#the real common thread here might just be mental illness
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The Fictional Crush Line-Up For 2023 and Beyond
Was going to do this sooner (as in a review on the year based on the new or resurfaced interests I picked up, with aforementioned fictional crushes along the way), but I wanted to collect art for them all too and then I also had to try and remember them all. But here we are. If I'm missing any, I'll either have to edit and or reblog to include them.
See if you can spot any common threads (it may get trickier as the list goes on, just be warned). This goes almost in chronological order. But order does not in any way reflect my level of brainrot and obsession with each.
SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE FRAGILE THREADS OF POWER, BALDUR'S GATE III, AND ARCANE: LEAGUE OF LEGENDS (SPECIFICALLY REGARDING VIKTOR).
Consider yourself warned.
Victor Vale (Vicious by V.E. Schwab)
Victor and his revenge story are kind of responsible for kick-starting my journey of self-rediscovery these past twelve months, in a strange and roundabout way. He made me want to stick up for myself and what I wanted out of life. Sure, he's extremely morally grey in a concerning way, and yeah, we don't normally encourage revenge, but I found him a comfort at a difficult time. But also, I could totally fix him (no one can and it's no one's responsibility, yet the sentiment is still there). I'm not usually one for blonds (I am a liar) but his cold aesthetic is oddly pleasing. There's nothing I understand more than an awe that rots into resentment and envy while maintaining the same thread of fascination with someone. "Victor Vale was not a fucking sidekick" is just a, mwah, chef's kiss line. Honestly, I have less of a crush on this guy, more of an understanding that I appreciate. Also, I haven't even mentioned the chronic pain implications and canon uses of his powers. But that might be for another time.
Viktor (Arcane: League of Legends)
Another Viktor with chronic illness themes and whose (in LoL lore) regard for a partner in science goes sour over time as they pursue different objectives (not seen in the Netflix series yet, of course, it's too early for glorious evolution). This guy always comes back to rot in my brain, and I cannot wait for season 2 later this year to see what comes of his arc. I'm planning a fanfic involving him, Jayce, and maybe/sort of Jinx, based on a dream I had months ago but still have swirling in the soup that is my consciousness. There is something so pretty about this guy. If I was more confident in my sketching abilities, he'd end up being my muse way too often. Viktor's character to me is kind of a tragedy personified, and I love a good tragedy. Oh, and his voice actor?? Amazing. There's some debate over how authentic he sounds to Eastern Europeans, but the accent aside still, he sounds sooo good. I want to sit in on a lecture where he speaks about literally anything for two hours.
Kell Maresh (A Darker Shade of Magic; The Fragile Threads of Power by V.E. Schwab)
Usually, I don't talk about Kell because of how silly I feel like my crush on him is. I identify with Delilah "Lila" Bard throughout ADSOM and even Threads, so I hate further mentioning how much I actually think about Kell because I'd have to fist fight anyone who said I only relate to her because of Kell when that's not the truth. And yet, there's still enough differences between Lila and I for me to be like "if I had to pick a woman in the Schwabverse..." But also, MAYBE I JUST THINK KELL IS GORGEOUS, OKAY? 🫣 Maybe I like that he starts as a somewhat naive prince who's had things both easy and rough in life (wanting to be loved by the only family you know and not feel like you're only there to protect your adoptive brother whom your parents tried to tell you both was not actually your brother and you should stop treating each other as such is VALID, argue with the wall, also he's the bodyguard and eternal worrier (yes, worrying) for Rhy and he's taken lives way too young). Maybe I like that he fell first and fell hard for Lila (okay, but if we're getting into the nitty-gritty, she did flirt with him first multiple times, but she would never admit to actual feelings), that he's the male love interest without reservations for once, leaving it up to Lila and whether she's open to love for once in a story. And yeah, okay, maybe I like that he's actually some kind of a prince charming, the sort you always secretly dream about, you know? Shut up. I like his stupid magic coat too. He's clever, but occasionally actually unbelievably dumb, he's funny and witty yet he knows when to keep his mouth shut (and is usually the one hauling others out of a scrap because of their own smart mouths), he cares too much about his family, AND DID I MENTION HE ALSO HAS CHRONIC ILLNESS THEMES THAT BROKE MY DAMN CHRONICALLY ILL AND IN PAIN HEART? I've said too much already, but there. He's a guy.
Miguel O'Hara (Spider-Man: Across The SpiderVerse)
This is the one my sister teases me most about because she doesn't get it. To be honest with you all, even I don't know how to explain it. But this guy. Miguel. There is something about him that I just abdkjdjsdv, you know? Is it the tragedy? The moral greyness? The fangs? His insane height? Just his fanon self? The fucking muscles?? I don't know. But I will defend how interesting he is as an antagonist until the cows come home.
Elliott (Stardew Valley)
Oh... boy. Sometimes, I realise I have a type. It's pretty guys who are hopeless romantics that write novels and poetry. Maybe it's just this one guy. But wow, it works on me. I'm writing a fanfic about him because I need to. There's only 400-odd words to it so far. It was not long after I met him in the game that I decided I had to wife him up. I planted that pomegranate tree early, because it's his favourite fruit for those who don't know, and he loves receiving them as a gift. I got ducks so I could give him their stray feathers. I learned how and when to find lobsters and catch crabs because he loves those too. If I'm out of gifts, I go get a coffee for him because every writer needs their sustenance. Literally, by Spring of Year 2, we were married, and I wondered if perhaps I might have been a little too single-mindedly pursuing every one of those cut scenes when I should have been taking it a bit slower and making it less of a mission. Don't know what to tell you, I went crazy. I fully believe in the headcanon that he gets up early just to go through his haircare routine. Is he pretentious? Maybe. Does he lay it on a little too thick that he's scared of dying alone? Well, okay, yes. Does it bother me that as a househusband he doesn't help out more on the farm? Occasionally. But there's also no one else I'd rather be with (and I developed a sprinkler system specifically so there was less work for me anyway and so now I don't mind at all when he isn't helping). And I can't believe my sister ever introduced me to Stardew Valley because I am now mentally ill about a videogame character made of pixels. Yes, I make wine just for him too. Hush. I spoil him daily now that we're married. Our first child is a son named Ernest. I was debating between Ernest and Edgar, and honestly, I think I should have gone with the latter, but I chose the former. All the dialogue from Elliott is so frickin' cute.
Astarion Ancunín (Baldur's Gate III)
And do you know what the worst part about this one is? I still haven't actually played Baldur's Gate III. I know, I KNOW. A crime. I'm working on it. But you best believe I've watched every cutscene I can, every scrap of gameplay dialogue, all the choices, the different endings you can get with him (Ascended breaks my heart every time -- I don't care how hot he is, it's not what he would have wanted, he doesn't love you like he used to anymore, and he's not as happy as he could be), and I've listened to all the interviews with Neil Newbon and the writer for Astarion about him. This fruity traumatised vampire haunts me. I want to hold him gently and caress his face and tell him he's beautiful and what he looks like to me since he hasn't seen his reflection in centuries and I want to make sure he knows he's loved. I want him to bite me and drink my blood too, but that's not as important. Does it weird me out how much he reminds me of Prince Charming from the Shrek franchise and Preminger from Barbie: The Princess and the Pauper and then aesthetically Asra from The Arcana: A Mystic Romance? Yes. But Astarion's also his own character and I'm in love with his smile and goofy lines.
Settrigh "Sett" (Heartsteel; League of Legends)
This... might be the lowest point, actually 💀 My sister would agree. Because it's not enough to crush on book characters, show characters, and videogame characters -- while technically this guy is a videogame character and was part of League of Legends waaay before the music video, it was the PARANOIA music video that got me. So, even fictional characters made/involved in music videos are not safe from my heart. Because, as I understand it, OG Sett is a bit different from Heartsteel Sett, and I've found I usually prefer reading about the interpretation of the latter in fanfic more than the former. I mean, I still really, really enjoy fanfics where he's The Big Boss of the pits, and or his other background/lore is included, but I've read some where his old personality is a bit Yikes. The golden retriever energy is my favourite era of his if we can call it that (I still headcanon him as a part fox Vastayan, you can't convince me otherwise so go argue with someone else about it, not me). And honestly, I think I might have read more fics involving Sett in 2023 than I did any of the other characters on this list. Which is saying something since he's not as popular as a few of them. He's a pretty guy and I wish to bite him. Lovingly.
Mizu (Blue Eye Samurai)
Oh woman. Mizu is... is... she's basically my wife. I know she's all our wife, but like just let me dream a little here. As soon as I finished the series, I was opening up Tumblr, Pinterest, and AO3, my holy trinity of fandom. My platonic wife was sending me TikToks of our shared fictional wife. Mizu can wind up non-binary, male, female, I honestly do not mind because I am in love with any version she is/becomes (for now, I interpret her as a woman in disguise, but if that changes, I'll absolutely change how I refer to Mizu). She is a tragedy wrapped up in revenge because of a rotten love and unfortunate parentage and time period. I want her as much as I want to be her. Also? I go insane over her little smiles and smirks. I LOVE when we got to hear her laugh, even if it was mostly the flashbacks (do not mention Mikio near me; if he wasn't already dead, I would kill him). Also, who doesn't hate their British/white half, ahaha, oh my god, I know mixed ethnicity is a hot topic for people who do not want POC whitewashed in media, and I fully understand that, but I do appreciate seeing parts of myself in mixed characters like the conflict between trying to be more like one side than another. I'll also admit it: she does indeed look hot covered in blood and carrying a sword. I'll see myself out the door. I've been wanting to write a fanfic about her but I'm still stewing over ideas. Mizu is also probably my first truly major crush on a fictional woman (other than my childhood crush on Helga Sinclair from Atlantis: The Lost Empire). Vi from Arcane comes pretty close, but I see too much of myself in her that it gets weird.
We'll do some honourable mentions for characters from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim since I've gotten into that again.
Brynjolf, Hadvar, and Nazir, I wish I could mod my gameplay so I could marry you. The developers hated their men-loving gamers (I know the women-lovers complain about Serana, but she will never be as heartbreaking as Brynjolf, I don't care if she recognises proposals only to decline them). I mean, Brynjolf is the Tamriel equivalent of Scottish, he calls you "lass/lad", has got a smoothass voice, supports you through so much of the Thieves Guild questline, has a wicked sense of humour, and then when you finish the questline, it's all "sorry, lass. Got important things to do. We'll speak another time" 😭 You can't even recruit him as a follower. He says nothing when you wear an amulet of Mara. I play on a fucking PS4, I can't do mods to marry him or get more dialogue.
(By the way, on my most recent playthrough, Lydia died when I fought the troll on the seven thousand steps, and I am still mad about it. It used to be difficult for Lydia to die, that was why I brought her everywhere, and now I have to become Batman "I work alone". ESPECIALLY after Benor then died on the way up to Paarthurnax. I still can't believe that happened, I should have told him to stay behind and wait for my return.)
Also, every time I play, Derkeethus is so bugged, I can't even rescue him let alone marry the guy, which was disappointing because he seemed nice.
Argis the Bulwark, Vilkas, Farkas, Rayya, Aela the Huntress, and Marcurio, you are all marriageable and live in my heart always. Marcurio was the first I ever married, I think. Three guesses why I chose him (it's the sarcasm, wisecracks, and general sense of humour) (maybe the long hair too). Has anyone noticed how there doesn't seem to be marriageable options among the Khajiit characters?? Why do you think that is? I just checked the Skyrim marriage wiki and this is what it has to say in the trivia: 'There are no Khajiit spouses, however; since the majority of Khajiit in Skyrim are traders or travelers from Elsweyr, they probably have families back home. Additionally, Khajiit characters talk about home a lot, stating how much they miss it and how cold Skyrim is; thus, they probably do not want to marry and settle down in Skyrim.'
Heart-breaking. Oh well.
And that's the end of the line-up. If you read through this, Divines bless your goddamn soul. Psycho-analyse me based on them, I dare you. Or just judge me. I'd like to see either. And if you can find something in common about them all (you don't need to consider the honourable Skyrim mentions), please let me know, because I am personally at a loss.
#victor vale#viktor arcane#kell maresh#miguel o'hara#elliott stardew valley#astarion ancunin#sett heartsteel#mizu blue eye samurai#skyrim characters#these are all just from the past twelve months#the real common thread here might just be mental illness
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I love your art, it is very detailed in a neat way. Was wondering how you got started making it as a source of income? How did you get your first paid work, I'd love some advice on how to get started, if that's ok
Thank you. Of course it's okay, although I doubt I have enough work experience in art to really delve into this. I only went full freelance this year, and had been juggling art as a side hobby until then. If you're still interested in my somewhat narrow perspective, and are okay with my long-winded rambles, I'll give it a shot:
So to answer your question fully, I'll describe how I started and move into personal advice and learnings later on. As a disclaimer, I am a white cishet dude in my late twenties with a moderate cocktail of mental illnesses, but overall I can pass for a functioning adult so a lot I have to say may come laced with privilege I cannot fully identify.
So uhh I began drawing in around 2012? I think? Maybe halfway through 2011? And I mostly made fanart for things I enjoyed and tried to branch out in communities that felt nourishing to my style and interests (I caught a bug for alt posters and enjoyed mainstream movies so I spent a long time on posterspy early on). There were a handful of opportunities that came from there but I could only accept a couple because of primary workplace commitments. Still, it showed that networking in a focused community was definitely a good place to start; I myself have huge trouble committing to social networks and really staying socially active, but I knew it was an essential ingredient in succeeding so I tried to make myself be involved in challenges and art support trains etc. as much as I could.
In parallel to all that I also ran a few third party online stores (redbubble, teepublic) for disposable income and would sometimes, if rarely, hit around $100-150 a month from those sources combined. It is a sort of thing that requires helper accounts on other social media sites to promote it on, because the stores themselves have a huge volume of content that translates into low organic discoverability. Obviously it was never gonna be the way towards financial independence through art, and with community projects being few and far between, I opened private commissions in around uhhh 2017 I think, focusing on offering a few styles I knew I could do well, and sometimes operating in individual fandoms (it was mostly a bioware thing to be frank). But I had to close them back down after a year or so, again because of work-life conflict and how badly it was burning me out. The reason I kept trying to monetize this hobby is because I honestly hated what I did for my main job and wanted to see a way out in some shape or form in the future.
And then in 2020 I had to quit my main job altogether because of *gestures at pandemic* and deal with a mental breakdown from all the wonderful things it did to us and me specifically. I took a short break and decided to give art a shot full-time, and that was around May this year. I was planning on opening up commissions again (and I still am), but a few sudden opportunities that fell in my lap moved that timetable down and now I'm grateful to even be doing something I am getting adequately paid for.
So, with that somewhat limited perspective, here's what I've learned that I'd tell myself if I was just starting out:
1. Being a fan of something can be a shortcut towards effective networking kickoffs. Which are important evidently. If you love something and enjoy making content for it, join communities, settle into a combination of social media websites that feel right for those interests + your body of work + your inner rhythm, and try to play to content discovery as much as your mental health allows you to. Like I said, I know that I myself am incredibly bad at self-motivating to talk to people, so I found that synergizing common interests into fanart - which I enjoyed making anyway - could be a way to give myself a gentle nudge forward and build those bridges leading to community activities, which then net experience and coverage. Sometimes even freelance projects from official avenues. Again; picking the right spaces for what you're after is key. Companies roam twitter, concept art recruiters scour artstation or linkedin etc, instagram can land you private commissions and collab opportunities, so on and so forth. Find your niche and try to kick up dust. However...
2. I do not believe that any social profile can replace a good portfolio. The thing that made an immediate difference to me this year was building a coherent, simple website with my best work front and center and a contact form on top. Every single opportunity I got came from that form (maybe via twitter or instagram initially, but always sealing the decision after going through the website), so I firmly believe that showcasing your skills and portfolio in a visually arresting and user-friendly way is a big priority. I had some reservations about tackling that task but fortunately I had help from a savvy life partner and we slapped it together via wordpress in less than a day. Twitter/whatever social media is prevalent in your target groups is definitely important to get the right eyes on your shit, yes, but those eyes will then look for a second stop where your work and rates are more clear and concise. Simplicity is key imo, I cannot overstate this. So make a cute, simple portfolio!
3. Your skills and rates will grow and change as you do. Let them. Over the years I built several lasting professional relationships from my obsession over mass effect and kept getting opportunities both from bioware and their partner companies, some small and some a bit bigger. A one-off job earlier this year opened an unexpected door to another much larger commitment, and then the work I did there brought some attention from small businesses looking for commercial commissions. These were all incredibly different projects in terms of scope and budget, and I've been tackling them all on a case-by-case basis and slowly coming into my own irt my needs, rates, and SOW thresholds. It is still a work in progress (and a LOT of literal work as well), and very much a thing I struggle with in publicly marketing, which is why I felt a tad underqualified to answer your question in the first place (obviously I did not let that stop me). But what it means for me now is that I am rapidly developing into whatever my "version" of a functioning freelance artist is, and when the conditions for that guy are met, I need to be able to confidently plant myself and operate from that space despite past precedents. Do not let anyone bully you into downpricing what you yourself perceive as legitimate products of personal growth and development. Speaking of which...
4. The shitty challenge of turning envy into inspiration, and paddling outside your comfort zones in full riot gear. it is hard, but realizing that being a miserable, self-hating artist in my early days got me nothing but more misery back was the first real step I took and what truly blew the hinges off. I was just not pleasant to be around, I would badmouth my work all the time, and it all somehow made sense in my broken mind because the validation I sought was purely external and the way I sought it was through eliciting sympathy via self-victimization (even when I made something objectively nice). It all led fucking nowhere. Except perhaps to my own narcissism that I one day managed to identify and start managing. So I started looking at things that made me seethe with envy and calmly deconstruct and figure out their inner workings instead, do studies, and find nuggets of inspiration or discover new ways to approach rendering or building up specific elements. It was an application of analytical diligence to what I wanted to be a purely emotional, esoteric workflow, but that I deep down knew wasn't. Art is a discipline and a skill, and maybe it isn't a straight line, but you gotta find some line to thread nevertheless. Being self-hating was almost an identity I had to break out of, and despite it still being like, 4-5% there? I realize its cause and effect on me, my work, and those around me, so it is with a conscious choice that I gently set it aside when I work and especially when I learn. It won't always stay quiet, but the effort is the difference. Your doors towards accepting true growth and venturing into uncharted territories, art styles, and networking will really open from there. But there's a huge caveat...
5. Toolsets, accessibility, privilege, and all the good things that enable artistic expression and profitability are not given equal to all. you might do all the mental work I mentioned to be ready to rock and roll and learn and draw your way out of anything, but digital art is a fucking money pit that asks almost too much at times. I don't got a good case study here but identifying and ensuring accessibility to the tools you need to do your best work is, like, super important. The ergonomics can improve as you make money and settle into the job, but the basics have to be made available to you. And some of that might not even be under your direct control. That can be anything from pen tablets to software subscriptions to opportunities in hiring sullied by sexism or what have you. You gotta navigate all that through careful networking and money/time management. I don't do a good job of devoting specific slices of time to work/study, and my primary clutch is iPad software which went from a good deal to a nightmare scenario over the years. So all I can say here is do what I didn't; network, invest in a PC/tablet, and pick a software you'll learn that won't burn a hole in your pocket.
6. Be nice to work with? This one is hard to articulate and has landed my own ass in hot water in my early years because of how socially inept I am, but nothing is more worthwhile than being.. like. a good person to work with. That can be anything like meeting deadlines, or sometimes missing them but eloquently articulating why, being generous in early stages, being communicable and not too wordy in your emails, having a good grasp on abstract artistic concepts and how to describe them in simple terms, having a clear, laid out framework of your working rates in commercial and non-commercial projects and sticking to those guns with grace, understanding when you need to say no and saying it well, the works. Just being nice. Sometimes that might mean going headstrong with something you believe in, or simmering down and sucking up to the big man, all relative and adaptive. Part and parcel of the service provision dance that we all have to do in order to make bank. Know your lines here, obviously, and don't like. work for nazis. or uh.. *shudders* exposure. but be nice and empathetic and communicable and word will travel eventually. Skill may be in abundance these days, but good people are most certainly not, and capitalism has a way of bubbling up scarcity. Grim, but uh, them's the breaks.
I know I'm ultimately telling you to like. Have a body of work, make a portfolio, grow, and network. But that's really how I see it for now. And being nice can be a cherry on top that sets you apart, along with the inherent irreplaceable voice of your artwork. I think I rambled on enough, but if there is something specific you need my help with, even if you want to come off anon and talk in private, please feel free.
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I'm so tired of roleplaying with people who don't put half the commitment I do into our threads and muses. I'm so tired of feeling like I'm a weirdo or like I don't belong for that. Any other hobby and people wouldn't care if I took it seriously. Why is roleplaying different? How can I keep going like this if I'm getting rudeness from all sides? I can't even go outside my already tiny bubble and find more partners, because I always see people putting roleplayers like me down and it's exhausting.
"Why is roleplaying different?"
Well, Anon, I know that was a rhetorical question, but I have some thoughts on that. To the surprise of no one!
I strongly believe that this is an issue with how fandom has come to dominate roleplaying. As I've said before, it really wasn't always like that. Of course, you always had canon characters and almost all RPers were invested in a fandom or two. The difference was that online RP was once viewed much more like tabletop RPGs are.
When the RPC became a near-total offshoot of Fandom, a lot of shit changed and very rapidly...and within Fandom, a lot of shit was changing very rapidly as well at that time.
RP has always been something looked down on (though, at least no one ever accused written RP online of being literally demonic like they did DnD, or made correlations to murder sprees like they did LARPing, so there's that) as strange, not the good, understandable sort of dorky.
Part of that is almost certainly because of the difference in the way society views writing vs the way it views hobbies like gaming - writing is seen as an intellectual pursuit and a job, gaming, even at its most negative points of view in wider society, has been seen traditionally as a downtime activity only.
But. RP was not looked down upon from within Fandom or in roleplay communities themselves like it is now.
When the whole experience of fandoms themselves became extremely mainstream and open, it welcomed in a ton of shit ideas and behaviors that were not previously prevalent. It changed RP, too, along many of those same lines.
When your hobby is considered objectionably weird by people within the fandoms you love and RP in and that makes you a sort of lowest-tier fan, the viewpoint of RP to RPers becomes something lesser than a valid hobby. When RPers are the same people who engage with Fandom monetarily, anything not monetized is passively consumable content, including RP. And RPers are trying to both deflect shame and struggling with wider society's mixed messages, that now hit them everywhere online as well. Shit like, "you don't have to monetize your hobby, it's okay to just make really good cross stitches of memes for yourself" and "if you're not paying me, you have no control over me."
We seriously do not view RP as a proper hobby anymore, that's why. There are many factors to that, those are just few, but that's the ultimate answer. It's not seen that way because it's not valued in the same way.
I think much of the problem with muns losing their entire shit over anyone else approaching the hobby differently, dare I say...more seriously, is related to a lot of complex psychology about self-esteem, control, and anxiety. So many people here struggle with serious self-worth and confidence issues, and I think to many of them, whether they realize it or not, when they see serious RPers, they feel like that's an inherent judgment and a danger to their own enjoyment. Because RP, as writing, is a skilled hobby - the more you practice it, the more skilled you become with it. Meaning that someone who approaches the writing seriously is going to be at a higher skill level.
Enter the way we're training to think about writing again - when they see someone who is very practiced, skilled, and confident with their writing, the learned idea is that they're somehow superior in a nasty, personal way.
I most certainly do not think that makes it alright, it isn't, and I'm not very tolerant of it.
It's absolutely alright to engage with RP in any way you see fit. If that's extremely casual, it's a minor hobby for you, that's great! I'm so happy you're enjoying yourself, and I mean that in no facetious way. But not when that is the only form of it respected and accepted. It's just as alright to have RP as your primary, serious hobby!
The only way we can all enjoy a hobby with such great variance within it is by respecting each other's variables, not by vilifying them. It's recognizing that, no matter how much you enjoy the mun and/or muse, they're not engaging with the hobby in the way you are, it's not a good fit to write together. (Please, begging y'all to be friends with those who are different, not enemies, shit's sake. You've not got to write together to be friends!) Instead of labeling them and being hateful. Different =/= a threat.
And, to go off a bit lol y'all demonizing serious RPers really don't get that there are some intense tones of ableism and more going on in that narrative of yours, huh?
Not that anyone requires a reason to be serious about any hobby, but when people pick a hobby like RP as their primary one...you should probably have the maturity to consider why that is. Could it be that they focus on a hobby they can do from their homes and that requires low physical involvement, and has a degree of separation from direct socializing, for a reason?
Serious RPers tend to be limited in their ability to pursue other hobbies. Mental and physical health, region, finances, and ability to spend time outside of the home are all very common limits for those who "take RP too seriously/are addicted to RP."
Maybe take five seconds away from your own issues to consider that the person you're shitting on for something so minor as a difference of importance of a hobby might be the full-time caretaker of a special needs child, having to remain home and on a very small income. They might be chronically ill or suffer from agoraphobia. They might live in an area with no hobbies of interest, affordability, or at all...or they might live somewhere that is incredibly dangerous for them.
I honestly do not know where these people have been that they've been aggressed at by serious RPers, but that's usually the excuse. (I'm not saying it has never happened or does not happen, before anyone goes there.) The idea that serious RPers are extreme elitists who are demanding that other muns do what they do, how they do it. That they expect other muns to be online and RPing all the time, that they be "available for entertainment at all times" at the cost of real-life matters. Having the expectation that threads not be dropped constantly or that a writing partner not leave for months with no contact is neither of those things.
In over two decades of RPing across almost every platform type that has existed, I have literally never seen that be either a singular RPer-type problem or one that serious RPers are even more likely to deal in. I've seen the opposite, actually. Which is not a condemnation or a statement that all casual RPers do this, just what my experience has been. And one that actually stands to reason based on the way they view and engage with RP - quick replies, quick entertainment, and very low commitment to threads, muses, or other muns. Of course, it's annoying to them when a more serious RPer is unwilling to do rapid-fire style quick, short threads from an ask with them, but is writing the lengthy replies they already owed instead.
That's probably a factor as well, in here among a plethora of misunderstanding/unawareness of differences - for many serious RPers, it's not easier and more fun to write short, quick threads. So, what a casual RPer is seeing is that they're willing to put all this extraordinary effort into a massive reply to someone else while their easy, fun, quickly done thread is waiting in line.
Misunderstandings and unawareness breed hostility, period. And there is a hell of a lot of those things in the RPC.
What serious RPers are expressing are either boundaries/expectations or frustration. Not a demand that you be around all the time, but an expectation that you leave them alone if you're not also a serious RPer who will be committed to threads and muses. Not hostility and elitism, the frustration that it's already difficult to find muns who will work out before you add in the majority rule of casual RPers.
It's incredibly disheartening, frustrating, and honestly, a bit anxiety-inducing to constantly be the weird one, always have few choices, and to be at risk of being Problematic purely because you take the hobby seriously. You can't vent without someone jumping on your ass to remind you (even if you said numerous times that "real life comes first" and "people can do what they want") that omg, people have lives, people can do what makes them happy, it's just RP.
It's so upsetting when you think you might have found a good writing partner, then, you see a PSA they've reblogged about how it's a "hobby, not a jobby," and "no one owes anyone anything, ever." Excuse me, as that last one is a direct quote, let me redo it so it is verbatim: "no one owes anyone here anything - EVER !!!"
I said I wasn't very tolerant :)
But seriously, exactly what you've expressed is why I'm not...it's another form of controlling others instead of trying your best to control your own experience, and it's often extremely hateful. I'm not tolerant of anything like that, it's no longer supporting preferences at that point. When your preference is the only one that will be tolerated in the community, it's not a preference anymore.
It's something that makes others feel isolated, afraid of harassment, and depressed. It is a hobby and it isn't supposed to make you feel like that!
And, no, absolutely the fuck not lol the "answer" to this isn't that you're taking it too seriously and need to take a break. I'm so tired of seeing that shit tacked onto RPH responses and vents and PSAs. You're not saying that RP is making you feel this way, "just take a break and come back when you agree with everyone else" isn't a solution.
Of course, if you do feel like your time here has become so upsetting? Yeah, obviously, you should try to find some other things to supplement your downtime that make you feel happier again. Engage in some other forms of writing just meant for yourself, or that can be published as fics. Spend some more time on a game you enjoy for a while, or get invested in a new one. Learn to shape bonsai or make no-knead rolls. Whatever would make you happy as a hobby when you're not here.
Other than that, however, well...we're not going to be implying on this blog that you're too serious and need to take a hiatus until you have no emotional investment in your hobby. That's insane. I'd not say it about hiking, martial arts, dog obedience competitions, hobby farming, or painting either.
I wish I could think of some solutions as to where you could look that wasn't like this, but it's definitely the majority of the RPC. It doesn't help that, due to this, serious RPers have a tendency to quietly stick together and not venture out into the RPC. They're just not incredibly easy to find.
I will say that they tend to be:
novella - if you're not here for serious RP and sticking around for a while, you're not going to invest the time and energy into particularly lengthy writing
older RPers - I would say that twenty-five is probably the youngest, with early thirties to late forties being the majority
in fandoms with a large adult base of fans - even if it's a franchise friendly to, or even meant for, younger fans, if it has a particularly active adult fanbase, it's a better chance of finding serious RPers in it
as above, old fandoms - fandoms that have been around for a long time tend to have more serious RPers in them
fandomless OCs - tend to have a higher chance of being written by serious RPers than canons or heavily fandom-involved OCs
RPers who do not do a ton of advertising for their muse(s), but when they do, they don't advertise them based on activism points or trends
slightly more likely to not have an emphasis on highly aesthetic blogs, graphics, icons etc. - they use a modified basic tumblr theme, low on graphics, their aesthetics are not on-trend, for example
anti-content policing/"write what you want" style muns
muns with more extensive rules pages - they plan to be here for a while, they take writing, RP, and their muse(s) seriously, so, it's a bit more important to them to head off problems before they start
those with older characters/FCs - be that literally in age or the character being one that has existed for a long time
"stay in your lane" style muns - if they're opining on fandom or the RPC, they must really be angry about something
those with numerous and detailed headcanons - for example, their response to a HC meme ask like, "what's your muse's favorite ice cream flavor?" is going to be treated seriously, not simply answered with "mint chocolate chip because my bby is gross"
As usual, not a complete or perfect list. I don't fit some of the things on there! It could give you some things to look for when trying to find other serious RPers, though. It's based on observances from someone who was never a casual RPer, even as a minor (me, obviously), and maybe it could at least keep you from continuously running into hostility about your approach to RP.
I've honestly considered making a list of some sort expressly for RPers who are on the more serious end of the spectrum, but...in a RPC back when things were dominated by serious RPers, I did that sort of thing with a RPH I had, and it still got labeled as being a list for and by Elitists. I don't know that anyone would want to put themselves out there for potential harassment on tumblr, you know? It was a joke then, just having a group of RPers label you as an Elitist. Here, you get told to kill yourself, and none of us need more of that shit, right?
Try to hang in there, Anon, I know it's upsetting, and I'm so sorry that something fun has gotten to be like this.
Try to understand that these people are coming from a place of irrational defensiveness, often in response to bullying themselves at some point or feeling bad about themselves. That doesn't make it right, but it does make it easier to not take to heart.
And keep at it! In my experience here, once you find a group of people you fit into, it really is...A Group. Especially among RPers who are ostracized, they stick together, they promote each other, and they're very happy for their mutuals to become your mutuals. Once you find them, it unlocks so many opportunities for the interactions and type of RP you've been missing!
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So, because Fatou’s season ends today and, as far as we know, Druck hasn’t been renewed yet, I want to go over the things I feel the team did well in this season and the things I hope they take with them when they sit down to write the next season (which I’m manifesting will be Ava’s).
I think that s5 and, perhaps to a bigger extent, s6, were the team’s attempt to address fan feedback for and criticisms of s3 and s4. So I have hopes that, after possibly the most scrutinized season of any Skams, they are still willing to read even more feedback and sit down once again to craft a couple more seasons (possibly even 3 or 4 more seasons!).
So, without further ado, things that were done well! (Do I have to add “in my opinion”? Do I??)
I liked that for both s5 and s6, the thorough-line for the season wasn’t made obvious or shared in a press release, but rather it was up to fans to connect the story threads for themselves.
I loved that the team sought to address one of the biggest criticisms of s3, that is, that Matteo was given so many symptoms of a mental illness, but it ultimately went unaddressed in the narrative. They did this by giving Nora a dissociative disorder, and Fatou dyscalculia. (Matteo has been headcanoned as being mentally ill and having a disability.) It allowed the teams to develop both fan theories into full-blown seasons and give each of them the importance they deserved.
I have said this already, but I really appreciate that the team chose misunderstood, misrepresented and underrepresented mental illnesses and disabilities. I feel like s5 and s6 will be referents for many years, because they really took the time to portray a dissociative disorder and dyscalculia in a down-to-earth, unhurried way that isn’t meant to shock and awe, but simply allow us to understand why and when Nora and Fatou will struggle. Druck got the viewers to anticipate when Nora and Fatou would struggle, and that’s the first step in being able to anticipate and accommodate the needs of the Noras and Fatous of the world. I really can’t overstate how important this is and what a difference it makes in a real, tangible way. These seasons aren’t meant to be enjoyed for voyeuristic reasons, but they will legitimately help people.
One of the biggest criticisms of s4 was that Amira and Sam didn’t connect as women of color. In fact, it seemed like in s4 Sam was treated as another white friend, when in s2 both she and Amira were the victims of Kiki’s racism. The team addressed this by giving us Ava and Fatou’s friendship, which I want to say might be the first friendship between main characters of color where their race is a substantial reason for their bond. (There are the Sanas with their Jamillas, but the Jamillas aren’t main characters, and then there are friendships like Jo and Megan and Zoya, or Imaan and Liv, or Luca and Yasmina, but iirc in every case their bond as women of color isn’t made explicit.)
Another criticism of s4 was the way Kiki turned into the world’s most understanding white friend offscreen. The team addressed this with the Ava and Mailin storyline, which I think was wonderfully and subtly set up in s5, then built on with the biology test leaked answers.
On the topic of race, I think a major criticism of s3 was that David’s ethnicity wasn’t acknowledged (to the point where a white actress was cast to play his sister gvhvhv). The team has made up for this with Josh (more in the s6 sm than in s5, but I still count it) and with Kieu My. Fatou and Kieu My bonded over being first/second gen children of immigrants, and in doing so, they acknowledged that these characters aren’t white and have different experiences than white Germans.
The first 6 episodes of this season were some of the finest writing in the Skams. The storylines all connected and built on each other. The motifs were just so good and beautiful and fitting. The themes were all clearly defined and easy to follow.
The tortoise plot was one of the most fun and imaginative storylines in any Skams, it connected Fatou and Ismail in a believable way. And not to rave about a fucking tortoise, but animals can be really uncooperative and that tortoise delivered every fucking clip. Druck has a reputation for being one of the most depressive versions of Skam, but the Maike/Burger plot was just plain fun.
I feel like some of the old gen’s instas were a bit self-indulgent. I’m thinking specifically of Matteo’s memes and how they they weren’t necessarily the kind of memes a gay dude born in 2001 would pick, but someone a decade older. I think this is much better done with new gen. Fatou’s memes reflect her age and her sexuality, and not just that, but Ava, Mailin, Kieu My, Josh, etc. all pick memes and even focus on different aspects of recent news, based on their gender, race, personalities, interests, etc.
I appreciate that the team found a way to fit a sex scene between Fatou and Kieu My to add to the small catalogue of wlw sex scenes on Skams (I’m including the scene in lovleg or we’d only have two lol). While I understood the reasons eskam opted not to include one, I thought there were ways to feature a sex scene that didn’t sexualize the actresses and didn’t require nudity. Cases in point: the lovleg scene, and this scene in Druck.
And it also needs to be said. This is the first original season with a main of color, and the third season overall (after Liv and Imane) where 10 episodes are given to a character of color and no one else. Of the three, it’s certainly the season that loved and respected its main the most. The bar is so low it’s in hell, but Druck did clear that bar!
With all that said, let’s talk about the things I would really want the team to address in following seasons:
The thing I most want them to fix might be small or unimportant for a lot of people, but I think it’s at the core of why the season has been unenjoyable or certain plot points haven’t come across the way the team wanted, for many people. I am talking about the overly expositional nature of the writing. It appears as if the team approached the writing of the clips with the intention of hitting each beat as noted in their agreed upon outline, and absolutely nothing else was to be added. This is an issue both in s5 and s6. It’s just less noticeable in s5, because s5 is setting up stuff for Fatou’s season, and possibly even seasons that haven’t been written yet. The fact that absolutely every second counts makes for a stressful watching experience for me, because the narrative tension is always heightened. Whereas with Skam, the narrative tension would build throughout the clip. Take the Pride scene in Skam, for instance. The clip allows for Isak and Eskild to get increasingly more agitated as they butt heads. I feel like if this Druck team had done the Pride scene in s5 or s6, the clip would’ve started with both Isak and Eskild already on edge, and cut much of the dialogue that got them there.
On the topic of naturalistic dialogue, this season doesn’t have it. Here is an example from ep 10 clip 2, Wieder vereint/Reunited 11:37.
Fatou: I’ll get a certificate too and bring it over to you. And I checked it, I only have to change one course and my schedule will work.
Teacher: Miss Jallow, you are not the first one to come to me with an epiphany. We could fill entire school weeks with the lessons you missed. In addition, Doctor Steinberg told me about your, well… activities. You don’t have a lot of arguments on your side.
Fatou: But I’ve spoken to all of the teachers and they said they are okay with it.
Teacher: You seem to have friends among the teaching staff. Mrs Pavlovic put in a word for you. Okay then, do it and go before I change my mind. [translated by @kieu-tou! Thank you!]
Like. This is the bare bones version of a dialogue. This should be the first draft, not the final version. The coordinator goes from absolute no to yes, with just one line from Fatou. The coordinator gives reasons that would necessitate more than one sentence of counterargument, like Fatou’s absences and the Biology test leaked answers. The coordinator even says Fatou doesn’t have a lot of arguments on her side, and yet it takes Fatou one line to change her mind!
And of course we viewers don’t want or need a lot of time with the coordinator. And particularly at this point in the season, no one would enjoy a naturalistic dialogue with the coordinator of all people. But my point is that this is an issue with the dialogue all this season (and last season as well, but this season has been more scrutinized), the reason I picked this example is because of how easy it is to see here.
Which brings us to the pacing of the clips, and specifically the Friday clips. Because the script goes straight to the information the team wants to convey to the viewers, skipping the build up to it, many Friday clips have fallen flat, felt abrupt, and have been, tbh, unsatisfying. Again, I had this issue in s5, but as that season went on, I felt like the team had a better grip on Friday clips. But then they did it again in the first Friday clip this season, and so I think this is something the writers really should work on. The first Friday clip in Isak’s season closes on Isak being sandwiched by Emma and Even on a bench, visually setting up the love triangle, or more accurately, the personifications of who Isak should want to hook up with and who he really wants. But in order to get there, we’re shown a good amount of info, from the way Vilde, Eva and Sana are handling Noora’s absence, to Chris and Kasper, Even hovering around Isak, Emma trying to impress Isak, Isak escaping and, like, draping himself on the walls because he’s so over it all. Isak playing a game on the bathroom to stall for time. The paper towel maneuver to immediately give us a sense of what a weirdo Even is. A conversation between Isak and Even that gives us some clues about Even’s shame, as well as establish interests in common (like weed), and this is all before Emma even joins them! Just think of all the stuff we learn about who Isak, Even, Emma, Eva, Vilde or Sana are as people, before we get to the point of the clip! Fatou’s season simply didn’t have that. Compare it with the first Friday clip of Fatou’s season where the cashqueens quickly talk about the leaked answers, one of the major storylines this season that only gets a couple lines, before Fatou says she doesn’t want to talk about school (Fatou’s struggles with school, another major storyline), and then we’re onto the point of the clip, which is that Kieu My likes girls too. AND FADE TO BLACK. When people say they want longer clips, what they mean isn’t artificially inflate the clip length or add more plot stuff. Just let us watch the characters interact with each other so that we get a feel for how they relate to each other. I know I wish we’d have gotten more of Ava and Fatou interacting with each other before things turned to shit, and Ava with the other girls, so that I know why they all like and value Ava so much. I wish we’d have gotten more of Kieu My talking to the cashqueens about, like, why she didn’t make use of the biology test answers, instead of getting it on a chat. Or food combos they don’t like. So it makes more sense that later on Kieu My actually thinks she and Fatou are friends. And every line doesn’t have to count. In Skam España, the characters are constantly talking and not everything they ever talked about ended up being relevant. When one of the characters lied about her house undergoing renovations to hide the fact that she was poor, the characters joked about Italian marble and put on bad Italian accents and made that Italian hand gesture. None of this was important to the plot because those renovations weren’t real to begin with, but they made viewers feel like these were real friends joking around, instead of characters needing to hit every storyline beat in a clip.
I have this joke with my friends about Druck always going 🤪🤪 in the last third of every season, in which a season that was very tightly written and cohesive suddenly pulls something inexplicable and pretty much impossible to resolve in 1-3 episodes. Hanna’s season suddenly switching to Mia, Björn creeping on Mia in episode 9! of a total 10, David getting outed in episode 8 and then disappearing for a whole week, Amira’s season pivoting to Mia and Hanna. It has happened in every season except Nora’s, so I thought the team had learned its lesson, but then the forgotten date with Ava happened. To be clear. It really makes no sense that Nora would have hung out with Ava several times since Tuesday, and the topic of the cashqueens being officially introduced to Kieu My wouldn’t have come up. it’s just not realistic.gif I feel like at that point the writing for the rest of the reason became super contrived to keep Fatou miserable and apart from Kieu My and Ava to artificially delay the reunions until episode 9 and 10. Why add a cheating insinuation and the main checking her partner’s messages in episode 8 if you know you won’t be able to properly resolve it? Why make Kieu My mock Fatou’s “uhm” if it’s not going to be addressed in their reunion clip? Kieu My had taken the initiative for a lot of the relationship, so it’s okay for Fatou to take the initiative when it comes to making up. You don’t have to add things that can only be resolved through an expositional info dump. (Please no more exposition than it’s necessary! I think we’ve established that at this point lol.) In the case of Fatou’s season, this is even sadder because I feel like Kieu My’s intimacy issues could’ve been the reason to drive them apart for two weeks, rather than the Maya/uhm stuff. This could’ve also been resolved through Fatou and Kieu My explicitly negotiating their boundaries and how they want to be comforted and how they want to comfort each other, which I thought was the issue with Fatou rejecting Kieu My’s attempts to help while wanting physical touch, while Kieu My didn’t want to be touched but rather seen.
There are going to be many thinkpieces on why a myriad of stuff didn’t work for people, so I’m going to keep this simple and address one last thing. I think that choosing to focus on Nora’s mental illness and Fatou’s disability is a great choice that doesn’t complicate the themes too much, but Druck (and all the Skams, but I’m invested only in Druck succeeding at this point) still struggles with being intersectional. This is the major reason why the Ava/Mailin storyline ended not with a bang, but a whimper. There just wasn’t enough work done to connect Fatou’s struggles not just to her disability, but also to her race (and even her sexuality). I think that if people really want (and lbr, it’ll be mostly poc who will put in that effort and work), they can see how Fatou’s race affected the way other people and especially adults reacted to her, but this wasn’t made explicit. If Ava and Mailin are going to argue about racism all season, why not connect that with Karin firing Fatou from Aquarius? As it stands, Karin fired Fatou because of a disability neither of them knew Fatou has, and that was the resolution to that storyline. Why not make it explicit that the Physics teacher had preconceived ideas about Fatou because Fatou is black? Why wasn’t Fatou’s disability addressed in the meeting with the coordinator? Why didn’t Fatou express to Mailin that Fatou, too, had issues with how Mailin was acting wrt racism? It felt like, with the way the season was putting so much emphasis on racism, all these threads were going to be connected. In the end though, it almost felt as if only Ava is affected by racism (aside from Mailin mentioning Fatou in the last episode). It’s not like talking about how racism affects Fatou is going to make the topic redundant for Ava’s or Ismail’s season. As a light-skinned black lesbian with a disability, Fatou’s life is going to be impacted by racism in a different way than Ava’s will, as a dark-skinned black fat straight cis girl, or Ismail’s, as a Turkish-German possibly Muslim possibly non binary person. All these experiences are specific enough, and different enough, that they can be touched upon in different seasons without becoming redundant. The fact that Fatou’s season almost seemed to forget at times that she is a black lesbian, doesn’t bode well for Ava’s and Ismail’s season to acknowledge all their struggles.
The bottom line is that this season really was great and did a lot of good, and I feel like the writing just needs to be tweaked a bit for further seasons to be even better and more enjoyable overall. I am very pleasantly surprised by how the team took s1-s4 fan feedback to heart and worked to implement suggestions, and so I really trust them and hope they keep working on the show. It’d be a shame if Druck wasn’t renewed, with this team at the helm.
#druck#this post is 3K+ words in word I'm so sorry#but I really hope it makes its way to the writers and is helpful
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The Tolls of Justice: the Tarot, Name Meanings, and More!
Gentlepeople…
BEHOLD!
All the tarot-aligned hints! All the future foretellings! All the silly references! :) Everything you might have overlooked is here for you easy-to-read pleasure!
Naturally, there be spoilers a-plenty ahead for Batman the TellTale Series: The Tolls of Justice, so if you haven't read it (or maybe you're thinking about reading it, or this is your first time hearing about it), I'd advise waiting until you're done with each chapter to read through the sections. You can either click the link and be redirected to Ao3, or look through my tumblr tag #ttoj!
*One forwarding note: the tarot references build slowly in this story, and I only use the traditional Major & Minor Arcana. You'll see a lot of jokes and name-type references before we get to the tarot. I also simplified the numerics, but they're often displayed as roman numerals on cards, hint hint.
Prologue
gang member "Four Ears" - a very very off-the-collar reference to the line "Listen up, four-ears!" from J-Men Forever; in context, it was an off-shoot of the insult "four-eyes" but for music taste, also implying the person's taste was "square".
gang member "Muddy Nye" - his name can be boiled down to "muddy river". It works as an allusion to the messy, unclear case ahead of Bruce and the Batfam, but also as a hint to Clayface, who acted as Muddy in his first sighting of the story.
"Sunset" - a reference to everyone's favorite vampire series to pick on, the Twilight series; back when it was at the height of it's popularity, some drug dealers sold heroin marketed towards the crowd based off it's terrible and unfortunately iconic(?) line from Edward Cullen, "You're my own personal brand of heroin"…hence why the drug of choice BM is shipping here is heroin. Essentially, this plot setup is one big joke.
"FIGS" - a reference to POP! vinyls, hence the capitalized name and spiky word balloon on the packages.
"Gray Ghost [memorabilia]" - one of my (and everyone else's) favorite BtAS episodes, which proves definitively that Bruce Wayne | Batman is not only a Huge Nerd™, but also a massive collector of normal fandom things. (Do you think he troughs through blogs and fanwikis…? What am I saying, of course he does. He edits them.)
gang members "Jack Whendleham and Kirby Noltz" - nod to Jack Kirby, comic artist extraordinaire!
Ch.1: A Different Ceiling
[chapter title] - John does not wake up in Arkham at the start of the story, hence waking up to a different ceiling. He also hits different limitations on what he can do, so it's also a different kind of "ceiling". (Like the term "the glass ceiling", the invisible barrier a demographic hits in a hierarchy.)
St. Dymphna New Life Home - named after Saint Dymphna, the patron saint of mental illness. There's no "'s" at the end because I saw other clinics named after Saints didn't use the possessive form when referencing them.
The Lucky Hotel - an oxymoron, really; the unluckiest place to get stuck at with it's seedy history, but also the place where John "gets lucky"…in a couple of different ways!
Stitched Up Alterations - a heavy nod to the wonderful batjokesy line from S2, "We're two threads in the same stitch". It's pretty deeply ingrained in fanon (and technically canon, if you go with The Dark Knight) that Joker makes his own clothes, hence Batman rarely finding him through his tailor. Since John's thrifty and clearly made his original Joker outfit(s), I piggybacked off it as a legit skill to give him. I mean, come on, the guy is always so stylish! And you're really going to look at me and say he didn't alter his thrifted shirts and vests to fit his sleek frame? Puh-leeease.
13th Street - 13 is a traditionally unlucky number in western culture; hence the "Lucky Hotel" there having a bloody history, along with a failed, closed casino nearby.
Corazón gang - okay, I admit…I'm still a weeb at heart. It's a One Piece reference. Corazon was one of the few post-timeskip new characters I really liked; his name is Spanish for "heart", and he sported a heart motif. Like the gang in this story, he also died before the start of the main storyline.
Ch. 2: Face Values
[chapter title] - A reference to the phrase "not taking things at face value", which is very evident in this story. Also doubles as a rather loose reference to the upcoming Tarot cards.
Sebastian Overfield - The name Sebastian means "from Sebaste", as is derived from the Greek word sebastos ("venerable", someone who has a lot of respect). Overfield of course is "over" and "field", implying the family is on a high hill overlooking/overseeing/maintaining a certain field. As Seb is a reverend, this name is well-fit for him.
orange rose [gift from John] - means "passion" in the language of flowers, and can allude to fascination; this can be taken platonically or romantically…but it's definitely romantic when it's coming from John.
blue iris [gift from John] - means "faith and hope" in the language of flowers, and sometimes are associated with royalty; an allusion to Batman/Bruce's overall symbolism in the eyes of Gotham…and John.
Chandis [ship, circa Prologue] - A reference to Chandi | Chandika, the Hindu deity; the short version of their story is that they are a demon slayer, known to be angry and passionate, wield multiple weapons, and ride a lion. And who was on the ship? Hmm…
Ch. 3: Ink Trails
[chapter title] - A reference to the Alterations' claim slip John finds, which ends up leading back to the Court of Owls. It doubles as a reference to the mask tattoo/clue on Ian 'Nito'.
Faith Ackart - "Ackart" is a variant of "ackhart", derived from "ekkehard", which we can say roughly means "brave/hardy". The name "faith" and "hardy" together is another very subtle clue for the audience towards the villains' motives. (Well, I say that, but it was really more of a joke-clue for me to giggle at. And it makes a good reporter name!)
Lou Monger - the guy's a fish monger…with the last name Monger. It's-a joke! ;D
Ian 'Nito' Coggs - first mentioned without his real last name, but "Ian Coggs, Nito", is a pun on the word "incognito"…which is what Clayface is here.
FriendBook/Chirp/bloggr/uBox - takes on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube respectively. (This started back in my 'Season 3' story, At the Brink of Midnight, though I've since learned that bloggr was a real thing. :T) The 'uBox' is meant to be a play on 'jumping box'/'the box' as other terms for TV, like 'the tube'.
"whole tomato of pins" - the supposed history of tomato-shaped pincushions is that tomatoes placed on mantels repelled evil spirits and guaranteed prosperity, but I really wanted to just allude to the common pin-cushion shape. (My mom once had a whole little basket of strawberry shaped pin-cushions. I remember "borrowing" them a lot as a kid to play with. And then "losing" them.)
"sock and buskin masks" - these are a reference to the "comedic sock" and "tragic buskin (i.e. boot)" of the Greek comedy-tragedy theatre masks. I figured something like them would be a good logo for the "false faces", as BM is obsessed with masks. It also doubles as a natural callback to the "your relationship with x has changed" feature of TT games.
Ch. 4: Suite of Cups
[chapter title] - the first chapter to be a reference to the Tarot, in specific the Minor Arcana of Cups; rather than specifying the card at play outright, this title is a pun on the aforementioned arcana "suite", as the main location of events this chapter are in a casino's hotel suite. One can interpret many Cups cards at play here, but...
○ Specifically, in the Casino's suite/crime scene, there are 8 visible seats, but 7 cups on the table. The 7 of Cups refers to choices, fantasy, and illusion, an indicates there are multiple opportunities or many paths you can take, but they should be chosen carefully; when reversed, it can mean confusion, diversion, and temptation, and indicate a lack of choice or failure to choose.
○ The upright version is definitely in play, with the overall root of TellTale games being choices, and some "the player" makes this chapter will move your relationships with Tiffany and John in different ways, which can strengthen your relationships with them. If "the player" has chosen to be a more violent Batman, the way the Talon - and later, the Court - treats Batman is different.
○ The Reversed reading can be interpreted for the Court's complete disregard for the mere notion of choice.
Bauta - a Venetian carnival mask, meant to represent 'anonymous decisions' via it's original design of protecting identities. It's quite common in carnivals.
Melpomene-Thalia - the Venetian masks for comedy and tragedy, a la 'sock and buskin', the masks used as a general symbol for theatre. You can practically taste the irony, given who's shown wearing it...
Volto - a Venetian mask, meant to represent 'anonymity, quiet exit' for it's blank face. It's also known as the "Citizen Mask" because of it's worn by the common folk (in comparison to the more elaborate masks).
The Lot [casino] - named for "drawing lots", like drawing straws or matches to pick a person to do a task (usually with the shortest straw having to do the task, but it varies). This is both a pun on the fact that it's a casino - where you try your luck at gambling - and corresponds with the theme of foretelling the future that's woven throughout much of the story.
The Wednesday Nighters gang - this doesn't mean anything in particular. I'm a big fan of Midsomer Murders, and there's an episode ("Death in a Chocolate Box") where it references a few dirty cops who frequently took the Friday night shift at a station for episode-plot-reasons, who called themselves The Friday Nighters. It's an off-shoot reference to it, hence the corrupt cops on the gang in this story. :)
[John's voicemail] - Another BtAS episode I love is "the terrible secret of Bruce Wayne". In particular, I loved Joker's voicemail when Dr. Strange calls in ("Boy, do YOU have the wrong number!") and I wanted to do something like that. But, y'know, way less murdery.
"F85H4ND" - l33t-written "Fate's Hand", for…well, the hand of fate, supposedly guiding you through life/events. Another correspondent to the foretelling the future theme.
Michael Hodgson - not all of the names I pick for characters mean anything. Sometimes their names are just loose references to things I like. This is a silly mish-mashup of the original hosts of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Michael [Nelson] and [Joel] Hodgeson. (Joel was the first host + show creator, and Mike was the second host who closed out the original series run.)
"40F5WRD5" [Batcomputer archive] - l33t for the 4 of Swords, a card in the Minor Arcana for rest and restoration; since the archives and file names are randomly generated when not prompted otherwise with manual input, an otherworldly force seems to be saying 'get some damn sleep Bruce'.
[John's ringtone] - I know, TT always has everyone's phone on silent. I don't care. Bruce's ringtone for John is "Mack the Knife", a song about a violent mobster, played on a carnival organ. Chosen because 1) John probably loves that song, 2) I thought it was funny that it has the line "the shark bites - with his teeth, dear - when he shows them pearly whites" and how well that goes with John's A+ dental care... 3) TeamFourStar made jokes in their BtTTS S2 playthrough about having "a special ringtone whenever John calls [them]"…why would I not carry that through? They did get me to where we are now, you know. ;)
Ryde - the in-game stand-in for Lyft, the not-a-taxi service.
Ch. 5: The Wheel Still Spins on the Upturned Chariot
[chapter title] - a reference to 2 tarot cards in the Major Arcana. 1) "The Wheel"/"The Wheel of Fortune", which is a sign for continuous cycles, inevitable fate, and usually indicates good fortune and pre-destiny when the card is presented upright. When reversed, it can signify bad luck and an unfavorable fate. 2) "The Chariot", symbolizing a path forward to success, confidence, and overcoming obstacles; when reversed, it's stands for recklessness and lack of direction/control. 3) As the Chariot is upside down, John's original plans have been upended and everything goes out of his control in a chaotic situation. He’s essentially "not at the driver’s seat" for a little while. "The player" decides which direction to take the wheel in - either letting him lash out violently and send him on more solitary and dangerous path, or satisfy his need for stability by embracing his new relationships. The Chariot is always upturned here, but whether the wheel spins forward or backward is up to "the player's" decisions.
511 N. Blade Street - this one's a bit messy. 511 = V I I, or VII in roman numerals, which =7. The tarot cards are traditionally numbered in roman numerals. North, for pointing upright, and "blade" is synonymous with "sword". So it’s the "7 of Swords", in the upright position – referring to deception and trickery, which is of course what's going on in regards to who Ian 'Nito' Coggs really is…
Apt 1005 - even muddier, but this is referring to the 10 of Swords, which is for betrayal and backstabbing, hinting at the true motives of "Ian" | Clayface. 10-0-5, so 10 and the l33t for "OS" = 10-o-S.
900 Wanda Way - Both a pun on the phrase “wander away” and the 9 of Wands in the Minor Arcana, which alludes to pushing forward to achieve victory. A good allusion for a clinic, me-thought.
400 Wanda Way - The 4 of Wands in the Minor Arcana stands for community, another good allusion for a clinic.
Karen McCarthy - named after the most stereotypically uptight narcissistic asshole the masses have agreed to call 'Karen', and both McCarthyism and another famous lady with the surname McCarthy. Because I wanted you to know the second you see her name that she is *horrible*. (Funny, though, there's 2 senators named McCarthy that are pieces of shit and one infamous quasi-celeb who's the face of the anti-vax scene. Is it just a cursed family name?)
Ch. 6: The Tips of Our Swords
[chapter title] - Refers to the 4 of Swords card in the Minor Arcana, as the "swords" are alluding to the four active members in the Batfam - Bruce, John, Tiffany, and Iman - who work together on the case[s]; you can infer this title to a presentation not unlike the Musketeers joining swords to affirm themselves as a team, as they all gather together. The reversed reading of the card is for restlessness/stress in Bruce's case, and the clear signal of the universe to tell him to relax, and the reading when presented right-side up is for the break it gives to "the player", with the homey atmosphere of the Batfam spending time together. Either reading is completely valid here.
○ BUT, as Alfred is a non-active member of the Batfam, we could also say that 5 of Swords is also at play, right-side-up for the fighting and resentment with Alfred, and John's hinted budding conflict with him; and 5 reversed for Bruce's attempts at making up with Tiffany. If one illustrated the gathering of our four heroes joining swords like the musketeers over a breakfast table, then Alfred would be sitting drinking tea, standing as a symbol of the Ace of Cups, signifying new emotions or stirrings of feelings.
○ If we stretch the metaphor eeeven further, the title can also be a loose reference to the Sword of Damocles; threats always hang above the heads of powerful people, and in this case the looming threat of Black Mask and the mysterious assassin, ever-present in Batman's world…
Dr. Brandi September - literally "Sword" and "Seventh Month", alluding to the 7 of Swords, hinting to deception and manipulation at play.
"I was tired of the soup du jour" - a shameless Devo reference; a tiring of the routine/everyday. "I'm tired of the soup du jour - I want to end this prophylactic tour - ain't nobody around me - understands my potato - I'm only a spud boy - lookin' for a real tomato" - DEVO, "Mr DNA/Smart Patrol".
Motel 11, Augury Road - "augury" is another word for crows; as a gathering of crows can be a method of fortune-telling, this a reference to a gathering of 11 crows, which when seen is supposed to be indicative of disguising or revealing secrets.
Ch. 7: Drawing the Strings
[chapter title] - meant to allude to John aligning the strings connecting the people and crimes together, like an old-fashioned way of mapping clues; can be interpreted as these crime-strings on the proverbial board being drawn closer together, marking the center of the "web" as the Court of Owls
Frieda Baast - Frieda, an allusion to the Norse goddess Freya, who rode on a chariot driven by cats, and Baast, the Egyptian goddess who had the form of a cat. It makes it really obvious who was staying at the Motel 11, huh?
room 14 [Selina Kyle's motel room] - a reference to the 14th tarot card, "Temperance", which when upright is meant for choosing the middle path between choices. This is meant to reference Selina herself, currently at a secret, personal crossroads and being in "the middle"; John can influence her hidden choice by either making her think about what her potential job's employers are really aligning themselves with, or taunting her into how she can't leave her old life behind. (Whether John is violent or not doesn't completely impact her choice, but it does impact how they interact later if Selina winds up in the hands of our villains.)
Oracle, Spoiler, Batgirl, Spectrum - Batman's had a lot of non-Robin sidekicks in comics, including Batgirl (originally Barbara Gordon), Oracle (Barbara Gordon, post-Batgirl-forced-retirement and computer hacker extraordinaire), and Spoiler (Stephanie Brown, who "spoiled" crimes). As a fan of Ao3/tumblr's @fractualized 's own Telltale Bat-verse fics (the "Release John Doe" series), I added in the reference to "Spectrum", which Tiffany became in lieu of "Robin". A wink from one fan-writer to another! ;)
"I'm steppin' out, my dear - to breathe an atmosphere […] - that simply reeks […] with class" - John's singing a classic Fred Astaire hit, "Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails".
Eric, Jerome, Jeremiah, Jack [John's "Normal name" ideas] - As this story allows "the player" to pick a name for John to use in place of his own, you can pick between some classic and modern references to Joker's alternate personas over the years. Eric White Border (edit: goddang it that's what i get for looking at White Knight while writing this up and never double-checking), Joker's regular persona in the New 52 Batman comic line; Jerome or Jeremiah of the Gotham TV series, both of which are different aspects of Joker's personality through media, with a more modern gritty version in Jerome (think Heath Ledger's Joker) and a more modern take on Joker's sociopathy in Jeremiah; and last but not least Jack Napier, the first official name of Joker circa Tim Burton's Batman (1989), and the one most popularly used (BtAS and other comics throughout the years since use this name). "The player"'s choice doesn't impact the story or the way John acts, but it does give a surprise feature later. ;)
Matt Chaney - Aka, "Clayface", Matt has both new and old elements in his name alone. Matt, for Matt Hagen, the most well-known/used of the Clayface personas, and Chaney, for classic film actor Lon Chaney, AKA the man of a thousand faces. This Clayface is an aspiring actor who is psychologically dependent on Moddy to keep him handsome after a terrible car accident left his face marred. He uses his excellent makeup skills and acting to infiltrate the False Face Society, and double-plays them and the Court of Owls.
Root / MuSec - stand-ins for Vine and TikTok, respectively. "MuSec" is both a play on the word "musac" (the word for 'elevator music' and generic produced music you hear in fake stores and the like) and the mish-mash of the words "music" and "second", referencing the short length of the videos. "Root" was used in a prior story (At the Brink of Midnight), and acts as another "natural network" type name akin to Vine; though I do recognize "Vine" might have come along as part of the phrase "I heard it through the grape-vine". I have a feeling some Aussie fans might find the fake-Vine name funny...or just awkward.
Ch. 8: It Had to Be You
[chapter title] - A reference to the classic crooner song, "It Had to Be You"; specifically, the one that flows through the first scene is a cover done by Frank Sinatra, meant to align with other Bat-media's use of Sinatra where Joker and Batman are concerned. The Arkham games got his famous "Under My Skin", and another crooner's "Only You". Batjokes fans/content creators have also used "Strangers in the Night" for their relationship. I wanted to present one that would feel at-home in the TellTale universe regardless of what route you end up with, and what's more perfect than a song about finally discovering the love of your life? The song fits them to a tee, in my humble opinion…
Estella Art Gallery - Selina's art gallery, mentioned previously to have been the site of a Talon attack. "Estella" translates to "star", for the tarot card "The Star". When presented upright, it means hope and rebirth; this card can be presented after a disaster, such as an event like "The Tower". Normally, it can be interpreted as a card to show a phase where you have trust and faith in yourself and the universe. Selina was turning over a new leaf and enjoying her new life until the Owls found out who she was.
Mrs. Bollard - "bald-headed person"…this poor woman got her wig snatched as John stole Bruce from her on the dance floor. xD
"I knew today's horoscope was bullshit" - a nod to earlier, where Roman mentioned his horoscope when visiting Bruce; "a friend will help you out of a tight bind." Not that it was mentioned like that... still! I wonder what today's was? "You will be fortunate in your business endeavors"? Ha ha ha! But really, the horoscope is another nod to the theme of foretelling the future, as it's a popular method to try and see how your day, month, season, or year will be. Not that I know what sign Roman is… *thinking face*
[Achievement Unlocked: Batman Who Laughs] - John showing up in the Batman cowl was not only funny, but a direct nod to the Batman Who Laughs. The TT games had Batman comic titles often used as Achievements, so I figured I'd put in some…
[Achievement Unlocked: Batwoman Rises] - Iman helping the team out in the spare Batman suit is naturally a nod to Batwoman, and something I wanted to do for a while. ;D
Brighella - a Venetian mask taken from a play now used to depict a cunning and mischievous servant. Originally the mask was used to depict a greedy villain character.
The Two Gilded Cups - A restaurant in-story that references "The Two of Cups" tarot card, a card representing unity, partnership, and two becoming one. When upright, it's a card that can reference lovers or a new relationship; when reversed, it can represent broken communication, imbalance, or tension. As such, the couple who were seen at the restaurant - Sonja Townsend and her husband - are established lovers who work together for the Court of Owls, but those who were really there are Jackie Lant and Matt Chaney, who are in an imbalanced relationship. "Gilded" implies that "The Cups" are covered unnecessarily with gold - this is both in reference to Jackie and Matt's disguise of the Townsends and the truth about their relationship. Matt's lies are covering for his narcissism and selfishness, and ultimately is the only thing holding him and Jackie's relationship together.
Moddy - A fictional body modification clay-mud-putty that's a product of Janus Industries, this makeup is the favorite of Matt Chaney and the reason we can call him "Clayface". Like the traditional Clayface, Matt is in dire need to have his fix of the makeup, despite what it does to him - as John notes, it leaves a weird burn-like sensation, and since Matt has deep scar tissue he covers every minute of every day, it's made the skin damage worse.
"You’re really committed to drowning in that river" - A riff on the old joke "denial ("de Nile") isn't just a river in Egypt".
"Your words are honey in my ears, but my brain always turns it into bitter wax" - In Futurama, Fry has a silly line of “Sweet words! Sweet words that turn into bitter wax in my ears!”. It always had the potential to be a great metaphor if the words were twisted around! :) Plus, I mean, come on, this is a totally On Brand™ thing for John to say!
Ch. 9: Strength in Numbers
[chapter title] - Referencing the Strength card, for bravery, compassion, and inner strength; the title also doubles as a play on “different kinds of strengths”. Strength is the will the expose your truths. Strength is finding compassion to help others. Strength is staying true to your convictions in the face of opposition. We see all different kinds of strength on display here.
○ It can also a reference to the different partnerships going on, with Jackie joining the team (unofficially), Bruce and Tiffany going off to tackle the other half of our case, and John and Iman’s team-up. :)
"[John] could barely hear it over the tinny electronic whistling tune emitting from his own phone, telling him the person on the other end was a mystery" - this is referencing an old tumblr joke! Yes, John has the “It is a mystery” tone on his phone for unknown calls…complete with the little (:o) ghost icon.
CUP5K1NG [license plate] - Referring to the King of Cups card, a card portraying emotional balance and compassion. As it's not written as "K1NGCUP5", it implies it's a reversed card, signifying there's manipulation and instability at work. Even though Matt doesn't own the car this license plate belongs to, it's definitely tied to him since it's his getaway ride, and thus hints at what's to be revealed in his and Jackie's hotel room.
Aylin Street - the name "Alyin" translates into “moon halo; one that belongs to the moon”, thereby being a reference to the Moon card, representing mysteries and illusions. An investigation is afoot!
“Looks like I’ve got the red light, kiddo.” - In stage acts, the red light is to indicate to the performer their time on stage is up. Generally, it’s reserved for comedians who either overrun their time or are losing the audience. John's joking that he's been given the red light to exit stage left (but not persued by bear).
"What’s the ‘G’ for?” - Iman's 'Gotham Construction' jumpsuit has a G different from John's - it's shaped more like a gear. This is another Mystery Science Theater reference, in particular the logo for Gizmonic Institute, the company/labs that "employed" original host Joel and the mad scientist Dr. Forrester (and his assistant, TV's Frank), who started the experiments of forcing a guy and his robot friends to watch reeeally bad movies. The result was 12 (soon to be 13!) seasons of some guys making hilarious and very memorable jokes at said bad movies' expense. Does this reference mean that Bruce is just as huge a dork as I am, or does it mean that MST3K is real in this universe?! You make the call! ;D
○ …if you read 'What's the 'G' for?' in Invader Zim's voice, that's also valid. Especially if you followed it with “I dON’t know!” in GIR's. (There is no cringing here! We openly embrace our childhood silliness!)
MasterOfClayFace / #IdW3arThat [Matt Chaney's social media login] - naturally Matt is so far up on his high horse that he considers himself a master of clay work…and of course his nickname is ClayFace! His password is a joke in and out of canon, being a riff on Lemon Demon song: “A mask of my own face – I’d wear that” ~ Lemon Demon, “Mask of My Own Face” [Nature Tapes].
3055 [Jackie Lant's InstaPic followers] - According to research, the average Instagram following is about 1000, so Jackie is above average popularity. Anything above 10k is usually(?) celeb status. The number 3055 is meant to be broken up and turned partially into l33t, to make 3-O-S-S, or 3 of Sword[s]. The 3 of Swords card in the tarot signifies heartbreak and grief, stemming from betrayal, loneliness, and rejection. Jackie experienced all three of these heart-piercing swords during her return to Gotham, with Matt basically forcing her into isolation, betraying her trust, and rejecting her input and values in favor of his own; but she didn't really know it until the truth was exposed.
8055 [Matt Chaney's InstaPic followers] - similarly, Matt's follower count is meant to be 8-O-S-S, or the 8 of Swords card. It signifies self-victimization and imprisonment. In particular, the card shows a person restrained and trapped, but their helplessness is a show…they could choose to get out, if they got over themselves. Matt is incredibly selfish, so it comes as no surprise that he will play the victim card.
#OnlyInGotham - Another tumblr reference! I love the @hashtagonlyingotham blog! ( ^3^)
The Herold Rite's Theatre - A play on the word "Hierophant": Herold, like “herald (ruler/champion)” and Rites, like “sacred rites”. In the tarot, the Hierophant card represents following tradition and values, which for the Owls is their very core. This is basically a big ol' hint that Iman and John are heading into Owl territory, but also foreshadows the religious undercut of The Court and Reverend Sebastian Overfield's role.
"a familiar red-pyramid-and-floating-eyeball" [graffiti] - A reference to my icon! ;D You think I can't self-promo?
trading cards [found in theatre storage] - In the Theatre, John finds "old promotional trading cards for an old sci-fi film with big-brained aliens". This is a shameless and loving reference to Tim Burton's 1996 film Mars Attacks!, of which my AO3/tumblr icon and username is lifted - the movie was based on a series of Topps trading cards from the 1960's, and had it's own set of cards with movie scenes and behind-the-scenes pictures (and summaries of events) printed for the movie! They also used them as promotional tools, and if you get very lucky purchasing a copy of the old single-issue comic books from the 1995 Mars Attacks run from Image Comics, you can get a promo card.
https://bit.gt.gd/S3272019F?=RO - Originally "gd" stood for a derivative of Google Drive, but I can’t look at it and not see “get good”. The "S3272019F?" is meant to stand for "Started: March 27, 2019 Finished: ?". I can't believe I started uploading the story in March of 2019! Man, 2020 really messed with my sense of time…
Ch. 10: Tantara Bounces Off of Moonlit Walls
[chapter title] - "Tantara" is defined as "the blare of a trumpet or horn", as seen in the Judgement card, which stands for self-reflection as well as reckoning, and can indicate rebirth. There's of course another reference to the Moon card, for intuitions and the unconscious being. Then what are the "[Moonlit] Walls"? Well, they're the part of the only Major Arcana tarot card to represent a building - they are the walls of the Tower, symbolizing destruction and disaster. When all the cards' meanings are put all together, this alludes to a time of discovery among absolute disaster.
○ Expanded, the whole title is a reference to both forms of Judgement occurring – self-reflection and change are happening with Bruce and John as their mysteries and anxieties are finally put to rest: John is undergoing his final "rebirth", seeing his reality clearly in Arkham’s padded cell; Bruce seems to finally come to terms with working with Tiffany, as his fear of not being able to protect her comes through with her showing she's able take care of herself and prove she's a true asset to the team; and the Court of Owls finally comes to light, with Matt Chaney, the Talon Adam, and the Talon Sonja Townsend finally showing their real motivations.
○ We can also interpret the title as a reckoning coming for the Owls, who have long been obscuring the truth of their deeds and whose true motives have been murky. They've built their own tower of disaster with bricks of delusion, and judgement's horn is blaring a warning through their hallways…
"X-Sharp Manufacturing" - a reference to the 10 of Swords (hence the "sharp"), the tarot card for betrayal, backstabbing, and defeat. For Bruce, there is disaster here beyond his control that ends in a [temporary] defeat. For Roman Sionis, owner of the small factory as part of Janus Inc., he's unwittingly walked into his own betrayal.
"Merlin's Flower Arrangements" - Merlin, a famous wizard, is a reference to The Magician card, who defines “as above, so below”… And as John is taken to a secondary location, so is Bruce. :)
"La Luna Painting" - La Luna, aka The Moon; remember, shadows can play tricks on your eye, so something’s afoot here… Aka "HEY GUYS THIS TOTALLY ISN’T SUSPICIOUS OR ANYTHING NO SIR"
Yelsnia Theater - Yelsnia is…actually a name. But searching for it shows my true hint, as it's "Ainsley" backwards. "Ainsley" derives from Scottish words meaning “alone, solitary” or “hermitage”. This is a reference to the Hermit card – in this case, it's blatantly upside down, referring to loneliness, isolation, and a general disconnection with mankind. AKA, the path Matt is on.
"the looming pillar tower" [Arkham] - A blatant representation of The Tower. It stands for impending disaster and "an upheaval of a foundation of reality". Of course, this can be taken in two ways. 1) That John has overcome/avoided the disaster of another mental breakdown. 2) That John’s foundation of his delusions - that he’ll wake up in or get sent back to Arkham for his sickness - was wrong in a realistic sense, as he’s made serious progress in managing his emotional issues, and right in an unrealistic one, where the only way he could be sent back was through an outside force, i.e. the Owls.
10210475 [inmate number] - When separated for the numeric cipher, we get 10-21-4-7-5, or J-U-D-G-E
13051420 [inmate number] - When separated for the numeric cipher, we get 13-5-14-20, or M-E-N-T
○ When put together, the inmate numbers read "Judgement", the tarot card is shown here for John's choices and character arc on display throughout this chapter. When the card is reversed, it implies a lack of self-awareness, which we can also attribute to "the player's" choices for John if they make Bad Decisions. If you simply take the word "judgement" at face-value (without involving the tarot) it also works wonderfully, applying to John's entire situation as being a trial/judgement set by a higher force.
"The prince returned to the tower" dialogue [the prophetic cell mate] - Whether the person speaking is physical or not, John notes he can hear the scratching of pencil on paper within the cell, implying a person is writing their words down like a story… “The prince,” (John Doe, alias Joker, traditionally the ‘Clown Prince’ of Gotham) “having returned to the tower” (Arkham Asylum, the foundations of John's issues) “to reclaim his crown,” (assurance in himself and his reality; the completion of John's "self" with his final choices and becoming Vigilante!Joker for good) “trails after the fiend” (confronts the Talon Adam, alias Owl-man) “who's flying on wings of retribution” (core beliefs, perceived sense of justice). “The fiend’s wings are big, but the bones are brittle” (the Owl-man is imposing and persistent, but his physical "wings" are his weakness).
○ If you couple the Court of Owl's belief that G*d has written down the destinies of everyone in the world [as they are each born] with the knowledge that someone was writing down a short version of John's events at Arkham…hmmm.....
Room 11 [Iman's cell room] - The 11th card in the Major Arcana is "Justice". This can reference either 1) The just-desserts coming for Talon Adam/"The Owlman", or 2) The outcome of the player’s choice to take Iman with them or not.
11 minutes + 16 seconds [remaining time on bomb timer] - 11:16. 11/16, aka my birthday! :) I only wish I had finished Chapter 10 in time for the chapter's publishing year (2020), lol~
"Our Faith brings Perseverance, and Our Perseverance guides Justice, for Mercy to God." - The Court of Owls' beliefs circle around 3 principles bringing people closer to G*d: Faith, Perseverance, and Justice. Their belief hardens their persistence in their actions (as they are written and not guided by "Evil"), and their goals are ultimately to deliver justice where the human system failed and "Evil" prevailed in "escaping", hence the guiding of one principle to another. "Mercy to God" is what is granted by righting the injustices of the world; as G*d wrote your future down exactly, Evil can corrupt it, and once corrupted this does G*d a harmful injustice. The Court considers themselves close to G*d by "mercifully" stopping further corruption via eliminating "Evil" in all it's worldly forms…
Speaking of the 3 principles, our main Owls are meant to be "embodiments" of these in the story.
○ Talon Sonja Townsend represents Faith, driving home her belief in G*d's absolute destiny. She is corrupted by her own selfish goal of eliminating her son-in-law, but is also so by-the-book she does not think to look at the obvious double-standards of the Court, and doesn't think her underlying actions are guided by "Evil".
○ Talon Adam represents Perseverance, having fought Joker to unconsciousness, and was willing to blow up Arkham with himself still inside just to eliminate it; he is the most brainwashed, but the least corrupt in motivations, only striving to get what he feels is "justice". On the flip side of Adam is Talon Evan, who despite serious injury still appeared in Court and jumped at the chance to kill Joker and Batman, despite the Court's general appreciation of Batman; he is corrupt in personal selfishness, as he possesses no "real" faith in the Court's belief system and doesn't like others getting credit by stealing his targets.
§ ...it's also worth mentioning that the names for Adam and Evan are meant to be derivative of "Adam and Eve". In this way, it can also be seen as a parallel to The Lovers card, which one can attribute to Bruce and John. While Bruce + John are oddly harmonious and undeniably have a strong bond regardless of story paths, Adam + Evan are discontent rivals, with Adam "stealing" Evan's target and good graces with the Court, and Evan very pointedly beating up and kidnapping Batman (who Adam admires) to set up Batman's eventual Judgement.
○ Reverend Sebastian Overfield is the main representation of Justice, though he embodies all 3 principles. The Court’s belief is that their pursuit of justice – stopping Evil/chaos via deaths of criminals – overrides their own traditional sins. Because they are being helpful to G*d, granting Them mercy by righting the injustices of Evil and putting G*d’s Word back on the right path, they are in G*d’s favor. Therefore, as the leader of the Court and the one who organized everything by handing down "God's word", he is the carrier of Justice; without him, the Court would be nowhere and G*d would be shedding more tears over their ruined work…at least, in his mind. Naturally, he is the exact opposite of what justice should be. He is biased and unwavering in strict faith, as much a carrier of chaos as he doesn't want to be…
○ Of course, this is all also up to interpretation. One can interpret Adam as "justice", Evan as "perseverance", and Sebastian as the stand-in for "God", as he is the Court's ruler and is the sole person to hand down "the word of God".
"[…]if two people you normally count on for one reason or another" - Alfred made a subtle dig at John being Bruce's boy-toy. Ouch, Al'…
"[…]given it's your pet project, and all" - Even though Selina is talking about Arkham, she's making a dig at former-Arkham-resident John being Bruce's "pet", who in her eyes was Bruce's main reason for getting Arkham revitalized. :\ Man, everybody's picking on their relationship…
petrichor - The smell proceeding rain. Because it's not a climactic fight scene in Gotham city without rain.
Ch. 11: The Tolls of Justice
[chapter title] - Naturally referring to the Justice card of the tarot, this title is the same as the story title. Funnily enough, this is the 11th chapter, and the 11th card in the tarot deck. (I guarantee you I did not plan this bit… Funny how these things play out, ain't it?) The Justice card naturally stands for cause and effect, clarity, or truth; ultimately, it's a representation of karmic retribution, and what the Owls are in dire need of facing. The title overall is referring to both the [para]phrase "do not ask for whom the bell tolls, for it tolls for thee" (in the original context: a grievance over death for all out of love for community/mankind, not just one person) and the "toll" - as in cost or damage - of enacting justice. What Bruce has put himself through to become and keep being Batman, the enactor of vengeance for all those wronged in the city of Gotham, and what ultimately the Court of Owls has sacrificed - either wittingly or unwittingly - in the name of justice. It also extends to John, who for the sake of "justice" is routinely stuck in Arkham, in one way or another, and has never had a conceivably just or fair life at all - thus paying the unwilling toll opposing Bruce and the Owls. We can also extend it to Tiffany, who is making good on her work with Bruce to "pay her toll" for her own crime, with her toll being seen in a positive light as Robin, compared to what life sentence she might have been paying otherwise.
[the sword in the pulpit] - a symbolic reference to The Justice card, as the Justice card in the major arcana often depicts a sword, either alone or in someone's hand. This can also be interpreted as a reference to the Ace of Swords in the minor arcana, which is normally pointing upwards, referring to victory, truth, or ideas; when flipped, as it would be when looking at the initial depiction of the sword as a "cross", it stands for lies and confusion. The sword in the story itself is a symbol of justice, and uses snakes as the stand-in for the forces of Evil, which are destroyed by the owl making up the handle and supposedly wielding the blade.
"the skull peeking out of the knight’s helmet" [card in the box on Reverend's desk] - A very clear reference to the Death card, famous in the tarot deck. It signifies change, inevitable cycles, and new beginnings/directions. Depending on the reading, it can be interpreted as an actual death, but more often than not it’s merely showing of a life change. As this is the Reverend’s deck, it seems the last card he drew was Death… The viewer can interpret this as a reading from the Reverend into the Arkham plot, where Death is representing John’s own changes, the end of Talon Adam’s latest “cycle”, or the actual deaths that had occurred (no matter how many there are in the end). The viewer can also read this as the Reverend trying to find his own fate, the fate of Roman Sionis for his trial, or Batman’s fate. All of them are quite valid, but I feel the most accurate interpretation is that the Rev' was trying to read the future of the Court of Owls.
○ …as mentioned above, the Death card is the most overt reference to the Tarot. This way, if someone didn't piece together the weird chapter titles, the specified numbers and number-letter strings, and/or the odd names of people and places, they'd be able to double-back and see them as clues. They are put there purely as a storytelling clue for the audience. As you can tell, the tarot references increased with each chapter…almost like someone is trying to get your attention…
[the framed painting] - a reference to The High Priestess, aka card II of the tarot. This card is indicative of intuition and looking within, and can signal to mysteries at hand or a higher power at work. The pillars on the card are (hilariously enough) marked with a B and J, and are in black and white, respectively. They stand for Boaz (Strength) and Jachin (Establishment), and are meant to represent the duality of nature, good/evil, masculine/femine, etc. Naturally, both pillars are equal. In this depiction, it is both relating to “the player’s” own duality, with the ability to be flexible as Bruce and John and have both good and bad decisions play through the story, and as a strong hint to a higher power being present.
8-9-6-3 [candle puzzle] - It takes a bit to work out by sorting through the alphabetic values to each number, but it doesn’t make a complete word. On ye olde phone keypad, 1 is always null in value, so it’s always unlit in the candle sequence, and since there are 4 other numbers present we know it doesn’t count as part of the string. (If there were only 3, you could guess a year from your notes.) My idea for the “game” specs of this part would be that the key-code would be somewhat randomized, either using a specific year (if Tiffany and/or Iman are not present, this is *always* the case, as you have to utilize your background notes and the candles by yourself), a few translated letter combinations just for fun, or an occasional number-card type combo, as presented here. (In some lucky scenarios, “the player” doesn’t have to solve the candle puzzle, since Tiffany can figure out the year by herself and just call you over when she opens the door. You still have the option of looking around, though!) In this case, the values are another tarot-themed hint, using the card number first: 8-w-n-d, for the 8 of Wands, which alludes to quick actions. AKA “Get ready for quick-time events!!!”
"looking more like the king on the throne than a judge" - Meant to allude to The Emperor card, the ultimate royal symbol in the major arcana and always depicted with a king. Traditionally this symbolizes power, authority, control, etc., but when reversed it alludes to overbearingness, arrogance, and chaos. For the Owls, they would likely see themselves as the upright depictions, even when presented upside down before the person doing their reading… And here is no better example, with the Reverend Overfield taking place as the ultimate authority over the Court.
"like [Sonja] had a say in commanding the room" - Alluding to The Empress, in conjunction with Rev’s position, this card alludes to femininity, motherhood, nurturing, creativity, and/or abundance. When reversed, it stands for neglect, creative blocks, overbearing, and/or uncaring. Sonja is a good example of an overbearing mother, trying to make decisions for her child because she thinks she knows best - thus fits the reversed reading well.
[Courtroom layout] - How curious is it that I haven't referenced The Devil when we have so many opportunities? That's because I strove to show this card rather than reference it overtly. The Devil card depicts El Diablo in the upper middle, lording over the card, with two souls chained to him at the bottom. The classic depiction shows a female demon-like human on one side and a male demon-like human on the other. As such, Rev. Sebastian sits on the high bench as the judge, overlooking the courtroom, and Sonja and Evan sit beneath him, one embedded on each side of the lower bench, sitting before him rather than beside him. Naturally, The Devil card represents temptation, manipulation, and materialism (though not necessarily of physical things). There is nothing more suited to The Devil card than the Reverend Sebastian Overfield and the Talons.
Circe | Cindy Peterson - Circe was the original Black Mask's downfall, or at least serious decent into who would be Black Mask. In her origin, she was a model who seduced Roman and ended up being blamed for his poor business choices, as he completely revolved Janus Inc.'s new direction around her image, somewhat at her insistence. Roman seemed to love her, but grew vengeful when she dumped him. She was named Circe, after the witch who lured men to their doom. In this story, she plays a much less active role but ultimately still serves as Roman's downfall, though in a very different way. : she does seem to care about Roman, going so far as to hide him on her yacht, not rat him out for his overt gang activities, and even leave Gotham with him for good to run from Batman despite not being in a relationship with him for long. But Bruce is able to spin this to his advantage, openly lying that she was working for him undercover and twisting Roman's affection for her into paranoid doubt, which he eventually lashed out with and ended up being caught because of. Circe never got a ~proper~ name in the original canon, so I dubbed her Cindy. The name "Cindy" can be boiled down to “person from Kynthos” and since Circe is Greek… Well, it fits well enough!
"[…]waltzing into the danger-zone without his wingman" - It’s Top Gun's “You can be my wingman anytime”, but with ALL the homoerotic implications!
"the Degnah Club" - The Degnah Club can be inferred to be one of Roman Sionis’ clubs, or just one his False-Face Society visited on occasion, but the event that happened there is implied to have taken place before the start of the story. “Degnah” when written backwards is “hanged”, referencing the Hanged Man card. When upright, this card means sacrifice and selfless acts. When reversed, as very much implied here, it’s an unnecessary sacrifice. This is both a play on what Roman’s implying – which is likely a very violent event – being an “unnecessary sacrifice” as part of Matt Chaney’s greater scheme for the Court of Owls, and as an allusion to Matt’s fate, where his morals/good choices/old law-abiding life were thrown away for an inevitably failed pursuit.
"[Tiffany | Robin's] personal count of 13" - The 13th card in the tarot is Death, bringer of change and ender of cycles. It’s also a traditionally unlucky number. This number is the “body-count” of Tiffany’s run through the Court so far. Does it reference the end of the Court's latest cycle, or something else…?
Accompanying the Tarot, as mentioned earlier I also tied in other fortune-telling methods, with the counting of crows and reference to the zodiacal horoscope. I also threw in allusions to luck, with The Lucky Hotel and The Lot (in both name and the fact that it's a casino). This is all tied entirely around the concept of fate and being able to change it with the choices you have made or currently make as "the player". Luck itself has nothing to do with your choices and the fates you guide Bruce and John to, and it's not something "the player" can control - it's an illusion, with things seemingly lucky for our heroes having already been written in on purpose to lead to the next event. It's essentially a long, drawn-out joke.
Talons/Reverend's Owl Masks - I wanted the Talons to be set apart from the rest of the Court and have special owl faces. The Court's owl masks are as follows:
○ Talon Adam - Great Horned Owl; chosen for the owl's large size and hunting ability, as well as the protruding "horn" feathers mimicking Batman's cowl. This is the most common owl used in media. The "horns" are meant to clue the reader into the culprit early on. Adam's a Batman-fan, so he mimicked Bats' style.
○ Talon Sonja - Snowy Owl; chosen for the owl's fairly elegant feather pattern and Sonja's ~colder~ personality. Sonja had a masquerade one to show her "humane" side to prospective Owls, but always wears a full-faced mask for the rest of the Court.
○ Talon Evan - Barn Owl; chosen for it's ghost-like face and screeching call, and it's hunting skills. They sometimes are seen as bad omens. While Adam was a mysterious stalker, Evan is overtly dangerous upon appearance, in no due part to his temper.
○ Reverend Sebastian Overfield - Eastern Screech Owl; this owl is smaller than the other, but has similar "horn" feathers to the Great Horned, and a gray face. The "horns" are meant to be another a mirror to Batman, but can be considered another allusion to The Devil. It isn't the largest or flashiest owl of the bunch, but Sebastian has the most power of all the Court members.
[The "Justice" bell-toll] - traditionally, a church bell tolls to signify someone passing into death. In the Court/Church of Mercy's case, they use a bell rung at midnight to signify a complete "trial" and a carry-out of their own brand of "justice"…which also culminates in death. The "trial" shown in this chapter is a rarity, as the offenders are actually present to get a talking-to before their sentencing - generally, the Church will hold a mock-trial to decide the fates of the perpetrators…after some previous counseling with Talons and select older members. (Think of the Trial like a ceremonial conference for the majority of the time.)
Chapter 12: Ten Cheers to the World!
[title] - The act of cheering, aka toasting, is to raise a cup and drink towards someone or something in celebration or tribute. Here, it's referring to the tarot's Ten (X) of Cups, which is pretty much the best card you could pull in a reading - when upright, as it is here, it means celebration, fulfillment, and happiness! The World card is the final card in the Major Arcana, encapsulating completion, accomplishment, and harmony, all from inner and outer sources. It might seem redundant at first, but the Cups suite in the Minor Arcana is all in regards to emotions, relationships, and love; in comparison, the Major Arcana represents a journey from innocence and ignorance to wisdom and completion. So you have an emotional celebration with fulfilling relationships, and the story's path marked as complete in both a literal and figurative sense.
"An accident at Ace Chemicals" [Iman & John's convo] - Referencing the majority of Joker origins, wherein pre-Joker fell into the vat of chemicals at Ace Chemicals and survived, leading to a psychotic breakdown due to his changed appearance and/or the circumstances around to what led him to Ace Chemicals in the first place.
"the string of deaths in the Velestra mafia" [Iman & John's convo] - a ref to the former mafia/main antagonists in Batman: Mask of the Phantom that kept getting killed off one by one by the Phantom. Whether The Phantom exists in this world…we'll have to wait and see, I guess!
"an unrecoverable ‘data loss’ at the Agency" [Iman & John's convo] - not a reference to canon, but my own theory on a potential background for John being a former Agent…(see further below)
"Et tu, Peeps?" - a riff on "Et tu, Brute?", Julius Ceasar's last words as he was betrayed and stabbed to death.
"Maybe I was someone in the wrong place at the wrong time" / "someone at the right place at the wrong time" [John monologue] - Another reference to the most popular background choice, the Ace Chemical origin story, and it’s variations. Though probably lacking Batsy’s involvement, considering the timeframe…
"Maybe I was some experiment gone wrong" [John monologue] - A reference to a different author's Season 3 replacement fanfic, where John ended up being a genetically modified human/test tube baby. Unfortunately the work got deleted from Ao3??? And my bookmark is gone, so I can't name the fic… But I still remember you, Unknown Author!!! It was a fun story and I've never forgotten that twist!!!! \( >o< )/
"Maybe I was even an Agent, like you" [John monologue] - My own little theory as to why the Agency was so keen on getting him for the Suicide Squad – and why he was considered a dangerous part of the gang despite not doing too much of interest in Season 1 (even if you consider the theory that he was helping Lady Arkham get her chemicals/drugs) – was that he was part of the Agency somehow. Either an agent who screwed up on the job, a rogue agent that escaped death via Agency trap…or maybe a guy who knew too much! But it's a fun, fresh idea to bring to Joker's multi-choice past, right? (( ;w;)) <(please say yes)
hippocampus - The region(s) of the brain that primarily deals with memory.
[the photo] - I wanted to leave it up to the reader/"player" to decide what kind of pre-Arkham past the TellTale!Joker has… So whether you think the picture Iman has is a "real" photo of him or not is entirely up to you.
"[…]'you're the moon to my sun'" [John, 'paraphrasing' Bruce] - In Tarot terms, this is a reference to the Sun card, representing joy, success, and masculinity, as well as another reference to the Moon card. One can also interpret the Sun card as "success in overcoming your obstacles or fears". As the Moon card can represent inner fears and femininity, it's a fitting opposite for interpreting this romantic line. While Bruce doesn't exactly embody the "positivity" and "joy" that this card represents, he brings that feeling into John's life, and Bruce is more traditionally masculine in contrast to John. This is also an overt use of the phrase "[they're] the moon to their sun" - a romantic notion that one person, though the opposite to the other, is completely complementary, like a One True Love. TeamFourStar's playthrough of TellTale Batman: The Enemy Within had not one, but TWO mentions of the "moon to [their] sun" line, the second of which was referring to John and Bruce. This one's for you, fellas!!! ( ^3^)
○ Funnily enough, The Moon is a very broadly interpreted card. Sometimes it's not a good card to have because deception, manipulation, illusion, and mystery/confusion are all potentially at work in your life. Sometimes it's an excellent card, because it tells you examine your feelings to resolve a problem, or tells you that you aren't seeing the whole picture. The reversed of the card is often attributed to avoidance of one's problems and further confusion, but also clarity, truth, and the full view of what's going on. If John is the embodiment of The Moon in the upright position, then I say Bruce is that of the Reversed Moon…
"[…] two lovers against the world" - Another classic romantic phrase that can be turned into a Tarot reference. The original phrase is meaning two romantic partners are pitted against "the world"/external forces that threaten to tear them apart, but they are committed to each other regardless. You can't really pit cards against each other in a reading, but you can read Past-Present-Future. In which case, in story terms, The Fool is always the Past, The Lovers is the Present here, and The World is the Future. As mentioned earlier, The World represents harmony and completion - if reversed, it would mean incompletion and chaos. The Lovers card is representing a strong union being forged between two people, very often romantic in terms of the Tarot. The meaning is usually attributed to decisions in a relationship being made (whether to start a new one, or to deepen the one you have), but it can also represent people outright, as well as an indication that a new partnership/relationship is on the way. When reversed, Lovers represents disharmony, imbalance, or a loss of relationship. In our story, of course, our two lovers are representing the upright reading of the card in the Present, showing as a strong couple. As it's "against", it implies that The World is something that will be a challenge, so it's likely Reversed. Which is a pretty good representation of Gotham in general, isn't it? lol~
○ The Lovers can also be seen symbolically in chapters 8 and 9, when Bruce and John are laying opposite each other and linking pinkies/holding hands at the hotel. :)
○ John uses the romantic line regardless of whether he's a vigilante or not! If you didn't get the Best Ending, aka our Sleepover Ending, Bruce would wind up back in the parlor with John as usual, and once the rest of the fam are gone (if they were there at all), he uses it to describe themselves. In the villain route, Bruce and John converse in the Batmobile on the way back to Arkham, and John uses the line there, too. ;3c
○ Naturally, you don't really get this complete scene if "your" Bruce is with Selina in the vigilante route.
Ending Type - …it's not a tarot reference or anything specific. I just wanted to let you know that you can ONLY get the Sleepover Ending if you have Tiffany and John in Bruce's party on good terms with each other AND with Bruce.
○ You can drive Tiffy away from Bruce by saying she shouldn't be with them at the Court Battle, but also by generally not believing in her/being mean and giving a neutral reaction to her staying during Battle; she won't go back to the cave with Bruce, so you don't get a chance to speak to her directly afterwards as either character. (John can still have his conversation with her via text, and they can still end on the same terms.)
○ If you don't have vigilante!John, there's no one else to help lift the things, so Tiffy's idea is never brought up.
○ John is always simping desperate for Bruce's attention, so even if you don't treat him as well in a platonic relationship, he'll still be there for this Ending type. ;_;
○ If you have a Romanced!Selina in your party, Selina will join you in both Court Battle and the Ending as seen in this story. It'll either cause her to take Iman's place (if she is not present) or to have extra spot suddenly appear above the rest of the group. Like Tiffy, she overheats and needs more space too cool off.
§ You can also talk to her as John, and sort of makeup/say your part of the team now. (But John will still be somewhat jealous of the attention she gets.)
§ John doesn't get the emotional hug with Bruce if Selina is around - especially since she doesn't temporarily leave with Tiffany and Iman - but the conversation is almost the same.
§ Naturally you can talk to her as Bruce, too. I don't think on her options too much, but they'll likely talk about change and what it means to have this "job" and internalizing too much of their emotions/themselves.
§ If you and Selina are only friends, Selina can join you in the Court Battle, but will text you instead of sticking around.
1:06 A.M & [Clock time on Belltower in Chapter 11] - Bruce's sense of time is off, which is why he's surprised it's after 1AM and not closer to 2AM. (Can't blame him, he was unconscious for a while and a whole bunch of stuff happened.) I figured if Bruce broke out of his kidnapping ropes at 10PM sharp, and drove all the way to the GCPD, that's about 20-30 minutes in his supercharged car, if not a little less, plus with 5 minutes to escape proper. If we think GCPD is sort of a halfway point to Old Gotham/The Coventry district, it's another 15 minutes to there. So he'd arrive at the Church of Mercy before 11PM, and wait John for around another 10-15 minutes, including with all the investigating inside. The "trial" scene probably took another 10 minutes until Batman crashed it, and fight scenes seem long because of all the action going on, but by the time Bruce and co' leave, it's not 12AM yet. The bell-tower in the Church of Mercy is actually off by about 20 minutes… And what do you know, card XX (20) of the tarot's Major Arcana is Judgement, alluding to karma at work! It can also be attributed to a life change. ;D
"11:43:20PM" - this wasn't deliberately meant to allude to anything. It took the batfam about 2 minutes from the last toll to leave the church. Bells' tolling speed is varying between clocks and towers, but you can estimate about 30-45 seconds for a full twelve. If it rang at 11:40 exactly, then…ugh, this is sounding like math homework.
Epilogue:
[Still a WIP, so will be updated after it's uploaded! Shouldn't have much, though! Saay, isn't there a Major Arcana card missing? (9v9) I wonder what that iiiiis~]
So that was [just about] all of them! I had a lot of fun weaving them throughout the story this time, especially with the story's themes! AtBoM didn't have as nearly as many, so they weren't really worth mentioning before.
I hope this was helpful to those of you who were interested in diving beneath the surface of BtTTS: TToJ~!
#ttoj#ttoj reference guide#telltale batman#batman the telltale series#tarot cards#I made it a goal to use all the Major Arcana!#fortune-telling#it took me a month to compile this whole guide#I had notes scattered between my Word doc and google doc#hopefully this wasn't too hard to read#even if no one got any of these i'm satisfied!#they were really fun to write!!#edit: corrected Eric's last name (my bad)
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Brevity (But Most Often Not)
→ [2/7] of the Glossary Series
→ summary: All your life, you've been with guys who didn't bother to read the news or appreciate the art form of journalism. But Hoseok... Even the way he carefully chooses his words is a sign that you and he are a match. If only he weren't in a dilapidating psychiatric hospital. Then maybe you'd have a proper boyfriend who treated you right for once.
→ pairing/rating: hoseok x reader | PG-13
→ genre: 100% angst (but like, soft angst?? mellow angst?) | journalist!au
→ warnings: depictions of a psychiatric hospital and mentally ill patients, slight manipulation
→ wordcount: 6.6k
→ a/n: based on this ted talk! *disclaimer,,, the characters in this fic are fictional and do not correlate with the real members whatsoever!*
Merrymoor Hospital stands before you behind the gray clouds of fog that have drifted mysteriously and rather suddenly following your rather nervous departure from your car. Almost as if you've walked straight into a horror movie and Merrymoor Hospital was the haunted castle that would end up dragging you down to your demise.
You swallow.
The foggy weather isn't helping your anxious nerves. The weeds are overgrown in the dirt and a collapsed sign catches your eye. It reads Merrymoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane. That used to be the name for Merrymoor Hospital before they changed it to something a bit more... civil.
No wonder they're trying to close this place down. The whole building looks like a brewery for disaster—or murder if you will.
They should've sent Namjoon up for this job instead of you. The man has thick skin and probably hasn't watched a horror movie in his life, which would probably make him immune to the fear of entering a hospital that screams haunted mansion.
Though your hands are clammy, you make sure to take quick notes in your notebook about the surroundings.
Inhospitable hospital, you write. Might have something to do with weather. Possible revisit.
But you hope it doesn't have to come to that.
You're this jittery for your first visit; you don't want to think of the possibility of a second.
All you can do is hope the first visit at Merrymoor Hospital is so horrible that you can convey the exact picture of it in your writing and get it published. Then the place will shut down.
For nearly six years, citizens have been wanting to shut down Merrymoor because just the thought of these criminally insane people escaping the confines of the asylum terrifies them. And now your agency is taking action. If you write an article convincing enough (about your horrible findings) then Merrymoor will finally be shut down.
Of course, there is a slight chance that Merrymoor isn't as bad as everyone assumes it is. You'll have to report the facts as they are. If there's one thing you hate more than horror movies, it's yellow journalism. You promised yourself that when you became a journalist, you'd write everything as it is without exaggeration and overly pretentious language that the common man wouldn't be able to comprehend without pulling out a dictionary.
So here you are. At Merrymoor.
In a way, the place looks a bit like a college campus. If the campus had been severely mauled by zombies in a post-apocalyptic world, though. Cautiously, you step closer to the entrance of the building. There are guards there—unusually large and buff.
You clear your throat. "Hello." Your voice comes out squeaky and if your body language didn't give away how terrified you are, your voice sure did. "I'm Y/N. I believe I was invited to inspect Merrymoor Hospital today."
"Y/N..." a guard mutters gruffly.
You fight the urge to shrink back.
"Oh, Y/N L/N. The journalist? Yes, they're waiting for you."
Oh, thank goodness.
The guards nod at you before opening the heavy-looking doors.
"Thank you," you manage to squeak out before slipping into the entrance. What waits for you are bright white walls on all four sides of the hallway. There's a bit of dust in the corners and what you hope are water stains on the welcome mat you're stepping on. But otherwise, the conditions inside are far better than the outside.
"Y/N!!"
Your head jerks up when you hear your name.
"Hello!" A man dashes toward you, wearing a white lab coat and flashing his white teeth in your direction. He looks a bit too friendly to be working in such a serious place. "Y/N, right? Sorry I couldn't meet you outside. We were making sure your visit here would run as smoothly as possible." He grins at you again and you're starting to think he's doing that to hypnotize you into liking the hospital.
"Yes, I'm Y/N," you say. "Nice to meet you, Mr..." Your eyes trail down to glance at the name embroidered with gold thread on his coat, "Park."
"Oh, please, call me Jimin," the man smiles again. You have to admit if he wasn't stuck working here, he could've appeared in some magazines and gotten rich. "Welcome to Merrymoor, by the way. We're a psychiatric hospital established in 1863. Pretty old, aren't we?" He laughs but you don't.
Est. 1863, you scribble in your notebook. "Sorry if I don't respond sometimes," you mutter apologetically. "But I'd love it if you can tell me everything about Merrymoor."
"The more information, the better article you can write!" Jimin answers merrily.
Oh god. It sounds like Jimin's adamant about keeping the hospital open.
He drones on and on about Merrymoor's impossibly high specs and their success in helping their patients reach a peak in their lives. You scribble the facts down but don't include Jimin's biased side comments about the wonders of the asylum.
"Want to meet the patients?"
Jimin's sudden question startles you especially because you hadn't expected to actually come in contact with them.
"A-Assuming they're..."
"They won't hurt you," Jimin says, shaking his head. "Just don't bump into Gladys. She tends to get fussy when that happens. And don't mention the color blue in front of Jungkook. He doesn't like that. Steer clear away from anyone who looks like they're living in their own world. Some of them think they can get away with homicide in their minds. If someone approaches you and you feel nervous, call for me, okay?"
"Don't bump in Gladys. Don't say blue in front of Jungkook. Steer clear from people living in their own little bubble. Call you when I'm nervous. Got it," you say. "Thank you."
"No problem," Jimin salutes you.
Hm. He's cute.
You'd think the wellness center where all the patients are located for the evening would be behind one or two gates at the maximum. Instead, you and Jimin pass through six gates with even more buff guards.
Not bad, you think. Good security, you write in your notebook. Jimin glances over your shoulder and smiles proudly.
"You ready?" Jimin whispers to you before the guards open the seventh gate. "There are red panic buttons on the side if there's an emergency. But that's pretty rare." He shrugs.
"Yeah," you say. "You can open the door."
The moment the gates open, a rather large room is revealed. It sort of looks like a hotel lobby but with softer, pastel colors that are universally accepted as calming hues. The only bright color that stands out is the reds of the panic buttons scattered across the pale green walls.
"The rooms used to be pastel blue," Jimin says. "But after Jungkook came to us, we had to repaint them. He thinks the color is a curse."
"O-Oh..."
The patients are lazily lounging around the old armchairs or rocking on the balls of their feet in front of walls. Some are talking to themselves. Others are entranced in a kid's television show playing on the cracked television screen.
"It's been a long time since we've gotten donations," Jimin explains almost apologetically. "There are games in the closet over there," he says, pointing at the closet that is locked shut. "We lock that for safety reasons. But not a lot of them want to play checkers and battleship anyway."
There doesn't seem to be a set uniform for the patients. You see comfortable clothes on most of them. Sweatpants with mysterious stains and t-shirts with worn-out holes. All of them have a battered name tag pasted on their shirts.
Inadequate funding, you note. Jimin's smile crumbles a bit.
"Are they always this... turtle-like?" You stop yourself from saying slow.
"Well... They're... medicated," Jimin whispers as if it's the most important secret in the world.
That makes a lot more sense as to why some older patients are drooling on themselves. A lot of them seem to be drifting along like ghosts in some sort of vivid slumber. It's unsettling.
"Ah... I see," you answer. "May I talk to a few of the patients?"
"Yeah! Sure," Jimin says. "I'll get out of your hair. Call me if you need me."
"Thanks."
In general, the patients seem content, but you're not very sure if it's the drugs that are talking. They hum off-key songs and talk to themselves. Some glance at you but others act like you aren't even in the room. You try to pick out a patient from the crowd who doesn't look very... threatening. Just in case.
There's a strange man in a well-ironed navy blue suit who catches your eye. His hair is pushed back and gelled into a stylish sweep, revealing his forehead for others to admire. His nose stands tall and his posture is impeccable. He's arguing with an obvious patient in sweats.
You don't mean to eavesdrop but—
"You're wearing blue!"
"Navy blue to be more precise," the strange man says. "What do you want, Jungkook?"
"I-I c-can't allow it!" Jungkook declares. "Take it off! Take it off!"
Upon closer inspection, the strange man has a name tag on his suit; it is the only thing that ruins his pristine image. Hoseok, it reads. You can't even fathom that he's a patient in a mental asylum.
"That would be considerably inappropriate," Hoseok says. He frowns. "I fancy this suit quite so, Jungkook."
"BLUE!" Jungkook shrieks. He begins to thrash about so hard that you contemplate pushing the red emergency button. But just as you move closer to the wall, Jimin comes to the rescue.
"That's enough wellness center for you, Koo," he tells the crazed man. "Want to go back to your room? The color won't haunt you there." Jimin shoots you an apologetic look. "I'll be right back. Refer to the other clinicians if you need them, okay?" You nod politely. Jimin looks at you gratefully before he and Jungkook walk away.
Great. Now you're left alone in a room filled with a bunch of potentially dangerous crazies.
"You're new here, ma'am?" Hoseok, the patient in the prim and proper suit says. "You aren't a patient here, I suppose?"
"Oh, no," you say, quickly shaking your head. "I'm just here to observe."
Hoseok points to your notebook. "A journalist, Miss...?"
"L/N. But I go by Y/N," you say. "And yes, I am a journalist." You quirk your brows. Insanely observative for him to notice.
"Ah, I reckon you're here to write an article about Merrymoor's imminent closure?" Hoseok drawls on. He sits down on a busted armchair and gestures you to sit across from him. He's so charming, you do exactly as he suggests.
"Well, I'll have to see what Merrymoor is like before I can write such a..." you trail off, trying to rack your brain to find a fitting word.
"Definitive article?" Hoseok finishes for you. Right, definitive. He crosses his legs casually and leans back, exuding the aura of an extremely young but successful CEO rather than a patient at a mental hospital.
"Yes," you say, cocking your head. "A definitive article."
"May I ask how you fancy Merrymoor as of now?" Hoseok says. "Awfully decrepit, isn't it? Such a dingy environment. Yesterday, I'm afraid I found a toenail in my meal. Not much up to par with the other hospitals, this one. Is Merrymoor too run-down for your taste as well, Y/N?"
"Yes, just a bit," you admit. "But so far everything seems to be set up for the best of the patients."
Hoseok laughs a merry laugh. "Y/N, there is hardly any regular Merrymoor inhabitant adept enough to hold an intellectual discourse with me. I'd say I'm always a little more than bored here."
"Oh... I'm sorry." You're not sure how a man like Hoseok got stuck in Merrymoor Hospital. He doesn't look very criminally insane to you at all. Just very well-spoken and well-dressed.
"Oh, you don't have to be sorry," Hoseok smiles. "But it's rather often that I feel forsaken here. With no one to converse with except the clinicians... Even then, they are vigilant around me though I try to convince them I am not dangerous. They check under my blankets—even my mattress. Won't let me around scissors. Y/N, it's almost offensive how fastidious they are."
I doubt any of these patients want to be dangerous on purpose, though. It's obviously a good thing that the clinicians are so attentive. Bonus points.
"They're just looking out for you, Hoseok," you offer. You scribble attentive clinicians in your notebook.
"I would like to beg to differ," Hoseok says. "As you can surely tell, Y/N, I hardly belong here." He gestures at himself and glances detestably at the others in the wellness center. "Quite obviously, there has been a mistake."
"A... mistake?"
"Yes," Hoseok says. He uncrosses his legs and crosses them the other way. Then, he leans forward, clasping his hands in front of him. "You see, I wasn't a very courteous young adult, Y/N. When I was 21, I committed a minor crime that would sentence me to jail for about six years."
You frown.
"Yes, I know," Hoseok sighs. "I've deeply repented my faults before my departure to jail. I was in the prime time of my life, Y/N. I couldn't spend six years in jail at age 21. Not especially when I already mulled over my actions and expressed great remorse to those I hurt..."
His words are so convincing that you nod along with him.
"I remembered what someone had once told me. To get out of an unnecessarily long sentence, all I had to do was fake a mental illness." Hoseok shakes his head disapprovingly. "Apparently, my act was so persuasive, they threw me in Merrymoor instead. Now I can't get out."
"Oh god... How long have you been here?"
"Nearly fifteen years. Almost three times as much longer than my original sentence," Hoseok laughs bitterly. "Turns out, it is incredibly difficult to prove that I am, indeed, sane."
"Oh no..." you breathe. "I'm so sorry..."
"That isn't necessary, Y/N." Hoseok smiles. "But my only wish is for Merrymoor to close down. So I am finally let loose to freedom."
You gulp. His charming smile is so eye-catching that you can barely look away from his handsome face.
"I've always wanted to be a journalist..." Hoseok says sadly. He looks at the notebook in your hands longingly. "Words have always fascinated me, Y/N. You see, the wielder of words is more powerful than any delinquent brandishing a weapon. Words are controllable and may hold so much potent..."
"Oh, I agree!" you smile. "As a journalist, I kinda think of myself as the informer for the people. I write so others can read! And my reports will benefit someone with good information. At least, that's how I like to think of it. I'm glad you think the same!"
"If we didn't meet inside Merrymoor, I would've easily asked you out on a date, Y/N," Hoseok smiles, shaking his head. "But it seems so that dates might be impossible here. There is little to no privacy."
"O-Oh!" Your cheeks flush bright pink. "Maybe you'll have a tribunal one day. And then we'll have to see."
"I'm afraid that might be unlikely," Hoseok sighs. "They are concerned about the feasibility of recidivism..."
"I-I'll visit," you blurt out before you mull over your choice of words. "Maybe you'll feel less lonely then. I have to come back here anyway..."
"Tomorrow. 11 a.m." Hoseok says. He quirks a handsome brow at you curiously. "I'll be waiting."
Your stomach twists in anticipation and you have to look away from his intense stare. "I'll be there."
Once in the safe confines of your room, you open up your laptop and begin to transfer your written notes to an open document. You like to get the most of your workload done the first day, so you end up researching the history of Merrymoor Hospital. Until you read the articles about it up-to-date.
Apparently, if the people finally decide to close down Merrymoor for good, they might turn it into a hotel. Kind of fitting, especially since the wellness center had a striking resemblance to a hotel lobby.
But after a while, you start getting distracted by Hoseok. The charming man had certainly known what he was talking about.
All your life, you've been with guys who didn't bother to read the news or appreciate the art form of journalism. But Hoseok... Even the way he carefully chooses his words is a sign that you and he are a match. If only he weren't in a dilapidating psychiatric hospital. Then maybe you'd have a proper boyfriend who treated you right for once.
Your exes all had one thing in common. They all told you that you talked like a journalist. Apparently, that's a big turn-off. Not as much of a turn-off when they think 'fancy' dressing means wearing cargo shorts with a t-shirt and socks with sandals.
Now Hoseok is a man who is an obvious connoisseur of words and clothes. And you deserve a man like that. A man who is so well-spoken that you become lost in his speech.
Your laptop begins to dim to save battery but you ignore the darker screen and instead, look at your lacking closet. Tomorrow, you should wear something nice for once. Rather than your usual pants and blouse, you should pick out something... more flashy.
At one point in your clothes hunting journey inside your own closet, you remember that the purpose of going to Merrymoor again is not to impress Hoseok but to write an article. Right. Your job always comes first. So you sigh, throwing away your heap of useless and bland clothes to the side and sliding in your desk chair to wake your laptop.
You'll have to finish outlining the main points of the article today. Then maybe you'll let yourself go out and buy a cute outfit for tomorrow.
Tomorrow comes so slowly that you swear time delayed itself while you were asleep and now the world runs not in seconds but in lethargic minutes.
Jimin greets you just like the day before and he seems pleased that you are in a brighter mood than yesterday. For one, the weather isn't as foggy, which actually does wonders to the outlook of the outside of the hospital. Without the fog, Merrymoor doesn't look like a haunted mansion at all. In fact, it looks more like a grandiose museum promising historic artifacts and old texts. Much less terrifying than the previous day.
"How was your visit yesterday?" Jimin chirps as he offers you a cup of hot coffee. His eyes linger on your shorter-than-usual pencil skirt and low-cut, silky black blouse. "I hope it was good." He beams when you accept the coffee with a smile. "Do you have any specific places you want to visit today?"
"Oh, thank you!" you say. "It was great," you tell him truthfully. "The guards already toured me around the outside today, but I was thinking I could visit some individual rooms."
"Of course!" Jimin grins. "The patients should be in their rooms right now. Good timing."
You realize Hoseok had said 11 o'clock with a plan in mind.
"Don't worry," Jimin soothes. "There are two guards at every door so you should feel safe."
Good security x2, you write in your notebook while making Jimin hold your coffee. The clinician beams.
Jimin guides you around the white walls of the hospital. "Did you know, these walls used to be green? In the old days, they thought green stimulated mental health because it represents the color of nature and growth. But I think white looks much better now. Blue is supposed to actually stimulate health, though. But Jungkook's sensitive to blue so we stuck with white for the hallways."
You nod thoughtfully. But you really wonder how Hoseok will greet you today.
"Um, Jimin?"
"Yes?" Jimin turns to you hopefully.
"Can I visit Hoseok? I met him yesterday and I think he'll be great to interview... You know, for the article."
Jimin visibly pales. "Oh... You mean, Jung Hoseok, huh? He's... um, are you sure? Jungkook might be a better candidate for an interview. Maybe even Yoongi. How about Taehyung? Or Seokjin..."
"Yes, I'm sure," you nod. "He's well-spoken so I think I could get good quotes from him. I can visit the rest of the patients later. Is that okay?"
"Um... yeah... sure..." Jimin says but he doesn't sound so sure.
Regardless, he leads you to the door to Hosoek's room. From the open wide slot on the door, you can glimpse at the interior, which looks surprisingly cozy with warm blankets and even a window letting some of the morning sunlight shine in.
"I'll be waiting outside," Jimin says. "The guards will follow you in if that's okay."
"Yeah, thanks."
"No problem!"
When you enter the room, you find that Hoseok's sitting on a little wooden chair in the corner of the room. Today, he's in a classic pinstripe suit with a red tie. He grins brightly when he sees you, but he scowls at the two guards behind you. The guards ignore him, instead, standing at the entrance. You cautiously walk forward.
"Hi, again, Hoseok," you say. "I was wondering if I can get an interview with you today... If that's all right with you."
"Of course that's all right, Y/N," the man beams. "Here," he says, standing up and letting you take the chair. "I prefer standing during serious discussions."
"Oh, of course. Thank you." You slide into the small chair, looking up to face Hoseok. "Can I have your permission to record the interview?"
"Yes, by all means. You look gorgeous, by the way. Lovely skirt. Beautiful blouse."
You blush, tugging at the ends of your pencil skirt. "Thank you." Bringing out your little voice recorder, you clear your throat before pressing record. Then, you begin to speak. "I'll be asking about your stay at Merrymoor Hospital. All you have to do is answer to your best ability. Don't worry if you need a moment to think. Can you please state and spell out your full name? If you are comfortable, you can state your age as well."
Hoseok does so in a relaxed, enchanting voice that makes you wonder how tortuous it will be for you to listen to this interview over and over again to transcribe it.
"Why were you admitted into Merrymoor Hospital? And what year?"
"I didn't quite mean to be admitted into a psychiatric hospital so young," Hoseok hums thoughtfully. "I suppose I was reckless in my twenties... But who isn't?"
You nod. Your twenties were disastrous. Full of bad men, too much alcohol and little to no care for the repercussions.
"I did use my fists quite rashly once when I was twenty-one and that resulted in me getting a six-year sentence for prison," Hoseok shrugs. "The roaring twenties is called the roaring twenties for a reason—aside from the historical reference, of course. Nobody desires to be locked up at the rush hour of their lives, do they?" He smooths back his immaculately gelled hair. "After I severely repented my wrongdoings, I came up with a brilliant idea to reach liberty. I heard they coddle you at mental hospitals before releasing you to freedom after a couple of days. So I figured it was genius to merely act mental.
"But my act was so convincing that they sent me here. In 2005, I was shoved in this little, dingy cell, forced into isolation from the rest of the world and being stripped from my well-deserved privacy." Hoseok scoffs bitterly. "For nearly fifteen years, I've been trying to convince every clinician in here that I am a normal, average citizen. I am definitely not insane. But how do I prove that I am sane?"
The last question rings in the room. You shift in your seat. "If the clinicians are suggesting—"
"Wrongfully accusing," Hoseok corrects with a small nod.
"Right. If the clinicians are 'wrongfully accusing' you of having a mental disorder, then which one is it?"
"They've wrongfully accused me of a plethora of disorders from a medical book. I was forced to take written or multiple-choice or even verbal tests that would prove my insanity," Hoseok says with a scornful frown on his face. "If I made every single clinician in Merrymoor take the same tests that I took, I guarantee you that all of them would definitely come out as positive for one or more disorders. Everyone's a little insane inside."
He grins but it isn't maniacally. It is almost consolingly. Convincingly.
"Are you finished with your inquiries, Y/N?" Hoseok asks. "I have some of my own for you."
"O-Oh, I only asked two questions so far—"
"Will I be able to see you again?" He stands over you with a dominant aura that makes you forget how to deny a request. "I enjoy your company very much, Y/N."
"Yes, surely," you reply. "When would you like to schedule another interview?"
Hoseok grins, reaching forward to pet the perfect curls of your hair. The guards in the back flinch forward but when they realize you're fine with it, they ease their tension.
The man cups your cheek with his hand, which is surprisingly ice cold. You stare up at him with admiration. He laughs quietly under his breath. He's got you wrapped around his finger.
When you're around Hoseok, it's easy to forget your duties as a journalist. You're supposed to poke and prod for information, but Hoseok is so good at speaking that he often gets away with not answering your interview questions directly. There's something about the eloquent way he talks that makes you want to stop everything and just listen to him forever.
Your laptop is open again as you transcribe five days' worth of interviews with Hoseok. Embarrassingly enough, it took five days to get a day's worth of quotes and questions from the handsome man. But you strangely don't mind. Those five days visiting Hoseok over and over again was blissful.
And now that you have no more questions, you don't have an excuse to go to Merrymoor any longer. But it's hard to focus on writing your article (even though the deadline is rapidly approaching) when all you can think of is Hoseok.
He's been trying to convince you that Merrymoor should be closed, but from what you see, Merrymoor isn't the problem at all. The patients are genuinely well-treated and the clinicians are respectful and kind. Safety is a priority, which was the people's largest concern. And even the guards are polite.
If the people wanted to turn Merrymoor into a hotel, they'd have to let go of that thought. Merrymoor should stay as a psychiatric hospital.
Meanwhile, maybe you can put in a good word for Hoseok to get him out of Merrymoor. You admit it had been silly of him to pretend to be mentally ill (especially when psychiatry definitely isn't a joke) but he's obviously matured since he was 21. He's spent nearly fifteen years regretting his past. You think it should come to an end.
Maybe you're doing it for your own good too. You can't help but wonder what your relationship with Hoseok will blossom like outside the hospital. When he pets your hair or caresses your cheek, you feel like you're going to combust. And the last few interviews, you told the guards to stay outside the room. He was this close to kissing you, too. But he had pulled away last second, smiling teasingly at you. It was as if he was saying you'd only get a kiss if he was finally liberated from the confines of what he liked to call the prison cell.
God, you remember how breathless you had been the moment he pulled away. Imagine how breathless you'd actually be if he'd really kissed you.
You let your laptop screensaver go on before sighing. Without a second thought, you grab a coat and rush out of your modest loft. You drive yourself all the way to Merrymoor and park haphazardly in the dirt. The guards are so used to you by now that they let you in immediately.
You're breathless by the time you reach Jimin's office. The young clinician looks surprised but happy to see you. "Y/N!" he greets you warmly. "I didn't know you were coming here again!"
"I have to talk to you!" you blurt out. "Please," you add for good measure.
Jimin laughs. "I didn't know you were so excited to talk to me." Usually, he's wearing his white lab coat but that stays hanging on a coat rack near the door. He has a black turtleneck on with some casual jeans. It's nowhere as near stylish as Hoseok's attire, but he still looks effortlessly fashionable. Jimin looks you up and down and grins. "I see you're participating in pajama day today." He giggles.
You gasp when you realize that in your hurry, you'd forgotten to change out of your home clothes. Your face turns a bright shade of red as you wrap your coat tighter around you. "I-I was in a hurry."
"I can see that," Jimin smiles. "What is it that you want to ask me about?" He sits down on his big chair and gestures for you to sit across from him.
You gather your breath, tucking your hair behind your ears as you take a moment for yourself. Jimin waits patiently.
"It's about Hoseok," you finally gasp.
"Oh. Hoseok..." Jimin sighs. "Yes, our patient. What about him?"
"Well, there's been a mistake," you say. "He's not supposed to be here. He lied about being mentally ill when he was younger, but I'm sure he's learned his lesson by now. Hoseok's as normal as we are," you plead. "He just wants to be released. Get the freedom that he deserves."
To your surprise, Jimin sighs. "Oh no, Y/N..."
"What?" you say, frowning. "What's wrong?"
"God, how do I break this to you?" Jimin shakes his head. "Wow. Um... Well, this is awkward."
"Why is it awkward?" Your inside twist at the impending bad news that you were going to hear any second now. You hope for the worst.
"Well... Y/N... Normal isn't a very good way to describe Jung Hoseok. He's definitely not normal," Jimin says, scratching his head. "I'm his clinician. I should know, right?"
"Not normal? Then...?"
"He's a psychopath, Y/N," Jimin says.
"A what." You deadpan so seriously that it's Jimin who flinches back.
"A psychopath. Not all are dangerous... But some do have a tendency to commit crimes and try to get away from the consequences," Jimin says. "They're cunning, manipulative people, Y/N. Very abnormally large egos. And lack of empathy. They don't feel the way we do."
But Hoseok... He'd... he'd liked you, though.
"I'm sorry," Jimin apologizes. He looks genuine. "The fact that Hoseok tried to fake mental illness to get out of a prison sentence makes him abnormal. He's a clinically diagnosed psychopath."
"What do you mean they don't feel the way we do?"
"They tend to lack emotions like fear and sadness and guilt, Y/N... But they're usually very good at pretending they do," Jimin says. "It's hard for them to make emotional connections with others, but they'll use their charm and way with words to get what they want. Usually, they're a bit narcissistic too. I mean, Hoseok threw a fit when he realized we weren't installing a mirror in his room... And he might think of you as more of a thing than a person."
"A thing?" you scoff incredulously.
"He must've wanted you to feel attracted to him," Jimin sighs. "He probably thought you were the key to getting out of Merrymoor. He's tried that with several other women around here—even men."
You stumble over your words, fists clenching. "You mean he can't really care for me?"
"He might... But for different reasons." Jimin fidgets with his hands. "He cares about you in a sense because you'll benefit him."
"So he's puppeteering me," you scoff. "Like I'm some doll he can show a little bit of love to and I'll come running back to him! God, I'm so stupid!" You bury your face in your hands. "I thought he really liked me..."
"Manipulation is the term we use," Jimin sighs. "Normally, most psychopaths can function well in a given society. But Hoseok's proven to struggle with that a little bit. Um, he has violent tendencies..."
You're left speechless.
And you really thought you could have a future with him. You feel foolish.
"T-Thank you, Jimin," you manage to stutter out. "Thank you for telling me... I just... wow. I fell right into his trap."
"He's a charming man," Jimin smiles warmly at you. He has a way of making you feel better. "I'm sorry... I should've noticed something was up..." His expression shows nothing but warmth.
If Hoseok smiles, you feel the cold ocean breeze kissing your cheeks. When Jimin smiles, you feel like you're basking under an orange sunset where the last of the sunlight warms not just your cheeks but your whole body.
"It's fine," you say, shaking your head. "I should've known better."
Quickly, you stand up, suddenly feeling rather flustered to have a serious conversation with Jimin in your pajamas. "I'm sorry for bothering you," you say. "Um, but good news. I really liked Merrymoor. And even Hoseok couldn't persuade me otherwise."
Jimin's lips curl up in a bright smile. "Oh, that's great! Thank you!"
"I'll make sure to write a good article," you promise. "Maybe you guys can get the funding you need to replace some of the old furniture."
"That'd be amazing," Jimin grins. "Thank you, Y/N. Really."
You shrug. "I'm only relaying the truth to an audience. You and the other clinicians did all the work."
Jimin blushes at the compliment. "Email me when the article is published—so I can brag about it to family and friends."
"Hm," you hum. "Isn't texting much easier?"
You leave Merrymoor Hospital with lost hope for Hoseok but a new number from Jimin. The day doesn't seem so horrible anymore.
Psychopaths value charming, beautiful words that sound like music to the ears. They're fastidious, choosing each word with scrupulous care. It also makes them awfully pedantic to the average person.
You didn't mind Hoseok's elevated vocabulary.
But you do mind the fact that he's incapable of love. With much research, you learn that psychopaths are able to fake their emotions to find their way into the top spots of society. That they value pragmatics over emotions. Usually, they don't even know that they're different. Sometimes that makes them dangerous. Other times, they're just humans with another perspective on life. Just because they have a superficial charm that they may switch off and on at will does not make them insane. It is what they do with their different brains that decide whether they are mad.
The psychopath test is online. And when you look at it, surprisingly, you find yourself checking off a few of the psychopathic points.
Hoseok's right about one thing. Everyone is a little insane inside. Maybe not to the extent of a psychopath who gets in trouble with the law but just enough so that nobody is really normal. Normal is just a social construct people created to form a little more equality in a non-binary world.
You have so many ideas to write about after this article.
You open your laptop, being greeted by a screen full of independent sentences that are yet to be placed in coherent paragraphs. The deadline for the article is near but you've been putting it off to think.
You'll have to paint a beautiful picture of Merrymoor for the readers to make this work. Describe the patients who truly need help and friendly staff who give help when needed. You'll need to make Merrymoor sound as least threatening as possible. To show people that this hospital is more important than whatever hotel that could be there.
Then, you type away.
Halfway through, you get an email notification from an address you don't recognize. Upon further inspection, you realize that Hoseok had somehow acquired your email.
My dear Y/N,
I miss you dearly—I yearn to see your beautiful face again. I've already picked out my best suits to wear when we go on our first date. To my imminent freedom, yes?
Did I ever mention I am prohibited to have a mirror in my cell? Every day is a pain to style myself without the proper tools. I don't think I deserve this kind of prisoner treatment.
Regardless, I hope I can see you soon, Y/N.
Best,
Hoseok
It's subtle, the way he tries to get you to put in a few bad words about Merrymoor for him. But now that you know his manipulation tactics, you won't fall for them. You ignore the email and go back to writing.
Merrymoor: Hotel or Hospital?
Everyone in town scrolls through the article Thursday morning as you sit back and relax as the comments and responses flood in. It's the best article you've ever written, according to your editor. People are buzzing about the heroicness of Merrymoor Hospital and marveling at the jobs of the clinicians. The citizens have found respect for them.
You finally reply to Hoseok's email with a link to the article—no other words. He'll have to figure out where you stand for himself. With that, you close your laptop for good.
You'll take a little break from writing for now. Maybe relax a little from your journalist duties and enjoy other people's company. Namely Jimin's.
You're due for a date with him in about... five minutes.
You hope things go well.
[1 YEAR LATER]
"You sure you want to go to his tribunal?" Jimin asks in a worried voice. He wraps his arm around your shoulder and pulls you into his chest.
"I'm sure," you say, snuggling against your boyfriend. "He emailed me, asking me to come. So I'll go. There's no reason to refuse, right?"
Jimin rubs your arms. "Right..." You look at your boyfriend with such adoration in your eyes at Jimin giggles. "What? Do I have something on my face?"
"No, it's just that... you're amazing," you laugh. "You could've easily told me that I was delusional for loving Hoseok. You could've told me not to take part in clinician business especially because I don't even have the right degree. But you didn't do any of that, Jimin. You were respectful. And you just made me... understand."
"Well, that's my job," Jimin says. "I try to make everyone understand and respect each other."
"Hoseok once told me everyone's a little insane inside," you whisper, playing with Jimin's shirt. "Do you think that's true?"
Jimin laughs out loud. "Would you kill me if I said I'm insane about you?"
"Yes, I would!"
"On a more serious note, yes, we're all a little crazy," Jimin says. "You obsessed over your job before you met me, right? My other friend fusses about his looks the whole day. And I'm absolutely crazy about you." You roll your eyes but smile. "Everyone's a little crazy," Jimin chuckles. "But crazy has a whole spectrum of its own."
"So to put it succinctly, normal doesn't exist."
"Exactly."
—masterpost
—masterlist
#ficswithluv#btswritersnet#btswriterscollective#bangtanfairygarden#bangtanidx#hoseok#jung hoseok#hoseok imagine#hoseok fanfic#hoseok fanfiction#bts#bts fanfiction#yn having bad taste in men the never-ending saga#she rlly thought lmfao#brevity
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Inktober 2020 #21: Sleep
Based on the prompt from @writing-prompt-s, “The worst thing a wizard can do is sleep-talk.”
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Words spoken by a person without the power thrumming through their veins were just words. Even the Words of Change, the secret language the universe was built in, meant nothing to the people without the power. But for the people who had it, words needed to be guarded carefully. “Umhaha”, for instance, unraveled thread. An easy mistake to make; almost every young wizard had a story about accidentally rendering themselves and everyone in the room with them naked, just by laughing a certain way after saying the word “Um.”
“Kefzhizoss” should have been a word that no one would ever say unless they meant to say it.
The young man was crumpled up as small as a human could make himself, on the bench in the police wagon. No one had confiscated the amulet of protection from his neck; like most such amulets, it wouldn’t come off while he was under emotional stress, pain or fear. But he was under a silencing charm, and the amulet didn’t protect him from being silenced.
The cleric was arguing with the detective on the scene. “It’s obvious he didn’t mean to do this,” he said, waving his hand at the devastation of what had been the young man’s home, with his parents and siblings. The broken remains of the wards that had contained the word, made sure the destruction spread no farther than their property, would have stopped the word if it hadn’t been spoken within their house, and there were other fragmentary charms present. One to prevent fire. One that would probably have protected books from water damage. There was one, still intact, that purified air as it went into the lungs of birds.
There were no birds in the wreckage, or bird cages. Neither were there human corpses, or any human beds, except for the one the young man had laid in. The destruction had been too thorough.
“Look, Elimiss, maybe I agree with you. Could be accidental sleeptalking. But four people are dead, and the damage was clearly done by the Devastating Word, and the only survivor’s a wizard. You see why I can’t just let him go, right?”
Tears ran down the young man’s cheeks, but there was nothing physically wrong with him. Either he was tremendously talented for one so young, or one or both of his parents had been very skilled wizards, to have created an amulet that had perfectly protected him and the bed he had been found on from the Devastating Word. It didn’t matter anymore.
“He’s traumatized! He needs a temple, not to be held indefinitely under a silencing charm—”
“Oh, for the love of all your gods, the kid can still read and write. But I can’t let a man who killed his entire family just traipse off to a temple to have his trauma healed. Did it occur to you that maybe a guy who killed his parents and brother and sister maybe deserves to have some trauma?”
“It was obviously an accident! He was wearing pajama pants, for the love of Merenethe Who Heals All Wounds! What kind of devious, evil killer wears pajama pants and lays down in bed before blasting his entire home to ruin?”
“The kind who knows that people like you will assume it was an accident from that,” the detective said sharply. She was irritated that the cleric had felt the need to provide his god’s entire name, like he was offended that she’d invoked all his gods instead of his specific patron. “He needs to be interrogated, and we can’t let him speak until he’s told us his story.”
The man raised a tear-streaked face, brought up his cuffed hands, and with just one of them, signed, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over again. Both hands, he might have been trying a sigil, though the detective was an experienced enough wizard herself to catch that before it accomplished anything, if he’d tried it. One hand, it was obviously sign, and she relaxed. Only about half of all wizards knew some kind of sign language, which was stupid given the control wizards needed to keep on their speech. Sigils were much more complicated and couldn’t be done accidentally.
“Babababawa” brought a light, misting rain… into a building, if that’s where the wizard said it. It was a hazard of raising wizard babies, that some of them came into their power so early they couldn’t really talk yet, and their baby babble could very easily accidentally land on that one. “Sh’shoot,” an expression thaumnulls might say any time if they started to say “shit”, thought better of it, and instead said “shoot” as a full word without just following from the original sh – more than one wizard teenager had been found that way, growing up among thaumnulls, not knowing what they shouldn’t say. It made existing electrical current surge in power, and could very well blow every circuit in a house, or start a fire. “Kolonel” was a big problem with people learning the language as adults, who didn’t know how to not pronounce the word “colonel”. The only thing it did was create an impenetrable darkness that flowed out to the nearest boundary, if indoors, and a mile or two outdoors, until a wizard said “Kohanoel” to turn it off and restore the light… but people who’d said it by accident and hadn’t known they were wizards didn’t know how to turn it off.
The Devastating Word, however – the detective, being a wizard, did not even think the syllables to herself – was commonly thought to be impossible to say by accident. The “zh” sound wasn’t even common in this language; most native speakers around here wouldn’t even make that sound in their sleep. And here was Elimiss, the mandated social worker who worked with the cops to de-escalate situations and help folks with mental illnesses, insisting that obviously the man – boy, really, he probably wasn’t even out of college – had said it in his sleep, because that was what the plainly traumatized boy had told the cops when they’d arrived. Because a perp couldn’t possibly carefully plan out the excuse he’d use to get treated like a trauma victim and charged only with negligent manslaughter, maybe even go free, after he’d murdered his family. Right.
“Sanavah. I know we have to get his full story from him. But do we really need to treat him as if he’s a dangerous killer?”
Detective Sanavah ofWinterfall looked over at the destroyed house, and then back at the cleric, an expression of disbelief on her face.
Cleric Elimiss Elidanson, adept of Merenethe, sighed deeply. “Yes. I know he killed his family. But if it was an accident—”
“How does anyone say that word accidentally?” Sanavah exploded. “It’s just… not a thing you’d say!”
The boy signed. “We were studying it today. The Dire Words. I’m in magic school.”
Okay, so he was out of college. Magic school, like law school and medical school, was a graduate school; you needed at least a two-year degree to get in. “Why the hell would you be studying the Dire Words?” Sanavah snapped. “How fucking irresponsible would your teachers have to be—”
“Be professional, Sanavah,” Elimiss advised, and she wanted to punch him.
“It’s advanced work. Magical theory. We have to take the Words apart to determine why they work and have so much power,” he signed. “K-E-F-Z-H-I-Z-O-S-S was fascinating, I was working on an analysis all day… but I would never say it intentionally! I was calling it the Kef word.” He signed the individual letters, but ended it with the sign that indicated he was replicating a pronunciation, not a spelling.
Oh. Well. Maybe that changed things. Maybe not; it might still be a really good story. “You know we’ll follow up with your school, right?”
He nodded. “I don’t care what you do to me,” he signed. “Any kind of punishment. I deserve it. I killed Mom and Dad and Lifah and Raoun. But I want the world to know, it was an accident! I loved them! I’d never have said the Kef word in my own house, not without containing it first!”
“This the first time you’ve sleep-talked?”
“No… Mom said I’ve been doing it since I was a baby. Raoun insisted I had to move out and get my own room when I was eight because I was keeping him up at night. My parents turned my dad’s study into my bedroom.” He picked up the amulet. “Mom gave this to me so I wouldn’t accidentally hurt myself by sleep-talking, but I guess she never thought… I mean, I never thought…”
“I’m going to charge his teacher with negligence contributing,” Sanavah said tiredly. “Gonna charge you, too, kid. At least. I’d charge your mother, too, but she’s dead.”
The boy began to cry again, sobbing soundlessly into his hands.
“You believe me now?” Elimiss said. “I’ve had a feeling from Merenethe all this time that this boy isn’t a killer. Not intentionally.”
“That’s great. Very nice of Merenethe. I’m sure ‘a cleric of Merenethe had a feeling’ will be great evidence in court. He’s still coming down to the station.” She spoke to her forensics team. “You about ready to wrap up?”
“Yeah, pretty cut and dried. I think we’ve found all the evidence of standing charms we’re going to, and the Devastating Word would ruin any evidence of any other active spells,” Sofrani, the head forensic wizard, said. “We can head on back now if you want.”
“BTW, got a name,” the analyst, Charron, said. “Bylan Evertide.”
“That is not a real last name.”
“It absolutely is. Got it out of the city database. There’s a whole Evertide clan in and around the city here.”
“It’s going to be all right, Bylan,” Elimiss said. “The police and court, I mean. If you’re telling the truth, we’ll be able to get confirmation from an oneiromancer or a cleric of Morosma. We’ll clear you of wrongdoing.”
“Aside from the negligence and sheer stupidity of a guy who talks in his sleep learning Dire Words and then not putting a silencing charm on himself when he goes to sleep,” Sanavah said. “Elimiss, don’t make promises to the kid that you can’t make good on.”
“I know it’s my fault,” the boy signed. “Charge me with whatever you want. I won’t fight it.”
“Not how it works,” Sanavah said. “You’ll get a public defender, and if you want to plead guilty, you’ll have to convince her that you actually are before she’ll let you plead it.” She looked over at Elimiss. “You took your own pheasant over here, or did you get a taxi?”
“Taxi,” Elimiss said. “I don’t have a place to take care of a pheasant, I live in an apartment.”
“Take Elimiss back with you,” she instructed the driver of the enclosed auto-wagon. “I don’t think the chief’ll be thrilled if he expenses another taxi.”
“Will do,” the wagon driver said, and spoke a word under his breath, that made the magical engine that drove the cart fire to life. Elimiss got in the wagon, and the forensics team either got on their own pheasants, or into pheasant-drawn carriages, because no one got rich enough on a cop salary to ride around in an auto-carriage.
As she saddled up her own pheasant, who squawked in mild irritation because the beast had been enjoying plucking seed pods off the nearby mimosa tree and snacking on them, she gazed over at what had been the Evertide home. “Hell of a thing,” she murmured. “Come on, Basil, let’s get back to the station.”
Basilica, a middle-aged hen pheasant who was known for her reliability and love of sunflower seeds, snorted, flapped her wings, and took off. Running pheasants – named that because they were actually faster on the ground than in the air – had native magic that allowed their wings to work despite their enormous size, and they could easily bear a human or two through the air. A running pheasant could cross the distance back to the station fast enough, if it was through open or forested territory, but being on the ground, in traffic, mildly upset most of them and absolutely freaked Basilica out, so Sanavah had to fly back to the station every time.
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i also think those posts can spread the false idea that not only is something A Symptom but it's A Symptom Of This One Thing Only. when in actuality the same thing can have many sources/causes and misidentifying which can be a real problem. when i was young on the internet this kind of thing did actually set me back (thomaybe that's just me!) and ofc the subgenre of 'that's not a negative it's a Symptom so keep doing it and anyone who tells you otherwise is a bigot :)' but thats another convo...
Bro for real, I was actually thinking about adding something related to that to my tags but they were already so long... Like, there’s so much overlap between and variability within loads of things, be it different neurotypes, personality disorders, mental illnesses, physical illnesses, not just overlap in terms of shared symptoms but comorbidity is fairly common and can affect how disorders/symptoms manifest, and that’s before you even get into factors like personality, life experiences, cultural upbringing etc. Even in a medical context, I’m pretty sure there’s no blood test or brain scan you can do where they’re like ‘well I see here you have 12% depression, 33% autism and 2% milk, here is the specific pill for that combination, congratulations enjoy being normal’, so expecting a 5-tweet thread to give you that level of clarity is a lil misguided imo.
And like you say, the other issue with that super deterministic ‘if [x] then [y]’ attitude is that it can be pretty anti-progress/recovery (as appropriate). I struggle with stuff that impacts my relationships, wellbeing, etc, and it’s because of the Brain Problems not because I decided to be like that, but the fact that it’s not ‘my fault’ doesn’t mean it’s not my responsibility, or that I have to just let my brain cause problems for myself and other people. I can let people know that these problems exist and that I might need leniency or support at times, and I can be kind to myself and accept that these things are hard for me and that I’ll still get them wrong occasionally. But going ‘can’t help it, it’s the Disorders, like it or lump it’ is just not helpful to anyone, least of all me.
(Sidenote, while I agree that finding the wrong diagnosis can be a setback, I don’t think that’s unique to self-dx and because of the variation in people’s experiences you can also end up pursuing treatments (not just meds, applies to therapy etc too) that are the right ones for your disorder and/or symptoms but that for whatever reason don’t help you. My stance, and I don’t know if it’s a good or correct one, is that focusing really hard on finding the right answer to Why Am I Like This and Is This A Symptom Or Just Being A Person, and expecting those answers to magically fix everything, can be a really unhelpful spiral. For me there needs to be a balance between like, yes it’s helpful to have the vocabulary and context to talk about your feelings and support needs, but also there's a point where to me the why is not as relevant as focusing on actionable stuff like what behaviours are maladaptive, what strategies are genuinely helpful (regardless of who they’re ‘meant’ for), what to prioritise, etc. And those are things where a professional/expert opinion can be helpful, though not always obviously.)
#i mean i am very much not an expert and i am also fucked in the head so ... pinch of salt with any advice i give#but this is where i'm at i guess and like. i'm okay apart from all of the situational stuff.#anonymous#ask to tag#don't reblog idk why anyone would but i am Not an authority on literally anything
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Coulson, Body Horror, and lifeforms in Sci-fi.
AOS was sci-fi adjacent since day one and has only moved more into that genre of action-adventure scifi over time. They have already touched on themes of biological experimentation, trans-humanism, androids, and the nature of consciousness and sentience before and it’ll be interesting to see them continue that with both the Chronicoms and Phil Coulson’s consciousness in an android body.
Robots, androids, and other mechanical beings are usually a theme present in science fiction but beyond that, the theme of whether these machines are merely intelligent vs genuinely conscious with their own emotional capabilities is a common one. Androids like Data from ST:TNG, the androids from Blade Runner, or even Dorian 0167 from Almost Human are a very different living thing compared to the marine mech TARS from Interstellar, some of the types of Cylons from Battlestar Galactica, or even the robot Gort from 1950′s classic scifi.
AOS will most likely be exploring parts of this theme by comparing the Chronicoms, the various levels of LMDs from s4, and Coulson living as an android.
In a way, most of Coulson’s individual personal narrative throughout aos has already centered around coming to terms with boderline body horror. While his personal arcs are often being used to drive plot story lines and tend to most often be analyzed that way, this theme is still a big part of the character’s individual experience.
In season 1 he finds out he was experimentally resuscitated without his consent, had his brain altered without his consent, and finally found out that they’d used alien biological material to do it.
The body horror element is most front and center in The Magical Place 1x11 and in 1x14 T.A.H.I.T.I. where details of what happened to him are finally revealed, but the anxiety of “I feel different.,” of I think something might be wrong with me started much sooner in the season.
By the end of FZZT he’s accepted the fact that his personality is different now, but the anxiety about physical ramifications remains present. There’s a thread of, “Do I still feel enough like me to accept this?” throughout the season.
The emotional narrative fades to the background as the upheaval of his and May’s entire lifetime careers’ imploding comes to the forefront, up until the biological compulsion to start carving begins.
In season 2 we see him trying to hide the compulsions and the gradual onset of insanity from the team, excluding May, and they are both on the edge of handling it. In many ways, it was as if they were trying to plan for early onset dementia, but with Garrett having become so violent so fast Phil is afraid he’ll lose it and seriously hurt someone.
2x7 Writing on the Wall provides some closure for the trauma of learning the truth about the T.A.H.I.T.I. program, finally deals with the intentions behind the brain procedure and that at least one of the terminally ill volunteers went on to have a good life.
By 2b the plot is not using these themes anymore and it vanishes. Everything in 2x22 happens so quickly the only hint we get prior to s3 that he’s actually not coping very well with the sudden amputation of his left hand is in a two sentence conversation between him and Dr. Garner.
But at the beginning of s3 it quickly becomes obvious the coping with it all is just not there. The cybernetic hand is not helping him adjust very much and he leaves it off frequently. Like Daisy, he deflects from deeper emotional issues by joking and we see that a lot in 3a.
Coulson at this point is already a genuine cyborg. His left hand is a machine. The part of his forearm it connects to is never removed and would seem to be grafted on, so even when he removes the hand there is a cybernetic part remaining. Again he’s dealing with the questions, “Do I still feel human? Do I still feel like the person I think of as me?”
By the beginning of s4 Phil seems much more comfortable with both the loss of his hand and with having and using the cybernetic hand. Having it and discussing features for it are just a part of life now. 4a and 4b are about as close as we see him to mental and emotional stability in the whole show, though we find out from his LMD as if played it’s programmed role that Phil’s left forearm still causes him pain.
4c in the Framework we see some of the brain changes made in the TAHITI process come back to protect him in a way. Coulson doubts the Framework world, has some lingering memories and muscle memory from the real one. But, there was very little screentime of characters reacting the their Framework experiences for the most part.
And of course at the end of 4c, he makes the deal with Ghostrider. How Phil felt about the injury itself in season 5 really wasn’t touched on.
He spent several weeks with large patches of necrotic tissue on his body, a slowly failing heart and lung. He told May he was intermittently in pain. But the discussion of his injury, including by Phil, mostly centered around his refusal to accept anymore invasive or alien-in-origin treatment.
Given a major element of his character arcs throughout the show has been struggling to come to terms with sudden changes to his own body, this was hardly surprising.
It’ll be interesting to see how this element of body horror and coping with it or repressing it or refusing it gets carried forward into his becoming an android in season 7.
Cyborg with alien DNA to android is less of a mental jump than normal human guy to android, but it is still a very different form of life.
Chronicoms are definitely alive, have a culture and individual personalities and anxieties. It’d be reasonable to assume they are a silicate-based form of life, not carbon like humans. We know from 5x1 and 6x3 that Enoch can breathe and eat and drink, but does not need to. We know his skin functions as a sensory apparatus, but that he can remove it easily. Significant amounts of a Chronicoms physical form seems to function as a customize-able exosuit. Like Enoch has said, “I am not a robot or a synth...”
But that is the normal state of their species. How a human consciousness is going to react to living that way over time we don’t know yet. How Coulson is going to feel about living that way we will have to find out in s7.
The body we saw in 6x13 that Jemma and Enoch had reconstructed used both LMD technology and Chronicom technologies made available by Enoch’s help. It is more advanced than any of the LMDs from season four, and unlike Coulson’s season four LMD, his emotional capacity hasn’t been reduced and reprogrammed by AIDA to be ‘mission oriented’. This copy of Coulson’s conscious came from Fitzsimmons, who would have never altered or harmed it.
Without a serious handwave, this Coulson will be missing some memories. His memories might stop at the last point he exited the Framework in 4c or when he was first added to the Framework by AIDA. (We will just shrug about how that data was recovered and assume it got uploaded somewhere that didn’t blow up.) It’s also plausible that Coulson’s brain was mapped again during the middle of season 5 when they were first running tests when he collapsed, but I personally doubt that is the point in time that will be used.
That he’ll likely be missing some memories will be hard on him and everyone else, but that part of this could have happened due to any head injury causing retrograde amnesia. It’s the change in his body more than his mind that Coulson will be internally dealing with again, in addition to most likely needing to convince May and other team members that it’s really him in there.
Season 7 will again be asking Coulson to decide Do I still feel like me in here? Is this still my body? Can I cope with living like this? In so many ways it is still a continuation of one of his character arcs from day one of the show.
We might see his opinions change over the season. We might see him decide he can’t do this long term. He might decide living like this isn’t as strange as he thought it would be.
Personally I am at flip-a-coin levels of thought on whether we keep Chroni-LMD-Phil through the end of the season or whether the team changes their own timeline in a different way. Either way, aos did some of its best writing with the nature of the conscious mind theme in s4 imo, whether a digital life could be a real one and how personal that choice had to be, what made a duplicate of a person’s mind real or subpar and the limits of contemporary AI. I’m looking forward to seeing them expand on that theme in their final season.
#aos#agents of shield#aos s7#aos meta#phil coulson#chronicoms#lmds#hints of body horror and transhumanism#essentially phil having to muddle through is this even still my body and mind or not?? has been there since 1x1#and watching him muddle through it again in s7 in an even more profound way might be able to serve as a really fair continuation#of that character arc#which was pointed out in conversation by preux-chevalier with whom i share a beloved analysis braincell <3#and just#in the history of scifi#robot doesn't automatically equal android and androids aren't automatically not sentient and incapable of emotion#sometimes they are and sometimes it's like The Builders from the Expanse and their minds are just too different to understand#but this is a human's mind in a very advanced android body#and unlike poor LMD may he is definitely built to last and doesn't have any unfortunate secret mission programming#how phil and those around him cope with it all i cannot wait to see tbh
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I read your other two posts about shipping nejiten and why you dont. I think you make good arguments about how marrying neji would take away tenten's freedom but I was actually wondering about how you view the ship from the perspective of someone who is married? Sorry of that doesn't make sense. I mean like how compatible you think their personalities are if the story was written differently.
Hey there anon!
So this will be my third time addressing the pairing and not to say it's any fault of yours, but I hope it's the last.
I care most about what makes a character develop in a way that is meaningful and beneficial for the overarching story. This extends into the pairings I choose to ship. I've also never been a big shipper to begin with and I'm indifferent to most pairings from any show I watch.
I also am married. Personally, fictional ships or shipping wars do not interest me in the slightest. I'd rather focus on my own, real, interpersonal relationships.
To expand on why I don't like talking about this pairing in particular: it's because I have been openly harassed by fans of the pairing both on this blog and on a previous blog that I eventually closed because my inbox blew up with angry stans that, a few years ago, I was not mentally equipped to handle. I've responded to around two to three asks openly on the blog, but at this point I've deleted in the range of 10-12 messages that I did not see fit to dignify with a response.
I figure that most of these comments come from underage followers who are too immature to understand complexities of romantic relationships or are simply too disinterested in talking about the literature to have open discourse with. They just want to ship what they believe the characters are like, have headcanons, and ignore the evidence contrary. As an adult, I have to handle this with patience and understanding. I'm not about to rage on any anon follower because I don't know their age or personal circumstances. And frankly, a fictional pairing is not worth tearing someone down over–I speak from experience.
Now, on to answering your question in full:
When it comes to the narrative, there isn't a common thread (theme, motif, storyline, etc.) that ties Neji and Tenten together. They both have the goal to get stronger, (As is the theme of team Gai at large) but Neji's story is MOST closely tied to Hinata/The Hyuga, Lee, and Naruto (in that order.) All three of those characters are sufficient enough to spur Neji's growth in his own arc. Tenten's support as a teammate is also sufficient enough. They are good battle partners (combining long range and short range) but the same is also said for Tenten and Lee. There's nothing special here. Nothing that screams "chemistry" or that "stands out."
The reason people love pairings such as SnS, NaruSaku, NaruHina, Sasusaku, SaiIno, ShikaTema, etc. is because all of these pairings have two partners that can equally contribute to the other's growth. Neji and Tenten simply do not have this. Tenten adds nothing to Neji that he does not already have: her support already comes from multiple other people in his life that understand his situation better. Tenten is often shown having a more common thread with Lee: they are both ninja that came from no special background and are overcoming their own weaknesses to pave their own path. You might say Tenten could humanize Neji or humble him, but Naruto and Lee already do that. Neji's closest female relationship is with Hinata, and that's where we see him become softer and more patient. Hinata is the one that humanizes Neji the most, and it's because they also share a same arc: literally, the Hyuga clan arc. She has the emotional intelligence to reach Neji and the position to make him believe in the determination of the once-talentless. That's THEIR arc as siblings.
I would also like people to ask themselves what exactly Neji can offer Tenten. In the reverse, I strongly can affirm that Neji does NOTHING for Tenten. He can train with her? So can the rest of her team, and she does. He can encourage her? So can the rest of her team, and they do–far more than Neji. He can calm her down when Gai/Lee do their antics? Okay, but is being a walking pacifier really a great foundry for a relationship? (Also, as Tenten gets older, part of her personal development is finally accepting her own goofy side and joining in!) In fact, his relationship and subsequent would inhibit her stated goals and dreams.
Tenten flat out does not want to have a traditional, feminine lifestyle of getting married. And as a married person, it's not impossible to understand why! Relationships and marriages are HARD work! It's not sailing into the sunset with kids and a house! They require commitment and upkeep! Sacrifice! They are a huge stressor (even the best marriages!) and you must balance the feelings and dreams of another person when you are deciding your future and make personal sacrifices.
Tenten wants to follow her hobbies and her dream is one of self-determination. Marrying Neji means introducing a rigid, hierarchical clan structure for which Tenten has no experience/interest in and is ill-prepared to handle. Her blunt, insensitive attitude would not fare well in the formal atmosphere of Hyuga affairs–this isnt a shoujo of rich guy/average girl. This is a shounen. She'll be expected to raise children and retire/hiatus from her career. This expectation does not help her goals or dreams and effectively halts her personal development.
In fact, had this pairing actually happened, shippers might have been happy that their pairing "made it," but I have no doubt that people would have ALSO called Tenten yet ANOTHER victim of Kishi's 'housewife' troupe next to Sakura and Temari. Making her Neji's wife erases what little personal identity and development she had. Why would you want to put the ONE woman who pursued her career and goals in a relationship and erase that? Because they have an aesthetic? I surely hope you never then complain about the fates of Sakura or Temari, then!
And on that note, "fixing the writing" to where Tenten is an 'empowered working mom' does NOT address Tenten's personal desires. I see this most often discarded in favor of ANY of her ships.
Tenten's purpose in the story is to show a woman who branches out from the norm. I also seldom see a woman in any story who is as balanced and flawed as she is while still being lovable. Also, despite relegating the other kunoichi to housewife status, Kishi deliberately let Tenten be a single woman who is not criticized for her decision. Japan itself still has a traditional mindset in that regard, and seeing the other cast members treat Tenten as normal–not even commenting on her relationship status–is a quiet, but no less significant addition to the story. It normalizes career women in a traditional atmosphere.
Gag about her store aside, Tenten's shop isn't doing poorly because she's a bad businesswoman or a spinster. It's been clearly stated by Tenten herself that it's because they are in a time of peace. Again, a small but significant detail that gets overlooked in Tenten's story. As Boruto progresses and war seems to loom on the horizon, I have no doubt her shop may get more business soon.
Tenten and Neji have the making of good friends and comrades with some common ground, and it's for the betterment of both of them personally that they stayed that way throughout the series. Good relationships add to characters and stories–they don't take things away.
Hopefully this finally puts my full opinions on the matter to rest. Fandom can do whatever it wants, but I'd like to not see any more of the ridiculous "pairing war" nonsense pop up in my inbox. Nejiten has FAR better reasons to stay platonic than it ever will to become canon, even in a rewritten story where Neji lives. If you want a pairing with this aesthetic but actually have chemistry and a shared narrative, look at Ren/Nora of RWBY (which, coincidentally, is actually one of the few pairings I enjoy.)
Thanks for contributing to the blog!
#nejiten#neji#nejitenten#naruto#naruto headcanons#asks#writing#female characters do not need relationships to be complete#I have this pairing blocked because all the anon hate really left a bad taste in my mouth#so that's where I stand#if you want to discuss canon then use canon evidence#not what you believe the subtext of their interactions are#it's a shounen and their few interactions are NOT that deep#tell me about the chunin exams and I'll point out that Tenten was the Opposing support to Sakura and Ino#and Kishi deliberately never painted them as romantic anywhere in his manga#he had the final say in all pairings#and chose to endorse Konoha Hiden where Tenten affirmed she never wanted a relationship#it's clear Tenten was supporting a teammate#and never her romantic rinterest#hell she noticed Kakashi and Sasuke more than Neji#and in a shonen pairings are made VERY clear#there's no way around it.#neji hyuga#neji hyuuga#hinata#hinata hyuga#hinata hyuuga#tenten#rock lee
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oh while i still have some time to just sit and be today, i wanted to write some Thoughts TM that i had while listening to tswift’s folklore in the car yesterday
1. folklore is really great as a concept album. there’s a couple of songs that don’t hit me perfect, but as a whole it does FEEL like the mystic, timeless folktale thing that she was going for. i’m impressed with the cohesion there
2. i’m not entirely sure what “the 1″ is doing there. it feels a lot more reputation/lover than the rest of them, especially since it’s more straight up romance and doesn’t do anything very interesting with the style in the way that some of the other songs do. i don’t HATE it or anything, but it doesn’t feel like it belongs on this album
3. i like how there’s clearly more than one story being traced through the songs
last great american dynasty going into mad woman is great. last great american dynasty is more about the character but also about taylor herself, and then it shifts into that theme of just wanting to go apeshit because there’s so many strings attached to civility.
also, mad woman HITS a lot better than some of her rant stuff for me recently. i’m not a big fan of the man from lover because it feels more like “why can’t patriarchy work for me”, but mad woman feels more like shouting in a soundproof room, the way that it so often does trying to rage against the status quo.
cardigan to betty is great, and i feel like august is probably also in that story because the earnest summer romance aspect seems like it happens BEFORE cardigan which happens before betty. so order of the story is 2 1 3
seven and mirrorball and this is me trying all feel like they’re the same story. there’s less backing for this one, but the way that seven is about returning to the fierceness, wildness, and sureness of self of childhood melding into mirrorball “this is where i am right now, melting myself into different shapes to fit for different people” to “i have done the melting for so many different people that now i’m far behind and don’t know who i am. i’m trying but it’s just not going well” feels like a narrative thread together.
hoax and the lakes for sure go together. i’m not sure if it’s the narrator, but the way that the two play off of each other is perfect. the shift from screaming on the cliffside asking for a reason to jump going to lie in your sadness by the lake just to be there is so.... visceral
it’s such a violent mourning shifting into more of a melancholy.
4. many of them are about themes that just don’t really get explored much.
seven as really the Purity of youth as much as the lack of knowledge and slightly feral quality. like, there’s the innocence, but not innocence as an entirely good thing. the narrator clearly doesn’t really understand the abuse the nature of the situation that “her” companion has been through and there’s this just run off to the woods and be pirates narrative that’s sweet, but clearly borne from a place of not really getting the situation. it focuses more on the narrator wanting to escape the confines of her adult life and civility than letting the companion with the bad home life escape.
then it’s got that playground chant style that’s mixed with kind of a foreboding “haunted” feel that just gives it the perfect amount of creepy and wistful. it’s a good song.
i also LOVE the lakes. i hadn’t heard it somehow until yesterday, but it’s just a feeling that i’ve never really felt expressed to music before. it’s that deep melancholy that you WANT to wallow in because there’s something about being a teenager that makes you drawn to lying in angst to lie in it, the “alone together” in a place of sublime in the literary sense, just to kind of soak up the way that the world feels vast and beautiful and terrifying and ugly and lonely- together with someone else who gets it too, while the assumption that no one else could ever GET that thing that’s kind of a universal experience is running through too.
it feels so much like being a teenager to me in a really good way i’ve never seen before. the hamlet part of being a teenager.
the style feels right for it, but i can’t tell you why as much as something like seven. i might be able to grasp it better with a few more listens.
5. other highlights- cardigan DEFINITELY feels like it’s music video where you’re transported to another, magical world. it’s a mystical and scary one, though, which is perfect for a first love that leaves you heartbroken and adrift on the sea
exile feels so right for the content of the song- that loneliness that can only be achieved through miscommunications that could probably be solved if you talked a little better
mirrorball’s style is hollow and feels like it’s spinning like a music box, which feels perfect for the image of someone who feels hollow trying to fit themselves into a million different boxes. this is me trying feels similar and works for about the same reasons.
also lyrically, this is me trying has some of my favorite stuff from her. i have about six close readings i did in the car but here’s my favorite section
They told me all of my cages were mental-- the narrator asked for help and did not get any because she was told she was making the issue up
So I got wasted like all my potential-- okay so let’s talk about this one
1. wasted potential is of course a common phrase that we’re playing on
2. “i got wasted” has the meanings of “i got drunk but in a way that was giving up my sobriety” and “i had things to contribute, but i didn’t, which is a moral and personal failing” and if you go a little further and take “wasted” to mean “thrown away like trash” that also implies a failure on the part of those THAT threw her away. like, all of the implications here of having had something to give and being tossed aside because there is no more efficiency attached and you aren’t Fulfilling Your Purpose is just fantastic, especially after the line about how she reached out for help that wasn’t given.
And my words shoot to kill when I'm mad
I have a lot of regrets about that-- 1. the words shoot to kill when i’m mad coming after the frustration of her wasted potential is great because it shows that there’s still that resentment towards the people that helped the narrator end up in this situation and she takes it out on them 2. she regrets doing so, whether because they don’t deserve it or because it doesn’t help that. 3. the “i have a lot of regrets about that” line is a motif in the song, but both times it comes back it’s more regrets for things she feels she has no control over than things she’s done
I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere
Fell behind all my classmates and I ended up here-- i think that this one’s pretty self-explanatory? anyone who was a gifted child knows the feeling of having been great at academics but not necessarily socially or in fields that translate well to “real life” and then ending up at the bottom of things because the skills that you were building left you ill-fit for the way that world actually is.
the instrumentation and bounciness of betty just feels so nostalgic and childhood summer-lovey in a way that works perfect for two young lovers coming back together after a fight
6. i don’t know, other than the 1 this album just really feels like what it was going for. there’s a lot of great running themes that make it FEEL like folklore and a few of the songs take some great stuff from folk songs which helps
the emphasis on narratives and perception and especially movies helps with that.
as a whole with running themes and motifs and junk, this is definitely some of tswift’s best work. maybe THE best work. some of the songs aren’t necessarily “fun” to listen to and i wouldn’t choose to put some of them on just individually, but they make for a great whole.
7. i’m not saying you have to listen to folklore because i don’t make your choices but there’s a lot of great stuff on it so
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We’ve Got You: Pt. 2
We’ve Got You: 1 2
Ship: Hoseok | Reader | Yoongi
Description: The line between fiction and reality blurs further, and you’re unsure whether or not your best friends improve or worsen it.
Warnings: Death, Mental Illness, Threesome, Dom!YoonSeok, Dirty Talk, Spit Roasting, Intercourse, Oral, Overstimulation, Multiple Orgasms, Unprotected Sex, Creampie
Word Count: 3,441
A/N: I didn’t even plan to write part 2 but here we are- the conclusion.
"I don't understand any of it! I thought this medication was supposed to work, or do something. But she's still... she's still seeing them," Jin seethed, his tone exasperated.
Dr. Kim sighed, giving the man a sympathetic look. "Medication does take a while to work. Besides that, many have to try out different antipsychotic pills before finding one that works for them. If there was one pill that could immediately cure symptoms of schizophrenia, the world would be a far better place. But perhaps you're right. I'll look into switching her from Abilify to something stronger or more suited to her needs."
"Y'know, doc, sometimes I start thinking that they're real. Like she's got those two assholes just following her around and trying to... I don't know, take her. I see them for a moment and I'm convinced I'm the delusional one- but then I remind myself I'm just letting it get to my head."
"It's normal for you to be feeling this way- there's a lot of stress for taking care of someone with this disorder," Dr. Kim reminds him. "I'll remind you that if you ever feel the need to send her to the ward, we'll be more than happy to take her in."
"Is this normal, though? For someone of her condition?" Jin ponders. "I've been doing so much studying on this, but usually the hallucinations or delusions don't pertain to... well, dead people. To people she knew."
"There is a first time for everything. Besides, she's displayed other symptoms that link up to it. Stress tends to trigger mental illnesses, and it's usually around this age where it pops up for the few people who do have this disorder. Besides, according to your records, your family does have some history of schizophrenia. She's shown the symptoms of delusions and hallucinations, but another thing you've got to remember is that people with schizophrenia tend to be more of a danger to themselves than others. That's especially concerning considering what you told me happened last night. If she continues to show this sort of behavior, we may have to detain her regardless of you admitting her to the hospital."
Jin sighed, rubbing his hand over his face. "I understand, Doctor. I'll keep her safe, trust me. What should I do in the meantime?"
"There's not much else I can advise other than what you've been doing. Just make sure she takes her medication and keep her out of harm's way. It's the bare minimum you can do for now until we get more done," Dr. Kim advises.
"Alright, thank you, Doctor," Jin says. He leaves the office to see you, sitting in the chair, leaning back and crossing your arms. He feels so, so tired, but he wouldn't show you that side of him. He didn't want you to believe that you were a burden.
"So, what'd Dr. Kim say? Should I be locked up because I'm crazy?" you huff. "I would think that I'd get to listen in on those conversations. I'm still a functioning member of society, might I remind you."
Jin offers a weak smile of amusement, glad you still had some pep to you despite the lack of sleep. "Y/N, I think we should talk."
"This again? To scold me?" You huff childishly, but he knows you're only playing. You understood his concern.
He leans in front of you, holding your hands in his and locking your gaze. "Y/N, you're an adult. As you said before, you're a functioning member of society. But you and I both know that... Well, you're sick. Really sick. I'm- We're, trying our best to help you. But you've got to help, too, y'know? We wouldn't be here if we didn't care, and you know I only want the best for you. I only want to help."
Your hard stare softens when you analyze the expression on his face. He's gotten paler these past three months. There were circles under his eyes, and he seemed very sullen and skinny. Your brother was handsome, no doubt, even now. However, he seemed to lose the glow that once was.
"I know," you say slowly, diverting your gaze to your lap.
"I know it's normal for someone of your condition to truly believe what she... sees. But surely there's a part of you that knows that what you're seeing... it's not there. Yoongi and Hoseok are dead- they died three months ago. I know you need time to cope- they were your best friends and it's only been a few months. But you're only going to end up hurting yourself and me if you continue chasing after something that's not there."
Your eyes began to well up with tears. "I know... I just..."
"You miss them?" Jin offers for you.
"You don't understand. It seems so real. I can feel them, touch them, hear them. It's them through and through and... it feels like they're still there."
"Y/N, you saw their bodies at the funeral. You know what happened."
"I know, but don't you ever wonder... just wonder if ghosts are real? I've been thinking so much about it. No hallucination can touch me. No hallucination can seem so... so lifelike. It was just like them."
"Hallucinations and delusions are common for someone of your condition. I did ask the doctor about it, though, since it is... special. Most only have auditory hallucinations, but as he pointed out there was a first time for everything. As for physical interaction, I can't say I know much about that. I'm no expert, and the best I can find is through scholarly documents. But I am trying to use what little I know to help you," Jin says.
"I know. They always hated that about you," you smile weakly.
Jin mimicks it. "I need you to cooperate, though. When you... see Yoongi and Hoseok... don't follow them. They're not real. Don't do anything they want- they can't really harm you. You have to remind yourself that they're not real because they've caused nothing but harm. Even after death, apparently. Another thing that's common for people with your condition is that they tend to be more harmful to themselves than to others, despite popular media has shown. Think to yourself whether or not something's truly tangible, and what the ultimate consequences are. It'll be hard, I know, but I want you to try."
"I understand," you say softly.
"Good. I talked to Dr. Kim about getting you a new prescription since the pills we have doesn't seem to be very effective. If the new meds work out, you won't be seeing them again," Jin smiles, the sentiment one of good intent.
You didn't find it nearly as comforting.
-
You're woken in the middle of the night, the two of the boys beside you on the bed.
Yoongi smiles at you, combing his fingers through your hair- just like he used to. It feels so heartwarming and comfortable that you let yourself melt into the sensation, humming quietly in content. Hoseok, meanwhiles, snuggles into your side, affectionate as ever, curled up in fetus position as he wraps around you like ivy.
"How'd you sleep, beautiful?" Yoongi whispers in your ear, voice husky. "Did you have sweet dreams?"
At that, your eyes snap open. You realize despite the fact that his fingers thread through your hair, you can't feel his breath on your neck. You couldn't even feel Hoseok's chest rising and falling with his breath.
Because neither was breathing, to begin with.
You pull back from both, sitting up to stare at them with wide eyes through the dark. "You're not real," you whisper quietly.
Hoseok scoffs at that, rolling his eyes as he stretches. "Is that more bullshit your brother is spewing?"
You squeeze your eyes shut. "Please stop. You're not real and I know I miss them but... This hurts too much. Seeing you, feeling you, as though you're actually here."
"We are here, Y/N," Yoongi says, his voice soft as he presses a cold hand to the side of your face. You look up at him, still present. "You feel that? You feel me?"
You reach up to the hand on your cheek, but you can't make out a pulse. You don't know if it's because your brain can't make one, you're just too sleepy, or something else. "I don't know anymore. Hallucinations... they can touch you... I think..."
Hoseok grumbled at that, pulling you to him, your back flush against his chest. "Hallucination, huh? Could your imagination really even compare to this, though?"
You whine, arching your back when one of his hands gropes your breasts, his mouth finding its way to your neck, nibbling, biting, and licking in that way he knew you loved. You gasp in surprise, but his other hand comes up to your mouth, blocking the noise. "Shh, baby. Wouldn't want your brother seeing you getting off with a couple of hallucinations, now would we? Now be good and spread your legs for Yoongi."
You comply, your legs shaky as you spread them for the older man, relaxing when you feel his veiny hands massage the skin, loosening your muscles.
Yoongi and Hoseok had shared you plenty of times, and other times when it was only two at a time. The sort of polyamorous relationship shared between three friends. You kept it a secret, however, knowing your brother wouldn't approve. Turns out that the secret would be taken to the grave.
Yoongi tugs down your pajama shorts, sucking in a sharp breath once he sees you're not wearing any underwear. "No underwear, huh? Dirty girl. You were just begging to get fucked tonight, weren't you?" Yoongi questions, his thumb twirling around the small nub in a way that made you keen. "That's right, get nice and wet for us baby. We'll show you how real we really are."
The hand that Hoseok had clasped over your mouth now shoves fingers inside, muffling the moans as Yoongi continued his ministrations, two fingers delving inside to roughly finger you, knowing you can handle it.
"Do you remember the first time you did this with us, Y/N?" Hoseok questions. "On prom night? How we shared you in the back of a dirty old limo, with the driver oblivious to what was happening in the back? To how wet you were and what a nasty girl you were for us?"
You nod, some of the drool going down your chin and onto Hoseok's hand. Your eyes roll back as Yoongi leans down, capturing the small nub in his mouth and sucking harshly, his ministrations rough in an effort to get you to cum as soon as possible.
It had been three months since you had been fucked, and God had you missed it. Hoseok pulled his hand down, forcing you to look directly at Yoongi between your legs. His stare was predatory, locking with yours as he feasted between your legs, enjoying the way your eyes started to glaze over.
"That's right, baby, look at him. He's taking such good care of you, isn't he? He's getting you ready for cock. We've held back from you for long enough."
Yoongi's gaze stays locked on yours as he stimulates your g-spot and clit, trying to get you to race towards the edge. Your tells begin to show, from the slight quiver in your thighs to the glaze in your eyes as you tumble towards the edge of subspace.
"That's right, cum for us," Hoseok rasps in your ear. "There'll be more where that came from."
You find your orgasm washing over you, and the moan is suppressed. Yoongi holds your thighs down, still lapping at your heat, doing his best to overstimulate you as you soak the sheets. You whine in pain at the sensation as Yoongi continues to lap at your clit, but Hoseok only pets your head, calming you as you let the pain subside for pleasure, another orgasm, though less intense, coursing through your veins.
Yoongi comes back up for air, his face glistening with your juices. He grabs the back of your neck, Hoseok letting go of you as Yoongi presses you towards his own body, smashing your lips to his. You taste yourself against his tongue, and you feel yourself getting hot all over again at the thought.
Yoongi breaks apart, a string of saliva connecting you now parting into nothingness. "Still think we're just a figment of your imagination, baby?"
Your face goes red, and your mind is still hazy despite the fact you're wide awake now. "I... I..."
"She still doesn't know, hm? Maybe she needs a bit of cock to help get her senses straight," Hoseok chuckles. "Get on your knees, baby. It's time to take what's ours."
You obey, your limbs shaky as you get on all fours. You observe Yoongi, who has now yanked down his boxers and pants, stroking his length before you. Your mouth waters as you remember the girth of his cock, and how deliciously it would stretch you. Hoseok's cock wasn't as girthy, but he made up for it in length, always using it to mercilessly batter your g-spot.
At that thought, you feel the blunt head run over your folds, a low hiss coming behind you from Hoseok. "Fuck, I've missed this." He pushes inside, an easy slide from the copious amount of lubrication, and both of you gasp at the feeling. Hoseok stills inside of you, and reaches forward, grabbing your face and opening your mouth, pushing your head towards Yoongi. "Why don't you suck him off, Y/N? He was so nice to you. It's only right to return the favor."
You nod, opening your mouth in compliance. Yoongi accepts the invitation with little fanfare, pushing inside of your mouth as you begin to bob your head. Yoongi fucks your throat as Hoseok begins to fuck you from behind, both of their paces controlled and in rhythm, as though the two were synced.
Hoseok grabs fistfuls of your ass before pushing his chest against your back, his face next to yours as he observes how lewdly you swallow Yoongi's cock whole. "What a good fucking girl for us, taking our cocks so well."
"Shit, baby, just like that," Yoongi grunts, his hips stuttering slightly as he continuously dives into the warmth of your mouth. "You were made for our cocks, weren't you?"
You can't even nod up at him, fucked out as you rock between the two men, your mind going plank as you enter another plane of consciousness. All in a result of an orgasm that consisted of being sandwiched between two men. Everything seems to go into a dreamlike state, a subspace only they could bring you to.
Before you knew it you were swallowing all of Yoongi's cum, and Hoseok was filling up your pussy with a low grunt. You were brutally used by both men, with three orgasms now to boot.
Yoongi wipes the sweat from your brow, smiling fondly at you. They both look at you as though you're their world- a look you'll never forget. "Still think we're imaginary, Y/N?"
"No," you say, your lashes fluttering as you slowly come down from your high.
"Then come with us," Hoseok smiles. "It's time we finish what we started."
-
"Here again?" you whisper quietly, looking down at the seemingly endless abyss below the bridge.
"It's the simplest way," Hoseok shrugs.
You ponder for a moment, tossing the switchblade from hand to hand. "I didn't give it much thought last time you tried to get me to do this. But it's clear now that I think about it what you want from me. My only question is why."
Yoongi gives you an understanding smile. "Ah, you've figured it out."
"What can we say? We picked a smart one," Hoseok chuckled.
"If I cut this, we'll all fall and die. But you two can't die, can you? Because..." You suck in a deep breath. "Because you two are already dead."
The two are quiet for a moment, your words hanging in the air.
"What is it like? To die?" you question softly.
"It's quick. As you know I died on the spot. Hoseok wasn't so lucky. He had to go through a lot of pain and even a coma before he died," Yoongi pointed out.
"I remember," you say, tears welling up in your eyes at the memory. "They wouldn't even let me see him."
Hoseok gives you a warm side hug, embracing you. "It's alright, Y/N. I'm here now, aren't I?"
"Yes, but..."
"You wanted to know how death was like? It's painless when it comes, but with this method, it's quick. I don't want it dragged out for you the way it was for me," Hoseok says.
"We just want us all to be together, Y/N," Yoongi tells you. "We promised we'd always stay by each other's sides, right? We're a team, a trio. We'll never love anyone else as much for as long as... Well, ironically as long as we lived. You belong with us, Y/N. Even you know this. We wouldn't be here if you didn't."
You were conflicted. Could this be your mind playing games with you in order to bring about your doom? Or were they really ghosts set out on doing unfinished business... which was reuniting with you.
You swallowed hard.
"What about Jin?"
"What about him?" Hoseok scoffed. "Y/N, he thinks you're crazy- he thinks you're delusional. We're telling you we're real, and he's been out here drugging you, about to take you to some ward. He feels burdened trying to brainwash you and take care of you. He doesn't have your best interests at heart like us."
"Yes he does," you begin to defend.
"No, he doesn't," Hoseok clarifies. "He's always had the goal of keeping us apart. He's going as far as to get you drugged up on something new, isn't he? So you'll no longer see us? Do you never want to see us again?"
"No," you say. "I love you. More than anything."
"Then let us be together finally," Yoongi says, taking your hand in his and bringing the switchblade up to the rope. "We'll finally have our happily ever after, just the three of us."
You nod, the two of them giving support as you begin to drag the blade across the rope.
You're down to the last few threads when-
"Y/N!"
You turn, seeing Jin run towards you. You hold the blade up above your head, eyes wide as you threaten to bring it down. "Don't come any closer!"
Jin freezes in place before the bridge, panicked. "Y/N, don't! Please, let's just go home!"
"No! I'm not going anywhere, Jin. You've got to understand that. You've kept me away long enough," you say. "Yoongi and Hoseok... They're real. They're here, with me. They're real!"
"Y/N, Yoongi and Hoseok are dead. Please, we can get you the help you need. They have a division at the hospital to help you-"
"No! No more doctors, no more pills, no more treating me like I'm crazy!" you exclaim. Your eyes water as you stare at your brother. "I'm a burden enough to you, Jin. Let me go."
His eyes get glassy as well, and a lump forms in his throat. "I just don't want to lose my baby sister."
You falter at that, slowly lowering the knife to your side. Hoseok, however, grabs your hand, halting your surrender. "Remember what we said," Hoseok hisses at you.
"He's my brother," you whine.
"And we're your best friends. You didn't choose to be siblings with him, but you chose to love us," Yoongi says.
Jin sees you speaking to yourself at the bridge, and quickly makes out what he believes is going on.
"Y/N, I can't see them," Jin says. "Doesn't that prove anything to you?"
"You can't see them?" you question, eyes wide.
"Because he's a fool. You see us because of our bond, Y/N. He's blind," Yoongi hisses.
"Y/N... please..." Jin begs.
"He's going to send you away to some ward because he thinks you're crazy," Hoseok tells you. "Do you want that? To be locked up and become a prisoner? You're not crazy, Y/N. You're not."
You stop for a moment, torn between two worlds.
You look up to Jin with glassy eyes. "Maybe I should've died in that wreck, too."
"Y/N, wait-"
"I love you, brother."
With that, the bridge came falling down.
#yoonseok#hoseok#yoongi#jung hoseok#min yoongi#suga#bts yoongi#bts hoseok#jhope#j-hope#bts suga#bts jhope#bts j-hope#agust d#bts#bangtan#bts smut#yoongi smut#hoseok smut#smut
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Neon Genesis Evangelion & Making Arthouse Work
There is a lot of arthouse media out there. Anime certainly has its fair share, and who hasn't watched a Lynch or Jodowrosky film solely to lord your cultural sophistication over your inferiors? Most of them share a common thread of being “art for art’s sake”: impressive on an aesthetic or thematic level while a little lacking in character and narrative, which leaves its wider appeal, ah, limited at best.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is a show that cannot escape its ending. The show’s final stretch is totalizing in the popular discourse - everyone knows it "goes off the rails" in its latter half. Evangelion becomes an arthouse show, throwing reality to the curb in exchange for an assault of abstract and introspective setpieces. At age fourteen when you inevitably first see it, your mind is blown by it all, which is fair if it’s your first taste of the genre. However, coming back to it over a decade later like I did, having seen way more avant-style media than is probably healthy, I expected to enjoy the show but also see it just-another-entry into the genre.
Instead it held up masterfully. Evangelion is replete with flaws if you look at its whole picture, but in the execution of its arthouse appeal I saw it soaring past its competition in so many ways. In hindsight it had to - why else would an entire generation of fans trumpet it as one of the most successful shows of all time despite all those rails it went off? Evangelion, through undoubtedly sheer luck and insanity, stumbled on a way to make arthouse work for audiences beyond its niche, and I think that is the key to what makes the show as a whole function so well.
A World Without Uncertainty
As previously mentioned, most avant animation & film privileges aesthetics first in its visuals. The goal is to evoke a mood or feeling, and whether or not it really connects to the narrative is pretty secondary. I am certainly not bashing that - the way this challenges the viewer creates a unique experience. But even I will admit that sometimes it makes it, well, a bit hard to care about what’s happening on the screen.
Evangelion dodges this problem pretty much completely by making so many of its visual elements extremely direct. Honestly if you look at the majority of the more out-there sections of the show sequence by sequence, they would barely qualify as out of the ordinary! To choose one, take one of my favourite moments from Episode 26:
This sequence is not a mind-boggling piece of animation, at all. The concept of an outer frame that contains fast-moving images that reflect the nature of that frame is not new - ever seen this before?
--- It even has a red background, the hacks! ---
Not exactly the peak of avant-garde cinema here. Evangelion adds to the directness because this sequence is playing to illustrate that, literally, Shinji's identity is composed of the people in his life, and his desires are shaped by how they see him. It’s one of the core themes of the show - other people's conceptions of you are, in a way, just as much "you" as your own conception of you. What better way to illustrate that concept visually than having those people flashing through the frame of your body? While still an abstract animation sequence, it is not at all "art for the sake of art". It’s tied directly to the narrative, with a clear meaning - there is even dialogue partially explaining it.
This clarity exists for most of the more out-there sequences in Evangelion. The show's real "challenge" to the audience comes in how it strings sequences like these together, often at a breakneck pace. While in isolation they are only borderline abstract, when thrown together you are pounded down by the mix of themes and aesthetics. Look at Asuka's breakdown in Episode 22:
The scene has a cool visual design with the color contrast, to heighten the faceless crowd vibe - which it should, because Asuka is constantly fighting to not drown in a sea of anonymity, to stand out from the crowd and be the best pilot, to rely on no one but herself - and yet she constantly fears she is doomed to fail. This pretty-clear sequence, though, jumps quickly into this:
Then goes into this:
--- Eat your seizure-warning heart out, Pokemon ---
And in 20 seconds the show has thrown a half dozen thematic ideas at you via abstract representation. The viewer is absolutely overwhelmed on their first viewing from this, it becomes an aesthetic and you get that unique “arthouse experience”. But almost none of it is art for art's sake - you are watching a plot, a narrative, it almost all has dialogue explaining it. If you slowed it down you could get almost all of these scenes on the first watch, and on a rewatch you will probably pick it up fully. It’s this merging of abstraction and concreteness that elevates Evangelion above most other arthouse animation I've seen; you are constantly challenged, but never so much as to surrender and give up.
(Note: When I say that these scenes are “direct: or “clear”, I don’t mean that they have only one meaning, or that everyone will agree on the meaning. Their meaning is based on many other scenes, each with their own ambiguities and layers, and those differences will multiply out over the course of the show to result in varied interpretations. That process is different, however, from scenes having only aesthetic content, with no or little inherent narrative grounding.)
Realizing the Obvious Over and Over
Okay, the art itself walks the clarity/abstraction line, but even if it is connected to the narrative, why do this? Why would an audience want something that was a "typical" show to move in this direction? A lot of viewers have commented on the severity of the "shift" in the later episodes of Evangelion (generally starting around episode 16), a disconnect the fandom has not failed to capitalize on:
This split has its own meta-narrative, based on the production history of the show. Anno's growing mental illness - always present from the beginning - and huge production woes involving having to scrap already-complete episodes, caused a "breaking point" around this time where he threw caution to the wind and let capital-D Depression take the wheel. While there is some truth to this in the meta-sense, I have never liked the idea that the show itself has such a split. I instead see the more arthouse final stretch as more-or-less a natural outgrowth of the narrative, not a meta-split. In particular, the arthouse second "half" only functions as a reflection of and continuation of the more traditional first half, and without that first half it would fall on its face.
To show why that is the case, I want to explain a type of narrative arc that really hits my personal aesthetic in long form media that I am calling now and forever more the "Multifaceted Character Arc". Essentially, these are when characters have a core arc, and over the course of events they resolve this arc - but the show or book or what-have-you is only halfway done. They could just have a second, different arc, but instead the resolution of their previous arc proceeds to be undermined, picked apart, and exposed as a partial lie, and the character realizes they haven't resolved anything yet; and so the same arc continues, but from a different angle.
Evangelion embodies this trope on turn-it-up-to-eleven steroids. Episode 16 might be the "split" point in the meta-sense, but I always looked at Episode 12 as the narrative split-point, where the first half "ends". Episode 12 wraps up with Shinji, Misato, Asuka, and Rei having a ramen dinner together after beating an Angel, and so many of their previous arcs are "resolved". Shinji has opened up, comfortable with his surrogate family and no longer pushing them away, Asuka is letting her guard down and actually thought about Misato when choosing where to eat, something early-Asuka wouldn’t be caught dead doing, Rei is socializing, and so on. Shinji even admits why he wants to pilot the Eva (praise from his father), which has been one of his "arc" question up until this point, and he seems to have finally figured things out.
--- This might actually be the last happy expression Shinji has till the finale ---
Of course, the directing will have none of that, because this is a false peace. Misato, who is wise to the wider narrative, knows exactly on how shaky a ground this is all built on, and gives Shinji the side-eye to prove it.
--- The “we call those daddy issues, Shinji” face ---
Episode 13 is a Ritsuko side-story, and episode 14 is a recap episode....look, I never said Evangelion was perfect, okay? But once episode 15 rolls around all of this narrative build-up starts being completely undone: Shinji and Asuka's stable-ish friendship gains some very-unstable romantic overtones, Misato has a full-on emotional breakdown, and we are off to the races in episode 16 as Shinji's newfound confidence and masculine need to wave his dick around for Asuka's benefit results in one-way ticket to psycho-analysis mind-screw station:
I could go into how these themes develop from here, but that isn’t the focus of this essay. My point with all this build is instead to focus on two core narrative elements: justification, and engagement. All of the out-there elements and pyscho-analytic themes of the second half of Evangelion are present in the first half, and were presented in a typical way - character interactions, dialogue, plot events, and so on. Remember that scene I mentioned before from Asuka's breakdown, of her being swamped by ghostly forms, and how it referred to Asuka’s desire stand alone from the crowd through her skills as a pilot? I know what it meant thematically, cause here is Asuka, implying to you, in dialogue, what that scene is going to mean 8 episodes earlier (“it” is “pilot the Eva”):
And this isn’t even the first scene this theme has come up in, I could pull up a number of screenshots if I needed to of her either implying or directly stating this desire, its conflicts, and having resolutions around them.
The avant latter half of Evangelion can throw half a dozen themes at you in sequences of abstract animation because you have already spent half a season thinking about these issues in normal terms. It’s the multifaceted character arc - they have been continually struggling with these issues and exploring different solutions to them, solutions that seem to fail. On this backdrop, to repeat these themes again using traditional narrative tools would be, well, boring. Evangelion isn’t an essay, it’s a visual medium; the show has set the stage with the regular visual tricks of the trade for exploring these arcs, but in the latter half of the show it pushes what that visual medium can do. With that grounding, unlike in so much avant work, you can fully follow along with it. Essentially, Evangelion made you do your homework before the test.
The Ones You Love Mean More Than Anything
This groundwork is true on an intellectual/comprehension level, but it is also true on an emotional level; not only do you understand better these abstract elements, you also care about them, because they are not just referring back to factual elements but human moments. To take an example, Shinji and Asuka have several fight scenes that occur in abstract-head-space, and in one of them Asuka (wanna guess who my favourite character is?) is ripping into Shinji for how he fails to reach out to her, to make her feel wanted, and she mentions this:
The image here is one of many flashing across the screen at the time, but it’s a flashback to the aftermath of their kiss in episode 15. The “hold” here isn’t metaphorical; it’s a direct reference to how he didn’t hold her during the kiss. If you didn’t think it was clear, look back at the actual episode 15 footage - how the kiss scene focuses entirely on Shinji's hand in all its not-holding-Asuka glory. Like, really:
--- This shot is held for over 15 seconds, with only Shinji’s hand moving. Also a penguin walks by, don’t ask. ---
This is a really impactful call-back, part of the multi-faceted arc, as Asuka continually tries to figure out her feelings for Shinji and fails. Except, the scene being referenced here is not shot as a dramatic relationship moment, it’s a comedy scene. Its honestly hilarious, one of the worst first kisses ever on screen, to the point where Shinji almost suffocates to death because he is such a wuss and Asuka is such a tsundere. And at the end of the show they take this moment and transform it into part of Asuka and Shinji's relationship implosion.
Which means that you care about it! Because you are going to care about two kids’ fumbling attempts at romance far more than an essay on isolation and connection, for all the reasons those narratives traditionally work. Real people never have endless strings of introspection - introspection is something you do on a life that you have otherwise been living, with moments of seriousness and moments of hilarity and dumbness. Evangelion can show that, because it isn’t drama 24/7. Its first 15 episodes have comedy, action, slice-of-life, the works.
I think this is the element that really makes Evangelion stand out - that it can push what is happening onscreen to the limits of abstraction, and you are not only going to understand it, but also remember the human beings it is all happening to. It not only put in the time to make these characters fully-fleshed out, but connects back its new later elements to the moments that made them so fleshed out. It justifies going as far as it does through its arcs, and engages you emotionally as it escalates, while so many attempts at arthouse media either fail or don’t bother with either of those key elements. Evangelion is a show that starts as a highly traditional narrative, ends as an arthouse film, and by binding it all together so tightly makes you think it couldn’t have gone any other way. Which, it turns out, is a pretty good way to make the arthouse elements actually work.
....
Oh yeah, so Neon Genesis Evangelion: 10/10. Like the score? We are supposed to do that, right? That’s my score.
-Tim
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Final Notes: I have a bunch of other thoughts on Evangelion, and so while I imagine a lot of the shows we watch are going to get one cohesive essay, I will almost definitely have some follow-up posts - this post is just the main one that connects so many of my biggest takeaways together. I definitely want to write a few on the plot issues and their (non)relevance, the ways Shinji’s arc is perceived by fandom, and some other topics, but I do want to put up a few essays on other anime so we don’t have a massive Evangelion dump starting out the project. Hopefully I will get some inspiration on more topics from all the great ~discourse~ going on around Evangelion right now, and we will see what gets written.
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By far the most common request I get is for pre-ROTS Anakin angst/fluff, so here you go!
*.*.*.*
“Haven’t you noticed?”
It took weeks before Padmé found the courage to ask Obi-Wan that question. Something had been…not wrong per se, but just a little bit off for a very long time.
Every time Anakin returned to Coruscant after a deployment of several weeks, he looked worse and worse. This time, when they had met up at their favorite late-night café in the middle level of the city, Padmé was shocked by the man who stood before her. It was worse than the usual blend of tired and harried; Anakin looked absolutely defeated.
He ordered a triple-strength caf and nothing else, and barely paid attention to their conversation. Even news about the baby, who recently started kicking, only earned her half a smile.
Padmé invited him back to her apartment with the intention of getting some food into him at least, but it was late and he said he was just tired. She wanted to press him, but the rare nights when they were both on Coruscant were so precious that Padmé couldn’t bear to spend one arguing.
Padmé took the medicine she’d recently been prescribed to calm her own nerves (because wasn’t the war weighing on all of them?) and crawled into bed beside him. She took Anakin’s hands in hers and placed them over her baby bump. “It will be worth it in the end if we can build a better world for our child,” she whispered.
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to accomplish that,” he growled back. Not exactly the reaction she had hoped for, but he hadn’t disagreed.
She fell asleep there in his arms, still worried.
She awoke to the sound of a scream, and then Anakin’s hand on her cheek.
“You’re okay,” he whispered, panting. “You’re alive.”
“Of course I am,” she whispered back, putting her arms around his neck, but Anakin pushed himself free.
“I dreamed…you and Obi-Wan. I lost both of you. Obi-Wan-”
“Ani, I’m okay, and I’m sure Obi-Wan is too. Isn’t he safe in the Temple? Lie back down.”
Anakin rolled to his feet and began shoving his arms through the sleeves of his Jedi robes.
“It’s the middle of the night, Ani. It was just a dream. Do you want to put something on the holo to calm down?”
“I can’t—I would die if—I shouldn’t even be here, Padmé,” he said, gesturing wildly. “We’re going to get caught. Somebody’s going to know.”
“Stay,”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Padmé watched him storm off, staggering a little bit. He didn’t seem completely awake, nor completely lucid. She didn’t like the thought of him flying through the city at night alone.
-He’s on his way to the Temple.-
Unbeknownst to Anakin, Padmé and Obi-Wan had exchanged comm messages like this one before. Padmé hadn’t originally intended to hide it from Anakin, exactly, but he was so insistent that they couldn’t ask Obi-Wan for help and she hadn’t found the right time to talk him into it yet. Still, a tentative alliance between the two had formed out of a mutual interest in Anakin’s continued survival.
-Check on him?-
-I will.-
Padmé was surprised by the promptness of Obi-Wan’s response, given the late hour. Apparently they were not the only ones going without sleep.
-He hasn’t slept, or eaten that I know of. It’s getting bad, Obi-Wan. Worse than usual.-
-I know. Thank you, Padmé.-
…
Obi-Wan paced through the apartment once, then twice. He couldn’t think of a reason to call on Anakin and knock at his door at four in the morning, not when he wasn’t even supposed to know that Anakin had been out.
He knew he wouldn’t sleep until he had confirmed that Anakin at least made it back to the Temple safely. In the past, he had comm’d Ahsoka for such confirmation on nights like these, but now Anakin lived alone. He decided he would give it another thirty minutes, not that there would be much traffic between the senatorial complex and the Temple at a time like this. He breathed in slowly, then out. Were they overreacting? Padmé wasn’t a soldier, perhaps she just did not understand.
Obi-Wan put a hand on the door and made up his mind. He would just pop down to Anakin’s apartment, come up with something about a datapad he’d left.
With a gentle brush of the Force, he palmed the door aside, and saw the missing party hovering near the mat, as if deciding whether to knock.
It’s getting bad. Haven’t you noticed?
Of course Obi-Wan had noticed that Anakin was fatigued all the time, but so was everybody else. He was dropping pounds at an alarming rate, but honestly the whole company was losing their appetite on the daily, grappling with heavy losses and horrific sights. Anakin often mentioned headaches or migraines, but even these were explained away – who wasn’t overtaxed and overworked?
And by the Force—Padmé was right.
How hadn’t he seen it?
Obi-Wan turned on the hallway lights, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“Force, Anakin, you startled me. Come in.”
Anakin did, looking nervous. His face was gaunt and the bags under his eyes made Obi-Wan wince internally.
Obi-Wan said nothing as he approached, and Anakin made no sound of greeting. Gently he laid a hand on Anakin’s brow, then moved it to his cheek. No fever. But Anakin looked positively ill.
“I just…I just had to make sure,” he stuttered.
“Make sure of what, Anakin?”
Anakin’s bottom lip trembled. Obi-Wan didn’t press the issue.
“Sit down,” he invited softly, pointing to the couch as he slipped into the kitchen. It was far too late (or too early, to be pedantic) for tea, and Obi-Wan was already scheming to get Anakin to bed before the sun came up, but he was also concerned by Padmé’s comment that Anakin hadn’t eaten.
Anakin sat stiffly on the couch, rubbing his burning eyes. Obi-Wan returned and sat beside him.
“Here. Drink up,” said Obi-Wan, pushing a glass into his hand.
Anakin looked down at the chocolate supplement drink he was now holding. It was the same kind the Healers had often given him in that first year, when he’d come to the Temple underweight and undernourished. They came in vanilla and tulanberry flavors too, but he’d always preferred the chocolate. Funny that Obi-Wan had remembered that.
“You’ve not been taking care of yourself,” Obi-Wan said. He didn’t sound accusatory, only sad.
Anakin just shook his head, at a loss for words.
“You’ll stay here tonight,” Obi-Wan decided. “Get some sleep, and take tomorrow morning off if you can.”
Anakin swallowed a tiny sip of the drink. “I don’t want to.”
“Anakin, it’s nearly dawn. You need more than two or three hours of rest. Whatever it is, I’ll help you reschedule it.”
“No, the other part. I don’t want to sleep,” he confessed. Then in a halfhearted grumble, he added, “Probably won’t be able to anyways.”
“Do you still take the sleeping pills?”
Anakin cringed, and for a moment Obi-Wan was afraid that he had annoyed him. “Last time I saw the healer, she increased the dose,” Anakin admitted in a small voice. “But I don’t exactly…usually…take them?”
That was more honesty than Obi-Wan had expected from him, and he nodded in carefully concealed surprise. “Is there a reason why not?”
Anakin let that question hang in the air for a while, pretending to be absorbed by the glass in his hands.
“It’s okay,” Obi-Wan said quietly. The conversation had already surpassed his expectations as far as Anakin opening up. He’d been growing distant for quite a long time, and doubly so after the ordeal with Ahsoka.
But Anakin caught him by surprise again.
“I feel like they make it harder to…to wake up from the nightmares,” he whispered.
“Oh, Anakin,”
Anakin bristled at the pitying tone of voice he had chosen, and Obi-Wan schooled his face quickly. “Are you having visions?”
“No. Maybe. Force, I hope not. If they came true, I’d…” Anakin shook his head. “I’d rather die.”
“Do you want to tell me what they’re about?”
“No.” said Anakin immediately. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Obi-Wan didn’t need to know tonight. If this unexpected conversation was any proof, he might manage to find out another day. He suspected that Anakin would never have shared this much information if he wasn’t run down to his very core, and hanging by a thread. When had it gotten so bad?
Anakin set the glass down on the table and pushed it away from him, as if to signal that he couldn’t drink any more. He had barely finished a third of it, but that was better than nothing. Tomorrow morning, Obi-Wan decided, they would work on getting some real food into him.
“Come on,” he said, standing up and offering Anakin a steadying hand. “Go brush your teeth, and I’ll find some clothes you can wear to bed.”
If Anakin had any opinion on his master ordering him to go brush his teeth like a youngling, he didn’t share it. He must really be feeling sick, and Obi-Wan’s heart hurt. Anakin did as he was told, and changed into a pair of Obi-Wan’s pajamas.
“Do you want me to give you a sleep suggestion, Anakin?” Obi-Wan asked as Anakin lay down on the pallet in the spare room.
“No,” he said reflexively.
“Are you sure? You won’t dream, good or bad.”
Anakin hesitated as he pulled the extra blankets up. “That…sounds nice, actually.”
Obi-Wan drew the room-darkening blinds over the tall windows so that the sunrise wouldn’t disturb them. He knelt by the pallet and laid his hand on Anakin’s brow.
It took Anakin several long moments to disassemble his tightly-drawn mental shields and allow the energy of the Force to flow between them. Obi-Wan guided him under, deep enough in sleep that he would not dream.
He wondered for a moment whether he should stay, and watch over Anakin in case he started to resurface. He brushed the side of Anakin’s face with a feather-light touch, and stroked his fingers through the younger knight’s curls.
May the Force hold you, as it holds all its children, Obi-Wan thought. He had to believe that this war would end within their lifetimes, and that maybe then Anakin would be granted a chance to heal. Perhaps they all could.
He stood without making a sound, realizing the early hour. He sent Padmé a note that all was well, or as well as it was going to get today.
[Read Part II here!]
#Anakin Skywalker#Obi-Wan Kenobi#Padme Amidala#hurt/comfort#Emotional Hurt/Comfort#naps#our boys being cuddly#because sometimes anakin needs somebody to tuck him in#anon#mpost
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🍵+ gatekeeping
Send 🍵for the mun’s salt! || Meme
gate·keep·ing: noun - the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something.Tumblr definition: when someone takes it upon themselves to decide who has access to something .
Boy, you know. I’ve been mulling over how I was gonna work with this ask and how to do this post for a while. Actually had the words a few times that I wanted to use but I waited and thought on it. As it turns out, there’s a lot I want to touch upon with my salt in this post. Most of it is general toxic behavior from the RPC community itself and some of fandom but, for the most part, it’s Tumblr bullshit to the extreme.
If you don’t want to see strong af opinions, please keep scrolling. The salt will be under the cut and I understand that most of what I’ll be saying in this post will not be popular opinions.
Gatekeeping Is A Form of Bullying
Ever heard some dudebro go ‘I bet she hasn’t even read the comics’ about a girl wearing a Marvel shirt? What about someone going ‘If you don’t read the books, you’re not a real fan’ when someone’s in line at the theater? Yeah, those are examples of gatekeeping. A couple of the most common ones actually.
As for Tumblr RPC gatekeeping, it’s a bit more like this:
Omg, you can’t write that because it doesn’t fit into what I believe is the only lore that ever exists
wtf why are you claiming that character is gay/trans/bi/ect? they’re not or it would be mentioned in canon
how dare you want representation for your gender identity/race/ect., that’s not okay because it doesn’t adhere to CANON
you can’t ship that because it’s morally wrong and i don’t like it (which sounds a lot like old church people bitching about anything at all really)
if you don’t have the right aesthetic then i won’t follow/interact with you at all
These are just a few examples but most of them are pretty common. And, you know, that’s sad as fuck, to be honest. So many people I’ve met on this side claim to have been bullied but they’re usually the same people who turn around and do this shit to others. It’s unreal to me that they don’t recognize their own behavior. What’s worse is that it can’t be pointed out or people want to use whatever buzzword they can to tell you to fuck off.
If you try to help correct someone, suddenly you’re every -phobic on the planet and you conveniently managed to set their grandmother on fire. The dramatic overreactions of some people have a price and they don’t realize that the emotional response is sometimes not the correct one.
Just because someone is doing something you don’t like doesn’t mean that it deserves a negative action on your part.
‘That person upset me so I’m gonna post a callout/vague post about them!’ Why do you guys think that literally fucking everything needs a reaction? It doesn’t. You don’t have to react to everything that happens. Sometimes things warrant a simple ‘oh that’s fucked up’ and then you move on with your fucking day.
Say you have thirty water bottles. Someone steals one and drinks out of it or whatever but you still have twenty-nine water bottles - why the fuck are you going to be angry all day about that one water bottle? What’s the point when you have twenty-nine other water bottles and you can forget about or throw away the one that was ruined/taken?
You see, that reaction is how you guys act about any one instance that goes wrong on Tumblr except you’re pissed off for a week and you want to ruin someone’s fucking life over a post/thread that you don’t like. Or, in extreme cases, you open blogs to run your mouth at these people. It takes more effort to act like a dick toward someone than it does to just keep fucking scrolling and it’s astounding how ready people are here to wallow in negativity/toxicity.
Puritan Ship/Roleplay Policing
So I mentioned it before, but there’s this super popular idea on Tumblr that if you don’t abide by a certain unspoken ship/roleplay guideline, people will tear you apart over it. But guess what, guys, it’s fucking bullshit.
Since when were people not allowed to make their own opinions on what they did or didn’t ship?
When did it start that people were considered trash for shipping something?
Who the hell made half of you the owners of the RPC so you think you can control what everyone does on their blogs?
You see, this is the same attitude that I see all the time in churches. Oh they’ll tell you to your face that you’re welcome to do as you like and come looking however you want but the second you actually fucking do it, you’re ignored and treated like a social pariah. All this because people love to go around spreading rumors and talking shit about one another all over a fucking hobby.
It’s actually kind of insane when you think about it. Like, you’re arguing over what two people are doing when they’re throwing internet Barbies at one another and you’re stomping across the playground to scream at them because you don’t like what they’re doing when it has nothing to fucking do with you. Remember what we called that in elementary and high school? Oh yeah, there’s a word for it: BULLYING. And now, it’s evolved into gatekeeping.
This attitude is literally as bad as someone going ‘you can’t sit with us’ just because you don’t like what they’re doing on their blog.
Now, I called this section ‘puritan’ for a reason - “practicing or affecting strict religious or moral behavior.” Does that sound familiar? Because it should. Tumblr wants to call everything wrong and, from what I’ve seen, the hivemind doesn’t want people making their own opinions. Oh and don’t forget, if you don’t already know something then tough fucking luck because it’s ‘not our job to teach you.’ Thanks for the reminder, Susan, but we all know that you’re going to resort to calling people toxic abusers just because they weren’t given the chance to learn something like you were. Because that’s a fucking great way to help people to understand things from your point of view.
Look. What I’m saying is that trying to force everyone into your moral alignment isn’t okay. Some people will write murder and abusive relationships and not romanticize them just fine. The same goes for incest, rape, dysphoria, and a great number of other things. Believe it or not, some RPers actually take the time to look this shit up so they can make sure that they’re doing it fucking right and avoiding romanticization. You know, what you people want them to do but yell at them when you see it trigger tagged without bothering to take a look at the entire thread in question. Goes right back to that knee jerk reaction people like to rely on - not everything is the end of the world.
Callout/Cancelled Culture
This one’s going to be fun.
So we all know that people love their callouts but we also know that people just fucking love cancelling people. Guess what though - you cannot cancel a fucking human being because they’re not a television show. Shocker right? I know.
Now, I’ll admit that there’s some callout worthy topics but there’s some callouts that are so goddamn stupid that I just can’t take either party seriously. Now Tumblr loves dividing people, especially in the RPC. Don’t fucking tell me that cliques aren’t a thing in the RPC because ‘RPing in your bubbble’ is the same as having a clique. It’s the same concept hidden behind another name, don’t try to tell me otherwise.
And yes, sometimes people want to run around and start ‘clique wars’ like it’s fucking high school all over again. Sorry, but no one has time for that shit. Do your replies and keep your nose out of where it doesn’t belong, Barbara. But, of course, people have trouble with this concept and get into fights. It’s natural that no two people are going to agree on the same goddamn thing. It would be ridiculous to expect this, especially on this website, but just because you disagree with someone doesn’t mean that they’re cancelled.
What you think is problematic and what someone else thinks is problematic are likely two different things. And sure, you’ll have people who agree with you and you’ll want them on your side but that doesn’t help because now you’ve created that divide. So things fester and get worse because you want to use your mental illness as an excuse (a popular choice from what I’ve seen) as to why you can’t communicate with someone. Next thing you know, there’s a huge callout against someone and that person didn’t expect it at all.
Knee jerk reactions. Fight gets worse. Divide gets bigger. Toxicity festers.
Well now, there’s this new thing in the RPC where you can get a PSD template and fake fucking screenshots. Sure, it’s for musings and character profiles for things like Tinder, Facebook, ect. Just fun little things for you to throw your characters into and stuff like that. But there’s always that 1% who decide to use it so they can make it look like someone’s said something when they haven’t. So, when that person tries to defend themselves with a full-screen shot of their own (whole desktop or mobile version), things get worse until there’s a giant blowout.
Once the dust settles you get this nice little ‘if you follow x, y, z then you can just block me bye’ behavior popping up. Well, that’s just childish. Unless something happened that was almost a ‘they found out where i live and they’re sending me glass filled cookies in the mail’ situation, then I have no reason to bother with that shit in your rules page. No one is obligated to tell you who they associate with just because you had a disagreement with them. However, if that person chooses to take your side, that’s up to them.
I’m sure damn near everyone has had a similar situation to this happen to them on Tumblr before and, if it hasn’t, were you the one making the call out? If you were, was it worth it? Did it make you feel better? Sure, it might have in the moment but if you’re having that much of an issue actually communicating with others then you should take a step back and work on yourself before you involve other people. It’s like that one saying I keep seeing running around ‘if bad things always happen to you, you should make sure that you’re not the one causing it.’
Now, that’s not to say that I’m trying to gaslight anyone, but 9 times out of 10, I’ve looked back and realized that my own knee jerk reactions have caused a lot of turmoil that I could have avoided had I stopped and thought on it. I’ll admit that because guess fucking what, humans aren’t perfect.
That’s the biggest issue on Tumblr. Half of you expect people to come on here and be perfect from the get go but humans make fucking mistakes and we learn from them. Do we not? How many of you can say that you were perfectly rational and amazing 15 year olds? Absolutely no one because teenagers have a lot of stress and expectations thrown on them while they’re going through a rough growth phase at that time. Things are unpredictable for them and they have school, teachers, friends, and parents throwing all of this shit onto them and then they come on here and have full-grown fucking adults slamming all this shit into their faces. It’s fucking ridiculous. And that’s another goddamn topic holy shit. The way some adults on here act is absolutely barbaric.
Sharing IP Addresses Out of Revenge/Anger
Oh this is something I’ve hated since I found out that Statcounter was a thing. Yes, I run it on my own blog but you’ll never see me sharing IP addresses on the dash. I’ll just quietly IP block you and go about my day, idgaf.
So there’s this huge trend and I’ve seen this on my own dash before (it was fucking disgusting, the response was atrocious on that person’s behalf, and I’ve since hardblocked) and it’s something I’ll hardblock over in a heartbeat.
Now, for those who don’t know, Statcounter has a little piece of code that you can put into your blog theme and it’ll track the IP addresses of people who visit your blog. For me, I use it because I’ve had two stalkers in the past and yes, I keep screenshots of their visits for my own records. Fuck them. First one started the trigger for me and the second one recently exacerbated it. Anyway, if the person doesn’t have something on their browser to block it, Statcounter will pick up on their visit, what links they look at, how long they’ve been looking, their ISP, general location (never their precise home location, just the ISP’s area), browser info, and screen resolution. I’m sure there’s more but that’s all I recall for now.
Having it so you can protect yourself from stalkers is one thing but having it and using it to throw someone’s IP out there is another. When I say that people weaponize Statcounter, I’m not joking. People will go on there after getting what they believe is anon hate and see who the move recent /ask visitor was and start blasting their IP all over the place.
For one thing - people can send asks via the dash. They don’t have to click onto your page at all so, there’s a HUGE risk of throwing out an innocent person’s IP address.
Say someone does this - mistakenly throws out an innocent person’s IP after receiving anon hate. That person is likely going to have a panic attack. Not only have you shared their state and general location but you’ve blamed them for something they didn’t do. Throwing that IP out there, to any fucking extent can create a witch hunt for anyone who has Statcounter to try to figure out who the owner of that IP is.
This is related to gatekeeping because you’re essentially blacklisting anyone who lives in that state/general area from the RPC all because you saw they were in the /ask page. How fucked up is that? It ties right back to the knee jerk response and it shows that people given even a modicum of power abuse it at the first chance. This isn’t even addressing how vicious some people answer anons.
Sure, posting an IP address on it’s own isn’t illegal but when you tack a name onto it, then it is because you’re essentially creating a threat toward that person.
Point of this section - don’t fucking share people’s goddamn IP addresses on the dash, it just makes you a douchebag. I lose all respect for anyone doing this when I find them - fuck you for doing that.
Activism Forced into Roleplay
I used to be in the Marvel RPC. Key here: used to be. Part of the issue that lead to me leaving was how much people slammed IRL issues into RP. Yes, I’m well aware that Marvel comics has a long and deep history of taking on IRL issues and the comics themselves are quite political.
However my issue comes when this is happening outside of the Marvel community.
I’ve seen people trying to force IRL events down people’s throats. ‘You shouldn’t be happy - x, y, and z are happening right now and don’t you dare tell me to be quiet about it!’ Good way to get yourself blocked. People RP as a hobby and, for some, as a form of escape. Immersing into a character to find out what makes them tick is a form of method acting, so it could be said that we’re method writing out characters to an extent. So shoving IRL issues at some RPers can cause them to lose muse or abandon blogs entirely.
Of course, in the same breath, I’ve seen people told that they can’t RP something because they’ve never experienced it, people think they’re romanticizing it, or some other bullshit Tumblr reason. Look, I’ve experienced rape, self harm, suicidal thoughts, CSA (incestuous and non-incestuous), as well as mental and physical abuse. Don’t you dare assume that I cannot write about these experiences in an accurate way and don’t you fucking dare tell me that I can’t write it because I’ll tell you first off where you can shove your bullshit. The fact that people have to disclose that they’ve been through these things so people will stay off their ass on Tumblr RPs is fucking ridiculous too.
You don’t get to tell me what I can and cannot write on my blog when I trigger tag the living shit out of everything to make sure that I’m protecting as many people as I can from seeing it. Do not try this shit with me. Censoring someone because it doesn’t adhere to your moral code is just as bad as banning books, televisions shows, and/or movies.
Censoring something doesn’t solve the problem and boy fucking howdy does Tumblr have an issue with that. Censorship is another form of gatekeeping, by the way! You might not like it but people don’t go to jail for writing about incest or rape, just fucking saying. Oh but there have been crime authors sent to prison, I was suspended from school for writing about murder, but nothing about rape and incest.
Sure, it may raise some eyebrows and people have to actually use gasp! postblock, tumblr savior, and any other method of tag blocking so they don’t see it but uh… that’s called being responsible for your content consumption.
Tumblr Is Not The Real World
Alright. So I’m gonna close this with a good reminder that I think some people on Tumblr could use.
Tumblr is not the end-all be-all of the world.
Yes, you can make some good friends here and that’s fine but when you stay on here too long, the toxicity can start to change how you view the world around you. No, not every man that walks by you is going to rape you. No, not every woman that you see is going to be okay with you treating her the way you do female ocs and canons on here (actually, I’ve met some women who were proud they could make a full-grown man cry with the right look so).
You have to think about how Tumblr makes you view others as well. All this ‘you messed up once so you’re cancelled’ behavior is a social media phenomenon that doesn’t carry on into real life. It just doesn’t. Sure, you can block someone you know IRL but that doesn’t stop them from talking to you if they were a Facebook friend you went to school with. If they still live nearby you, they’ll either talk to you or about you. What are you going to do? Take the Tumblr route and fucking scream at them like an incoherent banshee? No, you’ll suck it the fuck up and you’ll act like a decent person, don’t fucking lie.
You need to understand that Tumblr is it’s own entity, it’s own little sphere on the internet and, by no means, is it appropriate to carry on in your daily life the way some of you do on here. And if you do, please take a moment to stop and look at yourself.
Self improvement starts when you want to improve but gatekeeping, bullying, and acting like a total barbarian to people you don’t know isn’t okay. This goes for the ones you do know too. I’m not saying that triggers aren’t important in the real world but you need to understand that forcing the social climate to change will only make people dislike you. When they don’t want to change, they’re not going to and some will refuse to change to spite you.
Forcing anything won’t help.
Gatekeeping won’t help.
Censorship has never helped.
People don’t respond to being told what to do, feel, or think. Personally, I’d tell someone to fuck off if they tried doing it to me. So why do you think you can do it to others? Ever heard of ‘treat others how you want to be treated?’ Just be fucking decent and stop acting like other people are your goddamn doormat, jfc.
#chainedloyalty#;;bahamut's voice: ooc#;;salt#;;unpopular opinion#rape mention tw#rape tw#csa mention tw#csa tw#self harm mention tw#self harm tw#suicide mention tw#suicide tw#//this is a long post#//there's a lot of salt#//proceed at your own risk#//there's been two warnings - in post and in tags#//don't @ me - talk to me if you want to know more
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A bunch of people on Thousand Roads are doing Worldbuilding June, so I figured I ought to get in on it, even though my "world" is just, uh, the Pokémon world. Not one of the more interesting worlds on display!
Obviously I'm way behind at this point; may or may not go back and do some of the other prompts at some point. But for now, the first prompt (an easy introduction) plus today's will have to do.
Tell us about your world, what’s it about?
It's, uh, it's the pokémon world! And it's about what it says on the tin. For the most part I take the mainline game canon, steal a few bits and pieces that I enjoy from the anime, and glue it all together with whatever seemed like a good idea at the time. The story itself doesn't engage with the worldbuilding much at all, and Kanto somehow looks and operates suspiciously like the north-ish east of the United States (oops), but it's fun to go on about it now and again.
I tend to use different interpretations of the pokémon world for different stories, according to need and evolving preferences, so all this worldbuilding mostly applies only to Salvage and the associated stories.
What’s medicine and healthcare like in your world?
Ah yes, that utopian vision of free universal healthcare, what a fantasy. =/
In any case, pokémon centers are usually where a young trainer is going to interact with the healthcare system most of the time. In addition to being the one-stop shop for all things pokéhealth, pokémon centers also supply basic medical care for humans: they can take care of your basic stitches, sprains, infections, and so on. A pokémon center can also provide basic counseling services, although the primary recommendation for a travelling trainer experiencing mental health problems is to stop journeying while they seek care with a dedicated mental health provider. For anything broken-bone upwards a trainer would be sent to a clinic or hospital specializing in human medical care.
Pokémon's physical bodies can be almost entirely reconstituted from the data in their pokéballs with the energy supplied by a healing machine, so even gross injuries can usually be handled with ease. The real danger manifests in pokémon that aren't recalled to their pokéball quickly enough (or at all) and whose condition deteriorates as a result, or pokémon who take "identifiable only by dental records"-level damage, which is virtually unheard of in battle but might occur if they managed to, say, piss off the lord of volcanoes or whatever. However, while physical injuries are usually trivially dealt with, pokémon can develop all kinds of weird illnesses related to their energy metabolism and which are usually trickier to deal with. Pokémon centers diagnose and treat these as well--they serve not only battling pokémon but any in the community, including pets or wild pokémon that either come in themselves for treatment or are brought in by a human. Pokémon centers are also the most common or even only place where many pokémon interact with human society proper, and as a result they offer services to assist pokémon with understanding human laws and customs, what their rights are in human society, and to assist them with reporting crimes committed against them by humans. Pokémon centers are also typically going to be the first to recognize signs of trainer abuse or neglect in a pokémon, and in addition to identifying pokémon at risk and attempting to get them out of dangerous situations, pokémon centers will offer counseling and legal advice to pokémon who wish to pursue formal charges against an abusive trainer.
I'm talking here about well-provisioned pokémon centers, typically in urban areas with a lot of trainer traffic; the services available vary widely between centers and at a middle-of-nowhere kind of place you're probably looking at very basic medical treatment for humans, a healing machine for pokémon, and maybe one or two nurses able to handle more broad pokémon health issues. However, even very out-of-the-way centers will usually have at least a couple of rooms for trainers and will be able to provide meals if desired--if anything, pokémon centers in quieter areas tend to be more like inns that happen to have infirmaries than like medical facilities that will also put you up for the night.
In general, health care for humans is not substantially more advanced in the pokéworld than it is in ours. Pokémon's healing abilities don't work on them directly, and healing machines and other infinity energy-based devices likewise have no effect. However, there are some areas where pokéworld medicine is more advanced than our own, typically as a result of utilizing some pokémon-derived compound (like gloom saliva or swalot gastric fluid) or therapy or by research into pokémon biology. Life expectancy in the pokéworld is substantially higher than in ours, and it isn't at all rare for people to hit 100 years of age, but medical care probably explains less of this than general lifestyle and environmental factors.
(They can totally regrow limbs, but you're going to be laid up for several months waiting for the thing to properly flesh out, and it's just a pain.)
If you enjoy worldbuilding, you should also check out some of the other projects up on Thousand Roads, which include not only pokémon settings but also original worlds and also not one but two(!) humans and dinosaurs/birds worlds!
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