 🔬 Genuine lack of respect for muns as people who come first before our hobby. 🔬 Muns who create rp blogs on a whim and delete/abandon them with little to no notice frequently once they lose interest in that muse, and not because the mun is just busy IRL or having health issues. Depending on the offense, I will first speak with you about the issue. However, if the bad behavior doesn’t stop or I don’t like how you respond, I am well within my right to drop threads and not interact with you. I have a zero tolerance policy for toxic people and their abusive antics. If I find out you are guilty of being malicious towards anyone in the rp community presently or have in the past and continue to be toxic, I am not obligated to give you a second chance. I came here to have fun, not instruct adults on how to be decent human beings.

Writing Fight Threads With Me

🔬 I am selective with who I write fight scenes with. Some people make it awkward because of what they consider to be godmodding etc. and because of that I often lose interest in those threads. 🔬 You MUST SPEAK TO ME OOC if you're interested in doing a thread where our muses fight or spar.

How to Treat the Muse

🔬 DO NOT treat my muse like she's here to dote on and worship your muse, regardless of any connections/alliances she might have to other canon DBZ characters. She follows her orders, and respects her superiors and co-workers, but she's not here a push-over. 🔬 Dr. Kantalo may be a female OC, but she's not here for romance and smut. She's not that kind of woman. If you treat her like she's a sexual prize to own or win over, you're proving to me that you have no idea what she's really like, and that you haven't read my rules. 🔬 If you approach my muse with insults and an attitude, expect that she'll remember the things you say and do. While she's got a friendly disposition and she's not easily offended, Dr. Kantalo can be quite opportunistic. Even vindictive. Give her a reason not to like you, and your muse may regret it.

Stance on Shipping

🔬 In general, I am not interested in shipping with my OCs. Moya is a NPC kind of OC and Dr. Kantalo is Aro-Ace (meaning she doesn't experience either romantic attraction or sexual attraction to other people) and she’s physically unable to reproduce. Pursuing a ship with her seems pointless from my perspective. Emotionally she'd be weird to ship with too. In general I'm not interested in shipping with my OCs. 🔬 I have written her in a domestic partnership that lacked typical romantic dynamics and was not sexual with a friend of mine in the past. Neither labeled themselves as a "couple" either. While I doubt she'll be open to another domestic partnership, I wouldn't want to rule out the possibility of it happening either. 🔬 REMINDER: If there is any shipping stuff going on it won’t happen with muses or muns under 18 years of age.

Adult Themes

🔬 As of 12/17/18, it is supposedly alright to write erotica based on Tumblr’s guidelines, but I have no interest in writing smut on Tumblr. Nor am I keen about writing it with my OCs. 🔬 Dr. Kantalo isn't sex repulsed and she will speak of sex in a straightforward manner from a scientific point of view. If sex comes up as a topic in her posts, I will tag it with #lemon goodness or #touch of citrus. 🔬 While she's not repulsed by sex, Dr. Kantalo doesn’t feel sexual desires/urges. She may get curious about it and discuss it analytically. I would prefer it if you don't approach me and my muse for adult situations where she takes an active part in them. If you want to do so for the sake of comedy to get your muse rejected that's fine. But if I feel like you're getting pushy/forceful I will end things in a manner that makes you and your muse look foolish for not understanding that "no means no" along with ending communication and IC interactions with you.

If you've read these rules up to this point and want me to know, send me an ask saying, "I love science!" This isn't a password or requirement for me to interact with you. I just like knowing that people read my rules.

#Mobile Rules #long post

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freeselfeducation · 6 years

Photo

& this goes back to the BODY: <----- use the language until it’s DAMPENED (my body is a trigger, shit) and where do you first learn about the BODY?

The Church : it’s sacred & a gift

Parents : a gift to the one you marry

The school : personal space

The Belief : after trauma to the Body, there’s only one way to make it sacred again

RTI is Response To Intervention

✔️✔️🔥 : Left for ME to #FIND

This is how my mind unWINDs by recalling the past & trusting self that none of their bullshhhIT can last, it’s in the PAST so the lessons they cast, I’m granted access and here’s everyone’s HALL PASS

An Entrance Slip & an Exit Slip

ES es is the sound sssss

gonna put Sarah Sanders down for the way she lies, a permanent frown, the focus is morality, trust yo’self that you’ll never drOWn

let go of the ways that hurt worse

stay the course, emotions 101, thought works

ED IT & be delivered from it

Elevate Difference Delineate Ignorance

...now create it, let’s begin...

THE PAST [thoughts caught]

When a student (or any person) is struggling options do exist IF willing to LEARN about what deep down motivates them? Know your JOB...

ED flashback a student is meant to learn, make mistakes, ask questions & get everything they CAN before it’s over. That time to be wrong & to be “happy,” more like secure.

The greatest benefit a parent or teacher can provide to create LIFELONG LEARNERS, those rare firecrackers who pop when a new idea hits, as if it entered their heads, made contact with the appropriate thinking that already existed & with that spark, a wild inferno can grow and that’s the point where we forgot that spark! From the very smallest, something very grand or very dangerous can develop & you must GO THROUGH that fire, feel it’s char, taste its rage.

Energy cannot be created nor destroyed so the impact that got me here needs its polar opposite & that’s sights, sounds, physical touches, repeated battering, voices that don’t stop yet at the same time aren’t saying anything to HELP, and in some cases, with conscious harm. Let’s sound the alarms!! This is the first time connecting two thoughts that have roamed freely and never meeting -- consciousness & alarms -- with the fact on the street, this was the first sound that alerted me to a change.

I’d do what I’d usually do when I hear an ambulance, or cop car, a firetruck, who knows, you gotta look, but when I turned OUCH & then whoosh, and crack, snap, rattle and OUUUUCH. Then I learned when I heard that sound to not do what I’ve done since a very small girl, being told to pay attention when you hear this! Look up & get your wits about ya, to get outta the way! To pray (for those in need & for those who are going to help)

THE SELF : physical, emotional. mental. sexual & the #1 thing that determines a happy life or one met with daily suffering : independence & beyond

When you have the ability to support yourself (& family) & not fear where you’ll sleep, what you’ll eat & drink for the next days, weeks, safety being the #1 factor for us to work hard (support families or pets), stay true (not just for social media shaming) & most of all TAKE PRIDE in WHO WE ARE & make that matter most

When standards slide, it si 100% certain that most will take advantage & the ones who are “above that” look the other way, so a new type of self-education that I’m demanding after a series of events that connected ABUSES between home/school that we all experience...I just got to see behind-the-scenes of MAJOR HYPOCRISY and it changed me.

In these posts, this DISorder of words, thoughts & not having control of my body is new experience & don’t just appear out of nowhere. A series of events had to happen for this to happen, but the story about me, it’s those that let IT happen over & over and also those who PRESED in with consciousness.

Having a self-DOubt never felt before how shown me what you MUST DO & NOT DO post tragedy, whatever the trauma is & I will be sharing some of the tricks & strategies to help build your ability to self-education, only after TRAUMA & in the ways that relate to primary age kids since we must ACCEPT there are differences in intelligence that gives people an edge.

It’s taking a long time to figure out a format that will EFFECTIVELY help manage racing thoughts that are triggers, and have been masked in every & all ways based on others’ opinions, assumption & flat out selfishness & ability to ever see another person before self & THIS is the enemy that promoted the creation of this blog. To feel this strongly to do this (for me, someone who has not embraced tech for many many reasons, but most of all, I prefer the “real-world” and my attentions remains in the “real-world” but I needed a way to stay connected after multiple assaults & a physical injury & mental diagnosis (PTSD) that I can finally say, “thanks” to.

The reason for that is if it’s genuine, the feeling is REAL, successful movement through the acute stages have been competed & now you get to restructure, re-build that life & with knowledge of the past & now, I can say this with enthusiasm, but it wasn’t automatic & can’t be done with “a thought” or “repeated effort” or even “time,” this being the solution but only because it’s forgotten, right? The body remembers 100%. What it takes to end trauma is making the BEST of “your WORST” and the first step are in the details...

FBA (Functional Behavior Analysis) is the prompting event:

The prompting event is the moment “behavior” or “thoughts” or a “feeling” appear that create emotion (good or bad) with a focus on the undesirable ones. To say “negative” means a negative & the idea is to be positive or neutral in words since we’re describing behaviors, not the student (where I learned to track, assess, recommend, monitor, adapt, reflect, conclude, repeat) since I will never accept that a student is the problem until all avenues are exhausted since the opinion to GIVE UP, LABEL, assume is “low” or give a “name to,” let’s say weird, these acts done without EFFORT or THOUGHT. It’s become normal. Violence. Already dripping with humiliation from individuals who could so easily lie. Don’t you want to know the effect of your lies?

EXPOSING MYSELF in the safest way I know how--through books, language, words & imagery since their PRACTICE is to reward for SILENCE & ACCEPTANCE of a belief that is simply not possible to stay IN ME.

The word was Weird this being the trigger to go back to all the ways one is mentally abused, summed up in one word, so can it be erased & destroyed with one word, too?

Why did FBA create triggers?

A : it was a waste of time to ever have to write...

AA : Absolute Answer ∆ it’s paperwork that is done but HAS NO MEANING

other examples of paperwork : yes yes yes yes yes yes, omg

Children Crying from self-harm & wanting friends & using absolutes (e.g. NEVER, ALWAYS) that linger on an ECHO--ECHOO--ECHOOO...the same exact words as this child, made from a child that is in an adult body. Now it’s getting interesting. Crying & DOING harm in the same ways -->-->-->--> this triggered the ACT of discrimination of being given NO classroom & made to LEARN in settings that guarantees TEACHING is a waste of time. Not really fair, see. You can’t just shuffle these kids around when a perfectly suitable space is available & that’s where I ask for motivation?

Why do such a deceitful thing?

I simply did not know that IT takes TIME to know why people do what they do. Now that I know I can see that I survivED, but I also can’t NOT share what I learned from this experience since it something CHANGES LIFE as you know it, at the very least, you reflect a little

Dedicated to the master of self-education : TY 🤗

#let's begin

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terresdebrumestories · 7 years

Text

Kechibi

✗ TECHNICAL DETAILS

FANDOM: Digimon Adventure 01/02/Tri RATING: General Audiences. WORDCOUNT: 5 758 words PAIRING(S): Pre-Taiyama CHARACTER(S): Taichi Kamiya & Yamato Ishida, with cameos from Sora Takenouchi, Takeru Takashi and Michel Takashi. GENRE: Will you just stop it? TRIGGER WARNING(S): Some l light references to depression and Yamato staying in a psychiatric hospital for a while. SUMMARY: From: Yamato To: Sora ’got 2nd degree burns from a head in a fire ball last night’ Or: Yamato didn't really think spirits from his childhood stories were real, but if he had he certainly wouldn't have expected to meet one in the French countryside. NOTE: I would have gone further into the comedic potential of kechibi spirits, but I figured this story was already long enough as it was, and I didn’t want to fall into disrespect (since I only did realy cursory research) so here we go.

DIGIOTPWEEK 2017: [Day 1: Coffeeshop AU] [Day 2: Fantasy AU] [Day 3: Profession AU] [Read on AO3]

Yamato swears so hard, once he finally figures out what the problem with his bike is, that a rabbit jumps right out of its hiding spot and into the grazing field on the other side of the road. It can’t really be blamed for it: it’s midnight on a chilly, damp August night, and the poor creature probably thought it was safe from stupid humans who don’t have anything better to do than break down in the middle of the night.

Clearly, it never anticipated Michel Takashi’s ancient relic of a motorbike, or the absolute absence of patience Yamato suffers from at the moment.

He swears for an unreasonably long time, mixing the few Russian curse words he remembers from high school with the full extent of his French vocabulary, until realizes he’s up for at least two hours’ walk, pushing a bike uphill and, most likely, in the rain. Honestly, at times like these, he almost wonders what’s the point of having enough strength to leave the house if he’s going to end up in these situations.

He knows the answer, of course, and wouldn’t trade the propensity to spiral down into irrational anger or despair for the gaping nothing that were the past few months, but that doesn’t make his present situation any more enjoyable.

At least he didn’t break down on a dirt trail.

He’s been at it for about half an hour, earphones blasting a long string of insults vaguely put to music at an unreasonable volume, when he notices a flame in the wheat field to his right. The weather as been awful since he got to France, so it’s unlikely to set the crop on fire, but where there’s a fire there’s a person and, in this case, they’re probably trampling around in the wheat.

Yamato, who needs something to throw his annoyance at, decides to be a proper farmer’s grandson and go kick an idiot’s ass.

“Oi!” he starts, not interested in how odd that’ll sound to French ears, “you gotta turn your thing off! You’re gonna damage the crops!”

He has to walk along the field for a bit before he finds the entry path and follows the tire tracks from the tractors into the wheat, stomping more than he walks. Not that it seems to bother whoever decided to get a hot snack in the middle of the night, though, because there’s no movement or sound of any kind, not even when Yamato growls and calls out again:

“Hé! Piss off before you do anymore damage, dumbass!”

Still nothing. The wind picks up a little and the flame shivers, but as for the rest Yamato might as well be pissing in a violin—either the bastard is entirely deaf, or they’re ignoring him on purpose. Given the general conditions of deaf people in the country, Yamato’s inclined to believe it’s the later, and bright hot anger clenches his fingers into fists right before he decides to use his grandfather’s tried and true technique: just yell at them in Japanese.

True, the reason it works for Michel Takashi probably is that he’s a super-white octogenarian with the general silhouette of a particularly ill-combed leek, but if Yamato hasn’t let his obvious Japaneseness hold him back before he really doesn’t see why he’d start now.

(Ironically enough, there is also something viciously satisfying at making himself so other in his country, his culture and origins spontaneously and universally recognized and accepted in a way they rarely are at home. Who knew racist ignorance could do good things for his brain.)

“Sir!” He shouts, using the lower tones of Japanese to make his voice sound scarier, “could you please put your fire out and leave the field? You’re damaging the crops!”

The flame grows several centimeters after that, fizzles out, and reappears right in front of Yamato’s knees with a relieved:

“You speak Japanese! Can you help me? I’m lost!”

Yamato blinks.

Pinches his arm.

Does it again, but harder this time, digging his nails into the flesh for good measure.

Everything hurts the way it’s supposed to, so he’s probably not sleeping but, despite that, the flame is still here.

Clearly, he’s gonna need to check out his meds’ notice when he gets home.

“Can you help me?” The flame repeats.

It’s got a pleasant voice. Lighter than Yamato’s, maybe a bit too loud, but relatively pleasant.

It would, of course, be even better if it didn’t come from a fire that gives the inexplicable impression of being a head with far, far too much hair on top of it in the middle of asking a question. For a moment—a couple of seconds, at most—Yamato tries to make sense of it all.

Then he decides he doesn’t have the strength for this mess and walks away, refusing to let himself slow down even when the fire’s voice gets louder.

“Please,” it yells, far closer than Yamato would have thought, “I’m lost!”

Don’t talk to it, Yamato tells himself, that’s how people get themselves interned. Just ignore it and it’ll have to stop, eventually.

Right. Because this is exactly how hallucinations work.

“I’m lost! Please! I’m lost!”

“Buy a map!” Yamato tosses over his shoulder, heart in his throat as he reaches the exit path.

He’s giving himself a rather severe mental talk down by the time he reaches the motorbike and starts pushing on the handles. He’s finally lost it, there’s no way around that, but that doesn’t mean he’s got to go and make it obvious, for heaven’s sake!

“Please! I’m lost, help me please!”

Yamato screams and lets the bike stumble into the irrigation ditch when the flame touches his calf, searing pain shooting up his leg and sending his heart in overdrive. He whines in pain as he slaps the fire out, a litany of apologies floating in his ears even when he forces himself to his feet and takes off at a run toward his grandfather’s home.

***

He doesn’t remember getting home, let alone in bed, but he must have managed it somehow because, when the pain finally gets too much to bear, his eyes immediately land on the old dance trophy that resides on the bedside table of his mother’s childhood bedroom. He hisses and grits his teeth against the pain to sit up...and yells when the movement causes the sheets to brush on exposed muscles.

He’s still swearing by the time he gathers the courage to check, heart racing like it’s going for a gold medal in the fear Olympics.

There’s almost no skin left on the back of his right leg, raw flesh exposed to the morning air like a painfully undercooked steak. There are blisters all over it, one of them almost the size of an egg, and jeans fibers stick to the wound in a couple of places. It could probably be worse, but it’s bad enough to make him dizzy and vaguely nauseous.

He has to grip the edge of the bed with white knuckles before he tries to stand, and when he tries to put a foot in front of the other the pain, sharp and raw like nothing else, catches him fast and hard enough that he yelps and falls to the ground, wincing when the door open to reveal his grandfather standing there with his night gown and a panicked expression on.

“What did you do?” He yells in French when his gaze lands on Yamato’s calf.

“I didn’t do anything, it’s—”

A pained exclamation cuts through Yamato’s sentence when his grandfather plucks the jean fibers out of the burns, and it’s all he can do to get his breath back while Papy Michel chastises him:

“You couldn’t just do that with a knife, could you? You could have set the house on fire!”

“But that wasn’t me!”

He knows he’s lost before his grandfather speaks again. It shows in the way his features go from worried granddad to steely war veteran and, even if that wasn’t enough of a tell, the fact that he reverts to Japanese for the next sentence is a dead giveaway.

“Can you get to the bathroom?”

“Yes,” Yamato confirms with burning eyes, “I’ll manage.”

It’s easier to brace himself for the pain now that he knows what it’ll be like. With a wince, he bites on the pained sound that tries to get out of his throat and pushes himself upright, grabbing his phone on his way up. If his grandfather won’t listen to what he’s got to say, he might as well reach out for people who will.

‘got 2nd degree burns from a head in a fire ball last night’ he texts to Sora, before transferring the message over to Takeru.

It’s a little over seven PM back in Tokyo, so he’s not surprised when Sora answers first:

‘Did your dosage change recently?’

‘np & nothing causes hallucinations, I checked + I was in a wet wheat field. Nothing to burn me w even if I was seeing things’

‘Yikes. How did your granddad take it?’

‘badly’

‘YIKES. Hang in there & phone me when you can. My new pill keeps me up anyway.’

Yamato promises Sora to call her as soon as he’s done getting bandaged—possibly with lunch, too—and does his best not to be too obvious about how much he wants this thing to be over already.

“You know,” his grandfather tries after a while, eyes straying toward Yamato’s phone almost too quick to be noticed, “if you want to talk about this, I can—”

“Sora says hi,” Yamato says, heart in his throat, before the sentence can end.

“What?”

“Sora. My friend from the hospital. She says hi.”

She never had even the beginning of a will to get in touch with Yamato’s family, a sentiment he approves of and mirrors entirely, but mentioning her is a surefire way to cut any conversation short without having to provide an excuse. It’s not that Yamato’s family isn’t trying to support him. They are.

It’s just that they don’t exactly understand one another at the best of time, and neither his parents nor the two grandparents he still has were prepared to deal with the kind of issues Yamato turned out to have. His friendship with Sora, born and forged in the heart of a psychiatric ward, is quite possibly too much of a reminder for them to be fully comfortable with it.

“Good,” Papy Michel mutters with a bit of a strangled voice, “that’s good. Well, you’re all patched up now. Don’t get this dirty.”

Yamato nods and gives a perfunctory mutter about wanting a smoke before he makes his exit to the garden, where he promptly lights a cigarette. He can’t honestly say he needed it right this second, but since he’s here he might as well indulge and settle his nerves.

Besides, it’ll give him some space to answer Takeru’s incoming text.

‘Dsnt that sound lk 1 of grdma Fumikos stories?’

‘wut?’

‘the head ina fire thing. Its a Kõchi story no?’

‘maybe idk’

‘ill check’

Takeru doesn’t really need to check, seeing as his comment actually reminded Yamato of the legend in question, but waiting for more information gives hims something to do while he finishes his cigarette, and it’s as good an excuse as any to stay away from his grandfather for a bit.

The thing he met—the thing he thought he met—was probably a kechibi: some poor sod’s spirit literally rolled right out of them and into a fireball, for whatever reason. It can’t be real, of course, and Yamato feels stupid for entertaining the notion now, but he used to be a hardcore believer when he was younger. Not, as his grandmother first thought, because he was afraid of them, but because she used to say some kechibi were wrathful spirits, meant to exact vengeance on those who wronged them during the day.

The amount of time Yamato spent nursing his resentments, during middle school, hoping he’d generate a kechibi powerful enough to take care of his worse bullies, was probably not very healthy. He can’t say he regrets it, though of course he’s given up on their existence a long time ago now. After all, he may go to a temple on a semi-regular basis, half-because he wishes he’d believe again and half because the atmosphere soothes him, but that doesn’t mean he can’t realize that legends are just that. Legends.

‘how do u explain the burns then?’ Takeru asks when Yamato points that out.

‘dunno. Y do u even want it 2 b real?’

‘either it’s real or u burned urself & fabricated the encounter 2 cover it up. Whether were talking hallucinations or lies I prefer the 1st option’

‘...ngl, so do i’

It’s getting late by now, the butt of Yamato’s cigarette long discarded in the ashtray he keeps on the low wall protecting the vegetable garden, so he wishes his brother goodnight and finally goes back inside for lunch. He answers his grandfather’s questions—in Japanese, for the most part—without lying, though he’s careful not to mention the kechibi, and they spend the next few hours figuring out how to get the motorbike out of its ditch and into a garage shop.

The words ‘please, I’m lost’ float in Yamato’s mind the whole way through.

***

‘You’re a nutcase,’ Sora texts when Yamato finishes telling her about his projects for the night.

‘tell me somthng I don’t know’

‘No, the depression is regular crazy. This is just nuts.’

‘im going now ttyl’

Yamato can almost ear Sora’s disbelieving little snort as he sneaks out of the house and climbs on the mountain b ike his grandfather borrowed from a neighbor on his behalf. She doesn’t let it out as often as he does, but sometimes she’s got enough sarcasm to give him a run for his money and, honestly, the only reason he doesn’t keep texting her is because he has no intention to die on the road tonight.

Still it’d be nice if he could. He’d feel a little less stupid, for one. How else could he feel when he’s on his way to a freaking field in the middle of nowhere just so he can maybe have a—second—conversation with a head in a fireball.

Ridiculous doesn’t even begin to cover it.

The ride goes peacefully. There ’s next to no traffic on the roads as it is, let alone at eleven at night, and the weather finally cleared so aside from the darkness it isn’t that different from Yamato’s usual exploration of the countryside. There’s a sense of trepidation in him his usual outings lack, though.

The countryside in this part of France is dreadfully empty—not even five hundred persons in his grandfather’s village—and it doesn’t even have the decency to make up for it with particularly beautiful landscapes. Yamato had been spending most of his days out so far, but it’s a way to be alone with his thought and away from his grandfather’s worried incomprehension more than a show of appreciation for the place, r eally.

Add a healthy dose of depression to that and, well. That’s all you need to know about Yamato’s current hobbies, really.

There’s a real purpose to this particular trip, though, if only to figure out whether that thing really is real—it can’t be. Legends aren’t real! But then Yamato’s burn, still throbbing under the bandage and disinfectant, is, so there’s that. He pulls into the entry path to the field with a sigh and one last volley of disbelieving insults to his own intellect, and rests the mountain bike down on its handle before stepping onto the tire tracks.

The full moon’s getting near which, if legends are to be believed, make the possibility of a spirit encounter even more likely. Of course, that’d feel a little more logical if he weren’t thousands of miles away from Japan in a field that is painfully, obviously empty—of people and of flame.

Yamato is running a hand over his face with a weary sigh when there’s a firecracker sound, and he jumps about thirty centimeters into the air, shrieking as he lands on his ass and damages a sizable patch of wheat, as well as the butts of his hands, in the process.

“Shit, warn a guy would you?”

The face in the fireball doesn’t have very definite features, except maybe for the ridiculous excess of hair, but it still manages to convey a decent air of contrite confusion as it settles down at some distance from Yamato’s legs. Good. Not only does that mean he won’t get burned again just yet, it should also spare him the mental image of a head bouncing after him like a rubber ball which, as his irreverent conversation with Sora this afternoon attests, is nothing short of ridiculous.

Still, the head looks like it sort of feels bad, so Yamato sighs, shifts his mental processes over to Japanese, and says in as calm a voice as he can manage:

“Excuse me, oh Spirit, but what are you doing here?”

The flames around the head brighten, and the vague hint of eyebrows raise up as the head exclaims:

“You speak Japanese! Can you help me? I’m lost!”

“So I understand,” Yamato says, a not-so-small part of his brain still yelling at him to go home and get a grip.

The rest of him figures it can’t be worse than staring at the ceiling and hope for something to come and jump start his emotions back to life.

“Who are you?”

There’s a pause, like the head is gathering breath, and then:

“I’m lost, sir.”

“Yes. You mentioned that. Where are you from?”

There’s another, longer pause, and the flames around the kechibi’s head dim a little before it—he?—tries in a hesitant voice:

“I’m lost.”

“Alright,” Yamato sighs, distantly relieved this thing is managing to irritate him, “let’s try something different. Do you have a name?”

“I have a friend!” the kechibi answers, voice piping so high it sounds more child-like than the adult voice it had before.

It’s not the answer Yamato was aiming for, but it’s a step out of the ‘I’m lost’ loop, so he’ll take it.

“What’s you friend’s name?”

“Koushiro.”

There’s happiness in that one name, like saying it is enough to put the kechibi in a good mood, and a trickle of dread worms its way inside Yamato’s heart. He really hopes he’s wrong about where this is going.

Maybe this Koushiro person is just a close friend.

“Do you know where Koushiro is?”

Pause. Dimming flames.

“...I’m lost.”

Evidently, not the right question to ask. This is going to be tricker than he thought it would be.

At least, he reminds himself, it’s not a wrathful one. He hasn’t believed in literal spirits in a long time—tending to interpret them as energies of some sort more than anything else—but he did grow up with a healthy respect for them. That, and a certain awareness of their potential for harmful behavior, because respecting spirits doesn’t mean pretending they’re only ever nice and fluffy.

Hell, even his mother, who is a practicing Catholic, always told him not to anger any spirit, that’s how well aware of their nature he is.

This one though? More confused than angry. It’s honestly the only thing that keeps him from turning heels and leaving it to its own devices. Instead, he follows his earlier inkling, and asks:

“What’s Koushiro like?”

Look, Yamato isn’t usually the type to compare real life to movies but, one, he’s literally talking to a spirit so the usual rules can suck it and, two, there’s really no other way to describe the way the kechibi glows other than Ghibli-like. It’s like watching a flaming, wild-haired version of Ponyo puff itself up and yell:

“Awesome!”

It’s a good thing it looks so cute, because it means Yamato doesn’t have to fake his little smile when he replies:

“That great, uh?”

“Yes! He’s smart, and he’s funny and he knows how to do so many things with computers! And he’s nice and sometimes he forgets to it so I bring him food and then he smiles and we laugh a lot. He’s a really good friend.”

It’s funny the kechibi’s voice should sound like a child’s. Yamato can’t know for sure tit’s not its real voice—although the head seems large for a kid’s, and it did start out speaking in deeper tones—but even then there’s something so...innocent about the way it sounds. There’s no fear, no embarrassment, no self-disgust here, just pure affection and a fondness that can never be faked.

He sort of wishes he’d get to have that.

“He does sound pretty amazing,” he says, trying to keep the wistfulness out of his voice. “How long have you known him?”

“Oh, forever, I’m sure,” the kechibi replies, head tilting back like it’s looking for an answer in the stars, “I don’t remember not knowing him.”

“That’s quite a long time.”

“Yes, but it’s nice! Don’t you have someone you’ve known forever?”

“Not really,” Yamato shrugs, “my oldest friend is my little brother, but I remember what it was like when he wasn’t there.”

Dimly, in short flashes that mostly consists of the few weeks before Takeru’s birth, but Yamato still remembers.

“Do you like your brother a lot?”

Yamato blinks at the change of topic, in part because he was starting to get lost in his own thoughts, but also because he’d kind of given up on the kechibi extending their conversation topics on its own. Evidently, he just hadn’t found the right angle.

“Yes,” he says, settling into a more comfortable position, “I do.”

“How much?”

Oh well. If he’s gonna hear a kid’s words in a kid’s voice, he might as well go the whole way.

He extends his arms as far as they’ll go before he says:

“That much.”

He really hopes this kechibi didn’t come from an actual child, though. If he’s right, and there’s less an less hold on the hope that he isn’t, then he really hopes it’s happening to someone who’s old enough to mostly bounce back from it.

“I,” the kechibi says, the flames at the side of its head widening like they’re trying to imitate Yamato’s gesture, “like Koushiro thiiiiiiiiiiis much!”

The fire licks at a couple of strands of wheat on the side, and Yamato is halfway to his feet before he realizes nothing caught fire. In fact, aside from the damage he inflicted, it’s like nothing’s happened here at all.

Well, good to know major burns are a human-only experience, he guesses. Could have done without the discovery, though.

“Oh, sorry,” the kechibi says, dimming and shrinking as it talks, “sorry, sorry—”

“It’s okay,” Yamato reassures it, one hand straying to his calf, as if he could have forgotten the wound there, “it’s not so bad, and you didn’t—”

“Koushiro is a boy,” the kechibi shrieks.

Fuck, Yamato thinks.

He was right.

The spirit vanis hes with a loud snap before he can fully figure out what to tell it.

Yamato waits for the kechibi to return for a long, long while, even going so far as to call out once or twice, but to no avail. The spirit, it seems, is either back to its body, or determined not to come back. Yamato could wait it out until morning if he wanted, he’s definitely got the hang of not moving of uncomfortable length of time. That would probably result in his grandfather having a stroke in worry, though, and he’s not so far down that it’s something he’ll let happen anymore.

Besides, even supposing he stays here all night and his grandfather either doesn’t notice or survives the experience unharmed, anyone who lives within in a twenty kilometers’ radius would soon know about how Michel Takashi’s grandson slept in a field. He’s already the local weirdo, there’s no need to add to that.

He calls out for the kechibi one last time, then looks around to make really sure no one hears him when he promises to come back the following night.

By the time he gets back to his bed, he’s tired enough that even his brain can’t keep him awake.

***

The kechibi is already there by the time Yamato makes it to its field on the third night and he thinks, a little stupidly, that he might have to find it a name at some point. It’s ridiculous, really, these things are supposed to be people’s souls, not pets. It feels weird not to have a name to give it, though, so it doesn’t hurt to think about it.

It isn’t a priority though, and as soon as Yamato is within speaking distance of the spirit he makes sure to say:

“It’s alright that Koushiro is a guy.”

The kechibi’s features are a little more defined when he looks up to stare at Yamato. Its hair, still overgrown, is dark brown, a little paler than the stereotypical Japanese black. Its nose is short, its mouth a little too thin but somehow friendly, as if made for smiling. It’s the kind of smile that half begs you to be telling the truth, half asks if you wanna be friends.

If maybe you already are a friend.

Yamato’s Gay Epiphany wasn’t what sent him to the psychiatric ward but damn, he would really have loved it if someone would have put that kind of expression on his face instead of having to figure it out on his own.

“It really is.”

“It’s alright,” the kechibi repeats, its flames growing a little taller, a little brighter.

“Yeah.”

“Koushiro’s a guy. And it’s alright.”

“Completely alright.”

He’s not sure how a disembodied and mostly featureless head manages to make fondness bloom in the vicinity of his heart but, eh. It’s a spirit. They do weird things, like burn people by accident while leaving crops alone or, in this case, flickering and changing colors at a steady pace.

Flick-orange, flick-redder, flick-range, flick-redder.

“That’s funny,” Yamato says after a moment of silence, “your flames.”

“What about them?” the kechibi asks as if having fire all around your head was a normal, every day occurrence.

It probably is to a spirit, mind you, but that doesn’t mean Yamato can’t keep in mind how surreal the entire thing is.

“The way they change color. It’s like a heartbeat.”

“Heart?”

“Yeah,” Yamato replies, deciding to try and circle back just to see if their conversation changed anything, “it’s what you like people with.”

“I like Koushiro a lot.”

The flames don’t widen like enthusiastic little arms this time, but considering there’s no abrupt disappearance either, Yamato decides he’s okay with it.

“Yeah. It’s alright to like him a lot.”

It sort of feels like Yamato should be trying to have this conversation with a more elaborate vocabulary, mostly because the face in the flames doesn’t really look child-like. Sometimes, though, even adults need to get simple words, and this one hasn’t protested the lack of over-three-syllables lexicon yet.

“Jyou doesn’t like Koushiro as much.”

Ah, yes. That’s the fun part, as far as Yamato remembers, the moment he went from a relieved, almost elated ‘this is why it’s not working with girls’ to ‘oh fuck, now I’m even more different’.

There were other components, too, things being straight wouldn’t have changed like, oh, being blond or being socially awkward, or having lucked out at the brain make up lottery—although that point might have been easier to deal with in a different world. The fact remains that, even though his Big Gay Epiphany was, depression aside, a mostly smooth process, that part was particularly hard to swallow.

Still is, whenever it rears its ugly head, but Yamato learned to suppress his gag reflex by now.

God, this metaphor is getting out of control.

“Not everyone likes boys this way,” he says instead of trying to examine that strange train of thoughts.

“Boys don’t.”

“Some do. I do. Some girls don’t like boys that way, either. My best friend Sora, she prefers girls. The person she’s in love with is a girl.”

“I like girls a lot too,” the kechibi says, like it’s correcting a mistake, “and I like Koushiro.”

“Well, you’re allowed to like both. You’re allowed to like any kind of person.”

“Mom will be angry.”

“Maybe she won’t,” Yamato counters, because it’s true. Not everyone gets terrible reactions. “Even if she is, there’s nothing she can do against it. No one can stop you from liking people.”

Yamato has to hide his eyes behind his arm when he ends his sentence, and even then it’s not fast enough to prevent him from seeing spots for the next ten minutes, at the very least. He really, really hope no one was awake to see that, because he’s got no idea how he’d explain it.

Somehow, he doesn’t think ‘sorry, some poor fucker was having an identity crisis in the countryside’ would appease many people.

“I love him so much,” the kechibi says.

It’s quiet and wistful, back to the deeper tones of the first night. There’s acceptance in that, and some relief, but there’s grief, too, and Yamato isn’t quite sure whether the guy is grieving the safety of straightness or the possibility of something happening with Koushiro.

Either way, he’s definitely back in a headspace where he’s aware of the potential ramifications of his recent discovery, and Yamato knows exactly how that feels.

“Yeah,” he mumbles, “I can tell. Sorry.”

This time, when the kechibi pops out of the conversation, Yamato doesn’t bother waiting around before he leaves.

***

When he reaches the field the next evening, he’s almost afraid to find it empty. Sure, it’d mean no more risk of sounding like a complete nutcase, but then again...well, the spirit was the first person he had a real conversation with in this country, including his grandfather. He thinks it’s understandable that he doesn’t want to let go of the connection just yet.

Doesn’t prevent him from swearing blue murder when the kechibi startles him again, though.

Yamato ignores the kechibi’s surprised stare as he slaps dirt off his jeans and checks the state of his hands...yep. Fresh scraps. Damn it.

Then, because there’s only so long he can ignore a pair of big, almost pleading brown eyes in a fireball looking up at him, Yamato sighs:

“What?”

“Why do you keep speaking in a different language? I don’ understand it.”

“We’re in France. If you wanted to hear Japanese you shoulda had your out of body experience back home. Why don’t you ask Koushiro out if you like him that much?”

“He’s aromantic. He told me last week.”

“Ah. Tough luck.”

Brown eyes look down, shadowing a vague hint of pinched lips and, well, yeah. It’s not like there’s anything wrong about the aromantism thing, it’s just inconvenient for the spirit’s love life at the moment.

“It’s not a problem,” the kechibi says, looking like it’s shrugging nonexistent shoulders, “I’ll get over it.”

“Of course. Doesn’t mean the first few days of it are fun. Is that why you’re here?”

“What? No. I’m on vacations with my family.”

Yamato would be lying if he said he doesn’t smile at that. Sounds like the spirit isn’t so lost anymore.

“Anyway,” the kechibi adds with the tone of someone who’s trying really hard to convince themselves, “at least it taught me something about myself. It’s….”

“Kind of painful and coming with a whole lot of unpleasant strings attached?”

Okay, Yamato knows he sounds harsh, here, but this is honestly the easiest part of this whole story so far. He’s had plenty of time to think about the sort of unpleasant reactions people could, would, and did have to learning he was gay.

“If it makes anything better,” he says as he sits down in the grass of the entry path, “you learn to enjoy the cool parts more than you think about the bad ones. Those are only there because people are ridiculous.”

“No offense, but ‘ridiculous’ coming from you sounds somewhat...nice.”

“Just wait ‘til I can handle more than two languages again,” Yamato replies with a shrug, “I’ll show you how mean I can be.”

The kechibi snorts at that, laughter burying itself in the ground next to Yamato’s feet, and the only reason Yamato can think of for that is that the poor guy’s had a pretty stressful week. It’s got to come out somehow.

Besides, it makes him chuckle, too. It’s not actual laughter yet, but it’s been a while since he did that and really mean it, so he figures he might as well enjoy this new step on the path of re-recovery or something.

“I’d like to do that, actually,” the spirit says with one last huff of breath. “I really was lost and you...you got me out of it.”

“Well, my twitter handle’s @yamaNO, if you want to get in touch there. I have a rainbow-filled silhouette as a profile pic.”

“Okay!” The kechibi agrees with more enthusiasm than Yamato feels is needed, “I’ll check you out!”

A second passes.

“I mean, I’ll check IT out. It. Your profile. Soon. Tomorrow. Oh my god this is—I really should go….”

He snaps out of existence before Yamato can ask for his name.

***

Yamato is wasting time around the web the next day, trying really hard to pretend he’s not checking his twitter tab every five seconds, when he gets a new follower notification and a direct message, pretty much in the span of a second:

@tAYYYYYchi: OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE REAL

@tAYYYYYchi: I THOUGHT YOU WERE A DREAM

@tAYYYYYchi: YOU’RE TOO WEIRD TO BE REAL

@yamaNO: says the guy whose Big Gay Crisis gave him a literal out of body experience

@tAYYYYYchi: First of all I told you I’m still into girls so I don’t know what it is but it’s definitely not gay. Second, shut up, dumb face. Third: what are you doing?

@yamaNO: wondering if some1 invented time travel so I can go back & not help u

@tAYYYYYchi: LIES AND SLANDER.

@tAYYYYYchi: Everyone loves me.

@tAYYYYYchi: Clearly, you’re A Big Liar Who Lies.

Well, there’s no denying the guy—Taichi, his bio says when Yamato follows him back—is entirely right about that.

Yamato really , really doesn’t mind.

#digiotpweek #yamato ishida #taichi yagami #taiyama #digimon #digimon fic #fanfiction #10n

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mattmarlinwrites · 7 years

Text

Album Review: Blood Orange’s Freetown Sound

Hi there, readers! I wrote this extended analysis/writeup of Blood Orange’s Freetown Sound for a collection of online essays about notable indie albums in 2016, but never shared it here! Hope you enjoy it!

Background

Blood Orange is the current solo project of Devonte “Dev” Hynes, whose music primarily falls into contemporary/alternative R&B, but also incorporates elements of indie rock, pop, jazz, funk, and soul. Hynes was previously a member of the dance-punk band Test Icicles and recorded other solo albums under the name Lightspeed Champion before beginning to perform and record as Blood Orange in 2009. His previous album, Cupid Deluxe, was released in 2013 with a large number of guest musicians ranging from Clams Casino to David Longstreth (of Dirty Projectors) and received mostly positive reviews, including accolades on Pitchfork’s year-end list as well as their list for best albums of the decade so far.

In November 2015, Hynes sold a cassette recording of the previously-unreleased Nelly Furtado-featuring song “Hadron Collider” at his shows, sparking speculation about a new album. He announced Freetown Sound – named after the capital city in Sierra Leone where his father was born – in April 2016 and later revealed the album’s artwork in June, hinting at some of the release’s guest features in a promotional video that accompanied the album art reveal. (On an interesting side note, Hynes’s album announcement did not contain any track names, just the fact that the album would have 17 songs.) Hynes’s press release that accompanied this announcement detailed that the album would be about “my life, my upbringing, being black in England, being black in America...my movement to this country at the age of 21.” On June 28, Hynes made the album available to hear three days earlier than his previously announced release date of July 1, simultaneously sharing a video for the lead single “Augustine” (which features cameo appearances from Julian Casablancas and Porches’ Aaron Maine).

Review

2016 was a garbage year. There’s no way of ignoring that. On top of the dumpster fire of US politics and the seemingly nonstop high profile deaths, racial tensions and murders of people of color continued just frequently as they had in the past few years. Even worse, the strides the LGBT movement made just last year with the Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality hit a lot of pushback between North Carolina’s HB2 and the Pulse shooting. Not to mention all the ways these struggles were amplified for those who had intersecting marginalized identities, such as of women of color.

For me, no album this year encompassed all the experiences of these various identities in 2016 quite as extensively and vividly as Freetown Sound. In retrospect, this strikes me as odd considering this album only came out midway through the year. And yet, it seems even more relevant now than it did upon its release, almost as if it presaged that the year would only grow worse. But what kept bringing me back to Freetown Sound was its role as a conscious source of relief, a release I knew I could always turn back towards to assure myself that there’s some hope in spite of all the negativity. Hynes certainly made these songs with this aim in mind, publishing an Instagram post upon album’s release that said, “This album is for everyone told they’re not black enough, too black, too queer, not queer the right way, the underappreciated. It’s a clapback.”

The opening moments of the album set this tone immediately, providing the framework for what’s to come. “By Ourselves” begins somewhat theatrically in its approach, almost like the overture to the themes and sound of the album in the 16 songs that follow. A warped piano recording – the grainy quality to the audio’s texture reflective of the less-than-pristine conditions those in Hynes’s songs face – leads into a group vocal reminiscent of Greek chorus, before the song gives the spotlight to poet Ashlee Haze reciting her piece “For Colored Girls” over a fiery saxophone solo, ending with the foundation-laying words about the album’s aims for representation:

I will tell you that, right now There are a million black girls just waiting To see someone who looks like them

The album then immediately propels itself into its other main mode: downright groovy R&B tunes. “Augustine” walks a delicate balancing act with Hynes providing three different vocal modes – a whispered low-register that details the parallels between his life and his parents, a falsetto reflection on the murders of black youth like Trayvon Martin, and the closest he comes to belting it out on the album during the chorus – all while a punchy drum machine keeps the song to a steady beat. This track, too, is an overture of sorts, compiling the themes of connectivity, race, and sexuality – the chorus providing a queer reinterpretation of the titular African saint as Hynes’s means of grappling with the hypocrisy of Christian homophobia – that are at the heart of the album. It all culminates in a passionate address to Nontetha Nkwenkwe, a major South African figure known for being imprisoned (and eventually killed) trying to bring peace and unity to her divided nation.

From here, the album moves into something of a more free-flowing state, with tracks like “Chance” and “With Him” veering from typical song formats in pseudo-interludes meant to connect to the next substantial centerpiece of a song. These moments also introduce hooks and melodies that seem incomplete on a first appearance, only to be expanded upon in later tracks, making the record sound more like a film soundtrack to city life and all the recurring leitmotifs that come with it.

In fact, much of what would be dead space in other albums feels bustling and alive here instead. The gaps between songs are occasionally filled in with ambient noise from city streets – the shuffling of feet, protest chants from activists, interview clips from the likes of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Vince Staples encapsulating the lyrics that preceded them. Hynes implemented this specific production choice to allow listeners to hear the album how he hears it: as “music… to listen to on headphones to soundtrack… walking around.”Hynes even referred to the album as “like my version of Paul’s Boutique... kinda like a long mixtape.” Each of these interludes and soundbites, then, is vital to the album’s overall flow, transitioning from one mood to the next to simulate what Hynes experiences emotionally just walking around New York City.

But whenever the album reaches a centerpiece song, they always feel cathartic, their explosions of passion earned by the buildup of themes and reflections Hynes has been accumulating in previous tracks. “Best to You” is probably the clearest example of this, the liveliest song on the album with its multiple overlapping percussion tracks and Empress Of’s evocative vocals. Yet, this all comes even as its lyrics center around someone desperately pleading to be loved by another who clearly doesn’t love them back. “E.V.P.” falls into this category as well with Debbie Harry of Blondie joining Hynes on vocals among a memorably distorted synth line and a bombastic chorus. Later in the album, Carly Rae Jepsen fills a similar role on “Better Than Me,” a personal favorite track of mine that adds a winding keyboard melody and a pulsating percussion track into the fray. Each of these tracks brings the personal angle that Hynes mentioned in his press release, dealing with everything from finding self-worth to relationship troubles.

But, for me, the strongest moments of the album come when Hynes intertwines the personal with the bigger concepts. “Better Than Me” resounds exceedingly well in this field, implying that the song’s romantic prospect rejects Hynes because his blackness and/or queerness makes him inadequate by comparison. “But You” and “Hands Up” are perhaps the most powerful songs on the album in this regard, both of them direct addresses to the listener as forms of personal reassurance in the face of larger social pressures. The former fuses a commandingly patient bass line with stirring piano in the chorus, building to a simple statement about one’s personal value, but earns such a moment with the lines that come directly before it:

If you don’t know what that means Don’t tell me that it’s true Teach yourself about your brother ‘Cause there’s no one else but you

This track in particular evokes one of Hynes’s interviews about his intent in making the album, in which he said, “I think of this record as [being] fully aware of, ‘Yeah, my life is in danger on a daily basis,’ but using that as strength to rise up and stand tall and be proud of who you are and accept who you are.” On “Hands Up,” Hynes takes a similar approach through a devastating chorus where he fears about a friend’s safety in the wake of the country’s many racist murders, tying a variation on the titular protest chant into the refrain. Likewise, “Desiree” tells a narrative about Hynes’s transgender friend that he calls “an ode to her strength,” especially uplifting with the widespread hate the transgender community faces, accompanied with audio from the drag ball documentary Paris is Burning and a skittering drum beat.

But all of this would fall flat if the album didn’t deliver emotionally and back up its message with palatable sincerity, which Freetown Sound deftly manages to pull off. “Hands Up” is especially poignant in the context of the overwhelming amount of news about black murders, Hynes’s falsetto on the chorus aching with the pain of how close these losses hit. Towards the end of the album, “Juicy 1-4” wrings its emotion through one of the record’s most memorable bass lines and Hynes building up to a musing on how crucial sources of comfort are, but how difficult they can be to find when society views you as othered. “Hadron Collider” is an exceptional track in this regard too, with the song’s comparatively slower tempo spotlighting Nelly Furtado’s vocals. The bridge on this track offers a powerfully melancholic hypothetical that sums up one of the album’s core sentiments: “Oh, to be brave” when so much of the world is pitted against you.

When it comes to albums that I find vital and want to revisit most each year, I consider a few things. I consider how much the album reflects the world and its major enduring struggles. I consider how effectively an album makes its statements as a unified collection of music. And, perhaps most importantly, I consider how much the album resonates with me and my personal struggles. As a queer person trying to navigate one of the most devastating years of my life and wondering, fearfully, how my friends and I will endure in the face of the imminent danger we know is coming our way, I found myself returning to this album more and more frequently as the year went on. And each time, Freetown Sound proved to be uniquely therapeutic for me, providing the same comfort and reconciliation that I found in talking with friends about the issues that envelop the album, grateful just to know that I had people on my side, ready to stick by me. Even though Freetown Sound doesn’t provide any concrete answers to the issues it covers (and, if 2016 is any indication, any potential answers are easier said than done), Dev’s album helps in at least one way: opening up a dialogue. As he noted in an interview with Pitchfork earlier in the year, “Well, there really isn’t a takeaway, especially on this album. You’re just kind of listening to me thinking for 58 minutes. There’s no real solution or answer.” Reading back those words, listening to the album once more, hearing the soft, slightly warped guitar of “Better Numb” trickle through my headphones as Dev cries out the refrain, a reprisal of the one on “E.V.P.,” the one that never fails to incite chills or start tears welling, I feel like I am finding that comfort, that support, in the music.

Favorite Lyrics

Choosing what you live for It's never what you make your life How could you know If you're squandering your passion for another?

“E.V.P.”

It's real as gold Chains and all All the things that make us bold Make us bold Black is gold Rightly so

”Juicy 1-4”

Oh, they took and skinned my name Try to raise the feeling I saw right through, tried to love them They threw it in your face Tell you what you're feeling How could they know?

“By Ourselves”

Looking at the girl with the thick, blonde braids And you're tryin' to make out what her t-shirt says No one really ever cares what 'thug life' means They wanna be surrounded but they hate to breathe The air is thick as I plan my escape

“Chance”

The door was open I could've stepped inside Oh to be brave, want to be brave To be brave In this battle of the ages

“Hadron Collider”

Talking Points

What do you see as the primary overarching themes of the album? What resonated with you?

How do you think this album compares to similar continuously flowing and/or socially conscious 2016 releases like A Seat at the Table and Blonde?

What are your thoughts on the various soundbites and interviews spliced into the album? Thoughts on the guest features?

Dev Hynes’s voice: fitting for the type of music he’s making or undercooked? If you find his voice lacking, what kind of vocal style would work for you on an album that sounds like this?

I know Dev only toured the album at a few festivals and cities, but did you get the chance to see him perform the album live? What did you think? Did it improve or weaken your thoughts of the album?

#blood orange #freetown sound #dev hynes #devonte hynes #music

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lauramalchowblog · 5 years

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Dear Mark: Electrolytes and Keto Carbs

For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering questions from the comment sections of the recent posts on daily keto carb limits, within-meal keto carb limits, and electrolytes. I’m addressing questions about alcohol, uniform carb allowances versus personalized, potassium supplementation, salt appetite, salt water, electrolytes after the transition, whether fruits fit in, and why I don’t count above-ground non-starchy vegetables.

Without further ado, let’s go:

How does alcohol count towards the 50g of carbs per day? Would that be measured proportionate to the caloric values (ratio 7 (a) : 4 (c) ) or is it easier to simply ignore alcohol along with the fiber … ?

Alcohol doesn’t “count” as a carb, but I wouldn’t ignore it.

The body stops burning other macronutrients in the presence of alcohol until the alcohol is metabolized. When you consume alcohol, the body suppresses oxidation of fat, carbohydrates, and protein. The alcohol itself can’t really be stored as fat, but its inhibition of traditional fuel oxidation means you’re more likely to store rather than burn dietary fat.

If you’re keeping carbs low to improve body composition, you should definitely take alcohol calories into account.

Mark, Why is 50g of carbs set as the upper limit for everyone? Wouldn’t it make more sense to set the limit using macro percentage?

My BMR is roughly 1300 kcal, so 50g of carbs corresponds to a macro ratio of 15% (a bit above the suggested 5-10%). Is it more important to follow the 50g upper limit or the macro percentage?

Ease of use. I want to make this as effortless as possible for as many people as possible.

And again, it’s total carbs, not net, and you’re eating whole foods, so a good number of those 50 grams will be fiber and thus indigestible (by you).

It all seems to balance out in the end and end up “lower carb” than one might assume by looking at “50 grams of carbs”—for most people.

If people try this and it doesn’t work, then they can come with follow-up questions and get the detailed guidance they need. They can get more specific and take the (admittedly small amount of) time to calculate their macros.

How about low-sodium salt for extra potassium?

Not a big fan. Potassium citrate powder seems to work a lot better than potassium chloride (low-sodium salt) in several areas:

Bone density.

Kidney stone formation.

It’s quite tasteless, whereas potassium chloride’s taste is quite distinct.

Just make sure you clear potassium supplementation with your doctor, especially if you have or suspect you have kidney health problems; the kidneys excrete excess potassium, and a bad kidney can make potassium supplementation dangerous.

I’ve struggled with postural hypotension since childhood, but it used to be caused mainly by excessive heat. Recently I made the connection that if I don’t drink caffeine, it goes away completely. Soon as I drink it I’m lightheaded again, *especially* if I’m also pregnant. I could probably benefit from increasing my salt intake dramatically. I find that if I add 1/4tsp sea salt to a cup of water it tastes amazing, so that probably indicates I need more salt. I heard an interview where someone recommended adding salt to water especially if you drink coffee, and they said it tastes gross like you’re drinking sweat, but I really think it tastes delicious.

This is a really important point. Your craving for salt appears to track closely with salt requirements.

The more sodium you need (and the more you’ve excreted), the better salt will taste if you’re eating a natural, whole foods diet without the skewing effect of processed food products. That’s probably why salt in your water “tastes amazing.” This jibes with my personal recommendation for salt:

“Salt food to taste. Don’t avoid added salt if your taste buds and intuition suggest you could and should have some extra.”

I hesitate to offer iron-clad numbers for potassium and magnesium (even though I gave some ranges in the last post). “Sisson says take 200 mg of this and 300 mg of that.” We don’t want that. We don’t know everyone’s needs. We don’t have a “potassium appetite” or a “magnesium appetite,” but potassium tracks largely with sodium and most people aren’t getting enough magnesium so I feel comfortable saying “eat more of them” and having people follow their salt appetite.

Still, I’ll also mention that some people are clinically salt-sensitive, and the effects can be significant, especially in terms of blood pressure. It’s always best to let you doctor know. It’s a definite must if you’re salt sensitive.

Does anyone make a “sole” by diluting pink Himalayan salt, Red Hawaiian Alaea, etc. into water?

Any success with that method?

I’ll sometimes put a few healthy pinches of Hawaiian red salt into a glass of water before bed. When I wake up, it’s totally dissolved and I throw it back. Tastes good for sure.

What I do often is have a couple of mugs of black coffee in the morning with the last one having butter and coconut oil in it. Then walk 18 holes while drinking a couple of bottles of spring water each with a pinch of Himalayan sea salt. Seems to work for me

Thoughts?

I like it. If it seems to work, it’s working.

Thank you so much for this articles, Mark. You are the first keto expert I have read who says to add electrolytes “for the transition”! I am no longer in the transition period…but I still take all my electrolytes daily. Is a person who is fat-adapted supposed to wean themselves from supplemental electrolytes?? I’ve been keto for over 18 months, and I really do not think I have heard that particular advice before. Could you clarify? Thank you again!

While transition is the most important and full fat-adaptation means you won’t be shedding water/glycogen as often and all the electrolytes with it, you’re not out of the woods entirely because you’ll still be enjoying low insulin levels. And what doesn’t change post-transition is the inhibitory effects of low insulin on sodium retention. If you’re living a low-insulin lifestyle, you won’t retain as much sodium—you’ll expel more—and you should probably maintain higher levels in your diet long-term. Keep your doctor in the loop.

Since potassium loss is downstream of sodium loss (from the kidneys trying to balance out your potassium:sodium ratios), you’ll also need to keep potassium intake up.

And pretty much everyone could use more magnesium, so taking some extra there, too, is likely a good idea.

Question, so should the carbs be coming from below-ground vegetables like beets and onions and carrots, or if it falls under said carb amount per meal, does it matter if it comes from higher sugar fruits or from potatoes? My meals tend to be usually proteins and above ground vegetables, so I wouldn’t be counting any of those. For example I really like pink lady apples. The ones I buy state 16g carbs per apple. Having one of those with a meal would be fine? How about without a meal, would that be more likely to knock someone out of ketosis?

Below ground vegetables and potatoes and fruits all work and count. An apple counts, is completely fine to eat if it fits your personal carb allowance (and even if it doesn’t—it’s your choice!). If you have an apple by itself, there won’t be any fat or protein to slow down the assimilation of glucose, so you’ll get a “faster hit” that could “knock you out” of ketosis. But ultimately it’s about that meal in the context of your daily carb intake, your exercise levels, whether you’ve just trained or gone for a long walk, your fat-adaptation progress, and your goals.

I’m unclear as to why Mark says “don’t count above ground, non-starchy vegetables”. I mean, they have net carbs after you subtract the fiber. Surely a carb is a carb? I can easily eat 15 grams of carb per day in kale and broccoli alone; sometimes in a single meal..

It generally takes more glucose to digest the glucose in leafy greens, broccoli, and other non-starchy vegetables than they actually contain. The result is a net loss or a wash in terms of useable glucose.

You won’t ever find an athlete carbing up with kale before a race.

That’s it for today, folks. If you have any further questions or comments, let me know down below!

(function($) { $("#dfdzgwI").load("https://www.marksdailyapple.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=dfads_ajax_load_ads&groups=674&limit=1&orderby=random&order=ASC&container_id=&container_html=none&container_class=&ad_html=div&ad_class=&callback_function=&return_javascript=0&_block_id=dfdzgwI" ); })( jQuery );

window.onload=function(){ga('send', { hitType: 'event', eventCategory: 'Ad Impression', eventAction: '66572' });}

References:

Granchi D, Caudarella R, Ripamonti C, et al. Potassium Citrate Supplementation Decreases the Biochemical Markers of Bone Loss in a Group of Osteopenic Women: The Results of a Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Pilot Study. Nutrients. 2018;10(9)

Nicar MJ, Peterson R, Pak CY. Use of potassium citrate as potassium supplement during thiazide therapy of calcium nephrolithiasis. J Urol. 1984;131(3):430-3.

The post Dear Mark: Electrolytes and Keto Carbs appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Dear Mark: Electrolytes and Keto Carbs published first on https://venabeahan.tumblr.com

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jesseneufeld · 5 years

Text

Dear Mark: Electrolytes and Keto Carbs

Without further ado, let’s go:

Alcohol doesn’t “count” as a carb, but I wouldn’t ignore it.

If you’re keeping carbs low to improve body composition, you should definitely take alcohol calories into account.

Mark, Why is 50g of carbs set as the upper limit for everyone? Wouldn’t it make more sense to set the limit using macro percentage?

My BMR is roughly 1300 kcal, so 50g of carbs corresponds to a macro ratio of 15% (a bit above the suggested 5-10%). Is it more important to follow the 50g upper limit or the macro percentage?

Ease of use. I want to make this as effortless as possible for as many people as possible.

And again, it’s total carbs, not net, and you’re eating whole foods, so a good number of those 50 grams will be fiber and thus indigestible (by you).

It all seems to balance out in the end and end up “lower carb” than one might assume by looking at “50 grams of carbs”—for most people.

How about low-sodium salt for extra potassium?

Not a big fan. Potassium citrate powder seems to work a lot better than potassium chloride (low-sodium salt) in several areas:

Bone density.

Kidney stone formation.

It’s quite tasteless, whereas potassium chloride’s taste is quite distinct.

This is a really important point. Your craving for salt appears to track closely with salt requirements.

“Salt food to taste. Don’t avoid added salt if your taste buds and intuition suggest you could and should have some extra.”

Does anyone make a “sole” by diluting pink Himalayan salt, Red Hawaiian Alaea, etc. into water?

Any success with that method?

I’ll sometimes put a few healthy pinches of Hawaiian red salt into a glass of water before bed. When I wake up, it’s totally dissolved and I throw it back. Tastes good for sure.

Thoughts?

I like it. If it seems to work, it’s working.

Since potassium loss is downstream of sodium loss (from the kidneys trying to balance out your potassium:sodium ratios), you’ll also need to keep potassium intake up.

And pretty much everyone could use more magnesium, so taking some extra there, too, is likely a good idea.

You won’t ever find an athlete carbing up with kale before a race.

That’s it for today, folks. If you have any further questions or comments, let me know down below!

(function($) { $("#dfON269").load("https://www.marksdailyapple.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=dfads_ajax_load_ads&groups=674&limit=1&orderby=random&order=ASC&container_id=&container_html=none&container_class=&ad_html=div&ad_class=&callback_function=&return_javascript=0&_block_id=dfON269" ); })( jQuery );

window.onload=function(){ga('send', { hitType: 'event', eventCategory: 'Ad Impression', eventAction: '66572' });}

References:

Nicar MJ, Peterson R, Pak CY. Use of potassium citrate as potassium supplement during thiazide therapy of calcium nephrolithiasis. J Urol. 1984;131(3):430-3.

The post Dear Mark: Electrolytes and Keto Carbs appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Dear Mark: Electrolytes and Keto Carbs published first on https://drugaddictionsrehab.tumblr.com/

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smoothshift · 5 years

Text

My Journey to a GT3 via /r/cars

My Journey to a GT3

I wrote the following in response to a comment about how to choose the right sports car. It ended up turning into a love story of how I ended up in a GT3.

If you're interested in a long read about my journey, please enjoy. :)

For my part... back in 2010 or 2011 or so I decided that I really wanted a roadster. I've always loved driving and spent my 20's in the sport compact modified car scene. By then though my car (Sunfire GT) had been sitting in my garage collecting dust for nearly 4 years and I'd replaced it with something that out performed it in every way (Mazdaspeed3) so my long term plan of some day taking it back out and continuing to work on it wasn't seeming all that worthwhile anymore.

So I made up my mind to get a roadster and started squirreling away any money I could. I had a list of cars to consider, starting with a used Miata and going all the way up to a Corvette. It would end up coming down to how much money I saved and that would all depend whatever circumstances life might throw my way in the following few years.

I'll never forget the moment in October, 2011, as I was sitting at work and probably checking Jalopnik or some other car blog, when the first spy shots came out of the new 981 Porsche Boxster.

I fell in love. I blogged about it. http://www.notweasel.com/index.php?entry=entry111006-152510

Little did I realize at the time that it would be the beginning of the journey that lead me to where I am today, hustling a GT3 around race tracks.

Here's what I said at the time: "I have hereby decided that if I'm made ridiculously wealthy through a lottery win this weekend, I will certainly buy this car as my daily runabout."

As the next few years went by and I kept saving, I started knocking cars off the list. It definitely wasn't going to be a $10k used Miata. I was past the S2000 and the 350Z. I was getting up into Z4, Corvette, and Boxster territory. The Jaguar F-Type was announced, and was immediately in contention. I sat in a Z4 at an autoshow and hated just about everything about it, so that fell off the list.

I dropped the idea of the Jag when there was no manual available, so it ultimately came down to the Corvette or the Boxster. I was still in love with the look of the Boxster but my wife liked the new C7 and it was too great a package to just ignore.

The experience with the Z4 left me afraid that the same might happen with the Boxster. I convinced one of the reps at an autoshow to let me sit in one and couldn't be more relieved that everything about it just felt right. It wasn't awkard like the BMW was. There were no strange controls in places I couldn't reach them. It just all worked.

It was down to the final two. I started calling up GM dealers and, I kid you not, NOBODY would offer the least bit of help in letting me test drive a Corvette. The told me I could go ahead and order one and that, when it came in, if I didn't like it I didn't have to take it. The whole scenario was ridiculous and that's how the Corvette was off the list and the Porsche was the last man standing.

FWIW, I never did get to drive a C7 until last summer, when my friend brought his up from Baltimore. If I'm honest, had they let me drive it back then, I may well have bought one. It's an absolute blast to drive!!

But they didn't, so I didn't. I went to a Porsche dealer and they were more than happy to let me take a Boxster for a test drive, as well as a Cayman S to feel the difference in power between the two.

It blew my mind. The SA drove it first and he went around a highway onramp faster than I'd ever been in anything before. I couldn't believe it. When I took over the driving, I didn't drive it nearly as hard as he did and was still grinning ear to ear when we got finished. And then I found out the car was running on winter tires!!

It was somewhere around this time that Porsche announced the GTS versions of the 981 and that was that. I didn't actually end up buying from that dealer as trying to work out pricing with them turned into an endlessly frustrating process, but that was the moment I knew exactly what I wanted.

I think that was in April or May of 2014.

I took delivery of my Boxster GTS in December of that year.

As part of the deal, almost without even mentioning it, my SA (who is awesome to deal with) signed up up for Porsche Club of America (PCA). That small detail would end up changing my life and marked both the beginning and the end of my Boxster ownership.

I looked into what the club offered and thought a track day was obviously the right thing to do with a Porsche. I'd done plenty of drag racing and a bit of autocross in my 20's so getting onto a proper race track sounded like a ton of fun to me. And it would be.

In April of 2015 I did their Introductory Driving School and later that year I'd do my first full blown track day.

Here's video from that day. I'd never had so much fun in my entire life!!

https://youtu.be/D05PWxlPgBw

I wrote about it here and then continued to document my track days for the next few years:

https://www.planet-9.com/981-cayman-and-boxster-competition/110545-i-did-my-first-de-amazing.html

Now, outside of track days, I used that car for everything I could other than daily commuting. I went on cruises. I did a 5 day, 3000 km rally, I took it for a track weekend at Watkins Glen. I took it on road trips and cottage weekends. I loved everything about it.

If you want to know what it's like to drive a Boxster GTS, this video is EXACTLY spot-on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1LhUzL3qdU

But there was a slight issue.

I found more and more of my time was either doing track days or looking forward to track days. The Boxster was a phenomenal car and I loved evening drives with the top down but a convertible isn't really ideal for a track day and when you're on track with a pile of 911's and you want nothing more than to chase them and keep up and see if you can drive as well as they can, having a Boxster can end up being a little frustrating.

And then rumours started flying that the next GT3 would go back to having a manual transmission and would still have a naturally aspirated engine and might possibly be the last one ever to have both those things. We know now that the next one probably will as well, but that the time it was a very real chance that it would be the end of an era and if you didn't get one, you might never get one.

Up until then, I'd been pretty responsible about all this. Saving up and not over-extending myself and making sure all my other priorities like electricity bills and retirement saving were covered before I blew a big wad of cash on my car.

This was different though. If I didn't dive in and make a go of this, the opportunity might be lost forever.

I won't get into all the details of how I begged and pleaded and groveled to even be allowed to buy the car at all, as that's a whole story unto itself, but you can see the end result above.

I took delivery of the GT3 in April of last year and had it on a race track at the beginning of May.

So I went from really wanting a roadster to enjoy long drives on back roads with the top down to being a full-blown track rat with a giant wing on my car. :)

Things change. Enjoy the journey!!

#reddit #autonews #auto #cars

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euro3plast-fr · 7 years

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9 Essential Platforms for CMOs to Monitor Digital Marketing

Marketing dashboards that can help you report on and analyze your marketing efforts

Like it or not, today's CMOs are married to metrics. They have to be.

From closely tracking traffic to understanding which channels may be leaking potential leads, failure to make data-driven decisions continues to be the bane of many of today's marketers. As a result, global spending on data-based marketing continues to rise and is similarly expected to spike in 2017.

As we delve deeper into an era of marketing dominating by metrics and big data, modern CMOs can't afford not to have some serious tools on deck to summarise the impact of their digital marketing. This rings especially true to understanding any combination of the following:

Which marketing channels are worth scaling and are likewise providing a positive ROI

Where leads are dropping off within your marketing funnels

Which messages and campaigns are resonating with leads versus those which are falling flat

Fortunately, CMOs have plenty of options to ensure that their ROI is sound for any given marketing campaign. While the wealth of platforms out there can certainly be overwhelming, the following list gives a comprehensive set of services including our own RACE marketing dashboard. for any marketer looking to keep a closer eye on their numbers, regardless of niche or industry.

1. Tableau

Tableau are the market leaders in providing analytics dashboards for mid-large businesses, and they thoroughly deserve their position as market leaders. Tableau can handle data inputted from excel, Google Analytics, Salesforce, SQL server, SAP, R, AWS and more, making it a flexible and versatile platform. With drag and drop functionality it's extremely to set up useful interactive dashboards to help you review marketing KPIs.

2. Cyfe – An all-in-one dashboard to conquer the many moving pieces of your marketing activity.

Wrangling a staggering amount of data from social to sales, Cyfe offers a comprehensive dashboard for those looking to get serious about their marketing metrics.

With built-in widget integration with industry giants in ecommerce, email, SEO, funnel analytics, advertising, conversion optimization, social media and CRM (Shopify, Moz, Facebook, MailChimp and Salesforce, to name a few), just about any aspect of your quantifiable business is fair game. Beyond tracking current performance in terms of sales and traffic, by allowing you to monitor activity across platforms, Cyfe also uncovers new opportunities to scale and keeps tabs on which new opportunities are won and lost, respectively.

Representing a one-stop solution offering up data in real-time, Cyfe is a must-have for CMOs looking to hold themselves accountable for every piece of their marketing arsenal.

3. Inspeclet – Make more informed marketing decisions by breaking down user behavior.

Despite the need for today's marketers to be knee deep in analytics, it's impossible to ignore the human element of any given campaign.

Rather than becoming frustrated by the seemingly unpredictable behavior of our leads, Inspeclet offers marketers an opportunity to understand what users want versus playing a guessing game.

Through recording real-time videos of visitor sessions, marketers can track their every literal movement to figure out the in's and out's of user-experience on-site. This provides opportunities to fine-tune on-site elements and marketing messages accordingly.

Paying close attention to UX can result in huge returns in terms of click-throughs, conversions and engagement. Remember that bounced traffic and poor CTR represent more than metrics: they represent money left on the table.

4. w3Counter – Emphasizing the importance of real-time data from real-time visitors.

Just as marketers are expected to capture leads in real-time, monitoring actual events on-site as they happen can help uncover which of your pages are getting the most love.

Analyzing both where traffic is landing and spending the bulk of their time, coupled with the sources where they're coming from in the first place, w3Counter paints a picture at a glance of which pages are pulling in the most leads.

The tool keeps tabs on your most popular links and provides a regular daily email of stats including crucial metrics such as total visits and return visitors.

By further breaking down direct traffic versus search engines and referring sites, for example, marketers may acknowledge which channels should be further explored and which are likewise lacking.

5. Mixpanel – The perfect platform for monitoring mobile marketing.

The rapid rise of mobile users represents a telling tale for modern marketers: you simply can't afford to ignore traffic on-the-go.

Mixpanel offers a robust solution for those looking to monitor their mobile campaigns. More specifically, the platform offers keen insight on where users may be dropping out of the funnel of your native app or mobile campaign.

By analyzing leads from Point A to Point B, including time spent in each step of your sign-up process, sign-up success rate and which channels are the most popular for bringing in leads, marketers can plug up the holes in their mobile strategies accordingly.

6. Hotjar – How heatmaps help marketers make crucial decisions.

While understanding where your users click is obviously important, the level of detail offered by heatmaps provides an extra layer of information for marketers looking to make the most of their traffic.

From eliminating distracting page widgets to making your calls-to-action pop, heatmaps uncover the elements of a powerful landing page. Similarly, heatmaps are prime tools for A/B testing when it comes to refining the design of any page on-site.

Rather than having your traffic totally miss your CTAs, heatmaps offer an avenue for ensuring that your leads take the actions that you want them to take.

7. Brand24 – Keeping an eye on buzz for socially-driven brands.

Measuring the ROI of social media oftentimes feels like a shot in the dark; likewise, the positive returns from social mentions often go beyond dollars and cents.

For those laser-focused on press and PR, Brand24 offers a straightforward solution for monitoring the voices of your audience.

Beyond social mentions, breaking down the demographics and behavior of your audience via social helps marketers craft the messages that people want to hear. In other words, you know where your leads hang out, what's on their minds and how to speak their language accordingly.

8. GetResponse – Why automated marketing deserves a keen attention to detail.

Marketing automation has the potential to transform any given brand by putting the process of capturing leads and converting customers on autopilot. That being said, optimizing your automation strategy is crucial for brands looking to actually see positive returns.

Solutions such as GetResponse have emerged to keep a close eye on both email and e-commerce metrics to ensure that leads are traveling smoothly through your funnel.

GetResponse works to not only understand the behavior of users who've gone through your funnel from A to Z, but also engages those who haven't completed the purchasing process. The ability to reduce cart abandonment not only means more sales, but also uncovers potential weak points in your marketing campaigns.

98. Smart Insights RACE – A practical reporting dashboard that harnesses the power of Google.

Modern marketers want peace of mind as they ensure that their week-to-week activities are paying off for the long-term. Smart Insights' RACE dashboard focuses on KPIs with clear metrics that measure the effectiveness of your marketing over time, whether that means week-to-week, month-to-month or year-to-year. This example dashboard funnel covers engagement across the whole funnel and there is a more detailed channel view showing month-on-month and year-on-year changes which are essential views for a CMO which are difficult to create using custom dashboards in GA.

Through integration with Google Analytics, RACE provides actionable insight for any given marketing funnel and represents an entry level solution for any marketer. Focusing on four key metrics (Reach, Act Convert and Engage), insight gleaned from the dashboard is easy to digest and can help users understand at a glance what's working and what's not.

10. Google Analytics – The classic standard for analytics still holds its own for modern marketers.

Last but not least, Google Analytics still has its place for marketers today when it comes to making marketing decisions. After all, Google Analytics integrates with many of the aforementioned platforms as the catalyst that makes them tick.

Although Google's platform may seem bare bones versus some modern platforms, its free accessibility and analysis of overlooked yet crucial metrics such as exit pages and bounce rate are incredibly relevant to today's CMOs tracking conversions.

Even if you know Google Analytics like the back of your hand, bear in mind that Google continues to update the platform on a regular basis. For example, the recent introduction of metrics such as “quality score” and “session quality” provide marketers with additional insight in regard to their site's potential to convert leads.

The Bottom Line

Again, the explosion of data-driven marketing is sending a crystal clear message to CMOs: measure everything and measure with extraordinary care. With so many platforms out there to wrangle the many moving pieces of any given marketing strategy, the power of data is in the grasp of just about any CMO willing to take the plunge and understand their leads by the numbers.

from Blog – Smart Insights http://www.smartinsights.com/managing-digital-marketing/essential-platforms-cmos-monitor-marketing/

#Blog – Smart Insights

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fans-of-fiction · 6 years

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Come Join the Clown, Eds (Part 1) - Eddie Kaspbrak (IT 2017)

Prompts/Plot: 7 - “Oh, fuck. What’s that?” “It’s a shoe.”

Warnings: Potential trigger - there’s a portion where Y/N is scared in a forest at night, please do not read if you do not feel comfortable doing so. Swearing, Severe Injury/Near Death, emotional roller coaster so watch out for that idk

Words: 6778

August 1989 - Eddie’s POV

The American Elms of the Barrens were bending and swaying violently in the warm August wind.

“Come on, Eddie Spaghetti,” Richie mocked from his place on the bank of the Kenduskeag. “You’re just working yourself up.”

I scoffed at him, disappointed. “I’m not working anything up, Richie. I just-”

I scoffed again, pulling away from Bev. “But I-”

Richie doubled over and cackled hard. “That one’s my favourite!” He roared “Can we do that one again?”

June 1989 - Eddie’s POV

Bill cocked his head back towards me. “It’s just water, Eds. It can’t be that bad.”

She wiped her hands on her jeans and sat down beside me. “How’s the breathing?” She checked.

I realized suddenly that something was missing. I glanced at her neck, hoping to find a necklace that would give me the answer, but there was nothing. I had to use my Shit LungsTM.

“What’s your name?”

We laughed with each other, hard.

“It wasn’t that bad.” I managed in between cackles.

“‘Wasn’t that bad’ my ass!” She howled back. “I was scared for you!” Tears brimmed her eyes as she bent over and laughed, clutching her stomach.

He drew in a long, painful breath and spoke in airy breaks. “I gu-“ Wheeze. “got your-“ Wheeze. “muh-“ Wheeze. “hedication.”

She turned towards Bill and spoke with relief. “Now that Wheezy over here has his meds,” She turned to me, grinning. “Wanna grab some ice cream?”

I became aware of the sweat on my back. I pinched my t-shirt, pulling it off my skin, and stood up. For a moment, the world went black as the blood in my head rushed to my feet. I almost fell over.

The girl was at my side instantly. One of her hands held mine, the other laid across the sticky t-shirt on my back. “You alright?” She asked.

I told myself to nod my head. The girl chuckled and let go of my hand, pulling herself away. I figured it was the wind, but a lack of heat—of heat and comfort—grew as she pulled away.

I dove my hand into my back pocket and pulled out three dollars. “If we get ice cream,” I managed. “At least let me pay for yours.”

She chuckled and nodded simultaneously. “I’d be honoured.”

August 1989 - Eddie’s POV

“Y/N,” I began “will see right through this bullshit plan.”

“Hey!” She yelled down. “It’s been two days. I almost forgot what you dorks looked like!”

We all knew what they were going to say, even before Y/N asked where they were going. “Ben found an amazing book on the indigenous birds of central Maine.” Stan cooed.

“We need to pick it up before anyone else does,” Ben concluded before they turned and continued up the hill.

Mike nodded harshly. “You’re right.” He turned to Y/N and managed a reassuring smile. “Those cobs won’t husk themselves.”

Once their figures had been shrouded by the brush above, Y/N turned around to face Bill and I. “So,” She chirped optimistically. “Guess it’s just the three of us.”

Bill glanced at me, but fix his seemingly regretful eyes on Y/N. “Just the tuh-two of y-yuh-you, actually.” Bill held up his black-banded watch. “Spuh-heech therapy in an hour.”

It felt as if my brain had been disconnected from my body, rendering all functions useless. “Costello’s.” I blurted.

August 1989 - Y/N’s POV

You had been so focused on Eddie that the charcoal clouds hadn’t caught your attention. It wasn’t until he began doing his anxious, scanning-his-surroundings-for-danger-because-everything-is-lethal routine that you even thought to take in the world around you.

Eddie—despite the dirt and threat of tetanus—loved the Barrens much more than you did. The sense of freedom that washes over him in this brush-way is nearly tangible. It hadn’t always been that way, though. You could still remember a time where the Barrens felt like your second home; a place of comfort, of tranquility. The familiarity of the brush used to warm you from the inside out, but recently it had began to steal warmth, to remove happiness, to make you feel cold. So fucking cold. It had been months, but you still couldn’t shake the memories. You wouldn’t walk home with just one shoe, would you, Y/N?

You shook your head and looked up, hoping to find shelter in Eddie’s presence, but it had began to rain. As Eddie’s mother would say, ‘Rain gives you chills, chills lead to colds, colds to the flu and the flu to death. Do you want to die of the flu, Edward?’ You’ve always detested her obsessive thoughts and their effect on Eddie, who was scared. With no shelter in Eddie, you felt worried as well. The first drops of rain had already darkened the shoulders of his red shirt. You concluded quickly that it was time to leave.

“Eddie,” You began. “I think it’s-”

“Yeah,” He chuckled, though it was perfunctory. Half-hearted. “We should probably go.”

You smiled, trying to assure him. You began to turn around, but there, over Eddie’s shoulder, floating in the Kenduskeag, was your shoe. You froze. Come on, Y/N. Take your shoe. Your mouth was dry as dust. Take it.

“Y/N?” Eddie’s voice was distant. “Y/N you look pale. Are you ok?” You wouldn’t walk home with just one shoe, would you, Y/N? “Are you ok, Y/N?”

For two months you had been suppressing the memories. For two months you had kept the floodgates closed as best you could. No more, screamed your sneaker. With a deafening roll of crumbling concrete, the floodgate cracked wide open and spewed blackness over your conscious. The memories came crashing down on you with a force so heavy—so deep—you found it impossible to breathe.

It’s the reason you and Eddie had met. It’s the reason you had been there to save him. It’s why you were there in the Barrens, caked in mud and coated in fear.

You had come back to look for your shoe. That very fucking shoe.

May 1989 - Y/N’s POV

You had been to the Barrens a dozen times before. Swinging your legs over the Kansas Street guardrail, pushing your way through the brush to the bank of the Kenduskeag, kicking off your white sneakers before slipping your feet into the river, it was familiar; almost routine.

The water was lukewarm. It ran over your toes, then ankles then shins as you waded into the river. You stopped when it reached your knees. You liked coming to the Barrens for the typical reasons—the fresh air, the running water, the way the sun rays that cut through the canopy of elms danced in the water—but you also loved it for the sanctuary it provided. The barrens were a safe space. A place of comfort; of tranquility.

You breathed, closing your eyes. While wading in the water you often found yourself losing track of time, so you weren’t surprised to find the sun setting when your eyes fluttered open again. The cloudless blue of the sky had began to fade as the sun fell steadily towards the horizon, darkening the foliage and everything within. You heard your mother’s voice in your head, cautioning, the sun has set and you’re alone-

“Pick up your shoes and come back home.” You finished out loud, making your way back towards the bank. Scanning the shore for your shoes, you spotted one shoe and then stopped, unable to spot the other. You could only find one. You scanned and searched harder as your legs pushed through the water, but there was only one.

You felt a tightness in your chest. If it was the middle of the day and you had time to spare, you wouldn’t be worried about your missing shoe, but the sun had already retreated behind the trees.

You let out a deep, frustrated sigh and began to look around. You moved as quickly as possible, but after thirty-two minutes you were forced to stop. The sun had set, and the moon provided little light. It was pitch black in the barrens. When the sun disappeared, so did your vision, along with any familiarity with your surroundings. The trees, the rocks, ferns in the brush; none of it provided any comfort because none of it felt familiar anymore.

Disappointed and anxious, you began to make your way to the hill, reluctantly accepting that you would have to walk the streets of Derry accompanied by only your left shoe. Without your right, you felt a cool breeze sweep over your foot, but you continued forward. Without warning, a twig snapped somewhere in the brush across the river. You turned around, worried. Your eyes began to adjust to the darkness. They swept behind you, over the bank beyond the river, and even into the sewer opening in its concrete stature, but there was nothing. You noted, however, how the sewer runoff pipe seemed to loom out at you. During the day it was merely concrete and moss, but now that the light had faded, it seemed to call to you, to draw you in.

“Y/N.”

You froze, staring at the pipe across the river. Your mouth was so dry it felt as if you had just eaten a bowl of sawdust. What are you doing? You criticized yourself silently. It’s just the wind Y/N just the-

“Y/N.”

You heard it again. Your pulse rate spiked well into the triple digits. You felt your heart pound against your chest, rattling your ribcage. A cold sweat began to accumulate on your back. The wind, you repeated. Just the wind. Just the w-

“You wouldn’t walk home with just one shoe, would you, Y/N?”

You tried to scream but it hitched in your throat. Not the wind, you thought. Not your imagination. Somehow, the realization dawned on you, and it came with a weight you couldn’t handle. It felt as if you were breathing through syrup. You knew damn well that it wasn’t the wind and you didn’t have the energy, or the will, to fight the notion. This voice that seemed to float on the wind, out of the sewer and across the river, was real—droning, unrelenting, and real.

“It’s here.” It cooed coldly. A blackened pit opened in your gut, weighing you down. A tear fell from your eye. “Your shoe, Y/N. It’s here.” The voice continued. You stared into the pipe, eyes frozen in place, but found nothing. Your imagination tried to form a picture of whatever was beckoning to you from the darkness, though it never seemed to settle on anything. The voice kept changing. It wasn’t old or young, masculine or feminine, angry or melancholic. It was, however, painfully hoarse. It was as if whatever sat in that sewer—clutching your right shoe, no doubt—had been screaming for days on end.

“Come take it.” The shadows beckoned. “Come on Y/N, take your shoe.” The voice appeared to grow louder, only it wasn’t getting louder, it was changing, separating. It grew, spreading into a chorus of frantic, discordant voices, all fighting to lure you like a choir of greedy sirens.

All together they began to chant. “Take it. Take it.” Your heart crashed against your ribcage. You were scared to look down for fear that you would see it jabbing from your chest. Over the thumping that rang in your ears, you caught a sound, a set of sounds, coming from the darkness. Footsteps. Wet, sloppy footsteps. The smell of mildew and rotting flesh wafted out of the sewer like a cloud of rolling fog, choking you. You gagged, but sheer terror kept everything down. The sloshy footsteps grew louder, carrying whatever rot was hiding in that hole of concrete and runoff. “Take it.” Cooed one voice. “Your shoe, Y/N.” Beckoned another. “Take your sho-” “Take it, Y/N, take it.” “Take it!”

A car roared past up above, cutting off the voices and snapping you out of your daze. You made the mistake of looking up, of looking away from the concrete pipe. You turned back. The voices, the footsteps, the enticing chants; gone. In their place, floating on the Kenduskeag, was your shoe. It was white—too white—and the laces were done up in a neat, even bow. Every nerve in your body stood on end, but somewhere, deep in the back of your mind, you were tempted to reach out, to wade into the river and take your shoe.

That was before you looked up at the pipe, because in the darkness—its dirty, faded costume standing out like the moon behind a veil of clouds—was a clown. His eyes seemed to look through your flesh. He licked his lips as if he had smelled something savoury.

“Come on, Y/N.” He called. His voice resembled that of a stranger trying to lure a child away from their parent. “Take your shoe, Y/N.” He pulled the corners of his mouth upwards as if trying to smile. “Take it,” He cooed. “Take it, Y/N and you’ll float too.” You could taste vomit in the back of your throat. You took a step backward. The clown frowned, disappointed. The taste of vomit grew stronger. You could no longer feel your heartbeat. “Don’t leave, Y/N.” It whined. “Not without your shoe! You wouldn’t walk home with just one shoe, would you, Y/N?” It cocked its head to the side and smiled again, much more naturally this time.

Peeking out at you from behind his red, drooly lips were rows and rows of sharp, hungry teeth.

Your last nerve snapped. You screamed, and without a second thought, turned and ran. Twigs and branches and bushes all tore at your arms, your face, and your clothes; dragging you back towards the river. Towards the clown. You screamed again with the little air you could muster and pushed harder, digging both your bare and your covered foot into the dirt. Tears were streaming down your face, clouding your vision and itching your cheeks. Your ears were ringing violently, but you made it to the guardrail.

With a final push, you were up and over, sprawled on Kansas street. You were cut and bloody and bruised but you were out of the barrens, You forced your hands underneath you and kicked yourself up, and without looking back, you ran all the way home.

It took three weeks before you could walk past the barrens without shaking. Another week after that before you managed to go look for your shoe, finding only Bill and Eddie instead. Two months after that you were-

August 1989 - Y/N’s POV

Already knee deep in the Kenduskeag, unable to look away from the shoe. You wouldn’t be able to see the bottom of the river if you tried; only the reflection of the swirling, writhing storm above. You knew that Eddie was calling out to you—trying to beckon you back to the bank, but you couldn’t listen. Every last one of your instincts had been hijacked. Every last nerve in your body screamed, take your shoe. It lured you in like a moth to a flame.

Suddenly, you felt every hair on your arms stand up. The taste of copper rolled through your mouth, and before you could manage to do so much as blink, lightning struck an elm fifteen feet from the river. Your ears popped as every wet leaf in the barrens flashed like a swarm of bike reflectors.

As your eyes adjusted to the shadows under the storm clouds, your ears adjusted to silence. You could hear your heart pounding in your ears, but not much more. You looked around to find something, some sort of sound, to focus on. All semblance of wildlife from the barrens had vanished, the only sound you could tune into was the gentle trickle of the sewer runoff. That, and Edd-

You stopped yourself. A hole opened up in your chest, swallowing your lungs. You turned around once and found nothing. You turned around again, slower, scanning desperately. You realized that you were crying when you opened your mouth to scream and tasted tears. “Eddie?” You yelled. There was no response. “Eddie!” You tried to scream louder than before, but your voice broke, sending you into a fit of choked shouts, pleading Eddie to appear unharmed, but he remained hidden. Not hidden, Y/N, You wailed in your head. Gone.

Eddie was gone.

You kept blinking, desperately trying to force the tears out of your eyes so that you could see. Though you struggled, you continued to search. You threw yourself through the river, sweeping the banks with your feet—maybe Eddie was just swimming in the river. Maybe he couldn’t hear your frantic calls—but you couldn’t find anything. There was no sign of life. No sign of Eddie.

It felt like a lifetime before you stopped. The rain began to come down in violent sheets. The Kenduskeag had taken on too much water for you to continue. The current was already too strong and just kept picking up speed. You had to fight your way to the bank before it swept you away.

You stood in the mud, defeated. The wind ripped leaves off the brush and the rain cut at your face, but you didn’t stop looking for Eddie. The hair on your arms stood up again. Copper rolled through your mouth. A clap. A flash.

The bolt struck another tree down the river. You began to cry again. Harder this time. The feeling of defeat had begun to grow within you, spreading and eating and hijacking your reasoning. You felt defeated because you knew where you would find Eddie. You knew what you had to do.

Slowly, you raised your eyes to the sewer pipe.

You could hear the chorus chanting in your memories, luring you in. The voices had triumphed. You knew that you had to face it all; the sewer, the voices, the rot... and that motherfucking clown.

Part 2 Coming Soon !! This imagine (my longest one yet, even as part one of a two-parter) is actually my 100th post. So. wow.

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jesseneufeld · 5 years

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Dear Mark: Electrolytes and Keto Carbs

Without further ado, let’s go:

Alcohol doesn’t “count” as a carb, but I wouldn’t ignore it.

If you’re keeping carbs low to improve body composition, you should definitely take alcohol calories into account.

Mark, Why is 50g of carbs set as the upper limit for everyone? Wouldn’t it make more sense to set the limit using macro percentage?

My BMR is roughly 1300 kcal, so 50g of carbs corresponds to a macro ratio of 15% (a bit above the suggested 5-10%). Is it more important to follow the 50g upper limit or the macro percentage?

Ease of use. I want to make this as effortless as possible for as many people as possible.

And again, it’s total carbs, not net, and you’re eating whole foods, so a good number of those 50 grams will be fiber and thus indigestible (by you).

It all seems to balance out in the end and end up “lower carb” than one might assume by looking at “50 grams of carbs”—for most people.

How about low-sodium salt for extra potassium?

Not a big fan. Potassium citrate powder seems to work a lot better than potassium chloride (low-sodium salt) in several areas:

Bone density.

Kidney stone formation.

It’s quite tasteless, whereas potassium chloride’s taste is quite distinct.

This is a really important point. Your craving for salt appears to track closely with salt requirements.

“Salt food to taste. Don’t avoid added salt if your taste buds and intuition suggest you could and should have some extra.”

Does anyone make a “sole” by diluting pink Himalayan salt, Red Hawaiian Alaea, etc. into water?

Any success with that method?

I’ll sometimes put a few healthy pinches of Hawaiian red salt into a glass of water before bed. When I wake up, it’s totally dissolved and I throw it back. Tastes good for sure.

Thoughts?

I like it. If it seems to work, it’s working.

Since potassium loss is downstream of sodium loss (from the kidneys trying to balance out your potassium:sodium ratios), you’ll also need to keep potassium intake up.

And pretty much everyone could use more magnesium, so taking some extra there, too, is likely a good idea.

You won’t ever find an athlete carbing up with kale before a race.

That’s it for today, folks. If you have any further questions or comments, let me know down below!

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References:

Nicar MJ, Peterson R, Pak CY. Use of potassium citrate as potassium supplement during thiazide therapy of calcium nephrolithiasis. J Urol. 1984;131(3):430-3.

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