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estudos-sociais · 2 years

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How to Make Friends

A few weeks ago, I got a note from a reader named Amanda Schockling. She wrote, “I’ve been out of college for 3 years now and my question is this: How do you make meaningful friendships and connections as an adult?”

It’s a good question, but I didn’t know how to answer it. After I graduated, I moved to D.C. for a new job. It was a really tough year that turned into three tough years. I met friends through work, but never felt like I found my people. I discovered that I loved yoga, but never found a community there, probably because you don’t talk during yoga. Maybe if I’d read this, things would have turned out differently.

There’s no one way to make a friend, but there are definitely things you can do to try. I asked The Edit contributors and some co-workers from around The Times if they’d ever had trouble making friends and if they had any advice. Here’s what they said:

If you’re looking for a cheat sheet Jazmine Hughes, associate editor for The New York Times Magazine Making friends is actually quite simple; most people are flattered that someone cool (that would be you, taking my advice) wants to befriend them. If there is a person in your workplace, church group or running club that sets off Potential Friend sirens in your head, here’s what you do:

1) Become a person who is comfortable spouting non-sequiturs. Friendship starts by talking, which means that someone has to start talking! Comment on the weather, or the smell of the room, or something on TV last night … regularly. It’s pleasant to make conversation about something light. Just talk about Beyoncé!

2) Then, once you have built up a rapport with your Potential Friend, you have to DTT: Divulge To Them. Share a very tiny secret, like you have cramps or you’re hung over or you accidentally voted for Bush. This is step one to building trust.

3) The next step is crucial! After you DTT, wait a period of time, and then refer back to the thing you divulged to them! You are creating an inside joke. THE FOUNDATION OF FRIENDSHIP.

4) And finally, you have to ask them to hang out with you one on one. And then again, 2-6 weeks later. Then they should get the hint and ask you to hang out, too. Now you are friends. Congrats!

If you’re in college Kevin Liao, contributor to The Edit When I first got to college, I immediately felt an unshakable isolation. “I must be doing something wrong,” I thought. But I soon found comfort in my dorm’s RAs, who assured me this was a normal part of being at a new school. And while they didn’t magically cure my loneliness, they definitely helped me live with the feeling.

Lauretta Charlton, Race/Related editor I went the University of San Francisco, but my best friends from college went to other schools in the Bay Area. What brought us together was music. I went to shows every week — Bottom of the Hill, the Fillmore, Great American Music Hall — and that’s were I found my crew. There were times when I went to shows alone, and that was hard. But once the band started playing, I forgot about how embarrassed I was to show up solo. Music brings people together.

Hallie Reed, contributor to The Edit In high school I had a hard time making friends, so I tried to make it easier on myself in college. I chose a college with small classes. I pledged a sorority so I would have built-in social activities. I joined the crew team so that exercising would be social, too. It’s gone a lot better than high school so far, but there’s still moments of loneliness even in my sophomore year.

Claire Haug, contributor to The Edit What they don’t tell you when you’re filling out your college applications is that college is an inherently lonely experience. So much of your college life is spent alone, whether it’s studying or doing errands or just watching a movie by yourself on a Friday night because none of your friends’ schedules line up. One of the most valuable things I’ve learned in college so far is how to be alone without being lonely.

If you’re starting a new job Caity Weaver, writer for The New York Times Magazine and Styles The best way to make friends is to be curious about people. This doesn’t mean you should say “Tell me about yourself!” to everyone you meet — that’s disgusting. When you start a new job, transmit the message that you are friendly by peppering co-workers with bite-sized questions about their lives and jobs. Most people will think you have demonstrated good taste by being interested in them. If they give you one word answers, or avoid eye contact, they aren’t looking to make a friend right now. Move on.

John-Michael Murphy, software engineer I worked my first job in a small college town in North Carolina. While there were a lot of young college students around, there weren’t many young professionals in my same stage of life. Being gay in a conservative state added another wrinkle. I never found a group of friends like I had in college. Instead, I wove a fabric of unconventional friendships, many which I still maintain. I made friends with local musicians and scheduled coffee with professors on campus. I found these friends when I stopped looking for people who shared my age and interests and when I stopped letting fear of embarrassment or awkwardness get in the way. Scheduling phone calls with my long-distance friends helped. So did widening the radius on dating apps.

If you just moved Sopan Deb, culture reporter Shortly after I graduated from Boston University in 2010, I moved to New York and started working as an assistant producer at NBC’s “Rock Center with Brian Williams.” I wasn’t the happiest person in the world at the job, namely because the show’s low ratings meant it could get canceled at any second, which is, uh, what happened.

But leading up to the unceremonious axing, it was a stressful experience. Add in a painful break up with my college girlfriend, my head wasn’t in a good place. I needed to find something to help take the edge off.

I took an improv class.

There are two things I recommend to every 20-something year old. Take an improv class and see a therapist. Even if you feel like you’re very mentally in touch with yourself, it’s helpful to talk through things with someone.

And improv is an incredible experience. You get to create new worlds out of nothing. It’s such a social experience that you can’t help but make friends. And even if you don’t, you’re laughing the whole time. And when you are a recently-graduated young professional, experiencing being on your own in a brutal city like New York, you can’t ask for too much more.

Stine Dahlberg, managing director of brand marketing I have a habit of relocating, having done so nine times in 15 years. When I moved to New York a year ago I decided to see it as a catalyst for doing things I’ve never tried before. Continuing Education classes were a great way to meet new people and I got to try new things like graphic design or drawing. Many companies have HR budgets to fund that, use them! And if you can, find a co-working or community space with events and talks. I’ve met so many amazing women at The Wing.

Tim Hatton, contributor to The Edit After four years of living with roommates, I came into this summer terrified to have an apartment to myself and an internship in a cubicle. That’s not to say I don’t like being alone. I do, but I also know that means I’m always at risk of isolating myself. It’s been important to plan ahead and actively make time to spend with other people.

If you’re just getting older Robbie Harms, contributor to The Edit I teach fifth grade, and I often envy how easily friendships form among 10 year olds. Four square, Fortnite, food — all of these can spark conversation. Heck, the mere act of sitting next to the same person for five-plus hours a day is bound to produce at least a few friendships.

In the post-college years, I’ve learned that there is no secret formula, no three-step process that results in an impressive social circle. Instead, I’ve found it’s best to keep it simple: Be kind and approachable. At least, that’s what I’ve learned from my fifth graders.

Claire O’Neill, art director for NYT Climate In some ways, the older you get the harder it seems — when you’re way less physically capable of all-nighters and way too busy for the hours-on-end hangs like you had in college. Over the years, though, I’ve found that all it really takes is one good friend. Someone who you can be totally yourself around, riff and grow with. The click is fast and natural with a person who just gets you, and who you get in return. It’s also way more comforting and rewarding than a big circle of acquaintances who keep you busy, but maybe a little less grounded.

Ian Caveny, contributor to The Edit My wife and I have started a practice we call The Friendship Meal. What happens is something like this: we take a person or a couple and invite them to come have dinner with us. It’s almost always a disorienting thing to begin with — we don’t know them, they don’t know us, and everyone’s pretty shy. And sometimes the meals stay there: shyness and lack of connection, we eat and go separate ways. But sometimes that special spark happens, and, all-of-a-sudden, the conversations last for hours. And that makes the risk worth it!

Have you ever struggled to make friends? Do you have any advice for how to get through it? We want to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] with the subject line “Friends” and we’ll share some of your answers in the future. Please include your full name and location.

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radiantmists · 3 years

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Title: and you give yourself away

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

Pairing: Jon/Martin

Rating: Gen

Word Count: 4414

Jon is not an idiot. Contrary to what some of the people who love him might believe, he’s not even entirely oblivious to social cues, though he’ll admit they elude him perhaps more often than is standard.

All of this to say that in the week following their escape from the Lonely, as Martin graduates from shy smiling glances and tentative clutching of clammy hands to full-bellied laughter and warm, steady embraces, Jon is fully capable of figuring out where things are going. And, yes, the idea makes him uneasy when he faces it head on, but if there's something more he can do to feed the way Martin is unfolding, blossoming into the man he'd been before— except more sure of himself, somehow, steadier—

Well, there isn't much Jon wouldn't attempt for that, given the option. This is something small, something he's not even actually opposed to, just... less than completely sure of.

So when they’re sitting on the couch together, giggling over some charming thing the grocer had said to Martin, and Jon looks up to find Martin’s blue-green-grey eyes mere inches from his own, a breath caught in each of their throats, he's prepared for what Martin is going to say before the first sound emerges.

“Jon,” he whispers, “can I k—”

“Yes,” he blurts before Martin can finish.

Too loud and too abrupt; they both rear back with the force of it, and for a moment Jon feels like an utter idiot before he notices Martin giggling softly.

“Not eager at all, are you?” he teases, and now Jon hesitates.

The thing is—he’s not oblivious, which means he’s been thinking about it. He’d known how Martin felt since just after he woke up and listened to that awful tape with Elias; perhaps he’d figured it out even before that, somewhere between the fifth cup of perfectly-brewed, perfectly-timed tea in as many days and the third scrambled phone call from an ocean away, picked up on the second ring despite the forgotten time-zones.

But there had been so much going on, at first, that Jon had never had the chance to really think about it. And then after he’d woken, when he’d really had the chance to consider what he and Martin were to each other, it had always been in a sort of abstract sense—I need him to be okay, I need to trust him and I do trust him, and in the most maudlin moments of hopeful fantasy, I want him to still want me.

Only now, when they’d found that against all odds they were okay, and they did trust each other, and even begun to signal that they wanted each other, had Jon begun to consider what exactly ‘wanting’ might look like for Martin.

“I—wait,” he begins, the word tasting bitter. He knows Martin won’t be unkind about this, but that isn’t necessarily the same as understanding. Jon still has to say it. “You can kiss me, but only if you won’t be offended if I don’t like it.”

Martin sits up shock-straight, eyes going wide as he looks at Jon. “I’m not going to do it if you’re not going to like it! If you didn’t want to, why didn’t you just say no?”

Jon sighs, irritated. That hadn’t come out right.

“I didn’t say no because I do want you to kiss me,” he says, trying to be patient. “I mean, if you want to—”

“Of course I want to, Jon, but that doesn’t mean you have to say yes!” Martin replies, frustrated, gesturing sharply with his hands. Jon blinks, leaning back slightly, and Martin sighs, arms coming down and his tone going softer, smaller. “It’s not—this isn’t something you need to give me, Jon. I know you love me. It’s okay to have boundaries.”

Jon hadn’t had to come out to Martin, because the archival gossip chain had done it for him. But he supposes there was enough ambiguity in the terms that it’s worth having the conversation anyway.

“Asexual people can and do kiss, you know,” he says. “Some even have and enjoy sex, although I have to be clear that that will not be happening.”

“I—I know that,” Martin says, going red and avoiding Jon’s eyes. “And I know you can kiss, I wouldn’t have asked otherwise, but—you said you wouldn’t like it.”

Jon wrinkles his nose with a sigh. A whole week of turning this over, of deciding how he wanted to address this possibility and even rehearsing what he needed to say, and he’s still made a mess of it.

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t like it,” he says slowly. “I asked you to be prepared for the possibility that I might not, because I don’t actually know. I want to try, but only if you’re okay with this maybe being the only one you get.”

There’s a long moment of silence.

“Jon,” Martin says slowly. “Have you not—would that have been your first kiss?”

Jon has to bite his tongue on the first, defensively scathing reply, and nods instead.

“But—”

Martin stops, hesitant, and Jon waves permission for him to continue with a sigh. Maybe the next question is going to be indelicate or ignorant, but better to address it than to leave him wondering.

“I mean, I know you’ve been in relationships before,” Martin explains carefully. “I—I’m not as surprised that you haven’t done it, there’s nothing wrong with that, I’m just confused because it seems like if it was something you wanted, you could have?”

Turning that one over in his mind, Jon nods slowly.

“I suppose you’re right,” he allows. “I guess it isn’t something I want in the traditional sense. I don’t look at someone—even someone I love—and want to kiss them, any more than I look at them and want to have sex. But sex at least makes sense,” he grouses. “As… off-putting as I find the idea on a personal level, it’s necessary in an evolutionary sense and obviously it involves biological processes that are designed to be enjoyable. I get why people do it, and those reasons don’t appeal to me.”

At this point, Martin is brick red, but he nods in acknowledgement. “And… kissing is different?”

“Yes!” Jon’s maybe a little excited to get to talk about this. Sue him, he’s been thinking about it enough. “It’s not as awful as sex seems, but it also serves no functional purpose, and yet the whole world is utterly convinced that it’s absolutely wonderful, and I don’t understand it. Another person’s mouth does not seem like an appealing thing to have in your mouth. But then again, objectively neither do pen caps, and you’ve seen me with those.”

Martin snickers. “Apparently they’re irresistible.”

“Yes, well,” Jon says, flapping a hand. He’d made the joke, but somehow he still feels a prickle of embarrassment, so he moves on quickly. “The point is, there’s nothing inherently appealing or especially off-putting about it, in theory. But I’ve never had an especially good reason to try, and none of the people I’ve dated really liked it, so I’ve never bothered. That doesn’t mean I’m not… curious.”

His first two partners had also been ace; Georgie wasn’t, but simply ‘wasn’t a fan’ of kissing, though she’d never been able to explain why, any more than Jon could articulate why the idea of anyone touching him sexually made his stomach flip even though he saw nothing inherently wrong with the act. It didn’t matter why, really; as Martin had said, boundaries are important. But it meant he’d stayed curious.

There was a little more to it, of course. His first boyfriend had asked Jon if he wanted to try kissing once, casually, since he’d never done it before. Jon had declined. Perhaps he hadn’t been quite as secure in his sexuality then, perhaps he did actually feel more of a need to at least try for Martin, who genuinely wanted this. Jon likes to think, though, that his desire to try simply speaks to how comfortable this whole relationship has felt, how safe. There was no reason that kissing had to be any different from that pastry recipe they’d done together the other day, the one they’d thrown out after three bites each with little more than a regretful shrug.

“I… that makes sense,” Martin says finally, and Jon sits up.

“You still want to, then?” he asks.

Martin blinks, an uncertain smile spreading on his face. “You are excited.”

“I’ve been thinking about it!” Jon says defensively, and Martin gives a shocked laugh-gasp. “I mean—I thought you might want to, which meant I had to decide whether I wanted to try, and so now I just… I’ve just ruined the mood, I suppose,” he finishes, deflating.

Martin’s smile doesn’t grow, but it stops twitching and tucks in at the corners like it’s decided that it’s there to stay. “I wouldn’t say that. Unless you’d rather not, of course.”

“No, I’m fine,” Jon replies. “Let’s try it.”

He studies Martin’s face, leaning forward slightly. Jon has considered the mechanics of this before, of course, and he’s seen it in movies, but there’s a difference between knowing how to do something theoretically and having experience, so he’s hoping Martin will take the lead, as it were…

With a frustrated noise, Martin pulls back.

“What?” Jon asks, blinking. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, I—I guess I’m just nervous now!” Martin replies, running a hand through his hair. “I mean, I brushed my teeth this morning, but that was hours ago, what if my mouth tastes weird?”

Jon frowns. “Is that usually a problem?”

“Not—really? Not unless you’ve just woken up, or eaten something really strong…”

Would Martin’s mouth even taste that different from his? They’d eaten the same things today, after all, and used the same toothpaste. The memory of the bathroom with their toothbrushes sitting in the same cup, of sitting across from each other over a lunch they’d made with crisp sunlight streaming through the window, makes Jon grin a little even as Martin barrels on.

“Or—I thought, something chaste at least to start, but lots of people like deeper kisses way better, and really I’m not exactly talented, or even all that experienced! What if I put you off kissing forever, but you actually just don’t like kissing me?”

He looks down at his hands as soon as he’s finished; Jon reaches out slowly to take one in his own, contemplating this.

“If I don’t like kissing you,” he says finally, carefully, “then that’s all I need to know, isn’t it?”

Martin makes a cut-off sound that Jon can’t identify, and when he chances a glance at Martin’s face, his eyes are wide.

“I’m never going to want to kiss someone else,” Jon points out. “Best case scenario, you show me a fun new activity we can do together. If we… bump teeth or something, some good reason it’s an abnormally bad kiss, we can try again. And worst case—well, you don’t get to kiss anyone, I suppose, but—”

“It’s not like it’s something I need,” Martin interrupts, but he’s squeezing Jon’s hand. “Yeah, okay, I see your point.”

“There’s no pressure to be perfect from my end,” Jon agrees, but now he can feel himself hesitating. “But—there’s a good chance that I won’t like it, and it won’t be your fault, but if you’d rather not try at all, I won’t be upset.”

“Jon, I can promise you you’re not pressuring me into this,” Martin smiles.

Jon bites his lip. “I don’t want to do it if it’s going to upset you, or make you feel like you’re… inadequate.”

Martin sighs.

“Jon, I feel inadequate all the time,” he says frankly. “As long as you don’t—I don’t know, dump me over it? Make fun of me?—it’s not going to make a noticeable difference.”

“I think that’s worse,” Jon replies, and Martin winces. Jon wonders how much he’s already contributed to Martin’s feelings of inadequacy and decides it’s definitely worse.

“Well— I can promise I won’t be upset with you if you don’t like it,” Martin says finally. “But I think at this point we’re in utter agreement that we don’t have to, so maybe we can just—table this discussion?”

Jon sighs and shifts to rest his head against Martin’s shoulder instead. “Yeah, okay.”

Martin’s soft laughter rumbles in his chest and through Jon’s cheek into his skull. “Wow, you sound more disappointed than I am.”

“I was a bit excited to try,” Jon admits, running his thumb over the back of Martin’s hand in his own. “I’ve been curious about this for decades, Martin.”

“…yeah, that tracks.”

His tone is fond, but Jon still shifts uncomfortably, trying to make himself smaller.

“That’s me,” he says quietly. “Can’t leave any question unasked.”

Martin sighs. “Jon, you know that’s not what I meant.”

Jon does know. He does, except--

“You don’t mean it until it’s what makes me do something idiotic,” he blurts, sitting up. “It’s all just me, Martin, and—”

“Okay, being curious doesn’t require you to be ridiculously self-sacrificing!” Martin argues, letting go of Jon’s hands to gesture in frustration.

“Well, fine,” Jon bites back, crossing his arms. “I’m curious and an idiot. Happy?”

“No!” Martin snaps. “There’s a difference between being stupid, which you aren’t, and being so convinced that your own safety doesn’t matter that you’ll knowingly throw yourself into danger, or, or let someone maim you for a story!”

Jon opens his mouth. Closes it. Martin is studying him, the tension slowly leeching out of his posture and leaving him just looking tired.

“I… I needed to know those things,” Jon says weakly.

“Most of them, yeah,” Martin agrees. “But—Jon, when you need something, when you’re curious, why is you getting hurt the first option? When did that happen?”

When had it happened?

Long before he’d entered the Lonely, the possibility of his death not even registering if it gave him a chance to retrieve Martin. Surely before Jared, when he’d traded an extra rib for a statement with hardly a moment’s hesitation. One rib for the statement, one for Daisy, as though they were remotely equal, and the obscenity of it had occurred to Jon only later. He’d been glad, in a sick way, that it hadn’t worked.

He hadn’t known exactly what would happen, with Melanie, but he hadn’t exactly been surprised to look up from the bullet to see her swinging at him with murder in her eyes. It had been worth it, though, even if she’d hated him afterward.

Jon had expected to die in the Unknowing, deep down. He’d accepted that the circus would kill him at some point during that interminable month with Nikola, though he hadn’t realized it until he’d been accepting Michael’s offer of a cleaner death—a trade in itself, he supposed, his life for an end when he’d had nothing else to bargain with. He’d spent the next few months increasingly exhausted, until putting himself on Trevor and Julia’s shitlist in exchange for some real answers from Gerry had hardly even been difficult.

Did Martin even know about any of those? He hasn’t seen Jon’s rib, hasn’t asked about the new scar on Jon’s shoulder or, in the whirlwind surrounding their departure, what exactly two hunters were doing at the Institute. He must have listened to some of the tapes, in those months that Jon can’t quite remember, but had the one recording Michael’s statement ever made its way to the Institute, or has Jon just automatically included it in the perfectly-accessible archive in his head?

Martin might be thinking about the Unknowing, or perhaps about Jon’s hand, which he’d patiently helped re-wrap on the day Jon had returned to the Institute, when the wound had practically ripped itself open with the strain of holding a shovel and digging.

Maybe he’s thinking about less concrete hurts, the way Jon had thrown himself into the idea of being useful if he couldn’t be human. About how Jon couldn’t give his life anymore, how he’d traded his human death to Oliver in exchange for waking up.

Or maybe it had been earlier, in a moment Martin will remember: that first, frantic rush of Prentiss’ attack, when Jon had grabbed for the tape recorder on the desk through a sea of writhing white flesh without even considering whether there might be a second.

Whatever Martin is thinking about, he must see on Jon’s face that he doesn’t have an answer, that the list is so long and so old that he can’t even begin.

“That isn’t okay, Jon,” he says softly.

“You did it,” Jon finds himself replying, defensive. “With Peter, you knew he was dangerous—”

Martin sighs, cutting him off even though the sound is almost silent. “Yes, I did, Jon, after you’d been in a coma for three months, and Tim and Sasha were dead, and the Institute had been attacked again, and my mother had just died. Do you really think that was a healthy decision?”

No. No, it had been terrifying, listening to the tape they’d found in the Panopticon and hearing Martin’s recorded voice call it a good way to get killed. Even with him bustling around packing in the other room, perfectly safe, Jon had felt the terror rise up cold and choking in his throat.

“You’re not a tool, Jon, and you’re worth more than a statement or a convenient solution to a problem,” Martin says. “It terrifies me that you don’t seem to get that.”

“It—I can see why it would,” Jon allows, throat tight. “But what I am now, whatever it is that Peter thinks Magnus ‘got’ out of their bet—”

“That isn’t your fault, Jon—”

“I hurt people to live, Martin,” Jon replies, exhausted. “Don’t I owe those people—and the people I’ve gotten killed—whatever good I can do, even if it might not be… comfortable?”

Martin leans back, his eyes closed. He looks hurt, and Jon feels abruptly and deeply ashamed of himself. After everything he’s gone through, with everything he’s still struggling with, Martin shouldn’t have to deal with Jon’s baggage as well.

He’s searching for the words to make this go away, to assure Martin that he’ll think about it and that he’s not planning to throw himself into danger any time soon, that he’s happy to stay up here and leave it all behind for as long as it’s safe or until Martin wants to go, when Martin speaks.

“What do I owe you, then?”

Jon blinks. “What?”

“For making you come after me,” Martin explains. “My plan didn’t accomplish much except for giving Magnus something he wanted, after all.”

“That wasn’t your fault,” Jon argues. “I—it was my choice to go in, I—”

“It was Tim’s choice to go into the Unknowing,” Martin replies. “And Daisy’s for that matter. They didn’t do it for you, or even really because of you.”

Tim wouldn’t have chosen to go in if Jon hadn’t utterly ruined his life; neither he nor Sasha would have died if Jon hadn’t asked them to be his assistants in the first place. And even in the Unknowing itself, if Jon had just been able to see through it back then the way Elias—Jonah—had predicted he should, the way he’d almost easily found his way out of the Lonely, they could all have gotten out just fine.

Martin glares at him, apparently reading the justifications on his face. “They chose, Jon, with their eyes wide open. Don’t tell me otherwise, because I won’t believe you.”

“Even ignoring that,” Jon says, though the words are bitter, “it’s not—we’re not alike. You hadn’t hurt anyone—”

“I’ve been thinking about that one, actually,” Martin says, and his tone has gained the distant, thoughtful tinge he’d always had in his lonely office on the topmost floor of the Institute. Jon reaches for his hand, worried, and Martin doesn’t move away, but doesn’t close his own fingers, either. “I was enough of an avatar to convince Peter, wasn’t I? He must have been able to feel the Lonely on me, even if some of it was lies. That power had to come from somewhere. From someone, someone afraid.”

“He had control over the whole Institute,” Jon points out. “Maybe the low-level loneliness just sort of… carried over?”

But Martin shakes his head. “Maybe a little,” he says, “but I don’t think so.”

“Why?” Jon demands, frustrated. “There was no one who came in and made a bloody statement about you ruining their lives. Who did you hurt?”

“You, I think,” Martin answers, looking down at their hands. “Most of the Institute, they were afraid of the policy changes that Peter was making, or that he’d fire them or their friends—well, disappear them, but they mostly didn’t know that. And at first I think you were worried about what he’d do to me, too, but…”

“You kept making me leave,” Jon realizes, the words coming out almost before he understands them. “I started to worry that you’d chosen the Lonely, started to be afraid of more than just Peter realizing you were conning him, that you’d decide you really were better off without me.”

Martin stares at him, hands still limp in Jon’s. “That was… God, I’m right, aren’t I? You just Knew it.”

Jon had.

“It—it doesn’t matter,” he insists, squeezing at Martin’s hands almost desperately. “You didn’t even know you were doing it, it—”

“I knew I was signing myself over to an evil fear god, which is more than you did, going in,” Martin objects. “I knew Peter was evil, I knew you weren’t doing well—”

“It wasn’t your job to manage my emotional state, Martin—”

“Well, I’d have liked not to make it worse!” he snaps back. “God, talk about poor self-worth, you saved me after I practically left you to die over Peter Lukas’ theories—”

“About the literal apocalypse,” Jon points out. “It isn’t like I’ll be doing better if the Extinction really does emerge.”

Martin snorts dismissively. “His solution was to take over the world instead and kill the whole Institute in the process, that wouldn’t have been better either. And I might not have known that, but I did figure his plan was to use me for a ritual, and I still played along.”

“Because he’d have thrown you into the Lonely as soon as he realized you’d turned on him,” Jon replies.

“Which he did anyway. I’d have had to stop listening to him at some point.”

“Well, we did find out about the Panopticon, and Magnus,” Jon argues. “And you didn’t know if there was something even bigger he was leading up to, something we could use. You were doing the best you could, Martin, it’s only hindsight that makes the other options seem so much more obvious.”

Martin is blinking at him, gaze steady. Jon looks back. Thinks over his last few words. Makes a frustrated noise.

“It’s really not—”

“You’re genuinely so smart,” Martin interrupts, in a tone of wonder, “and yet so unbelievably stubborn. Yes, Jon, it is the same! You made some mistakes, most of them totally understandable in context, and none of them, even the really awful ones, mean you have to—to keep giving away bits of yourself!”

Martin voice has risen, gotten harsher as he goes, and he’s squeezing Jon’s hands tight enough that he can’t get them free to cross his arms, so all Jon’s frustration goes into his tone.

“Fine,” he snaps. “Fine! Neither of us will blame ourselves for things we couldn’t control, and we’ll both value ourselves more and build healthier self-images and all of that, and everything will be fine. Deal?”

“Deal.”

Jon glares. Martin scowls back, jaw set, still holding Jon’s hands tightly.

“Just like that,” Jon says.

“Absolutely.”

One more second of stubborn frustration passes. Then, helplessly, Jon snorts. Martin’s face twists, confused-irritated-wry, and then he’s snickering too, until they’re both laughing desperately, each leaning forward until Jon’s head is practically tucked under Martin’s chin.

“It’s not going to be that easy, you know,” Jon murmurs when they’ve calmed down, looking up to meet Martin’s eyes properly.

It’s an understatement; it’ll be hard enough just to keep things as good as they are. Martin still starts to drift off if he’s left alone for long enough, and no deal they make with each other is going to change the way Jon’s monstrous appetite is already starting to clamor for a statement.

“Well, at least we’re agreed,” Martin replies, but there’s a dry note in his voice that Jon knows means he understands. “We can remind each other.”

“I suppose.”

Their faces, once again, are very close together, and Jon abruptly realizes that he can feel Martin’s soft, tingling breaths on his cheeks. He pulls back, wrinkling his nose.

“What?”

“Nothing, just—breathing on me,” Jon explains. He’d mentioned his discomfort with that on their first night here, when he’d made sure there was a pillow between him and Martin on the bed.

Martin hums acknowledgement, then cocks his head in thought. Jon feels a curl of unease; this argument has been draining enough already.

“You know,” Martin says, “when you kiss someone, you can definitely feel them breathing on your face.”

“Oh,” Jon replies, utterly thrown. That was what had started this whole conversation. “Well. I probably wouldn’t have liked it much, then.”

“Good. And we figured it out without you actually having to do the uncomfortable thing,” Martin says. Jon sighs, then squints at him.

“And without you feeling like you’ve messed it up,” he replies pointedly, and Martin opens his mouth, then stops and chuckles.

“See? We’re going to be great at this.”

It’s not even remotely true. Jon still wants to know what kissing is like, though not with any real urgency, just as before; he’s still alarmed by Martin apparently feeling inadequate ‘all the time,’ and he doubts this has made a dent in it. Still, it might at least not make it worse.

Jon groans, leaning forward to rest his head on Martin’s chest and bringing his arms up to snake around his torso. “We can just hug instead.”

“Yeah,” Martin replies, folding him in tighter. “Yeah, okay.”

#tma #tma fanfiction #jonmartin #martin blackwood #jonathan sims #jon archivist #ive just started posting stuff #if people like it they like it #if they dont they dont #at least they get to see it #my writing

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longitudinalwaveme · 3 years

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Flash Villains: Who’s The Most Evil?

Like all heroes, the Flash’s villains vary widely in terms of threat level, motivation, and level of malice. Unlike most heroes, Flash is relatively unique insofar as most of his villains aren’t especially malicious. However, that doesn’t mean that all of them are sympathetic.

The most malicious Flash villains, to my mind, are probably Eobard Thawne (aka Professor Zoom the Reverse-Flash), Gorilla Grodd, Cicada, and Murmur. Eobard is a predatory stalker and has caused more personal harm to Barry than anyone else, Grodd is a sadist who wants world domination, Cicada led a cult that murdered hundreds, and Murmur is a creepy serial killer. None of them have ever displayed any signs of remorse or real humanity (and yes, I recognize the inherent meaninglessness of saying a gorilla has no humanity; I couldn’t think of another term.)

Blacksmith, Abra Kadabra, and Girder the rusty rapist are also pretty high on the list. Kadabra is frighteningly unhinged and has very little regard for human life. Blacksmith organized a plot to take over the entire city and arranged for such things as framing Hartley for his parents’ murder and convincing Jay and Joan that Joan was dying of cancer. She also pointlessly killed Rainbow Raider, who posed zero threat to her. And Girder is...well...a rapist. Besides being angry and creepy around women, he has no other noticeable personality traits, so he’s pretty easy to hate. I guess Plunder would also fall around here, though he had so little page time that I have a hard time getting a good read on his personality.

Beyond this point, things start getting complicated. While Grodd, Eobard, and Kadabra are almost always portrayed as malicious and dangerous, and Blacksmith, Girder, Murmur, Cicada, and Plunder were really only ever written by one person (at least in major roles), how malicious the other villains are varies widely between writers.

That being said, Hunter Zolomon (Zoom) and Thaddeus Thawne (Inertia) would probably fall just below Plunder on the list. Zoom is hard to rank, because while his actions are often heinous, he seems to be legitimately mentally ill; to the point where I think he’s one of the very few supervillains who could successfully use the insanity defense in real life. He honestly believes that what he’s doing is helping Wally....but his actions are still incredibly disturbing. It’s also worth noting that he’s much less evil under Geoff Johns than he was when he finally made his reappearance during the relatively recent War of the Flash arc. His level of actual malice was so much higher there, in fact, that at points he seemed like a different character entirely. Inertia, while a serious threat, was portrayed somewhat sympathetically in his appearances in the Impulse comic, but was subsequently portrayed as an Eobard-level psychopath in the Flash: The Most Terribly Written Man Alive and nearly all subsequent stories (his most recent major appearance, written by Joshua Williamson, is an exception). Because of this inconsistency, I can’t move him any higher or lower on the list.

Of the Rogues proper, the most malicious ones are, in no particular order, the Top, Captain Boomerang, Sr., Mirror Master II, and the Golden Glider. The Top is unique insofar as he was basically always portrayed as one of the most dangerous Rogues. In his first appearance, he tried to blow up half the world (though he seemed more than a little uncharacteristically unhinged in that story, so it’s possible that he wasn’t all there during that escapade), he tried to blow up the city when he died, he possessed the body of Barry’s father, he tried to take over the country by becoming president, he tried to kill the mayor to take over the city (though he was definitely mentally ill during this story), and he generally caused havoc during the Rogue War. He’s by far the most conventionally ambitious of the group.

Evan McCulloch, the second Mirror Master, is not especially malicious when written by his creator, Grant Morrison (he refuses to kill women and children, readily works with the Justice League when Batman promises to donate money to his old orphanage, and seems to bear no dislike for Wally or any other hero). However, when other people write him, he’s usually one of the most malicious Rogues. During Mark Waid’s run, he was depicted as an abusive stalker; during Geoff Johns’ run, he racked up an enormous body count and was responsible for the death of Piper’s parents. Why this is, I have no idea, but it’s still enough to put him fairly high on the list.

Captain Boomerang, Sr.’s level of malice jumped noticeably after Crisis on Infinite Earths. Pre-Crisis, he actually came across as one of the least malicious of the bunch, but when John Ostrander started using him on Suicide Squad, he became a disgusting, racist, sexist, foulmouthed, selfish, cowardly, abrasive, treacherous, boorish disaster of a human being...and he’s been that way ever since.

Golden Glider is bizarre, as she’s one of the very few villains whose level of malice actually seemed to decrease over time without them actually outright reforming. In her Bronze Age appearances, she was absolutely terrifying; targeting Barry’s wife and parents and pursuing revenge with a level of single-minded determination that would make Batman impressed. (Barry even canonically compared her to Batman during this period!) While she was more sympathetic than, say, Eobard, by virtue of the fact that she genuinely loved and grieved for Roscoe, she was still incredibly malicious. After Barry’s death, the writers seemed unsure of what to do with her. I enjoyed her semi-reformed period under Messner-Loebs, but after that things just fell apart until her eventualy pointless death. Geoff Johns portrayed her as more of a victim than anything, and since Flashpoint, she’s actually seemed to be one of the least malicious Rogues. It’s very odd.

Weather Wizard would probably be next. He’s had a few acts of humanity and a few more acts of unusual malice, but on the whole, he’s generally somewhere in the middle of the Rogues in terms of level of malice. He also doesn’t seem to vary too much between writers.

Axel Walker, the second Trickster, was very malicious during the early period of Geoff Johns’ run (tying bombs to homeless people-yikes!), but gradually became more sympathetic over time as he started to realize he was in over his head. Post-Flashpoint, he’s been one of the least malicious of the bunch, probably since he’s just a kid. It’s still strange to compare his appearances under Johns to his post-Flashpoint appearances, though, since they’re noticeably different.

The first Mirror Master, Sam Scudder, probably falls near or below Axel. Since most of his major appearances were pre-Crisis, he’s really never succeeded in doing anything particularly heinous, and when compared to, say, Roscoe or Bronze Age Golden Glider, he’s usually not planning anything nearly as damaging.

Captain Cold is one of the least malicious Rogues; he’s the one to enforce their codes and generally seems to avoid causing harm to people if he can help it. He can definitely be hypocritical, and he’s shockingly brutal at times, but on the whole he’s one of the most restrained and moral members of the group. Heat Wave is probably one the same level as Cold. For a long time, he was one of, if not the, least malicious Rogues, but since the pyromania retcon, he’s gradually become more and more unhinged and violent. Furthermore, even though Captain Cold and Heat Wave are traditionally among the least malicious of the Flash’s villains, for some reason they both seem to have become much worse since Flashpoint happened, with Captain Cold becoming much more of a brutal ganglord than he was pre-Flashpoint and Heat Wave’s remorse over his pyromania seeming to all but disappear at times.

Fallout probably falls about here. He’s more of a passive danger than an active one, and he doesn’t seem to mean anyone harm.

The first Trickster, James Jesse, is usually comparatively harmless, even reforming and managing to do an impressive amount of good during the 1990s. He even saved the world from Neron! That being said, when he finally reappeared after a decade-long disappearance, he suddenly became much more like his TV self than the traditional comic book version of James Jesse, to the the point where it almost felt like he’d been replaced by the Joker. I wasn’t really a fan of the arc where he came back. While I was glad to see him brought back from limbo, I didn’t really want to see him brought back as a psychopath who brainwashes the entire city.

Peek-a-Boo only turned to crime to try to save her father and legitimately didn’t seem to mean any harm to anyone.

Finally, the Pied Piper has been the most reformed, and therefore least malicious, of the group since the late 1980s. Since his reformation, he’s done almost as much to help the Twin Cities as the Flashes. However, it’s interesting that his reformation was immediately preceded by the period at which he was the most malicious: the never-ending Trial of Barry Allen arc. During that arc, he actually attempted to hypnotize the mayor into committing suicide! However, since then, the Piper has been pretty solidly on the side of the angels (his stupid appearances in the Flash: The Most Badly Written Man Alive notwithstanding).

#flash rogues #dc comics #long post #flash comics

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asleepinawell · 3 years

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Been having a lot of Thoughts about the nier series recently and the larger themes of both games and wanted to jot them down and toss them into the void of the internet.

Massive spoilers for nier automata follow, including for ending e. Do not read this if you ever intend to play nier automata. There are spoilers for nier replicant as well, though not for ending e.

One of the biggest themes both nier games tackle is the tragedy of an uncaring universe. Bad things happen to good people, people who think they're good and doing the right thing find out they were actually committing atrocities, the very idea that there's 'good' and 'bad' people is dissected and rejected. At the end of the day, the universe doesn't give a shit about any of us and none of it matters. Enjoy your existential despair!

In nier replicant, the main character starts off as an optimistic young boy who wants to save, not only his sister, but the entire world. After the time skip, nier is a young man whose optimism has (partially) been tarnished and whose goal has narrowed down to just saving his sister. As you move through each route you understand more and more how tragic the world is and how, despite your best intentions, you are only adding to the tragedy of the world. The original 4 endings of nier replicant are all tragic in some way. Ending D has a glimmer of hope in it in the form of nier being able to save kainé at the cost of his own existence, but it's a bittersweet ending and the world is ultimately doomed anyway.

Which brings us to nier automata. Even more so than replicant, automata hammers home the meaningless of everything, the uncaring universe, tragedy both avoidable and unavoidable. The main characters are locked in an endless loop of violence and despair. The worst that could happen, does, again and again. It thrives off the type of tragedy porn I usually hate.

Except....

Except it doesn't. If endings a and b are the opening statement, endings c and d are the facts and body of the essay, but then there's ending e, the concluding paragraph which takes everything we've been told and gives you the chance to draw your own conclusion from it.

Route e starts after you've gotten both ending c and d and is no longer about the characters in the game at all. Route e is about you, the player, and what you believe. It says "we've given you a story of complete despair, we've shown you the universe is unfair and doesn't give a fuck about you, we've shown you things that end in tragedy. despite all of this, do you still believe it's worth fighting for the hope of something better?"

And then it asks you to prove it.

Route e is the ending every fan has asked for when they've said "I'll fight the creators to give my favs a happy ending." Today is your lucky day!

Route e is the ending credits of the game, except that the ending credits have turned into a bullet hell mini game. In fighting the actual credits themselves, you are fighting the game devs. You are saying fuck you I don't believe that everything is pointless. Fighting for better is always worth it. The meaning that we imbue in life is important to us and that matters.

The bullet hell of the end credits starts out fairly simple and gets harder and harder as you go, lasting something like 15 minutes total, which is a brutally long time to be playing something that requires split second timing and 100% of your focus. It's meant to feel insurmountable, just like the challenges the characters in the game faced (the larger plot challenges, not the combat). You will likely die a lot and check points are few and far between.

But there's more to it than that. The first time you die, a prompt comes up:

And then when you die again:

Except now, there’s a message on the screen. A message that appears to be from another player, somewhere in the world.

And again:

(this one really fucked me up, but that’s for a different post).

And then finally:

(thank you user MR-YE-1996)

When you accept the rescue offer, you go back to the bullet hell again, but now you have a wall of other players around your weak little avatar, shielding you from harm. The music, which has been a single vocal track up until now, gains an entire chorus of voices to represent the army of actual players who’ve shown up to save you (and there’s a lot I could say about the use of the (exquisitely good) music in the nier games, and especially about the difference in lyrical themes between ashes of dreams and weight of the world). Every time a bullet hits one of the players surrounding you, there’s a message saying that user’s data has been lost. Users from all over the world are sacrificing themselves to help you. It’s a very nice, heart-warming moment that you still don’t understand the full impact of quite yet.

After you beat the credits, you’re rewarded by a final cutscene. The android protagonists have been reconstructed and will receive a second chance at life. The narration at this point talks about how life exists within the spiral of life and death we are all trapped in. One of the two pods talking points out that even though the androids are being given a second chance at life, there’s a possibility that things will go just as poorly once again. And the other pod agrees, but adds: “However, the possibility of a different future also exists.”

And then the scene ends with this quote: “A future is not given to you. It is something you must take for yourself.”

And this is really the final conclusion of the game. There is no inherent meaning in the universe, so the meaning we give our lives is the most meaningful thing. (And the ‘you’ here isn’t necessarily an individual either. It can be, or it can be humanity as a whole, or even one group). And you, the player, thought that it was worth fighting to give these characters a second chance, and other players out there in the world thought it was worth helping you to do so.

It’s such a wonderfully beautiful piece of meta interpretation posing as a game ending, and also a departure from the final conclusion of previous Yoko Taro games. It feels like a much more mature and nuanced interpretation of the world than the ending of replicant was (I won’t comment on the new ending e of replicant just yet since it didn’t come out that long ago). (Also, for the record, I love nier replicant and the characters in it with my entire heart. This post is not bashing it).

But the game has one more surprise in store for you. After the cutscene ends, you’re given one last choice. The game asks if you have any interest in helping other players the way you were helped. And if you say yes, you’re told that the only way you can do this is to sacrifice all your save data.

I think that sacrifice hits differently for different people. Some people genuinely won’t mind that at all. As someone who probably still has save data from games I played 20 years ago, it felt like a gut punch. To me, save data represents all the time and emotion and energy I’ve put into a game. Games are so deeply important to me in so many ways and have been since my childhood when they were one of the few ways I could escape from a lot of terrible shit going on in my life. (There’s a reason my blog title is what it is). I could talk a lot more about that point, but I’ll leave it by saying that when I saw what the game was asking of me it felt like someone had knocked my legs out from under me.

For more practical players, it also is locking you out of chapter select, the best way to go back and get all the things you missed and grab the achievements/trophies you still need.

The game will point out that you’ll get nothing in return for this (not a lie, there’s no secret reward), that you will likely never know if or who you helped, that you won’t be thanked, that the person you help could be someone you intensely dislike, etc. And with all of this comes the realization that all those people who came to help you in the credits had already done this. Those people whose data was sacrificed to help you get to the final cutscene had already sacrificed their save data to help you.

We’ve now gone from a world where everything is meaningless, to a world where other real actual human beings out there have sacrificed something that represented hours of their time and a varying amount of emotional investment without any hope of reward to help a stranger see a message of hope.

When I was younger, I was more drawn to dark, hopeless stories. Stories about how dark and meaningless the world was. The world was a terrible place then too. 9/11 happened when I was in highschool (an incident that influenced yoko taro’s creation of nier replicant and had a huge impact on me at the time), the pointless wars that happened after and the recession and a million other things seemed to infuse everything with hopelessness. In that world, stories about everything being meaningless and hopeless felt correct. They felt validating. Yes, everything really does suck that much!

That sort of story lost its appeal for me later on. Pointless and horrible things continued to happen, and still continue to happen. The world events of the last few years have been an unnerving reliving of those earlier years, except even worse. The cycles of tragedy are still there with no end in sight. I’m exhausted from all of it. It really does feel hopeless a lot.

But stories that stop at that point no longer appeal to me. Stories like nier automata--stories that say yes, things are terrible, but there’s always hope, you can create your own meaning, it is always worth it to fight for better even if you fail, your life is worthwhile simply for existing--those stories are the ones I think we all need more than anything.

#nier automata #nier automata spoilers #nier spoilers #nier #nier replicant #niermp #mp #sitting around having existential thoughts on a sunday afternoon #as one does #nier meta

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sapphicdt · 3 years

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Just Like You Used To

hihi i usually hate sad fics because i personally read fics for comfort but i wrote this out of impulse and because i needed a good cliche Snape x Reader thingy to cry to so i apologize if this comes out as too cringey and wattpad-y. this was quite poorly written but i still hope you like it.

(italics for the flashbacks :) )

warnings: angst, minor typos

word count: 1.8k

The musky earth smell of the dungeons hit your nose like the perfume of an older lady when she went in to hug you.

You had not been here since the end of the war, and neither did anyone else. Minerva had not gone down there either. You had seen how the usually composed professor’s demeanor would shift behind her eyes into a raging sea, whenever she would be indirectly reminded of him.

It was funny how life worked; one moment, you were helping him clean the cauldrons in his classroom, and the next you were to sweep off the dust from his abandoned office.

“Miss L/N, you are going to freeze your ears off if you do not get back in here” he said to you as you were walking around in the snow without your coat, prancing about in the cold like a child on Christmas morning. “Sorry, professor. It was too beautiful out to miss.” you responded meekly. He rolled his eyes. “Silly girl” he said, and ushered you back in.

As the both of you walked side by side, the silence was broken when he asked “How was your day?’. He said it very quietly, like asking such a question was humiliating, and that it would destroy his usually stoic bearing. You sighed and said “It was alright. But it did snow so it got better. What about you, professor?”. He stayed quiet for a while before responding with a little grunt of an “It was okay”. You giggled in response.

He walked you back to your dorm, not saying anything else.

Time flew and you had started spending more time with the professor. According to you, it was because “He was your new bestie”. He would roll his eyes whenever you would jokingly refer to him as that whenever your friends would ask why you hung around him so much.

It was true; you did see him as a friend, and although you wished to yell out to the world how much you would do for this man, you did not want to get slapped in the face by rejection and humiliation. After all, his doors were closed, and heart belonged to the late mother of The Boy Who Lived. Everyone knew this.

On one of your visits to his office, you were both sitting in silence, doing your own things, before you said “Professor, If I’m going to be honest, I would just like to say that I am going to miss you.”. “What do you mean, Miss L/N?” he responded. “I am graduating soon, and I’m just going to miss going to your office, studying here with you in arms reach, having class with you, having you as my teacher, and just-” somehow, the oxygen in the room has disappeared, and you found it hard to usher out what you were going to say next. “Seeing you everyday” you finally breathed out. You expected a him to throw a fit, to slap you, yell at you about how this was highly inappropriate and that he did not want to see you ever again, for him to spit at you for how stupid you were. But none of that came; everything but all of that. He was quiet for a moment, as he was every time you said something inherently nice. But then he said “I’m afraid I will miss your company too, Y/N”. You had the smile of an idiot plastered on your face for the rest of the afternoon.

Months flew by, and it was April, you had seen him again on his way back from his meetings, and wanted to tell him something for you had not been able to talk to him at all ever since the war started. He seemed so tired and somehow even more irritable and angrier than he had been before, so you left him alone. But today, you decided that it would be worth a shot to try and reconnect, so you walked up to him and said “Hello, professor.”. He looked at you and if you looked with a telescope, you could see his gaze softened, but only behind his eyes. Because that made fucking sense. “Good afternoon, Miss L/N. Is there anything I can help you with?” he responded. “No, professor. I just wanted to see how you were doing. After all, we haven’t talked in a long while.” you replied, a bit more blunt than you had intended, and you feared he was going to do something that would make you regret it after. But he did not. “Would you like to come to my office, just like before? We can talk there.” he said. You smiled sadly, and walked with him to his office.

He sat you down, and gave you a cup of tea, and made sure you were comfortable. Like he used to. “Now, how are you, Y/N?”. You had not known how much this man meant to you until this very moment. You could not hold anything back anymore. You burst into a sobbing mess, hiccuping trying to drink the tea. You could not pinpoint exactly why you were crying so much, but you just were.

He was taken aback for a moment. He had seen many students cry at Hogwarts, especially after having been scolded by him, but this was different; you were in his office, and he just asked you a simple question. Not knowing what to do, he hesitantly patted your shoulder. He was not used to comforting people when they were sad. But although he had done it to you in many unconscious and indirect ways in the past when you were silently having a bad day, he just was not used to actively doing it. Your sobs ceased a bit and he asked you “Y/N, where is this coming from? What happened?”. You sniffed and hiccuped a bit before blatantly saying “I just miss you, professor, is all.”. He did not know what to say to say to this, and was still quite startled, then you cut his thoughts off when you said “I just wish all of this would end even just before I graduate so I could spend my last few afternoons in Hogwarts here in your office, like I had originally planned.”. “It will end soon, Y/N” he said and fiddled with his tea cup, and hesitantly pulled you into a hug. This somehow made you want to cry even more, and the next words that came out of your mouth were so unexpected, you wanted the ground to swallow you whole. “I think I love you, professor.”. He pulled away and lifted up your chin to look in your eyes. You felt him in your head, but you were too tired and sad to push him out, so you just let him search. After what seemed like an eternity, you felt your mind left alone again and he just moved his hands down your shoulder. With a sigh, he then said “I think you ought to be heading back to your dorm, Miss. I do have somewhere to go to.”. You stood up and wiped the snot off of your face, and headed out the door. Before you closed it, you said to him “I hope to come here again soon, professor.” and you left his office, and walked back to your dorm.

You stood in front of the wooden door of his office, tears now pouring freely down your cheeks. You knocked and you were wishing in the back of your head that you would hear him call you in, or see the shadow of his feet when he went to open the door, or see him towering over you with his usual stoic demeanor, or with those beautiful onyx eyes you came to love, looking back at you.

You felt silly, and touched the handle of the door, before pushing it open. You stepped in, and everything was left as it was the last time you came here; his half filled ink jar, half graded exams, half filled bottle of whiskey. But if there was anything about this man that was not halved, would be his passion. Oh Lord did this hurt.

It was like he knew his office would be returned to, just not by him.

You had been standing in the middle of the room for quite longer than you intended, so you snapped out of it and walked to his desk. You felt the wooden frame as you came across an unclosed envelope. “To whom this may concern” was all the back had read, You opened it and read through it.

It was addressed to you. He was apologizing for not giving you a proper answer for what you said the last time you visited him. He was sorry for all the times he brushed you off before, during all the times you wanted to talk to him. All of that said, you were still able to use whatever was left of your composure. Then came the end of the letter

“......I am sorry it had to end this way. And I am so sorry for leaving you like this. Please don’t weep for me. I do not want to see you crying like that.

But although I am gone, I hope you think about me when you see a sparrow flying across the dusk of winter, when you smell the faint waft of parchment, or even hear the dripping down here in the dungeons. I too wish you could still sit with me here in my office while you read, just like you used to.

Nothing I say can satisfy you now, but what you said that April afternoon was not something I expected. I will admit that. But rest assured my dear, that I will not allow you to live the rest of your life not being reciprocated what you said.

So with the little time I have left of writing this, I hope you know that I love you very, very much.

Yours,

Professor Snape.”

Your chest was aching and your sobs were now very vocal. Through broken breaths and shaky legs, you stood up from the squatting position you were in and sat down on his chair.

Time had passed, and before you knew it, you had fallen asleep in his office. You looked at the grandfather clock at the corner of the room and you had fallen asleep for quite a long time because what used to be noon, was now 3 in the afternoon.

You took the letter from his desk and walked out of his office, back to your dorm.

You would rather anything else than to have lost him like this, or in any way at all. You wished everything was a dream and you could go back to the days where everything was happy. But this was the reality, he was dead and was never coming back.

It was now evening and dinner was over, but you did not go to eat. You stayed in your room and slept, too tired from crying, and from everything else in general. You reached to your nightstand and read the letter again, tracing over the print of the last sentence. And somehow, those words brought you great comfort, just like he used to.

#severus snape #severus snape x reader #severus snape x y/n #severus snape x you #severus #snape #harry potter #Alan Rickman #snape fic #harry potter fic #pro snape

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Fandom Stuff To-Do List (basically just stuff I want to get to this week in any order, now that I have Completion Capabilities. Not meant to be a promise of any specific things on this for sure getting done, just these are stuff on my mind to get around to when I have the chance)

- Finish meta post about the wings fic AU and how peoples’ wings are affected by massive physical or emotional trauma that changes them as a person (aka do Babs’ wings change when she becomes Oracle). Which will of course segue into a mini-rant about how our culture tends to view trauma and the acquisition of physical disabilities as something there’s no coming back from, like there’s a ceiling on how good a person’s life can ever be after certain things happen to them.

And that’s why so much of our media content is geared towards treating disabled people and survivors almost more as resources to ensure ‘the same kind of thing’ doesn’t happen to people it hasn’t happened to yet and thus ‘can still be saved/protected.’ Rather than people just fucking acknowledging that trauma is just destructive change that’s impact is relative to how many resources a person has to cope or deal with that change and incorporate it into their life. And that people don’t need to be protected from trauma or accidents as much as is hyped because its literally impossible to ever prevent anything bad from happening ever, so rather than hyping the illusion that ‘this sort of thing could never happen to you as long as you do xyz and don’t do abc’ more attention and focus should be shifted to acknowledging that its still gonna happen sometimes no matter what people do to prevent it or keep safe from it. Because these sorts of trauma ARE EXTERNALLY ORIGINATING and thus there’s literally only ever so much people can do that’s originating within the self to control/protect from being affected in certain ways by stuff originating from outside the self, aka inherently OUT of our control.

And thus IMO we’d all be better served as a society by paying less lip service to the idea that people can be guaranteed safety or protection from various things and instead have more of that focus and attention shifted over towards the acquisition and building and distributing of more resources to help people in the EVENT of certain things happening to them anyway. Which in turn helps spread the narrative that you know what, even if these things happen, even if you are disabled, even if you are traumatized, that’s not the end of the road, that’s not a dealbreaker, that’s just a CHANGE that we as a society are here to help you through. It just means that your life is different now, that you may be different now, but different doesn’t have to be bad, it doesn’t have to come with a ceiling or limitations, it just means a change in perspective.

Bad things will still happen, just like bad things still happened before your Big Change, and its important to remember not to glamorize or romanticize the Before time because that tends to gloss over the fact that nobody’s life was ever perfect before big change or trauma hit anyway. So why on earth should it be a surprise (or any different from anyone else’s life) that life isn’t perfect after big change or trauma? That doesn’t mean it can’t still be GOOD. That you won’t still have good days, good surprises, happiness, friends, joy, laughter, that maybe it takes more resources or just DIFFERENT resources to get there than it did before.....but everyone’s life is different and everyone requires different resources to achieve various desired results or experiences in the first place, so its not the end of the world to have to switch your focus and look in different places for different resources now.

There needs to be less focus on what HAPPENED to people and more focus on what EFFECT it had on them, specifically. On how it changed them and what those changes mean they require now in order to live their life fully and happily, that just might be different from what they needed before. There needs to be a shift in focus from just the trauma or accident or THING that happened that changed the course or direction of a person’s life as like....the definitive point their life changed, because that THING that happened was still just a THING. It came from the outside. It was external. It literally WASN’T ABOUT THEM, and thus focusing on IT can only ever reveal so much about the PERSON it happened to.

No, the point of focus for a person’s life changing in the wake of massive trauma or an accident isn’t WHEN that happened, its when in the aftermath of that, however long it took, when that person, that survivor, finally got up one morning and realized they had a new normal. That they weren’t the person they were before, but they aren’t aimlessly lost in a single long-lasting trauma response searching fruitlessly for personal landmarks to reorient themselves when those landmarks simply don’t exist anymore, because they don’t HAVE to find or lean on those old familiar landmarks anymore. Because they’ve found new ones, found their footing in a new landscape, a new approach to living and perceiving the world around them and how it impacts and intersects with them.

Gimme a change in focus to how recovery isn’t a thing you can ever FIND, that you can ever ACQUIRE by searching for it...and so its less vital that we hold up the idea of it as some kind of semi-mythical Holy Grail its okay to send knights eternally questing for on just the possibility of its existence because hey at least its something to shoot for, when not so deep down a lot of people shelling out advice for recovery that isn’t rooted in their own experiences or utilization of the same advice they’re selling but rather is born of ‘eh, you want something I can’t give or help with and that’s making me uncomfortable so lemme point you in a direction just vague or far away enough that I don’t have to worry about seeing you and your aura of Making Me Uncomfortable around for awhile’....

.....nah, instead how about looking to how resources might be better utilized just....supporting people until they can reach that point of recovery in their own time and their own ways. Because by its very nature, you can spend years working on recovering, on finding a new normal, a new sense of stability in your life, but you’re only ever going to ‘find it’ the day you realize that you’ve ALREADY found it. That you don’t have to go searching for it anymore because its already there, you settled and replanted yourself without even realizing it. Recovery in the wake of trauma is about searching for a way to feel better, to heal, to move past something, and the answer to that need is a feeling of no longer needing to search or find that ephemeral something, because you’re content, you’re okay with who and what you are now. And you don’t need to look anymore for something you wake up and realize you’ve already found somewhere along the way.

Being disabled, being traumatized, being hurt, being CHANGED by some kind of big ass fucking Meteor Of Suck smacking into the planet that is your life and wiping out the fucking dinosaurs of this weirdo metaphor, like....yes, it leaves a mark, makes an impact, oftentimes a BIG one. But like, without the meteor that ended the dinosaur age or whatever, none of us would even be here because the point is just life goes on, and there’s no predicting what it will look like tomorrow, so yeah it could be worse and maybe it’ll never be like it was before, but there’s absolutely zero proof it couldn’t maybe be BETTER, even if it doesn’t ever look the way it was before.

Change is just change. Its not the enemy, its just the point of life. Like we’re born and then things change every single day of our life however long it is and then we die. Birth and death are the bookends, and constant change is every single page of the book in between that. Change isn’t the villain of our story, change IS our story.

And its OUR story, so it never gets to be defined by what someone else does to us in the story, because the hero’s journey isn’t about what MADE the hero set out on their quest, its about their QUEST itself, its about their TRIUMPH, its not about what happened its about what THEY decided to do NEXT because of it. Its not about the catalysts for our changes, its about what we decided to DO, who we decided to BECOME, once those catalysts hit the page and necessitated further change.

Your trauma, your change, none of those are YOU, because YOU are the person you see when you look in the mirror and take all of that in, view it as part of you, your story, something that left a mark just like every single experience of your life has left SOME kind of impact no matter how small, and who you changed into, decided to become, how you incorporated all those marks and changes and experiences....THAT is you. The ENTIRETY of that map, not the single markers along the way, no matter how loud or dramatic or attention-grabbing they try to be.

You are the map of your experiences and you only look to a map, a map only matters to you when its about leading or finding the way to where YOU want to go, with intent. No road map gets to take the wheel of the car just because you aren’t going in the direction it said you were supposed to go originally. If you get lost, you get lost. If you end up somewhere you didn’t expect, you end up somewhere you didn’t expect. If you realize you no longer want or need to go where you were setting out to originally, if you change your mind or decide another destination is better suited to you, you get to look to your map and draw a new route accordingly, because its YOURS, it only exists because of you, not you because of it.

Your trauma or whatever else is fucking up your life may be big fucking pieces of the mosaic you are when you see yourself in the mirror metaphorically speaking cuz I want this analogy to be inclusive for blind people too and I just realized I need to spend more time thinking up alternative ways to express that sentiment that don’t rely on a singular axis of experience to convey it, because that’s kinda the point in and of itself:

We’re all born with toolboxes that give us a variety of tools to approach life with, to build things out of, to build OUR life out of. The aim of civilization, of society, of being a species that only made it this far by being communal and building things together, pooling our tools to build things none of us were equipped to build with just what we already had...is that ideally, the toolbox we’re born with gets added to by others around us. Our parents or guardians or teachers, our friends and loved ones, the random person at the store who saw someone was a dollar short at the grocery store register and offered one of their own or the way we can add to someone else’s toolbox by simply asking if they’re alright when we can see they’re not and then just like that they have the added resource of the knowledge that someone cares enough about them to want to know what’s wrong.

And none of our toolboxes are identical. None make it all the way to our deathbed with us while containing the exact same tools we started with, some are missing, some are added. Some we didn’t even realize we had. Some we never even used. Some we used the hell out of and are worn to pieces and some are shiny and new because we wore out the older version of them and needed a replacement. And sometimes big fucking meteors of suck smack into our lives right when we’re just minding our own business and enjoying our own jurassic age and everything changes forever, but millions of years later we might still be around and now we just look like chickens and alligators and sharks and all the other creatures that are basically just dinosaur descendants in a different form because we’re hardy as fuck and damn I really need to get over this metaphor it is not the analogy I’m looking for but oh well.

Point is, sometimes Change happens and the tools we’re used to leaning on when building our better, ideal lives and optimal experiences, like....maybe they just don’t work for us anymore. Maybe we can’t grip the old familiar ones the way we used to, maybe our eyes have gone to shit and we can’t wield the more precise instruments with the precision we’re used to, maybe the nails we were using to build stairs in our dream house are fucking useless cuz they’re not the right size when building the wheelchair ramp our new dream house needs instead.......and so fucking what? What does any of that actually say about US, about who we ARE, about what our life could be or how good it could get?

Absolutely nothing. Because the toolboxes we were born with were still only ever just tools. What we ARE is what we make with them, what we build out of ourselves, what we choose with intent to become. So what if our old tools aren’t up to the task of actualizing our new dreams? That’s what we need other people for. That’s what society SHOULD be for. That’s when what we need is not to be FIXED, not to be restocked with what we had originally but is now no longer of use to us or what we need or maybe even not what we want.....no, all we need is....new tools. New resources. New kinds of help.

And again, that’s what society is SUPPOSED to be for. To help us define ourselves not by the problems we face but our solutions to overcoming them. To help give each other new tools and teach each other how to use them when change necessitates hunting around for something that’s easier to grip now. And if we all come into the world starting out with different tools than everyone else anyway.....what does it MATTER if somewhere along the way we have to swap out the old familiar ones we started with and look for new ones we didn’t need originally?

A cane is just a cane to help someone walk because for whatever reasons, their legs or spine need that tool to help get them where they want to go. A cane is not proof that it will never take them to a destination where they’re every fucking bit as happy as people who made it to the same place without the use of one. A cane is not THEM. Its just a fucking cane. Same thing with glasses, with wheelchairs, with prosthetic limbs, with hearing aids. Same thing with support groups, with therapists, with trauma centers.

Like do people ever think about how fucking AMAZING it is that we have prosthetics at all? That somewhere along the line, people saw a problem, saw a need, that was not ‘oh this person (or maybe even ‘they themselves’ because let’s not go the saviorism route and forget that disabled people have had plenty the fuck to do with designing or dreaming up or building the tools disabled people use to navigate life while working with a different set of physiological tools than most people are equipped with. Like this isn’t a ‘oh look how good other people are to people in need’ point but more just a ‘people-as-in-society-overall-which-includes-both-able-bodied-and-disabled’ point).

Like the point is the response to seeing that was not just ‘oh so and so or maybe even me is damaged beyond repair,’ no instead it was just ‘this person’s legs aren’t currently equpped to do what this person needs or wants them to do.’ And people said okay the solution, the answer, the RESPONSE to seeing that problem or need was not to sit back and think about how much it sucks that this person can’t walk on their own and how limited or ‘lesser’ their life will be than other peoples’ because of that, no they said instead, hey, what if we just BUILT THEM DIFFERENT LEGS. Like, just THINK about that. We, as a people, communally, as in more than one, pooled resources to BUILD PEOPLE NEW FUCKING LEGS.

And all it ultimately took, the catalyst for THAT, for changing the lives of people who use prosthetics as tools in their day to day lives....the catalyst for that CHANGE was NOT in fact....whatever happened to make various people need prosthetics in the first place. No, the catalyst, the change that got us to the point of people having the OPTION of prosthetics at all, was the point in time where people saw a need, and came up with the solution of prosthetics to address that need. When they said not oh that’s a problem or oh sorry you have that need, but oh I have an idea, or oh here’s what we can do about that. The defining element wasn’t that something needed building. The defining element was WHAT PEOPLE CHOSE TO BUILD BECAUSE OF THAT.

Just like severe trauma is a catalyst for change in a person’s life, a meteor that no one saw coming and can dramatically reshape the landscape of their life, wipe out familiar comforts and landmarks they use to orient themselves.....but at the end of the day, that person is not the meteor itself. We don’t call them whatever we call that meteor, we call them by their fucking name because they’re still the same fucking person, just in a different place now, with different needs, with different dreams or wants or goals. Who they are isn’t how rough they have it while they’re going through the most....because how much a trauma shakes up a person’s life is directly relative to how equipped they are already to deal with that particular trauma or change.

So by its very nature the ‘worst’ or most changing traumas are the ones that we’re personally LEAST equipped to deal with at that particular time on our own, and how fucking stupid is it to try and draw conclusions about a person based just on how they react in the immediate aftermath of an event whose defining element is that it was a destructive change that was uniquely impactful because it hit them where they were least equipped to deal with it?

Like, NOBODY is equipped to handle well, like, an event that relative to THEM SPECIFICALLY, like....is something they’re not equipped to handle. LOL. Like, that’s so fucking dumb, but that’s who we ALL are when in the midst of massive trauma responses - just people hunting desperately for new normals, new landmarks, new awareness with which to recenter ourselves, reorient ourselves, redefine who and what we are in relation to our lives and society and our loved ones in the wake of a massive change that shook things up and required repositioning ourselves because the spot we used to be positioned on no longer exists.

And what the fuck can you learn, can you actually KNOW about a person based solely on the fact that ‘oh this person is having a hard time dealing with something that there’s literally NO good way to deal with?’

People talk a lot about how revealing trauma or tragedy is, that you can learn a lot by seeing how someone handles a huge trauma or tragedy being thrown at them, even in fiction. But y’know what? There’s a ceiling on how much that alone can ever reveal, especially if the lens of time through which you examine that person or character is limited just to the aftermath of the trauma, the thing that HAPPENED to them. Rather than focused on the beginning of their new journeys, once they’ve reoriented themselves, acquired new tools, picked new destinations or goals for their lives and set out to now make THOSE a reality....just like people before or without massive trauma or tragedy are similarly not defined by the LACK of what didn’t happen to them, but simply by......what destinations or goals they pick for their lives and their journeys to get there and what they do and what choices they make along the way.

Nah, if you ask me, a person’s truest essence isn’t revealed by what they do with whatever limited tools or resources they have when struggling with a massive trauma or tragedy that’s only massive specifically BECAUSE it hit them in a way or place they were ill-equipped or unprepared to deal with. Because the essence of that person, the truth revealed by examining that struggle, the answer in focus when looking through just that finite lens....can be boiled down to the exact same thing, no matter WHO you put in that place.

What they do in the wake of a massive trauma is simply ‘as much as they’re capable of given their limited resources or capabilities at THAT SPECIFIC POINT IN TIME.’ Which is inherently....not a lot. Completely subjective and relative to every individual, given the different traumas, resources and needs or injuries relative to every individual while they’re going through their fucking worst....but that’s still the point.

A person struggling with things beyond their capability to handle well at that given moment given their current state or resources.....is ultimately never going to appear as anything other than.....a person struggling with things beyond their capability to handle well at that given moment given their current state or resources. Wow. Really pegged that person huh. Got them all summed up, totally differentiated from every other person to ever go through shit, just by seeing them.....not handle it great when by its very nature of fucking course they’re not going to handle a trauma they’re not prepared for with any degree of ‘great.’

Like, is it any wonder our society has this built in presumption that experiencing certain traumas or tragedies just fucking CONDEMNS that person to from then on live a life that will never actually measure up to being as optimal as it maybe could have been if that hadn’t happened? What other conclusion are you gonna draw, about how good or not a person’s life is in the wake of massive destructive change....if you’re only ever focusing on or looking at how they react at the specific point where they’re LEAST equipped to deal with that trauma or tragedy well?

Because thing is....that’s not a person. That’s a snapshot of a person. Try and define me or sum me up by looking at a fucking Polaroid of me when I was ten or whatever. Go on. See how revealing that is. Tell me what that says about me.

People can’t be defined by negative space. By what they’re NOT. By all the ways in which they can’t be what they MIGHT have been had something happened different, or all the things they COULD be if they were born into different circumstances. You do that, you’re not describing a person, you’re describing hypotheticals that you can apply as desired to ANY person, with just a few tweaks here and there, and thus always find a way to picture them as you want to for your own personal purposes, agenda or comfort, rather than gaining any insight whatsoever about who they are as defined by the space that they DO fill up, with intent, by their choices.

We don’t look to the early history of our species and talk about all the people who DIDN’T discover fire, maybe even just because they were born in a fucking wet climate or whatever where it was inherently more difficult to happen across the realization that striking sticks or stones in certain ways can make a very useful and helpful flame. With the point being that even if we DID talk about those early humans as much as we did the ones who got actual bonfires going, the fact that they simply ‘weren’t the ones to discover fire’ actually would reveal shit about them in and of itself, because who’s to say that the reason, the ‘culprit’ for that was that they were simply too dumb or whatever to figure that out instead of just being they lived in a climate that made that discovery particularly difficult or less likely to happen by chance? Y’know?

But no, anyway, we talk about the ones who DID discover fire, because the turning point for our species which that was, like, we don’t look at it and define it by the lack of it happening sooner, at the problem that not having fire was for the people who came before that discovery. It was the triumph that mattered, it was the choices made in the wake of that discovery, it was how people put that new tool to work and not oh how revealing it is about the rest of early humanity that they didn’t put that tool to work in similar ways because it simply wasn’t even a possibility for them when it was simply a resource they didn’t have.

Nah, IMO a person’s truest essence is revealed not by their problems or their lacks, not by the hypothetical maybe me they could have been if they went through life without anything bad ever happening to them and thus who they’ll never actually be now. Its not revealed by taking a snapshot of them in the moments or days or even weeks following a trauma or tragedy that struck with an accompanying seismic shake-up of all their existing stability and support systems that ultimately limited how much or many of the resources they’d previously acquired or built could even be of use to them in dealing with things now. You don’t learn anything substantial by putting people in a room with only two exits and one of them locked and then act like its an insightful revelation that they ultimately make their way out by means of the finite options available to them when their options have been actively limited by forces outside them and their control, even if that wasn’t the ‘optimal’ answer to that predicament and you wanted them to make other more ideal choices without acknowledging they literally were limited to the most basic of fucking choices available. No, IMO the actual revelations about people come in their declaration of a new want or wish or ask or goal AFTER they’ve found their footing and are ready to live again rather than just cope.

Why define ourselves by our needs when we’re most ourselves when dreaming of our wants?

You don’t gain the most insight by watching someone flail about when they’re at their lowest and just floundering. You want insight, you look to see what tools they use to pull themselves upright, what resources they ask for or seek out in order to build something new that they can place upon their new shaken-up-and-reformed foundations and from there find some stability with which to pull themselves FORWARD. Instead of just clinging to the shattered remnants of whatever their source of stability was previously but is no longer useful for that purpose, maybe not even because they WANT to cling to just that or are afraid or unwilling to move forward, but because they simply can’t reach any fucking resources with which to do anything BUT just cling to what little they could grab, and what they actually need is just someone to offer them said resources instead of just acting like they really did something by looking at a person lacking in resources and then judging or defining them simply by all the things they AREN’T doing to better themselves or their lives, WHEN THAT’S ONLY BECAUSE THEY’RE LACKING THE FUCKING RESOURCES TO DO ANY OF THAT.

You see who a person is not by comparing them to who they MIGHT have been before, because who can say with any certainty what person they might have been the day after that massive trauma or tragedy, had said trauma or tragedy never actually occurred? Who can guarantee that person, that hypothetical maybe-me is ACTUALLY better than who they are or can become now?

Nope. You wanna know who that person is? That’s who they declare themselves to be the second they stop trying to define themselves by who they WERE and thus who they’re not anymore....but rather by who they are NOW, and who they want to be from here on out. You don’t look at the person who’s been pushed to the ground and say oh that’s that person, that’s who that person is. No, all that tells you is that person was pushed to the ground by an asshole, and surprise surprise, they fell because that’s what fucking happens when someone pushes you to the ground, lolol. That’s not the nature of a person, that’s the nature of physics. Wow. Person A is affected by gravity and the forceful aggression of assholes in their vicinity. The uncanny insight of it all.

You wanna see that person, you look at who they are AFTER they’ve pulled themselves back up. You see what they do THEN. Once they’re back in control of themselves, their life, in the driver’s seat.

You can’t define people by the lack of something. A lack of control, a lack of choice, a lack of resources. Because we are our choices, we are the journeys we take, we are what happens on the next page of our story because the next page of our story only EVER happens because each and every page we decided to MAKE something happen next.

And we can only MAKE those choices, versus have them made for us and which thus says more about the person who forced those choices on us than it does us for simply being unable to stop that, we can only TAKE those journeys, versus being forced into certain directions and paths and down certain roads by limited options that say more about how little a person can do with only finite options available to them rather than say anything substantial about what directions a person might go in if they had actual options and choices available to them beyond just being presented with two routes that both equally suck, we can only do anything substantial with any of that, anything that says anything about US rather than just descriptive of our circumstances....

We can only do anything with all of that AFTER we’ve gained or taken back or regained control over our lives. AFTER we’ve found our footing. AFTER we’ve said well guess what, this happened then, but guess what else happened today? I got out of bed and said okay so we’re just not gonna worry about that because its over and done and it doesn’t get to be the only thing that matters about us. So instead, how about what matters right now is whatever the fuck I choose to do today, because THAT is up to me, THAT says something about me, THAT is not just some random rock crashing into me from outer fucking space and saying knock knock, fuck you. THAT is ME, saying with intent, THIS is who I am now and THIS is what I’m going to do today, and THAT’S an actual story about me and my choices and my PERSONHOOD. Versus just a summation of how shitty I looked while being smacked in the face by a mountain of bullshit and me without so much as an umbrella.

THAT’S a story about a person. That other thing, that fixation on the rock that crashed into them without warning? Its ultimately never going to be anything other than the story of how a person got hit by a fucking rock.

All of which is to say, so yeah, in that wing fic AU, Babs’ wings do change after what happens with the Joker, even though her wings had already settled.

BUT, the key thing about that is....the point of CHANGE for her wings was NOT when the Joker shot her. Its not when her life, when SHE changed, ‘because of that.’ Because maybe her wings didn’t work the same way anymore after that happened, because they represented who she was before that. And before that she was and thought of herself as someone who could grapple between buildings, flip kick into bad guys, do cartwheels across rooftops, and she can’t do those things anymore so maybe her wings don’t work for her in the way they used to because they were ‘designed’ for someone who lived life in a way she was no longer capable of.

But her wings didn’t just change then and there, they still remained the same as always even if they weren’t as useful because maybe she could still fly perhaps, but not land in the ways her wings were designed to do that, due to the changed capabilities of her legs and spine which were meant to work in concert with her wings.

See, because the point is.....if the wings are the ultimate expression of the self, even acknowledging that she was in fundamental ways CHANGED at that point (not lessened, but changed, made different, needing different things and having different wants).....the point is, at just that specific time, in the immediate aftermath of that trauma, what would her wings have changed into? What would they LOOK like, simply because say, two days ago, the Joker shot her and now she’s paralyzed? If she’s no longer the old her, how could the new her POSSIBLY be defined by that little data, that little definition, that small an image or encapsulation of everything she still MIGHT yet be or become once she’s out of bed, out of tears, out of grief for the goals that are no longer viable and now ready to say okay, now let me decide what DOES come next for me now.

So yes, Babs’ wings do change after the Joker shoots her, but they remain as they were for awhile. Just not as useful to her now that her toolbox of physical capabilities was less equipped to accommodate her newly changed needs and approaches to life.

When they change, its because she’s already become Oracle. That’s who she is now, Batgirl is a part of that but more about who she was. It’s part of the foundation she built her new self atop, its never going to not be a part of her, never going to leave, it still matters....but it is not the building itself anymore, it is the bedrock that made it through the seismic upheaval of her life and thus was sturdy enough she felt safe building something new on it, something that could ride out further earthquakes thanks to having it to ground her. But as integral as it is to what she built in the wake of her big quake....it is not the house she houses her self-image in. That’s Oracle’s domain now.

And so when her wings do change, it happens overnight, while she’s asleep. Dreaming of everything she wants now, everything she wants to become. They change not in a ‘this is happening’ sense, much like we’re never fully aware of how far into our recovery process we are.....instead, they change in a ‘huh, so this happened’ sense. Just like we only realize how much we’ve recovered, how much we no longer need to define ourselves by a quest to be better, happier, more alright...once we’ve already found that happiness or contentment and realized the reason there’s no longer the same drive to pursue some abstract image of recovery is simply because we no longer need to go anywhere to get that, we’re already there and this is what that looks like.

And so when one day Babs wakes up feeling different and looks in the mirror to see her wings no longer look like they used to but rather seem much more suited to the woman she is now, the woman she envisioned in her mind as a new goal or destination of self-determination, that she chose to become with intent, that she worked to become so she could be defined by something other than what some asshole did to her, so that she could be the sum of her deeds rather than the snapshot of her tragedy.....its a sign of change. Of her change, and proof that her life is not now what it once was, and never will be again.....but its not some big momentous reveal, more just an exhale of affirmation for something she’s already known for awhile and just now has the distance and perspective to see actual proof of.

Its the marker of the fact that actually she’s okay with it, she’s okay with herself, her new self, because she doesn’t need to be who she might have been without that trauma, she doesn’t need to be a maybe when who she is? Has no more of a built in limit or ceiling or cap on happiness and success than the woman she was before her trauma had. She doesn’t love what happened to her, but its just something that happened to her. Its not who she is, THIS is who she is, this is THAT, and this she’s more than okay with, she’s proud of, she’s like damn I look good. Life threw a punch at her and she got into a wheelchair and rolled with it, and if you’re busy looking at the bruise from that punch because you’re so focused on the fact that it happened, you’re missing the real story.

And that’s the way she pulled herself out of bed every morning for a year and into her wheelchair to train with escrima sticks in whole new ways of fighting so the next time the Joker tried knocking on her door, he wouldn’t get to pull the same shit twice. Because she’s not the same woman she was then and anyone focusing on THAT instead of watching out for all the ways she can still kick ass, some old, some new, some that she invented herself because necessity is the mother of invention and Babs has always been driven to be the top of her class for reasons that have everything to do with just HER and absolutely nothing at all with what happened to put her in a class where fighting from a wheelchair was a tool she felt she needed -

Well maybe they need to get clocked across the head with a stick to drive home that they’ve missed the entire point, that if you’re there looking to see a tragedy you’ve got the wrong fucking address cuz she’s doing just fine.

And so she wakes up one day and looks in her mirror and sees her wings have changed overnight and they look nothing like she remembers but tbh, she likes these a lot better, likes the way they feel, the shape of them, they just FIT....and then she just nods her head decisively, quietly pleased but in no rush to make any big announcement, because for her, this changes nothing. Its just a sign that change has already happened.

And its like....duh, she already knew that, and she’s more than okay with it, so semantics can wait for another time. She’s Barbara Gordon, the Oracle of Gotham, and she’s got shit to do.

And okay, so clearly, I ended up just writing that post instead of writing the rest of that to-do list, so I’m gonna now go make another post with the ACTUAL to-do list, and like, yay, I can cross this off I guess? My process is so mysterious, oh unknowable ways.

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 4 years

Text

HASO, “Into Dust.”

I have been working little hints into the story for a very long time, and now I am going a bit more obvious with it. Super exciting and I hope you enjoy :)

GA physicians and psychologists sat across from the human as he stared at them. Neither of them moved, and neither of them spoke. Outside the pop-up medical tent mist swirled in great undulations around them thicker than it had been yesterday.

All down the tent,, separated by curtains, other doctors were examining the other human, none of which moved, beside those that were ordered to guard the entrances and exits. The tent held its own atmosphere inside, so no one was wearing helmets, though they were resting very close by just in case.

“What is wrong with them?” Ramirez whispered from somewhere in the darkness.

Krill stood next to him from where he could see both Maverick and Adam at the same time, “Physically they are both just fine, but neural scans are showing…. Strange brain waves.”

“And that…. writing … what was that, do you think they can actually read it?”

There was a sharp hiss from behind them as the Tent’s airlock popped open.

Another Vrul stepped inside and pulled off their helmet. They gave krill a quick once over, and began to speak despite the look of destain, “I have examined the writings on the stone, we found some more of the markings and have arranged them according to their break pattern. Using what I know of this strange language from the first lines of text the humans translated, I believe…..”

The two of them stared at the Vrul pent up with questions.

“I believe that they CAN, in fact, read it.”

Ramirez blinked and stared at the little alien, “but…. That doesn’t make sense, why can some humans read it and other humans can’t”

That is what they had learned through the course of the last few days. There were some humans that could read it and other humans that could not, but no aliens could read it. Those who could read it, didn’t exactly read it, or so they said, but understood it inherently. They looked at the word and knew it’s meaning, but they wouldn’t have been able to give you a lesson on proper grammar.

The linguist walked past them, “A few other things of interest.” Krill and Ramirez moved to walk after the Vrul, “I have done a preliminary analysis of the linguistic structure of the language itself. Though I am not entirely sure about some words, I have nailed down the structure, and have seen that it does not seem representative of any alien language yet known-”

“How is that interesting. It seems like that is just a dead end-”

The Vrul glared at him, “If you would let me finish, you might have heard me say that, while it does not match any KNOWN alien language, it DOES have structural similarities to common human languages that can be found in the Lower middle east and upper Africa.”

Ramirez blinked, “And what exactly does that mean?”

The Vrul’s antenna twitched, “I have no clue, it could be a simple coincidence of language, but that is what my analysis has found, what is done with that information, I do not know.” He glanced towards the table, “Has there been any change with the humans behavior.”

“No they are just…. Like this…. In some sort of trance or something. They haven’t spoken since putting the pieces together.”

“Don’t let them hear that we found more.” Krill ordered.

THe other vrul looked at him askance but didn’t say anything.

Krill ignored it, an exchange that Ramirez would have found curious if it wasn’t for his concern for his friends

Ramirez huffed in frustration, he didn’t want to say that he was “jealous” the others could read the strange spooky rock language because he definitely didn’t want to be put into catatonia, but there was still a part of him that worried it had something to do with something being wrong with him. If this was supposed to work on humans, than why didn’t it work on him. Was there something inherently wrong with him?

He tried to shake off those thoughts. Thoughts like that were like….. Well they were like getting angry when the person you rejected finds someone else to date. You didn’t want them to begin with, you just wanted to be special enough for them to notice you.

And Ramirez, well he didn’t get jealous of other people.

Other people got jealous of him.

There was another slight pop from the airlock behind him, and he turned just as a couple of officers stepped into the room. They were all the way down from the UNSC, and they didn’t look particularly pleased to be there.

Admiral Kelly was at their front, and she stopped just next to them as she entered, turning to look at Ramirez.

She knew Ramirez from back in the day when he had done his first tour on the Enterprise. He had been on the Team with captain Kelly when Adam discovered the existence of alien life. It was kind of crazy to think back on those times. It seemed so strange that in his lifetime, no one had thought aliens existed, now to be surrounded by them without batting an eye.

“What do we know?”

“Not much Ma’am.” he began, “We know that there is some sort of…. Strange writing that only humans can read, and in that case, only certain humans. After reading it they sort of just locked up like this and we haven’t gotten them to talk since.”

Admiral kelly grunted, “ALright, put orders out that no one is to go near that writing, at least no one human, until we can determine what it is. Get some linguists on it, and see if we can’t identify authenticity.” She glanced over to where Admiral Vir was sitting, “I want to take a closer look.”

No one stopped her as she stepped across the room.

Krill followed her and Ramiez hung just back from where she stood as she walked over and traded seats with the scientist who was sitting across from Adam. She sat down, and Adam did not move.

Krill stood with her and stared at him.

From the outside, nothing seemed so different about him. IT was the same skin and the same eyes and the same mouth that sat there, but there was… something off about it. He couldn’t really understand until he noted the expression on the man’s face.

It was almost as if he was holding his jaw differently than usual, not in an abnormal way just not in a way that Adam ever did. It didn’t lend itself so much to a smile as it did to a frown of serious contemplation. His eyes, while glassy seemed intense, as if he was staring off into something they could not see.

When he stared into his eyes Krill got the…. Uncomfortable feeling that he was looking through a window staring inward….. As something tried to break it’s way out.

He shivered and threw away his strange musings.

Admiral Kelly leaned forward, “Adam…. Adam Vir.”

She reached a hand across the table and placed her hand over his.

Krill jolted in surprise as the man slowly lifted his head to look at them.

Admiral Kelly sat back.

“It was not for us to see.” he said, and when he spoke his voice…. Seemed to echo strangely in a space that shouldn't have supported that kind of acoustic phenomena.

“What wasn’t for us?” She wondered

He tilted his head, “The writing was not for us. We are prying into things we shouldn’t pry into, admiral kelly.”

“I see…. We couldn’t have known that it wasn’t for us. We were just doing our jobs.” Krill didn’t know where this was going, but the way Adam spoke made him nervous.

Adam tilted his head, and the way he did it was just so… wrong somehow.

“That is true.”

“Adam…. What is that language…. Do you know.”

He turned his head back to look at her, and when he did the glassiness in his eyes vanished leaving him shrewd and sharp, though there was still something about him that struck Kril as odd, the way he held his body as if…. As if it was not his…. Or perhaps the inflection of his voice making him sound much much older than he was. Or perhaps not older, but….. Timeless? No that was just ridiculous

Admiral Kelly slid back in her seat surprised.

“Am I…. speaking with Adam?”

He had no idea what caused her to ask that question, but the human smiled, and when he smiled it was also…. Off somehow. It wasn’t an unpleasant smile or even all that sinister, it was just…. Different.

“Yes, and no.”

He wouldn’t speak more after that, and no matter what they tried to get out of him, he would not speak.

They did not get any words out of the other humans. For days and nights the humans sat there in the darkness of the tent. They did not eat and they did not sleep. Despite attempted medical intervention, it appeared as if they needed none, as if their bodies had frozen in time. Their hearts still beat, their lungs still breathed, but there was no deterioration. They simply sat there unmoving.

Despite the secret nature of the military operation, someone somewhere got hold of some information until rumors were spreading around the galaxy like wildfire. Ships landed planetside only to be turned away as nosey reporters and stubborn scientists tried to get a peek at the humans.

That was until one ship landed.

WHen the door opened a tall shape came stepping out from inside. The marines in their space suits moved forward to stop them, but were stopped in their place as the tip of a sharp metal spear was pointed towards them and their suits.

“Corporal, its good to see you again.”

***

Ramirez stared down the shaft of the spear, “Sunny, That your spear or are you just happy to see me.”

The Drev huffed humming with laughter, “I’, glad to see you haven’t changed much.”

“What are you doing here! I thought you were supposed to be back on Anin…. Bringing light and truth to the people like some sort of space Moses.”

“Again with that comparison.”

“Sorry, but seriously. How did you get here, and how did you know we were here.”

She tilted her head, “It's hardly difficult to find out where Adam Vir is. He has this habit of being the center of the universe without trying.”

“So I assume you heard.”

“I heard… something…. Something about strange writing, and humans behaving strangely. There was only one person that it could be.”

Ramirez sighed, “I suppose that is true.” he waved the other marines down and motioned her to follow him. Together they stepped onto the hovercade and drove themselves through the swirling red mist, “They haven’t eaten, and they haven’t slept for over a week, but Dr Krill says that…. Nothing seems to be medically wrong with them. There is no dehydration or deterioration. They don’t sleep, but they don’t seem to need to. Whatever is going on with them…. Well we can’t be sure.”

“Have they spoken?” Sunny wondered.

“I mean yeah, once to tell us that the writing wasn’t for us.”

“Who spoke?”

“It was Adam, but he was, weird….”

Sunny went very quiet just then, and he couldn’t get her to speak the rest of the trip over.

***

Krill stood next to Adam, who still sat in the same spot as before. He checked his pulse and his breathing which were regular and unlabored. He was worried about him remaining in one position so long afraid that he would develop blood clots in his legs. They had tried moving the humans for their safety in this matter, but they had refused to be moved. All signs should have pointed to their slow and eventual demise from dehydration. Based on the timetable, they should have been critical about two days ago, but still they sat there without being bothered to move or even die.

Their brain waves were, just odd, it wasn’t that something was wrong, but almost as if there was some sort of interference in the way.

He was just Examining Adam’s good eye, which seemed reactive when the airlock popped open.

He turned surprised to watch as Ramirez pulled off his helmet, followed by another familiar face, bright blue with yellow eyes.

“Sunny!” His exclamation was lost as she dropped her helmet into Ramirez’s arms and walked across the intervening space, her eyes locked on Adam. She ignored everyone else in the room as she pulled the seat back and sat down resting her upper elbows on the table as she leaned forward.

“Hello, Deus.”

The room stared.

And watched as Adam cracked a smile, “It's good to see you again, Sunny. I missed you.”

“What are you doing here.”

Adam shook his head and sighed, “You….. understand so little about what is going on here…”

“What do you mean?”

“Deus for one. I think you have confused that as my name.”

“Then what is your name.”

“I already told you, it's me, Adam.”

“You don’t act much like him.”

He turned his head to look up, “That's because I AM Adam but MORE or perhaps, Adam but disconnected, not the whole Adam.”

“Stop speaking cryptically, and just tell me who and what you are.”

He watched her his single eye wide and green, “I am human.”

“Bullshit.”

“I am Human.”

“Now your just being difficult.”

He laughed, and for a moment she DID see a bit of Adam in there. He reached out a hand placing it over hers, “Assume for now that I am…. Perhaps a piece of Adam, it does not accurately describe me, but it will work for now.” he looked at her, and the expression on his face was so soft….. And familiar, “We did miss you…. I suppose we can actually thank you for all this. If it wasn’t for you he would not have been able to read those words.”

“What are you talking about.”

“Nothing you will understand.” “What are you doing?”

“We are waiting.”

“For what?”

“It hardly matters now, our waiting has been in vain, and I must finish this.”

“This…. What is THIS, you aren’t making any sense.”

Adam stood legs unbothered by days of sitting in the same spot. The other humans turned to look at him. Maverick even smiled, but did not move further. He began to walk forward, and Sunny reached out a hand to grab him, but as soon as her hand came in contact with his skin, she yelped and had to draw her hand back as his skin…. Burned.

He looked down at her, “Please…. For your own safety do not try to stop me. For the safety of this body…. Bring a medical team.”

She stared in confusion as Adam made his way towards the airlock door.

Others tried to stop him, but their reactions were similar. Sunny raced after him as he stepped into the airlock, without a suit.

The door shut and before she could do anything, and airlock door hissed open. She expected Adam to fall to the ground as noxious fumes permeated his lungs and began to suffocate him, but he seemed to ignore it, stepping into the mist which swirled around him in great waves of red billowing and undulating at his feet.

As he walked he seemed to…. Slow slightly, as if the heat of his skin was letting off heat.

Scientists in suits stepped back in shock and horror as he walked, unprotected between them though his breathing was even and unbroken.

Mist swallowed him, and Sunny had to run to catch up.

Noxious gas rippled against his skin.

Krill ran after, and Dr. Katie and ramirez were close behind.

“He should be on the ground by now.” She heard someone say.

Her own breath was making the inside of her suit a bit muggy.

They had reached the site now, and sunny looked down to see large blocks of metal or stone on the ground, carved with strange symbols. Scientists stood around having been examining the rocks, but when they looked up they stepped back in shock and awe, and horror as the human stepped into the middle of their work.

He turned to look at Sunny, “They are not ready?” He said

And then he held out his hands.

As he did, the ground around them began to vibrate. It wasn’t a large vibration, like an earthquake, but a small vibration, a small vibration so powerful, Sunny found herself staggering to her knees as her very bones went numb. All around them scientists and aliens alike keeled over onto the ground.

The vibrations grew stronger until the rocks danced and wobbled with fury.

Adam raised his hands and the vibrations grew more powerful. Sunny couldn’t feel anything below her midriff.

His hands were raised high and wide, red mist swirl around him, though his skin seemed to glow white

He lifted his head underside of his chin and neck exposed, and then he clenched his hands violently.

All around them it seemed like the vibrations hyper focused, and the rocks around them crumbled to dust.

Sunny collapsed onto her chest and arms as a billowing wave of black ash roared up around them.

When the ash settled, he was still standing there.

Groggily she watched as he lowered his hands and the subtle glow faded from his skin.

He lowered his head, and as she watched, a look of confusion crossed his face, confusion that was replaced suddenly by fear. He took a step forward hand outstretched, and then collapsed to the ground body violently seizing.

Limbs still numb, barely able to walk, Sunny struggled to her feet and over to where he lay. A few others had raced forward.

An emergency shroud was deployed, similar to a vacuum sealed bag you could pull over someone and then close shut while pulling out bad air and putting good air in.

Little was she to know what back in the tent, the other humans had come out of their seeming trance.

And below her feet dust was kicked up into the air as the last remnants of the words faded into ash.

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oneweekoneband · 3 years

Text

her Nebraska (1982)

In July I flew to Massachusetts with a plague on, and I felt that it was wrong, but my mother had begged and I’d been out of work for months. Mornings there I ran in long, uneven ovals on the same roads I’d memorized in high school. There’s no sidewalks, but the few feet of dirt between the craggy pavement and the open mouths of the fields serve all right for a single body in motion. When a truck comes up close from behind, the ground shakes, and I step away bouncingly from the street toward thigh-high yellow weeds and grass, and keep going. I was slowly picking my way back in that dirt, sweat-slick from only a plodding couple of miles in peak summer heat, and sucking the wet cotton of my mask in between my teeth on every inhale, when Taylor Swift announced she was releasing a surprise album produced by the guy from The National. Not the guy from The National, like, the voice, but the guy from The National whose photo was circulated on Twitter earlier this year as some kind of antifa super soldier, which isn’t the case, but would’ve been rad. First, I stopped dead to send some outraged, misspelled text messages, and then I ran home faster than I’d moved in years.

Tall, blonde, patrician pop star Taylor Swift is to me something like a cross-between a wife and a boogeyman. Bound we’ve been since we were really children. Time and its changes haven’t rid me of her, and what’s worse is I have never quite been able to wish they would, though I claim as much all the time. Countless hours of my one wild and precious life have been spent on endlessly analyzing the minutiae of Taylor Swift’s music, the mind that made it, the real world events which influenced it. And though all the while I have known she is only a person, and that people, while each strange and lovely in their own ways, are, in the end, mostly dull, needful in just the regular manner, the fantasy is better, the sick dream of a megalomaniac songstress, curious, thrilling, probably evil, and I choose that. I don’t know Taylor Alison Swift, born to this world in, I presume, the usual way. But my Taylor Swift? I’m a renowned expert. I’ve always eaten up stories—movies, music, celebrity news, the one my grandfather tells about falling off his bike once in Ireland as a boy and his face “cracking open like an egg”—like a starved dog. I’m obsessive about my interests, but not inclined to intense fandom, and certainly not fandom in the mode of the stan. For one, I’m too self-absorbed. But caring intensely for a famous person is falling in love with a ghost, and that’s all right—I mean, what the hell? We’re here together just dying... Let’s enjoy—but is an affair best undertaken with the knowledge that everyone alive has their own complex interiority, as unruly as your own, and that you, a stranger, are not in any real way connected to the lawless, blurry middle of that celebrity, and will never be. It’s freeing and fun to know this. I mean, these people are basically in your employ. Glamorous dollhouse dwellers. Acknowledging that uncrossable distance allows for a different, healthier closeness of pure imagination. My feelings, then, can comfortably be at once both fiercely intense and entirely silly. I am a foremost scholar in the art of the Taylor Swift who exists in my head. The real person raised in Pennsylvania I don’t know at all. I have some conjectures on the matter, and, as with all my conjectures, every hackneyed theory, each picky little opinion, I’m sure they’re perfect, brilliant, just absolutely right, but that’s still all they are. Taylor Swift, figure of the cultural imagination, is the Jodie Comer to my Sandra Oh in Killing Eve, annoying and pretty in frills, taunting me endlessly and holding us trapped together in a dance of most enchanting death. But the real Taylor Swift has favorite bed sheets and a social security number and a British boyfriend, none of which I have any desire to know about, and if I saw her at a restaurant I’d politely avert my eyes before, yes, dive-bombing the group text. There’s nobody on Earth I’d stand in line to speak to, but then I’ve been speaking to a certain figment of Taylor Swift for nearly half my life.

I went to a Taylor Swift concert the night before I moved into college in 2009. My father’s work friend, firefighter by day, near professional gambler by night, got comped tickets to the Fearless Tour stop taking place at the nearby casino, and he let me have them as a reward, mainly, for happening to be seventeen. Live in-person and performed acoustically, “Fifteen” made me cry. A few years after that, in the thick, sticky part of my first post-college summer, I wrote approximately twenty-three million words about her in these very pages. (”Pages”) At that point, Taylor’s most recent release was 2012’s Red, and the work I produced that long ago July about Taylor and her career, writing I was fairly pleased with at the time, feels now, besides just being extremely clearly written by a twenty-one year old, strange to me for the way it favors the sweet over the sour almost uniformly. There is a wholesome kind of ardor in that writing which maybe I’ve outgrown the ability to hold. Or maybe Taylor just proceeded to spend the next half a decade plus releasing one bad single after another, and it was taste—and trespasses against taste—and not some shift in my nature which altered the tenor of our bond. I have real love for my particular image, gleaned from public statements and published art, of smart, bizarre famous woman Taylor Swift, and I admire the bulk of her output very much. I’m just no longer so inclined to fawn. This is not to say I am here to offer a Taylor Swift hate screed. I couldn’t swing it, and, anyway, I’m not a pop feminist-for-hire circa 2010. But we’re older now. Things are different. At twenty-eight, twenty-nine this month—Taylor will, also this December, turn thirty-one—I regard Taylor Swift warily, like an ex with whom you have a tentative friendship, perpetually on the brink of falling one way or the other into hatred or delight, only to wobble back the opposite direction again at the slightest provocation, but still, despite best efforts, even, I regard her all the time.

folklore was released at midnight on July 24th 2020, but I was at a cabin in rural Vermont without Internet or cell service. I drank Bud Light seltzers with my mother while watching the eerie pandemic return of Major League Baseball, and when I got into a strange bed there I stewed, knowing there were people out in the world all over who were hearing Taylor Swift songs I never had, and that this was a fundamental wrong, a disruption in the balance of the universe. I listened to it the next morning in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot.

And folklore is great. That’s the terrible thing. Slightly less great, maybe, than some people have insisted, tricked, I think, by just the pronounced shift in sound. But it’s great. A little gift I asked for a thousand times and was still surprised to get, like a wife who didn’t expect her henpecked husband to ever follow through and buy the paraffin wax hand bath as-see-on-TV. For years, I’ve been halfheartedly insisting that Taylor had a great album in her. I’d say it even, perhaps especially, while she stubbornly fed me gruel. Or worse, gruel with the occasional whiff of something better. With a ripe, little raspberry dropped into the slop. The bright, villainous thrill of “Getaway Car” made me believe Taylor, my Taylor, was in there somewhere under the lacquer of sequins and synth, which, while not objectionable by default, seemed a costume, and an ill-fitting one. The lived-in world of “Cornelia Street” made those old scars sting. That gay “Delicate” video. When she did “Call It What You Want” on SNL and played guitar while wearing an ugly sweater. If the abominable “ME!”, lead single off Lover, was the stick, 1989’s “Clean” was the carrot. I was Charlie Brown, and Taylor my Lucy, yanking the football back again and again. Over drinks I still yelled that Taylor Swift’s next album would be, “her Nebraska”, referring to my favorite Bruce Springsteen record, and learned to live with that egg on my face for good. I suppose I even came to like it. There was something inherently funny in taking up, like, “blind faith in the as of yet untapped greater artistic potential of massively wealthy and popular singer Taylor Swift” as my totally inane personal cause du jour, and eventually it was a bit, a gag I performed to be obstinate and didactic, but way down somewhere awful near my kidneys I meant it the whole while. And then she did it. A pandemic befell the world and amid a sea of human suffering Taylor Swift remembered she can write. She wrote, and with a massive, crucial assist from Aaron Dessner, whose music on this record is sometimes so beautiful it actually angers me, as the last thing I needed in already perilous times was to be made to try and marry my uniquely perverse emotional responses to beloved divorced dad band The National and fucking Taylor Swift, she made an album which, if not her Nebraska, per se (I’ve come to realize that a major part of believing Taylor Swift will one day make an album I find as quietly devastating and gorgeous as Nebraska is knowing that no album will ever actually be Her Nebraska... That each will, rather, to me, be more and more evidence that it’s coming still, more proof that the limit is untouched, on and on ad infinitum, or at least until the seas take us into a place of salty peace.) is a shocking credit to all my hard-fought and deluded confidence. folklore is great. This fact has made me feel almost equally as disoriented from my understanding of the world as the time-melting COVID-19 lockdowns have, and it turned my Spotify year in review annual collective AI humiliation kink thing into a glaring indictment of my mental state, but still, I mean... It’s great.

In talking about folklore a bit this week, there are a number of specific topics I intend to cover—what a thrill it is to hear Taylor say “fuck”; Taylor’s terrifying birth chart; the astoundingly perfect bridge of “the last great american dynasty”; “because my ass is located at the back of my body”; the bit in last year’s “Lover” where deranged WASP Taylor Swift implies that to “leave the Christmas lights up til January” is some signifier of being a love-struck bohemian, when actually everyone who doesn’t employ domestic staff to take their lights down does this; how reputation is the best of the Taylor Swift records released in the latter half of the 2010s, actually, and the people who can’t see that are cowards—but intend mostly to let the muse move me where she will. Against the advice of my better angels, she—that tie-in marketing eldritch terror—always does.

#taylor swift #folklore

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lookbluesoup · 4 years

Text

I’ve seen a lot of talk about anti anti culture lately and an emphasis on canceling people who write stories where bad things happen (i.e., rape, molestation, abuse). I’m really interested in facilitating a positive, open space here on my blog. So sharing my personal opinion about this at all is something I thought about for a while, and my hope is that it offers a helpful perspective as well as solidarity to people who use fiction the same way as me.

It’s not directed at anyone in particular or any event in particular. The tl;dr version is – people should always have a choice, they should be allowed to read or choose not to read, they should be allowed to write and share or choose not to write or share. Taking that choice away from people ultimately hurts survivors by making topics taboo and forcing everyone to fit a specific moral narrative for their pain or experiences to be valid.

Trigger Warnings: Rape, abuse, cancel culture, child molestation, depression, suicide, dogmatic religion, homophobia

1. These things DO happen in real life, and yes, they are harmful, and yes, reading about them can be triggering. Fully, completely acknowledge all of these things and have experienced my share of it firsthand.

2. People should be allowed to know before they get invested in a story whether triggers might be present so that they can choose to avoid it if they want to. It is their choice, and responsibility to decide not to read something that is appropriately tagged. (And please, please tag appropriately!)

3. Being interested in reading about dark subjects does not make a person evil. Somewhere between 31-57 percent of women admit to having rape fantasies. (x) That does not mean women want to be raped in real life. It does not mean that half the population of women are perverted degenerates. Reading fiction, like indulging in our fantasies, is a safe place to explore and enjoy sensations, dramas, and experiences we still don’t want in real life.

In less touchy examples - I love reading about gladiator arena battles! I love playing apocalyptic games where monsters jump out of the dark and scare the shit out of me! I do not want gladiator rings or to live in an apocalypse in real life! That doesn’t mean my interest in these stories or games condones them in real life. It doesn’t mean I think it was right that Rome irl forced slaves to fight to the death for entertainment.

4. I grew up in an environment without grey areas. The dogmatic Bible-beating hatemongering kind. Someone was good and did everything right according to my beliefs and worldview, or someone was bad and a direct threat to me. If I did something wrong, I had to punish myself physically and emotionally to make up for not being perfect. I was taught to despise myself. My parents believed there was only one correct way to view any situation - their way. I was petrified of punishment and learned that it wasn’t even worth trying to do better or accommodate someone else’s experiences because I would never measure up and would be condemned for doing something that wasn’t perfect. That is immensely, cripplingly harmful to an individual and to society. Cancel culture does the same thing. It excommunicates people who aren’t pure and allows others to get by with abuse because they are ‘teaching’ or an ‘authority on morality’ – and guess what? Nobody is pure. We are all human, we all make mistakes, and we are all learning. None of us have moral authority.

We cannot build a healthy, inclusive society if we are unsafe. We cannot be safe if we are not allowed to first admit that we ALL make mistakes and have prejudices that we can improve on. So we need to be kind and nonjudgmental whenever we have the chance to be. And we have to accept and respect that what’s fun or helpful or healing for us might be the opposite for someone else, or vice versa. Which is okay if we are respectful of each other’s boundaries and don’t try to force a way of being onto someone else without their consent.

5. With regard to writing, this means that people need to be allowed to explore difficult, even painful topics if they wish to. Even for fun. Even if someone else might not want or need to explore those same topics. That doesn’t make either person inherently evil or wrong. It just means we all have different needs and wants and diversity is normal.

As a serious example, as someone who was molested by a teenage neighbor as a child, I can guarantee you that the fact these topics were considered so disgusting and taboo by society made it very difficult for me to cope. It was not my fault, and I’ve healed from it, but when it happened I didn’t even understand what was going on, and the guilt and self-blame that followed me for years afterward were almost crippling. So yes – what happened to me in real life was wrong, inexcusable behavior. But censorship did not protect me. First it made me ignorant and vulnerable to manipulation, and then it made me feel dirty, disgusting, and isolated.

What I needed was a safe avenue to talk about it and the thoughts and sensations it stirred up, in order to heal. I needed to know it was okay to have automatic thoughts – they were a result of fear and trauma or even just being human, not a moral failing on my part. I needed to actually talk about and explore what I had felt openly, and how that related to the rest of my life, before I could move past it and have a healthy view of intimate acts that weren’t soaked in guilt and self-loathing.

I read a book after that happened, set in ancient Rome, where pederasty took place. And the victim was allowed to admit that he’d enjoyed some of what had happened to him while enslaved, and was then assured that even though he didn’t hate everything that he experienced, it didn’t make him to blame, nor his abuser right, and those thoughts/feelings did not define him or his morality. That has been immensely healing to me – but this ‘grey’ exploration of a topic is not compatible with mainstream cancel culture.

Or alternatively, I watched the series 13 Reasons Why. I hated it. It felt like nothing but shock value entertainment and not a respectful management of topics like suicide that were very, VERY real to me. Except for someone else I knew who had also struggled with suicidal thoughts and impulses, 13 Reasons Why was immensely validating. They were glad that a series showed such graphic representation of these events in a way that couldn’t be ignored or brushed over. What had been hurtful to me, was empowering to them.

I believe it is not mine, or anyone else’s place, to decide that a piece of media should be across the board banned because of what it might do. Because while some of us share traumas, we still each have different experiences, needs, and healing processes.

Such strict censorship allows for only victims who meet a certain “standard” to receive care and healing. The rest are left to suffer or are even punished further.

All of us have gone through life with vastly different levels of privilege, opportunity, expectations, etc, which leads to vastly different interpretations of the world, none of which are 100% correct or true.

6. Cancel culture hurts LGBTQ+ rights. I’m neither straight or cis, and I might never have learned that if I hadn’t been able to build friendships outside of my social circle who allowed me to integrate and ask questions without being obligated to agree with them. Where I grew up, there was immense prejudice against gay people. My cousin was disowned and disinherited for coming out. I was sheltered from anyone who might argue for gay rights, and discouraged from looking at or being curious of the deep south’s version of ‘problematic.’ That’s what I was taught – to be uncomfortable toward, judgmental, and condemning. If I had been on tumblr during those years and gotten ‘cancelled’ I would have been even more suspicious and condemning of Others, and even more determined that my way was the only right one. I specifically avoided tumblr social circles because I ‘knew’ they hated ‘people like me.’ It’s not exclusive. This trend where people become even more convinced to pick an opposing side because the Other person is being hateful is one of the first things they teach you in social psychology.

The kind of intolerance that goes with mobbing people for saying anything they consider problematic at all is the same cruelty that makes me unable to tell my parents I identify as agender or pan. It’s what gets women stoned to death and gays beheaded. It’s not moral.

What changed my point of view was friendships. One of my friends came out as gay and my world turned upside down because here was someone that didn’t match any of the stereotypes I’d been taught to fear. He wasn’t hateful or condemning of me, he was one of the most thoughtful and peaceful people I knew. That is what started to change things for me, and made it safe for me to explore other ways of thinking and interpretations of scripture. Because I cared about him more than I needed to be right.

7. Nobody is obligated to interact with someone who is being violent or hateful to them. You’re not even obligated to interact with someone you disagree with, if the topic is too painful or you simply don’t want to talk about it. Keep yourselves safe. But within the world of writing, live and let live. If someone posts a story you don’t like, and they’ve tagged it appropriately, please, please consider that your experience is not universal. You have the choice not to read that story. Someone else might need to read it. Let them, and don’t shame them for it.

#cancel culture #tw rape #tw abuse #tw child molestation #tw depression #tw suicide #tw religion #tw homophobia #tw cancel culture #wyn gabs #not fallout #text #long post

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luque-moreau · 3 years

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y'know i think its about time ive refurbished my psychonauts headcanons/theories

what??? me??? rewriting my psychonauts headcanons in a more comprehensible and informed way???

alright, i think everyone knows what im talking about, by headcanons i mean headcanon as in singular, and as singular, i mean my "raz is somewhere on the spectrum of adhd".

so lets just get into it:

what is adhd actually?

adhd by definition stands for attention deficit hyperactive/hyperfocus disorder (yes, let me get into the details in just a sec). it is a nerodevelopmental disorder that is almost completely reliant on genetic factors, however conditions during pregnancy can sometimes contribute to certain aspects of how adhd manifests itself.

long story short, people with adhd have a smaller frontal lobe, and therefore less dopamine in general (even though yes, it is more complicated than that).

theres also a little bit of "chicken or the egg first" goin on here, certain behaviors or personality tendencies can also affect how adhd is presented in one individual to the next, however its still not clear if that is because it is an accommodating for a certain thought process or if someones experiences and personality shape their symptoms of adhd entirely. its a very blurry line, and the answer is different for everybody.

hyperactive type

hyperactive type is probably the closest to most stereotypical depictions of adhd, think the 5 year old whos parents brush off their child’s hyperactivity as something that will “go with age”. however, this isn’t only present in children, adults with adhd have to deal with a constant need for stimuli to make up for the lack of dopamine their current activity is providing them. this results in someone fidgeting frequently in repetitive or predictable motions, unable to hold attention to a specific task for long periods of time, or many other of the symptoms associated with adhd.(i sadly cannot provide more information in this area, i am not knowledgeable enough to...)

hyperfocus type

hyperfocus type is a tricky one, it can look like the complete opposite of adhd in theory. hyperfocus can look similar to special interests or hyperfixation, a great deal of time and knowledge dedicated to a very particular thing (although it is important to note that even though hyperfixations and special interests are incredibly similar, special interests is a term more typically used within autistic-circles, and isnt really the best word to use if you happen to be neurotypical). Think of maybe that kid who knows all the cool animal facts and won’t shut up about them. Its because certain trains of thought or activities might release more dopamine then others, so to get more of that dopamine, someone of hyperfocus type will be mentally unable to stop thinking or doing a very specific task or topic. this results in someone seemingly always spacing out, unable to change subjects or changing subjects too fast or with little to no correlation, or being completely unable to have enough motivation to do simple things.

personally i tend to fall under the category of hyperfocus myself rather than hyperactive, however the two are not mutually exclusive, its more common to find people with both types rather than just one. even myself, i might exhibit more tendencies to place me under the label of hyperfocus, but that doesn’t mean i don’t have any symptoms of the hyperactive type. its my personality that affects my mannerisms, which then makes certain aspects of my symptoms more or less apparent. Thats because im an INTP-T, i just tend to be more to myself and constantly in a state of thinking abstractly. I have trouble communicating and even sometimes recognizing my needs, and get to a point where im unable to do the simplest of things without feeling emotionally drained. Thats just my experience though, everybodys different.

so what the fuck does this have to do with raz then?

well lets think about it, rather than have it just be me projecting myself onto a comfort character:

raz finds issue with connecting to kids his age

lets be honest. none of the campers really like raz that much. or at least some do the bare minimum to be try and be polite. it doesn’t seem like any of the other campers besides dogen, whos also socially outcasted, are really fond of raz. lili might like him, but that can definitely be interpreted as curiosity in someone new and different from the norm. It might not be that the kids despise him, but nobodys opinionated enough to care whether he is around or not.

social isolation is one of the most damning things i had to experience from an early age and still feel even today. there is a sense of feeling that you are different among your peers, whether that is a good thing or bad thing. it feels difficult to interact with other people you are not familiar with, and can really stunt you emotionally and socially. from a really early age, theres somethin in you that knows something is very different between the experiences of your peers compared to your own, and it can feel incredibly isolating.

raz and his borderline stupidity

time to get real again. raz is a fucking idiot. at least in the sense that sometimes his decisions seem incredibly spontaneous and not really thought through. he runs from home to attend a summer camp, not really thinking about the logistics of how he will get there, how the staff will react, how long its gonna take for his parent to find him, and so on. it doesn’t seem like he over or underestimates his abilities, he just goes for it without considering. that doesnt seem like the smartest thing to do, even though we know hes incredibly intelligent when it comes to larger, abstract situations. its the little details that he misses, small minuet things that seem unimportant that he overlooks, which can sometimes make things harder for him in the end.

i think its obvious that impulsivity is one symptom of adhd. however i cannot stress how difficult it is to think at supersonic speed and still feel incredibly stupid. i mean, thinking faster doesn’t inherently mean you will have better ideas, you can always be stupider faster, but being able to realize stupid mistakes or inconsistencies in your own thought process is annoying as hell. it feels like every time you try to recognize the issue, fix it, and move forward, you only end up not paying attention to another issue that gets bigger and more annoying than the first. Its always two steps forward, one step back, constantly making the same mistakes even though you try everything in your power to avoid them or grow as a person. The simplest of facts, ideas, or just things to remember end up being forgotten, and once youre reminded of them you remember them and feel like an idiot. however, arbitrary things and complex issues are much easier to digest and remember for me, things like history and the whole blame game charade of it all, biology and how every minuet thing has a greater impact on others and intertwines with every single factor of its environment, philosophy and theorizing why we think the way we do and what can be changed. but oh shit, im a dumbass i forgot to do my laundry. shit. god fuckin dammit.

empathy over sympathy

one of the basic themes of psychonauts is empathy. simple as that. raz goes around into other peoples brains, and tries to help them as much as he can, even if his efforts are not always successful in the way he intended. he never demonizes anyone to the point of unredeemability, and can empathize and understand other peoples perspectives. hes open to new ideas and

although some studies out there theorize that empathy is impaired due to adhd, from my perspective i feel like that is simply not true. if anything, i would say the sensitivity that comes with adhd (hypersensitivity) only enhances that empathy. i could definitely see social disconnection being one of the reasons it might appear that someone with adhd is less empathetic, however i would doubt that adhd would impair a persons empathy. adhd tends to also entail heightened emotions, this doesn’t necessarily mean a more outwardly emotional person, however it definitely shifts a persons perspective of their own emotions as well as others. the concept of hypersensitivity also completely contradicts the idea of people with adhd be less empathetic.

miscommunication and disconnect

sigh, the dad thing. yup. raz has that very iffy relationship with his dad at the beginning of the game which is eventually resolved. very abruptly, might i add. but thats not what this is about, thats a topic for another day. miscommunication seemed to be the root of the issue, however we only get razs side of the story. not to mention the severity of his claims and willingness to seemingly drop everything afterwards. kinda sus, ngl.

alright this ones a doosey. this, i feel, cements my theory pretty well. like i mentioned before, social disconnect and hypersensitivity are side effects of the symptoms of adhd. this means people with adhd are highly more likely to either misinterpret someones words or actions if those in question are not completely transparent, its because they tend to overthink and interpenetrate responses with too much thinkin n such. the social disconnect makes a whole lot of it worse, it can just pile on top of already established feelings of inadequacy and isolation. and oversharing as a poor coping mechanism isnt an exclusively adhd related thing, it tends to be shared within similar neruodevelopmental disorders such as autism or even ptsd. i find it incredibly easy to disconnect myself from my own emotions at times and think critically at what i feel and how it affects me. which is a bad thing. if i dont acknowledge my emotions like they are my own for too long, everything falls apart. its not fun. but, that disconnect can make talking about certain more traumatic experiences or instances that had deep personal effects on my life and development as a person much easier to just share. and not always in an appropriate manner, comedic opportunity can be v e r y enticing. this also explains why raz might have been able to drop everything about his dad after he apologized. he didn’t really, he probably still suffers just as much afterwards as he did before. but he probably wont realize that for awhile, since logically, the issue has been resolved. long story short, he has not had the time to cope, and to put that off he detaches himself from those feelings. w a c k

of course i have other reasons why i feel like raz could potentially have adhd, or at least be accurately represented in headcanon with adhd, some minor mentions being:

he uses his camp map as a journal to track his in-game progress, list of goals, and notes/snip-its of information. writing down information on some form of notepad or book is a common tool used by kids and even adults with adhd to help them keep track of minuet, individual tasks. its just using a planner, but with a bit more information.

just from my personal perspective, the lengths raz goes to pursue his dream of being a psychonaut feel more like a special interest/hyper fixation sort of thing. he can jump between having genuine conversations with his fellow campers and just exploring the campground, to investing himself entirely in obtaining his goal, even when it seems almost impossible. thats some serious dedication to one very specific thing, y’know?

this one isnt as solid as the other but: m̶̖̰̯̫̍͝o̵̦͖̟͈̹̤̥̝͐̿̄̀̀̎̓ņ̶̛̭̠̐̊̆̍͝ķ̸̝͈̺̙̰̊e̶͉͚̼̅̔͗̂͐̍̕͝͝y̶̦̖̼͖̪͎̝̖̠̐̑͋̾̔̑́͐͘ ̵̢̲̘͎͉̔̀͒̄͌͊̀͌̀m̴̲̫̮̪̖̍̐͆̕͜͝ͅả̶͙͚͗n̶̗̳̩̙̘̼̦̦͇͝ ̷̡̨̡͔̗͕̘͍̥̑͒̎̐̃g̴͔̔̈̅̐̏́̌̔̈́́o̶̥̱̽̆̂͌̀͗ ̶̝̩͙͕͛́s̴̛͓̥̲̜͓͚̣̠̆̓̌͌p̶̜̹̯̦̫̯̣̎͐̽̉̾ḙ̴͇̬͑̈́̐̈́͘͠ͅȅ̶̡̗̞̩͔̫̪͈͑̓͗d̵̠͇͎̜͔͇͒̈́́̀̅̈́̒͘y̸̡̦̠̻̖̥̿ͅ. yeah, its the most generalizing reason but look, hes moving nonstop the entire game, climbing and running around the entire goddamn place wrecking havoc. a bit of imp can be found in most people with adhd if you look hard enough.

so thanks for reading this far i guess? im oversharing even right now with this, like an i d i o t but yknow what i dont want to read the great gatsby rn, so ive got nothin better to do. who knows, maybe the second game will give us more info to either support/discredit this theory? gotta wait for pn2 i guess

:^)

#psychonauts #psychonauts 2 #theory #headcanon #razputin aquato #this is real biased #isnt it

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sugarcookiesandsins · 4 years

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Charmed [Episode 6]

➰ ot7 x reader, poly!bts x reader, mafia!bts ➰ they wouldn’t notice her until she was standing above them, a smoking gun in her hand a bullet in their heart 🌡 M 🛑 details about weaponry and similar materials, dark humor, swearing, mentions of violence 🕛 4.k+

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Following your explanation, the boys sat in silence as each of them took in the various blueprints and notes spread out before them. Processing it took them some time, and Eli took the opportunity to soothe his dry throat with the remnants of his drink.

“It’s complicated, to say the least.” Namjoon’s voice was distant as his mind wasn’t all that focused on the words coming out of his mouth.

Yoongi only snorted in response, but it was more of a reaction that he had given for the duration of the discussion so Eli considered it a win all in all and looked to the other members for their reactions. Seeing nothing else of note in their eyes, he reached for the papers to clean them up, planning on returning to his room and cleaning up, before going out for supplies. Sure, Hoseok or Jimin could probably hook them up with all that they needed but call it a con’s intuition for wanting to check out the equipment themselves.

Grabbing hold of the documents, he rifled through them and aligned the corners as he always did before getting up.

“I’m headed out for some of the basic equipment so yall can break it in before D-day.” Not waiting for an answer, he headed back to his designated room, barely sparing a minute to toss the papers onto his desk before heading to the bathroom.

With the door locked and the hot water soothing your muscles, you had some time to yourself to think. Your relationship with the rest of the boys could be simmered down to two words: grudging acceptance. Neither side was about drop their pride and invite the other out to dinner, but at least Jungkook wasn’t lunging for your throat every time he laid eyes on you.

The heist was risky, and would take some real trust and teamwork, and “grudging acceptance” wasn’t exactly the best relationship to have with the people you would be trusting with your life while completing the mission. You still were damn sure that they wouldn’t hesitate to leave you behind if they needed to; their relationship was one where they looked out for each other and solid walls were drawn against those who weren’t inside when those walls were built.

In a way, you understood. Though you didn’t have the exact details, it was obvious they went through some trauma together, one that bound them together by something greater than blood ties or brotherhood. You were the same way; the only difference was that you were alone when you built those walls and they had each other.

Shutting off the water, you stepped out into the foggy bathroom, the heat blushing your skin red. The mirror was fogged up, and the metaphor almost made you snort. It seemed that even the world was trying to tell you that within all the personas and costumes, you had lost sight of your true self, even as it stood within reach, blurry but there.

The skin on your chest was red and irritated, most likely from the bandages you used to keep your secret. You needed to spend a night away from them, if only so you could let your skin breathe.

Getting your costume back on, you waltzed out of your bedroom towards the living room, most of the boys had disappeared, but Jimin was still where you had left him, albeit in clothes more appropriate for your shopping trip. In a way, you expected Hoseok to be there as well, but Jimin oversaw their equipment.

“Do you know the weights and heights of everyone,” Eli casually asked as he thumbed through a small journal filled with more of his chicken scratch trying to find the specific page he wanted.

“Don’t tell me you’re interested in us,” Jimin scoffed obviously getting the wrong impression from Eli’s words.

“Interested in keeping you all alive yeah.” Eli turned his back on the still lounging Jimin, who had somehow managed to get even more attractive as he leaned back invitingly on their soft couch. “Don’t fool yourself shorty. I doubt you have anything that would make me want to chase after you.”

Making his way to the foyer of the apartment, he didn’t even look back to see if Jimin was following him before he slipped out and towards the elevators.

The ride down was silent once Jimin joined him, each absorbed in their own devices to pass the time. Upon exiting the tall high-rise building, Eli was none too surprised at the sleek black SUV waiting for them. They needed to buy a lot of equipment and they would need a large car to hold it all.

While in the car, both still maintained the strict silence that they had started in the elevator. Eli’s eyes were focused on the passing scenery, letting out tiny grins at the snapshots of daily life he saw beyond the tinted glass windows. They were all so oblivious to the harsh realities of the world and even if they did know, their brains would probably cut out the information deeming it too harmful to remember.

PJM

He seemed utterly uninterested in anything other than the mission. It really was odd to see how quickly his attitude adjusted when he explained the plan to us this morning. Not once did he let out his signature smile, all teeth and stupidity. It was long, complicated, and required a lot more trust than I felt anyone was willing to give him at this point in whatever relationship was forming between us.

Going out with him was most definitely not my choice, but Namjoon had insisted on it because apparently it was obvious that I was the one with the most prejudices against our new add-on. We all knew it was a blatant lie, but Jungkook had no qualifications to go shopping therefore here I am.

The car is surprisingly silent, and looking over at Eli, he’s focused on the outside world. There was longing in a sense, something we all felt from time to time; we wonder and dream of our lives with intact families and normality.

The car stops in front of a hotel, conspicuous and in the center of town; it’s perfect. Getting down, it’s no surprise that we make an impression on the surrounding people. Jimin’s face is common on the news channels and everyone knows the people he associates with, so everyone gives us a wide berth as we enter the hotel.

Walking to the front desk, the person manning the fort gives us the biggest customer service smile that I have ever seen. Jimin merely nods back before handing over a medallion and asking for, “Room 113 please” with the most conversational tone.

“Forgive me sir, but our staff is still cleaning the room for you. Please feel free to wait in our lobby and I will call you when the room is prepared.” When you enter this line of work, you should always be prepared to deal with word games and subliminal messaging. We both understood what his words meant, there was already someone shopping so we could not go in.

Most places like this did not worry about anonymity between guests, hoping that it would work as sort of a motivation to not betray the location; if someone got captured then they could name everyone else that they saw. It was more commonly seen in stores that had not gotten a footing in the black world of crime. Yet, the truly powerful locations did not need to rely on such childish motivations as that.

Jimin and I made our way to the couches a couple feet away from the receptionist. The world continued to move on around us. Initially, some were focused on our identities, but as they each needed to be somewhere else, we were left alone in the middle of the lobby. The hotel itself seemed to be the playground of the higher class based on all the brand names glittering around me and the large entourages that revolve around a single person.

In a way, that life seemed bland to me. What fun was there to have everything handed to you, sure it was novel for a little while but then it would lose it’s charm. Inherently, people get bored which is why you see celebrities always doing.

It wasn’t long before the receptionist approached us from behind the desk and informed us that they were ready for us. He motions us to follow him and we do.

The receptionist returns to behind the desk and programs a reader card to let us into our requested room. He faces us again and hands that card over with that same sickeningly bright smile. “I hope everything is to your standards.” He knows, though I do not know why I ever doubted it for a second.

Jimin nods and I follow his example of silence as he leads me down a hallway and to our room. Unlocking it with the given card, he lets me inside before shutting and locking the door behind us both. The space is small and not a room at all; it was an elevator.

Surveillance was full force as someone welcomed us to the store and instructed us not to touch anything as the decent began on its own. By my estimate, the level that we stopped at was one below the basement. The doors opened before us and we walked into a well-lit room, almost as big as a proper ballroom. Certainly, not as high but just a big in width and length. The rich vibe continued down here as well with the red walls and gold trimming on the walls and on the cabinets filled to the brim with guns and other equipment.

At the far end of the room, a man in a fitted suit stood relaxed in his posture. Not single strand of hair or muscle moved out of place as we approached him. “Welcome. Please take a look around at your leisure and feel free to ask any questions. We are here to assist.”

Jimin jets off towards the far end of the room, firmly in the directions of some automatic handgun; they suited him. I had initially pegged him at a knife person, but then again he wanted efficiency more than any perceived bloodlust so I relented on my initial judgement. His steps were quick, barely holding on to the perception of calm, but he was like a child in a candy shop, no doubts about it.

Letting him satisfy his own curiosity, I turned to the tactical gear. I would worry about the boys later, getting their measurements from Jimin now would be impossible when he seems much more interested in the custom grips on an Italian classic.

Shopping for harnesses was ironically reminiscent to shopping for clothes; they were all on gold hangers and organized by size and prices. The boys (read: Big Hit) were paying for all this anyways so I’d take advantage of that; only I knew what was really needed for this.

Shifting through them all, I decided on one with multiple points of weight distribution that had multiple clip combinations so one could vary their support based on their preference or on the limits of rope. As I was looking, I felt a presence on my 6 or 7 o’clock; it was either Jimin or the attendant.

“Is this what you wanted the body measurements for?” Jimin.

“No,” I scoffed. “I needed that information to plant fake bodies when we all fail this and need to get the heck out of dodge.”

“The confidence you have in us is astounding.” He didn’t waste time is coming back for me with the same amount of sarcasm.

“I have as much confidence in you as I do in my own survival with the group of you.” Snatching the paper with the written measurements out of his hand, I didn’t bother to head his response as I pulled out different sizes of the same harness. They would cost a pretty penny, but you weren’t footing the bill.

“Take these to the table.” I was already searching for the ropes; something strong preferably suspension or paracord, but mountaineering might work.

“Do it yourself.”

“Like you know what we need for this. Just do what I ask and maybe my confidence that we’ll survive this increase by a tenth of a percent.”

“You’re difficult.”

“But I’m good and that’s what you really need right now isn’t it? Now go.”

Deciding on some dark colored SWAT rappelling rope in 200 feet lengths. It was double braided and would be more than enough to carry our weights at 9mm in diameter. However, ti was a hefty weight, but I’d leave that to the boys. Additionally, I picked up some paracord, just in the case of an emergency lashing or situation.

Next, some infrared googles. They were also a hefty price, but trusting the boys to already have their own, I waited until Jimin returned from his second trip from the far table to confirm. Given a OK, I think he had given up on arguing with me for the sake of it, I picked out some durable ones with a heat sensor attachment.

Last in terms of tacticals, would be body suits. These would go under our regular clothes, additional protection and heat without the bulk. Of course, some bullet proof clothes would be going on top, but still a good base is always necessary.

Now to the fun part, weapons.

Jimin had already beat me to it, having laid out some stuff that he wanted for himself or that he got at the request of the other boys. A computer chip, most likely for Yoongi, catches my eye. Having a computer for research and planning would be so much easier than having to piece together scraps of paper.

Grabbing a sleek laptop off the shelf, I added it to the ever-growing pile of supplies on the table under the raised eyebrow of Jimin. He reaches for it, but I smack his hand away and firmly state that “I like doing these things myself.” I hear no further argument.

Then comes the guns. Semi-automatics have a soft spot it my heart so I grab an all-American Hollywood classic, twin Desert Eagles, metal caps, and a spool of wrapping leather; custom grip can only be truly custom when you make them yourself. Snagging some holsters, I argue mentally between thighs and sides, before just getting both; no point wasting time. Then for knifes, I grab a classic butterfly, before grabbing some more practical Damascus hunting daggers that were lightweight so they could be thrown as well.

Nodding at Jimin, I let him take care of the payment as I continued to explore the room for anything else that we might like. Closer to the door, I see a locked cabinet with oddities that most would not look twice at; they sell information. A couple flash drives being bid off, probably filled with some military programs or governmental passwords. I wouldn’t put it pas them to have one or two automatic Trojans with a logic puzzle for those dolts that didn’t know how to use a computer. Then on the far side, something unexpected.

“They say that’s a charm from the Banshee herself.” Jimin, seemingly done with the purchase, came over towards the elevator as the store took care of sending our goods topside.

“The Banshee?” This was one I hadn’t heard before.

“Yeah. She’s an assassin with some sort of moral code apparently when she kills. And she takes or makes charms from each kill to remember them. Morbid, but then again anyone who’s that good ought to have a few screws lose to not go crazy.” He wasn’t wrong.

Even Master had told me it was odd when he saw the charms, but he got used to it. The box of filled bracelets I left with Master, the only thing of personal value that I really owned anymore so my wrists were naked and empty. Yet, the feeling never hit me until now, when I saw the only charm I ever lost (a round mosaic for a contemporary artist who also profited from fakes) for sale. The Banshee name had power and with power comes profit; the betting for the charm already past the million mark.

“Don’t think to hard. You won’t ever meet her.” Jimin laughed, the kind that came from his belly and was not held back by propriety.

“And you have?” It was a good enough act, lovestruck youngster falling for a power girl he had never even met before.

“Nope. But I want to. Her story sounds interesting enough.” That was the most uncharacteristic thing I had ever heard come out of his mouth.

“Her story,” I snickered, my face trying very hard not to mock him with its expression. “A mafioso and an assassin on a coffee date. That sounds more like the first line of a joke.”

He didn’t respond, but looking back as he pushed me towards the elevator told me he was thinking. The cogs were turning either to make up a lie or to figure out how to put it in words.

“I want to know what made her this way. She is truly someone that does not care, and something must have happened to make her that way.” His voice was quiet and rippling under the surface I could hear some semblance of emotions from him. It was a change, and I let him talk. “Even you can agree with this; we didn’t just wake up one day and decided we wanted to be like this. We went through the ringer and decided that we never wanted to be that low ever again, so we went for the heights.”

“We braved the cliffs and grew wings.” Simple words, but with more meaning that even a full paragraph could hold. He simply nodded in response and the rest of the ride up was silent, each lost in our pasts.

The ride back to the apartment was no different, except for the back piled with our new supplies. Quiet and heavy, not even the driver disturbed us in our thoughts.

The boys were waiting for us when we went upstairs, all cleaned up and hair coiffed to perfection.

“How was it?” Namjoon, objective as ever wanting to make sure the boys hadn’t lost their biggest weapons source because the two of us butting heads.

“Uneventful.” Me, as I turned to the boxes.

“Normal.” Jimin, as he joined the boys on the couch.

“Did you bring us presents?” Taehyung, relaxed as always, stretching his legs on the coffee table as he watched me organize.

I put everything that I had bought for myself in one box, including my harness, a loop of SWAT rope, the extra paracord, and the body suit. The rest was laid out on the floor next to the boxes that Jimin had already organized the others’ stuff into, most likely at the store itself.

“I bought all of you harnesses and new rope. I suggest getting used to wearing them around and working with the additional weight so break them in to your own comfort.”

Jungkook scoffed, “We have our own already.”

“Of course, you do. But do they have at least a 5-point weight distribution and at lest 10 hold holds for various roping combinations?”

He stayed silent.

“No? Then I suggest you break in the one I got for you or I won’t be responsible for you screwing this up for the rest of them. I didn’t bother holding back with him. Jungkook had started to get on my nerves. I was starting to get the feeling that no matter what I did, I would never get on his good side. I had reached a conclusion; it wasn’t me personally he hated, it was the idea of me; all fun and games when matched with his cold perfectionism. He thought I was stupid and infuriating, I thought the same of him; it worked out.

Walking back to my own room, I could practically hear Namjoon trying to figure out a plan to get me and Jungkook back on better terms. But that would have to wait for another day; I needed to get my stuff together.

Making it back to the relative haven of my room, I unpack and start customizing. First was the guns, taking the leather, I cover both handles in a primitive but more familiar imitation of custom grips, adding in the end the metal cap at the bottom of the grip because if you can’t shoot, you can at least swing. Sure, it does mess with the balance of the gun but you get used to it after a couple years of practice. Next, comes the computer. Booting up, I have never been more thankful for technology and resolve to ask someone to scan the document to upload, but after spending a couple hours with Jimin, I am ready to be alone.

Then again, when does the plan of the universe ever work in my favor? Just as I put away the rest of the gear, keeping the harness out to break in after I relax, I hear a knock on my door.

“Can I come in?” Taehyung. Lovely.

“Sure.” I didn’t bother to try to contain my annoyance, but this was Taehyung we were talking about; he was selectively blind, and deaf for that matter, to the world around him. He heard me say that he could come in but he somehow didn’t hear my annoyance.

He waltzed right in and seated himself on my bed as turned around from my desk. Glancing out the window, I could see the first signs of the evening clouding over the brightness of the day, so it was no surprise that he was dressed to go to work. Silk shirt unbuttoned just enough for anyone watching to get a peak of tanned skin tucked into tight denim. A lone silver chain hanging around his neck and thin rings of the same material making his fingers seem longer than you have ever thought was humanly possible.

Once again, he lounged. Looking back, you have never seen him as anything other than relaxed, except for that one time when you technically broke in so context matter with him. He didn’t even bother taking of his leather shoes which made you scowl.

“Any particular reason you’re hear or is it just to grind my gears?”

“Both, but mostly I have a question for you to answer for me.” He reached for his pocket and pulled out a swatch of white fabric that almost made my heart strop.

“A bandage? You want me to wrap something for you?” I didn’t let it bother me. The bandages I wore were a dime a dozen and he could have gotten it from any mom and pop medical store along the road.

“No I was wondering why you had these. If you’re hurt, that’s not good for any of us see?” Sitting up, he kept waving that bandage in front of me, taunting me like he knew all my secrets, but he didn’t.

“You went through my stuff?” Sighing, I relented. “Should have expect nothing less from a sneak thief. They are bandages for emergencies. I don’t trust for a second that Jungkook still doesn’t want to put a bullet between my eyes.”

“True. You and Jungkook really don’t get along. Though that is to be expected when the both of you have different ways of surviving.” Taehyung was smarter than you, and probably anyone else, gave him credit for. His mouth was working to distract while his eyes watched and learned from the people around him.

I didn’t respond, but I didn’t need to. Even Taehyung seemed to sense that our conversation was over as he left my room with some important parting word. “The most dangerous liars are the ones who give themselves to the lies, body, soul and heart.”

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ieatmypizzawithaforkandknife · 3 years

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MAG 018 - The Man Upstairs

Summary: Jonathan reads the statement of Christof Rudenko, regarding “his interactions with a first-floor resident of Welbeck House, Wandsworth.”

Obligatory confession of American confusion: This episode is about 23 minutes long, and it took me until somewhere around the 20-minute mark before I had my light-bulb moment about Toby Carlisle being a “first-floor resident”. By “first floor” he means “SECOND floor” in American speak. Yes, that’s right - I spent almost the entire episode confused about which floor this guy really lived on. (For anyone not in the know, in the U.S. the “first floor” is the floor that you walk into a building on, that you don’t use any steps or stairs to access. It is also called the ground floor - they are the same thing. If you go up one flight of stairs, you are now on the second floor, not the first.)

The first-floor-second-floor thing was pretty much the only mystery I solved this episode though. I definitely enjoyed the episode (despite feeling like throwing up myself at some of the descriptions), but as with most of the episodes, I’m left with far more questions and tantalizing clues than actual answers.

Christof describes the odd, unpleasant odor around Toby Carlisle as “halfway between the smell of the pavement after a rain on a hot day and chicken that’s starting to turn”. The second part of that makes sense, given the state of Toby’s apartment when Christof enters it at the end, but I’m having trouble placing what exactly that first part is supposed to smell like. More interesting to me though is the fact that the smell was already there when Christof moved in, even though the banging from Toby’s apartment didn’t start until almost two years later. It seems reasonable to assume the banging was Toby nailing the various meats to the walls, floor, ceiling, etc., but if that’s the case, then where was that smell coming from for the years prior to that? Did it originate with Toby himself, or did his excess meat problem cause the smell long before he actually started nailing them to the walls?

When Christof returned the incorrectly delivered package to Toby’s apartment, we get possibly the most detailed description of any part of Toby in the entire episode: “The hand was thin and pale, with long, filthy yellow fingernails. On the back, I saw a single dark red mark that might have been a cut or a lesion, but it was gone before I had a chance to see it in more detail.” The “single dark red mark” is likely the beginning of the “puckered, septic lesions and holes” Christof sees in Toby’s dead face at the end of the episode (some part of me wants to say it reminds me of Jared Key’s eye tattoos from episode 12...but I’m trying to ignore that possibility), but the fingernails are what really piqued my interest. Christof tells himself for most of the episode that Toby just has a severe hygiene issue, but if it was straight-up uncleanliness, his fingernails would be primarily brown or black, caked with dirt or grime, that sort of thing. Instead, they are yellow more than anything else. This is the first of five mentions of the color yellow in this episode - the second is the color of the growing stain on Christof’s dining room ceiling, the third is the color of the liquid that oozes out of the hole in the ceiling after it collapses, the fourth is the color of the rotting meat covering Toby’s apartment, and the fifth is the color of the “fluid” that “oozed” from the creepy af pile of meat in Toby’s kitchen. The similarity in the colors indicates a direct connection between Toby himself (that is, his body) and the rotten meat. But the pieces of meat that lined his apartment were, in Christof’s estimation, pieces of various non-human animals - so if we take him at his word, the rotten meat wasn’t literally from Toby, so something external caused both Toby and the meat to excrete that sickly yellow rot.

So what made it target or infect Toby? No clue, since we don’t have any background on him, but I sure hope it wasn’t done by touch alone: Christof got some of that yellow slime on his jacket sleeve when Toby snatched the package from him. He said he couldn’t get rid of the smell and eventually threw the jacket out - but then he accidentally touched the stuff while fumbling for the light switch in Toby’s apartment at the end. When they followed up with him, he said “he had had no further experiences he believed to be linked to these events” and I don’t have any specific reason to disbelieve that - except that that means Toby wasn’t infected by just touching the wrong thing (or person). This isn’t a Jane Prentiss-type infection. So what’s Toby’s story?

And just what was in that package? “The envelope was thick and soft - it must have been mainly full of bubble wrap or other packing material.” So...it wasn’t meat? Because that would have been two puzzle pieces fitting together quite nicely, canceling each other out, and I’m more than a little irked that that wasn’t the case. It’s like Jonathan said at the end: “Where was he getting the meat?” At first, the sheer quantity of meat reminded me, vaguely, of the bag of teeth from episode 5. Both were a multitude of body parts. But those teeth were human and the meat is (apparently) from animals, and all the teeth were identical, whereas these meats are all different cuts from different animals. Notably, they’re all animals that are typically eaten by humans - Christof mentions steaks, chicken, and lamb among them. This seems to be more of that theme of rotten food, although in this case I think the “rotten” is more important than the “food”.

Despite all these questions I have, none of these things are directly harmful. Sure, Christof’s ceiling caves in, but no one besides Toby dies or gets hurt (that we know of). But that pile at the end...I got some Seriously Bad Vibes from that. To recap, Christof found in Toby’s kitchen “a pile of discarded meat and bone stacked almost as high as a person. It seemed almost less decayed than the rest of it, though that foul yellow fluid oozed from it, and…when I looked at that heaped pile of meat…it moved. I don’t know how - I don’t know quite how to explain it, other than it opened its eyes. It opened all its eyes. The next thing I remember is the police’s arrival” - and then suddenly the pile of meat was gone. There are two things here - inherently connected, I’m sure - that I’d like to point out.

First is the eyes. Creepy or out-of-place eyes have been mentioned every few episodes so far in the series: in the painting on Mary Key’s wall in episode 4, in Wilfred Owen’s death in episode 7, in the eye pendants in episode 9, in Jared Key’s eye tattoos in episode 12 (as well as the eye in the security camera in that same episode). And with each new appearance (particularly the one in this episode) I’m starting to get more and more worried about whatever being or creature or presence the eyes belong to.

Which brings me to the second thing. One of the recurring themes in these stories has been what I’ve taken to calling “altered reality” - when things appear one way but, we find out later, were actually quite different. When Graham is confused by Amy mentioning his nonexistent window box in episode 3. When Laura tries to reverse out of the squeeze in the cave in episode 15 and her foot hits solid rock. When the pile of meat straight-up disappears in this very episode. I want to be clear - those examples of “altered reality” are not what I’m talking about when I discuss a new (to me) theme: the incomprehensible. This pile of...whatever...in Toby’s kitchen is literally incomprehensible to Christof. He can’t even put into words what he saw. It’s like either the words don’t exist to describe what he saw or his brain can’t comprehend it - or possibly both. He says, “when I looked at that heaped pile of meat…it moved. I don’t know how - I don’t know quite how to explain it, other than it opened its eyes. It opened all its eyes.” Being unable to trust your senses due to some “altered reality” is terrifying, but to experience something that is literally incomprehensible and indescribable is just another level of terrifying. And the one thing most clearly intertwined with this incomprehensibility Christof experiences? The eyes. Specifically, the eyes opening.

We’ve seen this incomprehensibility before, albeit in slightly less terrifying (IMO) situations. In episode 3, Amy describes the creature entering Graham’s window: “When I say it moved, that’s not quite right - it shifted. Like when you stare at one of those old magic eye paintings and you change from seeing one picture into seeing another.” But much more blatantly and recently, in episode 17 Sebastian describes reading an excerpt from The Boneturner’s Tale: the Boneturner “crept up to the Miller while he slept. It described him silently reaching inside him and…it’s a bit hazy. All I remember clearly is the line ‘and from his rib a flute to play that merry tune of marrow took’. And as for the rest, I don’t recall in detail.” The second example concerns me much more than the first. I feel bad for Graham, of course, and I really want to know what that creature was...but The Boneturner’s Tale was a Leitner and seemed to have the power to deform anyone who touched it.

By themselves, it doesn’t appear that the eyes are doing anything. They’re just eyes, after all. No limbs, no body. But I don’t know if they really are just watching, or if their form and actions are so incomprehensible to humans that the people in these stories essentially can’t perceive it. And if they are just watching...what are they watching for, and what’s going to happen when they see it?

This post is part of a series where I write my thoughts about each episode and obsessively connect dots in an effort to figure out The Big Mysteries of the series. All posts in this series are tagged “is this liveblogging?” Comments and messages are welcome but I have only listened to season 1, so I ask that you not spoil me for anything beyond episode 40. In the words of Jonny Sims…thanks for listening!

#personal #liveblogging #is this liveblogging?#The Magnus Archives #this is some serious Eldritch horror crap starting guys and I Do Not Like #(I mean I actually do but it freaks me right the fuck out for sure)

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sunshine-shitposts · 3 years

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Here I am, after more than a week! 👀 whups～

(Part 1)

tw: mentions of past spousal abuse

Dust in the Wind—Part 2

Ignoring the lack of windows to the outside, it looked like a normal living room. There was a sitting area, with a large, low coffee table surrounded by a spacious L-shaped sectional on one side and two matching arm chairs on the other. It was minimally decorated, though signs of occupancy existed—scatterings of books on the coffee table with papers and notes, a few pairs of Sunnie-sized shoes next to the entrance, a sticky note on the mirror next to the door ("don't stare at yourself TOO much" it said, in rather messy handwriting), and some blankets bunched up here and there. A quiet yet efficient ceiling fan moved air slowly through the underground room, the hardwood floor was dark in color, and a large area rug made the sitting area comfortable, but other than that, it was relatively plain.

The second Sunnie opened the door and walked through, however, Jotaro heard a voice he had planned on never hearing again.

"My darling Sunshine, you've returned to me!" Came a deep exclamation from beyond a corner as a muscular blonde man emerged and rushed over.

"Oh my fucking god-OOF–" was the only thing Sunnie could get out before she was swept up in Dio's arms, her backpack jingling and feet dangling uselessly as he twirled her around. "Put me down, asshole!! We have company!"

"Can you blame me, dearest? I haven't seen you in several days, and it gets oh so terribly lonely down here," the blonde man chuckled, still holding her tight.

"Catherine talks to you daily!! You're fine!!" She complained, wiggling in his unrelenting grasp.

At the mention of her name, the COO huffed a sigh and shut the door behind her.

"Oh, my sweet, she's delightful company, but she's not you," the man cooed, taking and squishing Sunnie's cheeks in his talons adoringly.

Jotaro's jaw and fists clenched so hard they hurt, and Mrs. Gupta put her hand on his shoulder to try to steady him, but Star Platinum had already leapt out, ready to fight.

"Ora!" The Stand shouted, the roar-like battlecry causing Dio to stop twirling Sunnie around and look at the Joestar, expression nearly catlike in its smugness. Sunnie caught her first glimpse of Jotaro's Stand and her eyes widened almost comically.

"Oooooh… big boy…" she whispered in awe.

"You must be this dimension's Jotaro," Dio hummed, amber eyes surveying both the Joestar and his Stand, "Where I come from, your Star Platinum is green."

"Bastard," Jotaro hissed.

"You're not wrong," the man smirked as he set Sunnie down, playfully removing her hat–which he tossed off somewhere–and ruffling her hair as she slid her backpack off and chucked it on the L-shaped portion of the large sectional sofa.

"How the hell did you get here," Jotaro growled, eyes burning with wrath as his entire body tensed, "I killed you."

"Ah, see, there's your problem," Dio grinned, wagging a sharply-manicured claw, "You killed a me. Not me-me."

In an instant, Jotaro's hand was inches from Dio's neck, and a glimmering turquoise and silver hand separated them, slightly tapered fingers spread as if to catch something as the wing shape on the wrist flared wildly.

Jotaro looked to the side to see Dust in the Wind staring at him with narrowed yellow eyes, the sound of distant windchimes clinking as it focused on him with a sharpness that was strange from a relatively featureless face. Sunnie was standing in between the two taller men, green eyes seemingly on fire as they caught his own.

"I will do it, Jotaro," she said, voice low and monotone as she stared at him, unblinking, with an intensity he didn't expect from her. With all the friendliness and casual demeanor he'd seen from her in the short time they'd known each other, this piercingly focused glare was downright out of character, "This is my job."

Jotaro looked back up and saw Dio staring down at Sunnie with a strange look in his eyes, his lips pulled back in a nearly manic grin. It seemed like sheer delight.

"Jotaro, relax," Mrs. Gupta huffed, unphased by the possible violence brewing in front of her as she sat down in a wingback chair opposite a main sofa, "Please, I've had enough headaches dealing with the board today." When there was no movement between the others in the room, she patted her thigh sharply. "Sunnie, call Windy off."

She hesitated, but Dust in the Wind shrank back into Sunnie, glaring at Jotaro the entire time.

"Thank you, Sunnie," Mrs. Gupta said softly, which made Jotaro's brows furrow in realization. He turned, taking his attention off of Dio and turning it to the COO instead.

"You have a Stand as well," he stated, voice soft, and she nodded.

"That I do," she responded, and a massive, lithe, dark, armor-clad figure flashed behind her for a split second, plate armor shining iridescent like the wings of a grackle for the briefest of moments. Jotaro caught a glimpse of a long neck and a helmeted face, veiled on the sides by a long flowing cloth, before the Stand disappeared, "But that is neither here nor there. Dio is not under any circumstances going to hurt you or your family. Should he try, he will be summarily turned into dust."

"You speak of my possible demise so inelegantly, Catherine," Dio sighed, pulling Sunnie gingerly down on the sofa close to him as she made a strange squawking noise in surprise, "It's kind of depressing."

"It is what it is," she replied, leveling him with a bored look.

Jotaro never thought he'd see it, but Dio pouted. It didn't look right to him. It made him uncomfortable to see that monster acting so normal. "So. My question stands," Jotaro demanded, voice sharp. Mrs. Gupta shifted, giving him a tired glance.

"About half a year ago, we received communication from a Speedwagon office near a dig site in northern Norway that a man claiming to be Dio had appeared and wanted to strike a deal with the Foundation. He made his way, in secured vehicles and with appropriate escort, here, to Dallas, where we had an appropriate facility to house him as we ascertained his goal," the COO said, voice level and nearly clinical as she recounted the events, "Once he was deemed a relative non-threat, we began negotiations and arrived at an appropriate arrangement."

Jotaro's eyes immediately locked onto her. "Arrangement?" he practically hissed.

"He offered his body and service in exchange for a safe haven," Mrs. Gupta stated, not even phased by the anger rolling off the Joestar.

"Why the hell did the Foundation agree?" Jotaro growled, "What the fuck could this asshole have that anyone needs?"

"Are you kidding??" Sunnie suddenly yelped, eyes going wide as she leaned forward on the sofa, her demeanor completely changing, "There's so much we can learn from him! His regenerative capabilities in particular are fascinating, so much faster than in other creatures, like planarians!! The scientific applications are not only wide-reaching, but could help so many people in the future. Severed limbs, damaged organs, you name it. Like, holy shit, there's so much potential to help people in his big stupid body!!" Dio chuckled as Sunnie had gotten increasingly animated, green eyes sparkling as she whacked his arm three times to emphasize the 'big stupid body' bit.

"I have a relative who can heal people," Jotaro snapped, "Why not study him?"

"It's not the same and you know it," Sunnie shot back, "Stand abilities can't be bottled and sold as medicine or gene therapies; at least, none we've seen. Not like this. Dio's abilities are entirely biological. When he used the mask on himself, it altered his body. Probably rewrote large swaths of genetic code. These are advances we can actually implement, Jotaro. Don't let your previous experiences cloud your vision."

"And why are you here?" Jotaro asked, glaring at her, "From what I can tell, you were a mere civilian until recently. How much do you know about the mask, or my family's past?"

The second the full weight of his simmering rage seemed to settle with her, Sunnie's eyes widened and her fists tightened. She clammed up, shaking slightly. Dio looked at her and immediately snaked his hand into her hair, rubbing a thumb against her scalp.

"I personally requested her as my companion," he said, voice low, before looking back at Jotaro, "The circumstances were discussed with her and she accepted, knowing full well what she was getting into."

"And, like… I know the basics of what happened. What you went through to save your mom," Sunnie's eyes caught Jotaro's, her gaze sincere, "I'd destroy the world to keep my mom safe. I get it. But him?" She pointed at Dio, "He's not the same one you fought. That man is dead. So your beef isn't with this one."

Mrs. Gupta leaned against one side of her chair. "If it makes you feel any better, Jotaro, we have… ways of determining points of origin. You'd have to ask Ellison about it, but while most of Dio's markers do line up with ours, there are a few that are different enough to prove that he didn't come from here."

"Besides, you can't feel it, can you?" Dio grinned.

"Feel what?" Jotaro snarled, turning his attention to the vampire.

"The inherent connection that we who bear the birthmark have. The connection that I should have to you, and any other members of the Joestar family," he gestured with an elegantly clawed finger to the man in front of him, "because I am in possession of Jonathan Joestar's body."

Jotaro's gaze narrowed.

"I may still be Dio," the vampire continued, crossing one leg over the other, "but I am not your Dio. And there is enough of a difference between us for the bloodline connection to not be there at all. You didn't even notice when I came to this world, did you?"

Jotaro hated to admit that Dio had a point. He had no idea until he was contacted by the Foundation. There had been no indication whatsoever.

Having not received an answer, Dio smirked. "That's what I thought," his eyes narrowed as well, glinting unnaturally as he seemingly read Jotaro's mind, "You truly had no idea."

"Don't gloat, asshole," Sunnie grunted, punching Dio lightly with a small fist, "He gets it."

There was a quiet in the room as Jotaro took everything in. Of course the Foundation would have ways to figure out dimensional points of origin or whatever the hell it was… And this Dio did seem slightly different. Jotaro didn't spend that much time with the one he killed, but he had a feeling that that Dio wouldn't be tolerating Sunnie's casual demeanor towards him. Jotaro sat in the chair next to Mrs. Gupta's, sighing quietly as he mulled over the facts.

"Now, my dear," Dio said out of nowhere, turning to Sunnie, "Let me see them. Are they any better?"

Sunnie stiffened, shrinking inward. "Dio, not now. We have a guest here," she muttered, eyes darting to Jotaro for a split second.

"Come on. Show me," the vampire goaded as Mrs. Gupta sat forward in her seat, an arm propping itself on her leg so she could lean her chin on her hand.

"I'd like to see how they're doing as well, Sunnie," she said, "I have more work to attend to soon, so now is as good a time as any."

"Ugh, fine," Sunnie sighed dramatically, reaching her arms out as one hand reached over to the base of one sleeve. She slowly slid it upwards, revealing lightly freckled pale skin dotted with ugly yellowing bruises in various sizes. She then raised the other sleeve, showing the same there. Jotaro immediately gripped the arm of the chair hard enough to crunch it slightly.

"What the fuck did you do, Dio??"

"No, no, you got it wrong," Sunnie said quickly as Dio's clawed hands ran over her skin, his sharp brows furrowed. "He didn't… these aren't from him."

There was a tense silence as Dio inspected the injuries, and Mrs. Gupta looked at Jotaro with cold steel in her dark eyes.

"Her husband," she whispered, unable to conceal the disgust in her voice.

Oh.

…Oh.

"You know I can heal these, Sunshine," Dio murmured, "I healed Enrico, I can heal you–"

"The lawyer said we need to document how long it takes for them to heal," Catherine said sternly, "It would be suspicious if they suddenly vanished."

"How are the ones on your back? Your legs?" Dio pressed.

She had them there, too? Jotaro's brows drew down over his eyes. No wonder she was wearing long clothes in the Texan heat. He had no idea this entire time, from the moment he saw her in Dallas til the moment that Dio had brought it up, that she was walking around with all of that on her body.

"I mean, still there? It'll take time," she grunted.

"May I see, darling?"

Sunnie scoffed. "I'm not taking my shorts and leggings off, asshole."

"Just the back, then?"

Sunnie heaved another sigh, and Jotaro heard her suck in a breath as she fully shrugged off her cardigan, revealing more skin covered in bruises and a few still-healing cuts on her upper left arm, splotches of reddish yellow littered around the slashed skin. She turned to face away from Dio and he slid the back of her loose sleeveless shirt up.

"Your hand is fucking cold," she said loudly, yelling the last word, but he just clicked his tongue.

"I still think you should have killed him," Dio growled, not paying any mind to her complaint. A snarl, one that Jotaro remembered from a long while ago, lifted the man's lip and he saw a glint of pronounced fang. "It would have been easy for you. Suffocate him, steal his breath, no one would know."

"You know I don't do that. I don't use Windy against people who can't defend themselves," the woman said quietly, but loud enough for Jotaro to hear.

"Even if she did, she'd have to have lived with that for the rest of her life," Mrs. Gupta added, leaning back against one arm of her chair, "She wasn't—isn't—in a mental state for that."

"She could have at least defended herself," Dio responded, the hard anger in his golden eyes fading to a strangely soft concern. It didn't look right on the man. This didn't seem like the Dio Jotaro had killed. The vampire's large, pale hand ran up the apparently very much injured expanse of Sunnie's back, causing her to hiss a little. "You didn't need to endure so much pain."

Jotaro never thought he'd agree with Dio. Dio was evil. Dio was a curse on his family. Dio tried to have him and his friends killed. Dio was a monster.

But seeing these bruises, some still dotted with purples and sickly reds, he couldn't help but agree.

Dio was right.

"I couldn't do that, Dio," she whispered, "He said I deserved it."

Jotaro felt his heart clench. She sounded broken. She had been so calm and composed and casual in all the short time that he'd known her. He'd seen her relative physical strength when she had lifted her mother's heavy school supplies with ease. She was a sturdy woman, and her smile seemed so natural, her laughter so easy.

But there she was: drawn in on herself, battered, and so, so small.

"And he was wrong," Catherine stood from her seat and walked to Sunnie's side, crouching down in front of her spot on the sofa and delicately placing a hand on her knee to comfort her. "And we'll keep drilling that into your head as much as you need, alright?"

Dio moved the hand on her back to her side, sliding up the shirt there, revealing a large, sharp splotched line that wrapped around her waist, like she had been thrown onto or pressed against a sharp-edged corner. Jotaro, at this point, had to duck his gaze behind the brim of his hat. That was too much for him, for some reason. It felt like he was invading her privacy, though she was being rather casual about her skin being on display.

"So, all of that…?" Jotaro muttered, not wanting to meet her eyes.

"Yeah," Sunnie said, glancing at him, "This is from… that asshole." She paused, before gesturing with her head towards Dio, "Not this asshole, though."

"How sweet of you," Dio chuckled, lowering the shirt and giving her good shoulder a soft pat. She quickly pulled the cardigan back on, drawing her legs toward her chest and averting her eyes.

"The Foundation is providing her with legal counsel and a therapist," Catherine said plainly, standing back to her full height and walking to the raised arm of the sofa, leaning against it, "As well as medical assistance when necessary. We're making sure she's well taken care of here."

"…And 'well taken care of' means she stays down here with him?" Jotaro asked, shooting an acidic glance towards Dio.

And Dio reacted with his first open display of displeasure with the Joestar: another snarl, and an incredibly insulted expression. "There is no safer place on this planet for her to be than with me," he growled, "On the off chance that the piece of shit decides to seek out and associate with unsavory types with Stand abilities to track her down, I am the best equipped to protect her."

"And why would I believe anything you say?" Jotaro stood suddenly, advancing on Dio.

To Jotaro's surprise, when Dio stood, he stepped in front of the woman on the sofa, as if he was trying to protect her. "You act like you know me, Jojo. Let me assure you that you don't."

"Alllllright, that's enough!" Sunnie exclaimed, jumping up and standing on the sofa, still not as tall as either Jotaro or Dio, "I'm done with the bullshit!!!! You!!!!" She pointed at Jotaro, "Getting angry at the situation changes nothing. Deal with it. And you!!!!" She smacked the back of Dio's head, "Quit being a shitgibbon. Calm down." She reached out and bunched the stretchy fabric of his skin-tight top in her small fist, and softly added, "...Please."

Dio looked back at her and once again, something about him seemed to soften.

"Of course, Sunshine," he said, his voice low and strangely kind as he sat back down on the sofa with her.

"Just tell me one thing," Jotaro said, voice level and low. Dio's amber eyes settled on him in a calculating gaze that would unnerve most people as Jotaro tried to find the right words. "The… me from where you're from. What happened to his mother?"

They stared at each other for what seemed like forever, both of their faces unreadable, before Dio spoke. "…After I managed to escape the fight in Cairo, he received news of his mother's death."

The clenching of Jotaro's fist was audible in the otherwise nearly dead-quiet room.

"I spent years on the run from the remaining Joestar group, those they added to their ranks, and the Foundation," Dio continued, "All I wanted to do was survive. Jotaro did not make it easy."

"Good," was all Jotaro could say, feeling a roiling mix of emotions in his chest. He stood, looking at Mrs. Gupta. "I'm done here."

"Alright then," she said, standing as well, "Sunnie?" The woman stared at her boss, eyes wide and blinking. "See us out?"

Sunnie nodded and got off the sofa, wincing as she flexed and stretched a little bit. Dio pouted again, tapping her calf with his foot, and she huffed. "I won't be long, dude. Chill."

Seemingly pleased with her answer, the man grinned smugly to himself before picking a book up off the table and settling against the arm of the sofa, flipping to some page midway through. He did, however, spare one last wary glance at Jotaro, who could have sworn he saw Dio's eyes flash a very vivid and untrusting crimson for a split second before he left the room with the two women.

"Sunnie," Jotaro said as soon as he was sure the door was fully closed, eyes and voice soft, "I need you to be wary around him."

"Yeah, I know," she laughed, but Jotaro shook his head firmly.

"I don't know if you understand, though," the Joestar muttered, "He has a way of… his words alone can sway a heart. He can capture minds and twist them."

Her wide grin dropped, and she gave him a strangely stoic and bitter look. "...Yeah. Trust me, I get it."

Mrs. Gupta placed her hand, long and elegant, on Sunnie's right shoulder, and she pulled her close in a light side hug. Jotaro sighed quietly—he couldn't imagine what Sunnie had been through, nor for how long, but figured that she, with the Foundation at her back, could handle herself.

"Sunnie?" The COO asked softly, offering her hand to the short woman. Sunnie quickly pulled out a pen from her pocket and began writing something on the lighter skin of Mrs. Gupta's palm, glancing at Jotaro a couple of times. Confused, but not wanting to intrude, Jotaro waited. When Sunnie was done, Mrs. Gupta looked at her hand and stifled a laugh, and Sunnie sent a mischievous little smirk Jotaro's way.

"Be seeing you, Jotaro," she said. He nodded to her, following Mrs. Gupta out of the first set of sliding doors. When the doors closed, she let out another little laugh.

"Sometimes she writes things on my hand that she doesn't want to say out loud, like if she wants a certain kind of food or another blanket," she said, showing him her palm.

It was a caricature of Jotaro's face, glowering, with the words 'grumpy mcgrumperson' underneath.

Well. Hm.

"She hid it well, didn't she?" Mrs. Gupta asked as soon as the second sliding door closed, voice light and strangely conversational, "All that pain she's in—mentally and physically."

"Too well," Jotaro muttered, and Mrs. Gupta nodded, sighing.

"We actually wouldn't have known about it if Dio hadn't smelled the blood from her shoulder, you know." Jotaro looked at her confusedly, and she continued, "She was hoping she'd just hide from her husband by sleeping in her car, but Dio insisted that she stay with him here. Now she splits time between the Foundation and her parents' house."

"And you just let that happen?"

They arrived in front of the elevator at the end of the hall, and Mrs. Gupta held her hand up to the scanner. When it beeped in acceptance, she pressed a couple of buttons and they waited for the door to open. "I understand that you don't trust him, as you've made so abundantly clear. But I have a reason for giving the go ahead for this. You're going to have to trust us."

The elevator opened and she stepped inside, Jotaro following before the door shut once more.

"...How are you sure that he's going to keep his word?"Jotaro asked, and Mrs. Gupta glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes for a moment before looking back ahead of them.

"Before I became COO, I worked in… outreach," she said, "I was tasked with finding other Stand users, both natural and unnatural. I've met quite a few people and… others with useful abilities that way."

Jotaro's eyes narrowed. "Is that how you rose in the ranks so quickly?"

She crossed her arms, a small but sly smile on her full lips. "I have goals, Dr. Kujo. I would be a fool if I didn't take the opportunity to use the resources available to me to achieve them. I'm sure you understand." The elevator door opened to a short hallway with softly glowing wall sconces, and she stepped out, motioning for him to follow. "Now, we can discuss more in my office. Come."

Jotaro felt himself deflate slightly—he was getting tired, his limit for dealing with people nearly reached for the day, but he did want to speak with her for a while without Dio around. So he followed, and shut the door behind himself.

To Be Continued...

#SunnieD #sunnie writes #hopefully the next part is up tomorrow or yhe next day 😌

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