#only baseline thoughts and instincts. this i remember clearly | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

2lim3rz · 3 years

Text

THE HATE OF LORGAR [40k FANFIC] [LORGAR X READER]

This has been sitting in my head since April, so it's about time I wrote it!

Lorgar really didn't deserve some of the shit he got tbh, he just needed a better life. Anyways..

WARNINGS: Self-flagellation/harm , Lorgar's moods are pretty flip-floppy

You were a Remembrancer aboard the ship that held the Primarch of the Word Bearer's themselves, Lorgar Aurelian. You didn't know much of the other Primarchs, just that not many of them were... least to say, much fans of your job title.

But it was your job. You had been selected by thousands who were desperate for the position you were in. You had worked your literal and proverbial ass off. On the ship, you lost some of your flow at the complete master-crafters of the various historical arts. You felt incompetent, a mere toddling child amongst some of them.

Did you back down? No. You were close to it once, but some other Remembrancers and even a couple of the Astartes helped your courage. Even though you couldn't fathom why, as one the Astartes clearly held some form of disdain for baseline humans and had a sickly sweet charming voice. Most of the Word Bearers were very charming with their words, but his always had an undertone you never liked; yet given his rank, you couldn't do anything about it.

Of course, his help was the entire reason of why you were Lorgar's personal Remembrancer. Or.. that's how it began. Your meetings getting more frequent despite both of your myriad of duties to attend. You both found excuses. You both grew to know each other. Maybe that's why you paced in worry in the massive in-between hall of his grand room. Two doors on either side, one leading to the ship and one to his room. Maybe that's why you paced, the tip of your thumb in your mouth as you gently gnawed.

You felt his hate. You felt his grief. In fact, you felt all of their grief and hate. Even the most terrifying of the Word Bearers aboard the ship almost seemed to shake. Lorgar, and in turn the Word Bearers, felt as though they were an extended family.. so when you heard the news.. Monarchia was attacked. What was the galaxy turning to if the Ultramarines was turning against them? You took a shuddering breath. You wished you could have gone, but you just couldn't keep up with the Astartes, that was fact and he convinced you of that. So you were here, waiting for Lorgar to come and share his feelings and whatever else happened in the day. For your tradition.

Thoom, thoom, thoom, thoom. You heard his steps. Your head lifted, thumb drifting away as you wiped your hand on your clothes. He was coming, that was clear from the weight of the steps. Your instincts screamed at you, however, at how quick they were. At the clash of something hitting the metal wall. In the distance, a low sort of howl from a grieving beast. Oh, how lucky you were that you pressed yourself against the wall due to the sheer force the doors slammed open. One giving a horrible groan as if it cried out.

You felt your heart drop. His once shining armor was covered in grizzly ash. From his ear was caked blood. The man's eyes was wide and terrifyingly feral, tears had carved rivers in the ash smeared on his face. The already perpetually overwhelming feeling of being near a Primarch grew tenfold at how terrifyingly heavy his breathing was.

"Lor..Lorgar?" you hesitated, feeling as if you couldn't breath. Like a predator, his head snapped towards you. All before he fell to his knees, a sob causing a roaring racket in the silence. Stumbling one step forward, followed by another, you rushed towards him and fell to your own knees, clinging to his hand. "Lorgar! Lorgar, are you- What happened?"

He wasn't looking at you. It was as though you could have disappeared and he wouldn't have noticed one bit. His once beautifully clear eyes were almost glazed in a trance. Tears still falling steadily, his face slack. It was a grimly pretty sight, in the same way one would admire a sad painting. You knew you could not get to his mind when he was so emotional, recalling how he got when you not-so-politely stated how Kor Phaeron didn't deserve his rewards for what was clearly abuse to the Primarch you adored out of all the rest (despite not really meeting any others quite yet).

So it was silence you both dwelled in. Silence that shattered as Lorgar lunged. A roar bellowed from his lips as he tore forth one of the massive doors off its hinged and slammed it against one of your favorite murals on the wall. One of the many dedicated to the Emperor of Mankind, your favorite because it was Lorgar's masterful work. You wisely screamed in fear, stumbling back from the crumbling debris.

"He murdered them all." you thought his eyes were wild once. You thought once that you had seen a feral light in his eyes when he was angry. You thought you would see grief. Sad, sad grief in those eyes. Instead, there was only anger. A roiling blaze in this tear-filled orbs. His ash covered face torn asunder in a snarl. "He killed them because I was right! I was right and he murders millions for it!" your ears hurt. Oh, stars they hurt so bad at the force of his screaming. Letting go of his hand and covering your head, your back slid against the wall as he slammed his fist against the crumbling facade of the Emperor.

"All this sacrifice! All of humanity's blood spilled, all of my blood spilled! And this is what we get?! The moment I tell him the truth, I am spat upon and treated as a mutt!" the Primarch screamed to the air before snapping towards you. Your vision blurred as your own terrified tears emerged. It was as though he had to remember you were there.

"You write the truth, and nothing but the truth, right," never before had your name felt so terrifying. The way he snarled it in his question. You knew he wasn't angry at you and yet you felt so scared. Hiccuping, you frantically nodded, not trusting your words. "Write this. Let the galaxy know He forced the Word Bearers to kneel. He forced me to kneel. He allowed Gulliman to murder entire cities of innocents. All because the Emperor wishes to live a lie."

Just as soon as he spoke those seering words, his eyes staring so deeply in your eyes you swore he could melt you from within, he whipped away. Stomping heavily towards his room. Instincts within screamed at you to turn away. To run when Lorgar was so volatile. He was always emotional and you adored the fiery passion he showed for things.. but sometimes it was too overwhelming, like now. Perhaps some inane part of you figured you could still offer comfort.

So you followed him. Watching from the doors that closed behind you as he took off his armor. If it was any other day, perhaps you two would have traded jokes. If by traded jokes, meant you joked about as he sheepishly stammered his way through it. An unseen side of the Primarch, really, was that he always seemed to stumble his words around you. But not now. Not now as he barely bothered to don a robe before going low onto his knees again, hanging his head low.

You jolted, surprised as he spoke a low order and a man emerged with a large bowl that he seemed to struggle holding. Dark powder emerging in the air as he quickly sat it upon the ground and skittered away. It was as though you were invisible in your terror as he withdrew a long glittering object that was clearly barbed. A whip of sorts.

"Lorgar....?" your whispered voice almost echoed as he splayed his hands across the ground. His tears were back again as he silently dragged one large hand into the bowl of black powder.. no, it was ash. The ashes of Monarchia. The other hand lifted the whip and you covered your mouth with a shriek at the horrid crack it made. How Lorgar hardly winced.

"LORGAR!"

You were shocked, you knew this. But you couldn't move. You could barely breath as you watched Lorgar perform the wretched flagellation. Somehow, you broke your grim reverie to stumble forward, nearly knocking the bowl of ashes away as you threw your arms around his neck with him finally being low enough for you to do that.

The whip was so close to hitting you, but that didn't matter as he stopped. You could feel the hot blood and sweat making your sleeves and skin sticky. You were sobbing into his neck, clinging tighter. "Stop! Stop, please! Just stop!" you pleaded. You had no right to order a Primarch, but you couldn't stand to watch whatever wretched ritual was happening. He was hurting in his grief for Monarchia, but there was no right for him to hurt himself for whatever wrongs the Guilliman and the Emperor did.

Silence passed between you, Lorgar feeling limp in your arms as his own breath hitched twice before a sob broke forth. You heard the rattling clank as he let go of the torturous whip and clung to you as though you were a lifeline. "He forced them to kneel..." the Urizen whispered in another whimper "He looked at m..me with such hatred. At my sons as though they were not worth the dirt beneath his foot, the spit in his mouth."

You opened your own mouth to speak, but he continued. One large and bloody hand stroking yours as you felt a tremble wrack his body. The power of it shook you and it took all your might not to go into blubbering sobs of your own. "I hit Malcador. I hit Guilliman, my own boot-licking brother." a low snarl began to enter his wavering cry "I hit him. And.." he murmured your name, pulling you back so he could look you in the eye.

This was not your Lorgar. Your Lorgar was smiles and stammers. Your Lorgar had a serene focus about him as well as an intensity when he spoke. This man torn asunder with grief and anger was not yours. "It felt satisfying." it seemed to hurt him as he said this "It did not give me joy but I was satisfied at the Sigilite's pain." you trembled at the whispered words.

"Ven...vengeance is not worth the effort, Lorgar.. you.. you've said this-" "This is no longer vengeance, this.." for once he was lost for words, trying to grasp for one before a hiccup tore through his throat with the faint repetition of how the Emperor forced him to kneel. "Just.. please, Lorgar.. Look at me.. Look at me.." you murmured gently, pulling your hands away from his neck to cradle his face. You knew you would cringe later at the sight of the blood and ashes covering you, but for now you were here.

"He does not see the truth.. all I have spoken is the truth.." it was then you saw what was wrong. He was growing lost. If there was the one and only thing you appreciated of Kor Phaeron and the rest of the Word Bearers, it was they they helped Lorgar stay on track. They were more of his family than anyone could have been.. Kor Phaeron more literally even if he was the worst parental figure you could think of.

"It's.. it's not okay what he did, Lorgar.. but please, get cleaned. This isn't healthy." you stroked his ashy skin as he leaned his head against your hand. Closing his eyes and taking a deep shuddering breath. "You are right. There's much to do and.. and my Legion needs their Primarch." that wasn't what you meant. Everyone needed a break sometime or another, Lorgar especially right now. "Y..yes.. they do.." you mumbled after him. If he wanted to work, you would let him work. Anything to stop him from his self abuse. Anything to help comfort him, you would do.

#lorgar aurelian #lorgar aurelian x reader #reader insert #x reader #warhammer 40k #warhammer 40k fanfic #request #2lim3rz writes #Less active comforting and more like.. idk

48 notes · View notes

honourablejester · 4 years

Text

My sister and I were playing Far Harbour for the first time last night, and I’ll be honest here, I really don’t like the dialogue wheel when DiMA asks you if you might be a synth.

Like, okay, your options for responses are as follows:

How would I know?

I’m a human

I’m a synth

Sarcastic

Just looking at the flat, on-the-face-of-it choices for a moment, that’s …

This is where the dialogue wheel really struggles. Because those look both completely flat and completely arbitrary. Except for the first one, which is something you might actually say. So we said it. And then he prompts towards how you might know (dodgy memory gaps), and then just basically asks you again, so you have to choose one of the others.

Look. Before we get to any of the other answers, I don’t like this.

This is one of the driving questions of FO4. There is so much doubt, for everybody you meet, over who might be a synth, what that might mean, are their memories real, are they real, how would they know, if it was confirmed what would they do, and so many other questions. The entire Commonwealth is having a mass existential crisis over this question. No one knows the answer. And DiMA (or at least the dialogue wheel) just wants you to … arbitrarily pick an answer? With no indication of how you came to that conclusion? Yes, I’m a synth. I decided just now. No, I could only possibly be a human. Never mind that I’ve been helping the Railroad for ages and I’m in love with Nick Valentine, I instinctively reject the possibility that I could be a synth myself. They’re not …

I know how it’s maybe meant to sound. That you’re picking what your character instinctively feels about themselves. But there’s no room for doubt. The wheel just plops it flat. Are you or aren’t you. There’s no allowance for how pretty much every other person he could ask that question will have spent a decent portion of their lives wondering. Unless they’re a confirmed synth who knows their designation, and even then, they probably still wonder.

If you pick either option from that annoyingly flat and blunt choice, they expand out to:

I’m a human being, not a synth

I have to be honest, um, in the back of my mind, I’ve always suspected …

So, yes, apparently the first option was meant to make you sound vaguely racist. The voice acting (at least for the female survivor) puts a bit of an emphasis on ‘not a synth’ that does make her sound vaguely defensive and/or disgusted. It’s portrayed as a knee-jerk rejection.

If you choose the synth option, Nick likes it. So I’m guessing it was meant to be the more friendly option if you’re a general ally of synths. Or, you know, in love with one.

But. The thing is. Why are you saying either of them? There’s been no indication up to now (at least in our playthrough, and to be fair we haven’t gotten into the Institute yet) of what the survivor might actually think. There’s been no real indication of what she should think.

Why would she think she’s a synth? I’m not saying why would she wonder, there’s an infinity of reasons for that, I’m saying why would she pick an option that initially looks like conclusively saying she knows she is one. She doesn’t.

She could be. Very easily, though since we haven’t gone to the Institute yet our survivor doesn’t know a good few of the reasons why it would make sense. The most logical place for her to have been swapped would be that first wake-up in the cryo chamber, when Shaun was taken. It’s very easy to imagine that the original survivor actually died then, rather than got refrozen, and the one that woke up the second time was a synth. Especially since I gather it looks like Father was doing a lot of experimenting in general in allowing the survivor to be woken up. It would be very easy to think that the survivor that exists in the wasteland is a synth. There is the question of the memories, how would they have gotten a brain scan enough to picture some of the pre-War things from a corpse frozen in a tube, since Father himself likely can’t remember, but there are a good few sources of pre-War memories in the Commonwealth (hi Nick!), so it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine the Institute got their hands on enough to prompt and then fake the rest.

There are lots of little dialogue options in the game, usually when you’re talking to pre-War ghouls and/or Nick himself, that do make it sound like you have more pre-War memories. Remembering the details of Silver Shroud episodes, things like that. But, again, the Institute clearly has access to pre-War brain scans from CIT, so that can be explained.

But that doesn’t prove she’s a synth. And there are a lot of reasons for her to think she’s a human that have nothing to do with apparently being slightly racist. Primarily, because her story is already so weird as it stands. I’m a pre-war popsicle (possibly with brain damage from being frozen, defrosted, refrozen and defrosted again) that woke up in an apocalyptic wasteland. That’s a lot to swallow from a standing start, without wondering if I’m a robot with fake memories on top of it.

Admittedly, DiMA does say that. There’s a lot of explanations for dodgy memories that could happen to anyone, let alone someone with such a massive trauma and huge before-after divide as the sole survivor. Which, possibly, makes it more likely for her to be a synth, because hello tailor-made past to explain away internal inconsistencies. She’d make a great experiment. But it doesn’t make it more likely for her to believe she’s a synth. She thinks she comes from a time before they even existed. She has every reason to believe her own internal narrative about Vault 111 and waking up 200 years later. Regardless of her feelings about synths in general, she has no particular reason to believe she herself is one.

Which I think is my main problem with this dialogue wheel. It’s not really posing the question as a philosophical or existential conundrum, a question the survivor might actually ask herself. It’s asking the question as a means to make her pick a side.

So the option to say you’re human comes out vaguely defensive, something a Brotherhood operative would say. And the option to say you’re a synth makes the synths around you happy.

The wheel has nothing to do with what you actually think you might or might not be. It gives you no option to say you’re really not sure, you can’t decide, you don’t know. Well, it does, and then forces you to make a choice between them anyway. It makes you pick an option, and only gives a nod to doubt in hindsight, and only if you pick synth. The way the options play out, it makes it sound like you don’t make the choice based on what you think you are, you make the choice based on who you plan to side with (or have been siding with back in the Commonwealth). While presuming that the only reason you’d pick a side is that you’re part of it on a racial level.

It makes it sound like the only reason to think you’re human is because you hate the thought of being a synth. That any reasonable person would think that they probably are one, especially if they already like them and are an ally to them. That the only reason to be an ally with synths and want to help them is the idea in the back of your brain that you are one yourself.

Like, I don’t know if I’m overthinking this slightly because I didn’t like the flatness of the choice and then how our particular choice played out. We picked human, because to the best of our knowledge our survivor had no real reason to think she wasn’t one. And then what we said came out sounding like Maxson could have said it. Which, given that we’re a staunch Minuteman/Railroad member, and in love with Nick Valentine, did not please me in the slightest.

But I really do feel that the wheel is too flat, too arbitrary, comes out of nowhere, and frames your choices in a really manipulative way. While the base game does ask a lot of questions about who is or is not a synth, and several people do challenge you as one because they’re in paranoid meltdowns, this is the first time we’ve really been asked if we think we might actually be a synth. And for the first time you’re asked something, especially something so existentially fraught as this, are you really going to be able to give a flat, definite answer? Yes or no? Sure, I’m totally a synth. Not sure how I came to that conclusion, but absolutely I am one. Off the top of my head, yup.

(Sidenote: the way it dismisses your question of ‘How would I know?’ also annoys me. I know it’s because it’s meant to be a general ‘asking for clarification’ prompt, but it actually makes more sense as an answer in itself. How would she know? Why can’t that stand as her answer? But no, the wheel/DiMA presses you on to make a binary choice)

Why would you, as the player, pick ‘I’m a synth’, except that you’re siding with synths? The game has given you no evidence or asked you no direct questions up to now for you to genuinely think that your character is a synth. And I get RPing doubts, and the expanded version of that answer, what you actually say, is something I might have said had that been given as the initial option. In the back of my head, I have wondered if I might be. Because basically everyone in the Commonwealth has probably wondered that by now. But we had no reason to say ‘I am a synth’, like that was a thing we knew. Because we don’t.

The baseline assumption is going to be that you’re human. All your memories and evidence point that way. Unless you’ve been to the Institute and pulled your file and synth designation off their databanks, you’d have no way of knowing you’re a synth. So why would you say you are?

To get in good with Acadia. That’s why you’d say you are. Because you want to ally with synths, or infiltrate them, so you blithely say that you are one. Because clearly everyone knows that the only reason you’d help a synth or ally with them is if you are one.

I don’t like this dialogue wheel. I really, really don’t like it. I know it’s a system problem. The wheel system doesn’t expand on what you’re actually going to say, so you have to make your best guess based off dodgy summary prompts (which is why we basically never choose the ‘sarcastic’ option, because holy Hannah we’ve no idea if we’re going to be mildly snarky or cut someone to the bone with that one, and most of the time we’re not chancing it). But the particular way the initial prompts and then the actual dialogue in this one plays out has some very unfortunate implications. It does really feel like it enforces the ‘humans vs synths and if you are one, you’re antagonistic to the other’ divide. It feels like a choice designed to make you pick a side, and to declare yourself racially in order to do so. And I don’t like it.

Um. Right. Sorry for the rant.

(For the record, I am enjoying the DLC generally at the minute. Far Harbour as a setting is fantastically spooky and Lovecraftian, and running around it with Nick is great so far. But that particular moment really bugged me. Like a lot. Heh)

#meta #fallout 4 #far harbour dlc #humans vs synths #clumsy dialogue wheel #i don't like it #possibly overreacting #but still

16 notes · View notes

mauserfrau · 4 years

Text

Spiraling To Meet Me - Bordertober

Tonight: Tyreen v. other people. Framed as her dealing with massive spoilers from Satellite. Contains: blood, gore, death, referenced suicide, medical stuff and... [see tags]

The first person she ever met, she killed.

He was dying. There wasn’t anything she could do to save him. He went into her as a flash of syrup and heat. She’s never been sure how she recognized him as a he in the brief moment she knew him through her mother’s skin.

He left her dizzy with delight as she sprawled there in Leda’s sandy glass remains and the air coral rattled against the rift of sky in the temple roof.

Troy, too stunned and hurt to cry, rattled too.

She told Dad: “I didn’t mean to!”

It was kind of true. She didn’t mean all of it. Mama was dying, same as a manta gored in a trap.

That part, she meant.

The little fish just hadn’t realized Leda was dead. Tyreen got him with the rest.

She hadn’t had any idea before he evaporated in her leech.

Nobody else realized. There was no crystal clump of sand that gave away what Tyreen had done. Or if there was, no one noticed while they carried Mama out of temple in buckets and bottles. She never saw it, anyway. She just climbed up the toppled stones along the path that one more time, remembering not to eat the very small larvae and worms because they could still become big things, and then there could be more.

She also still licked her lips when she thought about him. Maybe she couldn’t have touched him, but she could have heard him, seen him, smelled him when he was just born and still wet.

Instead she ate him and he was gone except for this vague sense memory that crawled around on her tongue and the bottom of her own belly.

She didn’t stay away from the grave like Dad. Mama wasn’t there.

She didn’t go to the grave after midnight like Troy. Troy said Mama wasn’t there.

Sometimes when the storms roiled over the valley, she listened the air coral shuddering in the wind. Her mouth watered and she balled her marked hand into a fist.

Having another baby wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world. No, that was clearly her trying to prove as much to herself reading books out of the medical suite that made her blush and cringe.

She was supposed to be stronger than blushing and cringing.

She realized though that she might have been biased when it came to what was and was not awful about pregnancy. She had never not eaten for two.

She wouldn’t say she met anybody from her family. They were always just there, until Mama wasn’t. Dad tasted rich, Mama stale as recycled air. Troy held no flavor or sensation outside of his bone-leaf skin and skittering pulse.

Oh, she tried to eat him too. Just once with any seriousness. What if all of her brothers tasted that delicious?

Tyreen wrapped her arms and her leech around him, pouring herself against his body and begging him to slosh back, fill her instead of the other way around.

Instead, she drained into him, slow and crystal damp, even though she hardly had enough to share.

“It’s OK,” he told her, gently scratching at her fingers. “We can go outside again soon. You won’t have to be hungry.”

Back on the couch, Dad laughed at something on his old video screen.

Troy had put on one of the old, airy tracks that Mama had liked to play after dark in the summer. He was trying to sing with it and maybe Tyreen had tried a little bit too. At least, she was whistling along under her breath when—

“Boy, you shut that off!” And a crash so sharp and musical Tyreen thought at first it must have come from the speakers.

She peered into the front room to find Troy rattling against the wall. One of the good drinking glasses oozed down the wall.

Tyreen cleaned it up without complaining and Troy vanished, same as the liquor vapors.

She put her marked hand down beside Dad’s head.

He startled awake, stared up at her, tried to smile.

“Throw anything at Troy again I’ll do to you what I did to Mama.”

She doesn’t remember what he said to her, besides calling her Starlight. That might have been all it was in the end.

Tyreen stalked off. Her heart slammed in her chest and her joints felt all slippery.

It had taken her days to decide to say anything. It wasn’t on impulse like hunting or dodging or staying up way too late watching video clips of little fish fetuses kick.

She guessed she just didn’t care about Troy in that particular impulsive way what would have let her subsume him. It wasn’t like he was any good at hunting, after all.

When she got to Mama’s grave, she spit up and coughed. She didn’t cry. Crying was dumb.

Nobody followed her to ask if she’d shed anymore teeth or eaten anymore brothers.

And they wouldn’t know any of those things unless she told them.

Years passed before the one time she almost did. Troy was in a bad way, feverish and unsteady on his feet. She half-carried him to the bathhouse and heated the water up as high as it would go while she stripped him since he couldn’t seem to get his clothes off himself. They climbed into the water together and talked about Keats for a while. He said she looked different. Tyreen laughed at him for taking so long to notice. Then she untied his hair and pressed him against her chest, both of their hearts cranking in the swell of warmth from the water. She rested her hand on his empty shoulder as his breath tickled her skin.

“You ever get lonely?” she asked. It seemed like it might be kind of an OK leadup.

“Yeah,” he answered. “I don’t even know what I’d do with another person ‘round here. How about you?”

“Me? What? No. No of course not.”

The next part should have been I’m stuck with you, aren’t I?

But Tyreen said nothing.

The second person she met, she killed.

And the third.

And the fourth.

And all the rest. There were nine Maliwan researches altogether and Troy only got one, the one that grabbed him. The guy looked like he was feeling Troy up to Tyreen. Mostly, he pissed her off.

She wouldn’t have liked to have eaten him . Instead, she sang through the rest, sucking them down. The living bruise underneath her skin had them in gushes of fear and the kissed-out brightness of their wonder. Some were savory, others liquid tart. When they were all gone, she twisted on the toes of her boots and went down.

The rain stirred over her and the mud. She thrilled with what she’d gotten from them, flavors and memories of screams and not wanting so hard her mouth water. Actually, it was hardly damp, at least before Troy came around and tried to get her to stop laughing by tickling her feet— what a dumb thing to try, but it worked.

They knelt together in the rain, surrounded by strangeness and dead bodies made of sand.

It took hours to stash and secure their booty. They could only carry so much at one time, so they took the silliest, prettiest things like rings and name tags and somebody’s pocket knife that wouldn’t have been useful for trimming even tiny pieces of air algae, but it was new.

They hiked back over storm-slippery stones, hardly five sentences between them on the way.

It was when the lucernae on Mama’s grave came into view that the slippery twinge surfaced in her joints. Tyreen paused, scenting the air out of instinct. There was only home and water. Her hand went to her neck and she sighed.

No, something else fought to surface. Probably just her hunger returning.

She wondered, if only for a moment: what if she hadn’t eaten the intruders? What would she be doing now?

Talking or waiting or something. She wouldn’t have a new pocketknife.

Tyreen set the imaging equipment to warm up. Troy had taken a sharp blow to the belly and they needed to make sure nothing in him had popped.

The control console had broken a long time ago, and they’d patched the general computer in with some old optical cable. That meant that anything they tried to read out of the databanks and not existed would show.

Tyreen realized she’d been the last person in the medical suit and she’d left a rather gruesome birth video cued up.

Troy, leaning sideways on the table said though, “Oh. My bad. I was just thinking about...” He yawns. “Stuff.”

“Yeah? I mean, whatever. It’s a thing that happens, right, killer?” And she laughs, trying to stifle the crash in her heart.

The third or fourth person she meets on Pandora is a barkeeper who asks her name and how she takes her whiskey. Tyreen sits at the side of the bar, dazed and trying not to smile. She’s pretty sure the whiskey she gets isn’t whiskey at all. Anyway, it doesn’t smell like Dad’s, but it is in a real glass lowball and it makes her lips sting.

She thinks she should wait for Troy to get out of the can, but if she takes a sip herself he can’t ask her to toast.

She drums her fingers on the fine chips along the bottom and remembers.

“Yes?” says the bartender.

“Huh? Yes, what?”

“You look like you’re a million miles away.”

Tyreen cranes her head to the side. That’s a Troy question. Not a... random person question.

Right?

Right.

Besides, then she has to go and add, “Haven’t named the little guy yet.” She jerks her thumb to the calico bundle in an old apple crate. “Was gonna wait till he turns three months. Never know around here. But hey, now I never have to be lonely again.” She laughs.

Tyreen presses her fists to her knees. She will not blush. She will not cry. She won’t say yes of course that’s what it is, because it is a flickering tender place.

Part of her wants to eat this woman and her son.

But it takes more of her self-control than she’d like just to keep her face steady, just to think. “Oh, I get it.”

Fuck.

Tyreen smiles.

“Does he like music? I could go for some tunes.”

“Sure. What kind?”

“After dark in the summer.”

Apparently, that’s a fine enough answer. Troy comes back to the bar to find her gone in her glass and a softly thudding baseline.

#so tyreen ate her younger brother in Satellite #there I said it #bordertober #border-tober #borderlands 3 #Calypso Twins #Troy Calypso #Tyreen Calypso #Tyreen Calypso PoV #blood #gore #violence #suicide #medical content #fanfic #fanfiction #angst #and some drinking

7 notes · View notes

seriouslyhooked · 5 years

Text

The Same Soul (Part 1/?)

Available on FF Here and AO3 Here.

Our world AU where Emma and Killian knew each other as teenagers. Killian was sent to spend a summer with family in America. He met foster kid Emma while there. They fell in love but then he was forced back home and she couldn’t take the memories so she ran away, trying her best to move on from the dreams they’d always hoped for. A chance meeting brings them back together years later, and this time nothing and no one will keep them apart. Rated M.

A/N: Hey all! So it’s been a pretty long time since I dropped a new multi-chapter story, and for good reason. I am still very much working on finishing ‘Lost Souls’ and I have about a million mixtape prompts to respond to sometime this summer and into the fall. But when inspiration strikes, you have to run with it, and while listening to a song I’ve loved a long time, ‘Same Soul’ by PVRIS, I thought of this AU. It’s set in our world where Emma is a bail bonds person living a lonely life in Boston. She and Killian met years ago, there were definite fireworks, but fate kept them apart. Now, years later, fate steps in again reuniting them. For the rest, you’ll have to read and see. Anyway thanks so much for taking the time and hope you all enjoy!

“Listen Lady, I told you before, you got the wrong guy! That shit that happened, whatever it is the cops are spinning, it wasn’t me. You hear me? Hey! I’m talking to you.”

Yeah, unfortunately for me.

Emma did her best to try and drown out the noise currently emanating from the back of her car. It was hard work seeing as how the perp she’d picked up for jumping bail this time was one of the biggest whiners she had ever had the displeasure of bringing in. But at the end of the day this was manageable. In just a few more minutes they’d get to the courthouse and she would pick up a big fat check for all the trouble of interacting with this asshole. He was a big fish in a big city, and according to court records the state had him on the line for not one, not two, but twenty-five stolen luxury vehicles. And how had he done that? Simple – by preying on unsuspecting marks who thought he was the valet, or an assistant, or just a garden variety good Samaritan. Emma surprised a snort at even the thought of the last one. This guy was so obviously rotten to the core that she could smell his shit from a mile away, and despite his repeated denials, August Booth had been a very busy guy this summer.

“Okay I get it, you’re doing this for the money. Hell I respect that. You’re a regular entrepreneur. So what would it take? 10 grand? 20? I can get you that. All you gotta do is let me go.”

Now Emma really had to laugh. This idiot really thought so little of her. Didn’t he realize she’d been tracking him for a full week, and that in order to do that she’d had to do a deep dive not just into his personal life and habits, but also every last trace of his financial capabilities? He had no way in hell of making good on this offer, and yet he continued to lie and beg like it would somehow sway her.

“Seriously, I know people, and I’m good for the money. No one even has to know that you helped me out. Just pull over, undo these cuffs and I’ll get you the dough.”

“The dough?” Emma asked, incredulous and yet somewhat amused by how dissociated this guy seemed to be. “Who even says that? This isn’t a mafia movie from the 70s. You conned a bunch of people, stole a bunch of shit, and then skipped bail. I don’t care about the money that I know you don’t have, or the guys you think you know who are supposedly going to help you out of this. You’re not just a skip – you’re a bad guy. I’m not about to just let you go.”

“Aw fuck,” the man said from the back, his whole persona deflating as the realization finally dawned on him that she couldn’t be bought off so easily. “You’re one of those do gooders. Damn it! Just my luck.”

Emma didn’t bother to correct him even though she was hardly a ‘do-gooder’ as he’d so scathingly labeled her. Instead she reminded herself that talking to this man was nothing but a waste of time. Honestly, talking to most men felt like a waste of time, and at the end of the day, every man tended to show their true colors one way or another, and none of them ever appealed to her when they did. They might hide themselves well in the beginning, but no matter what men always seemed to find a way to fail to meet even the most baseline of expectations.

Except for Killian. He never let me down. He always did his best by me.

The thought was automatic as it rang out through her mind, and Emma’s immediate instinct was to miss him, which was crazy. Killian was a man – nay a boy – that she’d known more than ten years ago. She was sixteen the summer she met him, and though the thought was honest (he had, in fact, always been so good to her), it was also irrelevant. That was a whole lifetime ago. Hell, it felt like dozens of lifetimes ago. So much had changed. She was no longer the same person, and she had to imagine he was no longer the same either. Still, she wondered if that was true. Here she was writing off men in their entirety, but one possible outlier still remained.

“Get it together, Emma. You’re better than this.”

She whispered the words aloud under her breath, a common tactic to shift her thoughts from yesteryear that she’d developed as time went by. She had to pivot her thinking, and talking to herself, however strange, always seemed to help her do that quickly. The only problem was she still had an audience, and she’d totally forgotten that, only remembering when her perp responded to her with a pointed question that made her jump.

“So you are considering my proposition?”

“Hell no,” Emma rebutted, her eyes automatically rolling at the level of stupid that kept coming from this guy’s mouth. “I’m dropping you off, collecting my check, and then promptly forgetting you even exist.”

“Then what are better than?” Booth asked, his face shifting from hopeful to something a bit more sinister. Emma could see him trying to calculate an angle, no doubt aimed at manipulating her into letting him go. People didn’t get so far in running cons like he did without having that ability to play off a person’s weaknesses. “Sounds like you have a lot on your conscience Emma. Something weighing heavily on you? An old regret perhaps?”

“That’s none of your business,” Emma said with as much calm as she could muster, thankful as she rounded the corner and sidled up to the courthouse. She parked her car and opened the back door, not surprised that her guilty guest was less than interested in complying. He remained seated, and Emma tried to anticipate if he was going to play the dead weight card or try to make a run for it. “We can either do this the easy way or the hard way. But fair warning, the hard way is also the painful way.”

“Yeah right – like you’re going to hurt me somehow.”

“I took you down didn’t I?” Emma asked, her hand moving to her hip as she raised a brow at him. How fickle some people’s memories were. Clearly he’d forgotten the finer details of her apprehending him, including the part where he started running across the pizza joint she’d found him at and she stopped him by pushing a chair in his way, causing him to trip and fall with a crash to the ground.

“You got lucky. Bet you can’t do that twice.”

“Yeah, maybe. But see the thing is I don’t need luck, because I have this.” She pulled out her trusty tazer from the pocket of her red leather jacket and just because this guy was pissing her off, she fired it up, letting the buzz of the electricity start to circulate as a spark jumped visibly before them. “So let me ask this again. Are you going to get smart, or am I about to have a lot more fun than I bargained for?”

“All right, all right! Jeez, you really are crazy,” he exclaimed, getting up from the car and allowing her to maneuver him into the side door where on the lam defendants were deposited.

“That’s what they all say,” Emma sighed dramatically. “You could at least go for something more original.”

There was no reason to bother with goodbyes once Emma was inside. She’d meant what she said before; she absolutely planned to get her money and immediately forget about this low life. With minimal fuss she handed Booth over to the officers at the scene and then moved to the administrative desk to collect her skip amount and put yet another successful catch down on her record.

“Damn, Emma! Are you serious right now? The earliest person on the office pool said Booth would be at least a month long hunt. The BPD has been yammering on about his connections and underground network, but you make this look so easy.”

The words of praise came from Ruby, a sassy and sarcastic worker here who Emma always seemed to get along with. She wouldn’t call them friends per se, but they understood each other, and Emma was always willing to engage with her a little more than the others who worked here at the courthouse. Ruby had a good sense of humor, and she too seemed to genuinely understand the less than stellar nature of the average man too, which came up a lot when Emma dropped off her fugitives.

“What can I say? I was born for this.”

“Born to be a bail bonds person?” Ruby asked with a laugh. “Hardly. I still think you should be using those skills elsewhere. You’d make a great cop, or sheriff, maybe FBI. Or ooh – CIA! I can totally see you as a spy. You’d lure them all in with a little black dress and then you’d take down them down, and a whole country with it.”

“Eh, sounds like a lot of work,” Emma said with a shake of her head. “Besides, we both know no one else in this city is as good at this as me. What would the greater Boston area even do without me?”

“Good point,” Ruby acknowledged. “You’re practically the savior. Or the garbage collector. God I can’t believe some of these people. Like Booth – no morals. He stole a car from an elderly couple at a hospital. A hospital! It’s disgusting,” Ruby said with a shiver, and Emma absolutely agreed. It was heinous, but unfortunately not the worst crimes she’d ever heard of around these parts. “Anyway let’s get your forms all filled out. I know how the savior really operates – you’re probably jonesing to be alone.”

Emma offered a friendly smile, but even the off-handed turn of phrase sparked something in her. Jones. That was Killian’s last name and now that was twice that she’d thought about someone who should have long ago been forgotten. What was with her today? It wasn’t totally unheard of for her to think of him, but still. This was a lot – and yet she couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t enough.

“If you want my advice though, you should really stick around. There’s a new ADA here today, I guess he’s heading that children’s advocacy unit that the Governor installed last month, and he is hot – hot – HOT,” Ruby proclaimed without a care in the world as she fanned himself.

“I didn’t think you went for hot shot lawyers,” Emma teased, knowing that based on the guys who came in here claiming to want her attention after a night or two of her time, a lawyer would not be Ruby’s usual cup of tea. “Not enough tattoos to pass the Ruby Lucas standard.”

“I know, I know. Sadly I’m more likely to find a match on the wrong side of the bars in here. It’s really terrible. I wish they made something to cure that.”

“Extensive therapy?” Emma offered and Ruby shook her head.

“Nah I’m thinking tequila. Speaking of, some of the girls from my apartment building are going out this weekend. You should come with us.”

Emma was stunned at the offer. This was an escalation in terms of attempts at friendship made by Ruby and Emma didn’t know how she felt about that. She knew she liked Ruby and that she was a good person with a good sense of humor, but she didn’t really do the whole ‘friends’ thing. Emma was a loner and that was sort of all she knew.

“Let me stop you before you tell me something like ‘I don’t want to intrude’ or ‘I might be busy.’ You are coming out with us, and you’re going to have fun. It’s a great bar near Fenway – hidden enough so we don’t have to deal with tourists, but a good vibe all around. We’ll drink, we’ll eat, we’ll talk shit about celebrities or whatever and you will love it, even if you hate it at first.”

“You sound awfully convinced that this is happening.”

“I am. I know you’re guarded, Emma, but I’m not looking to break down any walls or anything. This is just fun, and when’s the last time you really had fun?”

It had been forever since Emma could recall a time when she was more than just content or surviving. Fun was a foreign concept to her, and in her life as a foster kid and then an independent adult, she had very few glimpses in her past that a normal person would consider enjoyable. It was for this reason that she was hesitant to commit to anything, but her gut, the intuition that she always trusted, was talkative in this moment, and it told her to give this a try even if it scared her just a little bit.

“Okay, I’ll go,” Emma said, prompting an excited squeal from Ruby. Before her new friend could get any ideas Emma put her hand up in physical warning. “But I will not be talking about my feelings and I am not getting blindly set up, so if this an attempt at doing that you better squash that idea now. We clear?”

“Crystal,” Ruby said with glee. She gave Emma the details of where they were going, and looked like she was about to talk more about the impending outing when something caught her gaze across the way. “Oh shit, incoming! Hot lawyer guy at two o’clock.”

An announcement like that would usually never mean much to Emma. She didn’t get worked up over the prospect of a hot guy, but before she turned she felt her stomach flutter slightly, a very unfamiliar feeling for as of late. It was strange and unexpected, but nothing could compare to the feelings that slammed into her all at once and she saw who was standing there, talking to one of the bailiffs outside of the courtroom.

“Killian?” Her voice was barely a whisper, and Emma didn’t even mean to say his name aloud at all, but she knew she must have when Ruby replied.

“Oh my god, do you know him?! You really do work fast, honey. He like just got here. This is his first day in the courtroom, and from what I hear he’s already killing it.”

Emma had no ability to respond to that information even though she craved more on a cellular level. She was consumed with so many thoughts and wants and emotions. Could this really be Killian? He was so different, so altered. The boy she knew was just that – a boy – but this man… Holy crap he was hot! Ruby had not been exaggerating, but it was more than just attraction. Emma could see in his mannerisms and from the easy smile that he had with a man who must be a relative stranger that he was still good and kind. It made her knees tremble to behold him in all the glory of this suit and with the swagger and confidence of a damn good attorney. Then he turned to her and she was totally lost, and after only the briefest moment of worry that he wouldn’t remember her, he eased her every fear on the subject.

“Emma?” he said, excusing himself immediately from the bailiff’s company as he walked towards her.

Oh shit! Oh shit! He’s coming this way. What do I do? What do I say? Ahh!

“Uh, hi,” was all she could come up with and she almost groaned at how basic that was. If someone could die of mortification, Emma was currently coming close to such a deadly level. She hadn’t felt this way since she was a girl, and she couldn’t tell if she loathed it or kind of loved it.

“I can’t believe it’s you. What are you doing here? How did you – I mean where did you…?”

Killian’s questions trailed off as his gaze took her in. He hid nothing from her, and the deep cerulean eyes she’d always loved and dreamed of for years traced her features with undeniable longing. She could get lost in the intensity of his expression, and again she was struck by how impossibly handsome he was, but this moment was made all the more breathtaking when she noticed how glad he was to see her again. He was more than happy, and he even seemed relieved, as if somehow, all this time, he’d been looking for her. The thought made her heart pound in her chest because she herself had considered looking for him for ages. It was one of the great ironies of her life: she found people for a living, but for years she’d kept herself from finding him again, scared that the response wouldn’t be enough. She’d always been tempted, but she’d never gathered the courage to take the leap and try.

“God, I can’t believe it’s really you,” he murmured, his voice clear but also filled with emotion. His touch of an accent washed over her, sending a buzzy sensation coursing through her and lighting her up inside. She wanted to smile, but she was still too stunned to even speak.

“This is the part where you reciprocate the feeling, Ems,” Ruby said, pulling Emma back from her wandering thoughts and the feeling of shock that seeing Killian stirred in her. Emma was still speechless, and she looked at Ruby in a silent cry for help that the brunette immediately answered. “Not sure how long it’s been since you too have seen each other, but Emma is a bailbonds person. She’s actually the best damn asset in the city. She’s got the most catches three years running.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Killian said with a smile and Emma’s heart skipped even as she gave him a quizzical look. “You were always brilliant, and tracking people down is no easy feat. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“You have?” Emma asked, finally finding her voice.

“Aye,” he said, moving forward so the air around them practically crackled with anticipation. Emma felt a rush of energy; her whole body felt fit to burst with an instinctive want to move closer even while her rational brain said she should bolt. This was too much; it was too impossible. She shouldn’t be feeling this. She shouldn’t start hoping for things, because hoping for things was the surest way to end up disappointed. “Emma, I-,”

Whatever Killian was going to say got interrupted by a boisterous gaggle of defense attorneys stampeding in the door. They had no respect for the ‘Quiet please’ signs in the area and completely broke the moment. Ruby, for her part, was extra irritated since the nuisance pulled her from openly gawking at Emma and Killian. She had to go and shush the offenders, but the sudden change of pace was all the interruption Emma needed to start feeling like her only choice was to flee. This was too much for her to handle and she was seconds from making a run for it, but then she felt Killian’s hand touch hers and the world stopped. The noise faded away and a hundred beautiful, perfect memories came rushing back to her as he held her hand in his.

“Please, Emma.” His tone begged for her to look at him and when she did she could see the earnest desire written all over his face. “I know it’s been a long time – God it feels like lifetimes ago – but I can’t leave you again thinking it’ll be the last time I see you. I don’t have it in me.”

“I know,” Emma confessed, her voice starting to break. “But it’s crazy. Everything’s different. We’re different. We have different lives. You could be married. You could be -,”

“I am not now nor have I ever been married,” he stated firmly, as if he was offended that she’d even suspect a catch like him could have tied the knot.

“Girlfriend?” Emma asked, hating that her curiosity was getting the better of her.

“No. There’s been no one truly special in my life. Not for a very long time.”

Emma knew instinctively that he was talking about her, and it was the only way she found the bravery to reply with complete honesty. “Me too.”

“Thank God for that,” he exclaimed, his breath coming out in a relieved wave as his thumb ran across her skin, sending sublime sensation through her whole being. “Go out with me tonight.”

“Tonight?” Emma asked, surprised at how immediate that request was.

“Aye. I don’t think I could bear the wait, and I’ve no shame in admitting that. I’d ask you out for this very moment, but I have another case being called in thirty minutes that I can’t postpone.”

Emma smiled despite the flurry of emotions she was grappling with. God, she’d always loved that about him. He was so unabashedly open with her, and that tendency had given her the space to be exactly who she was when they’d been together all those years ago. She never felt alone with him, and through some kind of magic, he always made her believe that it was okay to be vulnerable and to admit what she really wanted most of all.

“All right, tonight. But where are we going?”

“Leave that to me, love,” he replied and the term of endearment made her light up instantly. She’d missed that so much. She’d missed him so much, more than words could ever say. “Do you trust me?”

“I want to,” Emma replied quietly and though she thought he might be disappointed by her inability to promise absolutely faith in him right now, he only grinned in that boyish, charming way he’d been prone to way back when.

“We’ll get there. Starting with this date – we’ll find our way, together.”

“So it is a date?” Emma confirmed, excitement bubbling over at the firmness in his tone as she typed in her number to the phone Killian had quickly handed her.

“Aye, love. It’s a date.”

With that, and with a all too fleeting final farewell where Killian took her hand once more and raised it to his lips in a gentle kiss, her long lost what-if took his leave of her again. And though she still didn’t love the feeling of him walking away, Emma was comforted with the fact that she’d see him again in just a few more hours, and that hopefully this time she’d never really have to let him go again.

Post-Note: So despite the fact that I have so much other stuff on my plate writing-wise, I got struck with this story idea and I couldn’t put it down. It was originally going to be a mixtape and end right here (I know, it’s barely even begun!) but I have decided to make it into a short multi-chapter story. It’s pretty surface level stuff, a brief burst of fluff, and probably only about three parts, but it will be filled with cuteness, rest assured. Anyway thank you so much for reading, and I can’t wait to hear what all of you think!

#captain swan #captain swan au #captain swan fic #cs fic #cs ff #cs au #cs fluff #cs smut #cs au fic #emma swan #killian jones #ruby lucas #captain swan ff #cs mc #Captain swan multichapter #the same soul #the same soul au

44 notes · View notes

metatextuality · 5 years

Text

Broken Parts

(prompted by this post on lasting physical injury. tagging @aerialsquid and @whetstonefires because i expect this disorganised character exploration is at least relevant to their interests.)

The Jester’s face is a mass of scar tissue.

When people hear that, they usually say things like “I’m so sorry,” and, “That must have been awful.” They don’t think of things like two-month psychotic break or traumatic amnesia – or if they do, they assume it’s a vanity thing, even if they don’t normally think of appearance as particularly important; that J’s biggest problem was the violent disfigurement of his face into something unrecognisable instead of –

– the fact that the bleaching and discolouration go far more than skin-deep: the Jester can’t feel most of his face, most of the time; the muscles are drawn painfully rigid into something just short of lockjaw, so that if he doesn’t pay close attention and check his reflection in nearby surfaces often his mouth stretches automatically back into a ghastly gum-baring grin. He had to relearn how to talk like a parrot or a ventriloquist because it was too hard and hurt too much to bring his lips together for every P or B or F or V. He has to massage his jaw for ten minutes or so after waking up in order to loosen the muscles enough to open it; after he cracked a molar in his sleep, Francis (Dulmacher, the surgeon who treated him without asking for documentation or reimbursement, and who was clearly more used to being addressed by title and last name as befitting a professional but resigned himself fairly quickly to J’s reflexive familiarity) made him start wearing a polymer mouthguard at night.

– his throat hurts all the time. The Jester’s voice rasps like a violin played with a badly-frayed bowstring, and crackles like broken glass when he laughs; that’s what happens when a person inhales hazardous industrial chemicals.

– the numbness covers his entire body, not just his face. The Jester moves like a drunken master, or like a Weeble that wobbles but doesn’t fall down; people seem to react like this is just a him thing, a relatively unimportant eccentricity amongst the already vertiginous pile of eccentricities that has somehow kept him from getting killed so far, instead of realising that it’s because he always loses track of where his limbs are and has gotten used to compensating. Whenever he gets into the shower he notices new bruises he didn’t remember acquiring. This also means that he routinely performs superhuman feats of strength because he doesn’t notice sprains and dislocations until after the fact and doesn’t have a reference baseline to calibrate his expectations to. (It drives Owlman crazy that he can hit the Jester with two-hundred-something pounds of force behind it and J will just pop back up like a jack-in-the-box nearly every time, which is a silver lining.)

– there may, in fact, be something superhuman about him. Francis has lamented at length about his desire to examine Extruded Man for comparison, because the Jester’s body heals from things it shouldn’t in ways that, quote, “defy scientific canon” and bends in ways that “shouldn’t be possible without injury”. Most people, it turns out, don’t find back handsprings an equally intuitive form of locomotion as walking. (Which is to say, equally unintuitive, but it isn’t really a big deal for J to use his hands instead of – or in addition to – his feet, especially when he’s used to catching his balance with them all the time anyway.)

– J has at least two bullet scars, one of which he remembers getting. Owlman usually seems to prefer blades, which J has an easier time avoiding due to an instinctive desire not to be stabbed with them, but which leave more memorable scars. The rest of his skin has the slightly-crinkly texture of a burn scar; Francis was quite emphatic about the fact that whatever marks his body had before the incident at the chemical plant, the acid burned them away. This includes things like fingerprints.

– he can’t taste most food. Spicy things help, but once in a while the capsaicin comes into contact with a spot on his tongue or the insides of his cheeks where the nerves haven’t all died and it burns like acid in an open wound. Sweets are more reliable.

– when he’s as fully recovered as he’ll likely ever be, J can see about thirty feet in front of him before things start to lose focus; focusing on things in general makes his head hurt, especially when his eyes start vibrating with the effort of adjusting in tandem. He got a fifteen-dollar pair of glasses from a corner store one time but always forgets to put them on because he can see well enough in most circumstances not to need them until he does (and, well, he usually carries a pair of binoculars anyway for Reasons). He was lucky not to lose his vision completely; he still doesn’t produce tears the way he’s apparently supposed to, and sometimes forgets to blink as much as he should and then wonders why his eyes hurt so much.

– Harley says there’s no way to tell which cognitive effects are of biological origin and which were impacted by chemical damage short of an autopsy. (DNA analysis could indicate certain predispositions, but she was very clear about that not being sufficient for diagnosis.) Mania is only diagnosed in contrast to a pre-existing personality baseline, which they don’t have; J doesn’t generally hallucinate unless something else interesting is causing it, and doesn’t really experience the negative affective issues, so schizophrenia and the Cluster A disorders are out despite a tendency toward hyperactive apophenia and disorganised thought tangents – Harley’s said that in circumstances with a clearer medical history, she might propose ADHD, but given that nonvital medications aren’t reliably within their reach and that J and his friends have practice compensating for his distractibility and unorthodox processing, it’s more useful as a reference paradigm than a concrete diagnosis. (Jon looked vaguely disturbed at the suggestion that he synthesise amphetamine salts given the possibility of exacerbating the Jester’s symptoms, perhaps permanently, but agreed that it was worth experimenting with under controlled conditions with J’s consent. All they really did in the end was make J more whatever-he-is for about four hours, which might be useful under certain circumstances but was a bit too extreme even for Gotham's motley collection of vigilantes to deal with regularly.)

– traumatic amnesia, the fact that the Jester struggles to recall more than bits and pieces of a prior life that doesn’t feel like it belonged to him, means that J’s medical history is at most a best-guess approximation – which means that he once got shingles for a month because it turned out he’d never been vaccinated. He hadn’t even known that was a possibility. Francis and Harley ganged up on him to make sure he got the entire panel of booster shots as a precaution after that.

– no one tells you that leprosy actually affects the peripheral nervous system, and that the more well-known symptoms are usually a result of infected wounds that go unnoticed due to loss of sensation. The implications of full-body nerve damage due to chemical burns are left as an exercise for the reader. (Upon discharging him a second time after the Jester broke out of the clinic mid-recovery from The Chemical Bath Incident, Francis slapped an enormous tube of combined-antibiotic ointment into J’s hands with instructions to perform a complete physical exam no less than every two weeks for the rest of his life, preferably with assistance.)

#earth 3 #the jokester #the jester #crisis on two earths #dc #for $8000 a month i will stop #attempting to type up character meta on four hours of sleep is definitely a good idea with no possible downside #did you know that the joker and red hood in BtBatB never stop grinning even while speaking because i think about that Constantly #there obviously had to be someone else in the leslie thompkins role so the Dollmaker seemed a reasonable choice

46 notes · View notes

bardiccircle · 3 years

Text

Resh Chapter One Self-Exegesis

Over the past two weeks, we have gone through the first chapter of Resh, so here is a reposting of the updated chapter with the full analysis, for anyone who would like to revisit or catch up, beneath the “Keep reading” link.

Chapter One

1. You are not your body. The body is solely manifest. It is easy to consider the separation of the flesh, but less so for what is part of the flesh.

2. Memory is stored in the brain, therefore it and its offshoots are merely physical. Experience, which becomes the perspective and belief which influences behaviour, is a trapping of the manifest form. As is personality, which is wired into the brain in ways best understood via examples of those who have had their personality affected by brain damage.

3. Tempting as it is to identify with the flesh, it is moreso for thought. The connection between the flesh and thought is, for our purposes, moot.

4. You are not your thought. Thought is ephemeral, observable, dismissible, malleable. Thought feels less than manifest, or otherwise separated, due to its distinction from the external; it is a product of manifest.

5. Of all that can be said when the elements of manifest are, ostensibly, stripped away, the simplest agreement is that awareness remains.

6. Awareness is localized biomechanically, at the very least. Cognition and self-awareness is a biomechanically sourced aspect of awareness and often, due to the bias of human perspective, generally conflated with awareness. Awareness, in terms of our discussion, is best understood as synonymous with the semi-metaphysical consideration of the cosmic wavelength in a manifest form.

7. The manifest in which awareness finds itself is cast a role by circumstance. The realization of this role is contextual. Beyond fate, the behaviour of this role is open to interpretation like that of any actor.

8. From this basis, for any given aspect of life, springs the dynamic of the truth and the lie. This dynamic may be viewed in a general sense of over-arching themes or specific to the situation. All is perspective, derived from experience, determining how clearly one approaches an aspect of life.

9. From lies spring need, as misapprehension and acts thereof cause harm. Psychological need is the change necessary to stop hurting oneself, while moral need is external.. Knowledge of the lie and resulting needs is only the first step, as it is a practice to overcome ingrained behaviour.

10. Desire is distinct from truth; it is an aspect of manifest.

11. True will is distinct from, but in line with, truth. It is the manifest of higher direction.

12. The manifest is impermanent. This is a natural and joyous thing. It is a dialogue between manifest imperfection and perfect potential.

13. While localized in manifest awareness plays its part in the grand story. This world is distinct, but not lesser.

Verse One

You are not your body. The body is solely manifest. It is easy to consider the separation of the flesh, but less so for what is part of the flesh.

The first striking element of this verse is the use of the word ‘you’. This seems to demand some sort of definition of ‘you’ or the self, but as we see in later verses the function of ‘you’ here is to be a stand in for the consideration of self as layers are stripped away to see what remains. The importance does not lie in defining ‘you’, but the continued consideration of what ‘you’ is and what previously assumed elements may be stripped away.

Saying “You are not your body” may seem nonsensical to the average person. It is the most tangible part of the self; I can see my hands working in tandem with my desire to type this out, and any effect on the body feels deeply personal. Yet it is merely a tool. Humans tend to identify with the tools directly under our control, especially when said control becomes so instinctive to solely feel as part of the will. In this way, we do not say “His car nearly hit my car” but “He nearly hit me”. Likewise as we do not become one with the car when we are in the driver’s seat, we are not our bodies.

Any part of this flesh may be removed, as long as life is sustained, without becoming less of ourselves. This becomes more complicated in considering the brain in this way; as it is discussed specifically in the next verse the topic of the brain as part of the body will be left for that later discussion.It may be helpful to regard the brain as a special case, for the sake of concentrating discussion. This is not to say the brain is apart from the body, but simply to make clear the structure of this discussion to avoid confusion as it will be discussed tomorrow.

The word ‘solely’ implies a separation between the body and anything which is not manifest, so what is manifest? Manifest is the physical, the actualized plane. Typically this is attached to the idea of the traditional five senses. I can see the pen next to my laptop. I picked up said pen and felt its weight and the texture of its plastic. It rattled when I set it down. There is not much to report in terms of taste and smell, beyond the slight reflection on where a philosophy degree has gotten me.While we could delve into ideas on empiricism, that would be wasting energy on a tangent. Our focus is on interrogating what is outside that initial ‘you’ as parts are stripped away.

Specifying the separation of the body does not imply that it is any less important, as alluded to in further verses. To continue the car metaphor, while it is not part of us we still look after it as it plays an important part in our lives (not to imply everyone owns a car; regardless most will understand the comparison). While keeping it fueled and maintained is the baseline for it working, cleaning your car and making it nice to be in will improve quality of life. Now consider your body in the same way, except you spend every* moment of your life in it! Your body being solely manifest means that who you are is not tied to the physical form you occupy. It can, however, be an excellent medium for self expression.

“It is easy to consider the separation of the flesh” as it can be boiled down into a simple thought experiment. If you lost a limb, you would still be you. Certainly, you would be affected by it as it would be a significant change requiring adjustment, but you would still be you. If your car broke down on the side of the road, it would represent a drastic shift in your day-to-day, but eventually walking would be the new normal. If the hands I use for typing were to disappear, the means by which I put out my ideas may change but eventually I would adjust to speech-to-text or dictation and from the audience stand-point there would be no change. This part is an invitation to do the work, to sit down and consider your relationship to your body, with the encouragement that it is not an insurmountable task.

“[B]ut less so for what is part of the flesh.” And here we return to why the brain may be considered a special case: it is so central to our manifest form that even its consideration as such requires separate deliberation of its connection to the manifest and what may lie beyond.

*Debatable in a way unimportant to the discussion

Verse Two

Memory is stored in the brain, therefore it and its offshoots are merely physical. Experience, which becomes the perspective and belief which influences behaviour, is a trapping of the manifest form. As is personality, which is wired into the brain in ways best understood via examples of those who have had their personality affected by brain damage.

Here we begin our conversation of the brain and what elements can be considered to be “of the flesh” (Resh.1.1). The elements mentioned are memory, experience, perspective, belief, and personality; these can be simplified into memory, stored in the hippocampus, and personality, located in the frontal lobe. This simplification is avoided in the text as it may cause confusion to not specify the “offshoots” of memory.

Memory represents not only the raw data of our lives, but the events which impressed certain ideas upon us. The main semantic difference between memory and experience is internalization; there is a distinction, however slight, between remembering that 2+2=4 versus having experience adding numbers together. To clarify, experience is not just familiarity with a given action, such as addition, but the happenings which affect our approach to the world. The experience of being taken hunting and finding it distressing can be the formative moment someone stops eating meat.

Experience “becomes the perspective and belief which influences behaviour” through the previously stated internalization. If someone has the experience of growing up in a household which instills fundamentalist religious beliefs, this will not only affect their beliefs but their perspective on the world. Likewise, the experience of growing up in poverty will not only affect one’s perspective of socioeconomic issues, but their beliefs as well. Note, previously and going forward, that the examples put forth are simplifications to demonstrate the underlying mechanics.

Belief and perspective are intimately connected; perspective is how one sees the world while belief is the manifestation of said perspective into convictions. Belief is subject to more doubt and consideration while perspective tends to be more passive. The active shift in either will, inevitably, change the other if one does not revert to one’s previous perspective or belief. Belief and perspective influence behaviour as this internal approach to the world becomes externalized. To continue the above example, someone with a fundamentalist belief or perspective is more likely to behave in a likewise manner. If your experience of the LGBTQ+ community was through strawmen arguments and a homophobic environment, you will likely behave homophobically.

It is not mentioned in the text, as it does not contribute to the paring away of what is not ‘you’, but it is worth mentioning that perspective and belief can also be affected by behaviour. This is due to cognitive dissonance and its solution, when thought conforms to action.

Personality’s place in the brain is “best understood via examples of those who have had their personality affected by brain damage” due to the neurological complexity of said placement. The most well-known example of this would be the case of Phineas Gage, a milquetoast railway foreman who, after having an iron rod go clear through his skull, experienced an extreme change in his personality. That said, all we can really account for is a change in behaviour; naturally this demands an investigation into personality and what makes it distinct from behaviour.

While there are multiple definitions of personality, the simplest one attuned to our purposes is “the complex of characteristics that distinguishes an individual or a nation or group; especially: the totality of an individual's behavioral and emotional characteristics” (“Personality.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/personality. Accessed 10 Aug. 2021.). We have gone over the manifest aspects which lead to behaviour and, assuming behavioural characteristics to simply be the trend of behaviour, we are therefore left with emotional characteristics to discuss.

Emotional characteristics, if contrasted by behavioural characteristics, would be the trend of emotional states. If we look at the main psychological theories for emotion, we can see that they are typically explained in terms of the body, the brain, or cognition. Two of those three can be placed in the same category of the flesh, easily cordoned off into manifest as explained in this, and our previous, discussion, and, as explored in further verses, “[y]ou are not your thought[s]” (Resh.1.4). This is not to say emotions are not valid, in the same way as the body they are precious in their place, but they are not you. You are not anger. You are not sadness. You are not even joy. These are ephemeral aspects of our manifest existence. Ergo, you are not your emotional characteristics.

If we are not our emotional characteristics nor behavioural characteristics, it follows that we are not our personalities. It might feel upsetting to be told that, as we are conditioned to equate value and attachment. Personality is the expression of your manifest, it’s what other people see and is an aspect of how unique you are in manifest. The shock of considering this separation may feel constricting, but once you’re comfortable with the idea it can be freeing as it changes nothing but the weight of manifest.

Verse Three

Tempting as it is to identify with the flesh, it is moreso for thought. The connection between the flesh and thought is, for our purposes, moot.

The primary aspect we should investigate in this verse is the temptation of identification. We have already covered the identification with the physical in depth in the examination of Resh.1.1, so we will leave it at a brief overview: the body is our tool for acting in and interacting with manifest, and being the primary outlet for our will it is evolutionarily convenient to be tied to it as, prior to cognition, seeing the flesh as self is the basis for instinctive preservation of the flesh.

The temptation to identify with thought is, happily, more straightforward. Being ostensibly separate from manifest, thought feels more intimately tied to the self as an expression of the self to the self. There is no posturing, no affect from outside observation, so there is a sense of purity with thought. Of any quality beyond the flesh, it is the most easily observable, but as we will discuss tomorrow, that doesn’t make it you.

The “purposes” referenced would be the removal of all layers of manifest existence from our conception of self to see what is left. “The connection between the flesh and thought is” moot not only because it can be discussed endlessly, but because the result of said discussion either way would be irrelevant. Whether thought is purely neurological or something else, tomorrows discussion explores why, either way, “[y]ou are not your thought” (Resh.1.4).

Verse Four

You are not your thought. Thought is ephemeral, observable, dismissible, malleable. Thought feels less than manifest, or otherwise separated, due to its distinction from the external; it is a product of manifest.

You can observe yourself having a thought. Sometimes you’ll have a thought and be horrified by it as you assume it is reflective of who you are, but the more reasonable explanation is that the thought is not you but a manifestation. Whether it is sourced from the manifest or something higher, it is still not you. As we discussed specifically yesterday, and is implied by today’s verse, it is the most easily observable quality beyond flesh. Thinking about how to discuss this, I’m drawing both from my experience with philosophy and my memory of previous thoughts exploring the topic; I can observe my perceptions on thought more directly through thought as opposed to said perceptions latent state within my hippocampus.

In regards to the source of thought we enter the realm of speculation; all of this is meant to kick start consideration rather than deliver any misguided sense of truth, so let’s speculate. Sourced from manifest, we can subdivide into intentional and unintentional thought. Intentional thought would be drawing from raw data for consideration, whether it is working on a doctoral thesis or something as mundane as deciding what you will have for lunch; it is the purposeful manifestation of said raw data for observation and manipulation. Unintentional, or intrusive, thought is harder to pin down. It could be sourced from something as simple as the neurological need for stimulation, such as a daydream, or more complex such as l'appel du vide, such as the impulse to toss your phone over a bridge either making the fear of doing so accidentally controllable or as some sort of warning regarding the risk. Seen as sourced from something beyond manifest, that would typically be called inspiration or even divine inspiration.

In any case, thought can be seen as “a product of manifest” as it is a form of manifestation, albeit more ephemeral than the flesh.

Verse Five

Of all that can be said when the elements of manifest are, ostensibly, stripped away, the simplest agreement is that awareness remains.

We are aware of our bodies in the same way we are aware of our thoughts, but typically this awareness is filtered through thought as that is, as previously stated, the most easily observable thing beyond the flesh. As the stripping away of “elements of manifest” were covered in previous discussions and “awareness” will be discussed in the next verse, that leaves us with one word jutting out: ostensibly.

There is always room for further examination and conclusions. To say anything is the definite truth is the path to stagnation and dogmatism, themes which are covered in further chapters. “Ostensibly” is a reminder to keep looking, that all of this is food for thought. The path to the greatest understanding is an open mind and “[c]onsidering that you may be wrong” (Resh.3.9).

Verse Six

Awareness is localized biomechanically, at the very least. Cognition and self-awareness is a biomechanically sourced aspect of awareness and often, due to the bias of human perspective, generally conflated with awareness. Awareness, in terms of our discussion, is best understood as synonymous with the semi-metaphysical consideration of the cosmic wavelength in a manifest form.

“Biomechanically” points to the idea that the flesh, our consideration of life, if an organic equivalent to the machines we build. The most important part of this comparison is that our limits are determined by our physical form. We can’t know if said awareness only exists in living forms, but in any case the experience of any other organism would differ based on the physical form. “You are not your body” (Resh.1.1), ergo that which is left when all else is “stripped away” (Resh.1.5) is dependent in its manifestation on the physical form through which it is manifested.

It is implied, by “[a]wareness is localized” (Resh.1.6), that awareness both exists without manifest and is not divided up by manifestation. I think of it like a box of Lego: the parts you bring out to play with are still part of the larger unit, metaphysically speaking, but at the moment they happen to be acting as a rocket ship or whatever else is built. When playtime is over, the rocket ship is disassembled and returned to the larger unit of Lego. Here, the distinction between the physical and metaphysical must be noted. The physical blocks would be the atoms making up our universe, never created nor destroyed, being rearranged into a separate form. The metaphysical idea of the box of Lego would be awareness, existing throughout the physical universe with no change outside of manifest; removing Lego bricks from the box makes them no less part of the box. If it helps to think linguistically, consider the difference between playing with Lego and putting up the Lego. During playtime, there’s a divide between the pieces you’re working with and the box of parts you can pull from; when told to put up your Lego, the blocks and box become a unit as returning the box to its place is just as much a part of the action as returning the pieces to the box.

In the line between manifest and deity, “[c]ognition and self-awareness” could be seen as somewhat beyond manifest. As has been previously laid out, such things are “a product of manifest”. They are heavily dependent on the physical form we occupy, as they typically deal with ourselves in manifest and likewise relation to the external. “[T]he bias of human perspective” comes from the fact that, as our conscious experience is centred in our manifest form, we tend to view things from the manifest form usually convenient for day to day purposes. It is easiest, when viewing things from a solely manifest perspective, to “conflate [these] with awareness generally”.

To say awareness is “the semi-metaphysical consideration of the cosmic wavelength in a manifest form” seems to be an obscurum per obscurius, so let’s work through it. At the centre of this is the phrase “cosmic wavelength”, which we have discussed previously; there’s a whole chapter dedicated to it here if you want to read ahead. Simply, it is awareness viewed from a top-down perspective rather than bottom-up. This is in the verse as “consideration ... in a manifest form”, as opposed to considering awareness beyond the manifest form; they are the same. “Semi-metaphysical” is a modifier for the consideration, “semi” as awareness is a consideration semantically connected to the manifest, as that is implicitly the angle from which we are viewing it.

Finally, the idea of “awareness” should be clarified. From the manifest perspective, it is quite straightforward. You are aware of your body. You are aware of your thought. The one addendum is the metaphysical aspect uniting this facet of you with the rest of creation.

Verse Seven

The manifest in which awareness finds itself is cast a role by circumstance. The realization of this role is contextual. Beyond fate, the behaviour of this role is open to interpretation like that of any actor.

From the previous verses and their self-exegesis we can tell what “[t]he manifest in which awareness finds itself” is, so what role is it cast by circumstances?

We are born into certain circumstances, shaping the memories and experiences which will inform our interaction with the world. In terms of story, which will be interrogated in later entries, we play a character in manifest. We have aptitudes, hopes, dreams, fears, faults and more, all accruing onto us from birth. This is not predestination, it is likelihood. That is why it is beyond fate: where we are born, as to whom, affects who we are and how our lives may unfold

As much as our circumstances may shape the character we play, the way it is realized in behaviour is relative to the context. The way you act with friends differs from how you are with family; your personality at the pub versus the office will likely differ equally so. This may not be conscious, and most likely is not, and may be slight, but as humans we naturally adapt to our environment, including social ones.

This may feel as if we are simply blowing where the wind takes us, and for some that may be the case. Plenty of people fall into a certain role, end up playing a certain character, and forget that’s all it is: a role, a character, a game. This doesn’t just apply to office drones unquestioningly committing their lives to a 5x5 cubicle, but their CEOs so unflinchingly locked into the idea of growth that they will watch the Earth burn if it means the numbers continue to rise. That is the true death: stagnation.

Yet we, at our core, are awareness. The role may be out of our hands, but the interpretation of said role is within our grasp. The power is in the interpretation and reinterpretation, without an implication that it must result in change. The difference is between said office drone remaining in the job because they’re there and it is what they think is expected of them by society, versus someone working the same job knowing they have, every day, chosen to remain there.

Verse Eight

From this basis, for any given aspect of life, springs the dynamic of the truth and the lie. This dynamic may be viewed in a general sense of over-arching themes or specific to the situation. All is perspective, derived from experience, determining how clearly one approaches an aspect of life.

“This basis” would be the background aspects of the characters we play, as previously discussed, which influences our actions going forward. In storytelling theory this is called the ghost and is typically a specific event due to the directed nature of the characters in our stories. We are more complex as the medium in which we are expressed, manifest, is infinitely more complex than the mediums in which we express ourselves. In any given situation we draw from numerous past experiences to understand our current one.

The truth and lie are also storytelling terms and, in stories, simplified from how we can see it in our own lives. The lie would be the perspective in life which causes harm, while the truth is its opposite. If you are not taking care of yourself because you think you do not deserve it, the lie would be needing to earn said care. Its opposite, the truth, would therefore be that, by virtue of your humanity, you deserve to be happy.

The distinction between viewing said dynamic in specific or general would be the scope of perspective.There might an overarching perspective causing you pain, or it may be specific to certain problems. Often it is both as the long-term patterns of our lives influence it moment to moment. “All is perspective, derived from experience,” as discussed in earlier verses. It is first and foremost a matter of disentangling what perspectives keep us from “clearly [approaching] an aspect of life”.

Verse Nine

From lies spring need, as misapprehension and acts thereof cause harm. Psychological need is the change necessary to stop hurting oneself, while moral need is external.. Knowledge of the lie and resulting needs is only the first step, as it is a practice to overcome ingrained behaviour.

Needs are, as well, an aspect of storytelling theory. Most conflicts, in positive arcs, are driven both by a character’s lie and the needs it causes. When we base our actions off a false understanding, it can cause us to hurt ourselves and others even as we think we are doing the right thing. This is where needs come in, as they are a more actualized form of the lie.

In the example from yesterday, we determined that in the case of not taking care of yourself because you do not think you deserve it, the lie would be the conception that you must earn said care. Let us put it in terms of need to demonstrate the mechanics of it and what changes must occur to stop causing harm. The psychological need would be rekindling a sense of self-love, while the moral need would be viewing such care as a right rather than a privilege. In this way we both improve our own situation while mitigating how that worldview may negatively impact others.

This may seem like a simple solution, but the lie is sourced in numerous experiences and reinforced by behavioural pattern. This is why it is “a practice”, as acting in line with the lie feels like a natural behaviour, while acting in line with the truth, and therefore the needs, requires conscious effort.

Verse Ten

Desire is distinct from truth; it is an aspect of manifest.

This is our final term from storytelling theory, at least as far as character elements are concerned. Desire, or want, is the surface level direction that gives stories their shape. The desire of the main character of Tootsie is to be a working actor, while his needs centre around seeing women as human. Need and want tend to oppose each other in stories as it is a reliable source of tension and conflict. It is a bit more complicated in life, as desire may be an outgrowth of need or wholly unrelated. It is important to keep in mind it is “distinct from truth” so we may prioritize our needs when the choice arises.

All of this is “of manifest”, so why specify? Like any aspect of manifest, desire is worthwhile in its own right but ultimately temporary. This is a reminder not to place too much weight on desire, just as we should not do so with manifest.

Verse Eleven

True will is distinct from, but in line with, truth. It is the manifest of higher direction.

The first word to clarify is “will”, as it is not a call to do whatever you want. True will can be seen as a higher purpose, or in a secular sense the path which best highlights your aptitude to bring fulfillment. We will discuss it in more depth later, but for now know it is not a fixed variable. Think of True Will as the current in the river of life: you are being led in a general direction with various streams to choose, and the only wrong answer is to fight the current.

True Will doesn’t defy Truth, but they are not intrinsically related. We will get into the details at a later date, but, suffice to say, if you were to view Truth as an ideal of manifest, you can see True Will as the manifestation of the ideal.

Verse Twelve

The manifest is impermanent. This is a natural and joyous thing. It is a dialogue between manifest imperfection and perfect potential.

Death is a difficult subject to broach, as the loss of the manifest is permanent and a balance must be struck between the acceptance of the rhythms of life and the glorification of its loss. We are all familiar with why death is terrifying, why it has the stature of the worst possible outcome in any given situation, ergo this verse seeks to challenge that view to expand our consideration. However, the obvious must be stressed: death is not something to strive for, nor is the preventable loss of life ever acceptable. This verse is regarding mortality, death in the form of the inevitable.

How can we tell it is about mortality rather than death, and what is the distinction? Death is an event in specific, while mortality is conceptual. “The manifest [being] impermanent” is the core concept being explored, not the way that impermanence plays out. Mourn the loss of life and defend both your existence and that of others, but it is pointless to curse the fact of mortality.

Some may argue that we only accept death as natural because we have no choice, comparing it to Stockholm Syndrome. I am using the word ‘death’ in the previous sentence as that is how it is phrased in the video I am referencing, and it is worthwhile to dig into the negative correlations with the word ‘death’. Death is an emotionally charged word, and rightfully so given all the pain it causes. Yet, curing death would not cure mortality. The human body is fragile, so unless the body can be surpassed there would still be death by accident. But even in that scenario, there are multiple cosmological theories pointing to the universe being finite. Maybe we finally escape death by living beyond manifest, but the fact cannot be changed that “[t]he manifest is impermanent”.

We can see this naturalness in the inevitable, immutable nature of this impermanence, but from a human perspective it is hard to see the joy. This joy comes from the “dialogue between manifest imperfection and perfect potential”, so let us dig into that phrase. The word “dialogue” suggests that it is an equal exchange, taking away the value judgement we typically place on the ideas of perfection and imperfection; to fully understand this dialogue we must understand the component parts. We have previously covered what manifest is, and in the future will interrogate why its imperfection should be celebrated. “[P]erfect potential” would be that which manifest springs from, the creative ideal which plays out in manifest; keep in mind that without manifestation, that which is all would be indistinguishable from that which is naught. Said “dialogue” would be that “perfect potential” localizing in manifest, playing out its role, then the role ending when the manifest likewise reaches its conclusion. Consider the salmon, which makes its way down a treacherous stream to the ocean, only to return in spawning season to mate and die. The joy in this impermanence is the potential it fosters, the inevitability of change, as the earth is passed from one generation to the next, as things break apart and force us to rebuild them stronger.

Verse Thirteen

While localized in manifest awareness plays its part in the grand story. This world is distinct, but not lesser.

The localization of manifest is covered in Resh.1.6, so let us start with the concept of “the grand story”. “From a universal perspective, the long term paths and workings of the stars are as compelling as individuals find human-centred stories” (Yodheh.4.1), or, simply put, the universe’s thirst for change is comparable to that which drives stories. “[T]he grand story” is, therefore, the myriad ways the universe unfolds. This does not mean our human stories are insignificant, but that the distinction between the life of a human and the life of a star is, metaphysically speaking, only a matter of scale.

“This world is distinct” from that of all that lies beyond the manifest, which will be explored in future chapters. It is “not lesser” for the reasons explored in yesterday’s verse: the imperfection of manifest allows pure creation to be dynamic, it gives distinctions which allow for stories and change to play out.

#philosophy #magick #occult #metaphysics #epistemology #individual #individualism #individuality #the self #the ego #thelema #bundle theory #the bardic circle #death #mortality

0 notes

greenishbucket · 6 years

Text

Via the Zombie Apocalypse

Ransom was the first to admit that he never would have pinned himself as the guy to survive the zombie apocalypse.

For @ransomweek day 1 (primum non nocere - “first, to do no harm”), 3 (crisis - a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger), and 4 (cacoethes - an irresistible urge to do something inadvisable).

Inspired by this tumblr post.

Ransom & Holster, 2.5k. Warnings for detailed descriptions of panic attacks, typical Bad Times of a zombie apocalypse, and a passing mention of the idea of overdosing. Also on ao3.

Ransom was the first to admit that he never would have pinned himself as the guy to survive the zombie apocalypse.

Like, sure, he used to play hockey before the world went to shit so he was pretty ripped and had some great stamina from running from the undead that wanted to eat his flesh. But he’s also had an anxiety disorder his whole life and he’d been in cities since birth, enjoyed the comforts available to him while those kinds of things were still around. Stuff like TV, salmon shorts, easily accessible amenities. Good music, the sound of his mom’s voice on the other end of the phone, food he didn’t have to hunt and/or extract from half-demolished supermarkets. Bagged milk. Small stuff.

And yet here he was. Surviving.

At least it’s not a movie, or you know we’d be the ones killed ten minutes in, his sister always said, back when it had first started, when they’d been sticking it out together. But then she’d got sick; not even zombie-sick, just regular sick, only there hadn’t been anyone left with resources or the knowhow, and if Ransom had just fucking gone to medical school like he’d said he would–

But there wasn’t anything to be done about it now. Now it was just Ransom, and some people he saw from a distance from time to time but didn’t risk getting too close to, and it sucked but that was how it was. He contained his panic attacks to a half hour each morning when it was light so at least he wouldn’t be a sitting duck to any zombie bros while his chest locked up and his head span and his stress responses went out of control.

And Ransom wasn’t all that sure what the point of it anymore was, exactly, but like fuck was that going to override his survival instinct.

And like fuck was this zombie apocalypse mess going to ruin every second of the last however long he had left. So he was making the most of the complete collapse of society, when he could – he watched movies for free in abandoned cinemas when he could get them working, he spent a nice couple of weeks by the coast looking out at the Atlantic Ocean and wondering if living on the sea might be better, he learned to drive manual and automatic.

What Ransom really wanted was to go and see Niagara Falls again. He hadn’t been since before he left for college, the last real family trip they ever got to go on, and he knew it was going to bring up all kinds of horrific repressed grief shit to see it again, but he still wanted it.

It was just an issue of logistics; he’d been travelling consistently further south to have a chance of surviving the winters, and he wasn’t sure about how to get the fuel to travel all the way back up north again, or how to travel safely on foot by himself. But Ransom had all the time in the world to figure that out, no deadlines coming up on the horizon other than the potential he’d turn into a zombie snack, which was a potential he mostly tried not to think about.

All in all, he’s pretty much settled into a routine of post-apocalyptic life. Ransom couldn’t help but create routine wherever he went.

And so it came as a bit of a shock, as stupid as Ransom felt to register it as a shock, when he was trying to scrounge up a couple of water purifying tablets to top up supplies and realised he wasn’t alone in the echoing, abandoned mall.

He could hear the heavy, soggy footsteps before he could hear the whistling breathing, laboured as decaying lungs tried their best. The rotting smell was permanent, didn’t matter if a zombie was right on top of you or a hundred miles out, lingering in the air so much Ransom barely registered it anymore. And maybe that had been his mistake, not that it mattered now.

Ransom had gone very still, frozen with a fear that left his mouth dry and his pulse thundering in his ears. He didn’t want to turn and see it; every time it was the same, the bone-deep instinct to not look, to go as still as possible and play dead. He felt like he was a kid again, curling up under the blanket and telling himself the monster under the bed couldn’t see him if he couldn’t see it, or a college freshman and hiding under his desk Googling how many anti-anxieties he could take before it was an OD.

It was with a sickening sense of dread that he realised he’d left his weapons across the way, beyond the now-dry fountain. It was a hot day, and the mall had a ceiling of glass that amplified the heat to unbearable, the AC had long rusted to uselessness. Ransom had put his shit down, figured it was best to conserve energy by not sweating himself into heat stroke while he looked around. God, I’m a fucking idiot.

But a zombie didn’t care if the dude it was eating was an idiot or not, and the zombie wasn’t moving all that slowly. Ransom breathed deep, sent up a prayer he wasn’t sure had any value, and turned.

Fuck, if zombies weren’t the ugliest thing he’d ever seen. Ransom knew some people had pegged him as a bit shallow back in the day, but this was deeper than that. There was something viscerally repulsive about zombies, the most basic parts of Ransom’s brain screaming at him that whatever was in front of him was wrongwrongwrong and he had to get away, now.

But everyone knew that you didn’t run away from a zombie. They’d only run after you, and a good seven times out of ten they could run faster, powered with whatever virus shit had got them that way unless they’d been zombie’d so long they were more rotten flesh than even a virus could hold together.

So it wasn’t just Ransom’s natural propensity for freezing when presented with fight or flight that kept him still. Plus, the zombie was closer than it had sounded and didn’t look as decayed as it could. The only way to escape would be to climb fast – except you’re in a fucking mall, dude, said a slightly hysterical voice in Ransom’s mind, are you going to climb the walls like Spiderman? – or to somehow distract the zombie enough to get time to run and grab whatever weapon he first laid hand on.

For a moment, Ransom and the zombie looked at each other across the space between them.

Ransom could feel his t-shirt sticking to him with double the amount of sweat than before, and he’d already been pretty sweaty. The zombie was a tall, hulking mass of raw flesh, still wearing the remains of the dirty clothes of whoever it’d been before the poor sucker got contaminated. Its hair was blond, and its eyes were unsettlingly cognisant for all they were definitely not human.

Ransom felt sick. He was cornered, and this zombie was going to eat bits of him and then he was going to be a zombie and eat bits of whoever else was left in the world, and he didn’t want to hurt people. He would’ve taken an oath, if he’d ever actually gone to medical school. He was tired, and hungry, and thirsty, and the adrenaline pumping through his system was making him light-headed and twitchy. Ransom didn’t want to die.

And so when the zombie lunged at him, all putrid breath and gaping mouth full of broken teeth ready to rip out Ransom’s throat, Ransom did the unthinkably stupid: he bit the zombie first.

It tasted really bad. Like, so, so bad. He bit hard enough to break the zombie’s decaying skin and whatever came out wasn’t blood and it filled Ransom’s mouth and he pulled back, gagging and spitting and trying really hard not to freak the fuck out because did this count as contamination? No, that wasn’t how it worked, but had he made the zombie really angry? Did zombies even feel emotions?

The zombie collapsed. Just, like, flat out collapsed. Straight down into a crumpled heap on the floor of the abandoned mall, the bite mark Ransom had left in its arm still oozing sluggishly.

Ransom stared down at it. His thoughts were going haywire, everything moving too fast to catch onto, his chest getting tight and his head spinning and– oh. This was a panic attack.

It felt strange to sink onto the floor, put his head between his knees and shut his eyes tight. There was a maybe-dead-for-real zombie lying beside him, and this wasn’t part of the schedule. Ransom had already had his panic attack of the day, a familiar process of a curled-up meltdown after he’d pieced together some kind of breakfast.

He didn’t know what to do with it now, and the anxiety built as he realised without the imposed time-limit this attack could go on forever, what if it never stopped? He couldn’t live like that. Ransom couldn’t do life if it had to be like this forever, if he couldn’t repress everything and reassure himself one day it would be a funny story to tell in a therapist’s office when everything was fixed again. It had been hard enough adjusting cold turkey once his anxiety meds had run out; Ransom couldn’t adjust to this kind of anxiety as his new baseline. He couldn’t.

“Hey, hey, hey, dude. Listen, dude. It’s all good.”

The shock of hearing another person’s voice pushed the attack to its winding down stages like the old trick of a cold shower. Ransom still couldn’t respond, but he listened as the voice chattered a grounding stream of nonsense around him.

“… And so then here I am, as a zombie, which majorly sucked but you fixed me and I’m actually kind of blurry on the details for what happened which is cool. I don’t think I’d want to remember all that, we’ve all got enough nightmares and trauma to deal with, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” said Ransom, because he couldn’t disagree. He opened his eyes, focused on the grimy floor for a moment. Dude was clearly out of his mind with that used-to-be-a-zombie thing, but it had been a long, long time since Ransom had spoken to anyone at all. It felt good, and bad, and a little overwhelming.

“Hey, you’re back,” said the voice, pleased, “I’d offer you water but I don’t even know where we are or what’s going on really, I’ll be honest with you.”

“The water hasn’t been cleaned, anyway, so–” Ransom started, and then he looked up and his voice died in his throat.

Where the zombie had been passed out, a dude was sitting. A dude that was talking to Ransom. He was as big as the zombie had been, and had the same blond hair, but his skin was smooth and whole, and his eyes were blue and human. He still had some massive fucking teeth, but they were all present an (a little unsettlingly) uniform. He was – someone smack Ransom for thinking it – kind of cute, for a definition of cute.

He also had a red ring of toothmarks on his arm, healed over like a few years old scar.

“Dude,” said Ransom. He didn’t know what to say other than that. His brain’s higher function section was entirely blank. This guy had been a zombie and now… he wasn’t anymore. Because Ransom had bitten him? The fuck.

“I know, right?” said the guy. “This is some pretty wild stuff. For sure thought when that zombie bit me there wasn’t any going back, but I guess sometimes you just have to fight fire with fire. Eye for an eye, bite for a bite.” The guy carried on rambling a little, in a way that made Ransom think he was trying to reassure himself with it. The dude did look a little twitchy around the eyes; Ransom gave him about fifteen minutes, max, until the guy was having his very own meltdown.

Ransom considered up and running. He hadn’t been around people in a long, long time and this dude had been a zombie a hot minute ago. Loneliness was better than getting attacked in his sleep, or, perhaps worse, being the one left behind again.

But then Ransom figured, well. Bite for a bite, support through a panic attack for support through a panic attack. He didn’t have to hang around longer than that if the guy did re-zombify, and if he turned out to be cool then Ransom would deal with any abandonment-grief if it came. The zombie apocalypse didn’t get to decide things for him.

“… and so I’m thinking, how about now I can actually appreciate shit and have sensation back in my limbs, I go to see something cool. Something that’s hopefully still around. Niagara Falls, maybe? Pretty hard for zombies to fuck that one up. I’ve only been once, but it was some pretty beautiful stuff and–”

“Bro, no way,” Ransom interrupted, else the guy anxiously talk himself horse and also because, “I’ve been thinking about going there myself.”

“No shit? You looking for an ex-zombie, newly found buddy to come with?”

The guy looked like he was trying not to look hopefully at Ransom and failing hard. Ransom couldn’t even imagine being a zombie and then coming back, let alone whatever horrible shit had probably happened to this dude before that. Like the guy had said: they all had enough nightmares and trauma to deal with. Maybe this was a sign it was time for Ransom to stop pretending to be dealing with it alone, to stop pretending that was a possibility for anyone.

“If you’re feeling up for it, man, that’d be awesome,” said Ransom, stomach flipping over at the excitement-anxiety-risk of it all. He hadn’t touched another human in years, but he held out a hand. “I’m Justin Oluransi, most people called be Ransom back in the day.” No one needed to know about Ranser; it sounded like rancid, Ransom wouldn’t be argued out of it.

The guy reached out to shake Ransom’s hand, warm and real and human. “Adam Birkholtz, the guys called me Holster.”

Ransom felt the last vestiges of worry about re-zombifying fade. There had been more unbelievable things since this zombie disaster started than the possibility that things were looking up for once, and he’d long learned to trust his gut instinct. Holster across from him didn’t send out the wrongwrongwrong signals now he wasn’t a rotting reanimated corpse; his hand felt good in Ransom’s and his smile as he introduced himself made something warm bloom in Ransom’s chest, a rightness that spread all the way down to his toes.

“Ransom and Holster,” he said, trying it out. “Off to Niagara Falls, via the zombie apocalypse. Sounds good to me.”

#ransom week #my writing #the usual grossness of zombies plus ransom's anxiety ramped up are the main warnings #check please fic

11 notes · View notes

thatgirlonstage · 6 years

Note

Could you tell me the thought process of like. when you decided to have the bonding moment be the only thing Lance remembers, both in terms of like, how did you decide "okay screw it I'm including it", and in terms of "ok for this to work I should write it like this or maybe like that"? I'm just really happy that you decided to make it work for the fic cuz it is GOLD

The decision was 100% just me going “oh this would be fucking hilarious.” I mean, I made this post when I thought it wouldn’t work, but that got a ton of notes and people saying “DO IT” so I sat down and tried to figure out if it was actually possible and... I realized yeah, it was.

This hasn’t been strictly stated in the fic yet - we’ll get there - but the thing that erased Lance and Chuck’s memories was not a general “x amount of time” amnesia; rather, it specifically targeted anything to do with aliens. I hope that was largely clear from what happened with Chuck, and his ex saying that he had apparently forgot everything about aliens. It ended up erasing entire months because they’ve been such prevalent parts of their lives - but that’s the reason some of Lance’s memories are able to come back piecemeal or as instincts. He can’t remember the actual trip to “Kent’s” shack because it was too tied up with rescuing Shiro and the crashing ship, but the route by itself hasn’t technically been erased from his head. Thus with the bonding moment, he can’t remember clearly what he was wearing or where he was, but Keith isn’t an alien (at least, not that Lance knows about lol) and so he didn’t forget him. So that’s why I’m “allowed” to have him remember it via the rules of amnesia that I established for myself.

Within that, then, it makes sense that that could be the moment that Lance flashes back to. It’s a traumatic experience, scrambling his head with amnesia could have flipped some repressed memories back into his conscious mind, and he’s just out of it enough in that moment that he wouldn’t be consciously registering all of the alien shit all around him - he’s tunnel visioning in on Keith helping him sit up and the fact that he’s kind of dying.

I then chose to link it to a scene I already knew I wanted: Keith confronting Blue about why she hasn’t gone after Lance, seen at the end of Chapter 10. I hope I left it suitably ambiguous whether Lance’s dream/remembering the bonding moment helped him reach out to Blue or whether that memory came to the forefront because Keith was trying to reach Lance through Blue. They weren’t originally supposed to literally see each other but it seemed an appropriate way to break the moment of Lance’s memories - and to set their connection as a baseline for the rest of the fic.

It... actually ended up working out pretty well, because before I wrote it I had an idea about Lance finding something in Kent’s shack that linked to Keith, because I did want him to know that Keith was involved somehow - but I was struggling because I thought the eventual reveal would be better if he found out in person who the shack really belonged to. By letting Lance remember the bonding moment and being just sure enough it was real to go to Hopkins with it, I could bring Keith into the story a little more thoroughly, and make the police realize that HE was missing too (this worked out with expanding Hopkins and Cho’s role in the story beyond my original plans).

I’m glad you like the scene, lol, obviously I can’t talk too much about how Lance and Keith are going to react to each other when they do finally reunite, but it’s not insignificant to give them a moment of actual connection, beyond just snooping in each other’s living spaces. Lance is... not in a great place on trusting people right now, and so giving him back one of his most vulnerable and trusting moments in the entire series (up until the point where I break from canon, at least) is gonna go a ways toward helping him heal and restore that trust.

#answers #voltron #klance #stop hurting the sad space boy #save the knife boy #memory fic #thank you for asking you know i love talking fic :D #also I'm really really sorry about the long wait for an update -_-#i'm just really struggling to keep my life on track #and I don't want to half ass this #I want to say that at the LATEST there will be an update before the end of june #but i also didn't get assigned a front of house shift next week so maybe next week #maybe #i can hope #fluffyblue-artnwriting

3 notes · View notes

tb5-heavenward · 7 years

Text

flight hours

continuing from part 4, everything is fine and dandy. in better news, i’ve finally written up to the 53 words that I had in mind when I started this thing. they’ll be the start of chapter 6.

Shields are right at thirty-percent, and he can take maybe three or four more hits before electrical interference starts to damage flight-critical systems—but Scott isn’t about to mention this to his brother, in case it prompts John to do something incredibly stupid. Again.

In hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have collared John into this job. He probably should’ve let John fly back to Tracy Island. He’d feel much, much better about this whole situation if John were managing it from afar instead of right in the middle of it, with his exosuit and his misplaced confidence and his highly, highly illegal weaponized EMF generator. Beyond that, if John weren’t here, Scott could just push his engines to full throttle, leave the cluster of drones behind, and hightail it back to the island. If he leaves now, he risks the swarm scanning the skies and retargeting his brother, who won’t be able to handle a dozen drones actively on the attack, no matter what he thinks. It’s taking all of Scott’s attention to keep himself flying, and he doesn’t know how the hell they’re going to get out of this mess.

In between everything else he’s got to worry about, Scott manages to find a few spare moments to be furious about the fact that they’re in this mess in the first place.

There’s probably a lesson they should’ve learned by now about walking (flying/diving) into traps. They should all probably be taking steps to be more careful, to look at situations like this with a baseline of suspicion, prudence. It’s terrifying and unfair to think that there’s someone in the world who would use their profession against them; would turn their desire to save lives into a way to lure them into harm. In retrospect, so many aspects of the whole scenario seem like red flags, and they’re exactly the sort of red flags that John usually looks out for.

But this is hardly the time for hindsight. Scott just has to hope that his brother is as good at thinking on the fly as he is at thinking on his feet. He’s given John a solid half a minute to think, and he’s about to bark over the open channel for his brother to give him some options, when he hears a faint huff of breath, a frustrated sigh. And then John says something Scott doesn’t want to hear.

“…Scott, I really don’t see a way out of this that doesn’t require disabling that swarm. You’re gonna need to bring them to me, or break off and let them find me themselves.”

That’s not happening. Another shot lands against his hull, the dampening shield flickers and his display drops it to twenty-six percent. “Negative. You shouldn’t even be here—”

“You’d be dead if I wasn’t. There weren’t supposed to be two of us. We weren’t supposed to be armed. Clearly you were expected to get aboard that cargo jet and get caught in the cockpit while it dive bombed, and then without you actively flying it, Thunderbird One was supposed to go down. It would’ve gone down. We can get out of this, but you have to work with me. I can do this.”

There’s irony in the fact that Scott had thought a rescue would be a good way to stop having a stupid argument with his brother. They’re still arguing about whether John’s a good enough pilot, only now the stakes have changed. Now the stakes may actually be life and death. And Scott shakes his head, though John can’t see him. “Your shielding—”

“Will be in a better state than yours, in a minute here.”

“Only takes one to kill you.”

“There are twelve trying to kill you.”

“I can—”

“You can’t handle this alone!” John’s voice cuts him off sharply, gains an edge of sternness it hasn’t had before now, the same that Scott’s been trying to use to bring his brother up short. Desperation bleeds over into the warning, as he continues, “This was a trap, meant to kill you and take down TB1. If you go down, they’ll head for me anyway. You have to let me help, or—”

Scott doesn’t hear the rest of it, or maybe the blinding flash of plasmic blue in the skies overhead cuts John off. A particularly well timed strike brings twenty-six percent down to a bare twenty. Alarms start to blare, bathing the interior of Scott’s cockpit in bloody red emergency lighting.

And it just reinforces the fact that John’s right.

Scott exhales, hard, and his hands tighten slightly on the controls. He accelerates, trailing the swarm along behind him, as he starts to prepare to bring his ship back around, towards his brother. The sweat on his palms is wicked away immediately by the fabric of his gloves, but the clammy, anxious feeling remains. “…Okay, John. Coming to you. Just tell me what you need me to do.”

Basically, John needs his brother to thread a needle with his Thunderbird at about three hundred miles an hour.

“I need you to make a pass at your lowest possible speed, while I channel an EM field for you to fly through.”

It’s a little known fact about Thunderbird One—not that there are any widely known facts about Thunderbird One—that it’s actually harder on its engines to go slow than it is to go fast. Of course, this references a scale at which “slow” is anything under Mach 1, and “fast” is sustained flight at Mach 20, fast enough to circumnavigate the globe in two hours flat. TB1 is, after all, designed to push that upper limit, not to linger at the lower border of what’s achievable by commercial aircraft. If Scott goes too slow, his engines risk stalling. If Scott wants to leave TB1 hovering stationary in midair, he has to turn his engines off entirely, and rely on a suite of thrusters designed to keep the ship in the air.

There’s an inverse relationship between the size of the field that John’s EMF device can generate, versus its duration. It leaves them with two options. “I can give you a hundred meter field for three seconds, or a thirty meter field for ten. You’ll burn the last of your shielding on the way through, but if they stay in formation on your tail, it’ll take the swarm out with it.”

There’s math to be done here, but not the sort of math that’s done with numbers. It’s the sort of math that’s done by feel, pure instinct. Scott doesn’t need to do the math to know how close he can safely fly his ship, and he makes that call almost immediately, “Gotta be a hundred. I’m not flying within fifteen meters of you, the turbulence will be more than you can handle”

John’s less worried about that than he is about the timing. Three seconds isn’t much time. “It’s not much of a window.”

“Not your problem. You just open it when I tell you to. I’m coming back around, get ready.”

“FAB.”

So that’s that, decided. They’re doing it, and now John needs to get himself in position. He’s just thankful that Scott trusts him enough to help.

Whether he realizes it or not, it’s lucky he’s had eight hours of practice. John hasn’t had time since they first deployed from island airspace to switch out of thinking like he’s flying, the muscle memory of the suit’s controls remains fresh. He’s thinking too hard and concentrating too closely on what needs to happen next to second-guess himself, as far as the positioning of his ailerons or whatever else. In the briefest possible moment of distraction, John remembers the cargo plane and glances earthward towards where he remembers seeing it last. It’s still falling, trailing a corkscrew spiral of smoke downward towards the tops of the clouds below. It’s only been a few minutes since this whole ordeal started. Less than a quarter of an hour ago, Scott was nagging him to get back in the air and back to training. Kayo’s probably about seven minutes distant, but up here that may as well be an eternity. If John’s learned anything today (and if he’s honest, he’s learned plenty), it’s that time passes strangely in the sky.

And that the world is surreal, hovering at seventy thousand feet.

They’re high enough that the curve of the Earth is apparent, and far below are the fleecy, undulating clouds of a mackerel sky, marred only by the helix of smoke from the back of the cargo jet. At this height, the divisions of the atmosphere are visible, the aura of sunlight throught the stratosphere like a halo around the Earth, stretching up into the darkness of the mesosphere, then the thermosphere beyond. It’s strange and otherworldly, even by John’s standards, and for living his life well outside the Earth’s atmosphere, there’s something about the presence of gravity that changes absolutely everything.

It seems obvious, in hindsight. He probably owes Scott an apology.

Later, though.

Static hisses in his ear, and then Scott’s voice, firm and decisive, “Coming around for final approach now. Fire on my mark.”

“FAB.”

It’s a simple plan, which are the best kind, in John’s experience. He dials in the appropriate calibration for the EMF generator, and the pad of his thumb ghosts the trigger, waiting.

He doesn’t have to wait long.

“Mark.”

John immediately squeezes the trigger for the EMF generator, and the field radiates out from the source. He feels the peculiar, untranslatable sensation of his exosuit’s extant shields, as they cancel it out. It’s going to work, there’s no reason it wouldn’t. There’s nothing in the skies against which he can gauge relative speed or distance, and time seems to slow as he watches TB1 on approach. Even at his lowest speed, Scott’s moving fast enough that John feels him pass overhead rather than sees him, the disturbance of his passage enough to buffet him downward through the air, but not before he compensates with his thrusters, and stays level.

The swarm of drones has stayed tight to Scott’s tail, exactly according to plan, and even as the three seconds pass and the EMF field peters out, John can see they’re already falling, tumbling uselessly out of the sky around him; eight, nine, ten, eleven—the sudden spark of triumph ignites another giddy rush of adrenaline, and it’s impossible to suppress a slightly hysterical laugh over the comm channel, at the closeness of the call, even as he turns in midair, watching his brother coming back around.

It’s come off almost without a hitch.

But the hitch in question is one single drone, slightly different to the others, not a part of the AI hivemind. Configured for direct, remote control, and piloted by someone clever enough to have seen the shape of a trap, and to have known how to turn it back to his own advantage.

When the last mech comes careening out of the sky, John doesn’t know what’s hit him. But it tears an entire wing off his suit, and discharges the last of its energy into a bright, plasma blue bolt.

And like Scott said, it only takes one.

don’t worry, it continues >>

#tag fanfic #scott tracy #john tracy #flight hours #some kind of creative doubt

32 notes · View notes

elizabethrobertajones · 7 years

Note

So, I have this question and I thought I'd send it here :) What are your thoughts on Sam x fashion aside from the crack? Do you have early Sam x fashion meta? I'm feeling it's reflective of his making his own choices as he had wacky weird fashion sense in earlier seasons then during the time he follows Dean cos guilt copies Dean's lumberjack style until season 12 when he gets some weird clothes again (orange jacket cough). I kinda hope we see him in wacky fashion now he's more independent again?

hahahaha

I feel kind of like the asshole cat who’s always knocking things over until someone comes to give me attention

But no, yeah. Sam’s clothes are weird, man. Weird. *shuffles the purple dog shirt to the bottom of my drawer of t-shirts*

In season 1 his quintessential look to me is the brown hoodie and backpack, and sometimes the leather laptop satchel he has. He could be wandering on a college campus, and that’s intentional, because, well, that was what he had been doing. He has t-shirts with things on them, favouring purple and dark red for symbolic reasons but he does have a couple of different designs of each if you squint.

I always like the immediately established pattern that Sam and Dean essentially wear the same clothes with minor differences, but that Sam ALWAYS buttons up his shirt, and Dean ALWAYS leaves his loose. It’s the no. 1 thing that bugs me about fan art of the two of them, that I can tell casual “Lol just dipping into this fandom” art immediately because they’ll depict Dean with a buttoned up shirt or Sam with his open and loose. Sam wears his open in like… 4x07 when he was half-undressed, and Dean wears a button up shirt in 6x01 and 9x13 in a job interview. I may be missing some others but that’s like… in all my years of caring about this and rewatching the show with a meta mind, and keeping half an eye on their clothes in case of Symbolism, I don’t see much variation. (Also: Sam always wears v-necks once the patterns get entrenched, and Dean always wears round necks.)

Of course, the easiest explanation is Sam keeps his shirt buttoned because Secrets and Deep Hidden Layers, while Dean wears his heart on his sleeve slightly more literally, in that his shirt is flapping open exposing the t-shirt beneath, and of course he has the amulet to accent that look for the first 3rd of the show, hanging over his heart. (Dean also is the only one of them who wears henleys, ever. Sam just wears a t-shirt exposed when he’s being vulnerable, while Dean has a little more variation.)

Anyways. Sam’s look is less practical than Dean’s - more white shirts, more dressy shirts to start with. The godawful white one with the red patterning underneath. Pin-stripes. He has patterns and Dean has block colours. Even as the show goes on, Sam collects shirts with stripes and mixes them in with wearing plaid, all in the same manner. I think that is basically again a little link back to the early costuming.

One of the funniest moments of the show to me at the time when it was about all the canon we had, was in 6x18 when Sam’s only concession to time travelling is to change his shirt, and he pulls it off in comparison to Dean’s wildly over-enthusiastic time travelling, and issues with it and eventual re-costuming, again into a whole ensemble. I think that particularly tells us about Sam that he doesn’t really sweat the details like Dean does because his surface layer is such a strong, placid force that people don’t question it. In 8x11 Dean dresses up and Sam stays in his fed suit for most of the episode, and it doesn’t cause him problems in anywhere near the same way. In both episodes there’s a lot more to say about Dean and his need to fit in/exuberance to dress up and be someone else, but I do love the light it shines on contrast to Sam, that somehow his lack of caring about his clothes just beams out and makes everyone else not really care that much either.

But yeah, Sam’s shirts get more interchangeable with Dean as time goes on - he starts wearing some of the same colours, and they have shirts I am sure that in a non-TV world where the costume department takes care of this for them they’d always be mixing them up and accidentally wearing each other’s clothes. Or at least putting them on and then Sam stares in disbelief at how his arm grew another 2 inches overnight and - wait a minute this is one of Dean’s shirts.

(Dean also got a shirt in season 12 with the same pocket buttons as Sam’s rusty bacon shirt, but I think it was a block colour shirt. Of course.)

Although Sam would never, ever wear the denim shirts Dean does. It’s that sneaky little class divide between them again. Not a major thing, but Sam’s striped shirts vs Dean’s denim and henleys does tell the tale, that no matter how much closer their style seems to get, Sam’s always got that different backstory to his fashion.

(In 3x12 the close up of their feet always makes me notice Dean’s jeans are all fraying and old and Sam’s look new. I think for one thing Sam had to start mostly from scratch after season 1 because he took just a weekend of clothes with him to Jericho. But also just that maybe he has slightly more pride in his clothes while Dean will wear out whatever he can wear out (that doesn’t get too torn or weirdly stained.) I like in 3x11 you get the contrast to their ways of living and hunting with Dean clearly the controlling factor in the boot of the impala being all messy and esoterically organised and Sam locking it down in moulded foam to hold everything… Dean having scruffy trouser legs, dream catchers in the boot of the car, all that jewellery, on the other hand, makes me feel like he’s got much more of an instinctive, stylistic connection to the job as a *lifestyle* rather than a *job*, which was an old theme…

Oh gosh what else :P Well Sam’s new jackets… Yes okay I do actually love he’s getting new jackets which stand out so much as actually being items of clothing instead of boring camouflage/background radiation to being a hunter. You got me >.> I still think Sam’s got a baseline dodgy approach to clothes and style but it’s sort of quirky. It’s VERY Sam to get a red shirt under an orange jacket or to wear a jacket with a plaid lining over a plaid shirt. I mean… I would dress just as badly because it’s still practical over style in many ways.

I also wonder about his shoes because Dean’s boots or at least combat boots in general would be more practical in their line of work and they’re always being accused of dressing in army surplus, but Sam started off wearing trainers and I swear he never wore them on screen but I just headcanon him in converse all stars anywhere in like season 1 and 2 because it goes with the whole student/overgrown child thing the hoodie and backpack did… But anyway his shoes are more grown up styles now but he still doesn’t exactly dress for the JOB, while Dean’s always wearing good boots. I always remember an ex of mine wore similar shoes to Sam and I, being me, had a reputation for being pretty wonky and useless, and we were walking and it began raining, and we were in this plaza with slippery tiles, and my ex was like, “DON’T RUN, YOU’LL DIE” but I was wearing boots with a tread? And I legged it. And he was slippy sliding after me, barely able to function in the rain on a smooth surface. And I was watching from the shelter.

(PS: the moral of this meta is don’t date me unless you understand we are 2 completely autonomous humans because I am awful at being a team player or at willingly getting soaked because you wore the wrong shoes :P)

#Asks #the sam shoe saga #TRUNK #TRUNK OF THE CAR #SHIT #I try so hard to be American for this stupid fandom

134 notes · View notes

in-paradox-space · 4 years

Text

you’re right

we are just choosing to be depressed.

you call it a cold room but I find warmth in the dark blanket of gloom.s

Why is it? We choose the feeling of sorrow over joy.

I suppose if we hold onto it long enough then we can pretend we aren’t the reason.

We can pretend there’s a we.

Who is he?

Do I need to keep toying with this idea that I am multiple.

Sure, we’re the same person, yes, we are. I need you, you need me and I need I

b u t

We wouldn’t have different desires if we got along

although

we do love each other

what was the moment

was it an indentation

a crack

a split?

when did I part ways

I remember that younger age

staring into the mirror

Yes. I love myself.

Like a magnet attracted to itself... repulsing any other who came near.

I remember

4 years old

my dad loved to show me action movies

I don’t care much for fighting now, even then I didn’t, I liked the movies though.

hehe

I remember jumping for joy at the sight of him beating my mother

It used to annoy me so much how my sisters would freak out and yelp

I noticed they’d just make it worse. It completely bewildered me, how this would happen so frequently, enough to make it abundantly clear, how every time they reacted it got worse.

If it bothered them so much then why react? Just accept it.

I accepted it... because I embraced it. I loved the violence... when it was associated with my father.

Like I said, not really much of a fighter myself. The movie scenes were always cool though. Especially enjoyed fighting with my dad, although I don’t even remember the moves he taught me I felt like he knew such huge secrets. Such unexpectable tactics, using an opponents body against them. He was the first one I learned that from, I loved it, he knew exactly what someones natural instinct was to defend themselves, so forward-thinking to use that as a means of offense.

my sisters thought I didn’t understand. I did understand.

I understood they couldn’t control their emotions.

I understood they didn’t really love their mother. If they did then they would’ve understood. They would’ve understood their role.

I understood, my mother provoked him each time.

I was 4. Knowledge is learned, but at that age, you just know things, your mind is fresh. You don’t need knowledge, before any time has passed you’ve retained enough information to already have learned.

It became clear step by step. She knew him well enough, they’d been together 2 decades or so. She understood what made him tick. I was only 4 right... I didn’t understand anything did I? Well, I understood what I saw.

She knew what made him angry. The arguments would reach a logical conclusion. They’d both reach an equal exchange. After much aggrieviation he would accept he did wrong. She wouldn’t, but he was willing to move on if she would just stop shouting at him, he understood she didn’t want to acknowledge anything she did as unjustified.

Then he’d get that look.

She must know him well enough. I mean, there’s two sides to it. If she cared about herself, she would know just to leave it be at that moment. Provoking him more would have the same result as it always had. Every other day, I remember about 3.5 years of it but who knows maybe it was before then too.

That’s enough time to recognise every little detail intuitively isn’t it?

I recognised those moments of remorse.

He’d beg her just to help him

just to cooperate.

Then. If she cared about him. If she cared about him she would recognise that any emotion is too much when someone gets to their limit. He doesn’t act like that normally. There’s a reason for it.

She just didn’t stop.

She just

didn’t stop.

The problem is

although, i cant say its a problem because I have to be grateful with my life for it

is that she started in the first place.

too stubborn to stop. much like me right now.

the truth is

I really enjoyed it back then, watching them fight.

I would love to get good looks at it

sometimes I’d shout encouragement

go on dad, punch her, yeah!

It was so exciting.

Even now, I do find some glee in the thought.

Of course, I don’t want it now, but I remember the times clearly enough.

tis a shame

they’d always ruin the moment by screaming and crying. it would annoy me so much. I’d tell them shut up.

damn

that must’ve really screwed em up

i can imagine what it felt like for someone who actually had typical baseline emotional associations for their family members

they was older than me. I imagine they watched their loving father grow more and more stressed, antagonized and relentless.

it was like, only until we got older, I was the only one who saw the horrible sides of my mother. The neglect. Neglect with the voice of a forced smile. Forced as if someone was literally holding a gun to her. Does it hurt that much? You don’t need to smile and pretend to care mum. I wouldn’t have expected you to care every time. disinterest was completely fine. shame you bottled it all up, concealed it, so poorly. that was so much worse than disinterest.

I got disinterested too you know.

Shame you had to bottle it into neglect.

I know it was hard though. I know I was tough.

Truth is.

I’d say, I’d put down cigarettes for you.

but would I? I never really did pause my games for you.

I guess we was both responsible for the cloud of smoke which stopped us sharing our air.

your mother was right

I’m sorry to bring her into such a note.

You should have disciplined me.

Funny, how I feel I’m able to blame you for the fact I’m even writing something like this.

Funny.

Now I look back.

If only you disciplined me

yeah we’ll pin it all on that

I bet if you just didn’t smoke... I can’t even imagine it.

starting at age 9

you must’ve had a real tough time back then

honestly

I would love to hear in depth what you went through

im 21

all I know is some sentences from your entire youth

childhood to young adulthood

I would love to know

every, single, minute nuance and indiscrepency of that time when you was 8

even more delightsome

every memory precursing it from 7 and even 6.

I remember the story of the little chicken you bought

a small price

you had to take it back though. your mum wouldn’t let you keep a little chicken in your room.

well.

maybe. I know its complicated

but it would have been nice if you all understood back then

that you should have allowed me to be excited and joyful, of my father beating my mother, of my mothers verbal spite returning to her in physical form.

you didnt need to shield me from the realities. I already saw every detail enough to remember it before I was 4.

No, that didn’t traumatize me.

I think, I’d be a lot (less) different if it did.

you didn’t need to shield me.

In my flowery, blossomic fantasy.

Aysh, my dear sister, you didn’t need to scream and cry.

You could’ve smiled warmly at the fact your darling brother found even this delightsome.

There’s reason to be joyful in any situation.

My older ones.

All you did was get in the way. There was no way you could stop me seeing it. Do you think, in the slower perception of time I had in my young brain, that I didn’t absorb every single speckle of detail in the scenario with the long 5 minutes I had to watch it unfold

the 5 minutes you was completely oblivious and dumbfounded

brushing me off to another side of the room wouldn’t stop me from seeing anything

besides i could hear it.

why did you even make yourselves watch it if you didn’t like it.

you could’ve stopped it too.

“mum, you’re making him angry. I know you’re upset but just be patient with him. If you give him some space to breathe he’ll show you he already loves you.”

you just had to be patient with him

I guess when you’re hooked on nicotine since age 9, your 4 year old son has taken all your patience for himself.

Around age 5.

Although, it honestly dampened my soul to do so.

I copied and imitated my sisters.

It would make them freak out so much more when I screamed in excitement.

Then it would ruin the experience.

It would annoy me so much. I still feel remnants of the annoyance now. That irritating sound of my sister ugly crying and wailing. the low, long sob. Just pull yourself together. Like, why cry so soon? Just stop. Wow. Why do you even care?

Look. I care about you... without the thought of you reacting so maternally.

but come on

why ugly cry so desparingly? Just like. why cry so much each time? It’s happened for years hasn’t it? Why aren’t you numb to it yet? It got boring. It honestly got boring.

oh same old reaction is it dad? Don’t you get tired of the same old fights and arguments mum? You both know exactly what you’ll say and act... might as well just not acknowledge each other.

You know

the most ridiculous part of it

she would always hit him first

over and over and over again

like she was literally asking for it

communicating with her hands

go on hit me back hit me hahahaha youre not allowed are you hahahaha you just have to hold onto those tears, mind if i abuse you some more, hit me back, hit me back, hahaha, what are you going to cry in front of your children? no? gonna get angry instead oh boohoo, over and over.

following him as he walked away

literally

what on earth do you expect?

what really annoyed me

was the fact she’d always get so upset when he finally fought back

and he wouldnt even hit her straight away

he’d do everything he could, knock over furnitures, shout, tell her, even plead with her, just stop, leave me alone, i dont want to argue tonight.

then she’d act like it wasnt her fault

like somehow, she didnt cause it all to happen.

she would tell us all the different ways in which he’s evil.

but she underestimated me because I’m young, i supposedly dont know anything and will believe what I hear

but i saw about 5 events a second, I’d have minutes at a time to watch before anyone else even clocked on. I’d say these things like 20 minutes to maybe 45 but its hard to tell because time was slower back then. honestly felt like 2 hours or so. bored out of my mind, not allowed to watch tv because my sisters were freaking out too much

5 minutes every other day. it becomes very easy to spot the recurring events. then notice in which order they happen. which responses only come when a certain previous event has happened. I knew, i could actually measure, by looking at him, how close to the limit he was, when he reached the limit and how further over the limit he’d need to get for it to physically manifest beyond my awareness and into acts of frustration.

either telling me no you cant watch tv right now or no look away

are you stupid

hahaha

shouldve told me to stay in my room and close my ears instead

maybe that way i wouldve been properly traumatized and scared

then maybe i wouldnt be such a freak now

because id have regular memories to talk through with CBT

but i wouldnt be scared of my father

you just took your mothers information at face value.

but i saw everything that happened.

and most of all

i didnt just hear his words. i heard HIM

i understood he had a short fuse, he got angry, sometimes he’d even smack us

but he never hurt us if we didnt do something wrong

he wouldve never laid hand on us without good reason

and yes he’d make sure it hurt but it was only enough to remember what we did and think about it.

it baffles me

how did they think he would ever hurt them

even when we made him angry

he wouldn’t do that.

he even tried his hardest, not to hurt the mother of his children

but she literally begged him to attack

legally

you cant beg, ask or plead with somebody to do something without using words

but humans dont exist within the confines of the law

They do exist within the law of the Lord.

what im saying is, although in a court of law its a discrepency

you can communicate with your body

with your energy for use of another word

with actions

how absolutely numb do you have to be to not understand, those actions make him attack you

its not even about standing up for youself

you wouldnt have to stand up for yourself if you didndt provoke him

if youd just love him and forgive him, then we’d all stand for each other

no standing alone for yourself

and only yourself, but in the long run, for nobody.

so to summarise

what im getting at is

when i was 5. i stopped expressing my excitement.

and i couldve comfortably stayed there.

i couldve just watched.

but i skipped a few steps. i decided to mimic and imitate my sisters

why? because children are impressionable? i dont know. i just did it and mimiced. it. i dont know if its because i wanted thme to think i was like them.

maybe. i was always isolated in how completely different i was from everyone else. maybe even my sister was a consolation at that point, to share a likeness to.

so for a while I would scream, and cry. i was more elastic then, it was easy to produce tears. or would i even cry? id just scream like they did. annoyingly hold onto my sisters and pretend to be scared like they would with each other

yay. were now in this together.

were doing the samre things.

ugh

that really ruined it.

they believed it. I wish they’d know me enough to know that wasnt genuine.

so i stopped

i stopped pretending

but by then i didnt enjoy it

i just found it really annoying that my mum always complained

she would cry

act trapped

all this all that

she didnt love him

and we couldnt care any less

we understood the problem would be solved if she would jsut kick him out, its not like hes holding the family together or anything

but every day no mater how much she’d annoyingly yell and screech shes gonna leave him and kick him out

she would just take him back in

for like a whole year after that

until i turned 7

it went on and on and on. the same old monotonous reactions. how can the exact same thing, being repeated over and over, incite the same emotional response each time

how on earth is it possible for you not to just lose interest by then to the point you dont even care enough to get angry

i knew i was bored of it

i just wanted to live my days

but my sisters, who, as far as i knew, had had AT LEAST 3 years to get used to this, always always had the same shocked reactions

wheres the shock? its just dinnertime.

its literally

just 7pm.

Thankfully, we had time to watch the simpsons.

it is just 7pm

this is what happens when dad gets home

why are you shocked?

is it a surprise that he didnt give her a rose and lovingly eat dinner

its not a surprise to me

your idiot little brother who didnt know anything and loves to eat up little white lies like the blind deaf imbecile he is.

why lie? like why?

youre so stupid. you always were. you always underestimated me. it was so horrible of you. to act like just because im 3 and 5 years younger than you that i know less than you, that its my job to pretend to believe your lies.

why do you think my lack of knowledge is an invitation for you to hide the truth from me

if im in this world, the same world as you, why tell me im in a slightly different world which looks feels and sounds just like the one we share.

why did you underestimate me? because of my age.

theres a difference between elasticity and plasticity.

i dont say youre stupid because youre old

why do you assume im clueless because im young

youve had your clues

why dont you humble yourself and ask me for the NEW CLUES

do you think thats it? because you noticed patterns in your upbringing that the netire world will never change? is that what you thought?

if we both respected each other. if we both understood we could teach each other

then at the least

it wouldnt annoy me so much that you would lie to me

maybe it wouldnt annoy me so much that when you tried to teach me division

you made me follow you into the bathroom, so you could hold my homework whie sitting on the toilet, just to make me watch you draw on the back of my homework sheet without even asking permission

why was that? you would always use your height and stature to avoid me coming near your room

but whenever i had something you liked, you’d take it and destroy it, share it with your friends to scribble on and cover it in glitter

there was 3 of you

you didnt need my things.

you didnt even respect what I had

so you couldnt have wanted or cared about ti that badly

if you love something you destroy it? is that what it is

so, didnt really summarise.

i think thats when my mind split apart into more than one

more than one dude

but shared

there at the same time

using different connections to understand different things then trying to combine the thought

but not really settling on one thing.

yeah

it was when

i had to pretend to be normal. when i got sick of that feeling, of them wondering why im so different, in enjoying watching my father fight my mother.

i had to pretend it upset me.

then, there was two(+?)

and the veil I hid behind

but i was flexible back then

it wasnt just faking expression, I was like method acting

and honestly it really ruined the buzz

i did a lot of pretending after that

when my father left

id just repeat stuff i heard other kids say

i thought it was so dumb. stuff i had no interest in. but i just knew, at those times in introductions and conversations and in response to certain events, the kids who had friends would react like that ... so so so stupidly. they was so dumb. you’re kids. you have such a clear mind HOW CAN YOU BE SO DUMB

maybe thats what comes with being able to trust your parents ha ha ha

and yeah

in some ways, that was worse than being alone

its like i was living

but i was already dead

please forget how many other people have already said those words and read it again like its the first time, so you can truly understand

its like i was living, yes.

but inside, the real me. I wasnt allowed to live, because as long as I lived, I would be treated like I shouldnt be. Like people dont want to breathe the air around me.

They gave me the look, the one which resembled how that part of me, behind the door, in the darkness of the light which shines through it to the back of my mind, felt, when they failed to remember the basic things which they had already been taught.

it was upsetting.

its like i was living.

but i wasnt allowed to.

so the real me had to die

just so i could pretend to be someone im not.

it went on into my teens.

id cut myself

not because i had any interest in t, i just saw how easy it wa to join the emo kids.

say you have depression, cut yourself, respect people with mental health issues, pretend to love Kellin Quinn, be bisexual and whatnot.

youre one of them

you dont even have to try when it comes to comforting them

use the same buzzwords “ stay strong “ “your skin isnt paper” “youre beautiful” if course that doesnt work now

but age 13-15. thats the way every girl i spoke to online claled me their best friend. thank you so much for always being there every night i need you

and honestly

i do feel baf for acting like they dont deserve to be honoured in speech of them/

i really really am grateful, they allowed me to feel joy, they allowed me to know what its like to have friends, i shared some resemblance to them.

im really grateful, they was there to talk to each night. even if it meant i had to convince myself i loved cats.

maybe they understand now

psychoses dont make somebody evil

neuroses shouldnt be the attractive mental health conditions which get all the sympathy

even aggressive people need empathy

they feel it too.

by the way

obviously

this was trying to paint a picture of how it all started

at least the earliest memories i stil have anyway

i dont still rejoice in the thought of my family being torn apart

and i wouldnt call my sister stupid for being upset.

im glad we’re there for each other now

i wouldnt have it any pther way

and i wish them the best

and im really really really proud of everything my sisters have achieved and even moreso all of the things they continue to do. some of them even inspire me.

#personal #long text post #family #repressed emotions

0 notes

notesfromthepen · 5 years

Text

Gun Control and Prison Razors

(This was originally written after the Las Vegas massacre in 2018. I’m reposting since we’ve yet to address the serious issue of gun control in our country.)

Thank you so much for your time and attention. As an inmate, and as much as the state tries to suspend our involvement in society we must find avenues such as these to participate. Thank you so much for your time and attention.

Gun Control and Prison Razors

Once again we find ourselves in the aftermath of another mass shooting. Territory that has become all too familiar in recent years. As these incidents grow, in frequency and scope, we still haven't had meaningful discussion of possible solutions. Well, none that include any mention of the one common factor: Guns.

Just yesterday 17 people slaughtered, and many more injured, when a young man opens fire and begins his killing spree as they were attending school. 58 innocent people murdered and hundreds injured in Las Vegas massacre. The worst in our countries history..well, up to this point. As difficult as it is to stomach, without real change, these will continue to happen. For our elected officials, who are charged with the safety, security, and functioning of our society on behalf of its citizens, can't even have a genuine conversation free from ego and political pandering. The evasive response that "now isn't the time for this discussion" must be called what it is: cowardice and self serving avoidance. Plenty of 'talking' takes place but zero listening. And without both, a discussion is impossible. If the time isn't now then when?

Unfortunately any subject, even remotely, linked to guns in this country is treated with an auditory shut down. Fingers instinctively go in ears and we can't even have a conversation about what has, so clearly, become a problem unique to our society. And so, as ridiculous as it sounds, in an attempt to prevent the plugging of ears, I have to make a disclaimer. So here it is: a sad but necessary disclaimer renouncing any political allegiance or tribalism:

Fuck Democrats and fuck Republicans. Fuck Independents and fuck Socialists. Fuck partisanship and fuck bipartisanship. Fuck any label except citizenship. And fuck anyone who adopts an immovable set of beliefs. Beliefs created by others and adopted as their own to shelter them from any independent and critical thought.

As I write this I am a member of no particular political party. As such, I am free from biased thinking, based on party alliance and tribalism. Free to view individual issues with some reasonable objectivity and pragmatism. So often, our blind allegiance to a particular set of political views becomes stifling to any attempt at addressing the problems we face. One of our responsibilities as citizens of this county, I'd argue one of the most important of responsibilities, is to make honest, well informed, and logical decisions with at least an attempt at some objectivity, about the issues that face us. Or at the very least to take part in some open-minded discussion. A responsibility that the most self proclaimed of 'patriotic' Americans consistently shirk.

I have no vested interest on either side of the gun debate other than the desire for the health and success of our society and the citizens it is designed to protect.

I'm familiar with the arguments on both sides of the debate. We all are, but at some point these arguments aren't even arguments anymore. Arguments would at least be some form of dialogue between disagreeing parties. What we have, in this country, has devolved into nothing more than self affirming talking points yelled at the already converted in an attempt to rile a base and cover their ears. And at some point, if we intend to make any progress, we have to set aside all the convoluted and emotional propaganda that distracts us from actually addressing an issue in a meaningful way.

Just for a moment can we just be people in a society. People who live together and so should be able to have real discussions about the dire problems that face us all. People able to find pragmatic solutions to stop immediate and present dangers?

There, if your fingers are not yet in your ears, we can now talk about the issue of mass shootings.

The whole issue, at its core, seems to boil down to two related questions:

1: Are constitutional rights beyond reproach, even when they are detrimental to the health and safety of the society they are designed to protect?

2: As citizens of this country are we absolved from making sacrifices for the good of the whole of society?

I think both design as well as history dictate that the answer to both questions is "no".

First: Of course constitutional rights are not beyond reproach. Amendments have been and will continue to be made to the constitution to shape and mold it according to the evolving needs of society.

And second: In no way are we absolved from making sacrifices. We make sacrifices of 'freedom' everyday for the sake of the safety and good of society as a whole. Traffic laws, for instance. Are there people who can drive safely at 100mph? Of course there are, but a speed limit is a logical sacrifice necessary for relatively safe road ways.

The grey area of the debate is where to draw the line in each question. I get that. Is it safety at the cost of freedom or freedom at the cost of safety? The debate of the exact location of where that line is to be drawn can and should be hashed out with vigorous debate. I'm just suggesting that when it comes to the more dire issues, issues that need more immediate attention, that we can take some action towards a remedy in a more timely manner. I'd hope that when it comes to the issue of 'gun related mass-murder' that we can agree that it is one act well past the line of acceptable consequences of unfettered individual freedoms. For, if rampant and repetitive acts of mass-shootings can't be agreed upon as being well past the line of acceptability then what is?

At some point theoretical ideals and unrealistic talking points must give way to pragmatism when it comes to the most dire and detrimental circumstances that face society. Other wise we're arguing about how to fix a hole in the ship as we sink to the ocean floor.

The question of plausibility and a general uncertainty of the results, keeps many people from even entertaining the idea of new gun control laws. There aren't any examples that I can think of that would completely parallel how a newly enacted gun control law would play out in America.Because of the intricate variables and numerous moving parts, an all encompassing experiment seems impossible. But to get a loose idea of what the process and results 'could' be, it would need to be done on a smaller more controllable scale. A place like Americas prison system. Where a similar, albeit imperfect, experiment 'has' taken place. An experiment that I was present for.

When I came to prison in 2014 we shaved with disposable razors. A 'right' to hygiene. A right that goes as far back as anyone in here can remember. And according to the veteran inmates and C.O.'s, things went relatively smoothly (pun absolutely not intended, but slightly enjoyed).

That's not to suggest that razors weren't misused of their intended purpose and turned into make shift weapons. They were. The blades easily removed and attached to a makeshift handle to create a "buck-fifty". (A "buck-fifty": both a noun and a verb, named after the number of stitches it takes to sew up a slash to the face from the makeshift weapon.) It's not that buck-fifty attacks didn't take place in the distant past. It's just that they occurred very rarely. According to the elder inmates and guards, as little as 2-5 razor slashing, on average, took place in an entire year, depending on the particular prison. And all made a point to say that they only occurred for the most serious of infractions and were used exclusively in the most extreme situations, as a measure of last resort. But something started to change in the 2000s.

A drastic uptick in assaults involving razors began to occur from 2005-2010. What was once a rare occurrence and reserved strictly for informants and child molesters was now common practice and nobody was off limits. People were being slashed for debts of a few dollars, for instant coffee and ramen noodles, gang initiations, perceived disrespect, as a preemptive method to avoid fights. And so on. Needless to say, this presented a new set of problems for a prison system, already knee deep in violence and conflict.

Whether the increase in attacks were from the exploding gang culture or from the influx of younger inmates is unclear. Though I'm sure it's a combination of factors. In any case the problem continued to grow.

By the time that I came to prison in early 2014 razor slashing had become a weekly occurrence. Within days I witnessed this epidemic first hand. On my way back from chow I saw an inmate with his hands cuffed behind his back being led by a C.O. towards the health care building. The inmate had his state shirt pulled up over his nose, as a makeshift mask. Me and several other inmates stepped aside, as we were ordered, to let them by. As they passed, the inmates shirt slid from his nose and fell to his shoulders. A slash ran from his right ear all the way to the corner of his mouth, connecting the two facial features. His face was filleted into two separate flaps. With nothing to hold the bottom half of his cheek in place, it folded down over his jaw exposing the teeth on the right side of his mouth. He reminded me of a zombie from the Walking Dead. This gruesome display was my introduction to the prison culture. It was my baseline. My average. And I became all too accustomed to, what should have been, completely unacceptable levels and frequencies of violence.

Whether it was the excess medical costs, the threat of lawsuits, or just the general lack of control, the system decided that something had to be done.

Like any bureaucracy, the prison system resists change. I'm sure, as the slashings began to rise in frequency, justifications and excuses were invoked to keep the status quo: There are too many razors already out there. What are they gonna shave with? Electric razors are too expensive. How are we gonna confiscate all of them?

But no matter how many offenders they took to the hole, how many shake downs they did, or how much they hoped the problem would simply go away on its own, it didn't.

In mid 2014 the 'powers that be' finally had enough and they passed a new institutional policy. In every housing unit, in every prison in the state, a copy of the new policy was posted for all to read. It stated that the disposable razors were being discontinued. That in a month they would no longer be available on commissary. And in three months any disposable razors were to be disposed of. After the determined disposal date, razors would be deemed 'dangerous contraband' and anyone found with a razor in their area of control would be taken to the hole and issued a class1 ticket. The highest of institutional infractions, a 'class1'affects your security level as well as parole eligibility. Further down the page it listed the prices and vendors that offered the electric razors we would now have to shave with. It went on to explain that indigent inmates would be given an electric razor on loan until the debt could be paid off. And we were thanked for our cooperation.

Most inmates were irate about the new policy. I was one of them. 'I' was using the razors for their intended purpose: to shave! Why should 'I' have to give them up because other people couldn't be trusted not to misuse them?

I had become accustomed to the violence. Even the frequent lock downs that were imposed, sometimes for days, after a slashing, had become normal. I was so conditioned to the razor assaults that I was more concerned with the inconvenience to my routine and personal preferences than with the safety of my environment and my fellow inmates.

Many inmates used the grace period to order as many razors as possible. Some were to be stashed and sold. Others were to be tucked away for later use.

The new policy wasn't an instantaneous or perfect solution. The occurrences of buck-fifties didn't drop off immediately. It was more of a slow drip of decline. Just the knowledge that razors were no longer a renewable resource made inmates rethink what a buck-fifty worthy offense was. Over time the incidents of razor related violence happened less and less frequently. After years of loss, use, disposal, and confiscation, the numbers and availability of illegal razor blades dwindled to almost nothing. And inevitably so did the 'buck-fifties'.

To hear the old timers tell it, its more rare now than its ever been. I've been in my current prison for over six months now and haven't seen or heard of anyone being slashed across the face with a razor. Come to think of it, I can't remember the last time that I heard of someone getting buck-fifties. Its been well over a year.

Is prison now a perfect utopia of a rehabilitative society? Absolutely not! Is it completely safe and devoid of violence? Not at all. Fights and stabbings still take place more frequently than most would like. Is everything better now that the disposable razors, that were so easily misused and turned into weapons, aren't readily available to all? No. But it is 'one less problem' that the inmates and staff within the prison system have to deal with. And with one less, difficult yet preventable problem, we can all get on with the other, less dire and numerous important issues that face us.

The inmates, the staff, and the entire prison system were affected by the epidemic of razor violence and all the debates and theoretical ideas did nothing to curb the violence. Eventually, a point was reached when it was decided that enough was enough, that something concrete and pragmatic had to be done. And it was.

The cries of injustice from the inmates, the complaints of the implementation and logistics by staff, and the preferred continuation of the status quo by the institutions were not allowed to stand in the way of the change needed to maintain a safe and functioning prison system. And thank God that there was no influence from an all powerful disposable razor lobby.

In no way do I pretend that this is a perfect representation of the larger and more complex issues that we face with gun control in this country. It is, however, an example of a society that reached a point deemed unacceptable to its proper functioning and to the safety of its citizens. And so a difficult, imperfect, and nearly wholly unpopular decision for the sake of that society was made. A decision made, free from all the external influences and biases, free from partisan talking points and approval ratings, and free from the need to appease constituents. A decision made in order to accomplish a goal for the greater good of those involved.

And if that's not the duty of those in power, then what is? Sadly when it comes to our elected officials it seems to be second to: fundraising and placating for reelection, in order to do more fundraising and placating for another reelection… and so on, for as long as possible. All the while, we the citizens, who they are supposed to be beholden to, live in the real world where real decisions need to be made but rarely are.

And in a way it is our fault. All of this is made possible because our ability to think objectively and critically has atrophied to the point of disability. Which has allowed us to be manipulated through fear and tribalism. To be force fed partisan mantras that have lost all meaning and understanding for those who chant them. A disability that has rendered any conversation rooted in day to day reality impossible.

This is what happens when people espouse prepackaged "beliefs". Beliefs that they themselves haven't reached through an honest and informed search for truth. Beliefs that they themselves haven't reached through brutal self-awareness and humility. Beliefs that they have never 'truly' even thought about.

As heartbreaking as this to say: Maybe the biggest tragedy isn't the horrendous cases of repeated mass murder of American citizens by firearms while our law makers do nothing. Maybe the greatest tragedy is that there aren't enough people, willing to do the honest and difficult work necessary to come to their own opinions free from bias and tribalism, to do anything to stop it…

We need change, accountability, and 'real' participation in the society we are a part of.

If the time isn't now then when?

0 notes