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granulesofsand · 11 months

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Satanic Panic

I saw a post about Satanic Panic, so I felt the need to write an overview of what actually happened for those who don’t know.

What is Satanic Panic?

Satanic Panic can be viewed as either part of the Memory Wars or as an entirely separate entity. If viewed as aligned with the False Memory movement, it might be seen as proof of False Memories and a near complete lack of the existence of ritual abuse. The other takes Satanic Panic as still harmful, but removes the blame from those claiming to have experienced it.

I believe that a crucial part of enabling healing is giving survivors the benefit of the doubt. People who are speaking out about abuse might be doing so for the first time, and are particularly vulnerable to disbelief even if they have told their story before. Talking about maltreatment takes a lot of courage, especially when a stigma already exists around the topic.

Fundie Satanism

That said, the Satanic Panic was weaponized by Christian groups expecting to gain power from it. Some genuinely believed Satanic Ritual Abuse was a primary concern, others knew it was only a face for the politics.

Fundamentalist groups wanted to have the kind of attention they were no longer getting, and the instatement of mandated reporter laws and influx of unsupervised children gave them a fighting cause. They saw that child abuse was becoming popular in media, and they used it as leverage to frighten well-meaning folks into their way of thinking.

Satanic was the word for non-Christian, and Christians were quick to disown anything that hinted at rot within their own organization. Christianity was still popular, and nobody wanted to believe they could be involved with a group that caused harm. So they took any religious abuse, and some non-religious abuses, and slapped Satanic on it.

Satanic Ritual Abuse

Ritual abuse refers to maltreatment that is both standardized and associated with symbols or ideologies. At the time, many kinds of organized (involving multiple perpetrators and victims) and/or coercive (intentionally manipulative) abuse were grouped under that name. Extreme abuse was also called ritual abuse, and we still don’t have a solid definition for that one.

Given that all ritual abuse would have been considered Satanic, fundies basically screwed over anyone who was abused in this specific way. Ritual abuse as we know it now did and does happen. An abuser doesn’t have to believe in their symbolism or ideology to misuse it, and many forms of religion and other structured beliefs can be applied to hurt and intimidate people.

RAMCOA

Ritual Abuse, Mind Control, and Organized Abuse are grouped together under a metric ton of buzz words. The survivors of this collection of abuses are left with research that is out of date, chock full of misinformation, and unable to communicate with people outside of the community.

I know the words are conspiratorial. I get that the books have fear-mongering content. I need people to understand that there is no better option, and pretending bad things don’t happen doesn’t make them go away.

Government Mind Control

Mind control is manipulation with intent. Coercion. Using psychology to get your way. Implanting false memories would be mind control. Again, it doesn’t sound good because cultural contexts have evolved over time and clinical language for this kind of abuse has not. Not all mind control is abusive at all. McDonald’s using targeted ads is mind control. But also training children like dogs is mind control.

There have been government-sponsored projects on mind control. There probably still are. Governments do sketchy things like that for military advancement and because they don’t face consequences, and there was a time where government employees admitted to it. Similar to McDonald’s and their hot coffee campaign, there were some strategic moves to look better to newcomers.

The government has sponsored lots of things they don’t want to acknowledge, and people are still suffering the effects. People in poverty, black and brown communities, and so on can probably agree that government is not synonymous with benevolent.

One of the things the government did was talk to criminal organizations. I don’t know if this is news to anyone, but it was a good way to get information and resources. There were wartime experiments on drugs and interrogation, and those were mind control.

Enough survivors agree about their experiences that it doesn’t seem worthwhile to dismiss them, so until there’s better information we would do well to try to understand them. You don’t have to agree full heartedly to sit with people in their own stories.

Cult Mind Control

I would describe a cult as any group that uses unhealthy practices as a defining feature of their cultural norms. Not everyone agrees on what is or isn’t a cult, and that mostly fine. This is the definition I’m using because it makes the most sense to me in context.

Cults members are not the only ones to use or receive mind control tactics, but the post I saw mentions cults this way. The specific technique is called Trauma Based Mind Control, which is the application of psychological responses to danger and overwhelm for the purposes of an abuser.

TBMC is the primary method for what the RAMCOA survivor community calls programming. Programming is the use of cues associated with PTSD triggers to achieve a desired response in a subject. When programming is done to a small child (under age 6-12, depending on the source), a common response is Dissociative Identity Disorder.

HC-DID

Abusers create alternate self-states within one body to react to the cues given. Depending on how knowledgeable the perpetrator(s) is/are, a child might have a very structured system of alters with little control allocated to them. These systems are designed by and for abusers to create long term obedient subjects.

Not every DID system is formed this way. Most are naturally developed with the induction of trauma in a child’s life. Some organic systems have complex structures anyway, but not for anyone but themselves. These systems are polyfragmented, or C-DID systems.

The level of control and organization found within a programmed system is almost always more than those found in organic systems. In the RAMCOA community, this is called HC-DID. The key difference isn’t true complexity, but the type of prerequisites to qualify.

Highly Complex DID isn’t particularly difficult to groom in a child, but it does require intent. Cult groups, as well as other high control groups, are quite capable of figuring it out by sheer cruelty and observation.

Why Does It Matter?

Making blanket statements about what abuse is and isn’t real doesn’t actually help anyone. While people prone to worry who didn’t experience RAMCOA might feel temporarily safer, it’s likely they’ll figure out they were lied to.

People who did experience it struggle with doubt and disbelief from others, and may have been told that nobody would care. This field is still considered taboo, and there are victims of torture and adjacent who are ashamed or afraid because of the state of the larger population.

I survived RAMCOA. My family and friends survived RAMCOA. Not all of my friends survived RAMCOA. Watch yourself.

#did osdd #dissociative identity disorder #traumagenic system #actuallydid #ramcoa #tw ramcoa #did system #polyfragmented system #osddid #satanic panic #satanic ritual abuse #child abuse #tw child abuse #sysblr #system stuff #ritual abuse

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cleo-fox · 4 months

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The “When Are You Updating?” Ask

I should say up front that this isn’t in response to anything I received. This topic came up in a Discord server that I’m in and another friend of mine got a similar ask shortly after.

I’ve alluded to the fact that this Tumblr isn’t my first account and that I’ve written for other fandoms previously. What I haven’t talked about is why I’m taking an extended hiatus from that fandom or why the majority of my work in this one has been one shots.

Historically, I’ve been a long fic writer. On my other pen name, I posted a long fic that had a fairly decent following in that particular corner of fandom. I’m a slow writer under normal circumstances but when the pandemic hit, I started having more trouble writing and my updates slowed a lot. I worked in a public facing role and the stress I was experiencing was unlike anything I’d ever dealt with before. About a year into the pandemic, I got pregnant.

To sum it up: I was pregnant, which put me at a higher risk for developing complications from Covid. I was working in a public facing role, which increased my risk of catching Covid and had the added factor of people being aggressive about not complying with mask mandates. Because of my pregnancy, I was not able to take critical medications, which then negatively affected my focus and energy levels. I was dealing with other chronic illnesses that were exacerbated or changed by pregnancy, as well as the physical symptoms of pregnancy itself. Then there was also the delivery, which had complications, as well as adjusting to life with a newborn and then going back to work.

I was upfront about all of this. I said that my fics weren’t abandoned, but that I didn’t know when the next update would be because I was dealing with a lot.

I still got asks asking why hadn’t I updated yet.

I knew that these asks came from a good, well-intentioned place. I loved that people were so excited about my writing that they wanted to read more. I loved that they cared so deeply about my characters. I didn’t want to sound ungrateful for their enthusiasm or their support, nor did I want to initiate a pile on with a snarky reply or make someone feel bad for asking a genuine question. I often struggled with how to word my replies, to find a way to be grateful for their enthusiasm while also reiterating that I had a lot on my plate and that I would write more someday, but that I didn’t know when someday was.

It didn’t seem to matter, though. No matter how many times I said the same thing, the asks still kept coming. The worst ones were the ones that scolded me for taking so long because the sender didn’t know how long they would be in this fandom or the ones that included the phrase “I know you had a baby but…” Those hurt. Those made me feel like people saw me as a content creation machine and not like a person.

Eventually, this started to negatively impact my desire to interact with that community, as well as my desire to write that story. When you log in and you know that there’s a good chance your inbox is going to have one of those notes, it’s hard to feel enthusiastic about logging in at all.

So I decided that I needed to take a break. I still check that pen name every so often and I still intend to finish those other fics, but I need some time. This pen name was created out of a desire to give myself the space to write on my own terms, and I’m grateful for all the people here who have let me do that.

And honestly? If you want a writer to update, it is far, far more effective to talk about what you love about their fic. There are so many times when I’ve been pulled out of a writing slump by a comment or reblog where someone talked about what they enjoyed about my fic. That kind of engagement is more motivating than a request for an update could ever be.

There’s that one post going around with the compilation of crazy AO3 author’s notes—the ones that are like “sorry this chapter is a day late, I spent the night in federal prison lmao.” It’s a great post and I love that there are people like that. I admire people who can create art despite their circumstances. But for every writer like that, there’s someone like me who’s going through some shit and doesn’t have the time or energy to write the same way that she does when things are going okay. I wish people would remember that.

TLDR: be kind.

#fanfiction #fan fic #fan fiction

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waluigis-837th-testicle · 2 years

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more fluffy nyo rusame thoughts since yall liked the last one so much

Anya mandating when they watch movies. makes alfred sit down to watch cheesy new year and Christmas movies with her.

"All they're doing is yelling."

"yes! it is russian rom-com!"

also makes him change clothes before they go to the ethnic grocery store because she will not be embarrassed in front of the checkout girl no way no how alfred put on this calvin klein outfit you dress like old man on golf course.

Anya has a million petnames for Alfred. Fedka. Fedya. Milyi (sweetie). Daragoi (dearest).

if, for some reason, alfred has Fucked Up he does the only reasonable thing and hands over his MasterCard. she proceeds to drain his bank account at the Gucci store and treats her sisters to lunch.

Alfred knows how to braid hair and helps Anya braid her hair into high-fantasy princess styles.

"you look like a game of thrones character!!"

"i want to be the dragon girl."

"oh you're definitely the dragon girl"

they!!! talk!!! about!!! space!!!! a LOT!!!!

honestly them stargazing someplace in Montana on a road trip sounds....so fucking good. G O D

alfred is still mourning pluto. anya thinks he's silly. alfred mourns harder

they both have huge sweet tooths.

they would share a dessert with two spoons but let's face it, they're both too greedy for that shit.

i feel like they're both gamers. they visit each other's minecraft farms and animal crossing villages :')

me n the wife cuddlin in the gamer chair

one time alfred made anya hot cocoa when she was on her period and she cried :')

she's not used to people being nice to her like that

"is that :'( whipped cream?"

"yeah, do you not like it? jeez, i didn't mean to make you cry i can make another batch if you want"

"no :') it's perfect"

anya is taller than alfred i do not make the rules

how comically large the size difference is between them depends on you

she still steals his clothes :3 her favorite is this red flannel with a detachable hood that smells like him

and yes. she's sent him nudes with her wearing it

alfred gases her up when she's about to go out. whether it's for a business trip or a girl's night, he wants her to know that she looks like a baddy and he's proud of her

more often than not he's her photographer for nights when she wants to post selfies

once when Alfred is having a bad day, Anya constructed a pillowfort and they binge-watched the Star Wars prequels and cuddled in it. Alfred got to have his hair played with (WITH acrylic nails) while lying on the softest boobs this side of the prime meridian. to say he was in paradise was a gross understatement

in the same vein, they're both HUGE fans of any and all kinds of sci-fi. Star Wars, Isaac Asimov's writings, Battlestar Galactica, Planet of Storms, Solaris, ANYTHNG by Ursula K. Le Guin, etc.

honestly?? they just really love and respect each other. girlboss x malewife but they're both autistic nerds who love the sky and Hershey's chocolate. we stan

#nyo! rusame #rusame #nyotalia #hws russia #hws america #rusame imagines #hetalia imagines #hetalia headcanons #nyo russia #aph russia #aph america #hetalia rusame #hws rusame #rusame fluff #mine #amerus #aph rusame #alfred f jones #anya braginskaya

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rexcaliburechoes · 1 year

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“fight by your side” vs “i will lay my life down for you” // the diamant-sertation series

my partner (@asylumdream) said, “so, you’re writing a diamant-sertation“ when i said i was “writing another diamant dissertation“ since talking about engage localisation funnies triggered this conversation.

@successeurdiamant i’m gonna move the convo over here since this might be a long post and i’d rather not clog a post with character dissertations, lmao (any other ppl in the diamant tumblr zone do feel free to add onto this post too, though! the more the merrier!)

“fight by your side“ and “i will lay my life down for you“ both have two distinct feelings and i love them both because of both of the feelings they convey and how they both relate to diamant’s character.

to my personal taste, i really love “i will lay my life down for you“ mainly because it plays on his sense of devotion and how he’s hellbent on giving all of himself to his country, to ending the way, to alear... because he would, and he does. i wouldn’t know about how his character behaves specifically in the jp version (since i don’t speak japanese, and from what it sounds like is that he’s still relatively the same, if not tonally different because of line changes), but we know that he is a perfectionist and holds a lot of guilt based on if you let him or alcryst kill morion.

what kind of brother is he to let his brother fill in for his weakness? what kind of son kills his father? alcryst outright says that it’s a burden that is too heavy for him to bear (so he shall do it instead), but imagine how heavy the other burden is, to be helpless in helping the ones you hold most dear? he’s still his brother’s brother, after all. alcryst also states in ch15 that he’s worried for diamant’s mental state because he keep bottling his emotions.

diamant... there’s some (a lot of) brodian stubbornness in there. it’s the sheer devotion, come hell or high water, in sickness and in heath, and all of that- it’s his need to see everything through. what kind of king is he is he does not? he wants peace, and he’ll devote himself to that peace. he wants the one he loves to be safe, so he’ll devote himself to that, too. (this kind of devotion is actually what’s all over alear and marth’s dynamic. there is so much subtextual devotion from one to the other, it hurts. marth was, in fact, the one watching over alear the entire time, after all. but i digress; this is a diamant/dialear post, not a marth/alear post)

the thing is, though, it’s not exactly his life to give, now is it? his life, first and foremost, must prioritise his people above all. he has to be the the pillar of strength and the perfect, flawless diamond that everyone perceives him as. there’s his relationship with ivy and how brodia has hurt elusia over, and over, and over again and how elusians are taught to be scared of brodian armour. he’s the one only one that can make it right. that’s his job as king, after all. his life for his people. always.

in fact, perhaps giving his life to one person, the person he loves most, is a reclamation of his life. he cannot give his life to one person, for his kingdom mandates him to give himself wholly to the greater good. but perhaps, in another life, he could do so without fear of flaw or failure.

as an aside: now’s the perfect time to plug in and propose “shinunoga e-wa“ for diamant and alear’s relationship (i’d talked about it a little here but nothing in depth) because doesn’t “i want you to be my end. if it meant saying goodbye to you, i’d rather die“. fujii kaze has also said that the lyrics are on the old fashioned side, and historically, when “i love you“ gets translated from other languages into japanese, some equivalent similar to “i could die for you“ or “the moon is beautiful because of you“ is used because of the cultural context behind it. (i cannot believe this has come back to grace me with its presence.)

now... after some mulling it over, “i’ll fight by your side“ also carries a similar sort of intimacy... but different. it doesn’t have the same gravity that “i would lay my life on the line for you“ has, but it’s sweeter. softer. understanding that his life is not his to give and thus, he has no right to give it to someone whom of which it does not belong to (ironically, however, he gives his life to the state, but that’s out of duty and not out of emotional intimacy).

but this doesn’t make it bad. no, far from it, actually.

you see... “i’ll fight by your side“ very strongly reminds me of this confession:

“you are the wind at my back, and the sword at my side. together, my love, we shall build a peaceful world, just you and me.“

sound familiar? it’s chrom’s s-support cg dialogue, and i think it conveys the same exact thing that diamant tries to convey in his english s support. chrom has always viewed robin as his equal, and in terns of feh canon, his “other half“ (no, i’m not lying about that. chrobin is practically canon confirmed, especially with its inclusion of chrom and robin as the emblem of bonds). he loves robin- platonically, romantically, or even a secret third thing. friends are not lesser than romantic partners, after all.

but diamant... diamant views alear as close, just as close. maybe not as an equal like chrom and robin (who is he to consider the divine one an equal? he’s just the king of brodia, and alear is the monarch dragon of lythos. they’re god, effectively. to be equal to a god... or to drag a god down to his standing... it doesn’t sit well with him), but definitely with the level of understanding that goes beyond a commander and a subordinate, or a king and a god. they’re friends. they love each other, romantically, platonically, or even a secret third thing.

#fire emblem #diamant #fire emblem diamant #alear #fire emblem alear #diamant fire emblem #alear fire emblem #fire emblem engage #fe engage #dialear #rex rambles #i suffered writer's traffic jam while writing this LMAO help me #this should not have taken as long as it did but it did and so here it is #IT'S NOT ANGST THIS TIME BUT I HAD TO DRAG MYSELF KICKING AND SCREAMING TO NOT DRAG IT INTO ANGST OK

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bestworstcase · 2 years

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Which parallels between Ruby and Salem?

the first one i picked up on is that salem, in 6.4, echoes almost verbatim something ruby says to oscar in 5.5: oscar says that he’s scared, ruby tells him “we just have to press on;” and salem mutters—seemingly to herself?—“and so we must press on.”

further, the placement of these lines are directly mirrored in a really interesting way: oscar interrupts ruby before she can finish, asking how she can be so confident after everything she’s been through, and she answers that she isn’t confident, that she feels just as scared and overwhelmed as he does, but she’s chosen to try her best—to keep moving through the fear.

in contrast, salem gives this grandiose little speech to her acolytes—and of course none of them dare to interrupt her, but there’s nevertheless a lull, a pause in which salem glances out the window and we glimpse the sadness and weariness she’s carrying under the surface, because the mask slips just a little. “and so we must… press on” is salem’s answer to herself, to whatever pang of regret or doubt or exhaustion she just felt, before her attention goes back to her audience and she starts talking about the next steps in her plan.

so on the one hand we’ve got this inversion of ruby saying “we just have to press on” as a lead in to ruby having this monologue about what she’s feeling and what she meant, and then salem interrupting herself to make this remark—but on the other hand, both lines ultimately function as sort of narrative trail markers, flagging the grief/fear/pain both ruby and salem are carrying with them as they try to press on, and also highlighting the important difference that ruby has people in her life who care about her, people she can talk to about her feelings, and salem does not.

and on subsequent viewings it really hit me that rwby does this kind of thing with ruby and salem A LOT—that’s just the most immediately obvious example, because of how similar the two lines are.

another example occurs between 5.11 and 6.3. you know this beat?

RAVEN: All that time spent spying for Ozpin, and you still have no idea what you’re dealing with. There is no beating Salem!

RUBY: You’re wrong. We’ve done things that most people would call impossible, and I know the only reason we were able to do it is because we didn't do it alone! We had people to teach us, people to help us, we had each other. Work with us. At least I know we'll have a better chance if we try together. Please.

[She extends her arm, offering her hand to Raven, and Raven glances down—considering, for just a second—before her expression hardens and she steps back, resolute and angry.]

RAVEN: You sound just like your mother.

…yeah in 6.3 salem’s rejection of the divine mandate, the counteroffer she makes to ozma, and his reaction to that? framed EXACTLY the same way. and what’s really striking about that is that, from salem’s perspective, the underlying emotion of that scene in the lost fable is also identical—something that jinn’s narrative intentionally obfuscates by framing the scene through ozma’s point of view.

but, like, consider what’s really happening in that scene from salem’s side. the gods are the ultimate evil; they tortured her, murdered the planet, and consigned her to eternal suffering to punish her for disobeying them. she knows how powerful they are, and she’s seen that they don’t care if people are standing against them or not—they’ll kill anybody, they killed EVERYBODY, just to make a point to one person. to her. yet she also wholeheartedly believes that people can overcome their tyranny, that it isn’t futile to stand against them. (and why shouldn’t she believe that? after all, humans came back.)

so… in her eyes, ozma has just revealed a terrible secret—he was sent back to remnant to enact the will of those evil gods, and he’s chosen to obey because he’s terrified of what they’ve sworn to do if he does not—and salem comes back at him with: no, what they asked of you doesn’t matter, why should we obey them when we can fix what they broke by ourselves? whether you read “replace them” as “replace humans” or “replace the gods” doesn’t matter, because either way: from’s salem’s point of view, she’s asking ozma to join her, to work together to achieve their goals without submitting to the will of the gods. and ozma (figuratively) answers that with a fireball to the face, just as raven did to ruby in 5.11.

but wait! there’s more!

i’ve mentioned before that i think the fight with cordovin at the end of v6 is a big hint at what the emotional shape of the final confrontation with the god of light will look like—“clearly the people have forgotten that they live in peace thanks to the awesome might of atlas! […] consider this a reminder! […] and watch how your leader maintains order!” c’mon. “you are ants! you are lower than ants!” c’mon. “this is what happens when you think you know better than those rightfully in charge!” HELLO?—anyway, with that in mind,

in 6.12, ruby and maria fly right at the mech to bait cordovin into firing on them, intending to exploit a weakness oscar identified in the missile launcher itself. but cordovin figures out the ploy and, enraged, shoots their plane with the mech’s dust cannon instead. maria’s eyes get shorted out, the plane spins out of control, and they crash. ruby immediately picks herself up and marches forward to plant herself squarely in front of cordovin, staring down the massive barrel of the dust cannon as she REFUSES to surrender and declares that she and her team are GOING to atlas, no matter what.

sound familiar?

it really should:

where this one gets really interesting is that not only do both salem and ruby respond to what should have been a crushing defeat by getting right back up to stand their ground while shouting their defiance to the cruel, power-drunk authority figure who slapped them down in the first place—both of them also stick with the original plan, doing exactly the thing they were trying to do before getting slapped down. salem’s is “i’ll come back, i’ll tell the world of this massacre, raise a new army—” and ruby’s is baiting cordovin into taking a shot at her so she can exploit a weakness in the firing mechanism, and thus disable the weapon altogether. salem fails because the gods have already killed everyone, not just her allies; and ruby prevails because, by putting herself at point blank range this time, she neatly removes the advantage that allowed cordovin to outmaneuver them the first time around.

now, think about this: what is the essential difference between ruby in 6.12 and salem in 6.3? what tactic did ruby rely on to beat her odds that salem didn’t when she faced the gods?

ruby identified and then exploited a fatal weakness of her opponent, while using her opponent’s strength—the sheer size and power of the mech itself—to her advantage, literally hiding in front of the dust cannon cordovin intended to kill her with so that cordovin wouldn’t be able to see what ruby was doing until it was already too late to stop her. ruby wins here because she relies on the same tactics salem uses in the present—tactics that arose directly from lessons salem learned from her defeat at the hands of the gods.

and what’s especially neat about that is, those tactics don’t come to ruby any more naturally or instinctively than they came to salem; ruby has always been pragmatic—the kid stone-cold cut off tyrian’s tail after he stung qrow!—but she’s also a very straightforward combatant up until this fight. she’s a brutal, efficient fighter whose basic approach to battle is to ruthlessly chop down her opponents or snipe them from afar until there’s none left…

…which was exactly the mindset that got salem to fomenting a rebellion and leading an army to confront the gods head-on—exactly the mindset that led to salem’s horrific defeat and the total annihilation of humanity at the hands of the gods. which ruby witnessed only a few days before she pulled this tricky, underhanded move to disable the dust cannon and beat cordovin against what seemed like impossible odds. ruby learned the exact. same. lesson. from watching salem’s defeat that salem herself did through experiencing it, and upon being put into a similarly hopeless battle against a foe orders of magnitude more powerful than herself, ruby immediately put that lesson into action AND THAT’S WHY SHE WON!

salem’s divide-and-conquer strategy is also one ruby employs to great effect in the rwby-vs-ace-ops fight at the end of v7, and again against ironwood early in the climactic sequence of v8—striking at multiple pain points at once to split him off from his loyal supporters and playing to his arrogance and need for control to get him to lower his guard once “penny” has been restrained. other people besides me have pointed this out, so i won’t belabor it other than to emphasize that ruby adopts this strategic approach because it works and is morally neutral—that is, there’s nothing intrinsically evil about divide-and-conquer tactics, and both the narrative of rwby and ruby herself understand that salem is evil not because she relies on such tactics but because she applies them toward monstrous, destructive, cruel ends.

anyway—in the interest of brevity i won’t outline everything but i do want to highlight two more. one is just a visual/symbolic thing that has me VERY curious about the direction the story might be taking with ruby in v9, because THIS shot in the v8 opener…

…is STRONGLY evocative of this shot of salem sinking into the pool of darkness…

…and occurs in the context of an opening number whose theme is “we thought we could change the world, we tried our best, we gave everything we had and failed, but it was worth it to try.” with a side helping of “some heroes choose the wrong side” and an extra side helping of you could play the whole song over the failed rebellion in lost fable and have exactly salem’s point of view.

gives me brainworms.

anyway, the other thing—the last thing, is what ruby says during the broadcast in 8.5: “things are dire, and we need help. but please, try not to panic; this isn’t some new enemy or invading kingdom. this is a force we’ve faced before, for centuries: salem. […] we didn’t have time to prepare for salem, but now you do! just because she can’t be destroyed, doesn’t mean she can’t be beaten! if she really was unstoppable, she wouldn’t have acted with such caution before now. she knows we’re a threat! so even if we—even if atlas falls, you can’t give up.”

in… essence, that is a reiteration of the point salem makes about ozpin’s failure during her monologue in 3.12: “how does it feel, knowing that all your time and effort has been for nothing? that your guardians have failed you? that everything you’ve built will be torn down before your very eyes? your faith in mankind was not misplaced: when banded together, unified by a common enemy, they are a noticeable threat… but divide them, place doubt into their minds, and any semblance of power they once had will wash away.”—the emotion is very different, but in her broadcast ruby does precisely what salem is mocking ozpin here for not doing, ie using the threat salem poses to the world as a rallying cry to bring people together. there’s even a slight echo of salem’s own language in ruby’s broadcast; salem describes a unified humanity as a “noticeable threat” and ruby repeats that as “she knows we’re a threat!”

and in general, ruby speaks of humanity’s collective strength and of the possibility of people coming together and being able to drive salem back with the same conviction salem does—in stark contrast to ozma, whose faith in humankind has long since hollowed out into weary cynicism. ruby and salem are on opposite sides of the conflict, but they’re on basically the same wavelength in terms of what they think humans are capable of. in his heart of hearts, ozma doesn’t truly believe that humans can withstand salem, much less the gods.

but ruby DOES believe that, and salem believes that, and both of them base A LOT of their decision-making on that belief; salem exploits ozpin’s self-defeating secrecy for all it’s worth, and ruby refuses point blank to give up because she knows salem can be defeated if enough people are just willing to try. even when ruby starts to crack, later on in v8, she’s not losing her faith in humanity—she’s losing her faith in herself, doubting her leadership, her judgment, her decisions… without ever for a second doubting humanity as a whole. and THAT is, in a nutshell, the quality that makes ruby more like salem than she is like ozma:

salem watched the gods annihilate humanity with a snap of their fingers and she still believes that humanity can and must reject divine tyranny.

ruby learned that salem can’t be killed and she still believes that humanity not only can but will defeat salem.

but when the god of light tells ozma that modern humans are a broken shadow of what they once were and tasks ozma with redeeming them lest the gods obliterate them forever, ozma accepts that as a fact—a horrific, terrifying, painful fact, but still a fact he has yet to truly question.

and ruby—who is essentially ozpin’s successor, who succeeds where he has failed over and over and over again—is succeeding exactly because she is more like salem than she is like ozma.

#we could also go on AT GREAT LENGTH about #how salem’s utter ruthlessness is reflected in ruby’s battlefield pragmatism #or how ruby’s unwavering conviction and absolute REFUSAL to back down from what she believes is right #is exactly salem’s unflinching defiance of monstrous and tyrannical gods #but u know.#since brevity is the soul of wit and tediousness its limbs and outward flourishes i will be brief

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utilitycaster · 1 year

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I’d been wondering if you were going to listen to the Behind the Screens episode! As someone who was likewise put off by people’s “promotion” of that system, I appreciated hearing about it from trusted actual-players who were new to the mechanics as well.

That said, was there a specific mechanic that you didn’t gel with based on the podcast? Or is it just that the episode didn’t do enough to get you past the vibes you were already picking up from the game?

Sure! There were a few things that I'll cover below as specifics, but I think the biggest takeaway overall I have, as D&D player and a DM, is that it feels like D&D places the largest burden on the DM, and Pathfinder places it far more on the players. Which isn't good or bad, but I think, especially in terms of accessibility, placing the burden of crunch onto the person who says "yes, I like the crunch" instead of on your friend who wants to pretend to be Aragorn for a couple hours a week, makes far more sense. Murph actually says in the episode that 5e was optimized for simplicity, and PF2e for consistency, and I think he's right, and I happen to strongly prefer simplicity in this context.

I also say this as a crunchy person, but you know the D20 bit where Ross Bryant talks about TTRPGs and is like "Come to a world of fantasy...after you fill out your taxes"? The complexity of character creation comes with benefits and drawbacks. The way I described it to someone else is that in my first job, my role involved liaising between our software developers and our end users, and sometimes, software developers were like "this is so intuitive!" and the end users were like "what the hell is this." Pathfinder feels like game designers made the game they wanted to play, and that is great...if you are a game designer. Many people are not. Honestly, that's the biggest takeaway, actually. Pathfinder feels like it was made by game designers or software programmers or some other group of people who are very smart experts in something and don't necessarily know how to like, engage with the layperson in a meaningful way. (I also suspect this is why the fan community is afflicted with similar conditions.)

Specific things I wasn't a fan of:

The three-action economy sounds...ok in theory, but my hunch is it gets rough in practice. Like, it's great you have more room to allow failure of one action on a turn without everything failing, but have you ever been playing D&D and someone takes forever to decide what to do? multiply that by 3. I get wanting to foster creativity and cool moves, but it feels oddly mandated, and you are actively punished for just wanting to hit it three times, which is the main joy of having a sword. Also I checked out the SRD for more information and not only is this a LOT to learn, the mere act of concentrating on a spell takes two actions. Which brings me to the next part:

Emily Axford, who I trust on mechanics, and who was doing a very good job to be as positive and welcoming with a system she does not know as she could, was like "seems like it's not great for casters", and well, yeah. I get where they're coming from, because it is true that at L20 in D&D, a cleric can make god grant boons and a fighter can hit dragon with sword 4-5 times, sometimes 8-9 times. However, you do become a wizard because you want to see through reality, and you become a fighter because you want to swing a sword a lot. Anyway, point being, as a caster main, this is not appealing to me.

I never really got mad that a nat 20 dex save on fireball means you still take half damage, so the critical success/critical fail on saves is like. It's fine. I don't really feel strongly about it, but it doesn't feel like a cool selling point to me either. It's also like...if you really love this, it's very easy to throw into your home D&D game without having to take the rest of Pathfinder along with it.

This is a weird one but I feel like the reflex/fortitude/will save concept is SO CLOSE to being great but falls short. I agree that the three uncommon stat saves (strength, charisma, intelligence) are, well, rarely used and kind of vague. However, in practice, I also find this means many people tend to be super precious with dex and wisdom and won't dump them, even if it makes sense not to have good dex or wisdom, and this also means that charisma casters or strength-based fighters can feel stretched thinner than they genuinely are, stat-wise. It feels like a great way to balance this and trim the fat would be to, perhaps, allow your highest mental stat to be your will save stat, regardless of what it is, or permit strength or charisma to sub for con in some fortitude checks. However, Pathfinder eliminates strength, charisma, and int saves entirely, which unbalances this even further, and like, fuck that.

There were probably more but like, in general, I understand that Pathfinder absolutely has an audience and its fans, but it's just...even when presented by someone who I know isn't being a condescending asshole, who is also coming from D&D, and whom I like, I was just like. This is definitely for some people, and I am not one of them.

#answered #Anonymous

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38sr · 2 years

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#IndustryQs I’m curious, what’s it like working in the industry? What kind of environment is it usually? Is it hard to find a job, and are the jobs you get secure? (Like, can you stay with a company for years with stable pay/benefits?)

I’m interested in working in the animation industry too, and am going to university for it soon… there’s some things that make me anxious about it.

No worries at all! I completely understand being anxious about the animation industry. I just wanna start off by saying working in animation (or really any industry) comes with its pros and cons, ebbs and flows, etc. and it's not 100% perfect. Everything that I'm about to type is from the perspective of being a storyboard artist and 2D animator as well my personal experience from art school to getting my first studio job to current day. Some things may vary depending on job positions (or just the personal experience of a different person). So what I say here isn't 100% the absolute, definitive overlook on the animation industry. Alright? Let's go! Is it hard to find a job?

There's no way to really sugarcoat this but yes. And also no at the same time.

Why yes? I would say the hardest time it was for me to find a job was the very first one as an intern at Sesame Workshop in college. That was my first time ever working in a studio (and also got paid full time). But that internship came after a plethora of rejections which effected my self-confidence as an artist a lot. After that internship (and graduation), I didn't get my next full time in-house studio gig until 2 years later. Most of my friends who also work in the industry also share similar experiences where it's not always guaranteed you'll find a job immediately after you graduate. There are some people who have but the majority tend to finally really break in a couple years after graduating. And I know that sounds scary but trust me it's okay. Everyone moves at their own pace and you shouldn't mandate yourself (especially when life is unpredictable and things happen outside of your control). So is it hard find a job? Yes, but usually the first one is the hardest of them all. But then why no? Well once you do break in, it becomes easier to find the next gig and you start building relationships with fellow creatives. The animation industry is a very close knit community so if you're great to work with, meet your deadlines, and do good work, you'll build a rep and will get recommended for other projects. Unfortunately, this is also kind of the reason why it's so hard to break in. Some jobs are be filled through recommendations/referrals of people with experience and good rep with others. From personal experience, I don't blame any production who didn't hire me because I was so new and no one in the industry had ever worked with me or knew about my work ethic. All I could do was hone my skills and make that the thing that drew employers in. Luckily now I don't worry as much as finding the next gig, but in the beginning it was rough and I just had to keep at it until someone took a chance on me.

Are the jobs you get secure? (Like, can you stay with a company for years with stable pay/benefits?)

As for wages and benefits, yes. There is a union called The Animation Guild that represent animation workers. A lot of the studios are under the union so they adhere to the Guild's contracts and wages so that you're appropriately paid for your job. So you could hop between union studios without losing your fair wages and benefits. As for if the jobs are secure, yes and no. It really depends.

Working for animation is very nomadic because it's project based. You only get hired for a certain amount time for a project then leave once the work is done. Nowadays, you're lucky to find a production that is at least a year long (especially if we're talking about TV animation productions). Feature animation productions tend to have longer production schedules due to bigger budgets. So you could board on the same movie for 2 or more years and get paid a steady wage. Also feature productions aren't as fast paced as TV productions which don't have the biggest budgets (and therefore shorter production schedules).

For TV, it's not always guaranteed your show will get renewed for a new season and when it doesn't you have to search for the next gig. My current production as I'm writing this (Spiderman Freshman Year) is the longest I'll ever be on a production since we were lucky enough to get renewed for another season. It feels so relieving to know I have job security in that sense and I don't blame you for worrying about it. Sometimes you only have a gig for 6 months and have to start the search again half way through that job. It may not be ideal but I personally like being able to work on different kinds of projects, work at different studios and learn from all the different experiences in hopes it can be useful if I ever am in a leadership role. While sometimes it can be worrisome to think about, I prefer to look at it as a way to learn and try something new. As for staying with a company for years? Mmmmm you could but again it depends if there are projects available that can hire you. While I was at Titmouse, I hopped between Star Trek Lower Decks and Critical Role thanks to my supervising director on Star Trek recommending me. Most studios want to retain their talent so if there is something available and it's a project you genuinely want to work on then yeah you can virtually keep working at the same company for years. I know people who worked at the same place for 10+ years and never wanna leave haha.

What’s it like working in the industry? What kind of environment is it usually? Maybe this is me being me but it's like any other job haha. Granted yes, I'm living my childhood dream and am incredibly grateful for that. I love my job and get to work on shows that my family and friends can watch and be like, "Oh shit! Li worked on this!" But despite all of that, it's still a job at the end of the day. I wake up at 8AM, clock in at 9AM, do my assignments and clock out at 6PM. Some days are hard when I can't quite visualize a certain scene in my head and some days I breeze through a whole board sequence in one breath. Sometimes I get aggravated about the industry but it never gets to a point where I wanna leave all together. And I've gotten to meet wonderful, amazing talented people who push me to become not just a better artist but a better person. Working in the animation industry is really just like any other job. It just so happens we make entertainment for the masses haha.

But as for the environment, it's a bit hard to say 'cause the animation industry has been working from home for 2 and a half years (going on 3 years). But what little time I did get to be in a physical studio and you know, work with other people isn't really any different from working at home. Except for like, not being able to do spontaneous lunches and en-passing conversations. I do miss those random human interactions so now I have to make it a point to actively do that. But yeah, it's usually just a bunch of nerds who love to create, love the craft and come together to make the magic happen. I hope that answered your questions!

#ask #anon #ask me anything #animation industry #industryQs

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proshippy-fox · 7 months

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hi there! I'm not really knowledgeable on fandom culture and rules and i can't get a clear definition of what proshipping means for the life of me. sometimes i see an explanation that makes me think "oh ok that just sounds like how any rational person ought to engage with media/fandom" and then i see an explanation that makes me think it's kinda unhinged. so! i came across your blog and thought i might ask for what it means to you if you have the time and energy for it? my vague understanding of it is that it's like, yall don't reject anything with fandom/media, like, even the "problematic" stuff. does a proshipper mean you have to accept everything and engage with everything with an open mind, or do yall set your own boundaries on what you don't like and prefer not to engage with, without forcing that boundary on others? i took a brief spin over the most recent posts on your blog here and i've gathered that proshipping means yall don't want to like, mandate the media/fandom that everyone experiences bc one specific person doesn't like it/thinks it's immoral.

my stance on fandom and media is usually, there are things i don't like, and i set my own boundaries on what i wish to engage/not engage with. And like, i've definitely read some weird stuff, and I've decided that those just aren't meant for me. As long as something doesn't actively promote/cause harm to anyone in real life, I don't really care what people choose to do with their own media experiences. Which, that kinda sounds like some descriptions of proshipping that i've heard? But again, even just trying to google the definition never gives me a clear answer.

Anyways, answer this on your own time, I'm in no rush to get an answer I'm just curious. Thank you!

heya! being proship is generally "whatever fictional media or tropes that someone is into is not an indicator of their morality and character," at least to me.

I use the label because personally, and logically, it doesn't make sense to cherry pick tropes and say stuff like "violence is often glorified in fiction (especially video games) but it DOES NOT cause real life violence, while sexual violence or other things deemed illegal and immoral in real life being glorified (or even just depicted at all) in fiction DOES cause real life harm." the average person knows that immoral and/or illegal things are, well, immoral and/or illegal, and does not let depictions and enjoyment of such scenarios within a fictional setting affect their real life views.

and about boundaries I believe you would be correct in that most proshippers set their own boundaries and do not enforce it on others, not that proshippers have to accept and engage with any type of media. everyone has their own squicks and triggers, after all

I do agree that they are something you enforce on yourself, especially online. it is pretty rude to insist someone stop posting because it makes you personally. blocking and muting are the most common way to avoid content, which is also why tagging correctly is a big thing. (and especially recently, with the way tumblr tags work. "cw inc3st" will get past your filters if you only have "cw incest" filtered. I assume most of that problem comes from tiktok and maybe twitter, unfortunately)

the community is pretty big and, as with all sizable communities, things get confusing and mixed up.

anyway, I tend to talk a lot, but I hope this helped. thanks for sending an ask!

#proship #i did not expect to get an ask lol

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cilantrospirit · 8 months

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orchid & sage for the get to know me asks pls!

oh yeehaw!

orchid ⇢ what’s a song you consider to be perfect?

I don't believe in perfection in anything, but Come On! Feel the Illinoise! (Sufjan Stevens) is an ideal song to me, South Side (Moby) is also really well timed(?), Bodys (Car Seat Headrest) is so well done in every aspect that I wrote an essay on it last year❗, I consider a lot of Orville Peck songs as-close-to-perfect-as-possible, including but definitely not limited to Drive Me, Crazy and Turn to Hate, Frontier Psychiatrist (The Avalanches) is perfectly designed to cause me pain 👍, and this is a very cold take by now, but Bohemian Rhapsody is very good. <3 Sorry that this is a long list instead of one song but I love music and talking about it!! My cross to bear this summer was knowing and listening to a lot of Harrison coded songs but knowing that you probably wouldn't enjoy them because of the tism. Meanwhile I have the kind of tism that makes me love listening to new and jarring sounds teehee!!

sage ⇢ what ‘medium’ of art (poetry, music, fiction, paintings, statues etc.) is the most touching to you? why do you think that is?

oh poetry always! I'm a big believer that all mediums of art are equally valuable, and I try to be audience to a variety of forms and use them creatively, but poetry is usually the most affecting to me. I think that's because I think in words! not just in the sense of my inner monologue, but when I see something I instantly think of it in terms of its description, etc. and when I hear people speak I process it by first turning it into written words that I can "read" in my head, if that makes sense. so poetry is closest to reality for me, and almost all other art gets filtered into a poem for my mind to absorb it. example of what I mean by this: here is how I currently am experiencing the room I'm in: great wobbling yellow-white beaming and the vague insect whir of manmade light. a flat smoothness like balsa wood, wide plastic surface disinfected -- then beginning again its dry erase degradation (more dries than is erased). footnote: wouldn't you love to be a table? the accumulation of stains and scratches from work and purpose left to pile up without oils or bacteria mandating a bath? you need a bath. slight drowning feeling of chapstick and forehead grease. slight hunger inside, the sort that feels round. the sort like a painting of a calm ocean. cold knees. great growling squeal of a bus out the open window. thamp of dumpster overturned. humans talk like hyenas at play. bark and yap and yowl. almost full moon but it can't be seen -- only the parallel glowing sphere of campus streetlight. the sound of a whole floor of lights on, only for me. curtain closed. human dogs outside. sound of typing. sound of hunger like a cape. [I need to go eat so ending this to have a walnut <3] how I would describe the room if asked: It's got pink walls and one big table in the middle, with hand sanitizer and my stuff on it. There's a dry erase board and an open window with the curtains closed. [but the way I feel it has to be something more like a poem at first.]

anywho if someone actually reads this much nonsense from me then hi ^_^ and thanks Rachel for the ask! I can't believe I missed your birthday woe is me 😞 but you saying your top two mediums are poetry followed by music from this ask game 🤝 me agreeing in general but specifically me using this ask to talk about music and poetry... I love our minds and how they overlap <- normal thing to say (gaslighting you) normal people say this to internet people and it's normal (convincing myself)

#in which they speak

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gentian-mudd · 2 years

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hey um hi

could you elaborate real quick on why emigration to Canada is bad? I've been seriously considering it in the nearest future and I've only heard good things about it so I'm curious because it's Important Stuff to me and you seem to know your way around it

hello! so ive lived in canada all my life so have obv never immigrated here, and also i dont know! that much about a bunch of this stuff! if you’ve gotten information about canada from a reputable source that is different from what i’m saying, i’m probably wrong.

the whole immigration process? takes a long time. my understanding is that you’re able to move here with just a temporary residence, then you can apply for the permanent residence, then you can apply to become a citizen. i might be missing some steps. visas are also a things that exist but i do not understand. also because of covid lots of things have slowed down.

so! our housing market is. struggling, to say the least. prices peaked at some point last year with super high prices for houses and rent. now the prices are lowering a lot and some sources are expecting the housing market to “correct itself”, which sounds an awful lot like crashing hggsgshhd. fun /s. i read an article about the housing market today and i barely understood a word of what it was talking about but it didn’t sound great.

waitlists for subsidized/affordable housing can be years long.

although lots of canadians will say “sorry” when they walk into a doorframe, the stereotype of everyone being amazing and nice isn’t accurate. racism isn’t as obvious, but it’s just as common here as it is in the US. we don’t have guns, which is really helpful for stopping hate crimes, but people will be assaulted, harassed, threatened, etc. indigenous women are going missing at alarming rates and no one is doing anything. racism, slurs, teasing, etc are just as prevalent in schools as they are other places. there’s some people who call themselves the “freedom fighters”, who don’t believe in covid restrictions and mandates, and they and some others went to the capital to protest (which is legal and encouraged), but then blocked off streets and vandalized and stuff (which is illegal and not encouraged lmao). they also were. protesting something completely legal on the basis that it went against their rights sooo. lots of antivaxxers but theyre not making a big deal out of things rn so its fine. first nations reservations still don’t have clean water and have to boil everything. i‘m not trying to scare you, im just trying to show that the stereotypes aren’t true, as much as its nice to have people assume im an amazing person because im canadian.

our healthcare system is pretty good, but be prepared that although it’s “free healthcare”, you still have to pay for things like physiotherapy, dental care, acupuncture, massage, ambulance costs, eye tests + glasses, etc. in ontario at least.

also be prepared for the price of fruits and vegetables to go up significantly in the winter for preservative and shipping costs.

one good thing is that most employers are understaffed, so getting a job will be easier than it would be a while ago. in (southern) ontario, you can drive around cities and the sheer amount of “hiring” signs is honestly a bit apocalyptic. i saw a fast food place that had walk in interviews every wednesday.

anyways i really need to sleep i hope u have a nice day. if anyone has anything to add or fact check feel free to do that.

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princeofgod-2021 · 2 years

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LIGHT OF LIFE 225

John 1:4

SATAN’S STRUCTURE 32: REVERSE FASHION 3

Rev 16:15 "Listen! I am coming like a thief! HAPPY IS HE WHO STAYS AWAKE AND GUARDS HIS CLOTHES, SO THAT HE WILL NOT WALK AROUND NAKED AND BE ASHAMED IN PUBLIC!" GNB

We are talking about Reverse Fashion, whereby instead of people being ashamed and hurried to cover up, they rather are going naked and unperturbed about it.

How did they get this way?

It is useful to go back again to Noah, the Vineyard farmer.

We mentioned the problem with his “BEGINNING to PLANT”, right?

But there is nothing intrinsically wrong with grapes, is there?

Gen 9:20 In those days Noah became a farmer, AND HE MADE A VINE-GARDEN. AND HE TOOK OF THE WINE OF IT and was OVERCOME BY DRINK; and he was uncovered in his tent. BBE

I ask you brethren: what is the product of the Vine? Grapes!

Does grapes make people drunk? No!

But “he took of the WINE of it”, meaning he crushed the grapes and “produced” wine from it, right?

But plain Grape wine isn’t intoxicating until you ferment it – leave it to DECAY somewhat – and thus it releases alcohol, and you drink and become like you are swimming in the clouds; you get drunk.

Ecc. 7:29 THIS ALONE have I DISCOVERED: God made humankind UPRIGHT, but THEY HAVE SOUGHT MANY EVIL SCHEMES. NET

The First thing Satan does in making men go naked, is to tempt them to invent evil things that negate God’s standard and mandate to man.

Then the “producer” of such loses his mind and sanity.

Can you imagine that Noah, a great man of God – not his sons – is the one who first invented strong drink?

He got drunk and naked but his sons were sober and seeing him in his shame?

Pathetic!

Gen 1:28 God gave them his blessing and said: Have a lot of children! FILL THE EARTH WITH PEOPLE AND BRING IT UNDER YOUR CONTROL. Rule over the fish in the ocean, the birds in the sky, and every animal on the earth. CEV

God gave us the capacity to invent (subdue) but definitely not to invent corrupt things.

Imagine that the first invention of man, after most of biological life just got destroyed, is intoxicating wine? Whao!

Now I mentioned that it is in the decaying of wine that alcohol is produced.

Decay means to decompose or decline from a state of health or soundness. So make Grape unhealthy and get drunk.

Pro 26:21 TROUBLEMAKERS start trouble, just AS SPARKS AND FUEL START A FIRE. CEV

We are just saying that if you take nature and mess it up, it will mess you up; if you make it unsound and unhealthy, you will get your dose too, plus insanity, probably.

You think this is going too far?

To ferment means to subject “fluid” to a state of unrest and total loss of peace.

How can one be alright and at peace after drinking alcohol, a product of unrest?

Are you thinking about this please?

Rev 11:18 The heathen were filled with rage, because THE TIME FOR YOUR ANGER HAS COME, the time for the dead to be judged. The time has come to reward your servants, the prophets, and all your people, all who have reverence for you, great and small alike. THE TIME HAS COME TO DESTROY THOSE WHO DESTROY THE EARTH!" GNB

To ferment also means to “permit” bacteria – a destroyer – to destroy the structure of the Vine produce and alter it to an extent.

Beloved, Nature will revenge against anyone who messes it up.

Again I tell you, Nature is “engineered” by God to react against abuse and you may not know it, but many suffer from many issues of health because of this very factor, Grace dispensation or not.

Gen 4:11-12 So now, you are banished from THE GROUND, WHICH HAS OPENED ITS MOUTH TO RECEIVE YOUR BROTHER’S BLOOD FROM YOUR HAND. WHEN YOU TRY TO CULTIVATE THE GROUND IT WILL NO LONGER YIELD ITS BEST FOR YOU. You will be a homeless wanderer on the earth.” NET

Somebody may say: “Fermentation is a part of life and needed in nutrition”.

I agree, and I know that the process is even applied in the human stomachs and such bacteria are even a blessing, okay!

But all such are under strict controls circumstances. In the stomach, we have Hydrochloric Acid, which also aids digestion and keeps such bacteria in “check” and alcohol produced there are mild.

Pro 23:31-32 And DON’T BE DRUNK WITH WINE but be known as one who enjoys the company of the lovers of God, FOR DRUNKENNESS BRINGS THE STING OF A SERPENT, LIKE THE FANGS OF A VIPER SPREADING POISON INTO YOUR SOUL. TPT

Some Christians are drinking but they think they are smart and know how to manage themselves and keep their nakedness within their secret rooms.

A pity, because they may soon go on the streets, speaking spiritually.

May God keep us all from the “Dance of Shame” in Jesus name, Amen.

Come back on Friday for more digging into this intriguing subtopic.

Keep Shinning!

Brother Prince

Wednesday, July 20, 2022

08055125517; 08023904307

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writingwithcolor · 3 years

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Arab Character Joining Corrupt Superheroes, Police Parallels

Anonymous asked:

I’m writing a story with a Arabian diaspora main character. The story is about corrupt superheroes, and how they affect an oppressed superpowered minority. The main character is one of these superheroes, naively joining them in his teens believing he’s going to help people. Doesn’t help that his parents are having money trouble. Eventually he ends up fighting a superpowered crook, and gets a bystander killed.

1)I know portraying an Arabian character committing violence is a pretty touchy subject, even if accidental. Is there any way I can write this that makes it clear to the reader that the action itself is messed up without the unfortunate implication that Arabs are violent?

2)A large part of the story is the MC’s parents reaction. They are loving parents, however after this incident happens, they are confused and ashamed. While they still love him, they temporarily cut ties with him. Eventually they reconcile and start to be a family again. In my research (they are diaspora Saudi Arabians), Family is very important and tight-nit. Shame towards the family is to be avoided at all costs. However I’ve also read that disowning a family member rarely ever happens. Is there a way to write this kind of narrative with respect to this aspect of Arabian culture?

Let us begin with some terminology.

- If a person is from Saudi Arabia, they are Saudi Arabian, or more commonly, Saudi. This is their nationality.

- They may or may not be Arab. Arab is an ethnicity. Not all Saudis are Arab. Not all Arabs are Saudi.

- Arabic is a language. Lots of people across the world who are neither Saudi nor Arab speak Arabic.

- Arabian on its own is a word used to refer to a specific breed of horses.

If you are referring to humans, you want to either say "Saudi Arabian" (both words) or “Saudi” to indicate nationality, or "Arab" to indicate ethnicity. If you’re looking to describe your character’s culture, you probably want to call it Saudi culture. (While grammatically correct, talking about “Arab culture” doesn’t make much sense because Arabs are an incredibly diverse ethnic group and there is no such thing as a single monolithic Arab culture).

Now for the first question. In my mind, the issue is less about the character committing violence, and more about the premise of the story and how it mirrors real-life oppressive structures. You have an organized group of superheroes who think they are doing good by fighting “crooks” but in reality are enacting systemic oppression upon a marginalized group. This immediately brings to mind police violence, racial profiling, and the way that policing in North America is used as a tool of white supremacy while glorified in propaganda as a force for good. Essentially, you are telling a story about a character who joins an oppressive policing force, enacts violence upon a marginalized group as a result, and (I’m assuming) eventually realizes that they are not, in fact, the good guys. This is very close to being a “bigoted character learns not to be bigoted” story. I recommend re-examining your premise in light of the real-life parallels and asking yourself whether this is the story you want to tell.

The issue is compounded by the fact that your character is an Arab teen, who in real life is more likely to be the one facing racial profiling from the police. Taking this character and making him the oppressor in your story makes the already flawed premise even more problematic, especially if the characters in the oppressed group are white.

As for your second question, it seems believable to me that a teen’s parents might reject him if they learned that he committed a crime. However, when the family in question is Arab, you are suddenly feeding into harmful tropes about oppressive and violent Arab parents. You are asking if there is a way to write this respectfully. I believe that there is, but it requires a great deal of care, nuance, and cultural awareness. While it is possible to write a Saudi Arab character grappling with the consequences of violence and familial estrangement in a compelling way, the way your ask is phrased leads me to believe you are not equipped to do it justice.

- Mod Niki

Think about why Arab people committing violence is a touchy subject, and then think about the general propaganda narrative that came about from the act that made things so touchy.

It’s going to sound one hell of a lot like what you have here.

Military and police use buckets and buckets of propaganda to continue hooking in young, impressionable teens to commit state-sanctioned colonialism and oppression. That propaganda looks suspiciously like “we have health insurance, we will pay for your education, you just have to do what we tell you even if that means hurting or killing others, but it’s okay because you get to be the hero in the situation.”

Now, propaganda is a very powerful tool. I was taught, in my media classes, that controlling the message means shaping reality. The media is built as a propaganda machine, and when you start to see who owns what media properties you start to see some really disturbing patterns (Rubert Murdoch owns a lot of right-wing sources across America, the UK, and Australia, and he’s too rich to investigate his culpability in spinning terrible narratives found in right-wing publications. He owns the big names).

As Niki said, this situation mirrors police violence and police-sanctioned terrorism. And the very, very unfortunate implications of making the target of police violence be in that wheel. But I want you to look at the media situation that has made the plot happen.

Because even if you swapped out ethnicities, you’d still have a reckoning to do with the American culture that their primary social safety nets involve killing people.

I am not kidding.

Some of the most well-funded unions in the country are police unions. These people have pensions. They have health insurance. It’s damn near impossible to fire them. They get overtime very well mandated, and it’s a known thing among defence lawyers that arrests happen right before a cop’s shift will end so they get the overtime of filing the paperwork. They absolutely go into poor neighbourhoods and recruit based off people needing an escape, and them having the money to provide it.

A similar sentiment is true for the military, except they push for college education a bit more and don’t really have overtime, but they do have deployment bonuses. So the way to get extra pay for yourself is to go out and do colonialism outside the borders. The military doesn’t necessarily like it when the economy is doing well, and don’t like the idea of college being affordable, because they rely so heavily on poverty and fear of college debt to recruit.

The story you’re telling here goes so far beyond an individual’s actions and instead taps into America’s single biggest cultural investment: that oppressing others makes you a hero.

The Pentagon funds most military media out there as a propaganda tool, including most superhero movies and a large number of video games. This is in their budget. They will also go so far as to literally commission the games to exist. Part of getting that funding is you cannot critique America’s military, basically at all (the only exception I’ve seen is Ms Marvel, but that’s set in the 90s). This turns any sort of military-using media into a potential propaganda tool.

And the thing is? Even if you fall for that propaganda and were part of the military or the police, you still have to reckon with the fact you put whatever your own desires were above a huge track record of those groups being terrible. You still have to reckon with the fact you didn’t realize they were wrong, and were complicit in a lot of crimes.

This goes very far beyond “the action is terrible” and goes into “the system is rotten to its core, and you chose not to believe it, or to believe you could change what was built with blood.”

“Good” police officers get fired. If you try to question anything, if you try to say this action is wrong, you will absolutely get destroyed. Military’s much the same. You need some degree of buy-in to the concept of white supremacy to sign up for the military or the police, because you need to see their actions as not deal breakers instead of actions that violate multiple international laws.

In short: you need to see the people being oppressed as deserving of being oppressed to some degree in order to participate with police and the military.

Marginalized people can hold this belief, it happens. But that is a very sticky situation that outsiders shouldn’t touch.

It’s possible but difficult for you to write a white person having this sort of arc, but it would be extremely challenging to have it not come across as a white guilt story. To not have a socially aware audience roll their eyes at how long it took. You’d definitely not be writing a story with a diverse audience in mind, because you’d mostly appeal to those who saw the propaganda as just fine and not that bad.

This isn’t even getting into the oft-cited adage that boys who bully others become cops, while girls who bully become nurses. And the more police atrocities become mainstream news, the less and less people can convince themselves that becoming a police officer is a good thing.

Which brings me to the point of: how well-documented is this oppression? Is this character walking around in an oppressive situation like, say, pre-social-media where there was no direct access to the oppressed groups and you could close your eyes and look away even if it made national news? Or is this in a media connected world where these oppressed populations have a voice in the narrative?

The former has an angle of the character slowly realizing the horror and it’s slightly more forgivable for their early ignorance. But in any sort of world where there’s access to the people getting hurt? Things get more and more “ignorance is indistinguishable from maliciousness.” And keep in mind, these stories are read in the real world, where police brutality and war crimes go viral, and a lack of knowledge is getting harder and harder to defend as a position.

Media plays a huge role in shaping our perception of what’s happening. Cameras on a situation makes different activism tactics work, as we can see with how activism changed in the 60s and 70s as tv reached the masses. Social media has made it possible for you to look up firsthand accounts of discrimination within seconds.

This is a factor you are absolutely going to have to consider, when you want to look at how nice your hero is seen by marginalized or otherwise socially-aware people. If there is a way to find out how bad this superhero organization is before you sign a contract with them? Then that doesn’t look particularly good on the “hero”. You’d really have to establish them as super idealistic, super sheltered, super desperate, and/or just swallow the knowledge that they really don’t see anything that happens “over there to those people” as that bad.

All of the above is more than possible. And they’d still be seen as complicit no matter what justification you gave, because they are.

Does this mean all corrupt organization stories are off limits? No. The reason these stories have such deep cultural resonance right now is because of the propaganda I outlined above.

But you as the author are going to have to examine your own engagement with the propaganda narrative and do your own private reckoning so your own sense of guilt and compliance doesn’t bleed through the narrative too strongly, so you can tell a good story instead of an overt message story that’s you working out your own feelings.

By all means, write a story where police and the military are taken down, where propaganda is weaponized and the media is controlled (because that’s sure as hell the modern world).

But know that stories where the hero discovers the corruption already have a ticking clock because we, in the real world, are slowly being faced with a mountain of apathy instead of ignorance. The knowledge of oppression is out there so much that marginalized people are tired of the ignorance defence.

As the saying goes, “privilege is the ability to ignore the oppression of others.”

Propaganda, centralized media, and strategic cultural investment made it possible for police and the military to have a chokehold on their public perception. But that’s changing. The chokehold is starting to fade, people are starting to question their beliefs.

The past year has shown that knowledge isn’t the issue; it’s white supremacy. People don’t want to believe that any of this is that bad. People want to believe that oppression is justified, that if people just followed the law they’d be fine. They don’t want to question themselves. And marginalized people are tired of these narratives where, suddenly, people snap out of it. Because there was so much evidence to show it was bad, but it was only when you do one of the worst crimes imaginable that you realize this is bad? It’s only when it becomes personal that things are worth looking at critically?

No. And you need to examine where you are in processing your own complicity before writing a story where you’ve swapped around the ethnicities to try and distance yourself from the problem, where in the end you made the target the oppressor.

~Mod Lesya

#police brutality #oppression #arab #saudi arabia #military #superhero #superheroes #asks #violence #propaganda

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plus-size-reader · 3 years

Text

Curfew

Randy Meeks x Plus size!reader

Word Count: 3065 words

Warnings: none

Summary: The reader struggling when the curfew is put into place, but Randy has an idea that could make it a little better.

—————————————————————————————————

You were bored.

Woodsboro wasn’t a super happening place to begin with but now that the curfew was in place, it was even worse.

There was nothing to do, and with the additional stress that these recent murders had put on everyone, you were about to blow. The boys could see it, Tatum and Sidney could see it, and most important, Randy could see it.

It was only a matter of time before you absolutely lost it.

Your parents were taking this whole thing extra hard and basically had you on complete lockdown outside of attending school. They couldn’t imagine going through what Casey and Steve’s parents were going through right now, and they were scared.

Which was fair enough.

Everyone was scared right now, but you didn’t understand how putting you under house arrest was going to keep you any safer than you would be anywhere else. Casey was killed at home, after all?

If anything, you would be much safer in a group setting than you would be locked up in your house alone. Still, your parents had made themselves very clear where this topic was concerned. You were absolutely forbidden from attending Stu’s party, or any other party until the curfew was lifted.

It just made everything that much worse.

Parties, especially Stu’s parties, were one of the only things you were looking forward to as of late. Knowing that you couldn’t go to them was really starting to wear on you, and you were understandably let down by the whole thing.

...but it wasn’t just that.

Getting together with a big group of people, your age and ready to party, was an escape for you. With so much uncertainty going on and everything falling apart at the seams, you needed that normalcy to feel human again.

Not that you could really complain about that to anyone who could actually do something about it.

You knew that there was a very real danger out there and the only way to really be safe would be to stay inside your home where no one could get you but you just felt like your folks were taking it a little too seriously.

If everyone else was going to be out anyway, what different was it going to make, really? If anything, it made you a bigger target because you were one of the only people stuck in your house while everybody else was together.

To you, the logic was sound but to them, it was little more than a pathetic excuse to get out of the town’s mandated curfew.

Which it kind of was, but you couldn’t help but feel like they were being unreasonable. You were a smart, responsible young woman and you weren’t going to take any stupid, unnecessary risks. You just wanted to maintain some level of normal life.

You were tired of being stuck at home like a rat in a cage, never allowed to go out and do anything. It was a stark contrast to how you normally were, with a thriving social life and active party presence.

It was almost as if you were dead too, not to be dramatic.

This was just hard on you, and they weren’t making it any easier. You had to rely on your friends, now more than ever, and they were basically cutting off any contact you had with them to lunch at school and quick phone conversations.

No one would have just taken that and been happy with it. Certainly not within your tight knit group of friends.

You sighed, fiddling with your pen as you tried to remember all the things you needed to get done when you got home. You knew well enough to know that if you didn’t write it down now, you would never remember it all.

With everything else on your mind, school seemed like the least of your worries.

You were so enthralled, in fact, tapping your pen away on the table that you didn’t even notice at first when Randy came up and sat down beside you, taking note of how unhappy you were about everything going on right now.

He couldn’t blame you.

The male at your side was perfectly aware of how excited you had been for the parties the recent nice weather was bound to bring, and equally as aware of how bummed you were that your parents had put a kibosh on the latest shindig before it even had a chance to begin.

“You okay?” he hummed, startling you just a bit when you looked up to see him already sitting at your side, but the racing in your chest calmed down just as quick. No one really knew who was responsible for all these terrible murders but you knew in your heart it wasn’t Randy.

You had known him all your life and even if he was a little strange, he was the sweetest guy in Woodsboro. He wasn’t some natural born killer or a sociopath on a killing spree.

“Honestly, if I have to think about this anymore, my brain might explode” you allowed, leaning slightly into his side to take some of the pressure off your aching, tight muscles as you kept focus on your schedule.

All this stress had to be bad for your body.

Tatum seemed to think so, at least, warning you that if you didn’t learn to decompress somehow you were going to go prematurely grey and get crows feet under your eyes. While you weren’t sure how much you trusted her endless cosmo knowledge, you certainly didn’t feel the greatest.

This was all just a lot for one person to juggle.

Randy could see that much.

He had been watching you all day, moping around that you wouldn’t be allowed to go to Stu’s party and worrying about a huge midterm you had to take for your english class that would physically make or break your grade.

You were spreading yourself way too thin. Luckily, he had an idea of just how he could help you feel a little bit better without breaking your parents' rules.

He just wasn’t so sure you’d go for it once you found out just what he had in mind.

“I was thinking, maybe you’d wanna come over to my place later? I have tonight off so we could watch a movie or something?” he offered, trying not to come across as painfully awkward as he felt. Randy was your friend, and usually could talk to you no problem but what he was proposing was different.

The two of you had never really hung out, just the two of you, before.

You nodded, not even looking up from your notebook as you scribbled something down in black ink, likely a reminder to do your calculus homework based on the way your brow knit together as you formed the letters.

You were preoccupied, too in your head to really consider what was going on but he certainly wasn’t.

Randy was aware of every little movement you made, from the way your nose scrunched up as you concentrated on making sure all the due dates and assignments were right on your calendar to the way your shoulder rested gently against his side.

“Who else did you invite? You know Tatum always complains about the movies you pick” you reminded, thinking over all the times the six of you had tried to watch movies together in the past. She got bored of psychological thrillers and grossed out at the gorey slashers.

She was much more of a Meg Ryan fan herself, constantly pulling for the cheesy romance flicks that made you want to ralph. You couldn’t put it past her to make Randy grab a couple of sappy videos too, just in case.

If she was going to be involved in movie night, you were sure you’d have to shoot down a few of those crappy comedies before you could watch anything worthwhile.

Randy sighed lightly, doing his best to keep you from noticing as he thought about what his next move was. Clearly, you’d missed the point of what he was asking entirely, not that he could blame you.

He had never really been good at asking out pretty girls, especially not ones he;d known since he was in elementary school, so this was new for him as well. He just sort of hoped that you would catch his drift early so he wouldn’t have to clarify out loud.

The last thing he wanted to do was put you on the spot and make you uncomfortable.

“Oh, I was actually hoping it could just be the two of us. I know it's no Stu Macher party but it could be fun” he shrugged, this time almost wishing a giant hole would open up from under him so that he didn’t have to have this conversation.

He wanted you to say yes, of course, more than anything but he just wasn’t sure if it was going to happen and if it wasn’t, he wanted to know early on.

At least then he could have some dignity in this whole thing.

You stopped writing for a second, letting the meaning of his words sink in as you sat there, your left leg bouncing up and down to try and keep up with the racing of your thoughts. It had been going nonstop since you sat down, but now, it was just resting against his.

Was Randy hitting on you?

Randy Meeks, your childhood best friend who had never once made a move on you aside from calling you pretty in your winter formal dress in middle school?

It didn't seem likely, but it was also hard to misinterpret his words. That was about as cut and dry as a date invite could be, and if it had been coming from anyone else, Tatum and Sid would have surely confirmed it for you if you asked.

Not that you could ask either of them right now.

“You wanna watch a movie tonight? Just you and me, at your house?” you clarified, setting your notebook down beside you without a second thought in favor of looking him in the eye.

He was uncertain for a second, trying to read any cues of how you were feeling about that from your own expression but found nothing there, so he nodded.

“Like a date?” you hummed, the words barely leaving your lips as you spoke them, feeling silly at having to clarify at all but you couldn’t help it. If he wasn’t meaning it in that way and you took it like that, you risked making an even bigger ass of yourself.

...but if he did, you needed to know that too.

There was a light blush on his freckled face as he considered his options before he nodded again, giving you all the information you needed. Randy was definitely hitting on you, now all you had to do was decide if you wanted to.

A movie could be fun.

You and Randy had watched a hundred movies together before, with you sometimes staying after hours at the video store while he closed to just see the ending of Frankenstein's bride that you loved so much.

Usually, there were more people there, Tatum and Stu at the very least, with Billy and Sid joining in when they saw fit, but it couldn’t be so different to just be the two of you.

You loved spending time with him, so doing so under the context of it being a date couldn’t possibly change that up so much. This was just Randy after all, it wasn’t like he was some guy you’d only just met or some creep Tatum thought it was okay to set you up with.

...and you were sure that your parents would agree to it.

Spending a few hours at Randy’s house was vastly different than going to some house party and out of all your friends, you knew that they trusted him the most. If he said you were there, they would believe him which would cut down on the third degree.

There really were no downsides.

Besides, if you were going to go out with any of your friends, it would be him, even if Billy or Stu did happen to be single. You and Randy just had a lot more in common and you knew that he would never put you in any danger.

You trusted him, and you liked him.

If he liked you too, it only made sense that you had a movie night together, just the two of you.

Getting your parents to agree to letting you spend a few hours at Randy’s house wasn’t as easy a sell as you thought it would be but by the time he came to pick you up, he managed to convince them that it would all be fine.

He wasn’t going to let anything happen to you, and in all honesty, they believed it.

Randy had never given them any reason not to trust him and at the end of the day, they came to the conclusion that you did have a little bit of a point. Knowing that you were somewhere with someone else made them feel a little bit better than if you were home alone.

It brought some amount of comfort to know that Randy would be there with you. Besides, your mother was just so thrilled that he’d finally asked you out on a date that you were sure she would have agreed to anything.

That was how you got here in the first place, walking down the familiar aisles of the video store with Randy as you searched for something to watch. Between the two of you, you had basically seen all the good horror films that they had available.

Not that knowing that was stopping either of you from picking up title after title, looking them over incredulously as you searched for the perfect thing.

Initially, Randy was just going to pick something up on the way to get you but decided that this would probably be more up your alley first. The video store was only open for a short time today due to the curfew but that was more than enough time for him to find exactly what he wanted.

After all, there wasn’t a title in the store that Randy didn’t know by heart. In fact, he had likely put them each right where they were, in each of their respective spots on the shelf. That was literally all he did all day when he did work.

“What about this one?” you suggested, holding up a pretty well loved copy of night of the living dead happily for his approval. It was a classic, one that you had each seen a dozen times, but because of that, it was quick to go into the basket.

Then, after scanning the few horror aisles one more time, Randy settled on what he always settled on and plucked a copy of Prom Night off the shelf.

At this point, you were sure he’d rented that specific video nineteen times by now but didn’t bother to point that out. You knew that it was one of his favorite movies of all time and if that was what he wanted to watch tonight, you weren’t going to argue.

All you really wanted to do was spend the night relaxing with your best friend, on what was technically also your first date. It was a little bit of pressure, more so than you were used to, but nothing that you couldn’t handle.

At the end of the day, you loved Randy and this was just something else you could do together.

“Alright, are you ready to go? I’ve got plenty of good snacks at the house for us to munch on too” he promised, fully aware of just how you liked your movie nights to go down. That was something else the two of you had in common.

You were very particular about your movies, especially horror movies.

It was something he could appreciate, along with your sense of humor and heart of gold. All in all, when Randy actually stopped to think about it, he wasn’t sure why he’d waited so long to ask you to do this in the first place.

This was going to be awesome.

Randy’s house was nice, of course, well put together every single time you had been there but you couldn't really focus too much on that.

Instead, you occupied yourself putting the tapes into the player while Randy made popcorn in the kitchen. It was kind of strange for a few moments, as you sat waiting for him to get back, looking around the living room under such new circumstances.

You have been here a hundred times before.

You had sat in this exact spot plenty of times but tonight, it was so different. You had only ever been here before as a friend, normally with all your other friends there to keep you company even when someone had to leave the room but not anymore.

Right now, you were waiting here as a girl on a date, a date with a guy you’d known your entire life.

It was just so strange how quickly everything had changed. Just this morning, you and Randy were little more than friends, and now, you couldn’t quite be sure what you were. Not that you had too much time to consider that before he was back.

“I bring gifts,” Randy grinned, plopping down beside you on the couch, swamping the coffee table with bags of chips and assorted boxes of candy before handing you the big bowl of popcorn. Clearly when he promised snacks, he wasn’t kidding.

You watched him do a onceover of the spread he’d provided before he ultimately decided that it was going to be fine.

“Perfect, just what we needed” you smiled, relaxing even further into the couch next to him, getting ready to start whatever it was that was going on between the two of you. It was new, uncharted territory for the both of you but it wasn’t looking too bad.

A copy of Prom Night and some popcorn with Randy was perhaps the only thing that could make this whole curfew thing worthwhile.

#randy meeks #scream #horror #scary movies #randy meeks x reader #randy meeks x ps reader #randy meeks x plus size reader #randy meeks imagine #scream x reader #scream x ps reader #scream x plus size reader #scream imagine #horror x reader #horror x ps reader #horror x plus size reader #horror imagine

267 notes · View notes

renaerys · 3 years

Note

22. for reds 🤡

This is 100% not what you asked for (yet...👀), but I give you part 1 of what we're calling the Weird King AU. I'm turning this into a proper multi-chapter High School fic because I love you and I'd jump on any bandwagon for you.

xxx

Like most young, conventionally attractive Supervillains, Brick had made a bit of a habit of failing upwards. It was pretty easy in a town full of simpering morons content to project their own narrative assumptions onto him, and who was he to crush their dreams when they made his life a little easier?

For example, dating.

“You can tell me, you know.” His cute date, Tracy, sipped her milkshake across from him.

“Tell you what?”

She softened and reached her hand across the table. “Your tragic backstory. I’ll listen without judgment, I promise.”

Brick tried to think of something tragic, but it all seemed pretty underwhelming as far as Supervillain origin stories went. “You mean like how I was born in a toilet?”

She made an oh shape with her lips. “We all have those days where we feel like we were born in a toilet, Brick.”

He’d dated Tracy for three months before she broke up with him out of the blue in tears: sorry she couldn’t fix his baggage, she just wasn’t strong enough to handle all that tortured darkness, but she wished him nothing but health and happiness. Brick deleted her number from his phone and spent twenty whole minutes staring at the toilet in his bathroom, wondering what the lesson here was.

But everything changed when Mojo got out of prison and moved Brick and his brothers back to Townsville, where he enrolled them in the local high school alongside their former arch nemeses, the Powerpuff Girls.

Suddenly, everything Brick did pre-supposed ill intent. These people remembered him as the pest who had graffitied their local monuments and blown up their cars and endangered their children. They held no love for him, and at best they feared him. This was not Citiesville, where he’d been a tall, cold glass of Voss water in a sea of recycled Dasani.

He found himself thinking about his birthing toilet again as he stepped into the cafeteria alone and the conversation quieted down as his new classmates watched him from the safety of their tables. His next moves here were critical. He was no longer at the top of the food chain, but fear and mystery surrounding his origins and character gave him a certain power over his peers.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of social suicide, I will fear no cringe,” he said to himself.

The jocks were out. Capable though he may be, Brick was not much of a team player unless there was a blood contract involved requiring his participation on pain of satanic torture. The drama kids were also a hard pass, not because he thought drama was lame, but because they had barely noticed him walk in, and Brick did not have the energy to deal with people more self-involved than himself. Some of the unaffiliated tables could be safe, but without a good understanding of the nuanced social dynamics in the high school, he could be heading toward irreversible doom, and that was a risk he was not willing to take.

He saw his salvation just ahead. It was the only option, all else being equal. In an environment where he couldn’t be certain of his baseline status and potential for upward mobility, there was greatness to be had only by association and certainty only in the devil he knew.

Brick helped himself to the empty seat directly across from Blossom Utonium to a chorus of gasps and staring.

Blossom did not startle like her table mates had. She watched him critically behind a head full of bangs as she balanced her soup spoon in her hand. “Really.”

Brick unwrapped the burrito he’d purchased in the lunch line and brandished it before him. “Really.”

He took a bite of the burrito. It was not hot enough. The two girls to Blossom’s left whispered to each other about that bad boy and he’s hot, though.

Blossom daintily spooned soup into her mouth without spilling a single drop as she continued to watch Brick for signs of his imminent dark side transformation.

The guy next to Brick was brave enough to ask him what his next class was. Brick had a mouth full of disappointing burrito, so he passed the guy the printout of his class schedule in lieu of answering.

“Wow, all APs, huh? Hey, we’re in U.S. History together next period, nice. I’m Mike Believe, by the way. Brick Jojo, right?”

Brick didn’t answer him immediately on account of the burrito currently occupying his mouth hole, and Mike took it the wrong way.

“Oh, yeah, we all know who you are. Blossom sort of filled us in.” He winced like he’d inadvertently revealed a terrible secret.

Brick swallowed his food and washed it down with a gulp of water. “Saves me some time.”

Mike looked super relieved. “For sure! Hey, I could lend you my notes if you want to catch up. Gershwin’s giving a quiz on the Progressive Era on Friday, and she’s a hard-ass who definitely won’t care that you just transferred…”

Brick chewed on his lunch as Mike continued to talk at him about classes and other vaguely helpful, albeit uninteresting, information. But Mike seemed normal enough, a little chatty but not in an overeager sort of way. Blossom was no longer clocking his every move and seemed to be absorbed in her friend’s latest swim team cheating scandal, until Brick reached for his water bottle and she suddenly laser-focused on his wandering hand.

Her keen attention to him was honestly flattering, if expected. It was in his nature to be noticed, and in this narrow respect she was no different from anyone else whose head he turned. If she chose to feed her interest with the flames of suspicion, then it was no difference to him.

But if she was anything like him—and on a chemical level she was probably the closest to him that a person could get—he suspected it took tremendous effort to hold her full and sustained attention. The world they inhabited was as vapid and mundane as the humans that surrounded them, and even the most gracious of gods grew bored of worship. Which explained all the smiting and fucking and generational curses upon entire households in everything from Greek mythology to the Old Testament.

Brick was pretty deep into a fantasy of Blossom going full Ixion and the Wheel on the swim team when Mike tapped his shoulder. “You ready to go?”

It took him a moment to realize the bell had rung and he had a class to get to—AP U.S. History with Mike, apparently. Brick gathered his tray and his bag and followed Mike. When he looked back at the table, Blossom was already gone.

xxx

That whole first week was painfully boring. No one bullied him, or pranked him, or picked a fight with him, of course. But no one really approached him, either. His brothers were more determined to make an effort. Boomer announced he was trying out for the soccer team because there was no rule saying a Super with extremely well documented ties to active criminals and the forces of Hell couldn’t kick a ball around a field. Butch had gotten himself invited to a midnight screening of Snakes on a Plane in some rich kid’s home movie theater, but only after that same kid had accidentally spilled milk on Butch and burst into tears in front of a cafeteria full of Juniors and Seniors. Brick declined the invitation Butch extended to him. He had that AP U.S. History exam to study for on Friday, anyway.

He shared all of his classes with Blossom. Even in the classes where her assigned seat was behind his and he couldn’t see her, he could feel her lobotomizing stare at the back of his head whenever she glanced up from her notebook. And while Mike’s notes were perfectly adequate and the friendly gesture counted for more than the content (a gesture Brick would not soon forget), there was a far more efficient way to accomplish his goal of murdering the class averages while also taking the edge off his loner doldrums.

“Can I borrow your class notes?”

Blossom rose from her seat and pulled her hair tie out to re-do her extremely long ponytail. She held the elastic between her teeth as she worked. Her teeth were very straight, he noticed. Some pretty nice girl-teeth, generally speaking.

“Which class?”

“All of them.”

He watched her wind the elastic around her hair with quick, adroit fingers. “That’s a lot of notes.”

“You’re the top of every class. No point in asking anyone else.”

She moved toward the hall. He followed her out. “Why would I help you?”

A legitimate question delivered without venom. Unlike her sister Buttercup, who’d “run into” Brick after school on Monday and told him to watch his back, Blossom didn’t have to do anything but maintain a general proximity to make her superiority complex known. Which was the kind of flex he could fuck with.

“Isn’t helping people sort of your mandate?”

They had arrived at her locker, which she opened with enough force to rattle the hinges. “I help the helpless. Are you helpless, Brick?”

Brick smiled at her baiting. Had she ever actually said his name at a normal volume before? It sounded good even in her baseline bitch timbre. “Critically helpless. I’m the new student who transferred in the middle of the semester, and you’re the only person who knows me.”

A couple other students clearly trying to get to the lockers Brick was blocking hovered just out of reach. They whispered to each other, but neither of them actually worked up the courage to ask Brick to move. He ignored them.

Blossom rummaged in her locker for the binder she would need for the next class. “Make friends.”

“Working on it.”

The locker door slammed and she faced him. There was something confrontational in the way she held herself before him that kicked him in the nuts back in time thirteen years to their more uncouth days when all he wanted to do was destroy her so he’d be the only one. Now they were older and wiser and he actually did need her notes to study, so destroying her was not high on his list of priorities.

“You want to be my friend.”

“We have so much in common.”

“So do lions and hyenas.”

“Both are apex predators, so.”

She took a step closer and peered up at him. Brick did not move, although he wondered what was so interesting about his face. She probably just thought he was hot. She was probably as bored as he was. She probably—

“You have lettuce in your teeth.”

Brick pulled back and covered his mouth on instinct. God fucking damnit.

Blossom was already walking away from him by the time he’d picked the food from his teeth. “I’ll expect my notes back in mint condition before first period tomorrow morning.”

Brick pressed a fist against the lockers and quietly fumed. “Dumbass…”

“Um, sorry, but do you mind…?”

The student who’d been waiting for her locker space to clear up had her palms up as if to assuage a feral stray. Brick pushed off the lockers, but his fist left a dent where he’d unleashed some of his impotent self-pity. He looked back at the girl, and she shook her head.

“It’s fine! It, uh, it happens sometimes.” She pointed a couple lockers down to Blossom’s, which was dinged up worse than the others.

Brick stared at Blossom’s locker, and then back at the girl. Her narrow, dark eyes were wide, but not out of fear. She was waiting for something, and like an idiot it took him a moment to catch up. “You’re trying to make me feel better about fucking up your locker.”

She laughed nervously. “I mean, it’s really fine! You just looked so miserable for a second there, and I just thought…”

Great, he was moping so hard he had an audience.

The five minute warning bell rang, and a flood of students rushed past them on their way to fourth period. Brick stepped aside so the girl could get to her locker.

“Hey, you’re the new guy, right?”

The new guy, yeah. How quaint. Except, she was waiting for a response, which wasn’t the absolute worst thing that had happened to him all week.

“Brick,” he said. But of course, she already knew that, and she was just being nice.

“I’m Kim. Kim Chan.”

“Okay.” He didn’t have anything else to say to her, so he decided to get his shit and get to his next class.

“Welcome back to Townsville, Brick.”

Brick shoved his hands in his pockets and stalked off. It didn’t occur to him until later that Kim was the first and only person who had properly welcomed him back home.

#powerpuff girls #powerpuff girls fanfic #blossick #ppg reds #ppg blossom #ppg brick #september fic prompts #weird king au #i have no idea what i will call this yet #but it'll make its way to AO3 and it'll be a Thing #i have to think of themes and shit now #i came here to shit post and here we are with another full on Reds fic

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white-collar-lawmen-and-conmen · 3 years

Text

Pulse Point

A/N: Requested by anonymous. Warning for canon-typical violence; minor character death, nightmares, and post-traumatic stress. Also: borrowed Dr. Sweets from the show Bones.

Summary: A near-death experience leaves you with recurrent nightmares. Neal offers some comfort.

Word Count: 5,154

The steady beeping of hospital equipment was driving you insane. It had been hours now of nothing except the monotonous noise of your own heartbeat. If it didn’t shut up soon, you would claw your ears off. With a stiff body and an ache that penetrated down to your bones, you forced your body upright and pinched open the pulse monitor on your right hand.

You let out a relieved sigh as the equipment went silent and dropped yourself back onto the well-padded pillows behind you. The pulse monitor clattered to the floor on its long white cord and you settled down for a nap. The ache in your bones made you feel heavy, like lead. There was nothing quite like a well-deserved nap.

In mere seconds after you had closed your eyes, the equipment started acting up again, this time blaring one long, constant shriek. The surprise made your heart skip a beat, but your eyelids were too heavy to look and see what had happened. Then your heart kept skipping, and your throat tightened. You couldn’t breathe. Your chest burned. It wasn’t a heartbeat; it was a flatline.

You were dying.

The leaden feeling in your body doubled. Your muscles didn’t respond to trying to move and you couldn’t force your lungs to take in a breath. Footsteps pounded around you, incoherent shouts going in one ear and out the other. You were desperate for your paralyzed eyes to open. Was this what you’d have for the rest of your life? Nothing but darkness and unintelligible, mind-numbing noise, punctuated by electrical humming and the pain of a vice clamping itself again to your finger?

The flatline paused for a second. Your ears rang and you thought, for a moment, that you were safe, your heart was beating again. Instead, your stomach twisted and you realized you were losing feeling in your toes. No blood. No life. When the screech of your flatline came back again, it was louder, more piercing. The shrillness reminded you of screaming.

As soon as you remembered it, it was there – the same screaming as before, somewhere in your room, echoing from every corner. In the next pause of the flatline, it turned into a hoarse shriek and a plea. “No! Please!”

You couldn’t hear anything underneath it, no more overlapping voices, and your panic increased. Where were the doctors? Did they think you were gone? Help me!

Your eyes opened with a sudden snap, the droning of your alarm clock replacing the flatlining of the monitor.

As you stared at your ceiling, you panted for breath. Rationally, you knew, you had probably never stopped breathing, but in the panic of your nightmare, it felt like you’d been smothered. Terror powered your desperate gasps and convinced you that your feet and hands were numb, even as you could feel that one foot was poking out from the end of your blanket. After a long moment, you dared to move your arm, ready to scream if you weren’t dreaming after all and still couldn’t move. You turned your alarm off easily.

Soft rain pattered against the glass windows, creating shiny-looking streaks as droplets collected and streamed down the side of the building. It was much more soothing than the silence that usually reigned in Dr. Sweets’ office when he was waiting for you to talk. Maybe he should invest in one of those noise machines with rain as an option. You thought about making the suggestion, but knowing him, he would probably call you out on the procrastination, or deflection, or whatever else he wanted to call it.

You broke the silence. “I’m certain I can wait you out for the next…” You checked the clock. “Twenty-seven minutes.”

Dr. Sweets raised his eyebrows, still leaning his head on a closed fist, propped on the arm of his chair. “I’m equally certain I can recommend you remain on desk duty for the next…” He pretended to check his watch. “Twenty-seven weeks.”

You scowled.

Psychological clearance was a bureau mandate after something traumatic occurred during the course of the job. You’d been lucky enough not to need it up to this point, but after… that, you hadn’t been given a choice. Dr. Sweets was a highly qualified psychotherapist, and you were sure that he did amazing things to help a lot of people, but so far you felt neither amazed nor helped.

“Agent L/N, you went through something incredibly harrowing that you were very close to not walking away from.” The psychologist finally took his head off his fist and put his arm down in his lap. At least he’d taken the bait and you weren’t the one starting the discussion. “You were a half-inch or couple minutes from bleeding out.” He pinched his fingers to demonstrate as if you didn’t have a scar on your body that distance from your femoral artery. You’d never be able to forget what half an inch looked like.

“But I did walk away, and the person who did that to me is in prison for the rest of his life.” You crossed your legs, trying to look more comfortable than you felt. You weren’t sure how effective you were going to be at convincing a therapist that you didn’t need therapy, but it was worth the try.

He looked utterly unconvinced. Actually, the jerk looked like he knew exactly what you were trying for and thought it was cute that you thought you could trick him. “Justice, or even retribution, which it feels like you’re leaning towards, doesn’t erase a wrongdoing or its associated harm.”

“I didn’t erase it, I healed from it. I took medical leave, now I’m back.”

“Physically, you healed. It takes a lot longer to heal mentally from those kinds of wounds.”

“Does it?” You challenged.

“I think your nightmares speak for themselves,” Dr. Sweets said pointedly.

You glared at him, at a loss for a quick comeback. You knew you didn’t look like a million bucks, but you hadn’t thought it was that obvious you were losing sleep. If he knew, then the coworkers who spent a lot of time with you must know, too. Especially Neal – nothing got past him. Oh, that was embarrassing.

The nightmares had been recurring for weeks now. They had started once you had a return date to the office, but after actually resuming your work, they had increased in frequency and intensity. They weren’t identical, but they did all share some similarities: some fatal injury had you dying, alone, in the dark, like you almost had in real life. You never got to the point of actually dying in your dreams, you didn’t think, but you were just fine with that. They were bad enough as they were. Yes, they were a sign of trauma and anxiety. But if your mind didn’t heal itself from weeks safe at home, then you knew returning to normal as fast as possible was probably your best bet at getting over what had happened.

“I’m not your enemy here,” the therapist said to you more gently. You couldn’t say he was heartless, even if you didn’t enjoy the half-hour sessions where he tried to talk about your feelings whether you wanted to or not. “My goal is the same as yours. I want you back at work, safely, able to sleep through a night so you don’t jeopardize yourself or the people around you.”

You let out a deep sigh. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to tell me about the affect this has had on you.” Dr. Sweets encouraged, not for the first time. “You’ve accepted what happened. I can see that. But the next step is processing what it means for you, as an agent, as a person… maybe both.”

You felt helpless. What was that supposed to mean? You couldn’t very well tell him you were terrified your job was going to actually get you killed or cost more lives on your watch. When your employer paid your therapist’s bills, you couldn’t fully trust doctor-patient confidentiality. Maybe it was just paranoia, but you couldn’t bring yourself to risk it.

“I can’t sleep,” you admitted. Your tone sounded mournful. In a way, you were mourning for a time when you could sleep through the night and enjoy your days at work. It wasn’t like white-collar crime was your passion, but you did like puzzles, and you did like being around the people you worked with, especially a certain blue-eyed felon. “I keep having nightmares that I’m… injured, and I’m alone.”

“Your wire was jammed and your team didn’t hear you signal for backup.” Dr. Sweets talked slowly, patient and pragmatic as he validated your nightly anxieties. “You expected help, but they didn’t know to come.”

“They did come,” you said with a shrug. “It just… almost wasn’t in time. I know it wasn’t their fault.”

Your words about time felt glued into your ears. Yours had come really close to running out. And for what? Insurance fraud? No amount of money justified murder, and you likewise couldn’t put a price tag on a life. So why were you so eager to leap back into the same job that almost cost you yours?

It was something you had been mulling over since it happened. Your job was dangerous. You had always known that. You’d been shot at, been near explosives… your partner had been abducted by a murderer not that long ago, and your best friend had had guns in his face so often that, honestly, you’d lost count a while ago. Somehow it just hadn’t clicked, you supposed, that you could legitimately die. You were protected by the bureau and your body armor, until that wasn’t enough. Other agents had learned that lesson in a much harder way; being confronted with that was hard to simply get over.

Apparently, your use of the word “fault” led Dr. Sweets to talk to you about guilt and anger around the incident. You didn’t blame your partner or feel angry, except at the man who shot you, but you let him continue around your noncommittal, half-assed answers. You knew he at least suspected you were putting him on again, but you also knew you hadn’t given him much to work with. Then again, he didn’t call you on your bullshit replies, either, so you weren’t quite sure what he thought.

While Dr. Sweets had yet to approve you for field duty, there was still plenty to do at your desk. You pretended not to notice the itch in your legs to go somewhere while you kept yourself busy, preparing documents, performing research, helping delegate and manage case files, and topping off your team’s coffee whenever they got low. You had become even more of a desk jockey than Neal; at least he got to go out with Peter when given the green light. You missed outings with your partner, or really with any other agent.

Comparing yourself to a caged tiger was likely on the dramatic side, so you put it out of your mind and refused to feel sorry for yourself. You understood the protocols and the routines and they were for your benefit as much as the bureau’s. Besides, your team wasn’t treating you like you were fragile or demoted. They leaned on you to help just as much as they ever did, the assignment of duties just went a little differently.

You doodled a cat on your notepad during a meeting. Everyone had great ideas and you tossed in some ways you could contribute when you’d been quiet for a while. Peter’s proposed field op was going to go smoothly. Odds were high that any hiccups could be taken care of by Diana’s swift running of interference. Neal was raring to go and Jones was a little too excited to play the part of an intimidating brute, in your opinion, and Peter was appropriately apprehensive (someone ought to be, after what had happened to you).

“Let’s sleep on it,” Peter decided after looking out the window and seeing how low the sun had sunk. “If we’re all still in agreement in the morning, we’ll set the ball in motion.”

Jones graciously commented, “Good idea. We can all think on it.” He was probably the most cautious of all of you.

“Y/N?” Neal asked. You immediately looked up from your (admittedly lopsided) cat drawing. The forger was still in his chair, even while the others were pulling on their coats and blazers. “You’ve been quiet. Do you have any concerns?”

You shook your head, but not too quickly that it raised suspicion. You could get away with doodling – Peter often turned a blind eye to it; after several years, he’d developed a soft spot for you – but only if you were still paying attention and participating, so you didn’t want to give him a reason to suspect you weren’t.

Peter, Diana, and Jones all said their goodbyes. The two younger agents left the room, but Peter lingered at the doorway.

“Neal, do you want a ride?” He offered.

Neal looked from you to Peter, and then shook his head. “Thanks, but I’ll find my way. You don’t want to be late for roast,” he added when Peter looked unconvinced. After glancing at you, your partner decided that he really didn’t want to be late for roast and left without another look over his shoulder.

Now that you were alone, Neal softened his expression. “Seriously, Y/N, what’s going on?”

“I told you, I’m not worried. We’ve thought of just about everything we can predict.” You said with a straight face, pretending not to know that Neal wasn’t just talking about this specific case anymore.

He wasn’t having it. “Don’t lie to a conman, Y/N,” he chided you with a small, fond smile. “Come on. It’s not just today, you’ve been quiet ever since you came back. It’s not like you.” You raised an eyebrow and pursed your lips, uninterested in talking. Neal reached partway across the table for you but stopped there. It was an invitation but not a command. “I’m worried about you.”

The thing about your history with Neal was that it was a close one. You went from strangers when Peter got him out of Sing Sing to best friends within the span of two years. You trusted him more than you trusted just about anyone, and there hadn’t been a time when one of you needed the other and was turned away. He didn’t come to you when he was upset – seeking out reassurance and comfort was not Neal’s strength, because it involved professing vulnerability – but he never turned you away when you came to offer it, either. Now it seemed to be his turn to do the offering, as he had realized over the last few weeks that you weren’t going to ask.

You reached for his hand and silently sighed in relief at how solid and warm it was to the touch, so unlike the few dreams where you screamed and cried for someone to help and found yourself grasping at tricks that weren’t there. Neal turned his hand to hold yours and gave it a squeeze.

“It’s been so hard, Neal,” you told him reluctantly. “I have no idea how you do it. How you just walk away from all the close calls.”

Neal frowned a little. “I don’t just walk away,” he objected. “I have bad nights. I have bad days. Sometimes I have a whole bad week, or a few bad months.” You knew the latter was a reference to losing Kate, and you sympathetically gripped his hand tighter. “But, you know… there’s always something I can find to focus on instead, and after a while, the things go in the past. I let go.”

That advice was entirely unhelpful. “I’ve been trying to let go,” you said sourly. It wasn’t directed at him, exactly, but moreso at your brain, which was failing in its task of moving past what happened. “It’s not working. I can’t sleep. Sometimes I don’t think I can breathe.”

“It’s not easy,” Neal agreed, stroking the back of your hand with his thumb. It was an intimately affectionate gesture that comforted and eased the nerves beginning to bubble in your stomach. “Company helps. The reminder that I have backup, even when it doesn’t come right away. I’ve got Peter, Moz. You.” He met your eyes with a small smile and raised your hand to his lips, gently kissing your knuckles.

“Company?” You echoed uncertainly. If you were unconscious, how was company going to make a difference to what you dreamed about? Then you remembered what you had said to Dr. Sweets about your nightmares always ending with being alone. If you knew, on some level, that you weren’t alone, maybe you would feel safer. “Like, overnight?”

His expression didn’t change to give away whether you were right or wrong. Instead, he just asked, evenly, “Is that what you need?” The way he looked at you then, without judgment in his eyes, but with determination in the set of his jaw, you just knew that whatever you said you needed, Neal would move a mountain to give it to you.

“I’m not sure, but… maybe?” You hesitantly guessed. If it worked, it would be worth the awkwardness. Even just one night of solid sleep would do wonders for how you felt, and it wasn’t like it would be the first time you had stayed with Neal overnight. Long marathons on slow weekends, and the less pleasant nights after Kate’s death, meant he kept an extra toothbrush and a set of your pajamas in his penthouse.

“Okay,” he said right away with nothing but quiet matter-of-factness. It was so comforting to be proven right that you could rely on him to help you with what you needed. His tone just said, you need this, so we’re doing it, full-stop. You just hoped you were right, both so you could finally go eight hours without fearing for your life and so you weren’t inconveniencing him for no reason. “Let’s get dinner on the way. We don’t have to talk about it,” he quickly said, seeing your face. “Whatever you need.”

Everyone should have a friend like Neal, but everyone should find their own, because this one was all yours. If it weren’t for the table in the way, you would’ve launched yourself at him in a tight hug. As it was, you settled for a squeeze of his hand and a grin as wide as you could muster. “Dinner sounds great.”

The stickiness of your pants along your thigh made your hands shake, unable to bring yourself to look at your palms. You knew what you would see all over them. The fire lancing up your thigh told you what you already knew. So did the weakness in your body and the fog in your mind. It was done. The hourglass on the desk was trickling through the last of its sand. Moretti was nowhere to be seen. You couldn’t even die in the presence of a murderer.

There was screaming coming from another room. It was the desperate wail of another agent begging for their life. “No! Please!”

“No,” you mumbled, using all of your energy to turn your head to the doorway. He couldn’t… not now that you were down… you couldn’t even raise your voice to cry for help. You were completely helpless. You couldn’t save him.

Your chest burned with the effort of your heart, ironically helping you to bleed out faster. Your breaths came labored, and then they couldn’t come at all as your vision faded. The dark carpet blurred from a mass of pilled fibers into a solid navy sea. The pain in your leg was excruciating, it was all you could feel; the idea of feeling peace ever again slipping away.

Screaming. Banging. Footsteps. More screaming. Pounding. Shouting. It was all indistinguishable, a mess of men’s voices and loud gunshots. Then, you heard it. Just your name, barely audible above the rest, in a voice that made you strain to see past the blackness.

“Y/N!”

You’d give the rest of your precious seconds away just to see him one last time, just to know he was beside you and you weren’t alone.

“Y/N!”

Footsteps came closer and the pressure on your chest intensified. The blood loss made you dizzy and your body shook.

“Y/N!”

You jolted awake, eyes snapping open in time to see Neal leaning out of the way just in time to avoid your hand flying at his face. You processed slowly that his hands were on your shoulders – had he shaken you? – and it was still dark. You could barely see his face, but his figure was lit from behind by the lamp next to his bed. You could tell from his messy hair that he had been sleeping not long ago, and you felt awful for waking him up.

After cursing, you sat up and gripped the warm blanket on your lap tightly. “I’m sorry,” you said remorsefully, feeling like a fool. Not only hadn’t you been able to sleep through the night, but now you’d ruined his rest, too. You cussed again. “I really hoped being close… just not being at my apartment, alone…”

It had felt like a safe bet off to a good start. You had gotten dinner together near Gramercy Park, then watched a lighthearted movie before turning in for bed. Neal offered to let you take his mattress, but you didn’t want to put him out and you had slept over enough that he didn’t feel like a bad host for letting you insist on the sofa. You’d been out by ten, but now you could guess it had been less than four hours. Your heart was still racing, your leg still tense with an imagined pain.

“It’s okay,” Neal said, sounding unsettled. He kept his hands on your shoulders like he was keeping you grounded on the earth. “Don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”

Neal’s eyes must have already adjusted to the low light, because his aim was spot-on when he lifted a hand from your shoulder to cup your neck instead. His profile ducked and you felt his lips land on your forehead, checking your temperature, signalling forgiveness, and administering reassurance all at once. He rubbed his thumb across your jaw as he stood up straight, releasing you, and walked away around the couch.

You put your legs down in front of you and rubbed your face, exhausted mentally and physically. Helplessness made you want to cry. Time wasn’t healing. Sleeping pills just made it harder to wake up, letting the nightmares ravage your psyche for longer. Not even the proximity of someone you trusted and adored was enough to let go of the past.

The light in the kitchen came on, bright enough to illuminate the studio but far enough away not to be blinding. Neal came back to the couch holding a bottle of water and offered it to you before sitting down. He looked so adorable, still sleepy and with a bit of pink in the side of his face from sleeping with his arm under his pillow. You scolded yourself for even thinking about how cute he was when you were the one who had woken him up.

You sipped at the water. It was so nice and smooth on your throat. You felt fine, now that you were awake, but the vividness of your nightmares always left you feeling parched and you always expected swallowing to hurt as if you had strep. Neal leaned into the back of the couch and put his arm up along the cushions. You capped the water, bent your knees to pull your feet back up onto the furniture, and let yourself lean into his side. Neal dropped his arm softly on your shoulders, holding you in a tender sideways hug.

“I’m sorry,” you apologized again after a couple of minutes. You felt much better, much faster than you usually did, thanks to him, and if you were being fully honest, you were not ready for him to get up and go back to bed, but it wasn’t fair to ask him to stay up cuddling you at god-knows-what-time just because you were a wreck.

“I told you, it’s okay,” Neal said, his voice firm. If you apologized again, you figured he would start scolding you for it, so you let it go.

“I just – I should’ve expected this,” you said with frustration, feeling like you were confessing to knowingly bothering him. “I haven’t been able to sleep well in ages. I keep having these nightmares, I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

Neal was quiet for a few seconds, making sure you had said all you were inclined to. Then, knowingly, he asked, “This is about the Moretti case, isn’t it?”

“I can’t let it go,” you said with a whimper. “It won’t leave me alone. Every night, it’s a little bit different, but at its core it’s always the same.”

Neal’s voice cutting through the fog of your nightmare had been a saving grace, giving you peace even in your unconscious, but now that you were awake, you realized with clarity that his voice saying your name wasn’t the only voice you could make out. In fact, you always heard the same thing, every night, no matter what else changed.

“What’s the same, Y/N?” Neal asked you, trying to help. He stroked your upper arm with his open hand. You were already shaking your head. Neal could comfort you all he liked, but he couldn’t bring back the dead. In grief and shame, you turned your head and bent your neck to bury your face in his shoulder. Neal tilted his head so his cheek was resting gently on your hair. “Tell me, darling,” he coaxed in a whisper.

You felt like someone’s hands were wrapped around your throat, strangling your reply. “Agent Flynn,” you answered dryly, barely more than mouthing his name. “In every nightmare, I hear… I hear his last words. Begging Moretti not to take the shot.”

Neal was quiet for a long time, but never pushed you away. He held you closer when you started to shake, crying against him as quietly as you could manage. The artist rubbed your arm and periodically kissed your head, but he knew that there was nothing he could say to erase the horror of what you had heard or take away the guilt that you had survived because Moretti was distracted by taking out the other agent.

Moretti was part of a family gang, often in conflict with the Barellis, who, interestingly, paid a little deference to the white-collar division ever since you and Peter had recovered a stolen Book of Hours. The Morettis had no such connection or gratitude, so their response to the FBI sticking their nose into an embezzling scam was violent and bloody. Moretti shot you in the leg and intended to finish you off, but one of his own men had reported you came with someone. He left you to bleed out, and only a few rooms over, you had heard Flynn’s pleas – and the subsequent gunshot. Your team, wising up to the dead signal, arrived for a takedown before Moretti could make his way back to you, but it was too late for your teammate.

Neal shifted after what felt like forever, only to pull you closer to his chest and wrap both arms around you. You trembled in his embrace, but that just made him hold you closer, like you were delicate and breakable. When he next talked, his low voice was quivering, just like your body.

“I thought we lost you,” he said, cupping the back of your head in a gentle hand. He massaged his fingers into your scalp, even as he kept you cuddled in his lap. “I thought I lost you, Y/N. Two gunshots. I thought…” He struggled to find his words and you hiccuped, trying to stop crying. “I was the one who found you, and I was so scared I was too late.”

You sniffled and uncrossed your arms to melt against his chest and hug him tightly around his waist instead. “I didn’t know you…”

“We found him first, but you weren’t there and I needed to find you.” Neal now sounded equal parts frightened and furious. “If he had taken you away, I would’ve…” He shook his head and pressed his forehead to yours, as desperate to be close to you as you felt to be close to him. “I would’ve shattered. I can’t lose you, Y/N. I just can’t lose you, too.”

“I’m so glad I didn’t die,” you blurted, almost in a sob. You felt so safe with him, but now you knew for a fact that your own safety wasn’t what had been tormenting you. It was a nearly debilitating case of survivor’s guilt. “I just wish I hadn’t been the only one who survived.”

“No one wants that,” Neal promised you, untangling his hand from your hair and stroking it down instead. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could fix this and take it away, but all I can do is be here and hold you and tell you it’s going to be alright. It wasn’t your fault.”

You sniffed. Neal’s words were more of a comfort than you had thought they would be. They changed nothing about the situation, but… you weren’t alone. You hadn’t been alone since you met him. You just agonized that Flynn had been. “Neal, I can’t lose you, either. I love you, you’re… you’re who I’m going to heal for.” You had to find a way.

Neal seized your lips with his in a searing kiss. It wasn’t as sexy or patient as you may have imagined, but you gripped his shirt and gave as good as you got, and wow, the man gave verygood. It was a desperate kiss, needing to bring you together and reaffirm your life. To you, it was the seal of a promise that you wouldn’t let the past crush your spirit. When you could sleep through the night and had a handle on your post-traumatic stress… if he would just be patient, you would be his the way you wanted him to be yours.

He released you to breathe, eyes opening wide as if he only just realized what he had done. Before he could pull away, you pressed your forehead to his again, urging him to stay close. Your breaths mingled between you and you were sure you could feel his heart beating through his chest.

“I love you, too,” he said once he had caught his breath.

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