#ill also probably do more discussion via asks over there
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okay so i made a side blog that i plan on using for like... personal stuff and talking about animanga outside of the context of x reader writing. i kinda felt like this one was getting cluttered with stuff that isn’t writing.
i also wanted a space where i could just be me and post what i want and say what i want and stuff. kinda like being in the nude. nudist mindset, if you will.
so if you’d like / are interested in talking abt animanga and books and shit and also just kinda vibing and existing feel free to join me over there.
almost forgot to add it but it’s @cocksuki sorry about the url.
#and also bc im a little shady and have opinions but don't wanna BLAST THEM to 13k people#so its also a place for opinions???#IDK its everything. its for everything.#come hang out if you want#i accidentally posted the navi from it to my main for a sec#which was scary LOL#ill also probably do more discussion via asks over there#i wanna make friends idk#i like talking abt things with people#and this blog feels a little impersonal sometimes
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I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, I’m just wondering. I noticed that you only seem to rec your friends. Also you ignore some of the fics from fests that you participate in when it’s courtesy to read and comment on everything.
This one has been sitting around for ages, possibly since last years Erised. I don’t normally feel the need to justify any of my decisions as a fan, I don’t feel I NEED to this time either but it is actually something I’ve seen pop up over many years and I’ve decided to answer it this one time only. I’ll probably ignore or delete any other asks on the same topic.
So, everyone participating in a fest reading and commenting on everyone else’s work seems like the ideal, right? In reality, some people want to write about things that you as a participant absolutely cannot handle - for me that’s usually MCD, terminal illness, infidelity, domestic violence, severe depression, and lots of other things. That’s what the tags and warnings are for, of course, and I’m using them appropriately. Have I read and enjoyed stories with any/all of those themes before? Yep. That doesn’t change that generally these themes affect me negatively so generally I avoid them. If and when I feel like I can handle them, I might try them out. Only I can know when I might be ready to do that. It might not be during the course of Wireless or Suds or whatever the fest I’m part of is. That doesn’t mean others shouldn’t write that content. It doesn’t mean I should harden up and just read it for the sake of etiquette.
Sometimes I simply cannot handle the size of the fic. I don’t feel the need to describe my whole life, but I work full time, I have family commitments, I need to do regular life things like washing and shopping and cooking and the dishes. Fics under probably 20K feel more manageable, I can read that on my lunch break or maybe before work, but more likely before bed. Longer stuff requires more time (obviously) and I’m not good at putting something down when I start it and pulling an all nighter mid-week is way harder when you’re 40.
Some of my closest fandom friends have big and popular fics that I haven’t got around to reading yet. Some of them have short ones that are heavy on topics that I can’t cope with right now. Not to put words in your mouth, but its unfair to assume the reason for my lack of attention is that I don’t care about them or I’m not appropriately prioritising my fandom time. I’ll get there eventually, or maybe I won’t. My friendships are hopefully strong enough to endure me not reading their stuff and them not reading mine. My friendships are not based on what those people can create for me or how they can promote my work.
As far as reccing goes, I’m a very inconsistent reccer. My goal for 2022 was to do more reccing and I did none. None recs with left beef. I’m not generally trawling for fic (the way I did as a 22 year old approximately one thousand years ago) and so I mainly see fic from authors I have already encountered and loved, via AO3 user subscriptions. My next gateway is via recs from friends (the magnificent @sitp-recs for example). I’ve been very lucky to have had people I deeply admire and enjoy become off-stage pals, but I’m not reccing them on a friendship basis. If I had to guess I would say my most consistent recs are of authors who I have had lovely, delightful interactions with but who I don’t have established friendships with. No stats but I reckon @lqtraintracks @writcraft and @letteredlettered would be people who pretty much always write things that make me lose my fuckin mind but we’re not part of a DM frenzy that involves graphic discussion of our latest health dramas, what we ate for dinner, what shenanigans our pets and siblings have got up to (that’s @shiftylinguini whether she likes it or not). I rec the BABY CHEESES out of them despite this.
What it boils down to is that I will engage the way I feel comfortable engaging, when I feel like it. I definitely have people I avoid (generally those who express terfy sentiments) and people I’m dragged towards like a magnet. It is what it is. I’m sorry if you have been a person who I haven’t engaged with and if you feel badly about that. It’s probably for benign reasons (see above), unless it’s because of one of the bad reasons.
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gosh darnnit im tired
in other words: time for my weekly ramblings about a bl where im mildly interested in the main couple but the side couple means more to me than anything and no i will not stop talking about them
slight warning, there will be one mention of sa and one mention of murder/suicide (both of which are my personal speculation about particular situations, and there’s no detail apart from the word being mentioned). i also discuss/ramble to myself about mental health problems, and alcohol abuse. so if any of those things are triggering for you in any way, please be cautious about reading this, take necessary precautions, and if it’s particularly distressing, i urge you to call a local hotline for these kinds of emergencies. i care about all of you and your health and safety, whether i know you or not, and if you ever need to talk about anything at all, lemme know, my ask box and my dms are always open.
anyway, on with the show!
if you haven’t figured it out yet, this is...
MY THOUGHTS ON EPISODE 4 OF ABAAB
(if youre new here, it will literally be all of my thoughts on everything while im watching it bc i feel like im annoying my friends with my ramblings so instead ill annoy all of this circle of tumblr. and it will probably not be coherent. youre welcome.)
i’m obsessed with his little ‘cher is so cute’ smile
THATS HOW I FEEL ABOUT LITERALLY THIS EXACT POST
dONT YOU DARE DO A PATPRAN
that’s real insightful, cher. id never thought of that one before. the statement really gets me thinking.
are you- are you saying what i think you’re saying? or am i more dirty minded than i thought
his hair is extra curly today and its veyr pretty
the curls are giving charlie spring vibes from the side
i would like to touch his hair please
the fact that covid exists in this universe is weirdly funny to me
yup that sounds about right. no one rly cares about covid anymore when the entire world is ending
YAY HE’S FINALLY OPENING UP TO HIM
that freaking sucks tho
and what’s worse is it’s very likely tian was r*ped
WHY DO ALL THE HAPPY FEEL-GOOD SHOWS HAVE TO HAVE SAD DEATH BACKSTORIES BEHIND 50% OF THE FREAKING CHARACTERS
GUN (msp)’S DAD IS DEAD AND HIS MUM SPENDS HALF THE SHOW LOW-KEY DYING (and i swear if they do something to gim in our skyy 2 im gonna fly to thailand and have some words with people)
AYAN’S DAD LEFT, HIS UNCLE DIED
THUA’S DAD DIED
HALF THE CHARACTERS IN THE ECLIPSE HAVE DIAGNOSED DEPRESSION AND THE REST OF THEM ARE UNDIAGNOSED BUT ITS DEFINITELY THERE
HERE, JACK HAS DEPRESSION (and i rly hope they go into that more in depth later in the show bc he intrigues me. if they dont go into it more then im writing a way too in depth analysis post of jack)
AND NOW FREAKING CHER’S FRIEND/CRUSH FROM CHILDHOOD IS FREAKING DEAD AND HER BODY WAS FLOATING IN A POND WHICH DOESNT RLY LEAD TO ANY IMMEDIATE THOUGHTS OF A NATURAL DEATH WHICH MEANS IT WAS PROBABLY MURDER AND/OR SUICIDE WHICH MAKES IT EVEN FREAKING WORSE
i knew it was too good to last. the over-confident, cocky, funny, sassy/sarcastic people are generally the most messed up, they just hide it via humour and feigned confidence (i am most certainly not one of these people at all)
cher stop drinking, you’re gonna hurt yourself. also the alcohol might feel like it’s lifting the burden of thinking and stops you from worrying about everything thats happening, but itll come rushing back to you when you’re sober and worse because youll have a hangover, and it’s only a temporary fix, drinking only works for a couple of hours. you need a more permanent fix, cos if you keep turning to alcohol, itll turn into addiction and substance abuse and dependency, none of which are good, all of which are much harder to get out of than they are to get into. so yeah, just chill with the drinking a little bit. i get that you need to let it all out and you need to not feel for a bit, and that’s totally okay, but you need to make sure you’re not over-indulging yourself. otherwise youll be very ill in the long-term, both physically and mentally
PFFFT THIS WAS THE PERFECT SHOT TO END IT ON
final thoughts:
theyve both said things that make absolutely no sense in context unless theyre confessions of feelings, and yet theyre definitely gonna continue to do the “what if he doesnt like me back” thing even tho its SO CLEAR to LITERALLY EVERYONE they have feelings for each other
theyve gotten so close to kissing this episode and yet they havent which is sad, but also at least they have kissed at one point before getting to the point where they COULD have kissed a grand total of siXTY-SEVEN TIMES- (shut up im not talking about tinngun what are you talking about. .....but also if you wanted to see that post where i count out all of the times tinngun didn’t kiss...)
very sad with the complete and utter lack of threezo in this episode. actually, it’s not even a lack of threezo. neither of them even appeared in the episode. neither was even mentioned. they (i.e. the characters, the creators of the show) are all acting like threezo AREN’T the most important characters in this entire show
i love threezo
where is threezo
or is it zothree
either way i dont mind bc i love them
where was i
oh right
this episode was pretty good, very emotional, i definitely didnt cry what are you talking about (who am i kidding, eveyrone knows i cried three times, you dont even need me to tell you)
im excited for episode 5
that is all, thank you and goodnight
#quodekash rambles about abaab#im sorry my thoughts are a mess#idk why anyone reads these#i just make them to yeet my thoughts out of my brain cos otherwise they clog up#and if they clog up then i cant make funky posts where i overanalyse one line one character said one time#anyway#a boss and a babe#a boss and a babe the series#a boss and a babe series#abaab#abaab ep 4#guncher#chergun#forcebook#bookforce#force jiratchapong#book kasidet#jack's almighty curly hair#drake sattabut's almighty eyebrows
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i know you already have two other asks in your inbox , so dont worry about taking ur time answering this ! but i dont see a lot of people talking about how , when pouf died , there was a trail of blood to his body like he was dragging himself . he was most likely doing it because the king told him to continue looking for pitou , which just shows how dedicated he was to the king , even though the king was completely going against what he wanted him to be , , he mustve been completely broken after realising the king would be both dying and choosing to die with ( and metaphorically as ) a human but still dragged his body in dirt for him . it could maybe be partly because he genuinely worried about pitou too though
sorry that wasnt much of a question though ;( i just wanna know other people ' s thoughts since i dont hear this part discussed much
OKAY I HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS ON THIS
First though, the ask box doesn't have to just be for asks lmao! I welcome commentary of all kinds, things that spark discussion or even just little thoughts. I'm absolutely loving the community engagement I've been receiving here and I'm gonna encourage yall to give me whatever thoughts you wanna share via my inbox 💌
That being said, let me get the whiplash out of the way and say that I do have a lot of thoughts about Pouf's death, and yeah there's a lot to be said from a narrative perspective but it's the little details that absolutely kill me, like the blood trail you mentioned. I saw someone once bring that up as a sign of how quickly he was dying, that he probably tries to fly first and either couldn't get enough lift or actually fell when his wings started failing, then tried walking, then dragged himself until the very end. It really is a poignant sign of his loyalty and the longer you have to think about it, the more genuinely heartbreaking it gets, realizing that he probably knew he was never going to make it anywhere, that even if he was fully intending to look for Pitou or even try to get to the warehouse to be with Meruem, he wouldn't have enough time to be able to do it. And yet, he tried.
I have a few other facts on this that devastate me but I just realized while writing that that Meruem's memory comes back while he and Pouf (and Welfin) are standing in that crowd of people, and that's also where Pouf died. He was on the ground sobbing and now that I'm really thinking, there's a pretty good chance he may have tried to stand up, and then immediately collapsed, then tried to move forward and carry out the order he'd been given which. man I don't even know what to say, that's just a lot to take in..
The two specific things about his death that upset me most are that 1) he's the only guard to die offscreen, and 2) he's the only one that died alone. Pitou died onscreen in brutal detail (and the anime did in fact exaggerate some scenes; that wasn't one of them. Going back for the manga and realizing Pitou's death scene was practically 1:1 made me feel a little physically ill), and Youpi died in a flashback, but Pouf's death took place entirely offscreen. All we see is the pan over his body. As for the other point, Pitou died fighting and was grateful to have done so, Youpi very nearly did the same with Welfin before the poison overtook him, but Pouf wasn't granted that.
Pouf died alone in the crowd of humans he'd hypnotized, before they all awoke and died with him. Pouf, who hated humanity with a fiery burning passion, who likely tore himself to shreds in his final moments for how things didn't work out, who watched his king literally turn his back on him and walk away from him, died alone. We know what Pitou's last thoughts were, and similar can be said for Youpi (for the most part, anyways), but the same can't be said for Pouf. We get to hear his internal monologue so many times in the arc, and then in the one moment where it would be absolutely crucial, all we're left with is silence.
Truth be told, I didn't feel bad for him at all the first time I finished the CAA; I got very swept up in a lot of the other things happening and, while even then I knew Pouf was my favorite guard, maybe even my favorite character overall (at that point, needless to say now I definitely think he's one of the most characters ever), but seeing him dead didn't even make me sad. I mostly just sat there like wow,, you absolutely wild man, godspeed, what was ANY of that all about,, but the more I rewatched the arc, the more I really felt for him. I don't think I could go through the CAA again and not tear up a little at how solemn an end he gets.
I once saw someone else say that all the guards' deaths were direct contrasts to their entrances, and how with Pouf, it's how he came in so strong and flamboyant and loud, and then went out with a whimper. How everything he does gets more and more extreme and then fizzles out in a moment.
I'm running out of like. coherent responses to make about this, I'm just looking over all this like aughhghh he was loyal until the very end and his loyalty was complex!!! He did bad things because he was absolutely sure that they were the right thing to do!! And in the end, he did in fact have to face consequences!! They were immediate and direct in him seeing Meruem's evolution completely head on (which is something I talk about in another ask that's already been posted) and like. people say he's the worst guard or the least loyal when there's just so much more to him than that. So many people were glad he died which, I totally understand where they're coming from, but his death makes me so genuinely sad. All the guards' deaths do, but Pouf's especially feels so unfair. It's just another thing for the pile, with the pile being things about Pouf I wish other people would think about more 😔
#i just. think about him. i just think about him. truth be told i had those realizations while i was a little tipsy ksjxkx#i was fully expecting to be like heheho pretty pretty man but instead got hit with ''hey wait his death was so unfair actually-''#people dont have to love him but i just wish they would try to understand him 😔#most of the time i think about him im just like oughhghg heart eyes mf'er but sometimes i just (gross sobbing)#also realizing my answer took a slightly different angle than the question whoops; i stand by it anyways 👀#hxh#shaiapouf#asks#text#mod.txt
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That Inspires You? Pay out it Forward
I has been asked a problem today, who creates you? There are usually many answers to this question, Lance Armstrong, Ronald Reagan and Martin Luther Ruler, Jr. but merely one name popped into my head quickly, Sharon Neukam. Throughout the world there are few people, hundreds, not millions, that have known Sharon Neukam. Everyone of them are living better, because they will were touched and even inspired by Sharon. "How could they possibly know this particular, " you may inquire. I know, mainly because Sharon passed away from recently, and My partner and i heard story right after story, of how this kind of little woman altered the world, a single person at a time.
Now you state, "Lots of folks are kind and even do this every single day. " Do these cards do it while battling cancer, carrying out chemo every full week, for more as compared to thirteen years? Carry out they get it done right after being given their last rights, extra than once? Carry out they do it whenever they are sense so bad, that just about all of us probably would not even get away of bed? Sharon did.
Sharon may be the wife of one of my best friends, Frank. Frank and My partner and i went to school, played sports together and stayed buddies from that time. It had been natural, that will when Frank fulfilled and married Sharon, we became friends as well. You might have many friends over time, family commitments and busy schedules don't allow for much quality time. We had kids born within the couple months of each other, which usually allowed us to get more time than usual, but nevertheless not necessarily as much while we would including. The point is, we were good friends, but not talking on typically the phone everyday plus some years we might only see the other 3 or 4 times. That's ok, because a buddy will not need to be able to be there each day, a great friend is presently there when you need a buddy most.
Which usually brings me in order to the story associated with how Sharon influenced me in a new way that altered my life forever. In 2003 My partner and i was diagnosed with colon/rectal cancer, immediately acquired surgery and over the particular next 9 a few months, radiation and chemotherapy. This is wherever Sharon also comes in. We did not genuinely want to let her know and Frank, because you see, she got breast cancer considering that 1992, fighting and even undergoing treatments on a weekly basis, in addition to be able to being a wife and mother involving two sons. The particular dilemma was, I actually did not want them to hear it from another person. Why Small Businesses Fail broke down called and stopped by their home, wherever I proceeded to let them in on my secret.
It should are actually a disheartening time, but many of us spent the next four hours speaking, Sharon asking some sort of lot of concerns and giving suggestions and encouragement. The particular thing I remember most is, while i still left, my stomach really hurt, not through illness, but by all the fun. It was something I had developed not seasoned since being identified, but Sharon acquired a method of making any individual completely at easiness and forgetting your cares for the time she was throughout your presence.
This failed to end right now there; the inspiration the girl offered me in typically the following year changed my life and that of many folks that I have appear in contact along with since. When i state My partner and i did not discuss to my friends on a daily schedule, that does certainly not apply to Sharon in addition to the year I was going via Chemotherapy. Sharon would not call each day, but nearly, the amazing factor is, that about every call she had something for me, physical care plans, in the kind of herbal tea and muffins in order to fight nausea, although always sincere inquiries and cures intended for the answers presented. Each and each call made myself feel better. The lady never asked regarding or would have got considered taking something in return.
The issue with all regarding this is, the girl was sicker compared with how I was and even had been intended for a long moment. I should have been the one producing the calls in addition to asking what I could do on her. That will is when that hit me. I actually always considered personally a good guy, nice person, but the truth is, only if We did not have to go out of the way. She made me realize that becoming a good person, is much considerably more. It is something that we all need to do, not only today or down the road, but everyday we spend on this kind of earth. Sharon manufactured me see in addition to take action into it.
It does not necessarily take a lot of cash or even energy to do some thing nice or enhance someone's day. Before, I would enter into my office using blinders on, carry out my thing to go out, sometimes without uttering a word. My partner and i call that period, before Sharon. Following Sharon me, can make it a point to be aware of what is usually going on together with the people all-around me, who may be getting a bad day, not feeling nicely, had a latest loss or just needs a kind word. If website and i can put a smile over an encounter or come up with a poor thought disappear for a moment, I do it. The funny thing about it is, the rewards of giving are received in return, ten times over.
In no way can We compare, what I is performing, using what Sharon performed for me and thus many others. The thing is, one person could make a massive difference simply by doing a tiny kind thing for someone every day. In case two or 10 people take action, almost all the better. Sharon Neukam inspired us to be a new good man and to know that I will be not the best I will become. Thanks to the girl, I keep attempting to get better. This kind of article is committed to Sharon, those that will have been consumed from us by simply cancer and these still fighting typically the fight. In right now there honor, I inquire each person scanning this to take a great extra minute with someone who you realize, that can gain from a form word from you. A lot of to ask? Not necessarily really, the prize is more than a person could ever imagine.
It seemed as well good to be true, but We received it throughout the mail, established up as instructed and was earning money the first week. The device is a basic online business chance and easy to be able to use. There is certainly support and ongoing teaching by those users that are already earning five and six figure earnings per month.
All of which is great, but if you asked me what I like most concerning this top internet business opportunity, it presented new passion to my life and the particular freedom to delight in it.
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Invisible String
Ship: Fem! Reader x Spencer Reid
Warnings: None, this is just fluff.
Word count: 3.2k
Summary: You and Spencer Reid don’t know it, but you’ve almost met quite a few times. What happens when you do?
A/N: This is potentially a bit on the wrong side of the cheesy line, but I was listening to invisible string by Taylor Swift and couldn’t get this idea out of my head. Pls bare in mind I’m from the UK and my only understanding of the US college system is from Google searches, so pls be forgiving of any misunderstandings about that.
November 6th, 2007
Dr. Spencer Reid. As you sat, thumbing through the article he’d written about the formation of ionic compounds in a chemical whose name you could not for the life of you spell or pronounce, you couldn’t help but resent the man.
Sure, the paper was very well-written and as cohesive as possible given the complex subject matter. But Dr. Spencer Reid, whoever he was, was the current source of your resentment at selecting chemistry to make up your science credit. Highlighting the name of a substance you’d have to look up later, you sighed. It was getting late but you had to hand in a critical summary of the paper on Friday.
It didn’t help that Dr. Reid was: a) a triple doctorate holder by the age of 22, or b) that your chemistry lecturer was none other than his old chemistry lecturer from Caltech and practically glowed with pride whenever he got to bring him up.
You chew on the end of your pen, having now distracted yourself from the notes. Not that you were particularly focused anyway.
In another life, maybe you’d have been a budding chemist who could describe an ionic lattice off rote. In this one, however, you’d just have to settle for slogging through the list of chemical processes and hoping you understood it well enough to please Dr. Reid’s biggest fan.
***
April 16th, 2008
Spencer hated flaking on commitments. It caused him a great deal of anxiety, the feeling of disappointing someone. He didn’t have much choice in this circumstance though.
Diana had taken ill over the last weekend. Nothing serious, some stomach bug or other. She’d become severely dehydated though, and had been hospitalised as a precautionary measure. Truth be told, he might not have gone if she hadn’t caught him on the phone. He was already feeling guilty for not having visited since Christmas. He wrote her letters everyday, yet still felt like he was neglecting his duties as a son. Rubbing his hands over his face, he lets out a deep sigh. Then takes out his laptop, to send another email.
Dear. Dr Abraham
I sincerely apologise again for my last minute cancellation. Excluding any unforeseen circumstances, myself and SSA Hotchner will be available to present the lecture on May 12th.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Spencer Reid.
***
May 12th, 2008
Considering this was your third year on campus, you sure were bad at finding your way around. In your defence, they were doing maintenance in one of the main buildings, meaning that lectures got shuffled around and relocated. You probably had a higher change of attending the right lecture by accident than on purpose.
It doesn’t help that you’re running a little late this morning. You rush into Room 203. A lot of the seats are taken, you have to meander your way past quite a few people until you end up sat almost directly in the middle. Only moments before the lecture starts.
“I’m SSA Hotchner, and this is SSA Reid. We’re members of the BAU which is based at FBI quarters in Quantico. Today, we’ll be talking to you about profiling.”
This is not your forensic linguistics lecture.
Panic hits you, hot in your gut. Scanning the room anxiously, you suddenly become conscious that you’re drawing attention to yourself when you feel the eyes of the man who is not SSA Hotchner on you. Fuck.
There’s no way for you to escape now, not without disturbing half the lecture hall.
So you sit back in your seat, resigning yourself to sit awkwardly in the lecture you’re not supposed to be in and hoping nobody notices.
But then, it’s really interesting, actually. The work that Dr. Reid does sounds similar to work you’ve done in forensic linguistics, analysing patterns of speech and minor phrase formations that can give things away about the perpetrator. By the end of the seminar, you’re sat leaning forward. Enraptured by almost every word coming out of their mouths.
It seems to be the general mood: everyone is enamoured. People are clammering to speak to them at the end. After a brief inner battle, myou decide that you should talk to them too.
What’s the harm?
You’ve decided that you’ll speak to Dr. Reid, since he seems to share more of a field focus. However, as you’re heading down, you spot him. Dr Adams, your chemistry lecturer from last year. Oh shit, it’s that Dr. Reid.
Speaking to SSA Hotchner will just have to do instead.
----
“I’ve been majoring in forensic linguistics and criminal psychology,” You tell him, “Do you think ... I mean, I know it’s a pretty exclusive team to get on to. But is that the kind of thing that could maybe get me there one day?”
Hotchner nods, “Forensic linguistics is something that comes in very useful in the investigative aspects of cases. The FBI is always looking for new angles and perspectives, those are both good subjects to study if you were thinking of signing up to the academy.”
"Thank you, Agent Hotchner,” You say, suddenly a little bashful as you notice the queue of people lingering behind you, “That was a really interesting lecture. It’s definitely something I’ll think about.”
“You should talk to Dr. Reid if you have a particular interest in the linguistic aspect of profiling. He’s more specialised in that area than I am. I’m sure he’d be more than happy to discuss any research you’re conducting at the moment and suggest materials that might be helpful in furthering your understanding of the area.”
“Thank you,” You smile, and he nods at you again.
Stepping away from Agent Hotchner, you look to your right. Dr. Reid is still engaged deeply in conversation with Dr. Adams. You glance at your watch. There was time before your next class, you supposed, so you could wait. It couldn’t hurt to find out more, could it? It wasn‘t like you were getting your hopes up or anything.
It’s then that you feel a pair of arms around your waist, a familiar scent of cologne.
“Hey!” You whip around to see your boyfriend, grinning widely.
“Hey,” You reply, “How’d you find me?”
“I was walking past when I saw you talking to that FBI agent. Seriously, FBI?” He asks, with a disapproving quirk of his eyebrow, “You want to grab a coffee before Psych?”
You want to say no. But he’s got his hand on the small of your back, leading you out of the room before you even get a chance to reply. You glance back over your shoulder, making eye contact with Dr. Reid for all of two seconds before you’re swept away.
“Seriously though babe, FBI?”
Unsurpisingly, you don’t mention your potential change in career path to him.
***
March 8th, 2009
“Come in,” Hotch calls. He looks up from the paperwork on his desk to see Spencer entering the room, clutching a report in his hand.
“That last case we were on. I was doing some more research, just for future reference about linguistic patterns. Have you read this?” He asks, sliding a copy of your paper across the desk.
Hotch gives it a cursary look over, nodding, “Yes. It’s interesting. She’s signed up as an NAT. I believe I actually spoke to her at one of our lectures last year.”
"Her work is really impressive for somebody whose only studied this at a master level.”
Hotch almost smiles, “Yes. That’s exactly why I’ve recommended to the bureau that she signs up for profiling classes. Her work shows a lot of promise. They’re sending over a copy of her completed thesis, if you’d like to read it.”
“Yeah, I’d like that, thank you,” Spencer says, struggling to conceal the smile playing on the corner of his lips.
“I’ll email it to you as soon as I receive it.”
Spencer nods, smiling properly to himself as he leaves the room. It wasn’t unusual, exactly, for him to share new research that was relevant to cases. It was important that they all kept themselves fresh and acquainted with new theories about the field. Hotch, however, didn’t miss the excited way Spencer had presented it to him. Talking about how impressive you were, as if to subtly hint. He thinks it’s quite typical, actually, that Spencer could take such an interest in someone he only knew via an essay.
Although Spencer’s response does get Hotch to send a follow-up email, inquiring about whether you’d agreed to the classes. If Spencer was this impressed with your work, it must be good.
***
June 1st, 2009
The Metro that morning is packed. It doesn’t help that you’ve not been living here long, and don’t exactly know the route from your flat to the station off by heart yet.
You'd also had to make a detour to the post office. Your, firmly ex, boyfriend had mailed over the last of your things. Really, it was good riddance. His hounding you about your choice in job had only worsened. The relationship had been hanging on by a thread long before you’d moved away last month. You were more than a little grateful that it was finally over, that you could draw a line under it all and focus on your career.
Unfortunately, that hadn’t stopped you having a little cry to yourself on the way over.
Rushing, you make it onto the Metro just as the doors are about to close, falling against the railing on the left side. You grip onto it for dear life.
On the other side of the carriage, Spencer notices someone hurrying for the train. He had been buried deep in the paper he's reading, but the bustle had pulled his attention. Your back is to him, and there’s a scarf at your feet. He wants to say something, to try and get your attention, but he can’t from where he is.
“Miss, I think you’ve dropped something,” The woman you’re standing in front of says, gesturing to the scarf pooled at your feet.
You meet her eyes, sniffling slightly, “Thank you.”
Spencer watches as you pick it up, back still to him. Crisis averted, he turns his attention back to what he's reading: the published copy of your thesis Hotch had emailed him last week.
***
September 2nd, 2009
"This is SSA ____, the newest member of our team. She’s recently graduated from the academy and has an excellent knowledge of linguistics that the bureau feels will be a great advantage to this team. She’s had her induction and now will be joining the team on a probationary basis. She’ll be spending a little time with each of you in between cases to make sure she forms well-rounded knowledge of all aspects of what we do.”
It’s a little overwhelming, having everybody’s eyes on you.
“It’s so nice to meet you,” Emily is the first over, offering her hand for you to shake.
“You too, it’s really nice to meet all of you,” You say, shaking hands in turn with her, Morgan, Rossi, J.J, and Garcia.
“Hi,” Spencer calls from behind you.
You turn around to face him. You remember what Hotch had mentioned to you about him being a bit of a germaphobe, so you keep your hand by your side.
“Hi,” You say, “Dr. Reid, right?”
“You can call me Spencer,” He says, a little bashful, “I read your thesis, the study about you did about the construction of passive clauses as an indicator of guilt in adolescent offenders. It was fascinating.”
You feel yourself getting a little warm under his gaze, “Thank you. I'm surprised you’re even aware it existed.”
Hotch interrupts then, “Reid, do you want to sit with ____ while she goes over the case file? It’d be useful if you could go over how you’d go about constructing a linguistic profile.”
That’s how you end up spending much of your first day: with Spencer, huddled up over case files as he explains his profile-building process to you. Spencer’s an incredible teacher, you think. He explains his thought process without ever being condescending, leaving little gaps for you to answer.
You’re incredible, Spencer thinks. You seem to grasp exactly what he’s saying, filling in the gaps based on the clues that are actually in front of you, not letting yourself be guided too much by bias.
***
October 29th, 2009
Spencer loves everyone at the BAU. They’re all the family he never had, and he has relatively good friendships with all of them. Just, they aren’t quite the same as they are with you.
He struggles to put his finger on it, exactly. It’s a unique relationship. He shares very familial bonds with a lot of them: he and Morgan are brotherly, Rossi is fatherly, Garcia’s somewhat like an overexcited little sister.
The friendship he has with you is special. You always listen to him, even as he rambles on about inane things that anybody else would tell him to shut up about. In fact, sometimes about the exact things that they do tell him to shut up about. Just last week, he was rambling on about Star Trek when Morgan told him, not altogether unkindly, to “give it a rest, kid.”
“What was that you were saying?” You’d asked, sidling up to him, “I’ve never watched Star Trek but I thought the quote was beam me up Scotty.”
He’d looked at you, considering you for a moment, “You don’t have to-”
“I know. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know Spence. You think I’d ask for a 15 minute lecture on Star Trek if I wasn’t interested in it?”
A warm feeling flooded his chest. The look on your face was so genuine, and you’d perched on the edge of his desk as he gesticulated, getting deep into the lore and how the misconception had come about. He still didn’t pinpoint exactly what it was, until he got to the end of his spiel. And then you asked him a question. You asked him a question to make sure you understood what he was talking about. You were listening the whole time, and you genuinely cared about the point he was making.
It's then that he realises, it was hard to pinpoint because it wasn’t friendship. He likes you. Shit.
***
November 2nd, 2009
You like everybody at the BAU. They’re all quite patient with you, really, happy to walk you through how they do things. Morgan’s taught you quite a bit about the tactical side of things already, and Rossi has been working with you on your interrogation techniques. Emily’s generally just a great mentor, always happy to listen and support however she can. She’s more experienced, but still relatively new to the team too, so you feel like there’s a certain understanding between you.
However, you’d definitely be lying if you said the person you hadn’t learnt the most from, or spent the most time with, was Spencer.
It hadn’t gone unnoticed by the rest of the team, either. You seemed to gravitate towards one another, forever sitting side-by-side on the plane. Sharing a line of thinking that usually led to devolved rambling, and scribbling, until you came up with something coherent.
It isn’t until November 2nd that you realise you have feelings for him.
You’re sitting at your desk, filling out a case report that Emily had promised to go over with you before she left for lunch.
“Hey,” Spencer’s familiar soothing voice comes, as he sidles up to you, “I got you something.”
Looking up, you notice the coffee cup in his right hand, “You are my caffeine lifesaver.”
He hands it to you, smiling a little nervously, “It’s actually not that.”
“Oh?”
His other hand is tucked behind his back, and he pulls it foward towards you, brandishing a red sweatshirt.
“I know you uh, left your red sweater behind at the hotel on the last case. And I know it was your favourite one, and I was shopping yesterday and I saw this and...” He trails off, embarassed, “It’s not the exact same, but it’s the same kind. I just thought you might like it.”
You swallow, hard, “Spencer that’s so sweet. C-Can I hug you?”
He nods. Standing up from your desk, you wrap your arms around his frame.
“That was so thoughtful.”
He squeezes you a little, really leaning into the hug, his face pressing against your shoulder. His tousled hair tickles your nose a little and you smile, clinging onto him, relishing in the feeling of safety and warmth.
It hits you then. When you realise you don’t want to let go. When you realise he makes you feel fuzzy. Loved. Cared for in a way you haven’t felt in a long time. Eventually, you have to let him go, and it’s in a daze that you return to your desk. You’re so concentrated on your overwhelming realisation, you don’t realise how reluctant he is to let you leave his embrace.
***
December 22nd, 2009
Driving Spencer home from the office was really just an excuse to get some time alone with him. You’d said something about the Metro being busy, one of the services being cancelled. He hadn’t factchecked you on that.
The BAU had tentative plans for boxing day, with the caveat being that no emergent cases arrived in the meantime. It was only really four days you wouldn’t see him, but that was longer than you’d ever gone without seeing him in all the time you’d known him. You worked together everyday, and it was unusual for you to go a full weekend without seeing each other. Recently, you’d got into the habit of going out for Sunday brunch together.
Pulling up outside his house, you hear him sigh.
“I know it’s only four days, but I’ll miss you.”
Smiling, you turn to him, “I’ll miss you too.”
Something in you changes then. He’s looking at you. You may be relatively new to profiling but you can see something behind his eyes, feel the charge of unsaid words electrifying the air.
“Can I hug you?” He asks.
“You can always hug me,” You reply, undoing your seatbelt and opening your arms for him.
He embraces you the way he always has: tightly. Like he doesn’t want to let go, couldn’t imagine ever letting you go. His face nuzzles to the crook of your neck, and then you feel his thumb brush your chin. Tilting your head down.
You exchange a look. His eyes flicker from your eyes, to your lips, and back. You nod your head, just slightly.
He kisses you then. Tender. You melt into one another, lips moving quickly as you drink one another in. Kissing each other breathless, your fingers intertwine in his hair and his hand comes up to cup your cheek. Nothing has ever felt so right.
***
June 10th, 2011
Neither of you have ever really believed in fate. It’s hard to - especially in your line of work - to want to interpret the workings of the universe as deliberate. Maybe you’d think a little differently though, if you knew about all the near-misses. All the times you could have met. But fate knew better. She waited until you were ready.
And as you exchange vows, promising each other your forever, you both know you couldn’t possibly deny that this was meant to be.
------
Taglists: @takeyourleap-of-faith @sassiest-politician
(let me know if you would like to be added to/removed from this list!)
#spencer reid x reader#spencer reid#criminal minds#reid x reader#spencer reid x y/n#imagine spencer reid#criminal minds x you#imagine criminal minds#spencer reid fluff#spencer reid fanfic#spencer reid fanfiction#spencer reid imagines#pls like this it took me so long
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the many faces of tom riddle, part 4
-attachment, orphanages, and yet more child psych: time to add yet another voice to the void-
FULL DISCLAIMER THAT THIS IS JUST MY OPINION OF A CHARACTER WHO DOESN’T HAVE THE STRONGEST CANON CHARACTERIZATION, AND THUS ALL THIS IS BASED ON MY CONCEPTUALIZATION.
I'm going to be super biased, because my favorite portrayal of Tom Riddle is actually Hero Fiennes-Tiffin as eleven-year-old Tom Riddle, in HBP and I get to chat about child psych in this one, sooo here we go.
First of all, I’m just so impressed that a kid could bring that much depth to such a complex character.
This is the portrayal, I feel, that brings us closest to Tom’s character. Yes, Coulson’s brought us pretty close, but by fifth year, the mask was on.
We don't really get to see Tom looking afraid very often, but it's fear that rules his life, so it's really poignant in our first (chronologically) introduction, he looks absolutely terrified.
The void being the fandom's loud opinions on a certain headmaster. I wouldn't call myself pro-Dumbledore, but I'm certainly not anti-Dumbledore, either. (Agnostic-Dumbledore??)
Since I'm not of the anti-Dumbledore persuasion, I decided to poke around in the tags and see what the arguments were, so I don't make comments out of ignorance.
Most of the tag seems to be more directed towards his treatment of Harry and Sirius, but a few people mentioned that Dumbledore should have treated Tom with ‘exceptional kindness’ and tried to ‘rehabilitate’ him.
As I said in Parts 2 and 3, I am 100% in favor of helping a traumatized kid learn to cope, and I don’t think Tom Riddle was solidly on the Path to Evil (TM) at birth, or even at eleven. Not even at fifteen.
Could unconditional love and kindness have helped Tom Riddle enough for the rise of Lord Voldemort to never happen? Possibly, but...
Yes, I'm about to drag up that Carl Jung quote, again.
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
The problem with this is that if you’re going to blame Dumbledore for this, you also have to blame every other adult in Tom’s life: his headmaster, Dippet, his Head of House, Slughorn, his ‘caretakers’ at the orphanage, Mrs. Cole and Martha, and possibly more. In fact, if we're going to blame any adult, let's blame Merope for r*ping and abusing Tom Riddle Senior, and having a kid she wasn't intending to take care of.
Furthermore, you cannot possibly hold anyone but Tom accountable for the murders he committed. (I should not have to sit here and explain why cold-blooded murder is wrong.) And if you like Tom Riddle's character, insinuating that his actions are completely at the whim of others is just a bit condescending towards him. He's not an automaton or a marionette, he's a very intelligent human being with a functioning brain, and at sixteen is fully capable of moral reasoning and critical analysis.
I've heard the theories about Dumbledore setting the Potters up to die, and I'm not going to discuss their validity right now; but he didn't put a wand in Tom's hand and force him to kill anyone. Tom did it all of his own accord.
And while yes, I have enormous sympathy for what happened to Tom as a child, at some point, he decided to murder Myrtle Warren, and that is where I lose my sympathy. Experiencing trauma does not give you the right to inflict harm on others. Yes, Tom was failed, but then, he spectacularly failed himself.
We also have no idea how Dumbledore treated Tom as a student.
In the movies, it’s Dumbledore who tells Tom he has to go back to the orphanage, but in the books, it’s Dippet. We know that Slughorn spent a lot of time around Tom at Slug Club and such, yet I don’t really see people clamoring for his head.
I regard the sentiment that Dumbledore turned Tom Riddle into Lord Voldemort with a lot of skepticism.
But let's hear from the character himself -- his impression of eleven-year-old Tom Riddle.
“Did I know that I had just met the most dangerous Dark wizard of all time?” said Dumbledore. “No, I had no idea that he was to grow up to be what he is. However, I was certainly intrigued by him. I returned to Hogwarts intending to keep an eye upon him, something I should have done in any case, given that he was alone and friendless, but which, already, I felt I ought to do for others’ sake as much as his."
Now, assuming that Dumbledore's telling the truth, I'm not seeing something glaringly wrong with this. No, he hasn't pigeonholed Tom as evil, yes, I'd be intrigued, too, and it's a very good idea to keep an eye on Tom, for his own sake.
“At Hogwarts,” Dumbledore went on, “we teach you not only to use magic, but to control it. You have — inadvertently, I am sure — been using your powers in a way that is neither taught nor tolerated at our school."
Again, it seems like he's at least somewhat sympathetic towards Tom, and is willing to at least give him a chance.
More evidence (again, assuming Dumbledore is a reliable narrator):
Harry: “Didn’t you tell them [the other professors], sir, what he’d been like when you met him at the orphanage?”
Dumbledore: “No, I did not. Though he had shown no hint of remorse, it was possible that he felt sorry for how he had behaved before and was resolved to turn over a fresh leaf. I chose to give him that chance.”
Now, I think Dumbledore is pretty awful with kids, but I don't think that's malicious. Yeah, it's a flaw, but perfect people don't exist, and perfect characters are dead boring. I am not saying that he definitely handled Tom's case well, I'm just saying that there's little evidence that Dumbledore, however shaken and scandalized, wrote him off as 'evil snake boy.'
It's also worth taking into account that it's 1938, and the attitudes towards mental health back then.
Why is Tom looking at Dumbledore like that, anyway? Why is he so scared? What has he possibly been threatened with or heard whispers of?
"'Professor'?" repeated Riddle. He looked wary. "Is that like 'doctor'? What are you here for? Did she get you in to have a look at me?"
"I don't believe you," said Riddle. "She wants me looked at, doesn't she? Tell the truth!"
"You can't kid me! The asylum, that's where you're from, isn't it? 'Professor,' yes, of course -- well, I'm not going, see? That old cat's the one who should be in the asylum. I never did anything to little Amy Benson or Dennis Bishop, and you can ask them, they'll tell you!
Tom keeps insisting he's not mad until Dumbledore finally manages to calm him down.
I'm really upset this wasn't in the movie, because it's important context. Instead we got these throwaway cutscenes of some knick-knacks relating to the Cave he's got lying around, but I just would have preferred to see him freaking out like he does in the book.
There was extreme stigma and prejudice towards mental illness.
'Lunatic asylums,' as they were called in Tom's time, were terrible places. In the 1930s and 40s, he could look forward to being 'treated' with induced convulsions, via metrazol, insulin, electroshock, and malaria injections. And if he stuck around long enough, he could even look forward to a lobotomy!
So, if you think Dumbledore was judgmental towards Tom, imagine how flat-out prejudiced whatever doctors or 'experts' Mrs. Cole might have gotten in to 'look at him' must have been!
Moving on to the next few shots, he is sitting down and hunched over as if expecting punishment or at least some kind of bad news, Dumbledore is mostly out of the frame. He’s trapped visually, by Dumbledore on one side, and a wall on the other, because he’s still very much afraid. uncomfortable, as he tells Dumbledore a secret that he fears could get him committed to an asylum (which were fucking horrible places, as I said).
It brings to the scene that miserable sense of isolation and loneliness to that has defined Tom’s entire life up to that point (and, partially due to his own bad choices, continues to define it).
And, when Dumbledore accepts it, his posture changes. he becomes more confident and more at ease, as he describes the... utilities of his magical abilities.
"All sorts," breathed Riddle. A flush of excitement was rising up his neck into his hollow cheeks; he looked fevered. "I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to."
Riddle lifted his head. His face was transfigured: There was a wild happiness upon it, yet for some reason it did not make him better looking; on the contrary, his finely carved features seemed somehow rougher, his expression almost bestial.
I do think Harry, our narrator, is being a tad bit judgmental here. Magic is probably the only thing that brings Tom happiness in his grey, lonely world, and when I was Tom's age and being bullied, if I had magic powers, you'd better believe that I'd (a) be bloody ecstatic about it (b) use them. And, like Tom, I can't honestly say that I can't imagine getting a bit carried-away with it. Unfortunately, we can't all be as inherently good and kindhearted as Harry.
Reading HBP again, as a 'mature' person, it almost seems like the reader is being prompted to see Tom as evil just because he's got 'weird' facial expressions.
So... uh...
Nope, let's judge Tom on his actions, not looks of 'wild happiness.'
To his great surprise, however, Dumbledore drew his wand from an inside pocket of his suit jacket, pointed it at the shabby wardrobe in the corner, and gave the wand a casual flick.
The wardrobe burst into flames.
Riddle jumped to his feet; Harry could hardly blame him for howling in shock and rage; all his worldly possessions must be in there. But even as Riddle rounded on Dumbledore, the flames vanished, leaving the wardrobe completely undamaged.
Okay, one thing I dislike is Tom's lack of emotional affect when Dumbledore burned the wardrobe, in the books, he jumped up and started screaming, instead of looking passively (in shock, perhaps?) at the fire. Incidentally, I can't really tell if he's impressed or in shock, to be honest. I think they really tried to make Tom 'creepier' in the movie.
This is one of the incidents where Dumbledore's inability to deal with children crops up.
I think he was trying to teach Tom that magic can be dangerous, and he wouldn't like it to be used against him, but burning the wardrobe that contains everything he owns was a terrible move on Dumbledore's part. Tom already has very limited trust in other people, and now, he's not going to trust Dumbledore at all -- now, he's put Tom on the defensive/offensive for the rest of their interaction, and perhaps for the rest of their teacher-student relationship.
Riddle stared from the wardrobe to Dumbledore; then, his expression greedy, he pointed at the wand. "Where can I get one of them?"
"Where do you buy spellbooks?" interrupted Riddle, who had taken the heavy money bag without thanking Dumbledore, and was now examining a fat gold Galleon.
But I'm not surprised Tom is 'greedy.' He's grown up in an environment where if he wants something, whether that's affection, food, money, toys, he's got to take it. There's no one looking after his needs specifically. I'm not surprised that he's a thief and a hoarder, and I don't think that counts as a moral failing necessarily, and more of a maladaptive way of seeking comfort. It would be bizarre if he came out of Wool's Orphanage a complete saint.
Additionally, I think given that the Gaunt family has a history of 'mental instability,' Tom is a sensitive child, and the trauma of growing up institutionalized and possibly being treated badly due to his magical abilities or personality disorder deeply affected him.
And there are points where it seems that Dumbledore is quick to judge Tom.
"He was already using magic against other people, to frighten, to punish, to control."
"Yes, indeed; a rare ability, and one supposedly connected with the Dark Arts, although as we know, there are Parselmouths among the great and the good too. In fact, his ability to speak to serpents did not make me nearly as uneasy as his obvious instincts for cruelty, secrecy, and domination."
"I trust that you also noticed that Tom Riddle was already highly self-sufficient, secretive, and, apparently, friendless?..."
And while this is all empirically true, these are (a) a product of Tom's harsh environment, and (b) do not necessarily make him evil. But the point remains that child psych didn't exist as a field of its own, and psychology as a proper science was in its infancy, so I'd be shocked if Dumbledore was insightful about Tom's situation.
But I've gone a ton of paragraphs without citing anything, so I've got to rectify that.
Let's talk about Harry Harlow's monkey experiments in the 1950-70s.
If you're not a fan of animal research, since I know some people are uncomfortable with it, feel free to scroll past.
Here's the TL;DR: Children need to be hugged and shown affection too, not just fed and clothed, please don't leave babies to 'cry out' and ignore their needs because it's backwards and fucking inhumane. HUG AND COMFORT AND CODDLE CHILDREN AND SPOIL THEM WITH AFFECTION!
I will put more red writing when the section is over.
This is still an interesting experiment to have in mind while we explore the whole 'no one taught Tom Riddle how to love' thing and whether or not it's actually a good argument.
Andddd let's go all the way back to the initial 1958 experiment, featured in Harlow's paper, the Nature of Love. (If you're familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, him and Harlow actually collaborated for a time).
To give you an idea of our starting point, until Harlow's experiment, which happened twenty years after Dumbledore meets Tom for the first time, no one in science had really been interested in studying love and affection.
"Psychologists, at least psychologists who write textbooks, not only show no interest in the origin and development of love or affection, but they seem to be unaware of its very existence."
I'm going to link some videos of Harry Harlow showing the actual experiment, which animal rights activists would probably consider 'horrifying.' It's nothing gory or anything, but if you are particularly soft-hearted (and I do not mean that as an insult), be warned. It's mostly just baby monkeys being very upset and Harlow discussing it in a callous manner. Yes, today it would be considered unethical, but it's still incredibly important work and if you think you can handle it, I would recommend watching at least the first one to get an idea of how dramatic this effect is.
Dependency when frightened
The full experiment
The TL;DW:
This experiment was conducted with rhesus macaques; they're still used in psychology/neuroscience research when you want very human-like subjects, because they are very intelligent (unnervingly so, actually). I'd say that adult ones remind me of a three-year old child.
Harlow separated newborn monkeys from their mothers, and cared for their physical needs. They had ample nutrition, bedding, warmth, et cetera. However, the researchers noticed that the monkeys:
(a) were absolutely miserable. And not just that, but although all their physical needs were taken care of, they weren't surviving well past the first few days of life. (This has also been documented in human babies, and it's called failure to thrive and I'll talk about it a bit later).
(b) showed a strong attachment to the gauze pads used to cover the floor, and decided to investigate.
So, they decided to provide a surrogate 'mother.' Two, actually. Mother #1 was basically a heated fuzzy doll that was nice for the monkeys to cuddle with. Mother #2 was the same, but not fuzzy and made of wire. Both provided milk. The result? The monkeys spent all their time cuddling and feeding from the fuzzy 'mother.' Perhaps not surprising.
What Harlow decided next, is that one of the hallmarks being attached to your caregiver is seeking hugs and reassurance from them when frightened. So, when the monkeys were presented with something scary, they'd go straight to the cloth mother and ignore the wire one. Not only that, but when placed in an unfamiliar environment, if the cloth mother was present, the monkeys would be much calmer.
In a follow-up experiment, Harlow decided to see if there was some sort of sensitive period by introducing both 'mothers' to monkeys who had been raised in isolation for 250 days. Guess what?
The initial reaction of the monkeys to the alterations was one of extreme disturbance. All the infants screamed violently and made repeated attempts to escape the cage whenever the door was opened. They kept a maximum distance from the mother surrogates and exhibited a considerable amount of rocking and crouching behavior, indicative of emotionality.
Yikes. So, at first Harlow thought that they'd passed some kind of sensitive period for socialization. But after a day or two they calmed down and started chilling out with the cloth mother like the other monkeys did. But here's a weird thing:
That the control monkeys develop affection or love for the cloth mother when she is introduced into the cage at 250 days of age cannot be questioned. There is every reason to believe, however, that this interval of delay depresses the intensity of the affectional response below that of the infant monkeys that were surrogate-mothered from birth onward
All these things... attachment, affection, love, seeking comfort ... are mostly learned behaviours.
Over.
Orphanages, institutionalized childcare, and why affection is a need, not an extra.
His face is lit the exact same was as Coulson’s was in COS (half-light, half-dark), and I said I was going to talk about this in Part 3. I think perhaps it's intended to make Fiennes-Tiffin look more evil or menacing, but I'm going to quite deliberately misinterpret it.
Now, for some context, Dumbledore has just (kind of) burned his wardrobe, ratted out his stealing habit, and (in the books only, they really took a pair of scissors to this scene) told him he needs to go apologize and return everything and Dumbledore will know if he doesn't, and, well, Tom's not exactly a happy bugger about it.
But interestingly, in the books, this is when we start to see Tom's 'persona,' aka his mask, start to come into play. Whereas before, he was screaming, howling, and generally freaking out, here, he starts to hide his emotions -- in essence, obscure his true self under a shadow. So this scene is really the reverse of Coulson's in COS.
And perhaps I'm reading wayyy too much into this, but I can't help but notice that Coulson's hair is parted opposite to Fiennes-Tiffin's, and the opposite sides of their faces are shadowed, too.
Riddle threw Dumbledore a long, clear, calculating look. "Yes, I suppose so, sir," he said finally, in an expressionless voice.
Riddle did not look remotely abashed; he was still staring coldly and appraisingly at Dumbledore. At last he said in a colorless voice, "Yes, sir."
Here's an article from The Atlantic on Romanian orphanages in the 1980s, when the dictator, Ceausescu, basically forced people to have as many children as possible and funnel them into institutionalized 'childcare', and it's absolutely heartbreaking.
There's not a whole lot of information out there on British orphanages in the 30s' and 40s', but given that people back then thought you just had to keep children on a strict schedule and feed them, it wouldn't have a whole lot better.
The only thing I've found is this, and it's not super promising.
The most important study informing the criteria for contemporary nosologies, was a study by Barbara Tizard and her colleagues of young children being raised in residential nurseries in London (Tizard, 1977). These nurseries had lower child to caregiver ratios than many previous studies of institutionalized children. Also, the children were raised in mixed aged groups and had adequate books and toys available. Nevertheless, caregivers were explicitly discouraged from forming attachments to the children in their care.
Here's a fairly recent paper that I think gives a good summary: Link
Here, they describe the responses to the Strange Situation test (which tests a child's attachment to their caregiver).
We found that 100% of the community sample received a score of “5,” indicating fully formed attachments, whereas only 3% of the infants living in institutions demonstrated fully formed attachments. The remaining 97% showed absent, incomplete, or odd and abnormal attachment behaviors.
Bowlby and Ainsworth, who did the initial study, thought that children would always attach to their caregivers, regardless of neglect or abuse. But some infants don't attach (discussed along with RAD in Part 2).
Here's a really good review paper on attachment disorders in currently or formerly institutionalized children : Link
Core features of RAD in young children include the absence of focused attachment behaviors directed towards a preferred caregiver, failure to seek and respond to comforting when distressed, reduced social and emotional reciprocity, and disturbances of emotion regulation, including reduced positive affect and unexplained fearfulness or irritability.
Which all sounds a lot like Tom in this scene. The paper also discusses neurological effects, like atypical EEG power distribution (aka brain waves), which can correlate with 'indiscriminate' behavior and poor inhibitory control; which makes sense for a kid who, oh, I don't know, hung another kid's rabbit because they were angry.
Furthermore...
...those children with more prolonged institutional rearing showed reduced amygdala discrimination and more indiscriminate behavior.
This again, makes a ton of sense for Tom's psychological profile, because the amygdala (which is part of the limbic system, which regulates emotions) plays a major role in fear, anger, anxiety, and aggression, especially with respect to learning, motivation and memory.
So, I agree completely that Tom needed a lot of help, especially given the fact that he spent eleven years in an orphanage (longer than the Bucharest study I was referring to), and Dumbledore wasn't exactly understanding of his situation, and probably didn't realise what a dramatic effect the orphanage had on Tom, and given the way he talks to Tom, probably treated him as if he were a kid who grew up in a healthy environment.
In case you are still unconvinced that hugging is that important, there's a famous 1944 study conducted on 40 newborn human infants to see what would happen if their physical needs (fed, bathed, diapers changed) were provided for with no affection. The study had to be stopped because half the babies died after four months. Affection leads to the production of hormones and boosts the immune system, which increases survival, and that is why we hug children and babies should not be in orphanages. They are supposed to be hugged, all the time. I can't find the citation right now, I'll add it later if I find it.
But I think it's vastly unrealistic to say that Dumbledore, who grew up during the Victorian Era, would have any grasp of this and I don't think he was actively malicious towards Tom.
Was Tom Riddle failed by institutional childcare? Absolutely.
Were the adults in his life oblivious to his situation? Probably.
Do the shitty things that happened to Tom excuse the murders he committed, and are they anyone's fault but his own? No. At the end of the day, Tom made all the wrong choices.
And, for what it's worth, I think (film) Dumbledore (although he expresses the same sentiment in more words in the books) wishes he could go back in time and have helped Tom.
"Draco. Years ago, I knew a boy, who made all the wrong choices. Please, let me help you."
#tom riddle#the many faces of#tom marvolo riddle#character analysis#character study#albus dumbledore
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vexos hcs and random notes
ill update as i go, because yes i do update my masterlists every once in awhile, i should probably add them to my pinned...
General
I sincerely hope they have a small living arrangement so I can inflict them with the pain of having to share almost everything with each other
I just want Shadow and Lync to share a bunk
Like to think that alongside Volt, Mylene and Lync were also recruited by Hydron
None of them officially joined until they were a bit older but probably trained to eventually join the Vexos; in the mean time they probably worked for Hydron or something like that
Volt recruited at 11; Lync a year later and Mylene following not long after (respectively 13, 8, 12 when they’re all gathered)
My reasoning to why Volt is patient with Lync’s antics and Mylene less so but doesn’t lash out as badly as you think she would around annoying little kids; grew up tgt moment
Spectra probably forced his way into the Vexos like “hiiii i see you dont have any Vexos members <3″ bcs obv he wasn’t using royal scientist dad privelages (i think, bcs Clay seems horrified abt Spectra being a Vexos and well, being Spectra)
Shadow had an advantage of being a nobleman (in terms of him being accepted into the Vexos’ ranks)
the Vexos and their set of rules magent-ed on the fridge door or something and every time they go over a page they have to staple/tape a new page on
Joined in this order, Volt, Spectra, Shadow, Mylene, Lync, Gus
Vexos being a “chance of death low but the chance is still there” type of job... they feel like idols girl help they are bakugan idol group who work for the government
sorry the way the vestal kids talk about them... going to treat the Vexos like a kpop group now
Spectra Phantom / Keith Fermin
[canon] son of a (royal?) scientist. definitely had it good and comfy
think it’d be REALLY funny if he already knew Shadow before he became Spectra, Shadow just doesn’t recognize him bcs of his stupid get up
throws childhood friends Shadow Spectra at you, just two weirdos
Keith specifically keeps Shadow from ever meeting his sister which is why neither of them really recognize each other
Pre-Spectra; probably would’ve been really into bakugan biology and what not. Feels like the kind of person to talk w/ his dad about “do you think we could change their appearance if we messed w/ their mechanical ball form or would it not carry over to their released forms”
this mf looks like a biology major i feel it in my guts
mom isn’t dead she just divorced Clay bcs he didn’t know how to balance family and work, good for her
probably lives in another city now, and it’s a bit more of a hassle to meet with her kids so they don’t see her as much but she is present in their lives (keep in contact in other ways)
probably went a bit silent when Keith went missing
didn’t bleach his eyebrows bcs he didn’t want to harm the skin around there and he never thought he’d take the mask off around others, or about how stupid he’d look without the mask
please please please please draw him with his pink hair roots in his MS fit he should've grown out some of his bleached hair by then
daddy issues is truly the root of evil
Gus Grav
Just Some Gut background; middle class just living life
[canon?] was going on a route to being an “idol brawler”, because that’s kind of what their brawls felt like, since it was all purely for show with some competition. it felt less like a sport and more spectacle.
Gus wanting to be an idol brawler is actually such a funny string of words put together I’m making that a thing, if he didn’t join the Vexos he would’ve been an idol brawler
I like the Gus needs glasses hc (shoutout to @marmeladebois ‘s post on that)
The hc of him being half human and Runo’s half brother is so good
Cooks well but refuses to help cook fr the Vexos (unless Spectra specifically asks) --> that job is usually left to Volt
not related but reminds me heavily of yugioh vrain’s Spectre (or other way around... Gus was the blueprint)
Shadow Prove
[handbook canon] a vestal nobleman
has an older brother (oc; Lux- casual Haos brawler)
inferiority complex or whatever, the only thing he bested his brother in was Bakugan
the Prove family being typical prim proper noble family and forcing Shadow to be repressed is something, but the Proves having the same kind of wavelength as Shadow but in different variations is funnier. They’re just Like That.
Probably not a military family, does work closely with the government still; um im thinking somewhere under the Fermins but not by much
Considered running away from home several times
Unwillingly has knowledge on Vestal classic literature/ music
hard clutching a wall whenever he wants to join in on discussions about it bcs he knows this stuff but no way is he going to make himself look like a nerd + hes not actually that interested
*debates you for fun and bcs i hate u <3*
You know how he doesn’t take his job as a Vexos member super seriously, I wonder:
did his parents force him to be a Vexos since he wasn’t interested in the political side of his family and probably against taking up anything related to it, so they had him do something that’d still be beneficial to the family?
joined to pursue a freedom he didn’t have as a nobleman and is now just taking it really easy?
has clowns > jesters debate with volt; obv he’s team clown, volt is team jester
incredibly irrelevant but if he was a human he’d be chinese, i’ve claimed him, prodigal son older brother and fail son dynamic is there
Mylene Ferrow
While I like the idea of her being from a military family, I want to make her like Ling Wen (TGCF) in the sense she started from the bottom and climbed to the top... it fits her ambitious nature of grasping for more, she hasn’t reached what she considers the top just yet...
[very Ling Wen specific but Mylene being put in jail fr crimes unknown to me and being recruited by Hydron bcs she kicked serious ass is an entertaining thought]
I like to think she’s closest to Shadow due to the fact he kind of forces his presence onto her so... not her choice in that matter. “annoying” to “endearingly annoying, you still aren’t getting special treatment though”
Ofc Volt and Lync are on the same level, but I think they all know when to give each other space so they’re more of a “we hold each other at a distance, but we’re aware of out closeness which is enough for us”
Then its Spectra and then Gus in the “closest to Mylene” scale; she just straight up hates Gus and it’s mutual
whoever made the “Mylene and Spectra were exes” hc I think it’s really funny so I’m adding it here
terrible fashion, she’s the one who chose the outfits when she and Shadow went to earth; her fashionable armor look she usually has was designed with Volt’s help, she just voiced what she generally wanted
Her red lipstick look was bcs she thought it’d make her look more serious/ intimidating (Volt and Lync approved, it rlly does work on her)
Shadow matches w/ her (via his red nails) after they get teamed up tgt several times bcs he thinks they’re basically the go-to duo matchup whenever they’re assigned work n it’d be cool
Very forthcoming about the fact she used to be considered a criminal and was from same rundown area Volt and Lync come from
She’s grateful she got out of jail but she still has no respect for Hydron and despite how much she tries to hide it she does make it pretty clear to him she doesn’t really like him
I wish I had more to say about her... but It’s all relationship esque, i think in general she’s enjoyable and good so what I want more out of her is character dynamics
Lync Volan
[eng dub] he has grandparents; whether they’re still alive or not is...?
was part of the same area Volt is from
probably aware of each other but didn’t really know each other
you sound like you have mommy issues
came from the same area as Volt, but lived further out and closer to those areas where there were some bits of nature left
ill expand on why he got picked up by Hydron another day lazy rn
Volt Luster
[canon] he’s from an area that just straight up looks like yugioh 5ds’ Satellite, and Hydron was the one who pulled him out of there
He says Hydron pulled him out of there when he was a kid? I’d assume at youngest it’d be like Hydron (8) and Volt (11)
has a neat collection of handmade jester dolls
lot more artistic than he seems
Had his guardian bakugan with him the longest; had Brontes even before he met Hydron
Would the others consider him weird fr having a talking Bakugan that acted friendly with him n cracked jokes?
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Also available on Ao3: [link]
Proofreaded a bit by @wikimb
Partner Artist: @wikimb
Word count: 13143
Trigger Warning: Graphic depictions of heavy violence/gore, depression cases, PTSD breakdowns(abandoment/bullying/death), severe illness, physical torture(due illness) and emotinal breakdown.
Note: I’m not a native english speaker, fell free to point out via DM any mistakes.
Void Realm(aka Human World) - Same Day 11:30 PM
Victor decided to tell his three visitors everything he knew about the Sparda's twins; Sparda's story, the day Eva was killed, the mess of Temen-ni-gru, and at the end what happened in Mallet Island.
During dinner, Nero, among Kyrie and Nico, told Victor all what they knew and remembered about the Fortuna Incident and the Qliphoth Event.
"And now they're probably stuck in Hell", Nero finished.
"I see…" Victor said, quite thoughtful. "The problem is… the Qliphoth fruit helped Vergil to recover his heavily wounded magic and not make him overpowered like he thought it would happen. But I can't be sure if it also helped with his synchronization. Either way, you two doing Sync will be of great benefit for both."
Nero didn't say a thing. Just the slight idea of having to interact with Vergil, his so called blood father, again was making his nerves itch.
"But…" Victor kept saying. "How could you live this long? Without one of your parents to sync with, you should have died at a very young age, like… two years old."
Nero continued quiet, trying to understand why Victor was insisting so much about that.
Initially, he thought about the day he met Shooting Star Man; he was two years old, the "death age" Victor mentioned. But he’d rather not talk about that with a new person just like that, not even Nico knew about it yet.
"Don't you remember Sync with some woman?" Victor tried to help Nero recall some memory.
"I don't even know how's the sensation of being in Sync, dude." Nero contested, a bit annoyed.
Before continuing to speak, Victor had to adjust his glasses. "Well… as what my mother could briefly study about the twins, Sync in hybrids have some sort of 'bonuses'. Both parts can somehow connect mentally; they can feel what the other is feeling and as well share memories and theoretical knowledge. As for the magic, the twins described it as something very relaxing and peaceful - they didn't know it was a demon magic thing back then, but you got it."
"The peace thing makes sense since the magic energy is calming down," Nico added to Victor's explanation.
After the brief explanation, Nero couldn't hold but make a surprised face.
"Oh. Have you just remembered something?" Victor asked when he noticed Nero's reaction.
Nero was able to recall something, but just the fact of having to tell them that was making him sweat cold. He had a feeling it wasn't a good idea.
Hell - “Same moment”
Vergil and Dante were able to find a shelter to protect themselves from the fire rain: in the middle of the decaying remains of the Qliphoth tree they both sat inside a small cavern inside a massive root.
Dante was quite relaxed, he was laying his back in a small root, calmly waiting for the end of the rain.
Vergil sat a bit in front of his brother, he seemed to be tense for no apparent reason; he was tapping his feet nervously and rubbing his hands as if they were itching or something.
Once Dante couldn't stand his brother's silence anymore he got out of his place walking on his knees, when he got closer he said, "Bro, relax a little. You're too tense" and he gave a small tap on Vergil's right shoulder, unexpectedly making him do a little hop like a cat.
"Geez! Chill it." Dante said, quite surprised. "I'm not gonna attack you." and he moved a few steps backwards when his brother stared at him with eyes wide open scared.
Vergil couldn't think of something to reply to his brother, he was too surprised by how calm he was at that hostile place, such behavior didn't make sense to him; they could be attacked at any moment by some wild demon, but even so Dante was very chill.
Vergil then returned his gaze to outside, leaving his brother in an awkward silence.
The atmosphere was starting to make Dante feel uncomfortable; he recently had made up with his brother, thus regaining their brotherly rivalry, but that was the first time since their childhood they weren't fighting or discussing, instead, they were just in silence sitting close to each other.
Vergil could feel Dante's restless energy coming from behind him, but he had no idea what to say either.
Deep down their hearts, both had a lot of questions to ask each other, but none of them had a single clue in how to start a conversation that wasn't about who's with the highest score.
After long minutes of watching a literal fire rain, Dante was the one who finally took courage to break the ice: "Soooooo… Brother… Who was that 'Baby' you whispered about earlier? I swore you were talking about Nero's mom… Also! How was sh-?"
Vergil quickly interrupted him, rolling his eyes in annoyance, "I told you already, you will learn more about her when I tell Nero about it, he deserves to know that first."
Dante got annoyed by his brother's supposed etiquette, but regardless, he continued in his attempt to create a conversation: "Okay… but, what about the 'Baby'... person…? I guess? You got me curious, man! Especially about the part: 'this wouldn't be happening' thing," he said as he was getting a bit closer to Vergil again.
Vergil's normally stoic expression drastically changed to an uncomfortable one, he looked at the sky, took a deep breath, and let out a very sad sigh,"'Baby' was… a child… That wasn't his name, just how I used to call him. I never knew his name or how he truly looked like…"
Dante highly doubted Vergil's words. "What?! How? That doesn't make any sense yet. You gotta work on those explanations, bro"
"You remember what happened on Mallet Island? After you… -sigh- beat me?" Vergil replied with a bit of annoyance in the end.
"Uhh… yeah, you disappeared in a light…" Dante said a bit confused.
Vergil took a few seconds of silence, mentally gathering all the information he felt necessary to tell his brother before starting his explanation: "I honestly don't know how I did that… probably had something to do with Mundus' magic… I got teleported to somewhere else."
Surprisingly, Dante got quiet and Vergil had his full attention. Vergil didn't look behind him, but he could tell that Dante was staring at him like a curious child waiting for a new bedtime story.
Vergil cleaned his throat before continuing - "Thanks to you, I started to be able to have myself under my control again. I then began to try to fight Mundus' corruption over me, although the more I tried, the more it tormented me. Until I had an idea that would cost much more than I expected…"
Dante's eyes wide opened with curiosity but also of worry about the incoming words.
"Under all that pain...I truly panicked… and tried to Devil Trigger in an attempt to fight the corruption… " Vergil said low, recalling the pain of the said moment.
Dante gasped silently, even not knowing what happened, he was sure that terrible things had happened.
Vergil's voice started to get low and crumbling as those memories were like a living nightmare. "I could feel all my muscles and bones being crushed and twisted by the fight of the magic energies inside me. I couldn't scream, I could barely breathe and move either… I have no idea how much time has passed too."
Dante noticed that his brother started to feel apprehensive about that subject; Vergil was slightly sweating cold and pressing his hands against each other strongly.
But before Dante thought of something to say, Vergi continued to tell the story: "I can remember some very random and quick things that happened… I fought other demons… even humans and perhaps Devil Hunters too? I don't know, but I swore I was destined to feel that pain for eternity, until…"
Void Realm - “at the same moment”
“So, Nero” Victor called his attention. “Have you just remembered something?”
But Nero didn't respond, he was being reluctant to speak, they couldn't tell if it was because of his health state or something else. Kyrie tried to call him back to the conversation, “It’s about Monster, dear?” she said in a soft voice.
He raised his head a bit to look at her, with a visible sad face he replied low and insecure: “Yeah... “
He stayed quiet once again, staring at the void for a few seconds and avoiding eye-contact; Nico was getting anxious to know what was passing through Nero's mind, but Victor kept patiently waiting.
Finally, he looked at Victor and said, "I think… there was someone I connected with this way… but… he was a human that turned into a demon."
Victor raised his eyebrows in surprise, that didn't make much sense but he decided to not question, Nero was already emotionally unstable, it was better not provoke.
"Let's see then. If you don't mind telling the story," he asked politely.
Nero took a deep breath before starting, that subject wasn't that comfortable for him to talk about freely: "I was around six to seven years old, the de-sync started to happen with a higher frequency day by day… The other kids from the orphanage, especially the older ones, never liked me, and one day they were chasing me down in the woods on the outskirts of the city. Even not wanting to fight they still kept hunting me, they weren't satisfied until I passed out." Nero explained.
"Why?" Nico asked confused.
A bit uncomfortable with the subject, he tried to avoid, "I'd rather not talk about…"
He then continued, without making eye contact with Victor, he just continued to look at his own hands and sometimes to the void or away. "I couldn't run anymore, that's when they got me. The oldest was ready to punch me, but suddenly, a horrendous deformed… giant demon appeared from behind the trees. He was like what? four meters(13ft) high? He didn't need much to scare the shit out of them and send them back to the city, just a roar was enough."
Kyrie was the only one that already knew the story and how Nero would feel about it. She honestly wanted to speak in his place, but she felt better letting him put his feelings out by himself.
"I was the only one that didn't run. I was too tired already… and I didn’t want to return to the orphanage either." Nero said in a depressing tone.
(Hell)
"Have you attacked?" Dante asked curiously, yet worried.
"No" Vergil responded. "The others fled away very quickly and the one that left didn't do anything either. I wasn't going to waste my energy and feel more pain for no danger at all."
(Void)
"But the motherfucker didn't do shit", Nero added. "He left me hanging and just turned away!"
"When I saw him turning away, I yelled: "What are you doing?" But he completely ignored me"
"I yelled again, 'What's wrong with you?'."
(Hell)
"The kid came after me, but I didn't want to waste my energy. When I felt him touching my arm and yelling something - that I can't remember - I instinctively just waved my arm and threw him away."
(Void)
"I flew into a tree and all the stuff I was carrying in my small backpack got scattered around," Nero continued, his voice slowing down.
"You will need more than that to get rid of me!' I shouted to provoke him… but…"
He made a pause.
"But when I looked at him…"
"He was staring at one of the books I borrowed from the public library. He simply stayed there, kinda hypnotized by the thing, you know?"
"With the only hand he had entirely -the right one- he tried to pick up the book. His hand was huge and he knew that… but I think… he had terrible eyesight. The first few times he tried to hold the book, he let it fall because he didn't want to… 'hurt' it."
"He tried, over and over again. That scene was pitiful, to be honest. At a certain point, he started to wimp… kinda like a dog's painful crying: 'wimp wimp wimp'."
"and he tried... again and again, and again... the more he tried the louder the wimps we're getting."
"He was clearly in a panic… until then… he let out a very long and painful scream. It was when I noticed… he wasn't supposed to be like that...."
Victor interrupts, "why? What made you think that?"
Nero responded with sadness in his voice as he looked at Victor, "He was crying… Only through the right eye, but he was truly crying."
"'Do Devils cry?' I asked myself."
"During the screeching, he suddenly lost support on his left arm - the most severe and disproportionate one - and fell to the ground. The arm started to bleed around.. where I think it was the pulse… I couldn't tell, but the broken bone pierced through his skin. I noticed that the rest of his body he had various open wounds, that shit surely was hurting him badly. He then started to wimp uncontrollably while he was spitting blood out of the month, he was insanely trying to get up again but he barely could move his body."
"I don't know what the hell happened with me at that moment, but seeing and hearing all that suffering from him was starting to hurt me. I could feel my heart being pressed. My body moved by itself, I took off my jacket and went to try to... somehow help with the wound on his left pulse."
(Hell)
"I don't clearly remember how I got into that situation," Vergil continued. "I only remember very blurry images and immeasurable pain all over my body, especially at my left arm."
"In the middle of all that pain, I somehow could notice the kid getting closer to me. I tried to move away from him but that only was making the pain worse… I was unable to move."
"I couldn't see him clearly, but I heard: 'you weren't supposed to be like that, right?' from him."
"I remember… my heart and breath stopped when I heard he saying: 'Let me help you, stay quiet.'"
Vergil started to get visibly shaken from that point in front.
"Why? He could just have run away… but instead… he came to help me?! Why?! WHY?!"
"I guess... he did some bandages on my left hand… I couldn't move or see it anyway…"
Dante, a bit shocked by his brother's confusion, asked "Why are you so incredulous?"
Vergil turned at him quickly, his face of both anger and sadness. "WHY?! Because never in my entire life someone had lent a hand to me like that! Not even if I asked!"
Vergil recalled for a moment the difficult time he had after his mother's death; food shop owners didn't want to spare not even the smallest thing for him, some even shout him out, with the excuse he was acting. He couldn't find a good place to sleep and winter was a pain. He had to fight demons all alone. He had to manage to steal sustenance and clothes or get from the trash as the last resort.
"I didn't have the same luck as you, brother…" Vergil said harshly.
(Void)
All those memories were starting to make Nero more emotional, recall the monster's pain was very hurtful even to himself.
"I never discovered what turned him into that… but he was destroyed…" he added.
Victor then questioned, "And you just decided to help him? Just like that?"
"Yes… something told me he needed help… a feeling of he didn't deserve that…" Nero said quite sad.
But even being visibly shaken, he continued the story either way, "through the next days I decided to start stealing everything I thought could be the use of help with his open wounds."
Nico interrupted, "steal, man? why?"
"Who would believe in a six years old saying it needs help with a dying demon?!" Nero replied annoyed. "I had to do that myself. Blankets, towels, curtains, all those kinds of stuff I could get around the city, not just in the orphanage…"
-a pause-
"Also food… and the medicine I knew helped with such changes wounds, the one I remember the caretakers using on me."
Nero's tone slowly began to sound grievous, "He didn't leave the place I first saw him… he just waited for me there every day…"
“He couldn’t move, every time he tried he had to do so much strength. He was also… so cold... I tried to cover him the most I could… but even so… he couldn’t stop shivering. I could see that even those smallest moves hurt a lot… even breathing...”
“His wounds weren’t fresh. It was very difficult for me to make some bandages and mostly use the medicine… because whenever I tried he would start panicking and wimping all over again.”
“I used to say things like: ‘Stop, please! I can’t help you like this!’ or ‘collaborate, please!’ to try to keep him calm, but his pain also made me nervous as well.”
“The food was most difficult, the merchants got sharp eyes. The ones that knew me even got so mad that they started to throw stones at me."
Nico quickly stopped Nero's talk, "What the hell?! Fucking stones?!"
He stared at her, his eyes were blank, and then he said, with a low and grievous voice, everyone could sense the pain in the words, "When you are the... 'bastard, son of a whore, demon magnetic child' people just don't care about you…"
Nico didn't expect that, her face was of utter shock, which made her dead silent.
“I didn’t care about my wounds, tho… I just wanted to bring him food and water too. He needed help to eat and drink nonetheless. He used to eat and drink desperately, getting himself dirtier than he already was… he was definitely on his limit…”
Nero let out a desolate sigh while his eyes were getting teary.
(Hell)
Vergil's voice started to sound more painful the more he talked about the child: "The kid kept bringing new things everyday… cover sheets, bandages, food… even water and… medicine...I think? I barely could move anymore either way… I could only stay in the same place and watch…"
Dante started to feel his brother slowly getting more emotional with the subject; Vergil’s voice got low and he was also starting to discreetly sniff, his body was tense and his expression was of sadness: "He… he wasn't bringing all that stuff for himself… he brought blankets for covering me, to help me not suffer that much from the cold nights in the woods…“
“His voice… I’m sure I was hearing every pitch wrongly… but he sounded so… soft anyway: ‘here’s some food’, ‘come on, try to drink this’, ‘I hope you don’t feel so cold now’... and some many others.”
“My vision was a total mess, the colors were switched, the forms were distorted, I never got to know how he truly was or how he sounded… or even if the scent I remember was his true smell…” Vergil vented, as he remembered every single sensation of the kid taking care of him; the way the child had to hold his huge head up for him to drink water, how he had to pick every single food into tiny pieces because Vergil couldn’t chew. The child trying to cover his gigantic deformed body with small cover sheets or even towels.
Breaking Vergil's recall to the past, Dante asked him, “So… you never actually got to ‘know him for real’?”
“I think…” - a pause - “yeah… you’re right…” Vergil told him but looking away to the dark sky and the raining fire in Hell.
"I don't know how he did that… but there were times he used to hug me, or even just touch, and the pain almost got away completely… it was when I was able to breathe without pain for a few minutes..."
He closed his eyes, deep recalling those moments of calm and inner peace. Those were some of the memories he holded dearest, the sensation of being hugged by the child, or at least he thought it was. The kid stroking his head and singing lullabies to calm him down. Such gentle touch from his tiny hands on his wounded head and skin was something he could never forget, even if that used to hurt as well.
Before opening his eyes, Vergil let out a deep sigh, that made Dante get an idea of how much that unknown kid meant to his brother and he was starting to connect the dots with what Vergil said earlier.
"Why?" Vergil said in an indignant tone. "Why did he do all that to me?!"
He turned to Dante, he was very confused and incredulous, "What I did to that kid?! Why did he help me not wanting anything in return?! He never requested something back!"
Dante's eyes wide-opened surprised about his brother's confusion and he asked himself: 'He didn't understand what happened?'
Vergil's voice became louder as he was letting out old thoughts of painful memories, "Why, brother?! WHY!? There were even some days he appeared with wounds; he said it was the people that didn't like him, they hurt him to push him away because they didn't want to give the stuff to him. I could smell the blood, his wounds...he…-inhales- Why was he sacrificing himself?! He was doing all that to me… TO MEEEE! A PITIFUL WEAK USELESS THING I WAS!"
Dante even leaned back scared after Vergil's last scream, that behavior was quite unexpected coming from such a person that is always composed.
"I was weak! I was dying! No one cares for a weakened demon, they just let them die! He could have called hunters to finish me… BUT NO! He did the total opposite!" Vergil kept yelling extremely confused.
"I remember the stories he told me… and sometimes, during moments of physical contact, I saw some of his...memories? -I guess they were - he was an orphan! No one wanted him, everyone else hated him for no reason and the older kids used to hurt him for fun! HE WAS JUST A LITTLE KID! Why didn't he request me to pay back those people in return for the favors he was doing to me?! That's not how it was supposed to work?!” Vergil yelled while huffing out of breath.
Dante gently touched Vergil's shoulder and just gave a calm look at him, like telling him to take easy on his nerves; Understanding his brother's signals, Vergil took an incredibly deep breath in an attempt to calm down, but his disturbed face and stiff body remained.
"That's called empathy, bro…" Dante said softly.
Vergil took a moment to process what Dante said, but he kept looking at him confused. "What?!" he yelled.
Dante hardly believed that his brother never experienced an act of empathy before and stared at him confused as well.
"Empathy. You know… that thing of being able to understand what the other is feeling? To put yourself in the place of the other?" Dante tried to explain, but that only made Vergil more confused. His silence and as well doubtful face made the situation more awkward for Dante - making him visibly worried.
"Well… it's a human heart thing… Empathy generates compassion and that's what moved the kid to help you. He understood your suffering and decided to help you out. He didn't see you like what you described, he saw you as a living being." Dante tried again.
Vergil was slowly starting to understand; it didn't need much for him to recall Nero helping him when he was V and also the people himself helped when he was V during the Qliphoth roots' rampage.
"That's what moves humans to help others? That's how it's called?" Vergil asked confused.
"Yes!" Dante replied happily and a bit relieved. "Such strong empathy like that kid is incredibly rare to be witnessed, especially nowadays. People like that must be protected at all costs, not just because of their kind heart, but also because they can kill themselves because of it. Humans like that are worth fighting for."
Dante's words made Vergil a bit uneasy as if he did something wrong with the kid during a part of the story he hasn't told yet.
And Dante kept talking: "That's what is amazing about humans. But... demons think that's a weakness… well, that's, in fact, a weakness, it's incredibly dangerous but it's also their strongest point! For demons, self-preservation is more important than anything, meanwhile, some humans don't give a shit about that if it's necessary to protect what is important. They rather die sacrificing themselves, and for demons that's a shame, especially coming from a species that's magically and physically inferior…"
*Unfortunately…" Dante's enthusiasm vanished away very quickly. "The own mankind created such a society through the past decades where that kind of stuff is being suppressed...by themselves! And apathy is going apeshit everywhere… This is another reason why that kind of person should be safeguarded… otherwise, mankind will only keep hurting itself."
"I think… 'Apathy' should be considered a Deadly Sin… since the current seven are all based on it…" he said scratching his head.
They stayed in silence for a few seconds, hence Vergil had no idea about what Dante said at the end. They both returned to gaze at the fire raining (supposedly)night sky for a few minutes until Vergil broke the silence: "These kind people you said… It's pretty much like Baby and… Nero…"
"Yeah, you're right…" Dante said calmly without looking at Vergil.
"This thing of sacrifice itself…" Vergil then continued the story, but talking at a more slow pace, "There was one day… Baby didn't come… I was like 'I was abandoned again?'
"Aah…About that..." Dante interrupted a bit unnerved.
But Vergil responded quickly "I know! But back then I didn't! -ahem- I was finally able to get up a bit and worried something may have happened, I decided to pursue his scent…"
(Void)
Nero continued his side of the story, even with the feeling of his throat closing because of the incoming subject: "It was very difficult to take care of him… He didn't have the strength to lift his head or to chew some food… gosh… he smelled so bad, such a strong scent of dry blood and… other disgusting stuff -if you know what I mean- but eventually, I learned how to ignore that awful scent. He used to shiver so much… his extremity members were cold like ice…"
-a pause for a deep breath-
He then continued: "every little movement he tried to do he whimpered in pain… he barely could leave the place we first met. I was getting used to calming him down with some gentle physical contact like strokes on his head… but even so…"
-sigh-
"There were some moments I hugged or when I just touched him and I could feel what he was feeling… it was an immeasurable pain… Other moments… -It's very confusing, to be honest- But I think I was able to see his memories? I guess...?"
"How did they look?" Victor asked, interrupting Nero.
"Aah… well… a huge old man, long-ass beard and with feathery wings… hmmm.. aaaaand... aaaa... red third eye…? He was all white as if he was a statue and had a huge hole in his chest. He always appeared to be torturing him…" Nero said a bit uneasy, he remembered that as if it was his memories.
Victor closed his eyes and let out a concerned sigh, he knew Nero was talking about Mundus, but that wasn't the moment to tell him.
Nero looked at him worried, not understanding what was going on, although he suspected it wasn't something good.
"Just… keep going," Victor said apprehensively.
"The ones that most scared me was when the old man was taking off his members, like, literally. He used them to create monsters…" Nero shivered just with the slightly recalling his eyes even got teary from thinking about that.
He quickly passed his hand on his eyes to clean up the tears, before someone could notice them, "that always made me jump off the place, those images and some others were always storming his thoughts… I guess it was his thoughts… He cried every time I saw them…"
"Considering his reactions about those images and the state he was… I think he didn't deserve to be like that… he wasn't like that because he wanted… I think that old man did that to him… -sigh- ...he was so needy… he hanged his head in my lap every time I used to sit closer..."
Nero's eyes got more watery than before, he tried once again to hold his emotions and clean his eyes.
Before continuing, he took a deep breath to focus back and keep posture. "Well… there was one day I was trying to stealthily leave the orphanage… but the older kids got me. They were so pissed at me because they discovered it was me that had stolen some of their things… Pfft! They used to destroy and also steal my stuff… so fuck them. But I couldn't escape that time… and I was missing the hour to go meet with Monster…"
(Hell)
"I followed his trail with a bit of difficulty, mostly because of the pain all over my body, but I could find him," Vergil continued.
"Somehow I could hear more people around… so, I stayed behind some trees… or was it a wall? well..." but he hesitated to continue.
"What was happening?" Dante asked curiously.
"Some other kids… I guess… they were not so taller than him and were apparently fighting him. They had the advantage in numbers, he couldn't handle them all." Vergil said low.
"How did you know who he was?" Dante questioned.
"I learned how to recognize him… somehow… his shape and colors we're different from the others and as well his scent…" Vergil answered.
"I remember the other ones saying 'you freak! you're not just the son of a whore but also a thief?', 'what are you doing with our stuff?' I could feel his tiredness of the fight, he then replied: 'I needed them for a…" Vergil suddenly paused as if something got stuck on his throat.
"I needed them for a…?" Dante repeated, anxious for the end of the phrase.
Vergil kept quiet for almost a minute, holding back his next word. He was visibly tense, but Dante attempted to incentive him to continue with the story: "Brother? What happened then?"
No answers, although Vergil had closed his eyes and was biting his lips in tension, he was holding his emotions the maximum he could.
"Bro… listen…" Dante said softly while he put his hand on Vergil's shoulder. "Don't hold back your feelings like this… Put it out, let then go…"
But his brother continued immobile.
"I'm not gonna judge or mock you… I promise." Dante continued to try to convince Vergil. "Look, you can even stab me as much as your heart desires if I do something I shouldn't."
Vergil let out air since he was also holding his breath a little and something Dante never expected happened, not even when they were kids: Vergil's eyes started to become teary.
Yes, tears. Dante couldn't believe what he was witnessing.
"Friend," Vergil said low and with grief.
"He said… 'I needed them for a friend' -sniff- 'I have a friend that needs help, but you wouldn't help me anyway," Vergil said with agony in his voice.
"Friend… friend… friend...FRIEND!" He then looked at Dante with a quick turn and shouted in pain, "HE CALLED ME HIS FRIEND!" and a few tears rolled out in his face.
"WHAT DID I DO?! BROTHER, PLEASE! TELL ME!" Vergil screamed in panic and confusion. "WHAT HAVE I DONE?! WHY HE WAS DOING ALL THAT TO ME?! I CAN'T UNDERSTAND!"
"Why do you think you didn't deserve that?" Dante nearly broke Vergil's sanity with that question.
Vergil suddenly got an empty look, as he never thought about that, he could only stutter trying to come up with an answer.
"T-T-That's not how it works… That never happened before… Y-Yo-you got to do something to receive such a thing… right?! RIGHT?!" Vergil was on the edge of freaking out.
Dante took a long breath, to not absorb his brother's messed up aura. He kept his voice calm and low for don't provoke him more: "No, bro… Kindness is not an award, it is a gift. The kid saw something in you and thought you deserved that… What was it? I don't know."
Vergil's face turned blank, he'd never thought like that before… the way he lived didn't let it anyway, he had no idea about why and how that happened with him.
"So… what did you do to help the child?" Dante asked rather calmly.
(Void)
"The kids were beating the shit out of me… but I didn't give up on trying to flee from them. I didn't want to fight, I just wanted to return to my… friend." Nero continued, his voice getting low while sadness was taking over him.
"I even tried to explain to them that I was doing that for someone that needed more than them, but that only made them madder…"
-a pause-
"I don't know where he came from, but Monster just suddenly jumped off in the middle of the orphanage's backyard. He roared so loud that he even let a huge blue fire column go out of his mouth. He came straight to the bullies and swinging only his right hand he tossed all of them away in a single move! POF! ...He then stayed over me as if he was trying to shield me or something."
"His wounds were bleeding all over again, he must have made a shit ton of strength to reach the orphanage."
"The other kids recognized him from that day… the oldest even shouted: 'I knew it you were a freak, but this is too much!' That only made Monster angrier, he wanted to go for the kill."
"He started to prepare another fire breath, but I couldn't let him do that. I jumped in front of him and shouted 'NO! Don't kill them! It will only make it worse for you!' hoping that he would understand me…"
"And that worked?" Nico asked nervously with the story.
"Yes," Nero responded. "He stopped at the same moment and looked at me very confused. I also could hear the adults screaming to call the Order's knights at the same moment."
"'You have to get out of here' I yelled. 'They will kill you!'"
"I don't think he understood what I meant at first because he suddenly grabbed me by my shirt's collar using his mouth and threw me on his back. He got away from the place very quickly into the woods, I don't know how he was able to stand the pain… he was going relatively fast… and when already far from the orphanage, he tripped on his own legs and arms."
"I was launched out of his back and surprisingly I didn't blacken out when I crashed over a tree. I got up in a rush and the moment I spotted him I saw he was all bleeding… all again, he was back to zero. He was whimpering in pain again, but even so, he was trying to get up."
"I ran to help him out, I didn't know how I would help him, but I went to try anyway."
(Hell)
"I don't remember exactly what happened… The next thing that's more clear in my memory is both of us in the woods. I was trying to get up, but my weakened body and the extreme pain weren't letting me." Vergil explained with a bit of confusion on his face.
"'You have to go! The Order's Knights will kill you!' he yelled at me"
"Hold up!" Dante interrupted. "’Order’? The Order of the Sword?!”
"Yes…" Vergil replied low and slow.
"You were in Fortuna?!” Dante yelled at him quite stunned.
"Yes… Don't ask me how…" Vergil said with a bit of embarrassment.
(Void)
"I was trying to make him get up… but like… he was countless times bigger than me," Nero said with a sarcastic smile.
"I was starting to hear the Knights' yelling and running around the woods looking for him. That only made me more nervous… The only thing I had in mind was: 'they will kill him'."
"Out of nowhere, blue light strips appeared around us and I could make one hell of strength to make him get up. And when I looked at my arms and hands… there were my spectral arms, helping him to stand and move away, they were rather proportional to his size."
"I thought out loud: 'What is this? Your magic?! Thanks! That's gonna help a lot!'"
"Wait!" Victor stopped the story. "Through years you thought your demon magic was a gift from him?"
Nero kept staring at Victor with a surprised, yet embarrassed face. "Oh, well… -scratches his head- I could only use my spectral arms while in contact with him…so..."
"Hmm… makes sense...I would also expect such thoughts from a six years old that grew up thinking it was a human… well, part human in this case." Victor said calmly.
"Sorry for interrupting, continue, please." He asked politely.
Already thinking about what was coming along the story, Nero was already getting nervous and more shaken once more.
The sadness in his voice we're getting apparently the more he spoke: "We ran… and ran… and ran… and like everything can get worse, it started to rain, at least it helped clean his wounds a little. It was so dark, but my 'magical arms' could illuminate the way. At some point, we were able to find a small cave. Monster's absurd size and disproportion nearly didn't let him get in, but he could lay down to rest."
"I could make my spectral arms disappear, but there were the blue strings there yet...They weren't making any illumination tho." Nero said it was a bit uncertain.
"That's because isn't something 'material', it's like...infrared and ultraviolet rays, and only demons and half-demons can see it," Victor explained. "although, it can be seen with special cameras," he added.
Immediately, Kyrie made a worrisome face and Nico looked at her scared as well. The lights that only she could see and apparently, Trish as well, was an actual demon thing and not demon-magic related. That would also explain why Nico couldn't see them. What could that mean? Haven't Kyrie only obtained demon magic but it also turned into one… or she was still turning? After Nero's case, she was the next one to talk with Victor but the feeling of uncertainty we're only making her anxious.
"Ah… that would explain how they didn't find us…" Nero continued, without noticing the girls' reaction. Unfortunately, Victor did and he was already preparing questions for them.
"When the rain stopped I went back to the first place I was taking care of him and got our stuff back. Monster had fainted from tiredness and only woke up the next day."
"I haven't returned to the orphanage either."
(Hell)
"I don't remember too much of how we got in that cave, but the kid didn't return to the city, it was the first time he passed the night with me," Vergil said.
"That night was also the first time I had dreams in a long time… but I don't think they were mine, they were memories from the kid…" Vergil then made a pause, he remembered the child's memories as if they were his.
Dante was getting nervous since he discovered that little kid was from Fortuna; he had a feeling that 'Baby' could actually be 'Nero' since he was aware about the Sync's traits and many of what his brother described matched with.
Vergil had let out a depressing sigh before continuing to speak: "I could see more clearly than before how his life was… It also reminded me of mine… loneliness, pain, and sorrow… But that child didn't have a special sword or demonic powers to take care of himself alone… he was dependent on people that didn't care about him."
(Void)
"When Monster woke up I was outside the cave, wondering what I would do about my little life… the people from the orphanage definitely wouldn't want me back and I was one hundred percent sure I wouldn't be adopted after what happened. I had nowhere to go." Nero said quite sad, his eyes were getting teary again.
(Hell)
"He was just sitting right in front of the cave entrance." Vergil continued. "The pain on my body had returned, I could barely move again."
"'What I will do?' he asked me. 'No one will ever adopt me now… not after they discovered I have a demon friend…' and he started to cry… it was a quiet cry."
"…and ...I still can't understand what happened to me... His painful crying made my heart hurt… psychologically hurt… not literally. I didn't want to see him like that… I knew how much that was painful…"
Dante made an embarrassed smile without his brother noticing; Vergil just had described a moment of empathy, a thing that a few minutes ago he had no idea even how it was called.
Dante then thought: "You have so much to learn about your humanity, bro…"
"He then turned to me and said, 'I don't want to come back…' his voice was more trembling than before." Vergil continued with sadness in his voice. "His face was a big distorted blur to me, but somehow I could identify his tears dripping down his face."
"I honestly didn't think rationally at that moment, I just wanted his welfare. That child… he's been doing so much for me without me saying a thing and for nothing in exchange… I couldn't leave him hanging in the wind like that."
Dante, even having an idea about what was coming, became so hyped to know what would happen next that he got very close to his brother, nearly starting to invade his personal space. Vergil didn't like all that proximity, but he hasn't complained… yet.
"I extended my right hand to him, inviting him to get closer to me, hoping that he would understand what I meant with that."
"He did?" Dante asked curiously.
"He hasn't understood the first few times I made the signal, he kept staring at me for a brief moment, until he said 'Do you want to adopt me?'" Vergil explained.
(Void)
Nero was already in tears without even finishing to tell that part of the story. He was sobbing and crying as if he was living that moment all again. He began to desperately try to stop crying and to clean his tears, Kyrie even got closer and handed a soft tissue to him.
"It's okay to cry, Nero. No need to be ashamed of your tears." Victor said in an attempt to tranquilize Nero.
"Yeah, man," Nico said worriedly. "No one will judge you, I promise."
Nero tried to take his breath back between many hiccups and sobbings in an attempt to regain his posture, but that was impossible, that moment was too shocking for him.
"H-He.. he.. -sob- He wanted me -sniff- he was the only o-one… tha-that… -sniff- aaa-accepted me… that didn't see me as a… -sob sob- freak… a-a-a problem…-sniff sob sob-"
(Hell)
"I just waved my head confirming what he asked and he suddenly broke. He began to cry out loud like a newborn baby."
"sniff"
That "sniff" totally surprised Dante; Vergil was unexpectedly once again shaken and teary with the story. That kid surely meant a lot to him after everything they passed together.
"He came at me running for a hug… and kept crying like that for so long that he nearly lost his voice. He hugged me tight around my neck -sniff- as if I just had saved him from. death..."
Vergil stopped to take a breath and, surprisingly, he tried to clean a few tears. "And then... -sniff-...after that we began to live together… but I have no idea for how long… I just remember that he grew up a lot."
(Void)
"We then lived together for… six years…" Nero said between sobbings.
"He was my best friend… almost like a father… still… -sniff-... we had to take care of each other. But through the years his condition was getting better -sob- his body was getting more proportional and looking 'human-ish', he didn't have more pain like before… almost none to be more exact -sob- the pieces of the some short of armor he had started to fall off his body too."
"What do you mean?" Nico asked. "He was like… 'healing' or something?"
"I think?" Nero replied a bit confused as he scratched his head.
"Most of the time his actions weren't like a demon's, he mostly looked like a human in a demon body." Nero tried to explain.
"One day I asked him if he was a human once, he took a long time to answer, like five minutes almost, but he said 'yes'. Although… It took him hours to explain to me that he was half-human. He tried to explain other things but he couldn't because of his condition; he couldn't write or draw and much less speak. He gave up on the explanation and we never talked about it again."
"So, you never asked him how he was when human?" Victor asked with a bit of suspicion.
"No…I was waiting for him to speak and move better..." Nero answered quickly. "But I would be lying if I say I never tried to imagine…"
-a brief pause-
Nero giggled when he remembered about a silly thing.
"We.. we made up a 'special handshake' if he returned to be human when I wasn't looking…" he said with an embarrassed smile. "I never forgot how it was -sigh"
(Hell)
"It was very difficult to live around a demon-infested forest with a dependent child, a debilitated body and the Order of the Sword hunting us down," Vergil said sadly.
His face became sadder and more tears started to form as he continued to speak
"But he was someone I swore to myself I would protect", he said fiercely but still with a sad tone in the voice.
Vergil quickly cleaned his tears, expecting that his brother hadn't noticed them. But even sitting a bit behind him, Dante could tell by his movements what was happening.
"I tried to teach him what I knew of sword and fist fighting, fortunately whenever we touched each other and some kind of...lights...? I guess, appeared around us, I only had to think about the theory and he would learn right away, he just had to practice."
"While the time was passing I could feel Mundus' magic fading away veeeeeery slowly... as if I was being purified somehow. My body was getting back to normal, I wasn't feeling that much pain anymore, sometimes I even felt nothing wrong… but I was still a mess."
Dante dry swallowed a bit audible; that was more proof of Sync, a Parent and Child or Siblings of same parents exclusive stuff. A little brother of them the kid couldn't be, so the only possible conclusion was a child from Vergil.
Confused, Vergil turned back after hearing his brother's nervous noises. Dante couldn't hide his anxious face, that gave to Vergil a very suspicious feeling.
Dante then giggled nervously, "sorry, keep going…"
Vergil stared at him with skepticism, but he continued the story either way. "There were some moments I… I just wanted to hold him closer… comfort him with gentle strokes and give him kisses in the head."
He then wrapped his arms around his chest, like demonstrating a hug, while he made a face of joy and he said with a tender voice: "I wanted to tickle him to make him laugh… Play silly children activities like hide-and-seek…I wanted to read bed-time stories for him, cooking him food… and so many other things…sigh..."
His face was of pure happiness, that kid was very precious to him; thinking about the good times they passed together was one of the few ways for Vergil to be able to smile, a discreet but honest and pure smile of happiness.
Dante finally came to a concrete realization and interrupted Vergil: "You mean… The things mom used to do for us?" he asked, expecting a certain reaction.
Vergil stopped to think for a brief moment; his brother was right. Everything he wished to be able to do was everything he remembered what their mother did for them.
He turned to look at Dante, his face was of surprise, he never related the things like that before. It was when Dante knew that his brother had some parenting instincts and love hidden somewhere inside him. He just needed a chance to put them into practice.
But the problem was: what if Baby is Nero? Vergil had hurt the most precious person in his life for his "more-power-quest"? And how both parts would react when they discover they already knew each other?
Should he tell Vergil his thoughts? Tell him the deep details about Sync, since he seemed to not know them? Dante saw himself in a very complicated and delicate crossroads.
"I think...I understood why you called him 'baby'" Dante said calmly, trying to keep his anxiety away.
"Ahn?" Vergil blurted. "That was a misunderstanding, to be honest: a few days after I invited him to stay with me, he asked if I would give him a name. My debilitated mouth and tongue didn't let me speak a single comprehensive word. I tried to say 'maybe', but he understood 'baby', and no matter what I tried there was no way I could either speak or he understood me. So, we stuck with 'Baby'".
Dante surely wasn't expecting that; the disappointment had hit him like a truck, he was expecting something cute, something special… but no, it was just a misunderstanding.
"But… Why… "wanted"? You weren't able to do a single thing of that?" Dante asked, even already knowing the answer.
Vergil's joy quickly vanished, as if Dante just had stabbed him on his back. "How could I? In that state?! Even after all that time, we passed together, in the end, I could not even speak or see him clearly. The maximum I could do was hold him closer and nothing else."
They passed a few seconds in silence until Dante came with the worst question he could have done about that subject: "Well… what happened with the kid then?”
Vergil's soul left his body at that moment. Only to think about it made him visibly depressed. He started to stare at the void, his eyes had no shine anymore as if he just died that moment.
(Void)
"He used to teach me how to sword fight and also how to fight bare hands. I learned all the basics with him… although… I don't know how, but when that lights appeared, I used to instantly know about whatever he wanted to teach me." Nero explained, with a bit of confusion on his tone.
“Sometimes I had those… ‘de-sync breakdowns’… but being with him helped me endure the pain… I don’t know how that happened…but somehow it hurt him a bit as well. With time that stopped to happen and only came back a few weeks ago nowadays."
Now even Nico and Kyrie were with the feeling that Monster was in fact, Vergil. Everything Nero was describing matched with the description of Sync Victor gave to then early.
Nero giggled remembering every good moment he passed with his best friend. "When he was feeling good, we used to go to the city late at night and steal stuff. Clothes for me, food, cover sheets, and so on. Hehe. When he was in a good mood, rare times, we used to steal food from delivery guys, especially the ones from pizzerias. Or even watch TV from the windows of some houses… I could watch something, I don't know about him. I remember he loved to hear me reading books to him too… He always wanted to try to read them too, but he definitely couldn't because of his wounded eyes… - sigh."
"Why did you call him Monster?" Nico questioned, quite curious about.
"I don't know exactly, I just started to call him like that… Nowadays I think it's quite an ironic name… he only looked like a monster… but he was more human with me than every actual human I ever met…"
"He was so affectionate…" he said with a smile. "Not at the very beginning, he turned with time. He liked to hold me closer, especially during bedtime. He tried to do some gentle moves like… stroke or pat my head, but his size and lack of better control of his moments didn't let him do that so well…"
"... he even made up a clicking noise to pretend it was a kiss… sigh…"
"But… what happened to him?" Victor asked, taking off Nero's happiness from his face. That was the worst question someone could make about the monster.
Then, both Nero(at Void) and Vergil(at Hell) started to recall and talk about that fateful day:
Fortuna - back to 13 years ago - 04:00 AM
Baby and Monster were sneaking their way through the city, going in the direction of the port area.
Monster was wearing a dirty cloak, he was almost the size of a tall human by that time, although his large horns made a weird shape on the cloak’s hood. Since his body was almost proportional now, he was able to walk on his legs, only needing an improvised cane Baby made using hardwood to support himself standing.
Baby was at the end of his childhood, around twelve years old. He was wearing some humble clothing that he stole from a shop and on his backpack, also stolen, he was carrying the few material things they had. On his waist, it had a badly forged iron sword, a failed attempt to recreate a katana that he made among Monster.
When the Port got on sight, Baby whispered, "Finally! We need to get into one of those big commercial ships and we will finally get out of this hell.
They both went slow and silent through the darker areas of the place, contouring every lamp post and the one or two workers they spotted. Until they reached a medium-sized cargo ship; an uncommon kind of commerce ship that docks on Fortuna's Port bringing special products from the continent.
"Now we just need to get in thought the anchor" Baby whispered excitedly.
But before he gave the next step, Monster gently touched his shoulder calling his attention to him. Baby turned at him visibly confused but when he saw the gesture Monster was doing he understood what it was: he was calling him for a hug.
Baby could tell that his friend was trying to smile, Monster had to kneel to look at him eye to eye and his arms were stretched toward him, calling him closer.
Nero didn't get why that right now, but he didn't question, he went straight to the hug. They hugged tightly and tenderly and the time seemed to have stopped, they were enjoying every second of that comforting hug. Monster felt his heart warming, that feeling of seeing Baby happy was indescribable. While Baby was immeasurable happy about how much his friend got better.
They didn't want that moment to end, it was the first time they were able to do a decent hug, even if Monster's arms weren't totally recovered. Monster was even purring like a big cat for much of Baby's fun.
"Thank you...I love you Monster, you're my hero." Baby said from the bottom of his heart.
Those words were going to get stuck on Monster's mind forever, but it was him that wanted to say that most.
'No… you that saved me, my baby… I love you too' Monster thought. But he was so desperate to say such words that he tried to talk, unfortunately his vocal cords and tongue haven't healed enough and he could only mumble mostly random demonic noises and a syllable or two.
"it's okay…" Baby said when he noticed his friend's despair. "I can't wait for your mouth and neck to get better so we can have actual talks" he giggled.
"Let's go" he called him, gesturing for them to keep walking.
Once they were side by side with the anchor's huge chains, Baby said quite confidently: "Are you rea-?" he suddenly was interrupted by a loud painful screaming from Monster.
When he turned, he couldn't believe his eyes, Monster got stabbed on his back by a silver sword that pierced through his chest. It wasn't the same sword type the Order's Knights used.
The sword slightly opened its blade in the middle like a jaw and quickly drained Monster's energy, making him scream in pain again.
"MONSTER!" Baby shouted with all his strength.
He sprinted to help his friend, but twenty or more Order's Knights jumped out from inside the crates that were closer to the ship.
"The Order?! How?!" Baby yelled in panic. All those years living hidden from them, how they finally found the double?
The silver sword got out of Monster's body quickly; the fatigue caused by the energy drain made his -already unstable- body fall to the ground. Behind him, it had a woman in the Order's Knight uniform, the hood and low light were hiding her face and she was holding another sword, of the same look, on her other hand.
"Finally found you, you brainless beast," she muttered. "What's your problem in dying?"
Baby ran towards his friend's body on the cold metal floor of the dock, he was bleeding tremendously. He didn't have time to think about what that sword did to him. The moment he got closer Monster was still conscious, but he was weak once again.
Baby was on the edge of freak out: "No. No. No. No. No! You just got so much better! Why?!"
He tried to help him get up, but two Knights rapidly dragged him away from Monster. They quickly turned his hands to his back and wrapped his pulses together with a silver rope that had some strange runes written on it - immediately he felt his strength being drained and he kneeled tired as if he had just trained for the entire day.
"NO! Monster!" He shouted, feeling even his breath getting heavier.
Monster was feeling weak because of the energy drain, he felt the same tiredness he had years ago. But this time there wasn't pain aside from the stabbing on his chest, he could do that, he MUST and he WILL protect his child.
He started to concentrate strength on his arms to get up, his almost fully regenerated wings opened wide to intimidate the Knights, revealing his demonic body under the cloak, they also now had a blue glow inside that helped to illuminate just a little the place.
The woman with the pair of odd swords rolled her eyes before going straight to stab Monster's left hand against the floor. He didn’t scream but his face was of real pain.
She stabbed his hand so strong that the sword got stuck on the metal floor, with the strength he had left he couldn’t take his hand out of the place so quick and easy, dragging him into the beginning of insanity.
He roared scared, kinda telling Baby to run away.
Baby tried to untangle from the Knights' tight grips: He jumps and shakes his body, fighting to get free… But the ropes had cut off all of his strength and the Knights were being able to hold him like a normal kid. All that effort only made him more breathlessly.
Under all that stress he could only think: "What's going on with me?! If I don't do something they will kill him! He's not one hundred percent yet!”
Monster realized that Baby wouldn't get out on his own, he tried to get his hand out of the sword trapping, with no results. The only way would let the sword cut its way through his hand for he can get out, leaving his left hand useless for the moment.
"Spare me of this shit…" the woman said, annoyed by the attempts of the double to get out of that situation through the last minute.
"Listen, you piece of shit!" She called Monster's attention. "If you come with us in peace, we won't do anything with the kid."
She gets very close to him and whispers, for only him to hear it: "I know you can understand me… Nelo Angelo."
Her last two words made his blood boil.
Hear that name again triggered nightmares and traumas that he already had suppressed years ago thanks to his life with Baby.
Monster roared loudly and in despair, just for the fact that the woman had that information, she was surely dangerous and probably somehow knew Mundus.
He goes fully charged with his right arm at her, his claws ready to slaughter, but she could easily dodge by kneeling.
Monster barely could move his chest to turn around because of his stuck hand.
He threw his body forward, his mouth was wide open to get her.
Unfortunately, the woman was countless times faster than him.
He got close enough to take a piece out of her, but he had bitten the air. She did a high jump over his head and landed on his back, going down with everything she got and smacking his chest against the metal floor.
For some reason, she hated Monster and that could easily be seen in her vicious eyes.
With the other sword she had in her hands, she began a quick yet cruel multiple stabbing on his back.
The sword had not just pierced him, but it also drained his energy and magic at every stab.
Baby screamed in pain so loud that he almost lost his voice. Monster could do nothing either except shout in pain.
"STOP! STOOOOOOOP!" Baby screamed in panic and started to cry uncontrollably, that was the only thing he could do in that situation.
The woman jumped off from Monster's back, her sword dripping his blood as well her leggings and cape dirty with it as well. She took off the sword from his left hand and stabbed in his right hand, but he couldn't move anymore, he returned to zero all over again.
"WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?! YOU ARE THE MONSTER HERE, YOU SCUM!" Baby shouted with his most honest anger and panic towards the unknown woman.
Baby couldn't see her face but could feel her stare at him. The pressure was immeasurable, but it hasn't shaken him anyway.
She made a hand signal to one of the Knights to let the kid go. At the moment they had taken off the rope from his pulses, he ran away towards his friend - his face was completely wet with his desperate tears.
"Monster! Monster please… no… you have to get out of here!" Baby cried in panic, trying to help him get up.
But he was so weak… again. He tried to give his arms some strength the maximum he could, but the energy-draining made that an impossible task.
The woman pulled Baby, holding on the neck collar of his jacket, with ease away from Monster.
Very close to losing his conscience, Monster kept trying to get up and even charge some magic to help Baby. Unfortunately, all of his efforts were useless, he was already out of battle.
Baby couldn't speak, he only could stare at the image of his best friend dying in front of him and he couldn't do a thing about it.
Mentally, Monster was in a total panic, his body and magic weren't responding to his commands anymore, but he kept trying to get up anyway.
"AAAAAH!"
Monster had a bad vision, but he could see and understand what happened right in front of him: Baby was stabbed in the chest by the woman and a few blood drops had fallen on Monster's face.
The sword then electrocuted him with a deadly high voltage: "AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"
Monster's heart and soul slowly started to die together with Baby.
"You two can't stay together, that's not how it's supposed to work," she told him drily and dreadfully while she threw Baby's dead body in the ocean.
Monster died inside together with the sound of the “splash” of Baby’s body in the water.
The Knights could easily chain him up and take him to a big vehicle, transporting him to the Order's Headquarters after that.
Through a few years, the Order used him and the pieces they found of his armor to create their Angelos. They thought they were draining his magic, although, somehow he managed to hold the most he could his own magic and he made them drain all of Mundus' corruption out of him.
That nearly had the cost of his life, but he was able to regain his full consciousness and "original form" at a high cost.
One day we faked his death and was able to flee from the facility in a killing spree. That happened a few weeks before the Fortuna incident.
Through the next years, he lived that moment of Baby's death over and over, corrupting him from inside out; making him realize once again how weak he was, that he didn't deserve a human life or either love. His human side was only responsible for his and his loved ones suffering and that he had to return for his search of power because of his weakness and this time… no matter what, even if that meant discarding a part of himself.
Meanwhile, Baby survived the stab of that day and found himself on a shore later, still at Fortuna.
He went to live around the outskirts of Fortuna for a long time, attacking and sometimes even killing by accident every Knight he spotted on the path between the city and the Order's headquarters. He questioned every single one of them about Monster, but none of them knew what he was talking about.
Until he attacked Credo, that had an idea about what he was looking for.
Credo and Kyrie's parents accepted Baby to live among them since he had white hair and some connection with demons, very similar to the description of the figure they worshipped: Sparda.
Unfortunately, a few weeks later they got killed by a demon, thus, bringing the "demon magnet curse" back to haunt Baby.
He then joined the Order with the only intention of getting good equipment and to get inside the HQ to look for Monster.
A few weeks before the incident with the Savior, Credo was able to bring for Baby, in secret, a copy of documents talking about Monster… only for him to discover that his best friend had died.
Void Realm - Pitch Black City: Back to the present
Kyrie had to finish the story from Nero's "death" in front since she knew it as well, all because Nero was sobbing and sniffing uncontrollably, his tears were too much for he could clean it and he was too shaken to be able to speak.
Nico never expected to feel so sorry for Nero, she was aware he had a tough life, but not that much… Victor was also feeling bad for him, but he had to tell him the truth, the only possible truth. What he didn’t expect was the reaction that was about to come.
They waited in silence nearly an hour for Nero to calm down, it was already very late in the night.
“Nero...” Victor started slowly, breaking the silence. “I don’t think Monster really died…”
Nero raised his head to look at him, he couldn’t understand how Victor got to that conclusion.
“Have you payed attention… on the things you described?” Victor continued calmly. “Be able to feel what the other is feeling… see memories… receive the knowledge from the other…”
Victor’s words weren’t clicking Nero’s memory, he was still a bit shaken with the story.
Noticing that, he decided to be more direct: “You described every characteristic of Sync”
Nero’s brain gears began to work again, Sync was a recent subject Victor explained to him: an exclusive ability of Siblings of the same parents and… Parent and Children exclusive thing.
“No! Wait!” Nero blurted confused. “Ar-Are you… Are you trying to tell me that Monster… - a pause- was Vergil?!”
“I’m sure about that,” Victor said quite seriously, staring at Nero’s eyes.
Nero immediately got up from the seat, scaring Kyrie that was closer to him. His face had changed so quickly as if someone had pressed a switch. He began to yell angrily at Victor for no apparent reason: “VERGIL ISN’T MONSTER! No way that cold-blooded motherfucker is Monster!” he screamed between tears, but this time tears of anger.
“Dude! Chill! What’s up?!” Nico yelled scared with his reaction.
“Why are you in denial?!” Victor questioned, keeping his calm and serious posture. “Can’t you see that everything you said described Sync perfectly?”
“NO!” Nero shouted angrily.
Kyrie could see some sparks starting to blink around Nero, but before she was able to say anything Victor went first: “Why then?!” he yelled confused.
Nero took a deep breath and concentrated all his anger and depression on his next words and tears: “I’M NOT THE BASTARD CHILD OF A DEMON!”
And immediately after those words of sorrow, he started to bleed through his eyes, nose and mount at an alarming quantity. He lost control of his body and fell off the ground, shaking so much as if he was having a convulsion.
Only Kyrie could see the mess of blue and red bolts circling around Nero: “Oh my God! He’s desyncing again!” she shouted scared and instinctively rushed to help him out.
“Kyrie! Wait!” Nico shouted, but it was too late.
The moment she touched him, purple and white energy strings came out of her and touched his energy streams. At exactly the same moment, his energies repealed hers away, sending Kyrie a few steps backward.
“Are you a demon?!” Victor shouted quite surprised. “Or a half demon?! - he quickly turned to Nico - “You said she was human!”
Hell - at same moment
The situation got quite awkward between Dante and Vergil.
Vergil was holding his feelings the maximum he could, he was even holding his breath to do so, his body was shaking of so much tension and a tear or other was going down his cheeks, his face was red of stress.
“Ah… That’s why you did that then…” Date said low, finally understanding what initially motivated his brother to go after the Qliporth and throw away his human half.
There was no way Vergil’s uneasy and tension could pass unnoticed. Dante started to feel sorry for his brother like he never thought he would; Vergil lost the most precious person in his entire life. Baby was his savior and he barely could do something to help him in return.
The way Vergil was holding himself made Dante recall how he felt that day; Yeah, that fateful day he couldn't hold Vergil to destroy his own life. That killing sensation of feeling useless and powerless. The thought of 'everything could be different IF...'
“Bro…” Dante said soft and low, trying to call Vergil’s attention. “Listen… even a Devil may cry when they lose a loved one.”
When Dante thought he couldn’t see his brother more shaken, the inevitable happened: Vergil couldn’t hold anymore, not after his brother’s last words; he started to sobbing and crying in grief. Baby's death was too painful for him: he hugged himself trying to endure the pain and he stuttered uncontrollably many incomprehensive words, he brought his legs closer and assumed a fetal position.
Dante got closer and in an attempt to comfort the desolated man he laid his left hand on his left shoulder. Vergil couldn’t resist and laid his head on his brother’s shoulder; he was crying and sobbing as if Baby just had died that moment and even being a silent crying, he was in pure pain. His chest and shoulders were giving small jumps because of his strong sobbing and hiccups, his lips and jaw were trembling as if he was shivering and his nose was very runny.
“I-I-It-t-t w-as just like… just like that day… - sob- just like… -sob sob- just like that day…! -hic hic!” Vergil cried. “I-I-I I couldn’t protect him! I WAS WEAK! t-t-THE SA-ME SHIiiiT-T! ALL OVER AGAIN! -sob sob... hic- aaaaahh...!”
Dante tried to stroke Vergil’s shoulder to comfort him more, it wasn’t helping that much, but he was trying. He had no idea what to do, he’d never been in a situation like that before. Now… should he tell his thoughts to him? He was more than certain now that Baby is Nero. But how would his brother react? That would help? Would it make it worse? There was only one way to know.
Dante waited for a long time in silence, for his brother to catch his breath back before he could say something again.
For several minutes, if not an hour, Vergil's crying was the only sound around, echoing in their hideout.
“Vergil… Do you remember… that thing… we used to be able to do it when we were kids?” Dante tried to start slow, touching the wound with a bit of care.
“Sob - W-What… - hic - thi-thing…?” Vergil asked, very lost.
Dante got a bit nervous, he didn’t want to go to the point so quick. “You know… that when we touched… we could see each other’s memories, learn what the other learned… and so on…”
“Sob- Th-That thi-ing... -hic- Rose was studying about us - sob - ?” Vergil tried to remember but it was a bit blurry at that moment. “Sob sob - that later I dis-dis-covered -hic- with Vi-Victor that it was… -sob- a demon thing?”
“Yeeeeaaaah…” Dante said a bit awkwardly.
There’s a moment of silence before Dante gets the courage to continue: “Sooo… Have Victor told you everything about that?”
“No -sob- why?” Vergil replied as he raised his head to look at his brother.
Dante let go of him and gave a small distance, afraid of his reaction. “Well then… Victor explained to me… that’s a demon thing like you said… BUT it’s a thing… exclusive to siblings of the same parents… and...”
“And?!” Vergil started to notice Dante’s reluctancy on the subject.
“And a parent and children thing too… and a lot of you described about what used to happen between you and Baby matches with what Victor explained to me....” we said very slowly. “So… I’m afraid that… maybe... Baby…”
“NO!” Vergil understood very fast. “No no no no no no no no no no no! NO!”
“I’m afraid that maybe… Baby was your child all this time… He’s...Nero.” Dante finally said.
Vergil’s soul left his body and returned for a brief moment. Had he hurt Baby for real? Someone that only deserved love and care met his worst? His face became full of total despair and panic, he brought his hands to his head, pressing his fingers against his scalp. The more and more he recalled what he did wrong with Nero the thoughts started to storm his mind like a hurricane. Until he let all the panic concentrated on his gut explode away in a loud despair scream, that even called the attention of nearby demons.
Vergil began to freak out in tears, he was insanely crying in pain that he started to hurt his head with his nails, digging them on his scalp. Dante quickly grabbed him by his arms to hold him still, for he didn't get himself hurt in the middle of his panic.
“Bro! BROTHER!” Dante tried to call. “Easy Vergil!”
Between the heavy sobbing, he could split out a few words. “No no no! -sob sob- I would ne-never -sob- hu-hu-hurt him! - Sob sob”
“You can’t blame yourself for that, man!” Dante attempted to help him get in control. “You thought he was dead, you saw him being killed in front of you and you didn’t know he was a hybrid like us!”
Vergil looked at him, a desperate face and eyes red of so much crying, but he was listening to his brother.
“If you explain to him what really happened I think he will understand.” Dante said, very worried with Vergil.
It was very hard for Vergil to believe that he would be forgiven for such doing, especially the arm literal take off. He couldn’t think clearly about that now, he was too worried that it was very likely he had hurt the most important person of his life.
By now, he laid his head on Dante’s shoulder once more and let go all the tears as possible.
Inside Vergil (figuratively)
The place was close to being dead for real, the sun was hidden behind very heavy dark clouds, the ground was totally dry and crackly and there was a small pool of water at the center of the place. A loud painful crying was echoing very high around that infinite desolated place.
It was V, crying uncontrollably as he stared at a very small dying flower, smaller than his fingers, with another one starting to blooming at the side. He got his arms, legs and neck chained to a dead tree stump in front of the pool that had scorched marks at the roots. Although the chains were heavy, he could move his members. He was wearing the same clothes as Vergil and his hair and facial hair was purely white now.
Urizen was sitting behind the stump, he was quiet, only listening to V’s painful crying.
V kneeled to the little flowers that were at his side, with the point of his fingers he gently touched the dying flower, and raised it a little.
“My little one.. -sob- my little little one…. - sob - I’m so sorry… -sob sob- I’m so sorry for having hurt you… - sob - my baby…!”
To be continued...
#forgotten sins story#devil may cry#devil may cry 5#Vergil#Dante#dmc5 nero#nerokiri#dmc5 nico#original character#fanfic
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The Freedom of Expression, radio version - Ep 35, May 2016 - Live-streamed suicide, Tokyo governer Masuzoe Yōichi scandal, Celebrity Becky's apology for affair with musician, Female idol stabbed over 20 times
*Trigger warning* Discussion of suicide.
Kaoru starts by saying the layout of the studio has changed so it feels quite different. He used to sit facing Joe, but now they are sitting side-by-side. Joe asks Kaoru how preparations for the Mode of Vulgar tour are going, and Kaoru says at the time of recording this show, they are just about to start rehersals for the tour. Joe asks him if he likes doing rehersals, and he replies that he does not. He does, however, think that rehersals are important and says its better to rehearse, but he also suggests that there is another member of the band who hates rehersals even more, and never wants to do them (Shinya).
Kaoru then reads out the contact info, and reminds listeners that any interesting messages will be rewarded with a sticker. Joe says that Kaoru has been quite stingy with stickers so far, but Kaoru reminds Joe that he did give one to Dobashi last week.
After messing up his lines and blaming it on the new studio layout, he begins his first topic, labeling it a 'taboo story'. This is the news that a woman in Paris had live-streamed herself committing suicide by jumping in front of a train, and since then similar incidents have started to happen in Japan. Joe brings up the book 'The Complete Maunal of Suicide' by Tsurumi Wataru, published in 1993. It became very popular with people under 30. They book describes various ways to commit suicide in considerable detail, but the author Tsurumi actually intended the book as a way to make life easier to live for people (by giving people the knowledge that if worst ever did come to worst, there would be an easy way to end the pain, thus making the present more bareable). In various prefectures across Japan the book was banned for under 18s, but conversely the American/international media interpreted the book as a kind of shelter for Japan's youth. But Joe feels like producing this kind of book is still slightly different from broadcasting your own death. Live-streaming a suicide has no connection to making life easier for people. He says the person filming thier suicide may be consumed by depression, but they are only thinking of themselves. Kaoru agrees with this. He says that as he gets older, he experiences people around him dying more and more. He has also know people who have taken thier own life. He says suicide can cause the people who knew the deceased to fall into self hate or blame themselves, when it is really not thier fault. Despite pouring so much love into a person, a suicide may make it feel like it still somehow wasn't enough, or people may feel a sense of rejection from the suicide, and Kaoru says he cannot forgive this. Joe comments that this topic is really difficult. Kaoru says he cannot understand why someone would broadcast thier own suicide. Is it to stand out at the end, or to influence someone, or for no reason at all? Joe wishes the person would use that energy to continue living, putting it into a more positive direction, instead of using it to film thier suicide.
Before coming to the studio to record the show, Joe says he was having a drink with Tsuyoshi from P.T.P and Teru from Crossfaith. Thier conversation turned to K, the former vocalist of P.T.P who suffered from mental illness, and died in 2013. Tsuyoshi's band member in The Bonez, Jesse, had said he wanted to tell K about all the fun they've had since his death, meaning that even if you really want to escape from your pain, there is still so much enjoyment waiting for you in the future if you just carry on living. Kaoru strongly agrees with this. He appeals to the listeners to strive to get through those tough times, and to do thier very best to continue living.
They welcome Hiranabe for the Tokyo Sports corner next. Hiranabe's first story relates to the scandal surrounding Tokyo Governer at the time, Masuzoe Yōichi. The scandal is based on the fact that Masuzoe was found to have been using large amounts of public money to pay for personal luxuries and family trips etc. At the time of recording, Masuzoe still had not resigned, and Hiranabe thinks he is refusing to resign because if he stays in the job a little longer, he will still get his summer bonus of ¥3800000. Alternatively it could be that if he stayed in the job until the summer Olympics started, the media's eyes would be diverted, and he would get away with it. Hiranabe says that Masuzoe could learn from him. He then tells a story of how he recently took two senior hostesses out for drinks at ¥2980 per hour, which was quite cheap. He was drinking tequila, but then another girl who was sat next to him (who looked just like the celebrity Becky) also said she wanted to drink tequila. Hiranabe couldn't resist and ended up with drinks bill of ¥98450. Thinking he could claim it as expenses, he got out his card, but as it happened he had reached his credit limit on his card, and it got rejected. He couldn't withdraw money from a convenience store ATM, as they were not operating during Saturday nights. Eventually he asked one of the hostesses he was with to pay. He had to pay her back the following day. Joe suggests Hiranabe used the story about Masuzoe so he could link it back to himself and tell his own story.
Hiranabe's next story is about the celebrity Becky, linking on from the girl who looked just like her in the last story. Becky had been in the news previously after her affair with married musician Kawatani Enon was publicly exposed. She disappeared from screens for a while, but as part of her comback she wrote a letter apologizing to Kawatani's wife. Hiranabe laments that this apology was made after Becky had already started tv recordings again. He thinks the apology should have been made first, and that Becky has probably not done herself any favours with this. He says it looks bad, and makes her look too impatient. Kaoru thinks the oder of things probably doesn't make much difference to how people will think of her. Hiranabe says her colleauge/senpai 'Cunning Takayama' will make fun of her. Joe suggests Hiranabe could get involved somehow, and Hiranabe replies along the lines of 'Oh, I'll gladly have some fun with her'. The others laugh at this, as such a phrase can only be read in one way when coming from Hiranabe.
Hiranabe's next news is that 20yr old Idol Tomita Mayu had been stabbed multiple times by an obessive fan just before she was due to perform at an event. The stabbing had occurred after Tomita had repeatedly returned unwanted presents to the fan. Hiranabe says this would usually make a stalker happy, because its proof that the idol has acknowledged thier existence. That fact that this fan got angry about the returned gifts could mean he is slightly different from a stalker, and actually more extreme than a stalker, which is quite scary. He obviously held a grudge, and seemed quite sadistic. Tomita had actually contacted the police the day before the stabbing due to the barrage of threatening tweets he was sending her, but the police did not deem the case urgent. Hiranabe thinks this is one of the worst points about this incident. He says it could have been prevented if police were present at the event, and if they don't change thier response to such situations, incidents like this will keep happenening. Kaoru comments on how this whole incident is really scary. He thinks a future comeback for Tomita might be tough now, although at the time of recording they have yet to see what developments will happen. It has been suggested by some that the fan viewed Tomita as his property, and Joe says the fan's ability to communicate is in question.
Kaoru finishes by plugging his new jingle campaign, and his blog. He then says that the artwork for the new single has been revealed, and it was made by Ameican illustrator Matt Mahurin. He then annouces that there will be three days of movie screenings for the new Budokan DVD, and he plugs his upcoming tours, the first of which is due to start the following week. He ends by saying that tickets are also available for the DSS tour via either the fanclub or general sale, he cant remember which.
Songs - Dir en grey/Child Prey
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Psst. Write a hanahaki disease fic for Barduil where Thranduil has it. You gotta write it.
Hey, anon, remember when you requested this probably like a year ago? Yeah, me either...
Anyway, here is what you asked for. I wrote over 7000+ words in a day to finish this asap.
My thanks to @morticia-butler for all the help looking up Hanahaki disease headcanons and an iconic line I simply had to include.
This is a long one so some of it will be under a readmore BUT you can also read all my other Barduil prompts via this fancy schmancy LINK
On to the story!
---------------------
8:30am. Thursday. September 17th.
Just petals.
The mirror reflected a pale and haunted image back at him while bright and vibrant yellow petals dusted the front of his pyjama t-shirt.
Daffodils.
His favourite. Thranduil, however, had come to detest the sight of them. The sunshine yellow flowers openly mocking him, their bobbing heads in the breeze seen as a gaggle of them laughing almost jovially at his situation.
No point thinking on it in-depth, not when he could temporarily abate the problem.
With such a thought in mind, Thranduil brushed the petals from his shirt into the sink and watched as they swirled in the water a moment before vanishing down the drain into the darkness.
But there would be more.
There was always more.
A soft knock at the bathroom door stilled his hand as he reached for his toothbrush and he turned to see Tauriel watching him with concern.
“I didn’t know you were visiting today, what are you doing here?” Thranduil’s voice was soft as he spoke, though, the lilting sound of surprise cracked his voice for a moment. “Had I known you planned to visit I’d have been ready by now. What are-” Thranduil watched as Tauriel leaned toward him, her hand brushed the fabric of his t-shirt as she plucked a petal still clinging to the fibres.
“Dad, you said this had stopped!” The words rushed out and they were so loud as she held the petal up between them. While it hadn’t meant to come out so accusing, he could hear the dismay that coloured her words, it still felt harsh and Thranduil braced himself for a barrage of instructions to get himself to a doctor.
“It was quelled for some time. The doctor gave me special inhalers that slow the spread but I’ve not had the time to contact the surgery for a refill.” He gestured to an empty inhaler laying innocently on its side by the sink. They had helped immeasurably and the majority of his family had believed the disease was done and gone.
But Hanahaki was not that easy to be rid of, he knew and deep down his family knew that too. It was easier to think he had been cured than to do consider the alternative…
“I dropped by because I wanted to know if you felt like grabbing breakfast?” Tauriel turned from the bathroom door and wandered into her dad’s bedroom, his clothes were laid out already, she paced past the bed and back out into the hallway. “I’ll be downstairs, let’s go out still.”
There was no time to respond and so Thranduil internally agreed to breakfast with his daughter. She and Legolas were the same in that they were strongwilled, always happy to make a decision and happy to make it for someone else too.
They definitely had gotten that trait from him, even if he had mellowed somewhat with age. It was easy to recall his younger days with clarity, he walked tall never a curve to his back because he bowed to no one.
He had been so headstrong and confident, even after his wife had died. People had come to him speaking softly with sincere condolences but Thranduil cast the sorrowful glances aside and carried on working.
That felt like aeons ago now, Thranduil was more in touch with his emotional and mental health now, gave and took the time of others as freely as he should have when he was younger. Thranduil found value in the world where once he would have shunned it.
Turning to look in the mirror, that pale and haunted face stared back but the eyes seemed less empty than they had earlier. Even with his disease there was still hope within him, it was choked and stuttering by the roots of the flowers in his chest and lungs but it was there.
“I can’t give up, not yet.” He whispered to himself.
They ended up heading to Tauriel’s favourite place for breakfast, it was a small family-run restaurant and the food was good. The cheery wait staff did not match the highly polished wood and marble of the place but it felt strangely homely all the same.
It was while Thranduil perused the menu that Tauriel brought up the subject, or rather, the object of his disease to him. A public place so he would not make a scene, perhaps, or rather, she hadn’t thought of the setting and only wanted to relinquish her hold on the burning question she had within for months.
“So, will you at least tell me who it is that did this to you?” Badly worded. No one had passed the disease onto him, that wasn’t how it worked and he knew Tauriel understood that. “Come on, dad. Do they know what they’ve done to you?” Of course, she was angry but why was she being angry with someone innocent in all of it?
While the majority of the time Thranduil was able to ignore these unnecessary outbursts from his children, there were ofttimes when his frustration got the better of him and one of those times was now.
With hands loosely balled into fists resting on the tabletop, Thranduil pinned his daughter with an icy glare that quashed whatever words she had left inside to say on the matter.
“I have told you time and time again, I will not tell you who it is. You know damned well that they are not to blame in this. You’ve seen the diagnosis, even though I’ve asked you to stay out of it, you’ve seen the words ‘ self-inflicted’ on the documents.” He voice was low but the chill in his words caused Tauriel to sit back in her seat and avert her gaze from his.
“I’m sorry-” She stopped when the waitress came over and set down their coffee and a rack of toast. There was time enough between the waitress approaching and leaving for Tauriel to regain her composure. “I’ve read so much about this over the past few months, it might now be onesided that’s all.” She was right but the percentage was low.
Hanahaki disease was such an odd illness to contract, the phenomenon of flowers growing in a person’s chest and lungs due to unrequited or onesided love. The agitation of yearning and pining watered the blooms until the lungs were completely full and the chest cavity would split open with leaves and stems and petals spilling out and killing a person instantly if they hadn’t already died from suffocation.
But that was only intense cases. There were ways to slow the spread and Thranduil was taking measures to ensure he could do such a thing.
Regular therapy was one. His therapist was a wonderful woman who guided him through the process of coming to terms with his unrequited love. They spoke of how to be honest and open with the feelings he experienced and how to provide his own closure.
Though, they had many hurdles to jump. Thranduil didn’t believe in closure per se, to him revisiting something traumatic and uncomfortable merely reopened wounds. They’d spent many sessions focussing on the death of his wife and while it had helped immensely in allowing a belated grieving it ultimately had not helped with his predicament.
But he was not to call it a predicament his therapist had said. To remove the seriousness of the disease was to remove the value of his own life. There were many times she had asked him to look from the outside in and speak on the issues in his life as though they affected another person. It had helped and when things looked bleak or if Thranduil began to brush off the seriousness of his illness he would remind himself that he would not allow someone else to do that to themselves.
The next most drastic step was surgery, but it was a temporary step and it slowed the spread of the disease. Researchers in the medical field studying Hanahaki always implied heavily that the physical manifestations of the disease were caused by the brain and thus Hanahaki was registered as a mental illness.
It was why doctors pressed so hard for those that suffered to seek therapy.
“I won’t be involving the person in this what so ever, Tauriel. Please, I ask again that you drop the subject.” How he had pleaded like this before and how it emotionally exhausted him to see the fear in her eyes every time she visited.
It was all because he knew that one day she feared she’d find him lying dead, a bouquet of blood-stained flowers adorning his chest in a beautiful and grotesque display of the love that had plagued him.
“I understand that you’re scared but I promise you I have no given up. I have an appointment with my therapist this afternoon and with my surgeon to discuss a date for surgery.”
His words seemed enough to placate her for now and she instead busied herself with buttering some toast.
3:00pm Thursday. September 17th.
Just petals.
“We spoke about your wife again last week, I noted that you requested we move on from the subject. Why do you feel you need to leave that subject alone?” The room was shaded from the bright Autumn sunshine streaming in from the window.
Thranduil could see the glowing gold around the edges of the blinds and forgot where he was for a moment as he watched it flicker with the shadow of trees swaying the breeze. He couldn’t remember why he’d suggested they move on but it seemed the right course of action to him.
“I just feel we aren’t focussing on the real problem.” When he spoke he made a point to look at her. Maintaining eye contact seemed important at that moment, he didn’t want her to think he was ruled by indecision. “My wife has been dead for years and we have already confirmed that, as much as I miss her, I have come to terms with her death and grieved appropriately.” Too business-like. As soon as the words had come out of his mouth he knew.
The therapist merely ‘hmm’d’ in response and wrote something down. There was the internal battle to struggle with now, to explain himself to her or let her assume something of him that he would, personally, deem incorrect.
“What is it you would like to speak about instead?”
That was the problem, he didn’t really know. The only thing he wanted to ask was ‘How did you get over someone and quickly?’ but there wasn’t really much of an answer she would be able to give.
Magazines for years had offered ‘helpful tips to get over that person that doesn’t like you back!’ and Thranduil had put no stock in their, so called, wisdom. Now they didn’t publish these things, now they would ask you to seek help if you experienced any symptoms they listed on the page.
Distraction techniques had been offered by his family in droves at the beginning when his diagnosis had been revealed. Nothing had actually helped because his mind would often wander to the object of his affection when he was practising a new hobby.
“I think my need to rush these sessions is just because I’m scared of losing myself completely and if I do that, well, you know what happens.” Thranduil gave a half-hearted shrug, he barely lifted his shoulders but it was a shrug all the same and his therapist acknowledged it as so with a nod.
“Everyone is scared of dying, Thranduil. Perfectly healthy people, people who have terminal diseases. Do you want to talk about your fear of dying?”
He didn’t.
They, instead, spoke of newer experimental ideas that Thranduil might have been interested in trying. She wrote out the prescription for the refill on his inhaler and made another appointment for a week later.
It wasn’t often that Thranduil left the sessions more tightly wound than he had been when going in but he at least knew that he’d need something to talk about next week or they’d get back on the subject of his wife and he honestly didn’t think that was helpful.
His next appointment was at the doctor's office, they wanted to schedule surgery but they had needed proof he was visiting his therapist before they would agree. It was a messy and an unfair condition but at least at the doctor's office he could get them to fill the prescription so it wasn’t too much of a wasted trip if they refused his surgery.
1:00pm Friday. September 18th
Foliage.
The office was quiet now.
Everyone but Thranduil had packed up for the day and headed out to start their weekends. It was a perk Thranduil had implemented years ago and it had been appreciated, even if it had been created to benefit him more so than his employees at the time.
Nothing was waiting for him at home and there was plenty of paperwork to do so he poured himself a glass of water, took his inhaler and got comfortable at his desk reading through a brief for a new promotion.
So engrossed was he in his work that he failed to notice someone entering the office and only when a takeout coffee cup was set before him did he move his gaze from the files he had been reading to intently.
Looking up Thranduil ceased his movement almost instantly at the sight of his best friend Bard. The afternoon sunshine illuminated his handsome face with a soft golden glow, his brown eyes looked golden as he smiled down at him. His cheery countenance was always welcome and so was his gift of coffee but Thranduil could tell his friend was there with an agenda of sorts.
“Haven’t seen you lately, Thran. You’re not holding yourself up in this office every night until late again, are you?” The concern, it left a shaking and aching hole inside Thranduil and that hole soon became clogged with stems and leaves, give the disease an inch and, well, that old adage.
“No, I just had something to do here but it can wait. Did you need something?” To try and remain relaxed and carefree around Bard was increasingly difficult, more so when he had endeavoured to hide his disease from him as much as he could.
“Hm, well, I just had the feeling that you’ve been avoiding me for a while if I’m to be completely honest.” Straight to the point, no beating around the bush for Bard and he had every right to be concerned because he was correct.
Perhaps it was more obvious lately that he had been trying to avoid Bard for a few weeks. Avoidance was never going to be the answer but this man was why he had the disease, or rather, what exacerbated it. There would never be a time he would place sole or even partial blame on Bard for what he was going through.
“I’m sorry, I suppose I have been caught up in work recently. I’m absolutely not overworking myself before you ask. However, I’ve neglected my best friend and I think I owe you a drink, at least.”
“At least,” Bard repeated in agreement and he grinned, they didn’t move to get up.
Thranduil busied himself with taking a sip of his coffee, it was a blond roast from Michael’s he could tell without even looking at the logo on the side of the cup. All the while he inwardly cursed the tightness in his chest and new shoots began to sprout and buds began to burst into bloom.
There was no chance he could even begin to hazard a cough. It’d look like a cat had swallowed a canary. Or a man that had swallowed his feelings.
For a short while, they chatted idly about what they’d done recently. Bard talked of hating the empty nest syndrome he was suffering now that Tilda had moved out, leaving the family home nothing but a ‘mausoleum of family memories that were visited by a spectre that had helped create them’. It was a dramatic sentence and Thranduil laughed aloud before offering something vaguely sympathetic to soothe his friend.
“Can’t you clock out already, you own the business let’s get out while it’s still bright,” Bard complained as he rose from his seat and wandered toward the large window Thranduil sat with his back to. “The sun is still warm and we could probably walk to the pub instead of taking the car.”
“Walking to the pub suggests that you don’t wish to have a few drinks but one too many.” As much as he hoped he sounded wise, Thranduil knew Bard would have clearly taken it as a challenge. So they were absolutely going to get drunk that night and Thranduil couldn’t have been more terrified of that prospect.
“I haven’t seen you in ages, you’re my best friend and even if we both regret how bad we feel in the morning, age that does that to you, I want to get drunk with you, Thran!” Ah, old age hadn’t fully caught up with Bard yet, he was vibrant and energetic and hot. Gods above was that man gorgeous.
That was where it all began though, Bard had blazed into his life when they were in their early 30’s. Thranduil had just lost his wife and was trying to juggle a career and two grieving kids.
Bard and his wife Anya had helped him. They took the kids to school and picked them up and fed them so Thranduil could… do what? He couldn’t even remember now- he hadn’t grieved that was for sure!
With a 10 year and an 8-year-old broken over the loss of their mother and having no support from their emotionally unavailable father, Tauriel and Legolas had grown up to be quite well adjusted. Though, some of that might have been the therapy they’d gotten as suggested by their school.
It had happened only 2 years later, Bard lost Anya and he was thrown into a situation similar to Thranduil’s and the roles were reversed. Sigrid and Tauriel grew up like sisters and were still close because of how often they saw one another. They bonded strongly over what had happened to their mothers and became each other’s strength when they needed it.
The same happened with Bard and Thranduil, they became close friends. They took the children on holiday together, camping or water parks and spent their weekends finding activities for the kids that they too could take part in.
For a while, it had been just friendship, but then as the children grew up and wanted to spend less time with dad and more time with friends they found company in each other more often than not.
Then Tauriel and Legolas moved out for university, Sigrid and Bain left Bard for the same reason, Tilda was always adventuring with her friends and so when the empty house became too much they would go out.
Dinner, drinks, a walk in the park, catch a movie or two.
Innocent stuff, but Thranduil allowed himself to get comfortable and in letting his guard down he let feelings in that he had tried to avoid from the moment he met Bard.
The problem was when Anya died Bard told Thranduil he couldn’t ever see himself falling in love with another person again.
This was proven time and time again over the years, dates would happen once or not at all with people that could have been his perfect match, and eventually, Bard learned to ignore anyone that tried to flirt with him. A suggestive smile or even a compliment was brushed off as nothing more than friendly and the more unattainable he became the more Thranduil realised he was in love with him.
A terrible turn of events to be sure, and now he suffered daily for it with petals littering his pillows and flowers choking out his lungs.
“Are we going out then?” Bard’s voice cut through the memories Thranduil was replaying in his mind for the hundredth time and how thankful he was when he did. The blooming of the flowers in his chest increased with the thoughts of Bard.
To say no to the request would put a strain on their friendship. Bard had already noticed that he was being avoided and it would do them no good for Thranduil to continue that. So, with a nod, he got up from his seat and grabbed his jacket.
“It is a nice day, let’s walk to the pub then.” Intoxication was the last thing he needed but to keep up the charade that all was fine he’d need to at least try and play along. To play the role of a man in perfect health, body and mind, didn’t seem easy but he had to try.
He would try because he loved him.
10:45am Wednesday. September 30th.
Bursting Blooms.
It was classed as routine surgery but Thranduil couldn’t imagine how hard it would be to slice someone open and remove flowers stamen to stem to root. Temporary as it was, he was thankful they had managed to organise it so quickly, his outing with Bard and the subsequent dinner the night after meant that his condition rapidly grew worse as time went by in the company of his best friend.
He’d woken to more petals on his pillow than he had ever seen before and his breathing laboured. Even coughing to free up space didn’t work and instead, he was gifted with near whole flower heads landing in his hands.
The kids were horrified as they watched this because of course, it would have happened while they visited. Which led to him having to listen to endless ‘You should go to the hospital right now.’ in a chorus from them both until he showed them the inhalers.
They sat either side of him in the waiting room now.
Legolas bounced his leg continuously looking around the waiting room for something to distract him. He’d taken time away from University to be there to help with recovery.
Tauriel chewed her nails and checked the time on her phone every couple of minutes as if time flowed differently in a hospital waiting room.
There was no cause for his anxiety to manifest when he was sat between two that were already doing all the work for him. Sadly, he had no words to calm them of their fears because he was just as afraid.
“Have people died from this surgery, dad?” Legolas piped up out of the blue, he sounded so young in that moment and Thranduil felt guilt course through his veins like ice for putting his children through something like this again.
When he didn’t answer Tauriel did for him and she shook her head even though Legolas was focussing more on a poster across the room than on anything else.
“No, because the surgery, while invasive to a degree, only removes some of the plants. They don’t fully remove everything because they simply can’t. Dad is going to be ok, more ok after this than he is now.” Her confidence only shaking by the tremor in her voice and Thranduil hoped Legolas couldn’t hear it.
“Hmm, ok.” Pensive now Legolas falls silent but his leg continuous to bounce but not as animatedly as before. He was not calmed but something in her words convinced him that the surgery would be fine.
Though, he didn’t understand why she would lie to him like that. His son was perfectly capable of looking up the survival rate on his phone, it was low just as low as the rate of people that were cured by expressing their feelings to their heart's desire.
They were approached by a nurse in scrubs.
“Mr Oropherion, if you would like to come this way.”
1:56pm Wednesday. September 30th.
Roots.
Someone was gently squeezing his arm.
“Thranduil, you’ve just come out of surgery. Can you hear me?” The same nurse that took him in was now waking him. “We need you to respond to know you’re ok.”
Nothing felt real yet he managed to croak out something akin to an ‘I’m fine’ but that was it. The need for sleep and an excruciating pain rushed over him and he groaned hands gripping the sheets as he waited for it to subside.
“Out of 10, 10 being very painful and 1 being not painful at all how do you feel?” The nurse was holding a clipboard and a pen, they looked down at Thranduil with an expectant look and merely blinked blankly when Thranduil didn’t respond right away.
He needed more time than this to consider everything, on the one hand, he could breathe on the other the pain of being sliced open and stitched back together was awful.
“Ah… 8 maybe?” His whole body shook as he came out of the anaesthetic and all he wanted was to leave his body while it was in this state and return when he was at home comfortable in his own bed with a cup of tea.
His time in the recovery room was short and he was wheeled into a private room where he was greeted with the grim face of his best friend. Bard looked awful, pale and he seemed to have aged 10 years all with concern etched deep into his face.
“You were having important surgery and just elected not to tell me?” It was quiet, so quiet that Thranduil almost didn’t hear him speak. It wasn’t until they were fully alone after someone had administered strong painkillers, that Thranduil finally acknowledged what Bard had said to him.
“I didn’t need more people worrying about me than was necessary. I’m sorry, Bard. I should have told you but I didn’t want you to ask what the surgery was.” If he was honest, he still didn’t want Bard to know and if he asked him then and there he would outright refuse to tell him.
Even if keeping such secrets ended their friendship it would be safer then, the heartbreak of losing him as a friend was all the cure he needed and it would continue to protect Bard from the truth.
“If you had just told me that I could have been here for you from the beginning! Instead, I get a call from Tauriel asking me to come by and sit with Legs because she had to go grab something from home. I had no idea what she was talking about so you can probably expect a gushing apology from her later.” Bard dragged a hand through his dark hair, now laced with silver, as he started to pace.
It wasn’t fair.
Life wasn’t fair but this was kicking a man while he was down!
“I’m sorry, Thran. I didn’t mean to come in and just… yell at you. How are you feeling, are you ok?” Bard moved towards the bed and poured a glass of water out and handed it to Thran who took the offering gratefully and slowly sipped the cold water in trembling hands.
“Why can’t you tell me what the surgery was?” Bard pulled up the visitor chair so he was sad right by Thranduil’s bedside. For a moment he seemed indecisive in his actions until he, apparently, had a moment of clarity and took Thranduil’s hand in his. “Is it… cancer?” The words were uttered almost reverently as though he was afraid to speak the words any louder than a whisper.
Could he lie and say yes?
Oh, how disrespectful he would be to cancer survivors and those who had lost their battle. No, he could not lie and so he shook his head feeling more forlorn with each passing minute. The desperate need to wrench his hand from Bard’s was unbearable, the heat of the man’s hand seared into his skin and he couldn’t think straight wondering how it would be to hold his hand and know he loved him back.
Something inside him grew and already a new bloom began to sprout.
This was too dangerous.
Gods, he was dying and yet he still thought he had a chance with this man sat at his bedside holding his hand whispering words to him like a prayer.
Eventually, he knew he’d had to put an end to all of this.
How he wasn’t sure.
8:36pm Saturday. October 10th.
Stems.
The children had just left, left with promises to be there again in the morning but Thranduil waved them away and told them it was not necessary to coddle him in such a way. The look on their faces told him he really had no say in the matter what so ever.
The surgery results were more temporary than he’d have liked, petals had started appearing again after a mere 10 days. With the inhalers they were few and far between but only 10 days of respite. His scars not yet healed from the procedure!
All in all, it seemed to have been a waste of time but at least he was still able to breathe with relative ease, though emotionally it seemed he was breathless. Legolas and Tauriel barely gave him a second alone and were hawks when it came to spotting petals.
At first, they’d been nigh hysterical but Thranduil had calmed them down and explained that these things happened and that he was still able to breathe well enough so there was nothing to worry about.
They hadn’t believed him. Not even for a second but they were distracted enough to come down from the height they’d been at in their worry.
The doorbell rang not even 5 minutes after the children had left and Thranduil assumed one of them must have left something behind, so when he opened the door to find Bard on the doorstep he was surprised but ushered him all the same.
“It’s late, what are you doing here?” Thranduil shivered and pulled the long misshapen and baldy knitted cardigan tightly around himself. It had been a gift from Tauriel, she had knitted it and then proceeded to never try knitting again yet Thranduil adored the huge thing that near drowned him. “Aren’t you coming inside?”
He noticed after a moment that Bard lingered a little too long at the door and seemed frozen by indecision. It wasn’t like him to be unsure of something so Thranduil prodded again.
“Are you coming in?” But Bard wasn’t looking at him, he was staring at the cardigan and feeling self-conscious Thranduil wrapped his arms around it trying to cover the large holes, but Bard kept staring until Thranduil actually become protective of the garment and snapped at him.
“What are you looking at?” Much like Tauriel had done before, Bard leaned forward and between his finger and thumb pulled a yellow petal away from Thranduil’s clothing, it seemed much brighter in the gloom of the autumn evening.
It seemed enough for Bard to piece together the truth and he looked dismayed, his shoulders dropped and his head dropped for a moment before he forced himself to look up at his friend.
“Is.. this why you had surgery?”
“Let’s not do this on the steps outside, come in and I promise I will answer all of your questions.” That seemed to put him in motion and with a short nod, Bard stepped into the warmth of the house and Thranduil shut the door.
“How long have you had this?”
Straight to the point, Thranduil had hoped he’d be given the chance to offer tea or something else before Bard started grilling him for answers. Honestly, though, he knew the question Bard wanted an answer to the most and Thranduil didn’t think he had it in him to tell him that, not yet at least.
“Hmm, a year now, maybe?” It had been so long since he had been without the cursed disease and he hadn’t exactly been counting, seeing it was more a count down to his death if he truly tried to rack up the days.
“Is there a cure, will you die from this?” The panic appeared from nowhere and Bard bit his lip as he tried to work out what he wanted to do next, he seemed to want to cross the room toward Thranduil and pace so to put a stop to either Thranduil made him sit down.
“I will make tea and answer those questions when I come back.” One of them had to remain calm, while he would have loved to have thrown away his composure and screamed to the Heavens that life wasn’t fair he didn’t think it would help his situation in the slightest.
When he returned with the tray Bard was stood again but this time by the fireplace looking at the family photos set out across the mantle. They were mostly of himself with the kids, one of is and Bard’s family all together on a camping trip and one of his wedding day.
“Hanahaki, huh?” He must have googled it while Thranduil was in the kitchen, that was fine but he probably knew more than Thranduil would have liked now. “So the surgery you had was to remove some of the flowers… ah, I can’t pretend like I’m not going to ask. Who is it that did this to you, Thran, who is the one that can’t or won’t love you back?” The tone seemed one of incredulity, as though Bard couldn’t quite believe there was anyone in the world who couldn’t love Thranduil.
But there was.
“Does it matter who and isn’t it better to see that I am trying to get better instead of giving up?” Deflect the question by asking a question, the only thing he could do as he poured tea and tried to stop his hands from trembling. “I am doing everything the doctors say I should.”
“Which is?”
“Haven’t you just checked the internet for all of this?”
“Well, yeah, but I want to hear you say it, that’s all.” The conversation was going nowhere because Bard clearly couldn’t stand not knowing who this person was that had captured Thranduil’s heart and refused to return it.
“I have therapy every week, I have inhalers to slow the spread of the blooms and recently I had surgery to remove the majority of the blockage but the roots are deep.” Such a drastic admission and so unfair to reveal his imminent death so casually.
Taking a sip of tea, Thranduil watched Bard’s face cycle through several emotions before settling on… nothing. Instead of responding Bard merely added some sugar to his tea before lifting it to his lips to drink.
“So, you were just planning on dying without telling me?” The words came out flat as though the conversation was casual yet boring. He had hurt his friend that much he was sure of but there wasn’t really much of anything he could say to soothe him now. Bard had been right, and what Thranduil had thought was caring and helpful turned out to be more selfish than anything else.
“No, I would never do that to you, Bard. I don’t want to keep these things from you but please see this from my perspective. This isn’t something I want to scream from the rooftops- ‘LOOK AT ME EVERYONE I AM DYING BECAUSE THE PERSON I LOVE DOESN’T LOVE ME BACK AND I AM NOT EMOTIONALLY STABLE ENOUGH TO ACCEPT THAT!’ why would I want to reveal my weakness to someone? If Legolas and Tauriel hadn’t found out I would not have told them either!” He didn’t like being weak like this, not after a life of being seen as an unshakable strength a rock that you could rely on. Everything was beginning to crumble why would he want to bare his soul now?
“Fine but don’t think I can just forgive you for hiding this from me. After everything we’ve been through together you just fail to tell me that, 1) you’re in love with someone, and 2) You’re dying because of it.” Bard set down his cup a little too hard and pushed himself to his feet and headed for the door. “I… I have to go, Thran. I’m sorry.”
He was on his feet in seconds following Bard to the door but the man was already in his car by the time he got out onto the steps to call him back.
“You don’t understand…” Thranduil whispered as he tugged at the cardigan pulling it tight around him against the chill. “I didn’t tell you to save you from the guilt that I know you’d feel.” Of course, the words merely dissipated into the cold night air and the vapours trailing each word rose into the sky before vanishing completely.
At least the universe heard his admission of the truth.
4:00pm Friday, December 11th.
Nothing but a memory.
They had given him a clean bill of health.
No roots, stems, stamens, petals, not even a leaf remained. The flowers had wilted and withered to nothing and Thranduil took an easy deep breath as he left the doctor’s office. It was a chilly December evening and he was adjusting his scarf when Legolas nearly bowled him over running into him his arms thrown around his neck in a tight embrace.
“I heard the news! You’re better now for good?!” The excitement in his son’s voice brought genuine tears to Thranduil’s eyes and he buried his face in Legolas’ golden hair for a long month savouring the warmth his son gave.
When they broke apart Tauriel was stood by her car, the engine still running. They must have just arrived as he was leaving. She gave him a cheery wave before climbing into the car to shut off the engine.
Thranduil hadn’t confessed his feelings to Bard and Bard had not confessed his to him. Instead, he had worked hard to understand that sometimes your feelings just were not reciprocated and that was ok.
Platonic love was just as good as romantic love, sadly, he hadn’t been able to speak to Bard since he’d walked out on him all those weeks ago. While he would always love Bard he understood that what he had done was hurtful and if he’d been given the chance he wished he could apologise.
It had never been his intention to hurt his best friend but he had been so caught up in his own pain he had forgotten to consider those nearest and dearest to him. How had it been fair to hide such a horrible problem from those he held dear?
“Have you heard from… him?” Tauriel knew everything now, she’d gotten it out of him not long ago, he was at his lowest and needed someone who might understand. It was not his proudest moment, leaning on his daughter emotionally for support, but she had been steadfast in her support of him that it seemed so easy to tell her everything.
Thankfully, Tauriel didn’t hold the reaction Bard had against him.
“I had been angry just like him too, remember?”
Oh, she had, she had screamed murder in his home, right in the centre of the living room, when she had realised and didn’t speak to Thranduil for days. It was the longest she had ever gone without talking to him before, a whole 6 days until she came around and they talked about what it meant for the family.
But now they were fine, life could resume. Thranduil could live with seeing them without the soft concerned glances Tauriel and Legolas would exchange when his chest grew tight and he wheezed as he tried to grasp a full breath.
If only he could repair his relationship with Bard. There weren’t many he shared his life with and losing someone was extremely noticeable when that someone was fully apart of his daily life.
Even visiting his usual haunts proved useless. There didn’t seem to be a trace of him anywhere and Thranduil was much too much of a coward to walk right up to his door and demand to be let in.
Yet, none of his calls were returned or his texts answered. When Tauriel asked Sigrid if her dad was ok she just shrugged and said he wasn’t doing anything unusual of late, but he had been grabbing a drink with workmates more often.
That wasn’t a cause for concern as Bard had always been the friendly and sociable type.
Whatever was going through his friend's mind he sincerely hoped he would take the time to consider contacting him so they could talk. There were only so many text messages he could send without looking incredibly desperate.
5:30am Tuesday, December 24th.
Easy breathing.
A shrieking doorbell and the sound of continuous banging on the door jolted Thranduil awake and he swore loudly as he tumbled out of bed and shuffled wearily down the stairs. Whoever it was had better have a fantastic reason as to why they had to get him up at stupid o'clock in the morning!!
When he pulled the door open to see a rather dishevelled Bard using the door frame to hold himself up the air in Thranduil’s lungs seemed to vanish. He stood motionless for a good 30 seconds before helping Bard inside.
“You absolutely reek of alcohol. What are you doing here?”
There was silence proceeding his question and, at first, Thranduil thought the man had fallen asleep on the sofa where he had collapsed but it appeared he was just thinking of the best response.
“I had to see you.” Surprisingly he didn’t sound drunk and Thranduil considered that the cold must have sobered him up. For his own mental health, he decided against asking him what he meant about having to see him.
“I don’t know about you but the larks aren’t even up yet and I am tired. Let me make some coffee for the both of us and we can see if I can’t get some sense out of you.” As he turned to move Bard’s hand shot out and his fingers curled around Thranduil’s wrist tugging him backwards with ease.
“No, let me speak to you, hasn’t it been long enough already?” A sleep-deprived gravelled tone did not suit Bard and Thranduil could see dark circles around his eyes. Whatever had been on Bard’s mind of late must have had him up around the clock.
“You were the one that decided you’d had enough of me, remember?”
Those words caused the man before him to relinquish his grip on Thranduil’s wrist and he just gave a nod but when Thranduil didn’t move he took a deep breath and began to speak.
“I’m sorry that I made it about me. There wasn’t even a second where I considered how scared you must have been to know that any day could have been your last.”
“Yes, well, thankfully those days are behind me now.”
Like a shock of electricity had gone through him Bard jumped to his feet looking this way and that before having the decency to look genuinely apologetic.
“Did I interrupt your sleep with them?” In the light of the living room, Thranduil got a better look at him and something inside him clicked into place and he had to withhold a groan when he realised he had definitely, once again, fallen in love with his best friend.
“There is no one, the person I was in love with, I’m not in love with them now. It took a long time to come to terms with the fact they did not care for me the way I wanted but I am better because I started to love me more.” Oh, what a liar he was. Yes, he did care for himself a lot more but he was falling right back into the rut he had been not 8 weeks ago.
The second he started spitting petals he was going to wring Bard’s neck. There was no way he was going through all that again!
“There’s no one, ah, good. That means I have a sliver of a chance to ask you out on a date then.”
No, no he wasn’t doing any of this without coffee. As much as he wanted to address every single word the man had just uttered he wasn’t doing this without caffeine and maybe some toast.
Without a word he walked off into the kitchen and, like a lost puppy, Bard obediently trotted in behind him trying to get his attention. No, no, no, he was going to fill the machine with coffee beans and put bread in the toaster then he was going to get the toaster and throw it at Bard’s head!
Whipping round to face him, Thranduil grabs a fistful of Bard’s shirt and pulls him close enough that they are nearly nose to nose.
“You’re telling me that you have developed feelings for me in the past 3 months I have been in recovery?”
Fear was the only emotion in Bard’s eyes and they were wide to the point the whites almost exceeded the iris. It would have been funny if Thranduil hadn’t wanted to throttle the man where he stood.
“Well, I wanted to tell you I loved you as soon as you opened the door but you’re so scary when you’ve just woken up. You’re scary now, please don’t kill me. I love you!”
That was it.
“You LOVE me? Is that so Mr I Will Never Love Again? IS that so?!” There was a mixed bag of emotions stirring up inside him but mostly the murderous intent was winning out. Killing Bard wasn’t really on the cards but he wasn’t going to let the man get away with nearly killing him for over a year even if he had no idea it was his fault.
“You are very, very, very lucky that I just so happen to love you, too.” The iron grip on Bard’s shirt relaxed and he tried his best to smooth the deep wrinkles but it was not to be. Regardless, he had Bard looking at him with a sappy grin plastered over his pale face like he’d been told he’d won the lottery and not the affections of a highly problematic male.
“R-really?”
“As much as it now pains me to say this, yes, I do love you so very much. So much so that my heart could burst if I tried to contain it any longer.” The thumping of his heart was so hard in his chest that he was sure Bard could have heard it if he’d tried. Somehow things were falling into place now with such little effort.
There had been a chance Thranduil would have found himself bitter about the whole thing and shunned Bard’s advances. Revenge should have been high on his list with the grinning idiot before him but he couldn’t bring himself to do anything other than lean in and press a kiss to his Bard’s lips.
“Really, really.”
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Hi Pia! I'm a huge fan of your work and deeply enjoying FFS rn, it really shows the love and care you've put into this world and characters and it's an amazing read 🥰🧡
Idk if you've actually answered this question before or if it's a bit too much? So feel free to skip it. Do you have any advice on how to write a therapist and sessions with them? And to go along with that, a therapist&patient relationship that doesn't feel inauthentic but that's a healthy one?
I've had to visit both psychiatrists and psychologists a couple of times along my life, which has almost always been a positive experience to me, but when I get down to business and want to write a character going to therapy, I fall into a bunch of the psychoanalytic clichés US films have hammered us down with, even if I'm not from an Anglophile country!
Thanks a bunch in advance!! Ilu, have a nice start of the year🧡✨
Hiya anon!
I have a few thoughts about writing therapy sessions so I’m just going to put them down in no particular order.
Firstly, I don’t actually think it’s always a good idea to write therapy in stories, and a lot of the time I avoid writing it even when a character is actively seeing a therapist. This is particularly true in The Wind that Cuts the Night where all we see of Alex and his therapist are snippets, and nothing more than that, because therapy sessions would slow down the pacing, focus and value of the story.
Where possible, characters don’t see therapists, but talk to people in a way that is therapeutic, usually with love interests or members of the ensemble cast (Augus and Fenwrel in The Court of Five Thrones, Jack and Eva in The Golden Age that Never Was, Jack and North in From the Darkness We Rise/Into Shadows We Fall, Cullen and Cassandra, Cullen and Bull in Stuck on the Puzzle). All of those characters need therapy, but writing therapy sessions tends to slow down the pace of a fic pretty dramatically, and even I had misgivings about writing Efnisien’s sessions with Dr Gary at first because I’m acutely aware of the fact that:
1. Therapy sessions can be draggy and boring
2. They often take away important emotional realisations from other characters, ruining potential hurt/comfort and character relationship development moments with your actual cast / love interests
3. Fiction is meant to be fiction, not reality.
4. A lot of therapy sessions are actually not that interesting to sit in or write or observe, which is why writers do often find themselves falling into certain cliches while writing them to make them more interesting. Even I cut out huge chunks of sessions to get to the more interesting parts, lol.
5. You can write a character going to therapy without writing the therapy. You can just choose to have the character remember bits and pieces of the session later as it’s relevant to their life.
6. Therapy is different for everyone, and some readers (myself included) don’t enjoy reading it when the therapy is a kind that doesn’t resonate or feel right.
So you really need to ask yourself why you want to write therapy specifically, because a lot of the time it gets boring or - as you point out - falls into cliched territory. Writing a character going to a doctor a lot in detail for regular injections is boring. Writing them thinking about how they have to do this in brief while their love interest is sympathetic to them getting those injections is more interesting. Writing a character suffering from an illness that they need regular injections for, with their love interest comforting them? Interesting.
Falling Falling Stars is a unique fic in that Efnisien has no one before he meets Arden, except for Dr Gary and Gwyn. If you’re writing an FFS style fic, writing therapy sessions might be appropriate. It might be worth really thinking about the kind of fics you want to write, why you want to write therapy, how that will affect your pacing, etc.
If you’re still dead set on writing therapy sessions, then I have some suggestions re: writing more realistic/healthy therapy and how to find that knowledge yourself, and I don’t really know how to shorthand some of it:
1. Get books on therapy that are designed for the therapist. These are often expensive, but sometimes libraries stock them - and university libraries in particular will often have photocopy abilities (or you can just photograph the pages you need) because these books look at how sessions should be structured. Books with case studies are ideal, since they often show dialogue chains between the client and therapist. Books that obviously deal with the mental illnesses you’re planning on writing about are the most ideal.
2. With a view to this, learn about different therapeutic modalities (for example are you trying to write psychology or psychoanalysis or both? Are you writing social work? Are you writing cognitive behavioural therapy, dialectical behavioural therapy, expressive therapies, narrative therapy, transcendental therapy?) Be aware that different modalities have different session structures and learn what they are. Wikipedia is your friend, but your closest friend will be actually acquiring textbooks on the subject. This is a pretty significant financial barrier at times, I’ve been collecting books like this on psychology since like 1997.
3. Learn about your character’s mental instabilities that require them to go to a therapist and then look up the most recommended forms of therapy for your character’s specific issues. Will they suit your character? Why/why not? Will they have a therapist who realises and switches modality if it doesn’t suit? Or will they be lucky and find someone who helps them straight away?
4. All therapy sessions have a structure to them. And therapy often has a narrative arc through the course of therapy over many sessions. They should generally have the attempt at a beginning (greeting / setting up the problem to be discussed), middle (highlighting the source of conflict or inner conflict) and end (helping the client to focus on less stressful things, possible homework assigned, and potentially talking about future work/sessions). Learn this structure. Even if you’re not writing the whole session, you need to know where in the session you’re writing, beginning/middle/end will be different tonally. Structures will be different per therapeutic modality, and a therapist that knows many different modalities (like Dr Gary) will often be using slightly different structures each time depending on the character’s mood/issue.
5. In a healthy therapist/client relationship there will be the ability to discuss boundaries, grievances and the therapist won’t be revealing much about their personal life at all (unless anecdotally it’s super relevant and even then it will be deliberately vague). This is one of those things that will - in many cases - make for more boring sessions on the page, depending on the ‘client.’ For example, if you’re writing someone seeing a therapist for the first time, it might realistically take months or years before they start showing progress or trust. That’s not interesting (there’s a reason ‘therapy fiction’ isn’t a genre), so of course it’s tempting to shortcut into more dramatic moments.
*
I would say if you’re finding yourself leaning towards more cliched or dramatic forms of writing re: therapy, your writing brain may sense that the entire scene/s may not be suited to the story, and is trying to find a way to make them more interesting to yourself and the reader. If that’s not the case, then a lot more research is needed! It’s time to sink many hours into actually understanding what you’re trying to write. This doesn’t matter as much if you’re writing unrealistic or unhealthy therapy, but it’s 100% necessary when you’re trying to write healthier therapy depictions.***
Also a couple of sessions of experience is a start, but you might want to watch or find a way to watch more therapy sessions, because you’ve missed out on experiencing longer arcs, different modalities etc. (This is where my hands on experience with 19 therapists since 1995 is actually really helpful, lmao - I’ve had close to like 800~ sessions by now, with good and bad therapists; I cannot pretend that hasn’t given me a knowledge base that most people don’t share). You can still learn that stuff via research, MedCircle on Youtube is a good place to start, since it offers 30 minute snapshots on what CBT and DBT sessions will look like etc. and has some great playlists.
Most fics I’ve read don’t do a great job of depicting therapy, but the Babes!verse series by @rynfinity has probably some of the most realistic and still really interesting sessions I’ve read as an ongoing arc. The series is long, because it needs to be re: what it’s dealing with, but it’s great, and I definitely recommend looking at another example of how an author tackles these sorts of scenes. Out of the Mouths of Babes / The March of the Damned are the two intertwined series.
I apologise if this sounds discouraging overall, or daunting, but I just want to stress there’s a reason that I’m often not writing therapy in my writing, as anything more than the occasional scene with a non-therapist, or snapshots that are reflected on and that’s it. Falling Falling Stars is the exception to the rule, and unless you’re writing an exception to the rule as well, it’s really worth reflecting on the first six points I wrote - it’ll save you a fuckton of time and research. And if you go ahead with it, I wish you well! :D
*** Also disclaimer: But I still am writing very indulgent therapy that is not beholden to being either a 100% healthy or 100% realistic depiction. The fact is, real therapy sessions are pretty boring for observers except for maybe ten or twenty minutes in the middle at times.
(ETA: It’s just occurred to me that therapy fiction does exist, esp. in the mass media, but that it is - afaik - all unrealistic, dramatised or unhealthy. But if you want to watch a great show - I highly recommend In Treatment with Gabriel Byrne, just by aware that it is depicting, for the most part, unhealthy dynamics which are more character studies than anything).
#asks and answers#pia on writing#pia on psychology#it's even worth being away that clinical psychologists often frown on psychoanalysts#and psychoanalysts often frown on the rigidity of clinical psychology curriculums lol#dr gary works within both schools and is a bit of a rebel in that sense#anyway yeah like#even i was really wary of writing too much dr gary#and only really gave into it indulgently#when people revealed they were enjoying those scenes and dr gary himself#but like#i would hate him as a therapist#he's pushy and sometimes pretty impatient#even what i write re: therapy#is not necessarily a reflection on what a real life person would experience#in the same circumstances#Anonymous
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BUTCHER BABIES' CARLA HARVEY Talks About Being A Grief Counselor For Metal Fans
BUTCHER BABIES vocalist Carla Harvey went on the "Side Jams With Bryan Reesman" podcast to talk about her work as a grief counselor, death doula, and previously, an embalmer, and how those vocations have influenced her life.
She says her family didn't want her to become an embalmer because of what she would see.
"It is a very different, graphic thing," Harvey told Reesman. "You go to a funeral, but you're not preoccupied by what happened to get the body to the point that it's sitting in a casket looking that fresh in front of you. It is completely different than what you think. Embalming is pretty hardcore. I also was an autopsy technician. It can be a little bit barbaric and a little bit gory, and I do think you'd become desensitized after you've done it. It becomes more like a science project. But it is something that most people don't see, won't see, and probably would have a very hard time getting out of their mind. I was just telling Charlie [Benante, ANTHRAX drummer and Harvey's boyfriend] the other night [while] we were out having steaks, I couldn't even eat meat for a while when I started mortuary school, when I started my embalming class. Because when you open up the body and you realize you know what your steak is... I don't know, something comes over you. I started to treat my body with a lot more respect after embalming and doing autopsies because I realized how lucky we are to be upright and walking. You really get a sense for how your body works. We're all these fine-tuned beings walking around upright and doing all these crazy things. I think everyone should at least go to a Body Worlds exhibit and see what is on the inside. So seeing it firsthand [through autopsies], and then also involving people of all different ages, from infancy to old age, has really taught me to live in the moment, be appreciative of what you have, and be respectful of your body."
Harvey also talked on "Side Jams" about working as a grief counselor and a death doula which she described as two separate vocations with some similarities.
"What I do with my grief counseling is I help people who are struggling with a loss," Harvey said on "Side Jams". "It could be the loss of a certain kind of lifestyle, loss of a job, a divorce, or a death. And then as a death doula, I actually help the person who is terminally ill, or dying, [to] fulfill legacy projects. I help them have choices where they didn't know they had choices throughout the death process. I help explain to the family what is happening. I help finalize paperwork that needs to be finalized, but a lot of times it's even just sitting with someone in silence and holding their hand and just being there for people in a time when not everyone wants to be there for you."
There are some people who Harvey counsels who do not know about her musical life. "Not everyone that I counsel is a fan of metal, but many are," she explained. "I found a great niche because a lot of people who love metal don't know how to reach out for help." When asked why she thinks that is, Harvey replied, "I think a lot of metal heads from youth are kind of disenfranchised people. People who were misfits, people who were not supposed to be emotional. Metal is a great release for people, whether people realize it or not. When you go to a concert, you're self medicating by getting out there and screaming and getting in the pit. Women are more apt to discuss their feelings with friends and family members. Men don't do that as much. So my clientele is very male heavy. And it's been awesome to see the light bulbs go off and for them to realize that they can be open, they can discuss things freely. It's a healing process."
Metalheads, Harvey said, "struggle with mental health, they struggle with processing grief. So it's been a really cool way for me to reach out to people that love metal and say, 'Hey, it's okay to feel this way. I can help guide you into healthy grieving practices.’ It's been awesome to be able to help people hands-on again."
BUTCHER BABIES have just kicked off a headlining tour, "Butcher Babies Vs. Goliath", which features the band performing its debut album, "Goliath" — released in 2013 via Century Media Records — in its entirety along with recent hit singles and new material. The tour will stretch to October 8 and will see the group stop at several of the largest U.S. rock festivals, including Rocklahoma, Louder Than Life, Aftershock and more.
Hailing from the City of Angels, BUTCHER BABIES have released two EPs and three albums to date, with their latest 2017 LP, "Lilith", debuting at #1 on iTunes Metal chart and #7 on iTunes Rock chart. The band kicked off 2021 by independently releasing a handful of newly energized singles produced and co-written by Matt Good (FROM FIRST TO LAST), including the most recent track "It's Killin' Time, Baby" in August. Along with previously released singles "Last Dance", "Yorktown", "Sleeping With The Enemy" and "Bottom Of A Bottle", all are to be featured on their upcoming independently released EP.
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So, to start it, you must know that, according to Jung, the functions represent scales of Sensing-Intuition and Thinking-Feeling. The former is about how you perceive and learn information, while the latter is about how you make your judgements. This will be relevant in my explanation.
Also, keep something in mind: this is based solely on my findings and studies. I try as hard as I can to make the information accurate. If there is something wrong with what I said, please, correct me.
Let's start with The Extroverts™. Since these functions are extroverted, they interact with the outer world and on the objective; established facts and procedures, people, exterior feelings, the now, etc.
• Te:
Extroverted thinking, known as Te, is a judging function. This cognitive function is analytical, and Te users are all about facts, hard data, and standardized methods. They have the tendency to worry about what works and makes sense to the majority, and Te users take a logical approach via already existing systems and procedures. Most care about results and production.
Personality types where Te is their dominant:
ENTJ and ESTJ
Personality types where Te is their auxiliary:
INTJ and ISTJ
• Fe:
Extraverted feeling, or Fe, is a judging function. They are able to read one's moods, feelings, and body language, making them aware of what the exterior world likes, deslikes, outer morals, what is acceptable and what isn't. Because some of their priorities are to connect with people and emotions, they tend to change some of their opinions and habits, so they can keep the “harmony”.
Personalities types where Fe is their dominant:
ESFJ and ENFJ
Personalities where Fe is their auxiliaryy:
ISFJ and INFJ
• Se:
Extraverted sensing, or Se, is a perceiving function. Se users are focused on the objective, sensory world, and live in the moment. They make use of the five senses. Down-to-earth and practical, they are aware of what is happening around them, and unlike Ni/Ne, they are realistic. Se users learn about something via action and experiences; they go on new sensations and experiences so they can collect information. “Risk-taker” and “Free-spirit” are some of the titles you could associate to them. Some of the community may say this function has an eye for aesthetics and visuals.
Personalities where Se is their dominant:
ESTP and ESFP
Personalities where Se is their auxiliary:
ISTP and ISFP
• Ne:
Extraverted intuition, or Ne, is a perceiving function. Jokingly speaking, Ne users are the embodiment of the sentence “what if...?”. They interact with the outer world via patterns, metaphors, and abstract ideas. Those who have Ne are known to have many ideas and see the world as a bunch of possibilities to be explored. Ne users are not ALWAYS committed to only one idea. They have many projects, but only finish a few. Most people with this function are very open-minded and curious, and they are attracted to the new and novel. If something doesn't feel fresh to them, though, they end up... dropping it, and goes back in exploring.
Personalities where Ne is their dominant:
ENTP and ENFP
Personalities where Ne is their auxiliary:
INTP and INFP
Now, The Introverts™... since these functions are introverted, they mostly interact on the inner world and on the subjective; their minds, feelings, themselves, etc.
• Ti:
Introverted thinking, or Ti, is a judging function. Like Te, the Ti users are impartial, analytical and take decisions on a logical approach. However, it is more subjective; the systems and frameworks they use are more personalized and authentic to them. “What makes sense to me?” is one of the questions that can be associated with introverted thinking, because they have their own sense of reasoning.
One of the things I should probably add about them is how they handle facts. If an evidence is proven to be correct on a Ti user's perspective, but contradicts with their own logic, they find themself reevaluating their reasoning, so said evidence can fit in.
Personalities where Ti is their dominant:
INTP and ISTP
Personalities where Ti is their auxiliary:
ENTP and ESTP
• Fi:
Introverted feeling, or Fi, is a judging function. Like Fe, they make their decisions based on values and emotions. However, they possess their own moral code, and they possess a sense of self. “What is important to me?” and “what feels right to me?” are one of the questions that you can associate them with. They tend to not care about how the others might feel about their opinions, attitudes, and feelings, and they dislike those who act fake and unauthentic. They tend to stay true to themselves.
Personalities where Fi is their dominant:
INFP and ISFP
Personalities where Fi is their auxiliary:
ENFP and ESFP
• Si:
Introverted sensing, or Si, is a perceiving function. They worry with the “what it is”, and with the details. You could use a school book as an example: the book is full of details and concrete facts. That's how it works for most Si; they care about what is factual, and they prefer reliable evidence. Most Si users compare new information with their sensory data and the past.
Personalities where Si is their dominant:
ISFJ and ISTJ
Personalities where Si is their auxiliary:
ESFJ and ESTJ
• Ni:
Introverted intuition, or Ni, is a perceiving function. Like Ne, Ni users are good at identifying patterns, and both can also be quite attracted to metaphors, symbolism, and abstract concepts. They are focused on internal ideas. Most tend to have a deductive reasoning style to collect information. They try to find connections and trends with already known and old information to put it together, in order to find any clues to the present and future.
Personalities where Ni is their dominant:
INTJ and INFJ
Personalities where Ni is their auxiliary:
ENTJ and ENFJ
While Ni is similar to Si in many ways, one of the differences you might give to Si is that they are more organized in terms of reality and process. Ni users make use of abstract data, symbolism, and how one event has relations with the other, while Si uses more concrete data. Ni is not good at handling details, which is a strength to Si.
I hope you were able to understand something! My apologies if it's late; making the text took longer than I expected. In case there is a part you did not comprehend very well, let me know, and I will make further researching to explain it. You don't have to post this ask; I'm already glad in trying to teach you about the Cognitive Functions.
Thank you for reading through this.
OKAY I DIDNT ANSWER THIS BC I WAS READING OVER IT and ty!!! it makes wayyy more sense the way you put it. tysm for doing this for me :}} its really rather interesting, isnt it? please please please feel free to send me more stuff on it whenever^^ ill do some more research on my own, and itd be awesome to discuss if youd like :]
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Bill Buchalter interview
Bill Buchalter was a level designer for Sunstorm Interactive.
He’s worked on 3 official add-on of Build Engine games: Cryptic Passage for Blood, Suckin’ Grits On Route 66 for Redneck Rampage, Caribbean Life for Duke Nukem 3D.
Interview, November 2020:
Corentin: Can you introduce yourself?
Bill Buchalter: My name is Bill Buchalter. I’m an avid gamer of all kinds – video games, board games, and especially tabletop RPGs. I’m currently a freelance writer for AAW Games (Adventure A Week Games) writing mini adventures for Dungeons & Dragons 5E. I live outside Indianapolis, IN with my wife Jane, our three kids, and our dog Roxi. When I’m not gaming, I also enjoy music, playing guitar, hiking, and camping.
C: With Sunstorm Interactive, you're credited for level design on Cryptic Passage, Caribbean Life and Route 66. How did you start working with Sunstorm and what do you remember from that time?
BB: In the mid 90’s, maybe around 1995 or 96, I was very into playing Duke Nukem 3D. Like most PC gamers at the time, I had played Castle Wolfenstein and Doom, and Duke Nukem just blew me away. Back in those days, when we played online, we would use a 3rd party program called KALI. You dialed up on your modem, logged onto the internet, and then used KALI as a portal to chat with other gamers and find someone to play with. The KALI software would then allow you to network together over the internet and play PVP matches. It was crude, and the lag could be horrible, but we didn’t know any better at the time and we loved it!
I remember I was in a B. Dalton bookstore in the mall one day (another relic of the 90’s that is long gone!) when I found a book called the “Duke Nukem 3D Level Design Handbook”. I was intrigued, and as I flipped through the pages it talked about a program on the Duke Nukem CD called Build, which allowed you to create your own levels. I had no idea Build existed, let alone how to use it. I bought the book and spent the next couple weeks diving into learning how to use Build. I was hooked!
Making my own maps quickly became an obsession. I would share them with my friends on KALI and I quickly earned a reputation for making user maps. I remember there was a map building competition, but I don’t recall who sponsored it. A guy named Robert Travis won the competition. When I saw his maps, I was blown away! His designs were so much more advanced than mine. He was using tricks I had never thought of to get lighting effects and set moods. I had to reach out to him to pick his brain.
Robert responded and we began talking and quickly figured out that we both lived in Indianapolis. He was working for Sunstorm at the time and invited me to come to their office to discuss level design. I met him there one evening, and he showed me some of the stuff he was working on. We ended up playing Duke all night on Sunstorm’s network with some of the other guys in the office. I was in heaven!
Robert introduced me to Anthony Campiti, the lead producer on Sunstorm’s next project – Cryptic Passage, an add-on for a Build engine game called Blood. They invited me to design some levels for the game and I jumped at the chance. Robert assigned me to design an opera house level and immediately I got pictures in my head of the theater scenes from Interview with a Vampire. I went home and worked furiously on designing the level. I was still rough, but with Robert’s help I tweaked things here and there and slowly learned his techniques. In the end I was really pleased with the level I’d designed. Robert and Anthony were happy too and asked me to design a second map specifically for deathmatch.
The next project Sunstorm was working on was Suckin’ Grits on Route 66, an add-on for another Build engine game called Redneck Rampage. Robert again asked if I’d like to be a part of that team and assigned me to build a truck stop level. Using a lot of the things I’d learned on Cryptic Passage, and the campy feel of the Redneck Rampage game, I had a lot of fun designing that level.
The last project I worked on for Sunstorm was Duke Nukem Caribbean Vacation. By this time Duke’s popularity was beginning to wane, and Quake was taking over. Robert was already starting to experiment and learn how to use the Quake engine. I was a new dad at the time (my first daughter had just been born) so unfortunately, I didn’t have the spare time to devote to learning a new engine. I barely had the time to design my level for Duke Caribbean, but I did manage to finish the casino level for that project. I do recall that Robert ended up going through in the end and changing a lot of the aspects of my level to fit the theme they had in mind. I remember being a bit disappointed and not really feeling like the level was “mine” because of so many of the changes. It was the last project I worked on for Sunstorm.
I kept in touch with Robert and Anthony for a while after that. They were branching out, working on other projects, and even trying to develop their own FPS game that I don’t think ever really got off the ground. Sunstorm was having the most success with their Deer Hunter line of games that at the time were selling well in Wal-Mart. Sadly, I eventually just lost touch with those guys.
I’m sure this is WAY more information than you were wanting (I’m a writer… I can’t help but go off the deep end!) but you dusted off some fond, old memories for me, so I apologize for walking so far down memory lane!
C: I see that you're still making maps, different kind of maps! This makes me wonder if maybe you were involved with W!Zone (a pack of maps for Warcraft 2 released by Sunstorm). Can you tell us a bit about that if possible?
BB: I didn’t have any hand in the W!Zone project for Sunstorm, but I loved the Warcraft series. As was common for many video gamers like me, who had roots in fantasy games like D&D, I played a lot of Warcraft and eventually got sucked into the world of MMOs with Ultima Online, Everquest, and World of Warcraft! If only I had back the time I sunk into those games!
These days I’m exclusively writing and designing for Dungeons and Dragons. I started about ten years ago writing for D&D Organized Play in a campaign called Living Forgotten Realms. I co-authored two adventures for that with my good friend, Michael Pearman, and authored a third adventure on my own. As you know from tracking me down via AAW Games, I’ve now authored six adventures for them, five of which are already published and one that is still in the works but should be released soon.
When I do manage to find time for video games, Diablo III is my game of choice these days. I’m looking forward to Season 22 starting here shortly, and like many others, I’m really hoping for something great with Diablo IV. I’ve been a huge fan of the series since the beginning, and even wrote an entire campaign for D&D 5E that translated the story of Diablo III into Dungeons and Dragons for the players in my home game! Thanks again for the opportunity to share some of this history. It was fun putting it all down and reliving those days!
C: There are two signatures in the Truck Stop level for Route 66. Do you remember anything about that ? There also several levels with no known credit : Fun Park, House of ill Repute, Mystery Dino Cave, Bigfoot Convention.
The signature on the truck stop is Route 66 was a joke! I was the only designer on that one. I just signed it "Billy Joe Jim Bob Buchalter" as a joke for bad redneck name. I wasn't the kind of guy that had to sign my maps the EXACT same way every time. :)
Other than the truck stop, I don't recall designing any other maps for Route 66. I pretty sure none of those you listed below were mine, but I don't recall whose they were.
Finally, here are some final comments Bill made after reading through some forum posts:
Wow, I am really quite humbled that you guys looked so deeply into my work! The fact that you could recognize my build style is pretty cool - I didn't even know I had a style! LOL. The truth be told, the reason you probably had so much trouble telling my levels from Robert's is because he was a big influence on me. I learned a lot from him and incorporated a lot of that into the stuff I built.
Its funny how reading through that thread you linked brought back memories... I remember now that my biggest disappointment from Duke Caribbean was that my only level in the game ended up being a secret level - that some people wouldn't even find it or ever play it. I was actually pretty excited about that level. I was the one that suggested a casino because my folks had retired to Vegas, so I'd been in a lot of the casinos there and had some great ideas for the map. I'd forgotten all about the restaurant I worked into it, and the big fish tanks.
There seems to be some debate about Robert. From what I remember, he was a really good guy. Maybe a bit tough to work for, but only because he really strived for our designs to be the best they could be, and he demanded that of both himself and the other designers. As I said before, I learned early on to accept criticism and critique and not take it personally. It was just Robert doing his job. I'll be the first to admit that I designed better levels thanks to the stuff I learned from Robert.
Someone on the message board made a very astute comment, basically to the effect that "Bill had to have other work out there. Sunstorm wouldn't hire an unproven guy off the street." But truth be told, that's exactly what they did! I hadn't done a single thing before working there. But I think a few things played in my favor. First, I lived in Indy, just 15 minutes from their office, so it was easy for me to go in and work directly with Robert. Second, while I didn't have anything officially published, I did have a disk full of the maps I'd designed on my own, and Robert thought I showed promise. I would design at home a lot, then go into the office a couple times a week and sit with Robert while he critiqued my work and offered advice on how to improve it.
I'll be honest - I'm blown away at the number of people STILL playing these old maps we made so many years ago. I watched a couple YouTube videos of a guy playing and reviewing Duke Caribbean and Blood Cryptic Passage. His high praise of both Full House and the Opera House really made my day. It's nice to know that people enjoyed my work.
_____________________________
Thanks a lot to Bill Buchalter for taking the time to answer these questions!
Thanks also for sharing... “Big City” !
A Duke Nukem 3D map he created back in the day before joining with Sunstorm Interactive which was never released before!
Screenshot:
Map download:
https://msdn.duke4.net/bigcity.zip
______
External link:
Duke4 forum blog megathread:
https://forums.duke4.net/topic/11471-blog-interviews-of-build-engine-video-games-developers/page__pid__353013#entry353013
The forum posts Bill read, mentionned above, can be found here:
https://forums.duke4.net/topic/9418-duke-caribbean-multiplayer-levels/
#build#build-engine#blood#duke nukem#redneck-rampage#duke#nukem#duke nukem 3D#video games#route 66#caribbean life#cryptic passage
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Who is the little spoon?
Although it is admittedly more Muu than it is Hannah, there are also variables to consider. Since Muu is typically the more emotionally fragile and somber of the two while he works things out within himself, he finds himself being held more than he holds her. In the event it is her who needs the added consoling, or it just feels like he hasn't been in the position of big spoon in a while, that tends to be when he takes over. Other times he just really wants to cling onto her back more than he wishes for her to do it to him because he finds it equally as comforting as it finds it amusing to be a bit of a koala in those circumstances.
Who sings in the shower?
Muu. Out of any song it could possibly be, his latest is White Woman's Instagram by Bo Burnham. He's having a one man concert all by himself, so don't judge.
Who plays pranks on the other?
Both of them; however, Hannah is definitely better at getting results with hers whereas Muu is typically discovered very early on by not being as thoughtful and observant as he might think he is.
Who is the one who listens to pop music?
Both of them. Muu, though, even as his diverse as his music taste is, tends to listen to a lot of basic pop music made by performers that Hannah typically doesn't based on the fact that their morals don't align with her own. Muu, for example, is a big fan of Taylor Swift of all people due to her mainly romantic based lyrics. Hannah on the other hand wouldn't dare to stoop to that level of music taste when she could be supporting someone much better with her time and money instead.
Who brings the other a random cup of joe?
Hannah. If Muu's doing it, it is definitely a homemade version of someone he saw someone ordering from Starbucks on Tiktok. Most of which are overly sugary and in need of some further adjustments as he attempts to make the entire thing as close to vegan as he can manage, but the thought is there. Hannah on the other hand does it with the purpose of just being considerate and domestic along with the process of prepping the two of them for the day, or by trying to just get a smile out of Muu in general, so she would do it with more consistently and care than he might.
Who picks the cheesy movies for date night?
Both. They can be a little limited in content they can mutually watch together as certain topics for either partner are a must to be avoided, and that usually requires a lot of prior made effort and research, so romantic comedies, or comedies in general, are usually a much safer bet than a drama or horror film would be. Plus they tend to be so hilariously mushy that they have fun repeating the most laughable yet cringy lines to one another for their own amusement.
Who is more likely to feed the other in public?
Hannah. I can guarantee this woman has caught herself going as far as cutting food up for him out of familiarity of taking care of Lucy, as well as himself even from the time they were only teens. She is a doting wife to be, and this man has no qualms about being seen eating from a fork she holds out for him. On the flipside, if it is something he has personally made by hand to expand his cooking skills in an organic and plant based direction, you can bet he is right there to feed her a bite in order to gain feedback on his work. Don't think she gets off too easy. Especially when they do end up moving onto the next step of having a baby together, and needs someone to assist in taste testing the homemade baby food he plans on making.
Who gives the other random little compliments?
Hannah. This woman just breathes out positive affirmations, and Muu is right there to receive them every time.
Who is always stealing food from the other’s plate?
Hannah. Muu is very particular about what he eats on behalf of cutting out all meat and as dairy for sensory and health reasons, so he doesn't really pick from other people's plates to maintain that. If she eats French fries around him, he's definitely stealing a couple though.
Who is more likely to let the other borrow their car?
Neither since Muu can't drive and really has no ambition to learn since driving gives him an incredible amount of anxiety. He has no problems with managing his own way to places via the public transportation system, or by bike.
Who makes the list before they go grocery shopping?
They are both very practical in writing their own lists to follow for when they grocery shop for their own reasons, and yet both are equally as guilty of putting in snacks they didn't anticipate buying simply because it sounds good. Worse even when Lucy, and someday Daisy, is out shopping with them, because what babies want, babies get. That is at least what Muu holds himself to no matter how many times Lucy has to remind him of how old she is.
Who makes sure the other takes their meds when sick?
Hannah. Same way with making sure enough rest and hydration is being considered as well. Her immune system is also better than his is on account of him working in education and catching germs quite often, and because of her being what she is in general. He's also quite the baby when ill. Definitely has this man asked her to make him some soup that then had to be fed to him because he was supposedly too tired and sickly to move his arm to do it himself.
Who watches sports and has to teach the other the rules?
Muu. He may have gotten a tad bit too invested into Women's basketball after a player in the sport showed up on his fyp on Tiktok. His initial reasons for taking up watching the sport as a whole was just to support her career, and to admire tall, beautiful women that could either carry him, or beat him up with their muscular limbs, but eventually he managed to pick up more about the rules of the sport with each watch. He's attempted to then share that knowledge with Hannah, who just listens on account of just wanting to hear him talk about what he enjoys.
Who pulls the other to their feet for a dance in the living room?
Muu. The man definitely loves his music. Hannah, however, is the one more likely to pull him in for hugs, such as comforting him when he is sad, as well as to bring him in close to her to present the mood of intimacy. These two have maybe managed to turn playful dances or attempt at wrestling with one another into full on sexual intercourse s couple of times. Neither is really sorry.
Who has to keep reminding the other to hurry or they’ll be late?
Muu. By God, if he is told a time that they will be leaving at, she had better bet that they really be out the door at least a couple minutes prior to that earlier discussed time, because he can not stand to not follow through with those things. It is a habit tied to him being autistic that will prove to be the most fun when they try and get out to places as parents with a baby.
Who is the one most likely to get a tattoo with the other’s name?
Neither would really go as far as to get each other's names permanently tattooed on them, but they' definitely consider something more along the lines of a symbol, or quote that best describes their relationship. Muu has considered the idea that they split the phrase "You are never too much for someone who can't get enough of you" into "You are never too much" and "Someone can't get enough of you" into a couple's tattoo idea. He already decided he'd get his on his side since he just likes the appeal of them. Actually he'd probably get a couple of them. Another one he'd want is of the wire robot in the Save Me by Gotye music video while she gets the other once, since, even today, that song still reminds him so much of how she has been there for him over the years that he can't help but think of her every time he hears it
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