#and i built the old system all on my own because nobody cared before | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bnbc · 1 year

Text

Bite My Shiny Metal Ass (Kou's body lore dump)

As a disclaimer, back in the days when I started working on Kou’s post-canon story, I decided not to stick with canon in terms of technologies. I bought this ‘we can’t find a donor for you’ thing and built everything around her getting a full-metal body, yet, I needed her to be capable of certain things (read: to get laid without plugging cables in 100500 ports) so I basically made her an artificial human instead of traditional fullborg. New-gen borg it is! So if something of my ‘tech’ contradicts the canon, it’s because I decided not to limit myself by sticking with it.

Story >>> canon accuracy, this is the way.

So, the body. I headcanon that long ago along with developing relic technology Arasaka also started working on creating a perfect fake human body. First, because it’d make a relic tech more salable: you don’t need to care about finding a proper donor, so you could get those clients who don’t have blood related relatives or actually care about them (yes, Saburo, it is a dick for YOUR summer hat). Second, the tech basically consists of the three major parts — the body itself, the digital 'soul', and the code which make it all work together — and since all three would be Arasaka’s property it’d make such clients totally dependent on the corporation.

They advanced fast with the code and chrome parts but were stuck with one issue: the engrama still needed an old good meat brain to parasite into, and no matter how they tried, they couldn't crack brain cloning. So, they made someone else do the work for them.

After the game events Biotechnica went against the Soulkiller tech, claiming it unethical, and decided to cut their piece of the new market by providing 'morally correct' full cloned bodies for engrammas to claim. They were successful but they didn’t last long enough to taste the fruit of their labor: in the final stages of testing their facility in Brazil was raided, and brain-cloning tech was stolen. It caused Biotechnica’s collapse, and a lot of their technologies ended up in the free market. Brain cloning, though, was kept by Arasaka for themselves.

Early prototypes of new-gen borgs were quite… straightforward, and basically they were just nicely looking human shaped pieces of chrome. First tests showed insane rates of cyberpsychosis cases, so to make it salable, they had to advance both chrome and code further, creating a body capable of perfectly imitating organic processes. It worked, but the code was too complicated for meat brains to process, so the body’s passengers should’ve either gone through the long and unpleasant process of learning how to do it themselves or to rely on Arasaka’s satellite support system for the rest of their lives.

So, when it came to bringing Kou’s back to life, they had it all well tested, yet there was a challenge, as well.

The thing is she was put in her shelf in Mikoshi without plans of resurrecting her: they tried, tho, first with finding a donor, then with a borg way, but her DNA samples were no good for growing a healthy cell colony. However there was an opportunity, that with a clean sample of Johnny’s DNA, they would be able to get all the ‘trash’ out, and eventually the sample was delivered. (This part was created before I found out that there is a story behind real Johnny’s body and shit, so I stick to the oil field grave thing here)

But why spend so much money and effort on some mercenary whose biggest strength was in slicing people left and right? Kou’s aint a big brain netrunner after all, and all her skills were gone, wasted with the muscle memory of her original body. Obligation to nobody trash girl obviously wasn’t a thing that bothered Saburo much. Kou would’ve stayed on her shelf forever, if not for her allies.

Hanako Arasaka was introduced by the plan and managed to support it in front of her Father: Kou will be brought back, but not as a charity. She’d be in debt of Arasaka who’d owned both her body and soul, and would have to work this debt out as their agent. Everyone involved understood that such debts could not ever be worked out (you always can add some more to it, charing Kou for fixing broken parts, you know), but it was better than nothing, and the person behind the project idea promised to make sure that Kou would eventually agree to these terms.

They had another plan in their mind, but nobody should’ve known about this.

Back to the chrome! Till then Arasaka was producing only 'civil' bodies, because most of the SYS participants were rich people, they simply didn't need battle implants and software. But Arasaka agents were another story, they needed to be capable, yet they should've been sane enough to solve problems more complicated than ‘go and kill everyone’. So, they’ve made some changes.

I.e. Kou’s realskin is more dense then the common one, yet it’s so high quality you can’t distinguish it from human flesh my touch. (I HC tho, there are some hints, like her skin barely holds smell on it, doesn't change its color when she’s supposed to blush or get pale etc). But even with this update she needs to wear armor and subdermal implants because it turned out that being able to bleed is an essential part of staying ‘human’. She also have her legs augmented for jumping and keeping the balance; her reflexes are boosted to insanely high speed, she’s got a chrome spine to carry her frame (she weights fairly lot), a flagman cyberdeck (which is laughable because her netrunning skill are joke), optic and, of course, blades — and lots and lots new lines of code to make it all operating together.

The body itself is a very complicated tech, whose first goal is to pretend to be real. It doesn’t mean that she has all body systems duplicated as they’re in the human body, but her ‘organs’ serve the same goal. I.e. her ‘liver’ doesn’t look like a liver, it’s a system of sensors and filters that keeps the body clean. Her digestive system is a combo of ‘battery’ and ‘human guts’: she needs calories to keep her meat brain alive but doesn't really need to eat, technically, but eating helps her to stay sane. Yeah, this poor borg girl still has to poop. I’m so sorry, baby.

Of course, this fine piece of tech wasn’t given her on pure trust basis, and even tho she had no choice but to agree with her contract terms, her supervisor, the person who came up with idea to bring her back as ‘saka agent, got granted the access codes that could let them interfere in her processes or even cut her off the satellite support, making her body just a pile of dead metal.

Ah well, did I mention it was Goro?

He never abused it though, even when she tried to kill him, he broke both of her arms to stop her instead of using the magic button. I mean, it would be hella disrespectful to treat her as she's a machine, and Goro is not like this, right? xD Later, after their escape, Kou got her codes changed first with her fixer team, then, once again, in Night City. After that she gave new codes to Goro, just in case. He never abused them then, either.

So, one last topic to cover is THE LOOK. When I was creating the story I was living with the idea that ‘saka didn’t care about Kou’s appearance even barely resembling her old one, so they just took a standard body made for the inner market for her. But when I created her in her new body in game she turned out to be crazily pretty. So, I have altered my story a bit: since she’s supposed to be a corporation property she should've looked accordingly, so they designed her frame and face to be an Arisaka cover girl.

Goro kept as much distance from the process of her creation as he could, but he had to interfere once. Arasaka, of course, installed its own optic into Kou’s eye sockets, but on his last visit to Night City Goro’s got “Kiroshi” with Kou’s favorite lenses integrated. Vik gave them to him in exchange of the promise that when she’s back to life she’d be looking on the world through her own eyes. This is the episode he isn’t proud about, because he basically had to psychology crash the medtech for them to change her optics and to erase all the data about it from the databases. This really wasn’t cool (because it was fukking HOT).

And, of course, as anyone with such an amount of chrome Kou's balancing on the verge of cyebrpsycosys. She, basically, has it, but mostly in remission, yet if she stops caring about 'body maintenance (aka skipping meals, abusing sleeping system, or even killing way to much people) she's at risk of having cyberpsycitic strikes. They usually come as auto-aggression and are shaped in attempts to get rid of human likeness 'because we all know who I really am". But gladly, since she still has something (someone) to care about she always gets back to her normal state and her 'stupid routine'.

Ooof, I guess that's all.

#cyberpunk 2077 #fem v #oc koulin #female v #gigilpunk #cyberpunk v #cyberpunk oc #street kid v #gigilpunk: lore and meta

40 notes · View notes

qqueenofhades · 4 years

Note

Re: the post you reblogged about Bush. I'm 21 and tbh feel like I can only vote for Bernie, can you explain if/why I shouldn't? Thanks and sorry if this is dumb or anything.

Oh boy. Okay, I’ll do my best here. Note that a) this will get long, and b) I’m old, Tired, and I‘m pretty sure my brain tried to kill me last night. Since by nature I am sure I will say something Controversial ™, if anyone reads this and feels a deep urge to inform me that I am Wrong, just… mark it down as me being Wrong and move on with your life. But also, really, you should read this and hopefully think about it. Because while I’m glad you asked this question, it feels like there’s a lot in your cohort who won’t, and that worries me. A lot.

First, not to sound utterly old-woman-in-a-rocking-chair ancient, people who came of age/are only old enough to have Obama be the first president that they really remember have no idea how good they had it. The world was falling the fuck apart in 2008 (not coincidentally, after 8 years of Bush). We came within a flicker of the permanent collapse of the global economy. The War on Terror was in full roar, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were at their height, we had Dick Cheney as the cartoon supervillain before we had any of Trump’s cohort, and this was before Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden had exposed the extent of NSA/CIA intelligence-gathering/American excesses or there was any kind of public debate around the fact that we were all surveilled all the time. And the fact that a brown guy named Barack Hussein Obama was elected in this climate seems, and still seems tbh, kind of amazing. And Obama was certainly not a Perfect President ™. He had to scale back a lot of planned initiatives, he is notorious for expanding the drone strike/extrajudicial assassination program, he still subscribed to the overall principles of neoliberalism and American exceptionalism, etc etc. There is valid criticism to be made as to how the hopey-changey optimistic rhetoric stacked up against the hard realities of political office. And yet…. at this point, given what we’re seeing from the White House on a daily basis, the depth of the parallel universe/double standards is absurd.

Because here’s the thing. Obama, his entire family, and his entire administration had to be personally/ethically flawless the whole time (and they managed that – not one scandal or arrest in eight years, against the legions of Trumpistas now being convicted) because of the absolute frothing depths of Republican hatred, racial conspiracy theories, and obstruction against him. (Remember Merrick Garland and how Mitch McConnell got away with that, and now we have Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court? Because I remember that). If Obama had pulled one-tenth of the shit, one-twentieth of the shit that the Trump administration does every day, he would be gone. It also meant that people who only remember Obama think he was typical for an American president, and he wasn’t. Since about… Jimmy Carter, and definitely since Ronald Reagan, the American people have gone for the Trump model a lot more than the Obama model. Whatever your opinion on his politics or character, Obama was a constitutional law professor, a community activist, a neighborhood organizer and brilliant Ivy League intellectual who used to randomly lie awake at night thinking about income inequality. Americans don’t value intellectualism in their politicians; they just don’t. They don’t like thinking that “the elites” are smarter than them. They like the folksy populist who seems fun to have a beer with, and Reagan/Bush Senior/Clinton/Bush Junior sold this persona as hard as they possibly could. As noted in said post, Bush Junior (or Shrub as the late, great Molly Ivins memorably dubbed him) was Trump Lite but from a long-established political family who could operate like an outwardly civilized human.

The point is: when you think Obama was relatively normal (which, again, he wasn’t, for any number of reasons) and not the outlier in a much larger pattern of catastrophic damage that has been accelerated since, again, the 1980s (oh Ronnie Raygun, how you lastingly fucked us!), you miss the overall context in which this, and which Trump, happened. Like most left-wingers, I don’t agree with Obama’s recent and baffling decision to insert himself into the 2020 race and warn the Democratic candidates against being too progressive or whatever he was on about. I think he was giving into the same fear that appears to be motivating the remaining chunk of Joe Biden’s support: that middle/working-class white America won’t go for anything too wild or that might sniff of Socialism, and that Uncle Joe, recalled fondly as said folksy populist and the internet’s favorite meme grandfather from his time as VP, could pick up the votes that went to Trump last time. And that by nature, no one else can.

The underlying belief is that these white voters just can’t support anything too “un-American,” and that by pushing too hard left, Democratic candidates risk handing Trump a second term. Again: I don’t agree and I think he was mistaken in saying it. But I also can’t say that Obama of all people doesn’t know exactly the strength of the political machine operating against the Democratic Party and the progressive agenda as a whole, because he ran headfirst into it for eight years. The fact that he managed to pass any of his legislative agenda, usually before the Tea Party became a thing in 2010, is because Democrats controlled the House and Senate for the first two years of his first term. He was not perfect, but it was clear that he really did care (just look up the pictures of him with kids). He installed smart, efficient, and scandal-free people to do jobs they were qualified for. He gave us Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to join RBG on the Supreme Court. All of this seems… like a dream.

That said: here we are in a place where Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren are the front-runners for the Democratic nomination (and apparently Pete Buttigieg is getting some airplay as a dark horse candidate, which… whatever). The appeal of Biden is discussed above, and he sure as hell is not my favored candidate (frankly, I wish he’d just quit). But Sanders and Warren are 85% - 95% similar in their policy platforms. The fact that Michael “50 Billion Dollar Fortune” Bloomberg started rattling his chains about running for president is because either a Sanders or Warren presidency terrifies the outrageously exploitative billionaire capitalist oligarchy that runs this country and has been allowed to proceed essentially however the fuck they like since… you guessed it, the 1980s, the era of voodoo economics, deregulation, and the free market above all. Warren just happens to be ten years younger than Sanders and female, and Sanders’ age is not insignificant. He’s 80 years old and just had a heart attack, and there’s still a year to go to the election. It’s also more than a little eye-rolling to describe him as the only progressive candidate in the race, when he’s an old white man (however much we like and approve of his policy positions). And here’s the thing, which I think is a big part of the reason why this polarized ideological purity internet leftist culture mistrusts Warren:

She may have changed her mind on things in the past.

Scary, right? I sound like I’m being facetious, but I’m not. An argument I had to read with my own two eyes on this godforsaken hellsite was that since Warren became a Democrat around the time Clinton signed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, she sekritly hated gay people and might still be a corporate sellout, so on and etcetera. (And don’t even get me STARTED on the fact that DADT, coming a few years after the height of the AIDS crisis which was considered God’s Judgment of the Icky Gays, was the best Clinton could realistically hope to achieve, but this smacks of White Gay Syndrome anyway and that is a whole other kettle of fish.) Bernie has always demonstrably been a democratic socialist, and: good for him. I’m serious. But because there’s the chance that Warren might not have thought exactly as she does now at any point in her life, the hysterical and paranoid left-wing elements don’t trust that she might not still secretly do so. (Zomgz!) It’s the same element that’s feeding cancel culture and “wokeness.” Nobody can be allowed to have shifted or grown in their opinions or, like a functional, thoughtful, non-insane adult, changed their beliefs when presented with compelling evidence to the contrary. To the ideological hordes, any hint of uncertainty or past failure to completely toe the line is tantamount to heresy. Any evidence of any other belief except The Correct One means that this person is functionally as bad as Trump. And frankly, it’s only the Sanders supporters who, just as in 2016, are threatening to withhold their vote in the general election if their preferred candidate doesn’t win the primary, and indeed seem weirdly proud about it.

OK, boomer Bernie or Buster.

Here’s the thing, the thing, the thing: there is never going to be an American president free of the deeply toxic elements of American ideology. There just won’t be. This country has been built how it has for 250 years, and it’s not gonna change. You are never going to have, at least not in the current system, some dream candidate who gets up there and parrots the left-wing talking points and attacks American imperialism, exceptionalism, ravaging global capitalism, military and oil addiction, etc. They want to be elected as leader of a country that has deeply internalized and taken these things to heart for its entire existence, and most of them believe it to some degree themselves. So this groupthink white liberal mentality where the only acceptable candidate is this Perfect Non-Problematic robot who has only ever had one belief their entire lives and has never ever wavered in their devotion to doctrine has really gotten bad. The Democratic Party would be considered… maybe center/mild left in most other developed countries. It’s not even really left-wing by general standards, and Sanders and Warren are the only two candidates for the nomination who are even willing to go there and explicitly put out policy proposals that challenge the systematic structure of power, oppression, and exploitation of the late-stage capitalist 21st century. Warren has the billionaires fussed, and instead of backing down, she’s doubling down. That’s part of why they’re so scared of her. (And also misogyny, because the world is depressing like that.) She is going head-on after picking a fight with some of the worst people on the planet, who are actively killing the rest of us, and I don’t know about you, but I like that.

Of course: none of this will mean squat if she (or the eventual Democratic winner, who I will vote for regardless of who it is, but as you can probably tell, she’s my ride or die) don’t a) win the White House and then do as they promised on the campaign trail, and b) don’t have a Democratic House and Senate willing to have a backbone and pass the laws. Even Nancy Pelosi, much as she’s otherwise a badass, held off on opening a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump for months out of fear it would benefit him, until the Ukraine thing fell into everyone’s laps. The Democrats are really horrible at sticking together and voting the party line the way Republicans do consistently, because Democrats are big-tent people who like to think of themselves as accepting and tolerant of other views and unwilling to force their members’ hands. The Republicans have no such qualms (and indeed, judging by their enabling of Trump, have no qualms at all).

The modern American Republican party has become a vehicle for no-holds-barred power for rich white men at the expense of absolutely everything and everyone else, and if your rationale is that you can’t vote for the person opposing Donald Goddamn Trump is that you’re just not vibing with them on the language of that one policy proposal… well, I’m glad that you, White Middle Class Liberal, feel relatively safe that the consequences of that decision won’t affect you personally. Even if we’re due to be out of the Paris Climate Accords one day after the 2020 election, and the issue of climate change now has the most visibility it’s ever had after years of big-business, Republican-led efforts to deny and discredit the science, hey, Secret Corporate Shill, am I right? Can’t trust ‘er. Let’s go have a craft beer.

As has been said before: vote as far left as you want in the primary. Vote your ideology, vote whatever candidate you want, because the only way to make actual, real-world change is to do that. The huge, embedded, all-consuming and horrible system in which we operate is not just going to suddenly be run by fairy dust and happy thoughts overnight. Select candidates that reflect your values exactly, be as picky and ideologically militant as you want. That’s the time to do that! Then when it comes to the general election:

America is a two-party system. It sucks, but that’s the case. Third-party votes, or refraining from voting because “it doesn’t matter” are functionally useless at best and actively harmful at worst.

Either the Democratic candidate or Donald Trump will win the 2020 election.

There is absolutely no length that the Republican/GOP machine, and its malevolent allies elsewhere, will not go to in order to secure a Trump victory. None.

Any talk whatsoever about “progressive values” or any kind of liberal activism, coupled with a course of action that increases the possibility of a Trump victory, is hypocritical at best and actively malicious at worst.

This is why I found the Democratic response to Obama’s “don’t go too wild” comments interesting. Bernie doubled down on the fact that his plans have widespread public support, and he’s right. (Frankly, the fact that Sanders and Warren are polling at the top, and the fact that they’re politicians and would not be crafting these campaign messages if they didn’t know that they were being positively received, says plenty on its own). Warren cleverly highlighted and praised Obama’s accomplishments in office (i.e. the Affordable Care Act) and didn’t say squat about whether she agreed or disagreed with him, then went right back to campaigning about why billionaires suck. And some guy named Julian Castro basically blew Obama off and claimed that “any Democrat” could beat Trump in 2020, just by nature of existing and being non-insane.

This is very dangerous! Do not be Julian Castro!

As I said in my tags on the Bush post: everyone assumed that sensible people would vote for Kerry in 2004. Guess what happened? Yeah, he got Swift Boated. The race between Obama and McCain in 2008, even after those said nightmare years of Bush, was very close until the global crash broke it open in Obama’s favor, and Sarah Palin was an actual disqualifier for a politician being brazenly incompetent and unprepared. (Then again, she was a woman from a remote backwater state, not a billionaire businessman.) In 2012, we thought Corporate MormonBot Mitt Fuggin’ Romney was somehow the worst and most dangerous candidate the Republicans could offer. In 2016, up until Election Day itself, everyone assumed that HRC was a badly flawed candidate but would win anyway. And… we saw how that worked out. Complacency is literally deadly.

I was born when Reagan was still president. I’m just old enough to remember the efforts to impeach Clinton over forcing an intern to give him a BJ in the Oval Office (This led by the same Republicans making Donald Trump into a darling of the evangelical Christian right wing.) I’m definitely old enough to remember 9/11 and how America lost its mind after that, and I remember the Bush years. And, obviously, the contrast with Obama, the swing back toward Trump, and everything that has happened since. We can’t afford to do this again. We’re hanging by a thread as it is, and not just America, but the entire planet.

So yes. By all means, vote for Sanders in the primary. Then when November 3, 2020 rolls around, if you care about literally any of this at all, hold your nose if necessary and vote straight-ticket Democrat, from the president, to the House and Senate, to the state and local offices. I cannot put it more strongly than that.

#politics for ts #long post #anonymous #ask

20K notes · View notes

arcadialedger · 3 years

Text

Please note that I am most likely leaving this platform. I am done being abused. But first? We need to have a discussion. A discussion about hate and bullying in fandom.

All online-- I encourage you to read my story below. Reblog and spread awareness. The Dragon Prince fandom especially -- I implore you read my words, every single one of them. The short of it is that I am done.

This all began with losing and being blocked by a friend because I shared something they disagreed with. I don’t care what you feel about my initial reaction to this (which I’ll explain below) -- I’ve apologized for not handling the situation correctly. But I will not be shamed for speaking my mind and standing up for myself.

Because no human being deserves to go through what I have endured since last summer.

Following the “callout” post made about me by one of, if not the largest blogs in this fandom, I received hundreds of threats, harassment messages, and death threats. Messages and posts telling me to kill myself were also prominent, on a multiple times a week basis for awhile.

Messages from people who were well aware I have struggled with being suicidal. Due to one of their favorite Dragon Prince blogs speaking out against me, they thought it was okay to suicide bait me.

And it worked. I already struggle with hating myself, am already insecure, and being flooded with these comments which, while I made mistakes, did nothing to deserve, drove me to try and take my own life after years of progress in my mental health.

Mind you, this is like a 200 follower to 4k follower power dynamic. Which yes, plays a role-- because when you have a large following and influence, you have power. Yet the person behind this had the gall to claim Tumblr clout isn’t real.

People blocking and condemning others instantly at your word? Is power. If people read your words and are influenced, or have their minds changed, or buy or don’t buy something, etc.-- you are an influencer. You have power. And when you’re one of the largest blogs in a fandom, you have a LOT of power.

So take responsibility.

I was hurt because I lost a friend who I had chatted with for months, did a podcast with, and was generally not only one of my favorite blogs but the center of my experience in the Dragon Prince. I may not have been perfect in my words, but when I was asked why I was quiet/ inactive, I explained how I was hurting, anonymously. I was understandably in pain and upset. I had been cut off for just having a different opinion on a matter, for thinking differently. Even though it was within their rights to block and do so, it felt wrong and it weighed on me.

Is that such a crime?

The callout post and previously described abuse followed, lasting for months until later in the year (this began in June, or around then). It also included screenshots of tweets, when this user does not have Tumblr, and they have stated to have screenshots stored up on their computer of my various posts and interactions. This is creepy behavior, and freaked me out. I felt like I was being stalked, “evidence” being filed away for the very purpose of being used against me.

I eventually talked things out with the blog per recommendation of my therapist, and thought all would be fine. For a little while, it was. I largely stayed off of Tumblr to heal. Once in awhile I would have a rough, tearful night because something reminded me of what I lost, but I would make it through. Overall, I was making progress.

Then? My Twitter got hacked by one of the people sending me hate. For what had turned out to be much. And after they tweeted some purposefully incriminating and bigoted things to make me look bad, I came home from a weekend in the mountains to a shitstorm.

Twitter has a love hate relationship for me and I barely opened the app unless actively chatting with a friend. So when I saw 700+ notifications, I was surprised. It had never happened before.

I began to scroll through, and when I saw what had happened, I ran to the bathroom and threw up.

I had lost over half of my followers and a solid 60% of previous Twitter mutuals had blocked me. But worst of all, I had hundreds of hate tweets directed at me replying to the hackers tweets. Messages had been sent in DMs and accounts blocked, followed, and unfollowed as well.

If you have never felt that loss of agency-- that sickening feeling of words you never said next to your profile-- be glad. Because it is traumatic. I value my words. I value what I have to say. And having that taken from me was worse than anything I had been through here on Tumblr, outside of the suicide baiting (the most direct attack to me and my emotions/ insecurities throughout this entire ordeal). Further, this hacker had clearly stalked my tweets based on some of their comments.

Hundreds of tweets bashing me, calling me aphobic slurs (knowing I am asexual mind you, as it was in my bio), making fun of my appearance and targeting all of the insecurities which lead to my first suicide attempt in high school, and taking/ editing images of my face and mocking them. This all culminated in a doxing threat-- a doxing threat which made me feel unsafe on a campus I had already been sexually assaulted on. I was once again, after starting the healing process, thrusted back into the darkest time of my life and spiraled into anxiety and depression. I cried a lot overwhelmed by it all, had difficulty sleeping, and felt sick. I started fall semester and couldn’t concentrate on school. I was a mess.

I had once again been condemned, this time for something I had no part in. I tried to example what happened but nobody listened. I had been hung without trial. People were understandably confused, and my entire reputation on the platform, and my page, became a mess of lies, misunderstandings, and more.

If you don’t know the feeling of already hating yourself and being insecure, and having these beliefs reinforced and spread by hundreds publicly across the internet? Of already feeling lonely and unwanted and having the one space you thought you had taken from you? Consider yourself lucky.

I had a lot of voice actors and creators following me-- accounts I interacted and greatly cherished my mutual with. A handful of them unfollowed, understandably. This online hate mob was sending messages to people demanding they unfollow me, including some of these creators. They had no idea what to make of this mess or what was real and true and just didn’t want to deal with it. Most of the others just stopped interacting with me. @aaronwaltke (tagging so those who don’t follow already click and do so, because he is absolutely fantastic-- he’s a writer for ToA) who had followed me on the platform, graciously wished me peace with the entire situation after I checked to make sure he had not been subjected to messages or hate, either from my hacker or other accounts. His was the greatest compassion I got on Twitter, before I ultimately ended up just having to delete.

I lost podcast deals because of this with Adrian Petriw, Aaron Ehasz, and Justin Richmond. I do not blame them one bit and would have done the same in the confusion not wanting to get dragged into anything.

Only to have one of the friends I lost who helped start this interview these very people on their own podcasts. A slap in the face. A zine I had bought to support them came to my door, with the front page proclaiming to “spread a narrative of love.”

I was never granted that chance. That compassion. I had the vultures sent after me with no mercy. And anyone who has been through online abuse and systemic harassment knows just how much it feels like they’re slowly but surely picking at your flesh ( a metaphor I used in one of my old, since deleted posts discussing the situation, and still find accurate), wearing you down until you have no strength left.

Make no mistake, my story is not a one off situation. Many share the same tale of abuse and being driven off of platforms that once gave them great joy. These attacks are coordinated, systemic, and common hobby for these people-- who largely claim to be loving and accepting of all. They are a cyberbullying phenomenon which has risen with the presence of fandom on the internet. And I want to make clear, with current discussions of “cancel culture”, I mean nothing political in that statement. Some might call my experience cancel culture, but I don’t.

It’s just bullying. It’s just hate. These people get off on ruining people’s lives.

And my life was greatly set back and ruined. I had a stain on my past in fandom I could never be rid of. I had to shut down my podcast, took time off of all social media, and most of what I had built, most of my growth, was taken from me while those who incited and/ or spread hate thrived and continued to grow and find success. That was the greatest sting of all.

I asked the one previous friend who hadn’t blocked me, but had just stopped interacting with me (which I understood and respected, and also greatly respected her perspective, help, and support though this situation in which she largely unfortunately ended up in the middle) for help after explaining everything, and got nothing. They didn’t seem to care, and just blocked me on all platforms. Once in awhile, I would find I was cut off from yet another old friend, or a blog that I had never interacted with before but clicked into, interested. It hurt being cut off, unable to fully interact with the fandom, but I could move on.

That pain would never go away, but I made clear I did not blame them for the actions of those who abused, harassed, and threatened me. I also made it clear they did not owe me anything, including unblocking.

I just wanted to move on peacefully, but those with the power to enable that did not wish to help. I slowly, when I felt ready, began to be more active on Tumblr again, and once again the hate started up.

Sometimes when I was hurting, I expressed my pain and loss to my followers just to reach out, because I was sad. I had no idea how to rebuild from all that had happened. This got me more hate an accusations of emotional manipulation and gaslighting. I had no idea what to do, and got trapped in a cycle of needing to talk about it, and getting hate and backlash, but not knowing where else I could turn.

My doxer came back into my asks, ultimately making me switch schools, and refueled the drama. Speaking up about this got me more backlash-- mostly accounts reblogging (one with tags saying “fuck you”, despite not knowing the full story, and commenting and then blocking me so I could do nothing to respond or get it off of my page. I deleted all posts of the matter, as requested by these people (who validly pointed out they were in the main fandom tags, which I hadn’t thought of and understood), and hoped to move on.

But it hasn’t stopped. I have been beaten down and emotionally bruised for months. I have had my life and safety threatened, my education and by extension life path altered, and lost work (podcast) opportunities due to this-- alongside the irreversible emotional damage from trauma and abuse. My mental health issues and insecurities-- which I have been very open about to destigmatize the subjects and encourage conversation-- were actively targeted to inflict the most pain possible.

And I can’t even talk about it, without enduring more hate and accusations of “playing the victim”.

Death threats, suicide baiting, doxing, months of bullying and harassment to the most vile degree, which a lot of these people don’t know about because they don’t even bother to read my words. Yet I’m playing the victim.

And the accusations of bigotry and being hateful hurt, because it couldn’t be further from what is in my heart. I believing in love and acceptance of all. I don’t know how many are religious here, but I found God after my first suicide attempt and that is what his word has taught me.

I’ve been through too much in life to tolerate this, for lack of a more eloquent term, bullshit. I know what abuse and victim blaming looks like when I see it. And in my 20 years of life, I have gone through too much: constant ridicule and bullying, suicide attempts, sexual assault, major spinal surgery, to just be stomped over and not stand up for my right to basis human decency.

I refuse to put up with this, so unless I get an apology and some semblance of justice for everything I have been through, I am leaving. I will not participate in a space run by hate and toxicity. I will never claim to be perfect, and I have apologized for my mistakes and wrongdoings. Now, hold those who did this accountable. If you’re reading this you know very well who it was, and I am not naming them for those who don’t. Because at the end of the day I still send nothing but love and wish no ill will towards them.

But I’ll be damned if I don’t expect accountability of one of the greatest influencers in the fandom for their complacency in abuse, threats, suicide baiting, and and absolute ruining of my life and online experience. They enabled this and were well aware they had the power to stop it-- to ask their followers to stop-- and did nothing. They didn’t care-- about a human’s life and well being.

@dragonprinceofficial, are you aware that this is what many of the fans of your show, which preaches love and an end to the cycle of vengeance, do to others? That this is happening in your space? If you stand at all by the values you preach, condemn it. @staffTumblr/ @supportTumblr-- shame on you for allowing this abuse to happen and ignoring my reports. Shame on you for permitting these people to operate in your platform and for being okay with hosting hate. People have been driven to suicide on your website-- I am one of the lucky ones.

If you care at all about humanity and stand against this behavior, reblog and spread awareness. Share my story so I may not happen to anyone else. Tag @dragonprinceofficial until they notice and speak out.

This is my story, and so many others. Make sure it doesn’t happen ever again. No human being deserves to be treated how I was. Everyone deserves compassion, decency, and respect. And everyone deserves a place in fandom. Do better. If you want to reach out to me DMs are open, as well as my email, which is attached to my account. Until this change happens and I am given the support/ help needed to safely function on this platform, this blog will not be active outside of that.

Thank you all of the many accounts who have supported me, and I am working on getting back to all who have reached out! Your love means the world. You know who you are, and I don’t want to tag in case people come after you for showing me kindness. I am sorry if this is goodbye, to all that have enjoyed my blog. I enjoyed it for a long time too. I loved sharing my passion for stories, culture, having a space where I could analyze and discuss my favorite things. I loved getting to share what I had to offer with the world, having fun and posting jokes with my unique sense of humor. I loved interacting with intelligent people/ fellow fans and discussing my favorite stories, offering each other new insights and growing together. I loved the many, many kind and wonderful people who reached out to me in a variety of ways and provided support and friendship.

In the end, it just isn’t worth all of this pain and trauma, and I know when to put my foot down. I don’t want pity, I don’t want apologizes, and I’m not a martyr. I just want my story to make a difference-- to spur positive change in fandom culture/ spaces. I will be tagging all fandoms in which I have seen this kind of abuse present as well, to reach as many as possible.

Be safe, and be kind.

- The Arcadia Ledger/ Ryn/ Katie, signing off.

154 notes · View notes

sullustangin · 3 years

Text

Fearful Avoidant Attachment and the Single Spy

Caveat: I’m not a counselor of any sort, and I’m applying labels to fictional characters. Don’t take this too seriously.

This post has been kicking around in different forms in my prompt document for awhile. I will start posting my Yavin fic this weekend. A major element of this fic will be the dynamic between Theron and the playable character/love interest. Their interactions will be informed by how I view his attachments. I’ve put some of this into the fic series already.

“Attachment” in the Star Wars universe is the idea, according to George Lucas, that Jedi should love everyone but not get attached. “Attached” in this context is possession, greed, being willing to do things for individuals rather than the greater good, and ultimately the fear of loss. Attachment is a negative concept in Jedi philosophy.

However, I would argue that while this philosophy is in the back of Theron’s head, Jedi attachment concepts are not what makes Theron’s personal life messy. It’s the personal context surrounding that teaching and his life events that shape this. So let’s look at real life attachment theory.

In its most basic form, attachment theory is the idea that children need to develop a positive relationship with a caregiver to turn out ok. If the child is neglected, then they will have problems forming healthy attachments to others. There’s a lot of caveats to this theory. Some put the threshold of ‘must have positive relationship by x age’ to age 2 or age 5. Others state that this is problematic, because if a child loses their caregiver and passes into the hands of a less affectionate or downright abusive caregiver, then their positive attachment formation by age x doesn’t count for much.

There are several different types of attachment that a person can have. A secure attachment is what most healthy relationships are rooted in. People feel safe and secure within themselves and within the relationship. Jedi can be attached in this fashion, even if they don’t call it this; the Jedi have orderly boundaries and a clear understanding of what their associations entail. They have care systems for younglings and padawans, which were like pre-modern apprenticeships. They are secure within themselves as Jedi and in their relationships outside the order. They are at peace.

An insecure attachment has a flaw in it; something is wrong in how the person relates to themselves and others in relationships, platonic, romantic or otherwise. One type is dismissive or avoidant; the attachments are actively avoided, so the person is often isolated and rejects others and their friendly overtures. Another type is anxious or preoccupied; people tend to get very clingy or possessive with anyone they latch onto, which can cause the relationship to self-destruct (hi, Anakin).

Then there is fearful avoidant attachment, the label I think fits Theron Shan, our favorite high-quality spy and absolute emotional disaster. In theory, Theron tries to avoid deep emotional attachments because he’s scared of being left behind or not having those attachments reciprocated. At the same time, he desperately wants those attachments and relationships, but the potential of failure makes him avoid or even sabotage the relationship. That results in an on-going war between Theron and his feelings. To quote Psychalive, “the person [he wants] to go to for safety is the same person [he is] frightened to be close to. As a result, [he has] no organized strategy for getting [his] needs met by others.”

Why does Theron have attachment issues?

Some accuse Satele Shan or Jace Malcom of being “bad parents.” There’s a problem with this premise: although there is a biological relationship, neither Satele nor Jace had a parent-child relationship with Theron. Jace didn’t even know Theron existed until the child was 26, so he couldn’t act in any capacity. Satele gave Theron up to be raised by someone else; she opted out of the role of mother and did not talk to him as mother-and-son until Theron was 26. There isn’t an abusive or neglectful relationship here because there isn’t a relationship, period. Much like romantic relationships, it’s better to have no relationship than a bad one. Jace and Satele didn’t raise Theron. They were strangers to him until he was an adult. They were never his caretakers. Who did Theron have attachments to?

Theron was raised by a Jedi named Ngani Zho, who had been Satele Shan’s master when she was a padawan. After Satele gave birth in a cave on some planet, Zho took the child and raised him as his own son. This was irregular, honestly. Jedi younglings that express some sort of control over the Force are typically put into a creche at the Jedi Temple; we’ve seen this in the Star Wars prequel films. Guss Tuno references this in SWTOR, as he was chagrinned to be in class with a bunch of five-year-olds in bathrobes. Theron was raised by Zho directly and they were constantly traveling, based upon comments we read in The Lost Suns comic and in the novel Annihilation. Theron never entered the creche because he never manifested signs he was Force-sensitive – not even a little like Guss.

Zho traveled with Theron until the boy was an adolescent. Then, Theron was told by Zho to travel to the Jedi Temple at Haashimut to receive more training; he could do no more for him. The trip through a desert nearly killed the boy. When Theron had recovered, it fell to Master Till’in to tell him he would not be a Jedi. Ever.

Instead of telling Theron or notifying Satele about the boy’s lack of Force aptitude, Zho sent him onward and then disappeared. There is no indication that Zho told anyone where he was going or why. When Theron met Zho again at age 23, the Master’s mind was scrambled and confused; he couldn’t give any answers to Theron about anything. Was there a mission he had been set on? Or did he just wander off on his own?

For storytelling purposes, it’s convenient to pair Zho’s departure with the aftermath of the Treaty of Coruscant. In the year Theron turned 13 (3653 BBY), the Great Galactic War ended with the Treaty of Coruscant, wherein the Sith Empire enforced demands on the Republic. The Sith won. Zho leaving could be tied to this (through a mission or quixotic urge), but the source material isn’t clear on the timing.

Theron’s life suddenly became very uncertain. His entire life had been built up to becoming a Jedi. To some extent, even though he hadn’t done anything wrong, Theron probably felt like he was a failure. We know he tried to fix this; in The Lost Suns, he acknowledged pursuing access to the Force through the Matukai Force tradition – being an ascetic. In Annihilation, he recalled and took particular umbrage at the “arrogance” of the Jedi – those that made him feel like any other path was second (or third or less)-best. This diminished over time, but the revelation about his lack of Force Sensitivity probably left Theron feeling very insecure about himself and who he was as an adolescent/young teen.

In terms of his relationships, Zho was gone with no forwarding address. The man Theron called his father was no longer reachable, and for another ten years, there would be no closure as to what happened to him. Zho had actively endangered Theron by sending him through a desert to Haashimut. Did he gamble that the boy’s Force Sensitivity would manifest in a life-threatening crisis or something? Who knows? Theron never went into the Jedi creche, so he didn’t have close peers or friends beyond pen pals at best. Theron had not spoken to his bio parents at all to this point, and he probably didn’t know many (if any) non-Force Sensitive kids. With his expulsion from Jedi society, Theron’s entire relationship network was gone.

This is important to understand -- Theron had been raised to not have attachments that would lead to selfishness or fear of loss, but he was raised to be able to love and care for others. He lived in a structure that fostered good psychological attachments (secure attachments) to the order and to his fellow sentients without possessiveness or jealousy. Theron knew his mother gave him up. He knew one day Zho would give his care over to another Master. He knew one day, he would leave the Temple to go out into the galaxy. Theron knew how the galaxy worked and his role in it...

..and then it was torn away from him. No more masters, no more knowledge of what came next, no way to ever work with his mother as a Jedi. His life to that point had been an illusion -- he was never able to access the Force, and Zho knew it. This left Theron as insecurely attached, as nothing that he anticipated for his life would ever happen, and he knew nobody that would accompany him into this new life.

External to all this, the Republic Theron was raised to serve was on the losing end of war. How the galaxy worked, as far as Theron knew to that point, was going to change. After Till’in told Theron the truth, all we know is that he spent some time in Haashimut before going elsewhere. We the viewer have no idea what happened to Theron from adolescence until he was 16, when he entered SIS per Annihilation. This may be a canon math/timing error, or it could be reasonable; Theron might have been able to get permission to join a government organization at 16. If Theron was in foster care or a ward of the state or something else, whoever was involved didn’t make an impact worthy of mention thus far in SWTOR canon.

Theron described Zho in The Lost Suns as “never reliable.” That was a 23-year-old looking back. Yet, he referred to him as his father in Annihilation three years later, and even eight years later in SWTOR: KotFE, he mentions that “Master Zho would be proud.” This seems contradictory. Additionally, in both The Lost Suns and Annihilation, SIS Director Marcus Trant expressed concern about Theron and his issues. Theron was a workaholic. Being a workaholic is actually a sign of having attachment issues; a person attaches themselves to work, not people Theron expressed desires to run away, go on vacation, and do new stuff… but he never did these things – couldn’t get away from the job.

Attachment theory states that a child has difficulty with attachments if they are abused or somehow neglected by their caretaker. The desert march definitely strikes me as falling into one of those categories, but again, Zho’s logic isn’t readily offered up to the viewer, nor are many details about Theron’s life as a traveling youngling. That all said, Zho’s traumatic departure probably caused attachment issues that had no other herald.

Why do the labels “fearful” and “avoidant” fit Theron?

Theron Shan as the player met him in Forged Alliance SWTOR was a professional. Flirting was ignored, mildly acknowledged, or, rarely, fully reciprocated. There was no physical contact between Theron and his asset. This doesn’t seem off or irregular until his romance is compared to that of Lana Beniko. She didn’t have the same issues expressing affection for her asset on Imp side; she touched their face and gave them a hug by the time the spies went under deep cover after Rakata Prime. Even if the player did not romance Lana, Lana herself was keen to make a team and bust open the conspiracy; she wasn’t as willing to go it alone.

Avoidant people tend to refrain from contact, and they like being independent. They don’t do well in teams. Sound familiar? Fearful avoidants also have the concern that they will fail their partner or that their partner will fail them. If the player was Imp side, Theron was a jerk well into the Rishi storyline. Eventually, Theron did come around. His dialogue and follow-up letter reflect the fact that he actually did want these connections and attachments. He enjoyed the time he had with the player.

This is particularly pronounced if Theron was romanced by the player on Rishi and Yavin; first physical contact occurred on Rishi with a kiss. If the player was Pubside, the fade-to-black and his comments on Yavin indicate they had sex. Those episodes of affection, paired with the Pub post-Yavin letter and dialogue, really emphasize the connection that was formed. Interestingly, Theron did not get a fade-to-black with the Imperial player. One might argue that he knew they were going to leave him, and so he couldn’t –wouldn’t—get attached.

…. And then Ziost happened. Theron refused to ask for help. He didn’t want to depend on that attachment. He was distant on Ziost, regardless of how far the relationship went, and if Pubside, he declined a drink afterwards.

Whatever transpired between Ziost and the Eternal Fleet Incident, it’s clear that a romanced Theron and the player never defined their relationship. There were certain boundaries that never were crossed. He’d “like to think” the player is dreaming of him, but he didn’t want to presume. Even after Theron got into a romantic relationship on Odessen, he still struggled with his ability to be attached, as evidence by his letters and expressions of affection and concern throughout the KotFE/KotET expansions.

One might argue that the traitor element of the Nathema Conspiracy was partially caused by Theron’s attachment issues: his independent streak, his inability to ask for help, his lack of faith in others to do the job right (not telling anyone the truth), his lack of faith in himself (his willingness to understand why the player might dump/exile him). If romanced, he gave one of his Holonet messages the subject line “I love you,” but even then, he did not clue the player into his self-made mission. Certainly, the Nathema Conspiracy happens because of Theron’s desperate desire to save the galaxy and the player at any cost – including the relationship itself and his life.

For those who let Theron live, the attachment issues have faded as Theron has gotten engaged/married and/or reformed a relationship with his bio parents… or the writers have moved on from Lana and Theron as companions. Regardless, we have to keep in mind that Theron is closing in on 40, and he has grown as a character since he first appeared in Star Wars media at age 23 (baby and adolescent only in flashbacks). His issues with his relationships, the Jedi, the Republic, and his bio parents have changed over the course of 17 years. In the last story patch, people who have romanced Theron received letters from both Theron and his mother about how good the player is for him, and it’s very satisfying to see how far he has come.

How does this label of ‘fearful avoidant’ manifest in your fanworks?

Since not everyone is into fic, I’ll drop this behind a cut.

Basically, my version of Theron wants love but is terrified of all the feelings and closeness that come with it. When people get close, he draws away, but still wants them to be close. Theron has had good relationships, but if it gets too serious, he runs. That’s the case for his last major relationship prior to my oc; his Mirialan girlfriend was drawing a tattoo to mark their relationship, and she wanted him to meet the parents. Theron noped out of there pretty hard by taking a long mission off Coruscant and sort of forgetting to tell her. There are several times where he takes a big step with Eva (my oc)– disclosure, physical intimacy, caring for her or letting her care for him – and then he just doesn’t contact her for the next few days. He dives into work to avoid her. Toward the end of their initial relationship, that will turn into weeks and months. He is freaked out when he does things with her that are intimate, sexual or not. He has a lot of fear that he will be left again, so he leaves first.

Theron also sets up a lot of rules and boundaries that the partner has to dance around to get in. After 300,000 words, I just completed a slow burn with the Rishi kiss, because Theron wouldn’t get involved with Eva until after the op to expose the conspiracy was over. There will be more rules once they get to Yavin.

When I was doing research on this, I read a clinical study that found that people with avoidant attachment issues are particularly fastidious about safe sex. They don’t want attachments to their lovers in the form of a disease or a child. Anxious attachments tend to eschew this and take the risk so they can be bound to someone. This is part of why I gave Theron a male birth control implant, but there will also be reference to his back-up (condoms) and back-up back-up (PreP) to ensure there aren’t any adverse consequences for him.

Theron is often alone, but that doesn’t make him lonely by default. In part, that might be due to his avoidance of attachments. Dude can pick up people at a bar and get laid. Theron isn’t adverse to sex, just intimacy. He can find someone to hook up, but that doesn’t mean there is anything beyond sex attached to it. Theron can and does get dates, and he can have relationships ... but that doesn’t mean he can make a healthy connection to the other person. I think his issues are more emotional/internal than they are caused by not getting enough physical contact or affection from others. People want to love him. People reach out to him to be friends or have a relationship. He just doesn’t want it; he avoids it. I imagine that this is partly the case with Jace and his SIS coworkers.

The last fearful avoidant feature I’ll give Theron in my series is the tendency to idealize relationships after they’re dead and over. When the relationship is no longer available, it is held up and made glorious, partially to enable the person not to pursue a different relationship; it’ll never be as good, so why try? This also calls in the tendency for fearful avoidants to fear not only screwing up the relationship themselves, but that others won’t live up to their expectations. Theron is a mess after the Eternal Fleet incident and never moves on from Eva. It’s reasonable when he thinks she’s alive, but for a good two years, he thinks she’s dead… and he can’t. With anyone else.

Unlike the game, I eventually send Theron to a therapist to deal with the fearful avoidant attachment issues. I figure if I’m going to give a fictional character a real-world label, I need to give him a real-world solution that might work.

#swtor #theron shan #character analysis #theron thursday #jedi #jedi philosophy #ngani zho

53 notes · View notes

joezworld · 3 years

Note

📁

Specifically, any headcanons of the Sodor Engines interacting with the internet, or the internet in general?

For some reason, I’d imagine that podcasts and the like are popular among vehicles in general.

That is a question that I've been working on for some time - because I'm workshopping my own Tornado headcanon (and boy oh boy does she use the internet a lot) - but I have some ideas for the Sodor engines as well:

Henry is probably the most "plugged in" engine on the island, weirdly enough. One of his drivers gave him an iPod back in the early 2000s, and kindly preloaded it with a bunch of torrented music.

BTW, that works because all the engines are now equipped with automatic train warning systems, and the little on-board computer has a USB port - as a nice side effect it allows music players to work with the engines in the same way as bone-conducting headphones do. The computer also acts as some kind of computer interface, which I am not going to explain how that works because Jesus Christ I don’t know how it does either.

Henry has managed to upgrade his iPod a few times since thanks to hand-me-down units from NWR staff, so he eventually got his buffers on a wifi-enabled iPod Touch and now downloads new music from the station wifi. He does listen to podcasts, but as every other engine will tell you, you could show Henry ten thousand new and exciting songs from the best artists in the world, and his top ten played songs are still going to be Genesis, Phil Collins, and Yes. Bear considers it a win that he managed to convince Henry to regularly listen to Rush after a mere twenty years of convincing.

Mavis and Daisy listen to a very interesting program called The News, because as stated elsewhere, they invest a shitload of money and need to be on top of things. Thomas and Percy wish that Daisy would use headphones or something similar to that, instead of listening to Bloomberg TV at loud volumes in the middle of the night. Toby frankly doesn’t mind, as it’s very nice to be kept up-to-date on the outside world.

In a move that surprises no-one, Bill and Ben have a podcast where they talk about whatever they think about at that moment - usually horse-racing, investing, and clay mining. As such, they have a wide audience, almost none of whom know that they’re that Bill and Ben, as their podcast is audio-only.

In an also unsurprising move, Edward and BoCo have been made very much aware that Bill and Ben have a podcast, but are still unsure as to what the hell a podcast is, despite being frequent guests on it.

Of the main line diesels, only Bear has shown any real interest in the internet, and was immediately put in charge of the Amazon Alexa when a unit was installed in the diesel shed. He also has an iPod that he got for Christmas a few years back. (The NWR has a very good personal electronics recycling program called give it to Henry, he’ll make use it.)

Bear does listen to podcasts as well as music, but his choices are so insufferably boring that even Henry refuses to listen to them. (I don’t really listen to podcasts - despite making one - so insert the most boring podcast you can think of here.)

As for other internet uses...

Gordon is very up-to-date on the newest social media trends - somehow - but only really cares when he is involved. He won’t admit it, but he’s been trying to figure out how to work a camera/selfie stick for some time so he can start up his own Instagram account. So far he has been unsuccessful, but one day he will manage it.

James has had an ongoing feud with his own Wikipedia page for about a decade now. The article sourced most of its information about his construction off of some out-of-print book about the L&Y. The book in question is accurate about James’ class, but not James himself - as he was a prototype engine. There’s no other primary sources available, so the very dedicated Wikipedia mod who created the page won’t change it - no matter how much James complains that he was there! He knows what happened!

Every now and again a TTTE fan blog/tumblr will make a post about hypothetical “ships” of the Sodor engines. Most of the time it’s shipping the core characters like Gordon and Henry, much to Gordon’s bafflement and Henry’s amusement!

Only one blog (a ttte fan tumblr by the curious name of @mean-scarlet-deceiver ) has gotten it right. Henry actually reached out to congratulate this blogger, but was unfortunately mistaken for a very dedicated roleplay account.

James is very annoyed by these blogs, as they have never once correctly guessed who he is “shipped” with! He has tried several times to be seen in public with Delta, but these events have never gone as planned - the “best” instance is when Edward rolled by at exactly the wrong moment, leading to months of speculation that JamesxEdward was the ship to look out for!

Thomas, being a generally oblivious sort of engine, was totally unaware of the online fan community around the TV show until he started getting actively harassed by vloggers and Instagrammers in the early 2010s. He’s fine with it now, but it was a deeply unusual experience for most of 2012.

Toby has developed an unexpectedly popular following on social media following his collab with Stormzy. His official twitter is huge now, with over a million followers, even if he has no idea what to do with it. He posts rarely, but usually manages to make an incredible post when he does.

No-one is sure who told Oliver what a “fan-production” is, but if you manage to get ahold of him for any period of time and ask him nicely, he will lend his voice to your TTTE fan-project, so long as it isn’t about [INSERT TERRIBLE SOCIAL/POLITICAL VIEW(S) HERE]. This means that he has 100% voiced dramatic readings of NSFW Fanfics before, which is always an absolute riot to spring on people unannounced.

There is a series of slice-of-life TTTE fanfics on Ao3 that have been written with such accuracy and innate railway knowledge that people are sure it was written by a Sodor engine, but nobody knows which one.

The Culdee Fell Railway has very active Instagram, Twitter and YouTube accounts, with all of the engines and coaches showing up regularly. It’s about the closest any of the railways on Sodor have come to what those outside the UK would call “normal locomotive social media”.

The Skarloey Railway has social media accounts too, but they don’t really feature the engines in any meaningful way, instead being used as a normal service announcements page.

The SR is a real working railway that doesn’t rely on tourism money as much as the others do, so they get a bit of a pass here.

The Arlesdale Railway has Twitter and YouTube, which didn’t usually get a lot of hits until 2020, when Ivan and Amanda Farrier started badgering the staff to make some videos just to alleviate some boredom. So far the most popular videos on the channel are a front-mounted camera video of the entire line slow-tv style, Bert explaining how steam engines work, and a video of Mike complaining about Justin Bieber for a solid half-hour.

That’s about it as far as Sodor goes, but before we’re done, I want to take a moment to talk about Tornado, because I have some fun ideas for her...

First of all, we need to establish that Tornado is very young. Her construction only started in late 90′s, and she was steamed to life in 2000, putting her firmly into the “Zoomer” category. Add in the fact that she was built by a bunch of old men who didn’t really know how to treat a new engine, and she was raised much more like a human than a locomotive - I’ll get to this much more in the proper Tornado Headcanon post, but what this means here is that when social media started being a thing in the mid-to-late 2000′s, the people at the A1 Trust decided that they needed a young person to run things like Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace... and, well, Tornado was the youngest person in the trust by a large margin.

I should state here that in the rest of the world, locomotives are on the internet at roughly the same level as humans are, so there’s plenty of equipment to connect a phone/computer/camera to an engine - being English, the A1 Trust didn’t know how common it was, but they managed to get it up and running just the same.

So Tornado has very quickly become attuned to the internet, just like any other teenager would. (yes, let’s let that settle into our minds for a moment - Tornado is barely old enough to drink in the US!) Quite naturally that means that she knows social media inside and out, and is actually quite a proficient social media manager for the trust, managing all of their social pages. More than one person who has complained about the trust on twitter has unknowingly been complaining to Tornado herself!

“On the internet, nobody knows that you’re a dog Engine”.

Tornado has her own personal social media accounts too, but most/all of the time she gets mistaken for a very dedicated role-player, as the general perception of British Locomotives is that they don’t tweet. This has resulted in some amazing reactions from podcast hosts (because, as you might expect, Tornado is very knowledgeable about steam traction in the 21st century, and tweets about it often, so train podcasts want to talk to her) when she gets invited onto video calls, turns on her webcam, and is met with screams from people who suddenly realize that her profile picture is accurate.

By far the best instance of this is when she was invited onto a video call with a railfan podcast. She was at the NRM at the time and managed to convince them to let her use their Skype setup. A wide-angle lens was needed because she was on the turntable in the Great Hall, so that podcast quickly got sidetracked when her webcam was turned on and revealed Tornado, with Mallard, Evening Star, City of Truro, and Green Arrow visible behind her. Whatever the original topic was quickly got thrown out in favor of a 2-hour Q&A with some of the most famous engines in the UK.

#ask response #the internet #ttte thomas #ttte toby #ttte bill and ben #ttte gordon #ttte daisy #ttte mavis #ttte henry #ttte bear #ttte oliver #tornado #nrm #trains using the internet #ttte #sodor #sodor shenangians #the formatting on this one is super fucked up and i can't figure out how to fix it - sorry

89 notes · View notes

onecanonlife · 3 years

Text

In which Tommy travels back in time and tries to prevent a nightmare from happening to everyone he knows. Everyone else, meanwhile, is highly concerned.

(fic masterpost w/ ao3 links)

(first part) (previous part) (next part)

(word count: 4,598)

--------------------

Part Three: Wilbur

Wilbur oversleeps.

He doesn’t mean to. He never means to. But he does, and when he wakes up and finds the sun halfway to its peak, definitely mid-morning rather than the predawn he was hoping to find, it serves as a shock to his system, and all he can think is, shit. Because sure, he’s been pretty fucking exhausted lately, but that’s no excuse. He’s supposed to be the leader here, and leaders can’t lead when they’re sleeping.

And gods above know what Tommy’s managed to get into this morning, or what Dream’s done, because Dream’s been suspiciously quiet over the past few days and there could be an attack at any moment now, and shit, shit, shit.

He fumbles his way through dressing, tries to neaten his hair, fails utterly, and gives up and pulls his beanie on over it. Not very professional, but it’s fine. This is fine. He can’t hear any screams, so nobody’s dying. Probably.

He steps outside of the hastily-constructed house he claimed for his own, and it’s less of a house, really, than a single room with walls and a roof liable to cave in at any second, but it serves for now, and he never claimed to possess his father’s building prowess. There will be time for infrastructure development after independence is secured. But he steps outside, squinting against the sunlight, and finds—everything in order. Everything looks fine. Nothing is on fire, except for the ever-burning camarvan. The walls still stand.

That should be his next step. The walls.

He climbs his way up, surveying the area. The surrounding lands appear just as they were left last night. No ominous structures set up. No fucking TNT cannons. All is calm, peaceful, and he has learned not to trust peace, these past few weeks, but if everything is alright for now, he’ll accept it gladly. Even if it doesn’t last.

He sighs, bracing his hands against the battlements. All too often, these days, he’s found his mind wandering down paths they never would have before. He can’t help but wonder what Phil would think if he knew the full extent of what he’s up to. His father tried so hard, when he was younger, to shield him from war, from the legacy that he and his best friend laid out behind them. And Wilbur cannot blame him for that protectiveness; his first experience of war has only been a few weeks long, and he’s finding he doesn’t care for it, even if he’s discovered a knack for tactics.

The thing is, though, he’s always wanted a legacy of his own.

Phil always said that it would be through his music. He never told him that he had his doubts about that, that he loves his songs but that something in him always calls for more, something just out of reach, just beyond the crest of the next hill. He’s not sure his father knows how ambitious he really is, in the end.

He should probably write him. He’ll do it after the war is over. After he has a country to invite him to see. After he’s built something that his dad will be proud of. And if he leaves out the struggle it took to get it, nobody has to know but him, because it’s certainly better that Phil doesn’t.

“Hello, Wilbur,” Dream says, right by his ear, and he jerks, pulling his sword from his inventory in an instinctive motion. How he missed the bastard’s approach, he has no idea, but Dream is standing right there, right on the walls next to him, covered head to toe in netherite armor, smiling mask firmly affixed to his face. He holds no weapons yet, but Wilbur knows all too well how quickly that can change.

“You’re trespassing on L’Manberg property,” he snaps, trying to disguise the frantic racing of his heart. His feet shift into a ready stance, a movement that’s old hat by now, both from this war and from Technoblade’s training when he was a kid, even though the sword will never be his weapon of choice. “With armor on, too. You’re not allowed to wear armor within our borders.”

He doesn’t know why he bothers to try. Dream won’t obey. He never does. That’s why they’re at war in the first place.

But then, to his shock, Dream chuckles, inclining his head. And then, piece by piece, the armor disappears, accompanied by the familiar clink of metal landing in an inventory slot.

“Right, right,” Dream says, as if he hasn’t just blown all of Wilbur’s expectations out of the water. “Of course. I guess I really should be trying to get off on the right foot with you, here. Congratulations, by the way. I’m sure you were happy to hear the news.”

What is he—?

What is this? Is he trying psychological warfare now? Is that what this is? Because Wilbur has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. Is he supposed to know what he’s talking about? Dream’s acting like he should know what he’s talking about, and he doesn’t particularly want to give him the upper hand by revealing that he does not, in fact, have any idea what he’s talking about.

“Thank you,” he manages, a beat too late, but Dream doesn’t seem to notice, just continues on blithely.

“I just figured we should set up an official meeting of some kind,” he says. “One country leader to another. Get some peace treaties drawn up, write some trade agreements, draw some official boundaries, all of that stuff. I’ll admit, I’ve never done any of that before, but it can’t be too hard, right?”

“Right, I’m sure,” Wilbur replies, nodding along. Because, what?

“It doesn’t have to be right away,” Dream continues, and he just keeps talking. “I can give you a day or two to settle in, get stuff in order. There’s no real rush, but we should get it done soon. I don’t want to leave anything up in the air. That’s not the kind of thing that promotes stability.”

“Of course,” he says.

Dream goes to say something else, and then stops, tilting his head again. This time, it’s less mocking, more curious. “You do know what I’m talking about, right?” he says, and the game is up. Wilbur feels caught, but he breathes deeply, fights off his rising blush, gathers up all his composure.

“I’ll be entirely honest,” he says. “I’ve got no idea what the shit you’re on about right now.”

He’s not expecting that to make Dream laugh. But he does, tossing his head back and carrying on, loud and long, and then it devolves into a tea kettle wheeze. Genuine amusement, then, though at what, Wilbur isn’t sure. He doesn’t appreciate being laughed at, but he can’t help but feel like there’s something going on here that’s going straight over his head. He doesn’t appreciate that very much, either.

“Oh my god,” Dream manages, as soon as he’s capable of speech, mirth still dancing in his voice, “he didn’t tell you? Still?”

Something icy gets its claws around his heart.

“Who didn’t tell me?” he demands. “Who didn’t tell me what?”

“Tommy,” Dream answers, and those claws squeeze. His heart skips several beats, and suddenly, he’s casting back in his mind to the last time he saw Tommy. It was last night, wasn’t it? Just last night? He sent him to bed, because Tommy often tries to take late watches, claims himself capable, but he’s not even quite sixteen yet. Wilbur may have pulled him into a war, but he’s still a teenager, and Wilbur’s going to do his damnedest to make sure he comes out of this as intact as possible. And that means getting enough sleep.

He looked fine, last night. He was fine. He has to be fine.

He’s moving before he realizes it, his hand fisting in the front of Dream’s hoodie.

“If you’ve done something to Tommy, I’m tossing you off this wall right here and now,” he snarls. “Don’t test me, Dream.”

A year ago, a month ago, he never would have pictured himself making a threat like that. Never would have imagined himself capable of following through. But he is different, now, from the way he started, different already, and there is a part of him, a part of him that whispers to him in crows’ voices, that is scared of what he will be by the time the war is done.

“I haven’t done anything to Tommy!” Dream protests, raising both hands, though he sounds unconcerned. “I swear, I haven’t. He gave us a really good chance to, last night, but we didn’t take it. You should thank us for that. It was pretty stupid, what he did.”

“Explain,” he demands. “Explain right now.”

Tommy’s a resourceful kid. He can picture him getting himself in and out of an altercation easily. But the way Dream says it, it’s like he put himself in the situation in the first place, like he sought it out, and what the hell was Tommy even doing, outside of the walls so late at night? The walls are there for a reason. The walls are there for protection. The walls are there to keep his people safe, because maybe he didn’t exactly set out to start a country, in the very beginning, but he’s going to see it through. By all the gods, he’s going to see it through.

If, that is, this kid doesn’t give him a heart attack first.

Dream shoves at his hand, and he lets him go without an argument. Dream takes a step back, putting a bit more space between them, and then leans against the wall.

“Tommy came to us last night,” he says, “and traded his discs for L’Manberg’s independence.”

It’s a simple sentence. A very simple sentence. But somehow, the words don’t make any sense.

“Congratulations, President Soot,” Dream says, and he knows, he knows the bastard is smiling under that mask. “I look forward to establishing relations between our countries,” and he isn’t, Wilbur knows that he isn’t, but he’s enjoying this because he’s just dropped a bomb on him and he knows it, because—

“Leave,” he rasps. “Get out.”

Dream does a little salute, short and mocking, and then hops over the side of the wall. Wilbur hopes he takes damage, hopes he breaks his fucking legs. The sound of water hitting the ground tells him that he doesn’t. He can’t even be upset about it, because his heart has jumped into his throat, pounding in his ears, and all of the words were fine individually, but all together, they’re too much to process.

Tommy gave up his discs. And now L’Manberg is free. Just like that, the war is over. And Tommy gave up his discs. Tommy walked straight into enemy territory without telling him and handed over his most prized possessions, all for the sake of L’Manberg’s independence. And he succeeded. He got it. He sacrificed something dear to him, something that Wilbur never would have asked him to give up, and he did it for them. For L’Manberg.

Giddiness is the first emotion that fills him, and next is pride. Because this—this is above and beyond. He never would have asked Tommy to trade away something so important to him, but somehow, he found it within himself to do it, and he got what he wanted from it. He got what they all wanted. Somehow, Tommy managed to end their struggles in one fell swoop, and they’re not related, neither by blood nor by adoption or anything like that, but Wilbur thinks that this must be the sort of pride an older brother feels when watching the younger grow up, watching the younger go on and accomplish great things.

They are free, and it is because of Tommy. He feels like he’s on cloud nine. He feels like he could fly.

And then reality crashes back in.

Tommy didn’t tell him that he was planning this. Tommy didn’t tell him, might not have told anyone at all, and that means he strolled straight into the arms of their bitter enemies, people who might have killed him without a second thought. No one has died yet, and he always intended to keep it that way, but the thought of Tommy alone, at night, creeping his way into the belly of the beast, sends a chill down his spine.

Tommy could have died. Tommy could have died, and he wouldn’t have known until he woke up this morning, woke up late, and saw the message on his comm. TommyInnit was slain by Dream.

And then, another thought occurs to him: Tommy hasn’t come to him. Hasn’t come to brag, hasn’t even come to just tell him, to tell him that he’s just single-handedly won their independence. And that is not a Tommy-like thing to do, to let something like that go unremarked upon.

Something is wrong. Dream might have lied. He could have hurt Tommy. Tommy could be injured right now. He doesn’t even know for sure that he made it back.

Tommy gave up his discs for L’Manberg.

It still barely makes any sense to him. But there’s no time to make sense of it. He rushes back down the wall as quickly as he can manage, and then it’s off through their settlement, eyes darting around, hoping for a glimpse of him. He checks Tommy’s house, first, the ramshackle, makeshift thing he’s been sharing with Tubbo until they can get better buildings erected, and he’s not there, and Tubbo isn’t either. The camarvan turns up nothing. He’s considering leaving L’Manberg entirely, going to check by Tommy’s other house, the one built into the hill, when Tubbo comes up beside him.

“Morning, Wilbur,” he says, and then frowns. “You alright, man? You’re kind of pale.”

“Tubbo,” he says, and grabs him by the shoulders. Maybe a bit too emphatically, because he suddenly looks a bit alarmed, but he’ll be concerned with that later. “Tubbo, have you seen Tommy today?”

Tubbo’s frown deepens. “I was coming to see if you knew where he was,” he says. “He was being a bit off last night. Think he had a nightmare or something. But he’s not with you?”

“No, he’s not.” With every word out of Tubbo’s mouth, he feels his own panic grow. It is one thing for Tommy to hatch some sort of plot and not tell him. That is—well, it’s not fine, but Tommy doesn’t tell him everything. But to keep Tubbo out of the loop? To, presumably, visit him before leaving and yet still not tell Tubbo what was going on? It’s unlike him. Very unlike him.

“Okay, well, he’s got to be around here somewhere,” Tubbo reasons, his brows creased. “L’Manberg’s only so big. Should we go look for him together, then?”

“Right,” he says. He breathes, in and out. Tubbo’s a good kid. Very sensible. Very down to earth. And he’s right, of course. Tommy has to be around here somewhere. Any other possibility is out of the question. “Right, of course, let’s go look.”

So they do. They take a systematic approach, first checking all the most likely places and then combing every inch of their land in a grid formation. Tubbo’s suggestion, again. But that turns up nothing, either, and he can feel the panic creeping back in, because what if he actually didn’t make it home? What if he was out there in the dead of night, distraught and alone, and something took advantage of that? What if some mob looked at him and recognized him for an easy kill?

He’s not dead. He can’t be dead. There would have been a notification. But he could be injured somewhere, incapacitated, in pain and all alone, and he can’t let that happen, can’t let Tommy be hurt like that on his watch—

“Oh, wait,” Tubbo says, and pulls on his sleeve. “There he is.”

Wilbur jerks, and stares in the direction he’s pointing. And sure enough, Tommy’s there, right in front of the camarvan, and Eret too, it looks like. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt relief as pure as in this moment.

“Gods,” he breathes, and starts toward them, calling out, “Tommy!” And as he approaches, he gets the sense that something is off.

The first thing he notices is Eret’s expression. Pure, unbridled confusion, mixed with what perhaps might be something like anxiety. And the reason for that is clear enough: Tommy is holding their face very firmly in his hands. Which is bizarre, and Wilbur blinks a few times to make sure he’s seeing this right, because Tommy doesn’t—he doesn’t just do that. That is a gesture reserved only for people he is very, very close to. Tubbo gets that treatment. He’s been on the receiving end a couple of times himself, but not often. And he knows that Tommy and Eret get along just fine, are friends, just like all of them are, but he really didn’t think that the two of them were close enough for this. And judging by the look on Eret’s face, they didn’t think so either.

And Tommy is just standing there. Not speaking, not doing anything else. Just staring Eret in the eyes—or the glasses, rather—with a startling intensity.

“Tommy?” he asks, as soon as he’s close enough that he doesn’t have to shout. “Is everything alright?”

And Tommy startles. Withdraws his hands from Eret’s face as though he’s been burned. Turns to look at him, and Wilbur freezes in place, because just for a second—

There is fear on Tommy’s face.

He doesn’t understand what could have caused it. But it is undoubtedly there, only for a moment before it is smoothed away into something more neutral, if strained. And he hates it, hates it viscerally. He never wants Tommy to look at him with that expression on his face. It makes him feel sick to his stomach.

“Ayup,” Tommy says, and his voice sounds—rough. Like he hasn’t slept at all. “Morning Wil, Tubso.”

It’s casual. Far too casual for what Wilbur has just learned, for the panic he’s felt for the past half hour or so, unable to find this kid, this kid who is basically his brother, for all he pretends to protest against the moniker. Tommy is his family. Tommy is his family, and he risked everything last night, gave up everything for the sake of Wilbur’s everything, his grand ideals, his great vision, and now he’s standing there like nothing at all has changed.

“Ayup, Tommy,” Tubbo says. “You feeling any better this morning?��

At Tommy’s side, Eret shifts uneasily. Their expression is still one of concern, and Wilbur wonders exactly how long Tommy had been standing there like that, or what their interaction even was to get them to that point in the first place. It’s confusing. He’s confused.

“I’m great,” Tommy says, and—no, no, they’re not going to do this.

“Tommy,” he breaks in, and Tommy stiffens. “Tommy, last night, why did you—you just—why wouldn’t you tell me?”

It’s not quite what he should be asking, but it’s what comes out. And his voice is annoyingly desperate, and he hates showing off so many emotions like this, especially in a public space, but he can’t stop himself.

“What about last night?” Tubbo asks.

“Last night?” Eret echoes, and looks to Tommy, who blinks, his gaze darting between the three of them but landing on Wilbur most of all, and it’s like he’s nervous, almost, anxious about how he’s going to react, and—does he think he’s going to be angry about this? Perhaps he is, but only in the sense that he’s angry that Tommy took such a stupid risk. Below that anger, that anger born of fear, his pride burns bright. Surely, Tommy must know that?

“I—look, I knew you’d say no, alright?” he says. “But I knew that I could do it, so I did it. Simple as that.”

Simple as that, he says. As if he didn’t give up his greatest possessions. As if he didn’t win them the war, win them their freedom, win for them the reality of the values that this country was founded upon.

“What’s going on?” Eret asks.

“Yeah, does this have something to do with what you were saying to me the other night?” Tubbo says, and then looks at him. “Wilbur, what are you talking about? What happened last night?”

Tommy sighs, and says nothing. Wilbur swallows, and maintains eye contact with him as he speaks, searching for some kind of reaction.

“Dream came to me this morning,” he says, and does not miss Tommy’s flinch at the name, “not even an hour ago. He said—he said that we were free. That the war was over, that L’Manberg was its own nation, that he wanted to set up a meeting for diplomatic ties and whatnot. He called me the president. And, um, he said that you won it for us, Tommy.” He pauses, just for a moment, trying to get his emotions under control. He mostly fails. “He said that you came to him, last night, and you traded your discs to him for L’Manberg’s freedom.”

“You did what?”

Tubbo’s voice is dismayed and disbelieving all at once. And Tommy flinches, draws into himself a little, and that’s not the reaction Wilbur would have expected, but literally none of this is what he would have expected.

“Yeah,” he says, sounding quiet, a bit defeated. “Yeah, I—I did. I knew he’d take the deal. And I just wanted—I wanted the war to be over, yeah? Before anybody got hurt. And I knew this would work, so I just went and did it.”

“You couldn’t have, though,” he finds himself saying, before he even know what he’s going to say next. “Maybe you could’ve guessed that he’d go for it, but—Tommy, what if they’d killed you? Taken what they wanted and killed you right then and there? I just—” He breaks off running a hand through his hair, remembering too late that he’s got his beanie on. His fingers dislodge it, and he readjusts it with more fervor than is necessary. “I just can’t believe you did that without telling someone. Without telling—” Me, he wants to say, but holds himself back. No matter his feelings regarding Tommy, the deep respect and even deeper love that has grown in him over the course of their friendship, he doesn’t have a monopoly on Tommy’s attention. Perhaps he would have preferred for Tommy to tell him, but he’d have settled for Tommy telling anyone.

“What, are you worried?” Tommy says, and Wilbur only spares a second to wonder why he sounds so disbelieving, because—

“Yes,” he bursts out. “Gods, Tommy! Dream came to me with this and my first thought was that you’d died! Or that you hadn’t made it back, that you were out there somewhere, alone and needing help, and I didn’t—Tommy. Tommy, please tell me you thought of this. Please tell me, tell me that you were prepared, at least. Tell me that you—” He cuts himself off again, shaking his head hard, and under any other circumstance, he would be kicking himself for the display, for the outburst of emotion, for the lack of eloquence, but he thinks he can be excused for the moment.

Tommy’s mouth works for a second.

“Oh,” he finally says, weakly. “Um, right. Sorry, Wilbur. No, I had it handled, trust me. Sorry, I didn’t, um. Didn’t mean to scare you like that. Sort of just—did it, y’know?”

“It’s okay,” he says, even though it kind of isn’t, because Tommy’s continued to shrink into himself, and he doesn’t want that. “It’s okay, Tommy, I’m just glad you’re okay. And, gods above, what you did—” He steps forward, then, unable to help himself, and takes Tommy by the shoulders. Tommy stares at him with wide eyes. “I never would have asked that of you. I couldn’t believe it when Dream told me. And Tommy, I—I’m so, so sorry. But I am so damn proud of you. You hear me? So damn proud. I know what that must have taken, for you to do that. And I’m so fucking proud of you.” He smiles, then, wide and a bit watery. He’s not going to cry, he’s not, but emotion is rising up in his throat, thick and overpowering. “You did it, Tommy. You won us L’Manberg.”

Tommy returns the smile, if a bit tentatively. “Yeah,” he says, “I guess I did, didn’t I?” And then, the smile widens, and he puffs out his chest, putting his hands on his hips. “I hear that makes me the leader now. You’re speaking to Mister High President King Lord Innit, so show me the respect you owe me, eh?”

“Absolutely the fuck not,” he replies, but he’s laughing. “No, no, enough out of you, go, take Tubbo and go get yourself whatever you want out of our rations, you’ve fucking earned it, Toms.”

Tommy offers him one last grin, and then he ducks out of his grip, grabbing Tubbo’s hand and dragging him in the direction of their storage. He can hear Tubbo’s voice already, high and offended at the fact that Tommy went and did this without telling him, and perhaps all is right with the world after all. Some things do not change, even when everything else does.

He went to sleep last night a rebel, a general. He woke up a president. How about that?

“Do you think he’s alright?” Eret asks, and he starts, almost having forgotten they were there.

“Probably not,” he admits. “Not entirely. Those discs meant a lot to him. But we’ve got time to figure it out.” He turns to them, then, makes eye contact with himself in the reflection of their sunglasses. “What was he doing with you, before we walked up?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” they reply. “He came up to me, sort of yelling a bit? Punched me in the shoulder a few times. Couldn’t figure out what that was about. Then he thanked me for something, and then he hugged me, which was a bit odd, and then he did the, uh, thing, with the holding my face? And then you and Tubbo arrived. I honestly don’t know what any of that was about at all.”

He hums, and looks out after the boys, at their retreating backs. As he watches, Tommy slings an arm around Tubbo’s shoulders, his other hand gesticulating wildly.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” he says softly. “It’s Tommy. He makes it his job to be unpredictable.”

“You’re right about that,” Eret says. “I suppose congratulations are in order, President Soot?”

President Soot. It’s got a nice ring to it. He is the leader of a free country now, and it is thanks to the kid he sees as a younger brother, whether he’ll admit as much out loud or not. He is the leader of a free country, and that means there is much work to be done.

But he gives himself a moment longer, and smiles at the way the midday sun shines in Tommy’s hair.

It’s all for them, after all. Land is just land; as long as he can give his loved ones the freedom they deserve, that’s enough for him.

#mcyt #dsmp #dream smp #dsmp fic #wilbur soot #tommyinnit #dreamwastaken #tubbo #eret #/rp #cw swearing #cw death mention #cw injury mention #both of those are hypothetical #cat writes fic #long post #time travel au #surprise!! bet you weren't expecting a new chapter of this today!!!#:DDD

44 notes · View notes

repetitionsings · 3 years

Text

Sorting Cabin Pressure

I return! Briefly, because tumblr still hates me, and yet triumphant, because I’ve spent the last week re-listening to Cabin Pressure, and I want to talk about sorting the MJN crew. So let’s do some Sorting Hat Chats!

As usual, my view on these characters may not be yours, and if you have different thoughts, I’d love to hear them. :D Discussion spans the entire 27 episodes, so let’s say spoilers just to be safe.

Martin

Despite probably having the biggest, best-defined character arc, I'm finding Martin the main character I'm least set on.

Secondary-wise, I'd say he's definitely a built secondary; very little of Martin's improvisations seem to come comfortable to him. His insistence on doing things right and by-the-book feels fairly Badger, but his ability to be lured into shortcuts and moments of unprofessional behavior feels to me like a Bird who thinks that Badger hard word and toil is the best option. It also seems to fit with the way he becomes calm and confident once something works out for him, and then immediately loses it once things go wrong and he feels unprepared again. The few episodes where he really gets to be confident and succeed particularly feel Bird-y to me: relying on knowledge in Johannesburg especially stand out.

(That said, Badger also seems to ring consistently with the way he handles a lot of things -- his dedication to his job, his hard work, even the way half the time he does get confident, it's either because Douglas isn't there to bring him down, or he seems to be pretending to be him.)

Primary-wise, though, that's where I get tripped up. Not a Snake, I think; even his hesitancy to leave MJN is half about his own goals and issues, not fully founded in caring about others. Badger doesn't quite seem right either -- "being loyal and true to things or people that exist is more important than sticking to grander but more abstract ideals or concepts" does not sound like Martin at all. My first thought was Lion, just one that's still struggling to be as decisive as they usually are -- despite his hesitancy, and his instincts being 'follow the rules written by others', a lot of the Lion stuff seems to apply to him. "They are willing to sacrifice their safety, social harmony, and a certain amount of logic to do what they feel is right." "There is right and there is wrong. Things are black and white. Shades of gray are places where people go to play games, twist the truth, and to be cowards."

But... he does bend the rules, or sit back and let Douglas do so. If nobody who makes him feel like he has to put on the act is there -- see Newcastle and Qikiqtarjuaq -- he'll bend them pretty far. Trying to drop candy on a kids' birthday party (Johannesburg) and lying to a passenger about where they're flying (Timbuktu) levels of far.

So who's around seems to be a big part of it, which maybe could point back in a loyalist direction. I think in the end, though, I'm going to throw up my hands and say, maybe a Bird whose system is in progress from something fairly immature and black-and-white to something more complicated? Martin's devotion to his passion and his job above all else feels pretty Idealist to me, and this seems a little more fitting than him being an extremely malleable Lion.

Douglas

Douglas "at any given moment I never have fewer than seven ulterior motives" Richardson? Douglas "did something clever and now everything's fine" Richardson? Douglas "pretending very hard not to care about anything, actually cares very deeply, but only about specific things and specific people" Richardson? Is there even any point to considering an answer besides double Snake here? Douglas might as well be the model of it. Trickery is his first language. He schemes, charms, adapts, and lucks out in order to achieve anything in his sights, whether that's as small as a relief from boredom or as big as saving the day.

Motivation is trickier -- but it becomes clearer and clearer as time goes on how far Douglas is willing to go to save MJN, and outside his own desires to be the captain again, that seems like the biggest thing that ever drives him. Combine that with his hedonism, and the way he's happy to lie, cheat, and steal to accomplish most other things with no notable guilt or shame, I don't even see hints of a model or structure built over it; the things that matter to him are his own reputation and status (and even that in very specific, particular ways), and saving GERTI and her crew.

(That said, the more I think about it, I do think you could make a solid argument for Douglas as a rapid-fire Bird Secondary. Mostly built around Zurich -- his confession that his confidence started, not just as a mask, but wholesale imitating somebody else. There's also this excerpt from Finnemore's Farewell Bear Facts: "Douglas prefers to hang back, let other people make mistakes, work out the 'something clever' he's going to do in secret, and then present it with a flourish." While that could be Snake-y, I could see it as a Bird's planning working for someone whose very invested in his own reputation. That said, I still think Double Snake seems the most applicable overall.)

Carolyn

Carolyn's drives are a kind of mirror to Douglas', which is interesting to reflect back on. The two things she cares most about are how she's seen, and -- even if she sometimes shows it in her own strange way -- Arthur. Then Douglas and Martin start to rank in there over time, and eventually so does Herc. (Martin moreso than Douglas -- speculation, but I think it's probably because everyone knows Douglas will take care of himself first, so he doesn't need to be worried about so much.) Money matters to her of course, but several times it comes down to show that if money was the most important thing, she'd probably have given up GERTI a long time ago. We get it set out plainly as early as Douz: "Because I am the Chief Executive Officer of MJN Air. It’s a good thing to be. It’s better than... a little old lady."

I think it's possible to read Carolyn as an extremely burned Badger; there's something in how she reacts to her sister that makes me think I can see it. But in general, I'm more inclined to say Snake Primary. One that isn't fully burned -- Arthur's never really out of her circle, I think -- but does have a hell of a time opening up her circle to new people by the time of the series. Just look at the trial Herc goes through before he gets there.

Lion Secondary, I think. She's the immovable object to Douglas' unstoppable force, and Martin is the thing unfortunately trapped between them at times. She's stubborn and honest, hates playing at being nicer than she is and only does it when absolutely necessary, and cares about her rules being followed but not the rules in general so much. She's whip-smart, but she doesn't actually tend to be tricky or slippery in the same way as Douglas -- and in fact, the one time we really see her try to be actively tricky, in Timbuktu, she loses. She's more likely to ignore opposition or tell someone else to solve it, and even when she pulls something, it's usually pretty straight-forward. (For example, calling Hester's fans in Cremona -- it's an underhanded move against someone who's earned her ire, but not really a complicated scheme.)

Arthur

I think Arthur shares his mother's Lion Secondary. He's a force in his own right as much as she is, even if he's more of a tornado to her steel barrier. He's honest to a fault and very much always himself, no matter what the situation, or how much better it might be to try and do something else.

As Primary goes, it's hard to tell if this is just Arthur's optimism shining against everyone else, but my first instinct is Badger. He wants to be helpful, oftentimes too much so, and he likes them so much it tends to be notable when he doesn't like somebody. His focus tends to be the people in front of him at the time, but that does extend to include other people when they're there -- it's not just the crew at all times. While I think it's possible to see him in other lights, Badger seems to make the most sense and work with what we see of his wants through the series.

Herc

While most of the other minor or reoccurring characters don't show up enough for me to have even an idea, I think we do get enough of Herc to narrow it down some, if not make a completely secure conclusion.

My first instinct is that he's yet another Snake Primary in the mix. It works with his role as a foil for Douglas, and with his willingness to give up his position to be with Carolyn by the end of the series. (That said, I feel like his speech on why he's a vegetarian in Ottery St. Mary could point towards Bird Primary as well, and would make sense with everything we see of him.)

He seems straightforward in a way that doesn't line up with a Snake Secondary to me -- that could be a matter of the situations we see him in, but I still just don't see it in his conversations with Carolyn. I'd say maybe a Lion Secondary, in the way the two of them clash and he stands his ground. Bird Secondary also makes sense, but admittedly I'm having trouble pointing to anything specific that made me think so; there's just something in the way his manner bounces off the others, and in the way he seems to almost take on and off All-Knowing Air Captain mode.

In conclusion --

Martin: Double Bird with a Badger Secondary model Douglas: Double Snake Carolyn: Snake Primary/Lion Secondary Arthur: Badger Primary/Lion Secondary Herc: tentatively Snake Primary/Lion or Bird Secondary

or, as they say in Limerick... But for Arthur, they're all quite constructed With the Snakes bickering interrupted By a worrying Bird From the Captain's chair heard Til the newest of Snakes is inducted

Carolyn's Lion is strong and won't coddle Martin's Bird, leaning against his model Or the Lion she raised By the Snake she's unfazed And thank you all, for reading my twaddle

#sortinghatchats #sorting hat chats #cabin pressure #Sorting Things Out #m: cabin pressure #til binary systems run

13 notes · View notes

fallenhero-rebirth · 4 years

Text

Brain update

First, let me say that this isn't about what anybody has done. My reactions are not in proportion to anything that has happened, and might be considered odd, weird and sensitive to people involved.

So let me explain.

I'm an Aspie (what we call ourselves in Sweden), on the autism spectrum. Yeah, might have guessed that from the story I'm writing, Sidestep is not the only one trying to figure out how people work.

Over the years I have built up an arsenal of knowledge and analysis to be able to pretend to be neurotypical, something that I can manage alright most days, but which breaks down once you get to know me better. I'm open with this at my current job, and luckily both my bosses seem to be okay dealing with open communication and just telling me what I need to do.

It was not always like this, and that is one of the reasons why I had a breakdown and needed to get off discord/tumblr.

Back in the late nineties, I had finally got my dream job. I was a product developer in the food industry, part of a rather small department of middle-class academics. I was the new hire, everyone else had worked there for years, and things were going well. Or so I assumed. I got cool projects, got along well with one of the sales people, and well, my boss was weird but bosses always are.

Three years later. Our parent company wanted to sell us off, everyone was starting to get worried about their job. We tried to expand into things were weren't equipped to do (you don't bring spices into a fruit jam line, will be hell to clean) and while I did the projects, I also raised an (in retrospect) too big stink about the fact that we were wasting time developing things we couldn't produce without expanding. My boss (who I had learned was a devout christian) started to get really weird, I got called in and he wondered if I was a member of a cult (I was often wearing a headscarf at the time because pressure on my head is good for stress relief). I also got told off for wearing army boots to work (we had lab shoes in the lab), because (I kid you not) if we had danish visitors to the lab (we didn't have visitors) they could be offended since they had once been occupied by Nazis. Yes, at the time I was an Antifa metalhead/satanist, it was a very volatile time in sweden and nazis were everywhere. Now they're a political party, go figure.

It all came to a head when I was confronted with a folder one of the secretaries of the department had where she had written down every odd and strange thing that I did, and there were a lot of accusations of things I quite frankly blocked out. Around this time I was suffering from bad burnout, had memory loss, my hair was falling out and I lost two bikes because I forgot where I parked them. All because of workplace hostility.

So for the first time ever, I went to the company doctor, who immediately sent me on a one month sick leave, and gave a reference to a therapist. When I went and told my boss, his reaction was "It can't be anything at work," in a dismissive tone. I wrote my resignation right then and there, left the building, snuck back a Saturday to clean out my stuff so I didn't have to meet anyone. Luckily I was backed up by my union, so I got unemployment despite quitting, and the therapist helped me get back on my feet and hook me up with some antidepressants.

Still, I was a wreck for years.

At the time, I had NO idea I was an Aspie. It weren't talked about, the only thing I knew about Autism, was from the various portrayals in movies, and well, in the nineties you can guess. Rainman pretty much was it.

What destroyed me the most was not that people disliked me, I didn't like them either, we didn't have anything in common, and middle-class people always scared me. No, what broke me was the fact that my system failed.

See, I had built up myself over ten years into someone I wanted to be. Smart. Capable. Metalhead. Researcher. Activist. I thought I knew the rules. How to interact.

It turned out I knew nothing. People had been talking behind my back for years, and I didn't know. Getting annoyed by my ticks, and I had no idea. Nobody ever brought anything up to my face until it exploded one day out of the blue. This is why I have ranted about anons on this tumblr. This is why I have been so openly against passive aggressive posts and bullying, especially the anonymous kind, because it destroys people and I don't think the people who does it knows the impact they can have. I hope they don't.

I have never gone back to the lab. I can't. I'm having heart palpitations just thinking about it when I'm writing this. I retrained. Became a machinist. Back to the working class I came from. Eventually started writing.

And this is exactly what these last months have felt like.

I thought I understood things. I was pretty open with being old, an Aspie, not understanding memes, or humor, or tik tok, or certain aspects of people's behavior like jealousy, but the problem with joking about this is that it's so easy to take as just a joke. That I'm just making fun of myself (oh it's that too). I got advice from some of you, which I ignored, because I thought that I could be different. That there was no danger in getting close. That I could be just another voice in the crowd. An occasionally evil avocado. That this couldn't blow up in my face, that everything was cool.

And then it did. And I was wrong. And the talking started, and things were coming out that I had no idea that was going on. That I was being held responsible for. Opinions that were spoken in my name. Events I was supposed to have been aware of and supported. All of a sudden I was omniscient, aware of the true passive aggressive meaning of every reblog, aware of every post in every room in the discord I wasn't even running. Wasn't even a mod on. All of a sudden I had power, and I had used it to hurt people. The people I cared about. Everything I wrote was taken in the worst possible way, twisted into things I never meant, and the more I tried to talk to people, the worse it went.

Look. I know this was at heart a war between people that just doesn't like each other and the things they do/the ways they behave. I'm still not entirely sure who's been involved, and I'm not interested in finding out. I tried to build a supportive space, reblog everyone's art and fics, encourage people to make their own things, get a kofi, get some money, make some friends.

And herein lies my problem.

I thought I understood how to be, and now I don't. I have no idea who hates my guts and who doesn't (well, except some who has very vocally let me know). I can't trust anything. I can't trust anyone. And it sucks. Someone I trusted stabbed be in the back because they were convinced I stabbed them in the back and that sucks more than I can describe. Every time I make a comment on AO3 or twitter it's after psyching myself up for half an hour, and I'm usually a wreck afterwards, because my brain doesn't know if they hate me too, and if I am imposing on them and making their day bad.

So yeah. I need to figure out how to be. How not to have a nausea attack every time I accidentally click open tumblr from pure reflex, looking away from the screen just not to see how may messages I have.

I never wanted to be the aloof author, but maybe I have to be. The question is if I can. I have been told I can't comment on pics or fics, because then I have favorites. And that makes people jealous. And it makes people think I take sides. I have been told I can't be on the discord, because then I will be held responsible for what the mods do there, and everything that's said even when I'm not around. I should apparently have someone manage the tumblr, it's not something that I, an author should do.

I now understand the authors who just stay away and remain distant, because people give themselves the power to write the narrative for you.

Part of me wants to tell people what I've told my current bosses, don't assume, just talk to me. I don't pick up/do passive aggression, I don't understand hints, I have trouble with nuance, I don't listen to gossip, I don't interact enough to know anything that's going on. Just ask before assuming.

Except that right now I can't. I can't talk about any of this. It's too close. It sets me off. It's getting better, sure, I'm on medication again, but the smallest thing still can ruin my entire day. I have no idea how long it will take me to recover and come back to some semblance of normality. I'm not posting this myself (my partner does). Writing is going well, because it lets me not be myself. I need those walls again. The therapy of writing about pain.

I'll rebuild them. I'm not entirely sure who I'll be on the other end of it. We'll see.

I have consciously not spoken about any details because those could be misunderstood, this is not a passive aggressive callout to anybody. I have no hard feelings towards anyone, I am not angry or upset, just confused and sad. I am truly so very, very, very sorry that I've hurt people, both by action and inaction. It was never my intention. I will do my best to do better in the future.

Still working on how to do that.

#personal

370 notes · View notes

itslieutenanthawkeye · 3 years

Text

A Knight’s Oath

Day 6 of Jeankasa Week 2021: Royal AU

AO3

Sir Kirstein aids the princess of Hizuru escape a coup d’état organized by the marleyan Jaeger brothers.

There isn’t one inch of my body that isn’t yelling this is wrong, not one bit that isn’t shouting at me to return, to go back to my chambers, cover my ears with both hands and ignore that letter until the signal comes from within the palace. I came here to do a job: become her close guard, infiltrate the institution, take down the royal line.

That one job could have me swimming in silver. One job would be enough to buy myself that lifestyle I can only dream about. One job, and I could leave knighthood behind, buy myself a castle, a royal title and a woo wife to go with it. A pretty young wife with dark hair and big eyes and a whole army of servants to fulfill our every wish.

And yet here I am, walking with more purpose than ever before in my life, heading towards her.

Like most upper class Hizuran structures, the Azumabito royal palace is built atop a tall stone base. It’s an intricate maze of buildings, rooms and sliding doors that I’ve spent two years memorizing. I should know, better than anyone, how hard it’ll be for us to sneak out. Even if we do it without anyone being aware, even if nobody knows what the princess has found out.

“Jean, over here.” her voice calls from behind one of the doors. I follow like a bee searching honey. I enter the place where she’s been waiting for me and encounter her wearing the peasant clothes I procured for her a couple of days ago. She’s as lovely in them as she was the first time I saw her, sitting atop a high throne next to the regent, Kiyomi Azumabito, wearing a wonderful kimono of red fabric and golden threads.

Her mother, a pure-blooded Azumabito royal, fell in love with an eldian man, and in the process of marrying him, she also fell into disgrace and was expelled from the balance years before conceiving the princess. After a wave of plague that caused the death of the shogun and his closest relatives, however, Kiyomi had sent a contingent to bring back the princess’ mother to serve as regent until the princess came of age.

Stories say Kiyomi found a ten-year-old princess orphaned, living of scraps she found in the field near her home. Her parents were also killed by the plague. Some people say they starved, some others that they were murdered. However they died, the princess came back to the ancestral home of the Azumabito alone and Kiyomi took her into her care. Even I am aware of the love the woman has for her adoptive daughter, how much she cares for her safety.

It was her the first to find out about Marley’s plans to overthrow Hizuru’s royal line, of the spies sent by Marley in the shape of knights for Hizuru’s princess. It was Kiyomi who came to me, asking for help for the princess. She knew my involvement in Marley’s plans gave me a lot more intel than any other servant could’ve collected…and because she saw the way I looked at the princess that day our delegation arrived, two days ago, and how I’ve seen her every day since. She figured out quickly how much affection I carry for the princess and knew, barely one year after my arrival, that I would never leave her adoptive daughter behind.

“Are you ready?” I ask, putting on the peasant clothes, hiding the katana Kiyomi left in my room in the folds of my own hizuran clothes. “Your highness, are you ready?”

“I don’t want to leave.” She says; she’s turned away from me, giving me what little privacy she can while I change. “I can’t leave Kiyomi. I can’t leave the people of the palace behind.”

“Many of your servants are traitors, princess,” I remind her, tapping on her shoulder to indicate I’m decent again. A slight tremble travels her back and I curse myself; I’d forgotten how reserved hizuran people are when it comes to physical touch.

She turns around and faces me, resolution clear on her face. “Traitors or not, a ruler owes herself to her people,” she says, more dignified than any other royal I ever saw in Marley. “Traitors or not, I cannot leave them alone. And Kiyomi—”

“You heard their plans, princess,” I say, wondering how many times I’ll have to repeat the same thing to get her to forget that commitment to the people the Azumabito care so much about. “The moment the clock hits twelve, the guards will be at your doors. Zeke plans on executing you at dawn, on the morning of your eighteenth birthday. It’s either that or be forced into marrying his brother.”

“And I must let Kiyomi’s head hang just for the sake of escaping?”

“Mikasa,” I say; using her name feels strange. It’s a lovely name, but also forbidden. No knight is allowed to address the princess by her name, nor try to give her orders, let alone try to convince her to follow a plan she doesn’t agree with. The princess widens her eyes in brief shock, but nods, inviting me to continue. “You’re the last of your line. Kiyomi is willing to sacrifice her life for you.”

The princess lowers her head. “I can’t leave her.”

“If you can’t respect her wishes, at least do it out of pity for me,” I say, in a last attempt to get her moving. Time is slipping away from us, and Eren’s retinue must be making its way across the mountain roads already. “I’ve given up everything by just being here. If you stay, I hang with you, dishonored, tortured first.”

The princess looks up at me, her eyes stone-cold. “You came here under false pretenses, betraying mefirst. And now you’ve betrayed your country by being here. How can I be sure you won’t betray me again?”

Ah, how can I assure her without looking like a lovesick fool?

“I’ve served your palace for two years now, haven’t I?” I say. Mikasa nods, her gaze softening somewhat. In an act of boldness, or perhaps a leap of faith, I take a hold of her hands and fall to my knees. “I’m well acquainted with you now, princess, I cannot bring myself to leave you behind or betray you even if I should wish it.”

“Why, though, Jean?” she asks, and the mention of my name from her lips wraps me up like a warm blanket. Suddenly I remember again why I don’t care about the lost wealth, about that castle and title, about the group of nameless women I could’ve wooed into marriage. It’s her. Just her.

“Because you deserve to live. A great leader deserves to live,” I reply, bringing the back of her hands to my lips. I graze them briefly; a royal courtesy from Marley, never performed hereabouts. Royalty in Hizuru barely touches each other, and I can feel her trembling at the mere touch of lips against her hand. “I mean it when I say I won’t betray you, princess. I’m devoted to you as I haven’t been devoted to anything in my life. All I can hope for is that you believe me.”

“I believe you, Jean,” she says after a moment of quiet introspection. “I’m not sure why, but your face always seemed honest. From day one, even when you were scheming against me.”

I can’t help but to smile. “I’m willing to use my whole life to convince you I’m no longer scheming.” I say, standing to face her, holding her hand still. “Are you ready, princess?”

A sad smile adorns her face as she nods, and I’m forced to not focus too much on her face as we sneak out of the castle. Apart from being well-educated, she’s been trained extensively in martial arts and acrobatics, so sliding across the various rooftops of the palace and jumping from one terrace to another proves an easy task for her. She looks back at me at a point, her pale face illuminated by the moonlight, and I manage to give her a tight, ridiculous smile in encouragement.

I’ve seen plenty of women before, but she is by far the most beautiful sight my eyes have ever witnessed. But her beauty is just one of the things that have drawn me to betray my homeland’s coup d’état against Hizuru. I met her when she was sixteen, and I nineteen; these two years, I’ve seen her grow into a fair, kind ruler, one that cares more about the wellbeing of her subjects than the wealth of the family mines or the expansion of her land.

At seventeen, she convinced the council to abolish arranged marriages for women, recognize divorces requested by wives as legal, increase taxes for royals and establish a free education system for the entire country. I know she had in mind to establish free healthcare within her fifteen-year plan. All in all, she is a great leader.

Then there’s the fact that she’s extremely good at sparring. And I’ve always had a soft spot for women that are good with swords, especially women who can beat me in a fight.

I guess, in a way, spending my days with her, being with her…it all makes me want to be better. Before Hizuru, before the princess, all I thought about was ways of getting a comfortable life. My whole childhood, I’d spent it scamming people. Then knighthood had seemed a good way to find myself a relatively wealthy wife or become rich by taking down a king, or by plundering a town.

Just being by her side makes me a better man.

I want to keep being that better man.

I also want to keep seeing that pretty face of hers. I want to keep hearing her rants. I want to keep sharing my thoughts with her. I just want to be with her.

___________________________

Hizuru’s capital is surrounded by tall mountains. It’s thanks to my military training that I know which rivers the Jaeger brothers will use to invade the city, and which ones will give us safe passage to the sea, where a boat provided by the queen of Paradis Island awaits. Hizuru is a large nation, however, and the possibilities of our escape plan going sour are high. Still, I cannot let any of my insecurities show on my face. I took it upon my shoulders to protect the princess, to take her to her new home to keep her from being executed, forced into marriage, or tortured to death by the royals who had aided the Jaeger brothers conspire against the Azumabito.

By the time the sun begins to climb the mountains, we are miles away from the capital. And yet, we can hear the execution bells ring across the watch towers. Heads are starting to roll in the palace, the bells across the Hizuran Mountain Pass tell us, and one of them must be Kiyomi’s. Mikasa sits next to me on the motorboat, crying into her sleeves, leaning slightly against my arm.

“I’m sorry.” I manage to muster. “I wish I could’ve done more.”

She shakes her head, not looking at me. “Why did your people do this to us?”

I say the first few words that come into my mind. “Greed…I’ve never interacted much with the Jaeger brothers, but I know that the eldest wants power, and the mines in Hizuru are too rich to ignore. And the youngest cannot stand monarchies. He says people in them aren’t free.”

“Why decide to impose a dictatorship instead? What kind of hypocrisy is that?” she asks, although it’s clear she doesn’t expect me to answer her. “Why kill the council members? Kill Kiyomi? Our people are happy, and I wanted to work to make their lives better. I really wanted to. Why invade a foreign land that has rightful rulers with the excuse of freedom?”

“I wish I could explain it all,” I say, and the sight of the tear streaks on her face turns me into a rambling idiot. “I’m sorry, princess. I’m sorry I was with them. I’m sorry I didn’t do more to stop them. I’m sorry I came into your palace with—”

“You’ve already said you’ll spend your whole life making it up to me, won’t you? It is a promise, isn’t it?” the princess replies, and something inside me tells me she might be too tired to hear my apologies. She took the news of my original plan badly and stopped talking to me for a whole week, not being able to just look at me in the eyes, with fair reason. We spent so many days together with me as her guard, we became friends over those long nights of study, our few sneaky expeditions outside the palace, the times when I brought her street food for dinner in our chambers, the times when she’d sung for me and Kiyomi from behind a white canvas…

All those memories of friendship are stained now, covered with the mark of my initial plan to help the Jaeger brothers with their coup d’état. “I mean to fulfill that promise, princess,” I say, more convinced than I thought I would. “I’ll do anything to redeem myself from the initial betrayal.”

“What if I ask you to raise an army for me?” she asks, wiping the tears off her eyes with the back of her hand. “What if I say that you will prove you’ve redeemed yourself once you help me gain my throne back?”

Her face has acquired that solemn expression she uses whenever she addresses the council. And, like the council members, I cannot bring myself to say no to her. “I-I will try my best, princess. I do not have any influence, and I’ve no money to offer. But I will raise you an army, I will do my best.”

“Do you promise?”

“I could swear on my knight’s honor, princess, but you and I know I don’t have any. I’m a traitor to you and to my own homeland, remember?” I admit with an awkward smile, scratching the back of my head. “I’m lucky enough as it is that you trusted me enough to come with me.”

Mikasa smiles, then wraps my hand with both of hers. “There is one way you can assure me.” she says, her eyes not meeting mine. The sunlight is bathing us both; we’ll enter the lowlands soon, and speed will be of essence to avoid getting captured. Perhaps my concern for speed is what keeps me from realizing her face is dangerously near mine for the first couple of moments.

“What way?” I manage to stammer.

“An oath on your soul,” she explains. “It’s not a thing we do often here, though.”

“Is it like a blood oath?”

The princess shakes her head. “It’s something a bit deeper than that.”

I swallow hard, wondering if she’s going to force me to cut my finger off, or something worse. I don’t have any gripes if that’s what it takes to convince her I would fight to gain her trust back, but I can’t help being concerned about the health implications of cutting a finger off in the middle of a river.

“I’m not going to ask you to cut a finger off, Jean,” she half-sobs, half-laughs, guessing my thoughts. “It’s nothing as ghastly as that.”

“From the way you’re talking, it seems like a big deal.”

A soft blush travels her cheeks. “It is,” she says. “It’s a soul promise. We don’t touch each other here, not after you’ve left childhood behind. Let alone if you’re from a royal family. These oaths only happen behind closed doors, or at weddings.”

“What kind of oath is it, princess?”

“Kiss,” she says, closing her eyes. “You close the oath with a kiss, and your soul is bound to that person.”

“A k-kiss?” I manage to say, realizing at last how close she is sitting to me. If I must be honest, for the most part during my first year on the job, I paid little attention to hizuran traditions. It wasn’t until she started talking to me more that I began to care for the country I was hired to take down. And despite paying more attention to the country she loves so much, I have never heard of such an oath. Could it be that she just wants to feel someone else’s skin on hers?

A smirk appears on my face, and she seems to guess what thoughts are going through my head. She withdraws from me, narrowing her eyes dangerously. “It’s not like I want to!” she says, her cheeks burning red, her murderous expression only increasing my smile. “Stop looking at me like that!”

“I’m sorry!” I say, coughing to clear my throat. Her hands are still holding mine. “I didn’t mean to disrespect you, princess. Please, tell me about this oath.”

“No.” Mikasa replies, shaking her head. “You are clearly not mature enough for it.”

“Please, princess.” I say, and she gives me a serious glance before sighing in defeat.

“If you do it, it’ll be important. You cannot back away from this; you must fulfill it even if it takes your life. Your promise will be bound to your soul; and your soul is bound to me.” Mikasa hunches her shoulders and exhales, her eyes set on the mountains we’re leaving behind, her eyes longing for the warmth of the castle, the voice of her caretaker.

Her home crumbled in the lapse of a few hours; all her friends in the palace, her adoptive mother, the members of the council that cared for her…they’re all dead by now, or tortured, perhaps, to get information on her whereabouts. Kiyomi is probably getting the worst of all. And that’s when it hits me: I’m all she’s got left. Me, one of the knights sent to infiltrate her palace, gain their trust, and stab them in the back.

What a grim scenario that is.

“Princess, please look at me,” I say. She turns to face me, and my lips press against hers for a couple of seconds. When we part, her eyes are as wide as plates. “I promise I will not fail you.”

She nods, her hands clutching mine, her cheeks tinted pink. “Thank you.”

I let go of her hands and wrap her face with both of mine. Then, I press my lips against hers. This time, when we part, her eyes are closed. “I promise I am bound to you, blood, bone and soul.” I say, then kiss her again, a little longer this time. “I promise I won’t rest until you get your throne back.”

She smiles at me. “You’re splitting your soul into a lot of little pieces there.”

I kiss her again, and this time her lips move against mine, her arms wrap around my shoulders. Many times these two years I dreamed about kissing her –no, I’ve imagined doing a lot more with her, if I must be honest. But it was all fantasies, half-built while I looked after her during royal events, while I guarded her in her sleep, while we had our quiet dinners.

“I swear, my princess,” I say as we come apart once more, grazing her cheek with the back of my hand. “I swear my soul, heart and body are yours, from now until I the day I’m ripped from you.”

“That sounds a lot like a wedding vow.” She points out, holding my hand in place against her face.

I smile. “I’m sorry, princess.”

“Don’t be, please,” she says, then places a quick kiss on my fingers. “You can call me by my name from now on, you know. I’m not a princess anymore.”

“You’re always a princess, though.”

She shakes her head. “You and I are fugitives,” she says, setting her eyes on the mountains again, a fire burning bright behind the grey curtain of her eyes. She wants revenge; she wants to gain her throne, her homeland, back, and rain fire upon the ones who dared to lift a finger against Hizuru.

And all I want, I realize with a bit of embarrassment, is to keep her safe, stay by her side.

“I’ll raise an army for you, Mikasa.”

“We’ll raise it together. I believe in your oath,” she assures me, leaning forward to press her lips against mine for a long moment. “And I swear to you that when I get my throne back, I will give you all the lands and wealth you desire.”

“I could do without all that.” I say, shrugging, eliciting the first smile I’ve seen from her in a while.

I want to protect that smile, I think as our boat picks up speed. We’ll enter the lowlands in a couple of miles, and it’ll be a race to get to the ocean. The island is the only safe option for the princess now; the only safe place for the both of us. Despite my oath to her, all my mind can think of is a peaceful life with her. No luxuries, no armies, no grand schemes for power. Just the princess and I, sharing our lives in a quiet cottage by a river, hidden away from the world on Paradis Island.

It’s a fool’s dream, I know.

“I’ll keep you safe.” I assure her, giving her hand a little squeeze, hoping this isn’t too much touching for someone like her.

To my surprise, she squeezes my hand in return. “And I’ll keep you safe.”

#Jeankasa #Jean x Mikasa #JeanMika #Jean Kirstein #Mikasa Ackerman #JeankasaWeek2021 #Jeankasa Week 2021 #Royal AU #AU fanfic #fanfic #shingeki no kyojin fanfic

11 notes · View notes

shoryubug · 4 years

Text

I Said Leave Me Alone.

So let it be noted that I am not good at keeping up with things th way that people want me to. So I’m sorry that I haven’t done Standing Up chapter 2 yet, but I will get it up soon. Anyway this story was inspired by a hyped up fantasy conversation between my roommate and myself, however there was a better IRL conclusion than there is in this story. Also find it here on AO3 (registered users only though!)

Chapter 1

Marinette was known for being late, Alya had always taken that into calculations when she made plans to talk to her best friend...because time and time again, a serious discussion would be needed, and since Marinette would be late, she didn't need to make more of a plan than waiting near the entryway of the school. From what she understood, Marinette's parents didn't tend to care if she was late so long as she had good grades, which Alya could understand, Marinette was a good student, she got good grades, and she did good things...but Alya herself would always have to discuss her tardiness with her parents and oftentimes got berated for it.

Today though, she'd talked to her mother a few nights prior, and revealed that she knew she was going to be late one day this week, she just hadn't picked it out yet, and Marlena agreed with Alya...that being late for the cause of trying to find some common ground in the current situation she was facing was worth it. Alya felt blessed to have such a loving and understanding mother, even if Marlena was often busy at work, she was always there if Alya needed help or to be show the voice of reason, which Alya found great...even if she hated being grounded at certain times for her determination of getting the greatest footage and gathering intel about the Parisian superheroes team.

Just as she suspected, Marinette was late this day, and as the girl began to charge up the steps of the stairs, Alya grabbed her bag and dragged her back a bit, to pull her attention away from the school.

"I'm sorry for grabbing you like that, but you kinda charged past me...can we talk for a bit? I know we're already late but I really need to talk to you." Alya stated, as Marinette's bluebell eyes went wide, and she nodded, it was strange, but she could almost sense fear in her best friend...which didn't make sense, what did she have to be afraid about? Alya was the one about to set fire to the world, after all.

Releasing her grip on the bag Alya motioned for Marinette to follow her as she walked them to a café that was near the school, and she ordered two lattes so that the pair of them could get some energy...and so that she could stall this conversation as long as she could. The nerves in her system had built up so intensely that she didn't know what to do.

"A-Alya...you wanted to talk?" the meek girl across from her asked as she led Alya to the stools near the location that the coffees would be placed when their orders were ready.

"I...yeah...look, there really is no easy way to say this Marinette because it sounds awful...and far be it from me to make bad accusations toward you girl, but..." she began before she gulped and shook her head for a second, diverting her attention over to the baristas as they started using their loud machines.

"I'm not saying that you're a bad person, and I can't stress that point enough girl, but you also haven't tried to mend fences, and it's getting old. Everyone is getting tired of it and nobody knows what to do, it seems like as long as Lila is around that the two of you are going to have people pick a side even though neither of you has asked that, I mean, Lila hasn't even asked that girl, it just seems to radiate from you, and it isn't exactly fair..." Alya stated as Marinette let out a sigh of relief, which gave Alya a puzzled look.

"I thought there was something else for a second and got really panicky, sorry...but...I didn't ask anyone to pick sides, and I'm not going to, but I don't like her. I'm not going to make efforts for someone that framed me and got half the class akumatized either. I don't care who does like her, I know what I know, and honestly, I trust my instincts. I know that you want proof of her being a liar, but even without being able to give you the proof, I trust myself." Marinette stated almost matter-of-factly, which made Alya tense up as their drinks were slid over to the pair of them. Alya passed a latte over to Marinette and as her hands gripped her own, the warmth of it spread through her palm and left her pondering.

"I just don't get it Marinette...you were never like this with Kagami or even with Chloe..." Alya stated before Marinette sighed and stood up.

"It doesn't matter Alya...I have to go to class now...thank you for the latte." Marinette whispered before taking her leave.

Taking a sip of her drink, Alya sat there contemplating just what even happened. She was so certain that talking to Marinette about the problem would result in her seeing that she needed to be more civil, but...it had just had the opposite effect, Marinette was as stubborn as ever about Lila, which was frustrating.

It was like she didn't care about her other friends, and the more Alya thought about it with each sip of her drink, the more agitated she became because clearly there was more to this story than Marinette would tell her, and Alya was her best friend after all, didn't she deserve to know what was going on? It wasn't fair to have been put in this position.

"No, it isn't fair, is it, my dear girl? You only tried to fix this problem, but your friend refuses to see reason or be honest with you...I'd like to help you to expose the truth about this ordeal, so that you and your friends might have some real peace, so long as you help me get Ladybug and Chat Noir's miraculous, do we have a deal?" A voice called out to her, as Alya stood there frozen.

"Yes, Hawkmoth."

"Then Revelator, go find out your truths and get me my Miraculous."

#ml fic #mlb fic #ml fanfic #lila salt #ml salt fic #ml salt #salt fic #miraculous ladybug #ml i said leave me alone

508 notes · View notes

rjhpandapaws · 3 years

Text

Secure the Stage

Ch 4: Two Flames Are Better Than One

Silas's first reaction when he got the email about on campus classes being cancelled was delight. He would get to spend more time at the theater. That was closely followed by guilt, someone could have been hurt. He turned off his school alarm and got ready for bed. Monday found him awake at his usual time despite the lack of an alarm. He knew he wasn’t going to be getting anymore sleep, so he got out of bed and started getting ready for the day. Luther had put the finishing touches on some pieces that Silas had needed help with. Luther would be stopping by the theater to drop them off at some point today. Silas filled his travel mug with hot water from the sink, added instant coffee, put the lid on and shook it. Connor would be disappointed, but Silas cared more about caffeine than taste at the moment. He grabbed his bag, checked to be sure he had everything he would need, put on his shoes and left for the theater. He wasn’t in his usual clothes today. He planned to paint the set pieces Luther was dropping off as well as others that needed it. So he had opted for an old tshirt that an ex-hook up had left behind and an older pair of jeans that had seen paint days before. Part of him wondered if he would be seeing Allen today, and if did he wondered what they would talk about this time. They talked on his smoke breaks because rehearsals kept him busy and Allen was on the clock and couldn’t just stop to chat. When he got to the theater, he sent Luther a text to check in.

Sixer: I just got here. Sixer: Text me when you get here and I’ll open the delivery bay Sixer: Tell the girls hello if they are with you :) Superman: They say hello :) Superman: I should be there in a half hour Sixer: See you then!

He made his way to the side door and checked if it was locked. It wasn’t. He stepped back and then shoved his bodyweight against the door as he turned the knob to get it open. He grabbed the doorstop and wedged the door open so whoever came in next wouldn’t have to fight with it. He walked into the auditorium flicking the lights on as he went. He took the stairs to the left of the stage and set his bag down outside the supply closet. He opened the closet and got out what he would need. He let his mind wander as he got things set up. He was looking forward to seeing Allen today, if he was working today that is. After that awkward first day they had struck up a bit of an odd friendship. They didn’t talk often, only if Allen’s breaks lined up with his, or if Silas got to the theater early enough to catch him on his lunch break. They had built whatever this was on stolen conversations and the occasional wave from across the room. In spite of all that, he considered Allen to be one of his close friends. Not close enough to actively let his guard down, but closer than most.

Allen was his opposite in a lot of ways. The one that stood out the most to Silas was how open and inviting Allen was. Where Silas would think about how to answer a question truthfully but without giving any of himself away; Allen just answered them. He let people in close without thinking about the consequences. Not that Allen hadn’t gathered whole truths from him; because he had. The security guard could slip past his defenses without an issue. Silas hadn’t given him much yet, but Allen still knew more about him than anyone else outside of his carefully constructed family. It made him nervous. He learned a lot about Allen in their stolen moments. Some of them were little but personal. Like how he played the guitar and wrote his own songs sometimes. To broad but important things, like his desire to keep people safe. The thing that fueled his desire to become a SWAT captain. He lived in a house with four other people and was hoping to move out soon. Allen had so much he was freely willing to give. It amazed Silas, and remined him, in some ways of his twin. He was pulled out of his thoughts by the smash of of piano keys from his back pocket.

Superman: I’m here Sixer: Alright I’ll get the door

He put his phone away and jumped off the stage. He made his way to the back of the theater and into the delivery bay. He typed in the security code, set the garage door to open, and ducked under it once it was high enough.

“Luther, you’re the fu- best” He caught himself mid curse when he saw Alice’s head pop out of the back window of the truck. “These go to the same place as before. The code has already been typed in so you don’t have to worry.” Luther nodded as he pulled the truck in a little closer. Once he came to a stop Silas climbed into the bed and started grabbing containers with some of the smaller props in them while Luther got out and started on the bigger stuff. He was trying to be quick because it looked like Luther was in charge of taking Alice to school today. “Kara’s still not feeling well?” He asked as they made their way to the stage with the first load of set pieces and props. “I’d have rescheduled if I’d known.” “She’s starting to feel better, today was just an off day.” He set down the set frames he had been carrying, “I made time for this, Alice won’t be late.” Silas was relieved for that at least, “I’m glad I didn’t mess anything up then.” Luther hummed in acknowledgement as he went to go get another load. Silas set his load on the tarp he had set up and then followed him. They managed to split the last of it between the two of them and get it put away. Silas followed Luther back to the truck. “Thanks again for all your help Luther.” Silas said with a smile, “I’d be up a creek without a paddle otherwise. Let me know if there is anything I can do for you.”

“It’s no problem Silas.” Luther squeezed Silas’s shoulder, “Thank you for giving Kara and Alice something they can both enjoy.” “I can’t take the credit for that. They were here before I was.” He ducked his head and Luther gave his shoulder another squeeze before he headed for the truck. Silas walked to the back window so he could say goodbye to Alice. “Have a good day at school peanut.” Silas said through the window, “I’ll be seeing you this afternoon right?” Alice smiled and waved at him from the back seat, “Bye Silas!” He waved and stepped away from the truck so Luther could leave. Once they were gone Silas closed the delivery bay and headed back to the auditorium. He opened the sound booth and connected his phone to the system via bluetooth. With music playing to help pass the time, he settled in on the tarp and got to work. Silas wasn’t sure how much time had passed before a shadow fell across the tarp and scared the life out of him. He wiped his hands off on his jeans and paused the music. “Hey.” He said flatly, annoyed at being interrupted. He looked up to find Allen looking down at him in confusion. “What’s up?” “Hey.” Allen echoed as he looked over the tarp. His brow furrowed more as he spoke, “Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”

Silas shrugged. Leave it to Allen to believe that Silas was ditching classes to be at the theater. He’d only done that once so far. “Classes are online for the time being. There was a fire on campus over the weekend so they have to rebuild.” He displayed his paint mess with a flourish of his paint stained hands, “I picked up a couple of extra shifts at work, but the rest of my time is going to be spent here.” “That sucks.” Allen said after a moment, “I’m sorry about your school.” Silas shrugged, “It was just a building an no one was hurt. So things should be back to business as usual in a few months.” “That’s one way to look at it I suppose.” Allen said as he looked over the mess on the tarp, “So you have a key to the side door then?” “Kinda.” Silas said in an attempt to dodge the question. Allen didn’t take it and motioned for him continue. “This building is pretty old and that door in particular is picky. So unless you have the deadbolt just the right way, it doesn’t lock. It’ll look locked though. One stiff push from the outside and you’re in.” Allen gave a slow nod and spoke after an almost awkward stretch of silence, “So you broke in.” Silas rolled his eyes, “If you want to get technical about it, sure. Though personally, I only use the term if I have to use the fire escape or delivery entrance to get in here.”

“Why not just wait for someone to let you in?” Allen asked, as any reasonable person would. “Because nobody gets here until like eight.” He grabbed his paintbrush so he could get back to work. He wanted to be at least halfway done before rehearsal started, “I get here around six, seven if I take a cab.” “Does the owner know?” He pressed. “James? Yeah.” He grabbed the set piece he had been working on before and proceeded to get more wet paint on his hands. He ignored it and started on the next coat, “Why do you think I know the code to the security system?” It was amusing to watch Allen’s expression go through a rollercoaster of expressions. Going from panic to slight amazement. He collected himself before he spoke again, “Well I should be getting to work then.” Silas lifted his hand in an absent wave, “I’ll be here if you get bored.” He started his music up again as Allen left. He was pulled back into painting and a few more hours passed before his body decided whatever was left of his coffee was actually not enough to function off of. He checked the time and decided there was enough time to take a break and still get what he wanted done for the day. Since they were the only ones here it seemed fair that he checked to see if Allen wanted anything. He wiped the excess paint off of his hands onto his jeans, hopped off the stage and made his way toward the security office.

He knocked on the office door but didn’t get a response. He tested the handle, and opened it when he found it unlocked. He opened it just enough so that he could lean into the room, “I was gonna go grab some food before everyone else got here this afternoon.” He took some delight in watching Allen’s head snap up, apparently he hadn’t noticed Silas yet, Do you want anything?” “You might want to clean up a bit first. You’ve got paint all over your face.” Allen stood and stretched, “I’ll take my lunch break and come with you. The person working the afternoon shift should be here soon.” He felt paint crinkle and peel at his skin as he furrowed his brow. He touched his cheek to see if any of it was wet and came away with nothing so he gave a noncommittal shrug. “This stuff is a pain in the ass to get off so I’ll just shower when I get home.” Allen wrote something down before he turned back to Silas, “Alright. What are you in the mood for?” “Chinese.” He didn’t even have to think about it. He stepped back into the hallway figuring Allen would follow him. “There’s this place down the street. The outside doesn’t look like much, but the sweet and sour pork is to die for.” Allen laughed. “I’ll take your word for it. Are we walking or driving?”

“It’s pretty close, so probably walking if you don’t mind.” Silas said as he turned toward the auditorium. “You might want to get some shoes on first though.” Allen said, “If you cut your feet up too much you won’t be able to perform.” That was an odd thing to say, he was pretty sure he had shoes on. He looked down just to be sure, and found that he was, in fact barefoot. “Motherfucker!” Apparently he hadn’t put his shoes on before he went to find Allen, “One sec okay?” He took a few steps back and then ran at the stage and jumped up onto it when he had enough speed. He walked to the left of the stage and found his shoes right where he had left them, right beside his bag. He grabbed them and headed for the front of the stage. He put his socks and shoes on tying them tightly before he jumped off the stage again. “Alright.” he made his way back to Allen, “I’m ready.” He let Allen leave out the side door first, he flipped the deadbolt to unlocked before he followed suit. They made small talk as they walked toward the restaurant. He directed Allen toward the older building and got the door for him. He was surprised to see how crowded it was. “Is takeout okay?” Allen asked as he looked over the crowd. “Takeout is just fine.” He replied noncommittally. “I didn’t realize it was going to be this busy. We can just head to the counter and order, then when it’s up we can be on our way.”

They ordered their lunch and waited in easy silence for it to come up. As soon as they got back to the theater Silas took his shoes off and put them by his bag. He joined Allen at the front of the stage and settled in to eat. “So this might be dumb to ask.” Allen started, “But why do you always have your shoes off?” Allen gestured to his bare feet, “Every time I see you you’re barefoot.” “I’m just more comfortable with them off.” He mimicked Allen’s gesture, “If I’m not in an environment that strictly requires shoes I’m gonna be barefoot.” Allen smiled and shook his head, “What happens if you step on something you shouldn’t? Like glass or something?” Silas shrugged, “Pull it out and hope for the best.” They talked until Allen had to go back to work. Silas cleaned up the mess he had made of the stage and threw away the trash from lunch. After that he started getting things ready for practice. He was hoping their streak of good luck would hold out. They were ahead of schedule, and if they kept it up they would be able to practice the play all the way through twice before opening night. With everything set up, he walked into the sound booth to check his phone. Daniel still hadn’t gotten back to him about tonight.

Rehearsal was a disaster, if Silas had to pick a word. Half of the people who said they were going to be there didn’t show, and because of that they couldn’t work on the scene they were on. Instead, they ran through what they could with who they had, which was also a cluster fuck. The only thing that kept him from swearing up a blue streak was that there were kids present. He ended rehearsal an hour and a half early to help ease his frustration. “Are you mad at me?” Alice asked as they were waiting for Luther in front of the theater. “No, it’s not you Peanut, but some of the grown ups.” He said kindly, “You were great today Ally-cat.” Alice smiled and hugged him. He returned it and helped her down off the wall when he saw Luther’s truck pull into the lot. She rushed to meet her dad and Silas waved as they pulled off. “I need a fucking smoke.” He said to the open air. He grabbed his cigarettes from his pocket and paused when he didn’t feel his lighter with them. He checked his other pockets, his panic rising each time he came away with nothing. He put his cigarettes away and rushed inside to look for it. It had to be here somewhere. He didn’t know what he would do if it was lost. When the sound booth and concession stand proved to be dead ends he made his way back to the auditorium to look through his bag. He didn’t know what he was going to tell Richard if he had actually lost it. Getting something like that engraved had to have been expensive. When he dug in one of the side pockets and felt its outline he breathed out a sigh of relief.

“What were you looking for?” Allen asked as Silas jumped off the stage. Silas hadn’t notice him come in. “My lighter.” He said as he put the engraved silver lighter in his pocket with his cigarettes, “It was a gift so I don’t want to lose it.” He headed for the door, “I’m going for a smoke break. Care to join me?” “I don’t smoke.” Allen stated, “But I wouldn’t mind keeping you company out there?” Silas rolled his eyes as he opened the door, “I know you don’t smoke. You turn me down every time I offer you one.” He put space between them once they got outside so he wouldn’t have to worry about blowing smoke in Allen’s face. He sat on the short wall and lit a cigarette. He relaxed considerably on the first inhale and let the smoke out as a content sigh. “So how was rehearsal?” Allen asked just before the silence could get uncomfortable. Silas groaned, he had hoped he wouldn’t have to talk about it so soon. He took another longer drag. He tipped his head back and and blew the smoke into the air. He watched it curl away into nothing before he spoke.

“Horrible.” He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “We’re far enough ahead that it didn’t hurt anything. It’s just frustrating, you know?” He took another drag and adjusted his position on the wall to one that was a little more comfortable, “But that’s what I get for bragging I guess. I run my mouth to a few friends about how well things are going and then it all falls to shit. Though its better to happen now than on opening night I suppose.” “You’ll be fine.” Allen reassured, “I’ve only been here a few months, but from the things I’ve heard the plays you’re a part of always seem to do well.” Silas smiled stiffly, that was part of the issue. He took a short drag and let the smoke ride on his words, “The plays I’m in do well. The ones I write and direct tend to fall through.” Allen hummed pensively, “So you’re not in this one then?” Silas shook his head. “I am. I took two minor roles that no one wound up auditioning for.” He took another puff, “I do a little talking and have about ten minutes of total stage time.” “You do a lot here.” Allen said with a slight smile, “You do a lot for this place; acting, writing, directing, building the sets, painting them, and probably other things too. Why not just go to a better theater? You’d probably find more recognition that way.”

Silas motioned toward the building. He loved this place. “Don’t get me wrong; when I got into this in high school, I was chasing the Broadway pipedream.” He could feel himself getting pulled down memory lane, it wasn’t anything overly personal so he didn’t mind telling Allen, “When I got to college; my freshman year, we had to do a project on local theaters and why so many of them fail.” He took another drag and let the smoke out with his words, “I learned how many of these little theaters fail because all anyone is worried about anymore is exposure, and I wanted to keep that from happening.” He sighed, “Established theaters are good for exposure, which is fantastic if that’s what you’re after; but I want to foster the love of theater in other people. So here I am.” His cigarette was down to the filter so he put it out. He was still pretty tightly wound so he lit a second one. When he looked at Allen, that concerned furrow was back in his brow and he was frowning. “What’s with that look?” He said a little sharper than he had intended. He took a breath and continued in a more conversational tone, “It’s only my third one today. After this one I’ll head back and we can clean up a bit.” “I was just surprised.” Allen said lifting a hand placatingly, “You normally only have one then we head in back inside.” Silas laughed humorlessly, “Today’s a two smoke kinda day. It’s nice out and I have good company.” “I suppose that’s true.” Allen agreed.

Silas turned to face Allen, “You look like you want to give me a health lecture. My brother is a nursing student, so I’ve probably heard it. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll listen.” Allen sighed and looked away from him for a moment. “You sing and do a lot of the things you do rely on your voice.” He cleared his throat and looked back toward him, but not at him Silas noticed, “I mean, you seem to love doing this and I would hate to see you have to stop before you’re ready to.” “I am trying to quit.” He said a little defensively. “Trying being the optimal word. I’ve gotten down to having three or four a day, but I’ve never managed to actually stop. Every time I get to the point that trying seems like it would go well, something else I have going on gets fucked up and I start all over again.” “So its a stress thing?” He asked. “Kinda.” He said with a tired sigh. This conversation only made him want to smoke more, “That’s what it started out as. I like to say I do it to clear my head or gather my thoughts, which is also kind of true, but I also do it when I’m bored or nervous. It’s devolved into an all the time kind of thing. It helps keep me busy and that’s why its such a fucking crutch.” As proof of his point he took another drag to help ease the tension he felt coiled around his bones and let it out with the smoke, “I’m trying to quit now too. I’m trying to keep under a pack a day now, and then work my way down from there and hope for the best.” He shrugged, “The usual.”

“I can um. If you want, I could give you my number.” Allen suggested, “Then if you need a distraction you could call me instead. We could talk, or if it’s real bad I could come over and hang out.” “I’d appreciate that. Thank you Allen.” He found himself smiling around his cigarette as he patted himself down for his phone. It was still inside. “Fuck. Its still in the sound booth. “ “I’ll just send you a text, then you’ll have my number.” Allen said as he handed Silas his phone, “Problem solved.” Silas nodded hid acknowledgement and put his number in under the nickname Theater Bitch <3. Allen could change it if it made him uncomfortable. He smiled and handed the phone back. “Nicknames huh?” Allen remarked around a smile. Silas laughed, “Did you expect anything else from me?” “Not really no.” Allen teased. Silas put his free hand over his chest in mock offense and huffed out an over dramatic sigh, “You are so rude to me. I provide you free entertainment and this is the thanks I get.” Allen laughed, it was a sound Silas would never get tired of, “You’re so dramatic.” Silas put out his half smoked cigarette, “What part of Theater Bitch didn’t you get?” He got down off the wall and threw both cigarettes away. He made sure he still had his lighter before he headed for the door, “Let’s get the stage cleaned up.”

“Alright, let’s go.” Allen said after a moment. Silas dusted his feet off when they got back inside. He could hear his phone still playing music, it was still charging in the sound booth. He checked his feet once more and then made his way to the stage. He walked to the utility closet to grab what he needed for cleaning. He was not ready to hear his text tone blast over the speakers and it scared the life out of him. “Ah, fuck!” He yelp as he jumped and dropped the mop, “Fuck. I should change that.” He picked up the mop as well as the broom and made his way back to the main stage. He leaned them against the wall and then moved to start on the sets. “What do you need me to do?” Allen asked as he stepped up onto the stage. “Same as last time.” He said casually, “We’ll breakdown sets then I’ll do the rest myself.” They got to work and the small conversations they usually made fell away. Silas got pulled in enough that he began to sing along to what was playing on his phone. After a few songs he stopped, he remembered Allen was there. It didn’t stay quiet long, he started singing again. The cycle repeated itself a few times until everything was done and he had grabbed his phone from the sound booth. He had two messages. One from Daniel and one from Allen.

Danny <3: We’re still on for tonight ;) I’ll be to the theater soon. Then I have to go pick up Simon, so I’ll see you again at 9. That okay? Sixer: We’re golden. See you soon <3

Unknown Number: Guess who Theater Bitch :)

He set Allen’s contact The Okayest Captain. He was getting ready to got talk to Allen again, maybe have another smoke break when Daniel texted him again.

Danny <3: I’m here. Simon got off early so please be quick. Sixer: On it. I’ll be right out

“Fuck. My ride is here, I gotta go.” He tossed his shoes into his bag and leapt off the stage and ran toward the side door. “I’ll text you later! See you tomorrow Al!” Daniel was waiting outside with the top down on his car. Silas didn’t bother with the door, he boosted himself over the side and stuck his bag in the footwell. He kissed Daniel’s cheek before he put his seatbelt on as they headed for his apartment. “Let me guess, you didn’t tell Simon.” Silas remarked and they both cracked up. “You know how he is about these things.” Daniel responded, “I get he’s worried about the whole coworkers thing, but it’s you.” “We’ve been at this since what? Senior year? I’d hardly say the coworkers thing is something to be worried about.” When they got to his apartment he kissed Daniel’s cheek again before he got out. “You bringing the good stuff tonight?” Daniel just winked. Silas grabbed his bag and headed for the elevator. He texted Allen on the way up.

Sixer: Guess who :) Sixer: Sorry for running out on you! I have a friend coming over and I needed to clean my apartment. They Okayest Captain: You’re good. Have fun! Sixer: Thanks Sixer: Will I be seeing you tomorrow? The Okayest Captain: Yup Sixer: Cool. Have a good night! They Okayest Captain: You too.

Silas rushed to clean up his apartment. He took his time in the shower, because the paint was a bitch to get off and he wanted to be sure he got all of it. Afterwards he put on one of his favorite shirts, it was for Knights of the Black Death, and his favorite pair of socks. He felt like being a little shit so he took a picture in his full length mirror and sent it to Daniel.

Sixer: Still coming over? <3

He set his phone down for a moment. He and Connor hadn’t checked in a for a while so he decided to do that before he got distracted and forgot again. When he opened his messaging app he froze before he even got to Connor’s conversation. He hadn’t sent the picture to Daniel but to Allen. Well, that was one way to break the ice he supposed.

Sixer: I am SO sorry! Sixer: That was meant for a different friend! Sixer: I just hit the most recent contact. Sixer: You can keep it if you want thought <3 Sixer: I wouldn’t be opposed to you staying the night ;) Sixer: Just not tonight though. The Okayest Captain: No problem. The Okayest Captain: I’ll think about it ;) The Okayest Captain: Have fun and be safe.

Speaking of distracted, he had Allen on the brain again. The whole point of inviting Daniel over was to get his mind off the security guard, and now he was regretting not having invited him over. What was that saying about too many choices. He’d be pulled in when Daniel showed up, but for now he was left wanting and he hated it.

#Secure the Stage #StS #Hand Brewed Hope AU #HBH #Allen60 #Daniel60 #dbh captain allen #captain allen #dbh sixty #cyberlife tower Connor #rk800-60 #dbh daniel #dbh fic #dbh

11 notes · View notes

qqueenofhades · 4 years

Note

Could you expand a bit on the "death of expertise"? It's something I think about A LOT as an artist, because there are so many problems with people who think it isn't a real job, and the severe undercutting of prices that happens because people think hobbyists and professionals are the same. At the same time, I also really want people to feel free to be able to make art if they want, with no gatekeeping or elitism, and I usually spin myself in circles mentally thinking about it. So.

I have been secretly hoping someone would ask this question, nonny. Bless you. I have a lot (a LOT) of thoughts on this topic, which I will try to keep somewhat concise and presented in a semi-organized fashion, but yes.

I can mostly speak about this in regard to academia, especially the bad, bad, BAD takes in my field (history) that have dominated the news in recent weeks and which constitute most of the recent posts on my blog. (I know, I know, Old Man Yells At Cloud when attempting to educate the internet on actual history, but I gotta do SOMETHING.) But this isn’t a new phenemenon, and is linked to the avalanche of “fake news” that we’ve all heard about and experienced in the last few years, especially in the run-up and then after the election of You Know Who, who has made fake news his personal brand (if not in the way he thinks). It also has to do with the way Americans persistently misunderstand the concept of free speech as “I should be able to say whatever I want and nobody can correct or criticize me,” which ties into the poisonous extreme-libertarian ethos of “I can do what I want with no regard for others and nobody can correct me,” which has seeped its way into the American mainstream and is basically the center of the modern Republican party. (Basically: all for me, all the time, and caring about others is a weak liberal pussy thing to do.)

This, however, is not just an issue of partisan politics, because the left is just as guilty, even if its efforts take a different shape. One of the reason I got so utterly exasperated with strident online leftists, especially around primary season and the hardcore breed of Bernie Bros, is just that they don’t do anything except shout loud and incorrect information on the internet (and then transmogrify that into a twisted ideology of moral purity which makes a sin out of actually voting for a flawed candidate, even if the alternative is Donald Goddamn Trump). I can’t count how many people from both sides of the right/left divide get their political information from like-minded people on social media, and never bother to experience or verify or venture outside their comforting bubbles that will only provide them with “facts” that they already know. Social media has done a lot of good things, sure, but it’s also made it unprecedently easy to just say whatever insane bullshit you want, have it go viral, and then have you treated as an authority on the topic or someone whose voice “has to be included” out of some absurd principle of both-siderism. This is also a tenet of the mainstream corporate media: “both sides” have to be included, to create the illusion of “objectivity,” and to keep the largest number of paying subscribers happy. (Yes, of course this has deep, deep roots in the collapse of late-stage capitalism.) Even if one side is absolutely batshit crazy, the rules of this distorted social contract stipulate that their proposals and their flaws have to be treated as equal with the others, and if you point out that they are batshit crazy, you have to qualify with some criticism of the other side.

This is where you get white people posting “Neo-Nazis and Black Lives Matter are the same!!!1” on facebook. They are a) often racist, let’s be real, and b) have been force-fed a constant narrative where Both Sides Are Equally Bad. Even if one is a historical system of violent oppression that has made a good go at total racial and ethnic genocide and rests on hatred, and the other is the response to not just that but the centuries of systemic and small-scale racism that has been built up every day, the white people of the world insist on treating them as morally equivalent (related to a superior notion that Violence is Always Bad, which.... uh... have you even seen constant and overwhelming state-sponsored violence the West dishes out? But it’s only bad when the other side does it. Especially if those people can be at all labeled “fanatics.”)

I have complained many, many times, and will probably complain many times more, about how hard it is to deconstruct people’s absolutely ingrained ideas of history and the past. History is a very fragile thing; it’s really only equivalent to the length of a human lifespan, and sometimes not even that. It’s what people want to remember and what is convenient for them to remember, which is why we still have some living Holocaust survivors and yet a growing movement of Holocaust denial, among other extremist conspiracy theories (9/11, Sandy Hook, chemtrails, flat-earthing, etc etc). There is likewise no organized effort to teach honest history in Western public schools, not least since the West likes its self-appointed role as guardians of freedom and liberty and democracy in the world and doesn’t really want anyone digging into all that messy slavery and genocide and imperialism and colonialism business. As a result, you have deliberately under- or un-educated citizens, who have had a couple of courses on American/British/etc history in grade school focusing on the greatest-hit reel, and all from an overwhelmingly triumphalist white perspective. You have to like history, from what you get out of it in public school, to want to go on to study it as a career, while knowing that there are few jobs available, universities are cutting or shuttering humanities departments, and you’ll never make much money. There is... not a whole lot of outside incentive there.

I’ve written before about how the humanities are always the first targeted, and the first defunded, and the first to be labeled as “worthless degrees,” because a) they are less valuable to late-stage capitalism and its emphasis on Material Production, and b) they often focus on teaching students the critical thinking skills that critique and challenge that dominant system. There’s a reason that there is a stereotype of artists as social revolutionaries: they have often taken a look around, gone, “Hey, what the hell is this?” and tried to do something about it, because the creative and free-thinking impulse helps to cultivate the tools necessary to question what has become received and dominant wisdom. Of course, that can then be taken too far into the “I’ll create my own reality and reject absolutely everything that doesn’t fit that narrative,” and we end up at something like the current death of expertise.

This year is particularly fertile for these kinds of misinformation efforts: a plague without a vaccine or a known cure, an election year in a turbulently polarized country, race unrest in a deeply racist country spreading to other racist countries around the world and the challenging of a particularly important system (white supremacy), etc etc. People are scared and defensive and reactive, and in that case, they’re especially less motivated to challenge or want to encounter information that scares them. They need their pre-set beliefs to comfort them or provide steadiness in a rocky and uncertain world, and (thanks once again to social media) it’s easy to launch blistering ad hominem attacks on people who disagree with you, who are categorized as a faceless evil mass and who you will never have to meet or negotiate with in real life. This is the environment in which all the world’s distinguished scientists, who have spent decades studying infectious diseases, have to fight for airtime and authority (and often lose) over random conspiracy theorists who make a YouTube video. The public has been trained to see them as “both the same” and then accept which side they like the best, regardless of actual factual or real-world qualifications. They just assume the maniac on YouTube is just as trustworthy as the scientists with PhDs from real universities.

Obviously, academia is racist, elitist, classist, sexist, on and on. Most human institutions are. But training people to see all academics as the enemy is not the answer. You’ve seen the Online Left (tm) also do this constantly, where they attack “the establishment” for never talking about anything, or academics for supposedly erasing and covering up all of non-white history, while apparently never bothering to open a book or familiarize themselves with a single piece of research that actual historians are working on. You may have noticed that historians have been leading the charge against the “don’t erase history!!!1″ defenders of racist monuments, and explaining in stinging detail exactly why this is neither preserving history or being truthful about it. Tumblr likes to confuse the mechanism that has created the history and the people who are studying and analyzing that history, and lump them together as one mass of Evil And Lying To You. Academics are here because we want to critically examine the world and tell you things about it that our nonsense system has required years and years of effort, thousands of dollars in tuition, and other gatekeeping barriers to learn. You can just ask one of us. We’re here, we usually love to talk, and we’re a lot cheaper. I think that’s pretty cool.

As a historian, I have been trained in a certain skill set: finding, reading, analyzing, using, and criticizing primary sources, ditto for secondary sources, academic form and style, technical skills like languages, paleography, presentation, familiarity with the professional mechanisms for reviewing and sharing work (journals, conferences, peer review, etc), and how to assemble this all into an extended piece of work and to use it in conversation with other historians. That means my expertise in history outweighs some rando who rolls up with an unsourced or misleading Twitter thread. If a professor has been handed a carefully crafted essay and then a piece of paper scribbled with crayon, she is not obliged to treat them as essentially the same or having the same critical weight, even if the essay has flaws. One has made an effort to follow the rules of the game, and the other is... well, I did read a few like that when teaching undergraduates. They did not get the same grade.

This also means that my expertise is not universal. I might know something about adjacent subjects that I’ve also studied, like political science or English or whatever, but someone who is a career academic with a degree directly in that field will know more than me. I should listen to them, even if I should retain my independent ability and critical thinking skillset. And I definitely should not be listened to over people whose field of expertise is in a completely different realm. Take the recent rocket launch, for example. I’m guessing that nobody thought some bum who walked in off the street to Kennedy Space Center should be listened to in preference of the actual scientists with degrees and experience at NASA and knowledge of math and orbital mechanics and whatever else you need to get a rocket into orbit. I definitely can’t speak on that and I wouldn’t do it anyway, so it’s frustrating to see it happen with history. Everybody “knows” things about history that inevitably turn out to be wildly wrong, and seem to assume that they can do the same kind of job or state their conclusions with just as much authority. (Nobody seems to listen to the scientists on global warming or coronavirus either, because their information is actively inconvenient for our entrenched way of life and people don’t want to change.) Once again, my point here is not to be a snobbish elitist looking down at The Little People, but to remark that if there’s someone in a field who has, you know, actually studied that subject and is speaking from that place of authority, maybe we can do better than “well, I saw a YouTube video and liked it better, so there.” (Americans hate authority and don’t trust smart people, which is a related problem and goes back far beyond Trump, but there you are.)

As for art: it’s funny how people devalue it constantly until they need it to survive. Ask anyone how they spent their time in lockdown. Did they listen to music? Did they watch movies or TV? Did they read a book? Did they look at photography or pictures? Did they try to learn a skill, like drawing or writing or painting, and realize it was hard? Did they have a preference for the art that was better, more professionally produced, had more awareness of the rules of its craft, and therefore was more enjoyable to consume? If anyone wants to tell anyone that art is worthless, I invite you to challenge them on the spot to go without all of the above items during the (inevitable, at this rate) second coronavirus lockdown. No music. No films. No books. Not even a video or a meme or anything else that has been made for fun, for creativity, or anything outside the basic demands of Compensated Economic Production. It’s then that you’ll discover that, just as with the underpaid essential workers who suffered the most, we know these jobs need to get done. We just still don’t want to pay anyone fairly for doing them, due to our twisted late-capitalist idea of “value.”

Anyway, since this has gotten long enough and I should probably wrap up: as you say, the difference between “professional” and “hobbyist” has been almost completely erased, so that people think the opinion of one is as good as the other, or in your case, that the hobbyist should present their work for free or refuse to be seen as a professional entitled to fair compensation for their skill. That has larger and more insidious effects in a global marketplace of ideas that has been almost entirely reduced to who can say their opinion the loudest to the largest group of people. I don’t know how to solve this problem, but at least I can try to point it out and to avoid being part of it, and to recognize where I need to speak and where I need to shut up. My job, and that of every single white person in America right now, is to shut up and let black people (and Native people, and Latinx people, and Muslim people, and etc...) tell me what it’s really like to live here with that identity. I have obviously done a ton of research on the subject and consider myself reasonably educated, but here’s the thing: my expertise still doesn’t outweigh theirs, no matter what degrees they have or don’t have. I then am required to boost their ideas, views, experiences, and needs, rather than writing them over or erasing them, and to try to explain to people how the roots of these ideas interlock and interact where I can. That is -- hopefully -- putting my history expertise to use in a good way to support what they’re saying, rather than silence it. I try, at any rate, and I am constantly conscious of learning to do better.

I hope that was helpful for you. Thanks for letting me talk about it.

#history #long post #anonymous #ask

75 notes · View notes

strayen-fx · 4 years

Text

Monochrome

Hyunjin x Reader

Genre: Fluff, Angst, Barista!AU, Soulmate!AU

Word count: 2k

Summary: You found him, and he found you. Everything felt perfect, but what if everything that you felt right has been wrong all along?

A/N: I've been wanting to try the bulletpoint type of au, so here it is! Not sure if I did it right, but I hope you enjoy it~

• Everyone believed in soulmates

• Well, not everyone, but you get what I mean

• Most people are too worked up with finding their own destined partner

• Hoping to see "the one" with whom they'll spend their life with

• Actually, there is a special bond shared between soulmates

• Once your soulmate dies, your world would turn black and white

• And I mean literally

• You will stop seeing colors, and everything you see would be in a bland monochrome, like an old movie

• You personally think it as a sad and sentimental part of people's destiny, but at the same time, you found it romantic.

• You don't know how people realize who their soulmate is, though

• Some people say they hear a bell when they walk past their soulmate

• Some people say they feel a slowmo moment, as if time stopped and all they can see is their soulmate in front of them

• Some people say that you would just feel it when the two of you met. It would be an unexplicable moment, something that nobody else but the two of you would understand.

• But, well, you don't know, really

• It's that time of the year when lovebirds are spotted everywhere

• And while you are secretly a hopeless romantic, you simply don't have the time to invest in a relationship

• You are a college student

• And needless to say, you're stressed af

• Midterm exams are coming, and there's a TON of things you need to review for your major subjects

• And there's your minor who loves to pretend being a major

• But anyway

• You just don't have time time to spare

• You spend most of your time in the library, burying yourself in books and notes

• Because you definitely did not procrastinate in the previous weeks

• But today, you find yourself in the cafe with your best friend

• Because you're hungry

• And you definitely need some caffeine in your system

• You were about to get lost in the world of numbers

• Lmao what was that

• And just then, this tall barista came to your table to serve your coffee

• And you did a double take

• Because god

• He's SO CUTE

• And he has such an adorable eye smile

• He smelled like coffee and morning sunshine

• And he GLOWED

• When your eyes met, your heartbeat picked up its pace

• Alexa play P.A.C.E. by 3RACHA

• Even after he left your table, you were still dazed

• You can't concentrate AT ALL

• You were staring at him the whole time you were there

• He catches your eyes sometimes, and you would immediately avert your gaze

• But he noticed you looking anyway

• So he would offer a small smile each time your eyes met

• And you were dying inside

• You convince yourself it's the coffee that makes you palpitate

• But MAAAAN

• A part of you was convinced

• "He definitely is my soulmate."

• I mean, nobody can possible make your insides go crazy, right?

• Except for the person who is destined to be with you for the rest of your lifetime

• It was a feeling you could not explain

• And when your eyes met for the nth time that day, you were sure of it: that barista is "the one"

• So

• After that day, you became a regular in that cafe

• And that's because their coffee tastes great

• Definitely NOT because of the cute barista

• Nope. Of course not.

• You soon learned that his name is Hyunjin. Hwang Hyunjin.

• What happened with the barista not being the reason why you're there

• You started having small talks each time while he's preparing your Americano

• 🎶Americano, joa joa joa 🎶

• You learned that he's also a student in your school, taking a major in dance

• And you were like, WOAH, that's why he's got a nice built

• After a few weeks of visiting the cafe, you inevitably became close to him

• And he also grew fond of you

• One day, you lost track of time. You stayed until the end of Hyunjin's shift

• You were surprised when someone took the seat opposite yours

• "You're not going home yet?" Hyunjin asked.

• You glanced at your phone. It's already seven in the evening.

• "O-oh? It's this late already?"

• "You need to eat proper dinner. Wanna go with me? My treat," he offered.

• And then he smiled

• And you were like, holy crab

• When God said he has no favorites, he definitely lied

• Because in front of you is a perfect being

• The epitome of beauty

• You simply nodded like the lovestruck you are

• He brought you to his favorite diner

• You weren't expecting much with the food, but once you took a bite of their pasta, you were like

• WOAH WHY DIDN'T I KNOW THIS PLACE BEFORE?

• Hyunjin was smiling at you as he watched you savor the dish

• At the end of the meal, he offered to walk you home

• You obliged, of course

• You were talking about random things while walking

• When suddenly the topic was brought to the idea of soulmates

• "I don't know... I guess I'll feel it once I saw him," you said.

• "Did you feel it when you saw me?"

• You stopped on your tracks, and you just looked at him

• You felt your blood rising up your neck to your cheek

• You noticed that Hyunjin's cheek was also tinged with pink

• And his ears were practically burning

• But he did his best to look straight into your eyes

• "Because I felt it when I saw you," Hyunjin said.

• You felt the sincerity in his voice when he said:

• "I like you, Y/N. No, scratch that -- I think I love you. I know we haven't known each other for long, but I know that you are my soulmate, and--"

• You would lie if you'd say that you didn't like him

• So you did the dumbest most sensible thing at the moment

• You kissed him

• Ohmygod you kissed Hyunjin

• Hyunjin's eyes widened in surprise

• But he immediately recovered and kissed you back

• He was smiling through your kiss

• You can't help but think of how lucky you are to be Hwang Hyunjin's soulmate

• Soooo

• The two of you became official

• You continued spending your free time in the cafe, waiting for Hyunjin's shift to end so the two of you could hang out after

• You were having your date practically every week

• Everything felt perfect. Everything felt right.

• You hadn't even noticed that time flew right past by, until one day you were already celebrating your second year anniversary

• Yeah, time flew so fast

• You've done a lot of things together

• Hyunjin felt so happy to have you as his partner

• And nothing can convince him otherwise

• And you were beyond happy to have him as your soulmate

• And there were no doubts in your mind

• Until one day

• You fell asleep in one of your classes

• And when you woke up, you couldn't believe your eyes

• Everything you saw was in black and white

• You immediately grabbed your phone to call Hyunjin

• He wasn't answering

• You ran all the way to the cafe where Hyunjin was working

• You didn't care if you stumbled and fell and got a couple bruises and scratches

• A lot of people were looking at you weirdly, but you didn't care

• When you got to the cafe, you saw a lot of people

• Ordering

• Hyunjin was there at the counter, busily preparing the drinks of the customers

• Just then, your knees lost their strength

• You fell right there in the middle of the cafe

• You broke into tears

• You didn't know what else happened, the next moment Hyunjin was there hugging you, asking you what was wrong, peppering you with soft kisses

• He brought you to the staff room, tending to your small wounds while trying to calm you down

• And honestly, you didn't know if you were crying out of relief that Hyunjin was alright

• Or out of the fact that Hyunjin was not your real soulmate

• After the fateful day, you refused to tell Hyunjin about what really happened

• You did your best to pretend that everything was normal, but Hyunjin knew something was wrong

• He would catch you looking at him with sad eyes

• Sometimes he would see you crying

• When he asked you, you would simply say that you are stressed with your academics

• He knew you were lying

• But he can't bring himself to confront you

• Because you would just hug him and bury yourself in his arms

• The whole thing was taking its toll on you

• You would sometimes ask yourself: Who is Hyunjin's soulmate? Are they suffering, because I stole the person they were meant to be with?

• You thought: Of course -- who am I to think I deserve someone like Hyunjin to be my soulmate?

• You felt bad for your real soulmate -- they died, and you were out there thinking of somebody else. You were there on somebody else's arms, instead of staying by their side.

• You were out strolling one night, thinking and rethinking all over again, when suddenly, it rained so hard

• You have your umbrella in your bag, but you just didn't have the energy to take it

• You walked in the rain, soaked and drenched, shivering

• Then you saw someone barreling towards you

• You can't process anything at the time

• The person crashed to you, tackling you into a hug.

• "H-Hyunjin?"

• "What are you doing?!?! Do you want to get sick?! Do you want to get into an accident?!?! What are you thinking?!??!"

• He broke away from the hug to inspect your face

• He has an umbrella, but he was also drenched because he ran from place to place to look for you

• You cried even more

• You cried, because you knew that you didn't deserve someone like him

• You didn't deserve someone like Hyunjin

• Someone is out there, destined for him, destined to be with him

• And that person is not you

• You tried to smile at him, but instead, you can't help but break down

• "I'm sorry, Jinnie. This is all wrong. I'm a terrible person."

• "What are you saying?"

• "I don't see colors anymore. Everything is in black and white."

• He was silent for a while. He was just staring at your eyes.

• And then: "So?"

• His word took you by surprise.

• "'So?' That's the only word you're gonna say? I'm not your soulmate, Hyunjin! My soulmate is somewhere... dead! And your soulmate... Your soulmate is somewhere else! It's not me! You should be looking for them instead of staying with me!"

• Hyunjin's eyes softened. "I can't see colors, too."

• The world stopped, and at the time, you weren't seeing anything else but the man staring right into you.

• "W-what?"

• "It started just when we began dating," Hyunjin explained. "I was in the middle of my shift, and then suddenly, I felt dizzy. I lost consciousness, and when I woke up, I suddenly can't see colors anymore.

• "I ran to the campus then, but just in time I saw you going out of your class."

• "Y-Yeah, I vaguely remember that," you answered. "You just showed up in your barista uniform and bear-hugged me out of nowhere."

• Hyunjin smiled softly. "I thought I lost you. As selfish as it may sound, I was happy that you're not my soulmate."

• You felt stuck in the ground, frozen. You didn't know what to feel, nor what to say.

• You were sad

• And at the same time, you were happy

• You felt sad that your actual soulmate has died

• But at the same time

• You are happy that Hyunjin is standing in front of you

• You are happy that Hyunjin stayed

• Despite knowing that you weren't each other's soulmate

• He took your cold hand into his equally freezing hand

• "I can live forever in this monochromatic world, if that would mean spending every minute with you. I don't mind living in black and white as long as I have you by my side -- as long as I could live my life with you.

• "Are you willing to stay with me?"

• You nodded immediately, tears reforming in your eyes

• But they weren't brought by grief this time

• They were brought by love

• "You are all the colors in one, Hyunjin. I need nothing else but you."

297 notes · View notes

revlyncox · 3 years

Text

Democracy Is Not a State

Delivered to the Washington Ethical Society on January 10, 2021, by Lyn Cox

Congressman John Lewis reminds us what is possible when we join together, combining our collective action and sense of purpose to keep our country grounded in our best and highest ideals. His final instructions to us were to “walk with the wind,” to stay together and respond to the movement of our time in the spirit of peace and with the power of love.

That is what is happening in Georgia. This past week, we learned that Georgia will have two new Senators. The Rev. Raphael Warnock will be the first Black Senator from the state, of which about a third of the population is Black. The congregation Rev. Warnock leads, Ebenezer Baptist Church, is the former pulpit of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is also a congregation that Rep. Lewis attended. Jon Ossoff will be the first Jewish Senator from Georgia. Ossoff interned for Rep. John Lewis as a young man, after having written him a fan letter when Ossoff was 16 years old. Relationships built over years make a difference.

Regardless of political party, we can agree that democracy depends on the ability of citizens to exercise their right to vote. True democracy rests on free and fair elections, in which obstacles to the right to vote are not placed unfairly and disproportionately in front of voters from marginalized communities. The runoff election in Georgia was historic, not only because of the outcome, but because of the momentous turnout. Overcoming voter suppression was a major task, and one that grassroots organizations in Georgia have been working on for years. Multiracial democracy is a threat to white supremacy, and white supremacy has been trying to prevent the full flowering of multiracial democracy from the beginning.

Yet there is progress. Between 2018 and the November election, 800,000 new people registered to vote in Georgia. Registering and mobilizing new voters is the big story of this election, and that was achieved one conversation at a time, one knocked-on door at a time, one phone call at a time, one relationship at a time. Stacey Abrams is a strategic genius and a focused advocate, having started the New Georgia Project seven years ago and Fair Fight two years ago.

Abrams will be the first to tell you that a wide variety of leaders and grassroots organizations share the credit for voter turnout in this election. For instance, LaTosha Brown has been fighting voter suppression since 1998, and her Black Voters Matter project helped mobilize voters across the South. In a series of tweets on Friday, Abrams named 30 different grassroots organizations that coordinated their efforts to help Georgians exercise their right to vote, noting that the runoff election was a demonstration of “decades of strategy, grit, + building.”

Between Rep. Lewis’ reminder about clasping hands and moving together, and the turnout in Georgia’s runoff election, our takeaway should not be limited to admiration for the most visible leaders, candidates, and public officials. We can and should admire their good character traits and their dedication to service. We can and should thank the movement leaders who made this possible, especially Black women. But we should not elevate these officials and movement leaders to the point where we regard them as something other than human, an example too rarified for us to follow.

The lesson here is that organizing is happening all around us. Coordinated solidarity to enact structural change for liberation is part of how we help bring the full promise of multiracial democracy into being. There may well be someone like Stacey Abrams in the movements you are part of at your workplace or in your neighborhood. Let’s listen. There are definitely organizations in our own communities being led by the people who are most impacted by marginalization. We can follow the example that has been set out for us by supporting power-building and relationship-building that is already happening locally. Grassroots organizing takes a long time. It requires a lot of one-on-one conversations, very little in the way of immediate results, and broad participation. That path is available to any of us, nobody has to be a superstar to participate in repairing the soul of our nation.

We contrast the progress in building multiracial democracy in Georgia with the violent attempt to destroy multiracial democracy that happened on January 6. Because this Platform is being recorded for posterity, I feel that I have to be very clear about the events of this week; please take care of yourself if a reminder of these events is overwhelming for you. On Wednesday, at the urging of their demagogue, white supremacist insurrectionists invaded the Capitol building, threatened the safety of elected leaders and staff, looted the building, and left chaos in their wake for others to clean up, primarily janitors and facilities staff who are People of Color. They were not merely rascals ignoring the rules of orderly protest, they were an armed mob seeking to disrupt the practice of democracy. Computers were stolen, putting our national security at risk. Five people died, including an officer from the Capitol Police.

In our community, I know we are holding intense emotions about this incident. I am particularly mindful of the impact that this has on those who work for the Federal government, for whom the area around the Capitol is an everyday environment, a place full of memories and colleagues. My heart also goes out to those who live near the Capitol, who had to deal with armed white supremacists wandering the neighborhood unimpeded. To anyone who has ever been treated roughly by the Capitol Police for non-violently exercising their first amendment rights, the lack of resistance to the mob may not have been surprising, but it was yet another insult, a reminder that the level of force with which police respond to protestors is a choice. For People of Color, Queer people, Muslim people, Jewish people, immigrants, or anyone who holds an identity targeted for violence by these insurrectionists, Wednesday’s events were a chilling show of power that was precisely intended to make us feel afraid for existing as our whole selves. We cannot let that fear stop us from living fully, nor prevent us from persevering in the work of liberation.

On Wednesday night, I invited the WES community to gather by Zoom to process the day’s events, to overcome the numbness of trauma by feeling our feelings, and to lift up our shared values in a way that only a community like ours can do. It was short notice, and I apologize if you didn’t hear about it in time. Please reach out if you would like to talk to me or to a member of the Pastoral Care Associates about how you are feeling. More than twenty of you were able to attend. Just from that sample, I know that there are feelings of rage, worry, disgust, helplessness, disappointment, and confusion. There are also feelings of readiness, of curiosity about what to do next, relief about the Georgia election, and even optimism that there are long-deferred actions for repair that can take place with the new Congress. Emotions are what they are, and they will be affected by your previous experiences with oppression, trauma, and violence. Feel your feelings. Please know you don’t have to be in those feelings alone.

The violence on January 6 was designed to reinforce white supremacy. It was a reaction to the expansion of multiracial democracy, fed by the shock of racist white people that the votes of people who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color were allowed to have an impact. White people have been told since the moment Europeans arrived on this continent that the land and its abundance and the benefits of government are for ourselves, that white people own this country, and that this is unassailable no matter what happens to the bodies, voices, and lives of those who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. This worldview is gravely harmful and wrong.

The incredulity with which the insurrectionists faced the results of the 2020 election, urged on by politicians who capitalize on their racism, is rooted in the belief that only white votes are legitimate. Their invasion of the People’s House was meant to mark their territory, to show that their ownership remains primary, and that they can and will use violence to maintain that ownership. White supremacist violence as an attempt to derail multiracial democracy is not new, and it has worked before. We all have choices ahead of us to reduce the chances that this tactic will continue to work.

One avenue is to confront and dismantle white supremacy in all of the ways it shows up around us. For those who have been the targets of racism their whole lives, simply living and thriving is an act of resistance. For those of us who were socialized as white, the construction of a wall of ignorance around the machinations of white supremacy is part of how the system operates. For those of us who were raised with barriers to perceiving racism, let’s not wait another moment before removing those barriers and taking action to uproot racism.

We saw again this week how deadly white supremacy can be. It shows up in the minds and hearts of well-meaning people and in the institutional practices of well-meaning communities. It shows up in the decisions of governments from the level of homeowners associations to the U.S. Congress. It shows up in art and music and literature. We don’t have to look far to find a place to begin uprooting racism. For all of us, the outpouring of voter empowerment in Georgia reminds us that there is room for everyone in expanding multiracial democracy.

Another thing we can do is to insist that the threat of violent white supremacy is real, and that we should take it seriously. Perhaps that seems obvious after this week, but we’re already seeing efforts to humanize, sanitize, and excuse the perpetrators of destruction. News articles about insurrectionists who died emphasize their good qualities or accomplishments instead of their criminal records; an obvious departure from the media treatment of racial justice activists and those who have been murdered by police. Jokes about the perpetrators seem to imply that they are too stupid to be held responsible. Calls to understand their pain and excuse their racism rely on stereotypes that are demonstrably untrue. Exhortations to “move on” without practicing accountability reinforce the idea that harm caused by white people should be consequence-free. White supremacy is and always has been a threat to our national security and our national wellbeing, and the sooner we recognize and address that, the better.

Failing to take white supremacy seriously contributed to our vulnerability to Wednesday’s events. Racist militia groups have been allowed to grow and thrive for years when anti-racist groups have been infiltrated, sabotaged, and undermined with outrageous punishments and mysterious deaths. After the Charlottesville event where Heather Heyer was murdered, nothing happened to reduce the potential for future right-wing violence. The Capitol Police knew that the crowds planned for Wednesday were likely to be dangerous. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal said:

We all were aware of the danger. Ten days ago, Maxine Waters had raised the issue of our security on a caucus call to the Speaker and asked what the plans would be. And 48 hours before, we had gotten instructions from Capitol police about all the threats: that we had to be on high alert, that we had to get to the Capitol by 9 a.m. before the protesters, that we couldn’t plan on going out, that we should have overnight bags. It was very clear, and everyone understood what the threats were.

Rep. Jayapal points out the discrepancy between what the Members of Congress were told about impending events and how the Capitol Police were prepared on the outside of the building. Whether failing to have adequate staff or backup or hard barriers was a result of underestimating the threat or of deliberate collusion or both, the lack of preparedness is a product of white supremacy.

When we recognize the enormity of the problem, we are led to work on systemic solutions. That means examining laws and policies, and the uneven application of those laws and policies. At a Symposium yesterday, award-winning peacemaker and spiritual care activist Najeeba Syeed spoke about the “myth of interpersonal peacemaking,” and how it can be a distraction and derailment of the systemic justice-making that provides the foundation for authentic, lasting peace. Trying to understand and relate to Nazis does not yield systemic change. Attempting to de-radicalize loved ones is another project, not the same thing as building multiracial democracy or expanding liberation. Professor Syeed reminded us that “Peace is not the absence of violence … Peace is the absence of injustice.”

In a week with so many low points, even as we notice the high points, it is understandable to feel disoriented. I have said before that hope is doing the next right thing, working toward a better world even when the outcome is not assured or even clear. Yet if your sense of reality was turned upside down this week, or you were overwhelmed with an experience or a reminder of trauma, maybe the next right thing is especially elusive right now. In that case, the next right thing is to take care of yourself. Drink water. Eat nourishing food. Maybe go outside at some point during the day. Talk to people who care about you. The movement will still be there when you have regained a sense of the ground underneath you. You are a precious being of worth.

Another next right thing is to check up on each other. Remember your federal employee friends. Follow up on a Caring News email. If you’re reaching out to someone who might be having a hard time, you might ask, “Is it OK if I ask how you are?” Let’s try not to make people feel obligated to re-live negative experiences if they aren’t ready. Just being present is often helpful. Even if we can’t fix anything, we can give people the option not to be alone in their grief.

If you have a little more energy and want to channel your feelings into positive actions, consider something that will have a material impact on your local community. R was telling me about Mutual Aid in Washington, DC, especially in Ward 5. For information about Mutual Aid throughout the District, check the website for Bread for the City or find them on Facebook. I also checked in with D, who is involved with Silver Spring/Takoma Park Mutual Aid. You can find them on their Wordpress site or on Facebook. If you’re involved in Mutual Aid, feel free to mention it during Community Sharing or post in the Facebook group later.

R tells me: “Mutual Aid is a non-hierarchical way for neighbors to help neighbors. Anyone can ask for any kind of assistance, and anyone can offer to help. Some roles require some training and learning codes of ethics/responsible service. It's not a particularly ‘formal’ or ‘organized’ thing - it's all hands on deck, and everyone is just doing their best.” R went on to say that there are short-term and long term roles, and those who are able can donate any time.

If you’re wondering what this has to do with dismantling white supremacy, building relationships with your neighbors both is and is not about a larger goal. Building relationships with neighbors is a primary good; it’s something that is valuable and satisfying to do for its own sake. Similarly, offering care when you can and giving people a chance to practice care when you need it are both good, full stop. Neighbors helping neighbors is a form of resistance to oppressive structures.

In addition, neighbors who have strong bonds with each other are in a better position to advocate for their communities. If you and your neighbors are working to overcome environmental racism where you live, or redirect funding to basic human services, or update policies in the local school that have a negative impact on students of color, you will have a head start if you already know each other. This could be its whole own Platform, so I’ll pause there and just say that strong, connected, diverse local communities can be a manifestation of multiracial democracy and a home base for even more positive change.

Forming authentic relationships with our neighbors, community organizing, building power, paying attention to local issues, caring for ourselves and each other: these are some of the tools with which we will resist white supremacy and build multiracial democracy. This way is slow, and it is often hard, and it works. Growing multiracial democracy is a constant practice; Rep. Lewis reminded us that “democracy is not a state.”

When white supremacy attempts to use violence to enforce a warped and harmful vision of who we should be and how we should be together, one of our avenues for resistance is renewing our commitments to communities living into a vision of wholeness. That can mean your local mutual aid society, it can mean a project like the Food Justice Initiative, it can mean a coalition like the Washington Interfaith Network or the Congregation Action Network, it can mean a voting rights organization like Fair Fight, it can mean a community like WES. A better world is possible. There are pockets of it already living and moving among us and around us and within us. Clasping hands (figuratively, for now), traveling together with the winds of our time, let us gather our collective strength to stay grounded in a vision of the world that is possible.

May it be so.

7 notes · View notes