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shootybangbang · 3 years

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[Talking Bird] Ch 16: In which the plot finally makes an appearance

[Ao3 Link]

[Content Warning]: suicidal ideation, mild gore

[Note]: this fic has gone through some serious revisions — mostly expanded scenes/dialogue. The chapters most heavily affected are 1, 2, 3, and 7, but I’ve added a changelog to the end notes of each previous chapter detailing the edits that have been made. To save you some time though, here are the three main things to note:

The reader character does not have the bonds

The reader character refers to Arthur by his last name due to unfamiliarity

The horniness from last chapter has been moved to a future chapter. sorry!

This chapter is also pretty long in comparison to the others. From here on out, the chapters will probably be 2000+ words.

———

You look out into the plains, at the last pale band of light disappearing beneath a horizon of prairie grass and dark, looming buttes. The shadows of the scant trees stretch long and thin, their branches like a thousand spindly fingers grasping, searching. The landscape is dimmed to a tableau of reds and blacks, anything not illuminated by the fire slowly sinking into the featureless canvas of night. All of it blurred and indistinct behind a curtain of rain.

It’s a prettier sight by far than any you’ve had in St Denis. Or San Francisco. Or anywhere else you’ve lived, really.

And yet it hangs like featureless gauze behind the endless reel playing out over and over behind your eyes, spinning round like the printed images on a zoetrope.

The O’Driscoll’s hands wet with blood and mud. His eyes wide and uncomprehending. Trying to put himself back together the way one might a broken toy, sieving his viscera between his fingers and scooping it into the cavity of his chest. That initial, stunned bemusement giving way at last to the dawning horror of his own end.

And accompanying it, the numb realization that what bothered you more was the bare abstraction of the act. The burden of this sin weighing heavy with all the others, its addition tipping some moral scale, and —

“Hey.”

Morgan’s voice, jarringly brusque against the murmurings of your own private judge and jury, is almost mercifully irritating.

“What do you want?” you snap.

“Get up,” he says. “Start strippin’ the wet bark off the firewood.”

“For chrissakes, at least give me a second to catch my breath.”

“Why, so you can keep sittin’ there feeling sorry for yourself?” He leans one hand against the stone wall of the outcrop and drags himself back to his feet. The barest shadow of a grimace flits across his face as he straightens his back. “C’mon. Sooner we get set up proper, the sooner we can get back to ignorin’ each other. Then you can sulk all night in peace.”

The cottonwood branches are covered in cracked, ash brown bark that scrapes rough against your palms and fingers, rasping the skin raw as you hold the wood firm for carving. One of the downsides of living easy for so many years, you suppose — all the protective calluses atrophy to nothing, and what remains becomes susceptible to old and familiar hurts. But habits run deeper than skin, and what the mind forgets the body keeps.

As you work your way through the firewood, Boadicea nickers and paws impatiently at the dirt.

“I’m sorry girl,” you hear Morgan say. “Been a hard day for us both.”

You snort contemptuously. Out of the corner of your eye, you watch as he unhooks the horse’s bridle and lifts away the saddle, then starts grooming her with a battered looking brush, brushing with quick, circular motions, going against the grain and fluffing up her coat to dry out her fur with a solicitous measure of care that seems wholly unfitting of a man of his temperament and occupation.

Boadicea makes a low, rumbly noise in the back of her throat that sounds almost like a purr. She dips her head down and chomps at the yellowed prairie grass lining the floor of the outcrop, tearing up mouthfuls with a sedate contentedness that makes you sorely wish you could share in her circumstances.

A sense of fatigue more complete than any you’ve ever felt before settles over you like heavy snow. For the moment, you feel blank and washed out, stripped bare of all pretense.

“Morgan,” you admit. “I don’t have the bonds.”

“Yeah,” he replies. “I know.” He unpacks his canvas roll and yanks free from it the saddle blanket of coarse, undyed wool, then unfurls it over the horse’s back, pulling it over her flank and adjusting the fit. “Figured as much before we left Strawberry.”

“Oh.” At this point, you haven’t even the energy to be surprised. “Huh.”

For a long while, the only sound is that of the knife scraping against bark and the intensifying patter of rain, fat droplets coming down hard and fast.

In a small voice, you ask him, “You’re not really gonna sell me to a brothel, are you?”

He scoffs. “What makes y’think that ?”

“Thought you seemed too… too decent to do something like that.”

“Me? Decent?” Morgan lets out a low, disbelieving whistle. “Thought you’d know better by now.”

He turns partway to face you. In the dim light of the fire only half of him is lit bright enough to see, the rest tapering sharp into dark silhouette. For the lapse of a heartbeat it’s as if all the irreverence and bravado has been ripped away like a sheet of paper, and underneath a viciousness, a suppressed violence that you’ve been too blind to see.

This whole time you’ve been treating him like a dog, when the teeth at your throat are those of a wolf.

Your mouth goes dry and your fingers tighten around the knife in your hand. You stare up at him like a deer caught in his sights — blind panic rising up in your chest and throat like cold water. You swallow hard and try to force it down so you can maintain at least a semblance of control.

“Mr. Morgan…?”

“You ain’t been half as scared of me as you should be,” he says. “holed up with a wanted man, nobody around for miles. Some of the men I’ve run with, they…”

He lets the sentence trail off, the implications clear enough without him saying so. Then he shakes his head, and there is a weariness in him, a kind of cynical exhaustion that ages him far beyond his years. “Girl,” he says. “You keep at this line of work, I guarantee you’ll be dead in a year.”

Morgan slicks his fingers through his wet hair to keep rainwater from dripping into his eyes, and you can see that the hangdog look is back on his face, all his suggested cruelty vanished like smoke. He shifts his attention back to the saddlebags. “No, I ain’t decent,” he continues. He pulls out a tin cup and the individual components of what looks to be a collapsible grill. “But I ain’t so far gone that I’d hurt a woman. Or sell one.”

“But you’d ransom one.”

“Figured it out, did you?” he says. “Thought you might.”

He sits back beside the fire and pieces the grill together, twists its winch tight and positions it over the fire. Then he fills the tin cup with water from the canteen and sets it atop to heat.

“If you don’t hurt women,” you say slowly, your right hand still holding the knife tight as a vise. “Then what’re you going to do to me when you find out I’m not worth ransoming?”

“Doubt that’s gonna be a problem.”

“Why not?”

“Had a brand new Mauser on ya. You know how much those things cost?”

Mentally, you kick yourself. Looks like begging the gunsmith to lend you the best pistol he had in stock has come back to bite you in the ass.

“The gun’s not mine,” you say quickly. “It’s a loan.”

“Those bloomers in your room were real silk. You gonna tell me those were a loan too?”

“You — my bloomers?! Why were you going through my bloomers, you fucking degen—”

Of all the things you’ve accused him of today, somehow this is the one that actually rankles him. “You think I like rummaging through women’s underwear? Had to go through ‘em to get to your billfold.”

You flush hard enough that even the tips of your ears feel hot. “I… I saved up for those bloomers. Not that I’d expect you to understand the importance of—

“That shirt’s custom tailored, ain’t it? Those boots, too. And that’s good leather right there. Far too good for your typical drug mule. Either you come from money, or you got rich friends.”

There’s not much you can rebut here. All you can manage is a lame, “You don’t even know who I am .”

“Got a friend not too far from here who’s plenty familiar with St Denis. He’ll know.” Morgan holds his hand out towards you. “Gimme that knife a second.”

The knife is the only scrap of protection you’ve managed to grab hold of through this entire ordeal. You squeeze its handle tight.

He lets out a short, impatient sigh. “If I wanted to hurt you, I’d have done it by now. So c’mere and hand it over.”

You’ve known men who take a certain vicious pleasure in abusing women. Merchants with cringing wives. Clients with kind faces who’d leave working girls battered and bruised. There’s usually a certain mien about them that sets you on edge and that Morgan, brusque as he is, thoroughly lacks.

You brush the wood shavings off your lap and approach him. When you reach his place beside the fire, he tilts his head upwards to meet your eyes, the look on his face calm and expectant. A self-assured confidence that you’ve seen many times before, in the guises of many different men. It sends a familiar shiver of resentment down your spine.

You could cut out his eye right now. You could sink the blade into the thick cord of his neck. And he’d shoot you dead just for trying it — oh, you’ve no doubt of that — but it’d be quick and it’d be painless, and here comes that pathetic urge again, that little whisper coaxing you deeper, deeper towards the welcoming dark —

But equally pathetic is the nagging insistence that always stays your hand, that strident, desperate plea born from bodily instinct. The shared fear of all life from the inevitable. Cowardice — that’s what it is. A cowardice you’ve never been able to shake, a resentful, stubborn tether that you’ve bitten and clawed at over the years, but that still stays looped firm around your neck.

( And what about Mei? What about her son? )

You hand him the knife, and he receives it without incident.

The water in the tin cup is boiling. Morgan slips the point of the knife through the cup’s metal handle, and delicately removes it from the grate to cool. As you stand there, wet and cold and resentful, but not sure what else to do, he saws the top off a can of beans and sets it on the grill to warm, then pulls something out of his satchel and tosses it in your direction.

Somehow, you manage to not fumble the catch. It’s a can of peaches.

“Don’t eat ‘em yet,” he says. “I wanna take a look at your arm first. Roll up your sleeve for me.”

You grimace. One of the pros of tailored shirts is having sleeves that actually fit. “It doesn’t roll up that far.”

“Then I’ll cut it off for you,” he says, putting the knife to the shoulder seam.

“Like hell you will. This is my last decent shirt.”

Morgan shrugs. “No way around it, unless you wanna take it off.”

A shirt nice enough to present a veneer of respectability costs at least $4. Your usual tailor’s fee runs about $2, plus tip. That’s $6 total: the equivalent of two week’s worth of food for Mei and her son. Good food — white rice and cabbage, maybe even a bit of pork belly. Not the bits of offal scrounged from the butcher and wilted produce she’d resort to otherwise.

You hold out your hand and say, “Give me something to cover myself with.”

Your time spent reading Ovid in college would have probably been better served learning to dress like him, you think to yourself as you try and try again to wrap Morgan’s blanket around yourself like a toga.

“I said I’d give you a minute to yourself,” he says. “It’s been more than three now. I’m gonna turn around.”

“Just ten more seconds,” you respond, hastily tucking the corner of the blanket into the horizontal swathe pulled taut across your torso.

The sheer amount of irritation he manages to convey in the sigh he lets out is really quite impressive. In it, you can somehow hear him rolling his eyes.

When you finally let him know you’re ready, he takes one look at you and has to stifle a laugh. “You could’ve just wrapped it around your chest. Woulda been more practical.”

“Oh, excuse me for wanting to preserve what’s left of my dignity,” you snap, keeping one arm pressed against your chest to keep the whole improvised garment from falling apart.

“Alright Caesar, c’mere. Let me see.”

The cut looks like an angry red furrow ploughed through the field of your skin. Its edges are ragged and torn, separated like poorly cut cloth. In between, the wound itself gleams red and raw, with particles and fibers mixed in with blood and indeterminate tissue.

Earlier, when you’d gingerly untied the makeshift bandage and taken off your shirt, you’d taken a silent moment to survey the damage, wondering with horrified fascination if it was perhaps your own muscle you were glimpsing, that particular facet of your body surfacing through its dermal barrier for the first time.

“I’m gonna hold your arm,” Morgan says. “That ok with you?”

You nod, a little dumbfounded that he of all people would have the foresight to ask for permission.

He lifts your arm towards the firelight so he can better examine the wound, and in doing so handles you with more care than you can remember any lover ever giving you. You tell yourself that it’s a rebuke of your own terrible taste than an indication of any extraordinary kindness on his part, then forcibly dredge up the memory of his gun at your back for good measure.

“You’re gonna have a hell of a scar after this,” he says, running his thumb along the unbroken skin below the cut. “No inflammation, which is good. I’ll patch you up the best I can, but we’re still gonna want to check on it every couple hours to make sure it doesn’t get infected.”

He gets up to rummage through his saddlebags and returns holding a roll of gauze and a bottle of clear liquid. “You’ll be wanting this,” he says, handing over the latter. “This’ll hurt.”

You take a swig and nearly choke on it. “What the hell is this?”

“Grain alcohol.”

Grimacing, you bring it to your lips again and take in two more mouthfuls of the stuff before handing it back, gulping it down quick to get the burn of it down your throat and off of your tongue.

Morgan hovers his hand over the tin cup to test its temperature. “This needs to cool down first. Gives you some time for that liquor to set in too.”

“I think it’s going to my head already,” you admit.

Heat is spreading from the warm pit of your stomach to your neck and face, branching through your veins as sure as blood. The thud of your heart, previously an imperceptible thing, now asserts itself like a metronome.

He glances over at you and whistles low. “Not much of a drinker, are you?”

“Not usually.” You press your palm against your cheek. “Am I turning red?”

“Gettin’ there.”

It’s strange, settling into this oddly comfortable limbo between cordiality and aggression. Your sustained caution of him is beginning to wane so steadily that you have to consciously remind yourself the only reason he hasn’t shot you dead or at least seriously injured you is due to the fact that you’re worth more intact than otherwise.

“So,” Morgan says. “What’s someone with silk bloomers doin’ all the way out here runnin’ opium to Strawberry?”

“It’s a very long and stupid story.”

“Then give me the short version.”

You stare at the ground as though it’ll offer you some way to condense the sordid affair of your life into a couple easy sentences. He’d asked the question with what sounded like genuine curiosity instead of interrogation, and for once you feel inclined to blurt out the whole of it, like a girl in confession.

You want to tell him about how small the missionaries had seemed when you’d waved at them through the train’s grime-smudged window, not knowing it’d be the last time. The tweed jacket tossed carelessly onto the floor, and the cool, smooth sheen of mahogany against your skin. Feng fishing you out from the dark water lapping at the docks. The money, the opium, the blood.

The sight of the Heartlands for the first time, its blue horizon impossibly vast.

“I owe someone a lot of money,” you say finally, fiddling with a piece of grass between your fingers, tearing into halves and halves and halves. “He said it was either this or the brothel.”

“And you chose this. Runnin’ dope to those poor bastards working the railroads.”

It’s not the first time you’ve heard this particular tone of voice. The kind that implies its speaker’s higher moral ground as it categorically condemns you. But coming from him makes its sting especially hard.

“I don’t force them to buy it,” you say hotly. “It’s not just me that’s at fault here.”

“You ever seen a dope addict? They ain’t got a goddamn choice —”

“Well, d’you know what the average lifespan of a Chinatown whore is?” You don’t bother waiting for a response before plummeting to the answer. “Two years. After that she’s either dead from syphilis or suicide. At least with the opium I’ll die out here in the open and not in some squalid closet of a room that smells like piss and men.”

The liquor is starting to hit hard , and a part of you is fiercely grateful for it. It’s been a long time since you’ve been given an excuse to scream out the inequities of your life to someone, and a man who’s holding you for ransom seems as good a target for your vitriol as any.

“You think that just ‘cause it’d be better for the greater good or some shit, they should get to fuck me over? Is that what you think?”

Morgan seems a little taken aback. “I didn’t say th—”

“I don’t give a shit about the addicts. I don’t give a shit who’s life I’m ruining, as long as it isn’t mine. I don’t… I don’t care about anyone else because I’m a terrible excuse for a human being. That’s what you want to hear me say, right?” At this point, you realize that you’ve transitioned into a hysterical rant, that you don’t properly mean half the things you’re saying, but saying it out loud feels good nonetheless, like sucking venom from a festering wound. “But people like you don’t get to tell me so. Because at least I don’t hold people at fucking gunpoint . I don’t rob banks or kidnap women or beat debtors. I’m not a fucking murderer like you—”

The last statement barely clears the air before the image of the dead O’Driscoll, sprawled across the ground with his belly torn open, flashes through your head. You immediately clap your hand over your mouth, as if doing so will let you swallow back your words.

“No,” Morgan says, “You ain’t a murderer. And that’s why you won’t last long.”

“Good,” you seethe. The hot sting of tears begins prickling again at the corners of your eyes. “I don’t want to.”

He raises his eyebrows and regards you with a vague, detached kind of pity that makes you almost wish he’d just outright condemn you instead, then touches his fingers to the tin cup. “Water’s cool enough now, I think.”

You feel like a petulant child who’s just thrown an ineffectual tantrum. Rendered self-conscious and obedient for the time being, you allow him to secure your elbow with his hand and begin irrigating the wound with warm water.

“Jesus fucking god,” you hiss. You reflexively try and jerk away, but he holds you still and tells you to stop squirming, his grip firm as iron.

It’s the worst pain you’ve felt in years. Like a lick of flame passing over your skin, echoing its progenitor again and again as he washes the cut with a series of short, measured trickles of water, flushing away the combined grime of dried blood, dust, and lint.

“You think this is bad,” he says, unscrewing the bottle of grain alcohol. “Wait’ll I sterilize it.”

If the water was flame, then the alcohol is a streak of molten lava, wet fire soaking through the wound in a rush of white-hot burning pain. You don’t scream — you let out a weak, choking sob so pathetic that you cover your mouth again in an attempt to stifle it.

But you’re a little drunk and your subconscious recognizes this as an excellent excuse to cry, and so it lets flood the tears you’ve kept stoppered up for hours now. You whimper, meet his eyes briefly, then start bawling.

Your crying before hadn’t seemed to bother him, but now he looks almost comically alarmed. He must think it’s the physical pain sending you into hysterics, because he starts trying to comfort you the same way he did Boadicea when he’d led her into the river.

“You’re doin’ good,” he says, cajoling you in a soft, affectionate voice. He sets the bottle of alcohol on the ground and pats you awkwardly on the shoulder. “Just a little more to go, and we’ll be done.”

Another agonizing, scorching splash of fire. He doesn’t chide you this time when you try to pull away.

“Shhhh… I know, I know. Hurts like a bitch, don’t it? I’m gonna give it one more rinse, and — yeah, there we go. You’re alright.”

Morgan wraps the bandage over your arm with deft, practiced fingers, and you wonder briefly how many times he’s had to do this for himself, with no one to soothe him. Though better that than the shoddy job you’d done on him six weeks ago, frantically patching him up with just the barest idea of what you were doing.

He ties off the bandage, then picks the can of peaches off the ground, pops open its metal lid with the tip of his knife and proffers it to you like a peace offering. “Here. You’re hungry, right?”

It’s very hard to cry and eat at the same time. You decide to concentrate on the latter.

After tapering your sobs down to a series of quiet, resentful sniffles, you begin gulping down mouthful after messy mouthful of sliced peach. It’s the first morsel of food you’ve had in over ten hours, and you wolf it down so quickly you hardly taste it. Just an impression of cloying sweetness mixed with something faintly aromatic (cinnamon, you think) lingering as an aftertaste.

The old instincts of hunger are hard to shake off. All decorum thoroughly discarded, you raise the can to your lips and drink down what syrup remains, tilting it nearly perpendicular to the ground to get at the last few drops.

“My god,” Morgan says. “I seen dogs with better manners.”

“If you’d fed me earlier, then I— what’re you doing.”

“What’s it look like I’m doing?” he asks. He holds his bandolier in one hand. The other is working at his shirtcollar. “I’m gettin’ the hell outta these wet clothes.”

You clutch at the empty can of peaches as his union suit reveals itself in a revelation of blue. A blue which, you admit to yourself with an uncomfortable surge of appreciation, suits the shade of his eyes extremely well. But when he begins unbuckling his belt, you quickly avert your eyes. “Really?” you ask. The scandalization you probably ought to have felt from the very moment he’d begun undressing finally begins to surface. “Your pants, too?”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’m keepin’ the union suit on.”

“Are you usually this brazen with the women you kidnap?”

“D’you usually sit around half-naked with the men who kidnap you?” he asks, jabbing his thumb towards your own discarded shirt, which you’d spread out neatly beside the fire to dry.

“That’s different,” you hiss, knowing very well that it isn’t. “I had a medical reason.”

“Yeah, and so do I. I don’t wanna get pneumonia.”

He has a point. You look down at your own sodden trousers, which cling to your skin in a cold, wet embrace, and your internal scale of comfort versus propriety tips decidedly towards the former.

“Turn your back again,” you tell him.

“What for?”

“I’m gonna take my pants off too, and I don’t want you trying to sneak a peek at my bloomers.”

He laughs, then winces and gingerly splays his fingers across his ribs. It’s the first sign of real levity you’ve seen from him. “Oh, that is the last thing on my mind right now, girl.” There’s a tired grin on his face, and were it not for the events of the day, you might have almost found it endearing. “Besides, you ain’t hardly my type.”

“Well that’s good to hear,” you reply, a little offended. “Because I’m not interested in men with terrible taste.”

But he does as he’s told, and when you’re satisfied with the oblique angle of his range of sight, you let the borrowed blanket fall from your shoulders and pull the ribbon securing your braid free. You rake your fingers through your hair until it hangs loose, then gather the ends of it in one hand and twist it tight to wring out the rainwater. Only then do you pull the blanket back over your shoulders and begin to undress.

First, your boots. Then the knee-length woolen socks, which have left their cable-knit weave as an imprint on your skin. After glancing at him one more time to make sure his face is turned discreetly away, you unbuckle your belt and wriggle your way out of your trousers. It takes some maneuvering, and some thoroughly indecent posturing, to finally get them off. You leave your cotton bloomers on, figuring that the warmth of the fire will dry the thin material soon enough.

When you look back at Morgan, you find that he’s since turned back towards you. Not to gawk, but to get a better look at his own wounds in the firelight.

His union suit is half-unbuttoned. Most of his bare chest is visible, and along with it, the bruises from the ricocheted bullet. A mottle of blue and violet, like a spill of ink that radiates from the negative imprint of the flask that took the impact in his place. And right below it, a glimpse of your own handiwork.

When you’d first found him, the cut had spanned diagonal across his torso, trailing shallow from his chest and biting deep near the ridge of his hip. Most of it’s healed over since, but the edges are angry and inflamed still, and you can see the fading marks of your inexpert stitches laid like railroad tracks over the land of his skin.

“Don’t worry, I ain’t looked at you,” Morgan says. He probes gently at an indigo patch and inhales sharply. “Too busy lickin’ my own wounds.”

If you look closer, you can see the remnants of multiple scuffs and scratches. A history of violence storied across his body, told in the pale lettering of scars, many of them recent. An unwelcome pang of guilt settles itself low in your belly. It looks like he’s been on the road for a while, healing sporadically through long stretches of hard journeying. Hard journeying made worse, no doubt, by your theft of his bonds.

“You… uh. You want me to keep carving off wet bark?”

“Nah,” he says distractedly, still trying to determine the depth of the damage left behind. “Should be fine leavin’ the rest of it to dry out by the fire.”

You draw the blanket tighter around your shoulders, then root around your head for something, anything to talk about. Anything to get this burgeoning sympathy for Arthur Morgan out of your head.

“Your friend in St Denis,” you say finally. “He’s not gonna know much about me if he doesn’t speak Chinese.”

Morgan absentmindedly scratches his chin as he begins buttoning his union suit back up. “Wouldn’t put it past him. I know he’s had dealings with ‘em in the past.”

Something clicks in the back of your head. Long overdue recognition like puzzle pieces fitting together. “What’s his name?”

“Josiah,” he says.

“Josiah,” you echo. The spark of some fit of emotion is beginning to rise in your throat. “Josiah… Trelawney?”

His bewildered face is enough to confirm your suspicions. Relief, anger, confusion — all of them flood you at once with such intensity that you have to take a moment to squeeze your eyes shut. When you open them, you take a deep breath and swallow hard. “Josiah Trelawney’s the son of a bitch I sold your bonds to.”

———

Massive thanks to @reddeaddufus for editing not only this chapter, but the entirety of this fic. This whole thing would be a lot more disjointed if it weren't for her.

Definitely give her fic Red Dead Pursuit a look. The main character is extremely compelling, the plot is fast-paced, and the porn is A+. Her writing style is also a delight to read.

#arthur morgan #arthur morgan/reader #arthur morgan/oc #fic #red dead redemption #rdr2 #my work #talking bird

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arwenkenobi48 · 3 years

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The Fiend and the Fugitive Character Profiles: Stardust, Drakon and Smokey

I found the traditional format for these character profiles a little too taxing, so I’ll simply describe each of these characters with a little bit of prose and dialogue, then include trivia relating to each of them.

Stardust

He removed the crash helmet and goggles from his head, revealing two small conical horns upturned on his forehead, with two smaller ones aligned vertically on the bridge of his nose and between his eyebrows. The young man swished back a rich crop of hair, the colours of which were most striking, starting out with a deep purple and ending in an electric turquoise. The area around his eyes and halfway down his cheeks were marked by what appeared to be some sort of ritual tattoos, a rich crimson in colour, forming abstract shapes closely resembling crescent moons, only more angular. His bright purple eyes sparkled happily as he adjusted his parka, bowing modestly from side to side as the crowd cheered. “Thank you, thank you all, thank you very much,” he beamed, his voice rich and cultured. There was no doubt about it; this eccentric figure was indeed Robin’s childhood friend, albeit going by a different name. How on Earth did he manage to earn so much money? Surely not by becoming a human snowball every time he went skiing.

——————————

“Mephistopheles, hold this for a moment, will you?” Stardust placed a large object in the demon’s hands, so heavy he nearly dropped it, then calmly took it back and placed on the now immaculate shelf. “Thank you, old chap,” “What was that thing?” Mephisto demanded. “Oh, just a giant cosmic pearl gifted to me by a relative,” Stardust replied casually. “Why, whatever is the matter, Mephisto? You’re looking awfully peaky all of a sudden!” “I think it drained my dark energy,” Mephistopheles gagged. “Well, that’s certainly something else, as they say. I’m sure it’s not as bad as that. You know those things absorb energy like spherical sponges,” “I didn’t know that,” grumbled Mephistopheles, who now felt like he had just been cured of a cold, but in the worst way possible. As much as he felt bad for his rival, Stardust couldn’t help feeling rather amused that what dragons considered medicine had made a demon sick.

Stardust is one of my oldest OCs

His name is actually an English translation of the Draconic name Esrah, which quite literally means “essence of the stars”

Stardust is demisexual and panromantic

He’s a philanthropist who protects dragons that have been made homeless and have suffered discrimination from humans

Many assume that Stardust’s odd appearance is due to body modifications, but he is actually half dragon and can shift between human and dragon forms. This is technically called a Dragon Angel

Stardust’s only relative that he’s in contact with is his grandfather, Mitsuo, who is a 1000 year old Japanese water dragon

The only thing Stardust and Mephistopheles can healthily bond over is table tennis. Regular tennis is out of bounds after Mitsuo got knocked out during a rather heated match (quite literally, the ball was going so fast it was gathering heat)

Despite having sold his soul to Mephistopheles, Stardust repents and is able to retrieve it. He has already proven himself to be a good person after donating his riches to support his fellow dragons

Stardust enjoys listening to heavy metal and opera

Drakon

The dragon was around the same size as a Shetland pony, but at first glance nowhere near as cuddly. The dark blue scaly skin contrasted with an armour-plated golden underbelly, the curved horns, spines and barbed tail also indicated that this was a creature you wouldn’t want to mess with. Although he had sharp, owl-like claws, his hands and feet were bizarrely humanoid in shape and the powerful muscles seemed to indicate that this creature could be both bipedal and a quadruped, although being an all fours appeared to be the more comfortable of the two. His golden eyes peered up and his nostrils flared. He was clearly trying to appear intimidating as he stretched his wings out, but he somehow failed in spite of himself. “Now, listen ‘ere, human,” he warned in a voice with a strong regional accent. “I don’t know exactly what you’re up to, but let’s get one thing straight, yeah? You don’t wanna be starting any fights, especially not with me!” He bared his teeth, but they didn’t look as though they were capable of doing damage to anything other than a shawarma.

—————————

“Eh, who am I kiddin’?” Grumbled Drakon, sinking to the floor like a depressed panther. “I let you down. All cause I got the collywobbles seein’ them humans all at once. I wish I didn’t scare so easily, Smokey,” The baby’s reaction seemed to indicate that he not only understood his guardian, but empathised with him and wanted him to feel better. Even in his sadness, as a lump formed in his throat and a tear in his eye, Drakon couldn’t help but smile.

Drakon’s name is the root word of “dragon” in Greek

Drakon and Smokey are implied to be brothers from different clutches but with the same mother, although nobody knows for sure

After his cave was destroyed by humans mining for gemstones, Drakon resides in the House of Stardust. He thinks highly of Stardust and considers him his best friend. The feeling is mutual and they frequently protect one another from the cruelty of humans

Drakon loves shawarmas to the point that he put on quite a few pounds and now has a build similar to a bear

The inspirations for Drakon came from the Cowardly Lion in the book version of The Wizard of Oz and Captain Haddock from The Adventures of Tintin

Drakon hates trumpet music. Whenever he sees a trumpet he will do everything in his power to destroy it (and by that he’ll usually yell at it, stamp on it or at worst, set it on fire)

Smokey

With a loud whine that sounded like a cross between a baby bird chirping and a kitten mewing, Smokey came galloping down the hallway. His round body was shaped like a squashed pear and his limbs were short and stubby, although he could function perfectly well. He clearly still had a lot of his baby fat, but despite that, he was surprisingly fast. His mottled skin was so dark grey it was nearly black, although a bright red belly and round eyes resembling those of an owl stood out from this. His wide yet snub beak gave him a strong resemblance to a potoo bird and his wings hadn’t matured yet. The most striking feature of this infant dragon, however, were his floppy, comically lopsided ears, which flapped around like ribbons as he galloped along. He didn’t speak, as he was much too young to learn how, but simply uttered his trademark “nee-nee-neesh!” noise as he hugged Stardust’s leg.

Smokey is five years old in human years, but that’s closer to two years old for his subspecies

He can’t breathe fire yet, but manages to sneeze out a fireball to protect his friends from the forces of Hell

Being so young, Smokey cries very easily. Possibly as a result of losing his parents, he also gets upset whenever someone leaves the room, as he thinks they won’t return. This results in him running after them and clinging to their legs while ‘neeshing’ loudly.

I was originally doing to give Smokey some dialogue, but decided against it, as I felt he’d be much cuter without it and his actions would speak louder than words

He gets his name from the fact that smoke always blows out of his ears whenever he tries to test his fire breath

Smokey hates Mephistopheles and can sense his evil aura from a mile away. Whenever he sees him he makes a noise like an angry teapot coming to the boil

Despite being little more than a newborn in dragon years, Smokey is capable of great empathy and comforts his friends when they’re feeling down

His favourite album is Shepherd Moons by Enya

Smokey was based on a plushie I use for emotional support

His favourite food is Greek honey cake

Apologies for the absence again; mental health really hasn’t been great at all, but I was still determined to deliver some of the content I promised. I realised that there was nothing stopping me from writing the first draft of The Fiend and the Fugitive, so I made a start on that and I’m looking forward to officially beginning the project in September!

#the fiend and the fugitive #original intellectual property #OC: Stardust #OC: Drakon #OC: Smokey #dragons #original characters

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imtryingthisout · 5 years

Text

Sunglasses and Serenity

[a fic inspired by @nachosforfree @sanderssides-magicalgirlau check them out]

[Warnings: Descriptions of a Panic Attack]

[Pairing: Sleepxiety]

[Word Count: 2283]

——————————————————————

It was not a quiet night. The sky above was dark, the pearly stars hidden behind the neon verbosity of downtown. 24 hour shops and businesses had windows that never dimmed, pinpricks of artificial lightings blurred together creating an abstract mess of blended color.

The moon itself was distorted by the light pollution. It’s natural autumn glow paled in comparison to the vibrancy of the busy streets.

Remy both loved and hated it.

Growing up with summers spent in his family’s old Villa in Italy, secluded in a valley side miles away from the nearest approximation of a town, he had always known how the sky was darker blue than black. He and his cousins loved to climb upon the rooftop and find the stories hidden in the stars. The earth around them was quiet and peaceful, but never silent. The symphony of crickets and other night creature laid in the background of every night spent there. A distant murmuring, Tellus’s lullaby.

Moving to the city had been akin to dunking his head in a bucket of ice water and screamo pop.

Shocking, painful and utterly disorientating. But after the ringingness faded- strangely exhilarating.

Remy has thrown himself headfirst into the city’s night culture. Staying up late partying, trying all the best coffee houses, hanging around the hidden-and-not-so-hidden drag shows,gaining a reputation and a caffeine addiction along the way.

But this was not a night where he would be going out, not when everything he needed was with him.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Virgil really was a sight to be seen, his skin was pale, like the white-petaled sunflowers that grew by the valley, that seemed to glow in the moonlight. But his starkness fit in perfectly with the gleam of the industrial lights. Heterochromatic eyes, green and purple, stunning as murano glass and pulsing as strobe lights.

Achingly familiar, yet enticingly foreign. Home and longing rolled up in one boy, a boy who has stolen one of his sleep shirts for his own nefarious (adorable) use.

And who probably wanted an answer. Quick Remy, think of some witty remark to be entertaining!

“You ever notice how bright it is sometimes?”

Damn it! Guess we’re being genuine.

Virgil quirked his head to the side, giving Remy a piercing look, before nodding his head slightly . “Yeah,” he said, “Used to overstimulate the crap outta me when I was younger.” Then he paused, debating with himself over continuing- but decided to press forward. “Is that why you always wear those stupid shades?” The last words said in jest.

A surprised laugh escaped his through before he could stop it- Virgil almost reaches out to comfort him, but tensed up, too many bad memories stilled his arm.

“Girl, I’ll have you know these are designer glasses right here” he made a gesture around his face, “Iconic one of a kind Remy Hypnos Original Shades. Don’t go dissing my brand babes”

Virgil just snorted and rolled his eyes, “Uh, I’m pretty sure the designer thing on your face are those-eye bags you have hidden under there.”

“Damn right, even the bags under my eyes are Gucci”

“Oh Gods did you steal that off tumblr you sleep-deprived asshat? Oh don’t give me that look you totally did.” Virgil’s words had started off biting, but slowly devolved into a giggling mess.

(He really was just too cute for this world, Remy thought)

“Oh Ha ha, laugh it up” he snapped, ignoring his blushing cheeks and hot ears.

(Virgil could always tell how flustered Remy was by how red the tips of his ears were. A dusty pink for flirty, A warm rouge signaled embarrassment or arousal. Virgil loved watching the colors bloom on his skin. Memorizing what each shade meant- he could take any cochineal-colored paint swatch and map out Remy’s mood in the margins. It made him so easy to read, and so much fun to mess with.)

Soon the laughing and jeering subsided, and Virgil turned to look at Remy, “But seriously man, Is that why you always have those things on? Photophobia?”

“Can’t it be enough that I look rad as all Hell’s in them?”

“Not with that deflection it can’t” Virgil wasn't giving up it seemed, so Remy let out a deep sigh and gathard his words. “Remember highschool?”

“Kind of hard to forget.” High school was an absolute trainwreck for Virgil, he’d been on and off meds that screwed with his moods- making the already hormone fueled circus that was over a thousand teens trapped in one building, like a pack of sardines- even more emotionally taxing.

But if High School was a disaster for Virgil, it was absolute Hell for Remy.

Remy and his cousins had been homeschooled by their many relatives since they were children. Growing up learning in his family’s study. Rich mahogany floors, dim golden lighting bouncing off the variety of nick-nacks and treasures that line the shelves. Learning to read in his grandfather’s library, his worn and wrinkled hands guiding his young fingers along the words.

His cousin Alessia longed to go to a public school, and pleaded with her mother for ages before she relented. With the condition that she would allow her to go- but only if one of their own went with her.

So Remy, proving himself as her favorite, offered to accompany her.

The blinding smile on Alessia’s face as she squealed thank you , thank you amata cugino, favorito benedetto, was totally worth it. ‘It’s only one year’ he thought, ‘how bad could it be?’

Until he actually got there.

Virgil could think back and recall in semi-perfect clarity the day Remy Hypnos graced the halls of Sandershore High. Roman had become a central hub for gossip , and he’d heard whispers that of new transfer students, which in of itself wouldn't be news. But Hypnos was a household name, owning some of the most ridiculously pretentious Itialian Restaurants in the country. The kind people got engaged at, those levels of nice.

Needless to say when Remy and Alessia strolled into Sandershore’s gate. With perfect olive skin, rich brown hair and clothes nicer than Virgil’s single mom income could ever afford. Virgil fell in hate easily.

(The kind of hate that has him staring at him out of the corner of his eye during Calculus. Thinking about what his eyes looked under those darkened glasses. The kind of hate that wasn’t really hate)

Remy had all the perfect components to rule to school. Pretty, rich, with a startling amount of charisma and people skills for someone so unsocialized.

(Know one knew how he picked up slang so fast in an attempt to hide to slight foreign tilt that laced his words. Never knew how when he first heard someone mock Alessia’s body he punched the guy’s lights out without ever thinking. No one knew how he hadn’t had a night's sleep since school started. How fake he felt, his mannerisms esageraged and twisted to suit the liking of the student body- till he felt like a caricature rather than a person.)

By second quarter Virgil and Remy’s seeming distaste for one another had spread far and wide. They couldn’t be in the same room together without having some sort of verbal showdown. If you asked Virgil he would say that Remy was a self absorbed prick with an ego the size of Mt. Rushmore. If you asked Remy he’d say that that Virgil was a clingy mood-killer who couldn’t see past his own issues.

(Remy didn’t know how empty Virgil felt. How much the crushing weight of his own thoughts threatened to pull him down under. How his dependency on Patton was more sinister than a clingy best-friend. How sometimes his nightmares left him gasping and clawing- begging for them to come back. How his mother never really could fill the emptiness in his house. How Virgil sometimes felt like a puppet going through the motions.)

As the eye bags under their eyes grew darker and heavier, and autumn grew colder and colder. Both boys felt the pressure crushing them under its weight.

(Turns out they both used their arguments as cathartic release from the world around them.)

(Some things never change.)

It was winter when they found each other. Both on the verge of a breakdown-

(It was always too bright. There were no warm wooden floors just chilled title and harsh- fake- lights. The entire building smelled like body odor and cleaning supplies. The teachers were strangers, uncaring distant- he heard what the girls were saying about his cousin. He just felt so-)

(Empty. Hopeless. Patton was gone where did Patton go? He was lonely. And so so pathetic. He needed to get himself under control needed. Don’t be a burden- they all hate him- don’t slip up. They’re going to leave him. Everything felt so distant- drowned out by the static- he was drowning-)

Where the fate’s looking down on the two powder keg boy. A spark away from igniting. Weaving their strings together for a happenstance in counter. Or was it merely coincidence that they went to the same storage closet, to have a moment's respite.

Was it just chance that the door was automatic-locked.

“This is just great” Remy hissed under his breath, he just wanted one moment- just one! Of some cooled peace and solitude. Away from the buzzing gossip and fake friends. Away from the sensory hell outside. A little kernel of bitter anger swelled within the pit of his stomach. One moment, just one.

Then he turned to look at the other person in the room.

Remy had seen lots of sides of Virgil Anxiti, the sarcastic commenter, the horrible-yet oddly insightful- student, the debater .

(He hadn’t seen the devoted son, the caring brother, the friend who would do anything for his loved ones)

But he’d never seen him… blank.

Curled up in the corner of the closet, arms hugging his knees as they were pressed into his chest, was Virgil. Eyes dead and dulled as stone. The muscles in his face were relaxed completely- which unsettled Remy more than crying would have.

Remy wasn’t a Knight in shining armor, or even a comforting person in general- but unqualified as he may be, he couldn’t just let his favorite rival just sit there and do nothing to help.

Alessia needed physical touch when she was upset , their whole family was practically comprised of touchy people. So when one of them was sad, it was a one way ticket to hug time. Somehow Remy didn’t think that would be well received.

“Hey, babes I’m going to touch your arm- that good with you?” He didn’t reply, not that Remy thought he would- but still. So slowly, cautiously, he layed a single hand on Virgil’s arm.

The change was gradual, but noticeable. Hear bloomed under Virgil’s complexion, bringing back warmth into his skin. The glassy oversheen of his eyes subsided, and his entire posture just… relaxed. And so did Remy.

When he had gathered enough of himself, Remy guided Virgil though his breathing exercises. In and out, In and out. Hand never leaving his arm- grounding him to the world.

The door was still locked when Virgil regained his senses. “Guess we have to wait until someone notices we’re missing” Which nearly set Virgil off into another spiral. Until they rembered that technology exists. And so they used Virgil’s phone to text Logan to come and unlock it.

“He’s the only one who won’t make a big deal about us being locked in a closet together”

But there was time between then and there. Time to talk, if only to fill the awkward silence.

To talk about school.

“Girl I have no idea what they put in those ‘school provided lunches’ but they are not food.”

“What rock have you been living under? I once got food poisoning from drinking some of the milk in 6th grade- and that still wasn’t the worst thing I’ve eaten from there.”

About Friends.

“I met Patton when I was six and we’ve been best friends ever since. Dee joined in when we were all about nine and we first saw Lo’ and the twins when they started freshman year”

“I cannot honestly tell you the names of half the people who hang around me”

About Family.

“Hon you could bust down every wall in this building and still wouldn’t have enough room to put all my fam”

“It’s just been my mom, little brother and Patton since I was eight and my dad walked out. Still don’t know who I hate more for it- him or me”

If Logan took just a tad longer route to the closet- he didn’t mention it. He also didn’t mention when Remy started joining their table for lunch. Matching Roman and Remus in all their theatrics- offering to set up a ‘play date’ between some of his younger cousins and Dee’s many siblings.

(If he noticed how much happier the two were after that, how much more healthy Virgil seemed, how more secure in himself Remy acted...well that was just one more thing he didn’t mention.)

Present Day Remy took off his glasses, letting them rest gently in his hand. “My Nonna gave them to me the day before I started school. Said they would come in handy. They did of course.. they just kinda.. became more” he rubbed along the temple’s rubbery tip. Eyes focused in on the way his fingers move up and down the slender frame.

Virgil gently takes the glasses into his hand, and sets them down on the bedside table. He has to stand on his toes to reach Remy’s face, but when he does he tenderly places a hand onto his cheek, gazing into his deep brown eyes- the same shade as his espresso cups and just as rich.

And Remy melts into him. Allows himself to be led away from the window. From the bright lights and traffic noise, and into Virgil’s embrace.

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what-even-is-thiss · 5 years

Text

Fic, Off of Land, Out of Water, Part 5, After.

Warning for injury and implied homophobia and questionable relationships.

First Previous Next

Abstract: Dangerous games are afoot. Logan. Is involved.

5. After

Roman looked out at the ocean, wondering silently how exactly he got here. It’s not like he hadn’t earned this after all. He had gotten himself a lawyer, and not a bad one at that. He had worked his way up the ranks, written his book, leaked his makeup routine.

But still. Here, in a condo overlooking the ocean? Now that was just ridiculous. And his boyfriend did seem to take a lot more business trips since they moved in together. He wondered about his brother’s safety slightly if a certain fact were revealed. Or that other fact. Or the third, slightly newer fact with glasses and weird freckles.

No, that was crazy talk. Crazy talk. Listen to him. He’s starting to sound like Virgil. If Virgil were into anyone enough to date them, that is. Paranoid. He’s just paranoid. He earned this. He earned this view. He deserved a little time to himself while John was on his trip.

He took another shot of tequila as the buzzer rang by his door. Who the hell was visiting at one am?

He hit the button by the intercom.

“Hello?”

“Roman, let me in. Right now.”

“Virgil?”

“Let me up, moron!”

Virgil’s voice sounded deeper than usual, like it was being damaged by something. Roman hit the button to unlock the front door of the building and went to put on a shirt. The frantic knocking started when he got back to the entryway.

Virgil grabbed him so fast that he didn’t comprehend that his brother was completely naked and dripping wet until after he grabbed Roman so hard he felt he might break and said

“Where’s Logan?”

……….

There’s a game that mer children play with brine lakes. Pools of water under the water that rest there due to their high salt content.

Like with many games that unsupervised children play, there’s a level of danger to it. Like human children playing crack the whip on thin ice or putting dimes on railroad tracks, mer children kiss danger by luring blooms of jellyfish into brine lakes.

The nearest equivalent to the name of this game in English would be pop the bubble in the central to south Atlantic and hug of death in most other places. Logan of course, growing up in the central Atlantic, would have called it pop the bubble, and despite what he will tell you he played it quite a few times growing up with his classmates and with his best friend Virgil. Everyone did, and all parents know that no matter how many times they warn children against this game they will end up playing it anyways.

………

Virgil angrily ran the towel through his hair. The pink t-shirt that said “baby queen” on it sticking to his wet skin did nothing to improve his mood.

“How do you know he’s in danger? We’re hours away from the central coast. How could you know?”

Virgil threw the towel at him.

“I told you already! The ocean is angry!”

Virgil went into another coughing fit and Roman led him over to the sink where he promptly coughed up a disturbing amount of black sludge.

“Fucking black gold.” Virgil said.

Roman hit his back. “Come on, chemical bromance. Hack it up.”

With a few more coughs and a bit of vomiting all the black sludge found its way out of Virgil’s body. Or at least, no more came out.

“I’m no expert, but should I take you to the doctor?”

“No time! Get me your leather jacket.” Virgil said. “We need to get to Tampa.”

“Why Tampa?”

“Because Logan’s in Tampa.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do, okay? We don’t have much time!”

……….

Pop the bubble has no winners or losers. It’s done just for the thrill of it, and quite honestly the rush of adrenaline that comes with it is very addictive.

The magical scaled parts of mer people’s bodies are highly resistant to most forms of damage, including mild hacking, biting, and jellyfish stings. The same can not be said for the human portions of skin, however. Although the human half of the body provides warmth and the ability to breathe in almost any environment and eat almost anything, it’s also open to being stung. It’s this danger that having two types of skin on one intelligent creature provides that makes this game even possible in the first place.

……….

As they drove down the road a little too fast and Virgil changed into the emergency clothes in the backseat, Roman kept trying to change the subject.

“But the bigger problem here is Logan. How do we really know he’s there?”

“Logan and I are connected by the primal ancient force which is the petty bitch fight between the land and sea.” Virgil said. “Now tell me why you haven’t gone back to- ow!”

Virgil fell off the seat as he tried to pull his boots back on.

“If mother were here I think she’d say something about seatbelts.” Roman said.

Virgil awkwardly made his way into the front seat.

“Yeah well if mom were here that would mean she accepts us all now wouldn’t it?” he said, putting his seatbelt on. “Now shut up and tell me why you’re still living in Miami with that idiot.”

………

Jellyfish can’t sense in the way most creatures would, but they do have senses and they can become agitated. Mer children often make noise or bat at blooms with their tails to get them away from the unpleasant stimuli and towards the brine lakes. Many times children will come very close to being stung before they lure the jellyfish into the lake and watch them die.

Every time they come close to being stung they tell themselves “Well I haven’t been stung yet.”

And it’s all fun and games until it’s not.

……….

“...and it was just one time. I’m sure he didn’t mean it. It’s not like he got physical, okay? He’s a perfect gentleman most of the time. Like me.”

Virgil sighed and whistled high pitched first and then made a sound in the back of his throat almost like a mating whale.

“What does that mean?” Roman asked.

Virgil rolled his eyes. “It’s a saying. A man doesn’t realize that water pressure is killing him until he’s almost dead.”

They went for most of the way to Tampa in silence. Or, Roman’s version of silence. Which meant he only spoke about half the ride. Thankfully, highway patrol didn’t notice how fast they were going. Once in Tampa, Virgil seemed to know exactly where to go, even though Roman had no memory of ever visiting that place.

“No, moron. The other left. Okay, it’s up here.”

They were in a residential neighborhood with private woods behind it that led to the bay. It was pitch black out except for the occasional street light and as they got out of the car Roman couldn’t help but think that this was exactly the type of environment he could chip a nail in.

“He’s here.” Virgil said.

“Honestly I can’t believe you would… did you hear that?”

It was a masculine yell, and one that sounded very familiar. Not one that would wake someone from a deep sleep, but one that you would learn to pinpoint from a mile away after hearing it being afraid of their mother for the first time.

“Patton.” they both whispered together before jumping the fence and running towards it.

……….

Virgil was too squeamish to actually touch the jellyfish with his tail.

“They are so disgusting.” he clicked.

“I am starting to believe what you told me about the witch not letting you go anywhere.” Logan said, tying his hair back. “It’ll be slightly more difficult for you given your…” he gestured to Virgil’s mostly blank torso, “...condition, but I think you’ll be fine. Just resist the urge to let them touch the scaleless areas of your skin.”

“And why would I be tempted to do that?” Virgil asked, pulling his hands close to his torso in a very human show of disgust.

“They are very squishy looking.” Logan said in a very serious tone.

Virgil let one small laugh escape. Logan showed him the right way to swirl the water around and swim away really fast when it became too dangerous. If either of them were ones for laughing they would’ve laughed. As it was even the two most somber looking young mermen in the city with reputations for looking like they were always attending a funeral together, grinned from ear to ear.

As the jellyfish started to almost melt in the brine lake Virgil held onto Logan’s much smaller shoulders to anchor himself. At first Logan thought it was silent laughter. Then he noticed the heavy breathing.

Logan turned Virgil over and saw an angry red mark on his chest. And others on his side. They were slowly growing.

“Oh, gods and sacred tides. Virgil, can you hear me? Virgil, I can see that you’re still breathing. Virgil? I need you to answer me.”

……….

“Logan, answer me!” Patton called out.

Logan looked carefully over the waves for the first time since he had changed. The bay was much calmer than the open ocean, but not enough to quiet the screaming in his mind.

He had to be ready. He had to be, right? That’s what this must be. The call of the ocean that Virgil keeps talking about. It must be. It’s only logical. Why else would he hijack Patton’s car? If he’s doing it then there must be as reason behind it. That’s who he is. That’s what he is. If he goes in he can return to what he really is. That must be it.

Voices and footsteps mixed with Patton’s. They were almost there. All he had to do was go in. Find is way home. Finish his test. Pretend like none of this ever happened.

“He can’t swim!” Virgil called out. “I can’t swim! Not like this!”

“What do you mean you can’t swim, fishy edgelord?”

“I mean, I can’t change back right now and nobody ever taught me how to swim with a human body! Logan! No! Pop the bubble!”

The last thing that crossed Logan’s mind before the water engulfed him was “Wait. What? Oh. Oh no.”

#sanders sides #sanders sides au #mer au #roman wrote a thing #roman said a thing #fanfic #fan fic #fanfiction #fan fiction #logan sanders #logic sanders #virgil sanders #anxiety sanders #platonic analogical #analogical

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caspian-skye · 4 years

Text

The Apoptosis Project Ch.8, Making a Statement

“Twenty-five years after Salem's defeat, twins Caspian and Lazula Skye are finally of age to attend their father's academy; just in time for the Creatures of Grimm to return. While fighting the revived horror alongside Frontline Biomedical's controversial Organic Androids, they begin to unravel a web of secrets ensnaring more than they could have ever known.”

"Okay, let's go ahead and get started for the day!" Professor Corvis-Braun began eagerly. Caspian looked to the lecture hall's stage, where Lilly's mother peeked over the podium. Whenever Caspian had seen the diminutive, feathery-haired woman in the past, she wore some stylish mixture of cardigan, blazer, skirt, sweater, vest, and tights. Her outfit never strayed away from moody hues of black, white, midnight blue, and silver. Apparently, her work attire was no exception.

"Welcome to your first day of Interspecies History!" the professor announced. A pair of dark eyes flicked to the full rows of long, rounded tables forming eight half-circles up to the back of the room. "I'm Professor Corvis-Braun, but you can call me Professor Corvis if it's easier. Or Professor Braun, I love my husband. This class has the reputation of being a bit dry, especially at a school that teaches Grimm Studies and Practical Weapons Training. But! It's important. Plus, every year I've had a handful of students that really take to this class, so that might end up being you!" She took a sip from her water before continuing. "This is a special year for me, because my own daughter happens to be in this room! I won't call her out, but-"

Lilly smiled and turned, waving to the rows behind her.

"Oh! Well then, that's her," Professor Corvis confirmed above a chorus of laughter and "aww"-s. "Anyway, though faunus are equal in law now, and a big city like this sees very little overt racism, we're living in quite an important time right now. Can anyone tell me why this class has become so relevant?"

After several seconds, she pointed to a hand toward the back of the room.

"The Red Claw?"

Professor Corvis-Braun pulled back a bit in surprise. "Yes! I mean, that wasn't the answer I was looking for, but that's an important issue we'll cover in depth starting next week. Any other answers? Good answer, by the way."

At the furthest section of the room, a few rows back, Noxis raised his hand. Professor Corvis called on him.

"I wouldn't count them as a species," Noxis began, leaning back in his chair. "But are you talking about Organds?"

By the end of his first lecture at Sentinel, Caspian's wrist burned from writing, and his stomach was empty. The beginning of class saw a quick, broad overview of course content, which eventually shifted into administrative and logistic details of the class. Professor Corvis finished with a minute to spare, just as the zipping and shuffling of all the backpacks in the room began to drown her out.

Caspian clutched his stomach. "Man, I'm hungry. After Grimm Studies, you guys wanna meet at The Roots?"

"I'm down. I'll ask Ichigo," Rowan agreed.

"I suppose I'll stop by for a bit," Lilly said. "I'm meeting a new friend later this afternoon, though."

Unease crept into Caspian's mind. A new friend...

"Want to come to The Roots after next class?" Caspian typed into his Holoband. He looked across the room.

Noxis flashed his Holoband's screen, looking at it for a few seconds. He shut it off, slung his bag over a shoulder, and made his way out the door.

As Cedar Hall, Sentinel's first-year dormitory building, was built into the side of the steep hill holding the academy above the bay, The Roots Cafe was below ground level on one side, but well above the street on the other. One wall was almost entirely windows, revealing the impressive view from shopping center to the North, to the flat tract of land across the street that held the SFC, sports fields and sparring courts to the South. Looming furthest away, against a backdrop of skyscrapers and sea, was Sentinel Stadium.

The Roots itself was quite cozy, Caspian thought. The side furthest from the windows was a winding maze of counters and kiosks. It got fairly busy at dinner, but the food seemed decent so far, a selection from all over Remnant. Toward the windows, comfortable booths and tables in many shades of brown found space among gently curving half-walls and wooden pillars. At each end of the cafeteria was a near-abstract mural of huntsmen and Grimm.

The day after initiation, Rowan found a round table nestled in a half-circle alcove facing the window. Every meal since, he had refused to sit anywhere else.

"The flesh of Frontline Biomedical Technology's Organic Androids is created from human stem cells. The 'organic components,' as they are called, are mounted onto a titanium alloy and carbon-fiber frame, making Organic Androids nearly indistinguishable from humans," Caspian read. "Though they look much like us, what would be their brain is actually called a 'Brain-Core System.' The 'core,' in the android's chest, handles power and low-level internal functioning. The 'brain,' in the android's head, allows for higher-level processing. However, it should be noted both brain and core are incapable of thought and emotion."

Caspian looked up to Lilly expectantly.

"I see..." she pondered. "I think you do a wonderful job of setting up the issue, and differentiating between Organd and human. However, I fail to see the main point of your paper. I believe it would be helpful if you transitioned into your main point from what you have now." She looked to him. "Do you have any ideas?"

Caspian pursed his lips. "Hmm... I guess, I'll talk about how people generally respect Frontline because of its medical advancements, but there's a lot of distrust toward Organds." He looked up from his screen. "People don't like things that look so human and... aren't."

"Why'd your mom have to go and assign a paper on the first day of class?" Rowan complained. "Always seemed like a nice lady, but that's just cruel."

Lilly's lips drew up in a muted smile of amusement. "It's only two to three pages, and is worth a very small portion of your grade," she reminded. "This is more a measure of your starting point than anything. Have you started?"

"It's due Monday, right?"

"Yes."

"Nope. I think I'll start Saturday. Maybe Sunday," Rowan responded. He tore into his sandwich.

"I think I'll distinguish between combat models and companion models too, because their internal coding and ability to fight is different enough to note," Caspian commented, leaning into his laptop. He struggled to type a few words with his left hand, his right still wrapped up in a sling. "Writing an essay is hard enough with two functional hands."

"What about third gen Organds?" Ichigo inquired.

"They're not out yet. I might mention them, but I don't think I know enough to say much about them..."

Rowan raised a finger, gulping down an ambitious bite of his lunch. "You hear that the third gen ones are gonna be able to eat? Isn't that weird?"

"They can't digest though, what happens to the food?" Ichigo questioned.

"Damn, good question," Rowan admitted. He flicked on his Holoband, typing up a search.

"We're eating," Lilly reminded. "Perhaps we should leave this question for later?"

"...So who's the new friend, Lilly?" Caspian asked, attempting to pass off his budding jealousy as innocent curiosity.

Lilly smiled gently. "Her name is Aspen. She's a second-year, we happened to run into each other when I was exploring the campus libraries."

Good. A girl.

Lilly looked down to her Holoband in surprise, and switched it on. "Oh, that's her right now!" she announced. She dabbed at her lips with a napkin, and shuffled across the half-circle booth until she was free of the table.

"I'll see you later!" Caspian bid with a grin.

Lilly waved, and was on her way.

"Y'know, one of these days it won't be a girl!" Rowan chided.

Caspian balled a napkin in his fist. "I know..."

"When are you gonna make your move? Sentinel's full of dudes. I'm just trying to help you along! You've got that 'childhood friend' thing going for you, but-"

"Can we please talk about anything else?"

Sentinel's dorms were a rough transition for Lazula. She had grown so used to her plush bed, giant bathtub in a bathroom with marble floor and golden faucets, and gourmet food whenever she liked. Now in the land of shared showers, standard-issue mattresses, and long lines in The Roots, at least getting up for her morning routine was easier.

Only a few days in, Lazula fell into her routine. Every morning, she would wake exactly at six. She would grab a healthy bite, and run the trail around Sentinel's campus. The loop was almost exactly two miles, so would take eleven or twelve minutes. Then to the Student Fitness Center right as it opened, when no one was around to gawk at her, or the weight she put on bar and machine alike. She would be back before nine to shower and take a second breakfast, making it just in time for her first class.

Classes had just concluded for the day, so the SFC was a bit more crowded than usual. Lazula walked up to the front desk, nodding to the attendant as she neared.

"Where can I find the Sparring Team?" she asked. "I heard there's a meeting here today."

"Oh, that would be..." the student at the front desk began. He keyed a search into the computer. "Room 202. Right up those stairs, first court on the left."

"Thanks." Raising her wrist up to the sensor, her Holoband pulsed once with vibration, and the hard-light door allowed her through. She went to the locker room first, donning her combat attire in its entirety before continuing onto room 202.

"As is the case every year, let's start by talking recruitment," a young man's voice declared from behind the door. Strong, but friendly. Lazula had heard the voice before. "Cole is already working on designing flyers, and I'd like to start handing them out in front of the library starting next week. I'll also ask the Headmaster if-"

The door shut loudly behind Lazula, drawing everyone's eyes to her. One hand rested on Impetus's hilt as Lazula locked eyes with the man, cocking her head back ever slightly.

"I challenge you to a duel."

He cracked a grin. The same impossibly white, straight-toothed smile that decorated Sentinel's promotional material, and advertisements for countless brands having nothing to do with huntsmen. His hair was styled just as neat as the pictures, a close shave on the sides and back of his head, with hair in front and top swept to the side in golden waves, one unruly lock drooping to his brow. She had never realized how thoroughly dark his eyes were.

"And here I was, wondering how long I should wait for you to settle in before challenging you," Midas welcomed. "I admire your initiative."

"I'm a twelve-time tournament champion at a new school with some of the strongest huntsmen in Vale," Lazula reminded. "It only makes sense I challenge the very strongest one here, and beat him."

Midas's smile continued. "Well, then. I accept your challenge."

Lazula drew Impetus from its sheath, positioning her feet and staring down her opponent.

"...After our warm-ups, of course!"

Lazula's shoulders sunk, and she sheathed her blade.

"Sure."

After a quick jog down to the water's edge and back, and a bit of dynamic stretching, Lazula and the rest of the Sparring Team returned to their room in the SFC. She had been sizing up Midas from the moment she agreed to warm up. She knew he fought with Resplendence, a halberd that unfolded into a bow, and channeled the electricity Midas produced with his semblance. He was well built but still looked nimble, and kept up with her on the run down to the water. He had a height advantage of over half a foot.

"By default, Sparring Team matches use a safety parameter of twenty percent. Is that alright?" Midas asked.

"Seems fair."

"Good." Midas pinched the screen he projected from his Holoband and flicked it upward. It hit a strange metallic structure suspended from the ceiling, and two screens flashed above the pair, displaying their names, pictures, and aura level.

Midas and Lazula took their places at opposing ends of the court. "It's too bad we're inside," Lazula said. "I'll have to hold back a bit if I don't want to break something."

Midas grinned. "I can hold back too! It's only fair."

Lazula shook her head. "That won't be necessary."

The excited buzz of the room quieted as a girl in robes of silvery blue stepped between them. "This is an impromptu sparring match between Team Captain Midas Baine, and challenger Lazula Skye," she announced. "The first combatant to decrease their enemy's aura level to twenty percent, or the combatant with highest aura level after five minutes, will be declared winner." She turned to Midas, then Lazula. "The match will begin after a ten second countdown."

As the clock began to count down, Lazula unsheathed Impetus, hearing the familiar, comforting sound of steel leaving its sheath. She pointed it at the ready, lowering her head.

As soon as she heard the tone, Lazula tore toward Midas. He stood his ground, halberd at the ready. Lazula smirked. "People should know by now that some attacks are just too strong to parry," she thought. She swung her blade across her body, but slashed through air.

Midas had spun around the side of her attack, and she felt a heavy strike down her back. Before she could turn, Midas spun his weapon and jabbed her spine, flinging her forward as she yelped with surprise and pain.

No one had hit her like that in a while, she recalled. Her first tournament? Or was it the second, over in Vacuo? It didn't matter now.

"No way! Look at her aura!" a voice called from the crowd.

"Ninety-five percent?! After a hit like that?"

She ducked under a slash parallel to the floor, pivoting into Midas and springing up with a vicious bash by Aegis. She slashed twice as he was knocked off balance, but her third swing was met by the shaft of his weapon. Cracking a grin, Midas channeled electricity down the length of his arm and into his weapon.

Lazula ripped Impetus away just as electricity began to course its way into Resplendence. She flung his weapon away and met him with an elbow to the chestplate before spinning and knocking him back with her shield. Midas slid backward, and used the distance between them to transform his weapon into a bow. He drew as Lazula ran forward, but at the last minute lowered his shot and let fly a bolt of lightning into Lazula's boots.

Electricity crackled across the ground as Lazula leapt over the attack, and crashed down on Midas with her blade. As his weapon rose to meet hers she channeled her semblance, taking his resistance into her own swing and amplifying it. Resplendence gave way, and Lazula slashed across his chest.

Midas's recovery was impressive. By the time Lazula swung back at him, he regained focus and parried her strike. A second and a third attack were met as well. Lazula took a split second to drop back and regain her focus before lunging at the golden-haired huntsman once more. "He's faster than me," Lazula realized. No matter how quickly she attacked, Midas's spinning of body and weapon alike caught her blade and tossed it back.

Finally, Impetus swung into Resplendence's axehead. Midas grinned, twisting his weapon until her blade was locked in his. Electricity crackled around him once more as Lazula attempted to rip her weapon free to no avail. She felt heat on her hands, then a seizing of her muscles, as if some searing entity inside of her arm controlled it from within. She let go of Impetus, and the Sparring Team scattered as the blade was flung their way. Midas turned and brought the head of Resplendence down on his unarmed foe.

Lazula blocked the attack with Aegis. Channeling as much of her semblance as she deemed safe, she wrenched her arm outward. Midas's armor crushed with the weight of her blow. He was flung back, providing Lazula an opening to retrieve Impetus.

She eyed the screen above her as she picked up her blade. She had been hit a few more times since, but her aura was still above ninety percent. Midas's hovered just over forty. The huntsman panted at the far side of the room, shoulders hunched. Letting out one last breath, he straightened and transformed Resplendence back into a bow.

Lazula raised Aegis to block a lightning bolt, then a second. She ran forward, keeping an eye out for more as she approached. She and Midas were locked in combat for several more seconds, before Midas ducked under one of her swings, and spun on the floor in an attempt to sweep her feet from under her.

Lazula buried Impetus's tip, vaulting over Midas's attack. She took its force into her blade and channeled it into her legs, blasting Midas with a potent kick to the gut. He rolled into the nearest wall, losing Resplendence. Lazula jumped after him, finishing their fight with a final strike.

The Sparring Team broke into hoots and cheers of excitement. With one foot on the ground, Lazula stepped on Midas's chestplate, bringing Impetus's tip dangerously close to his throat.

Her triumphant glare softened. She sheathed her weapon and extended a hand.

"I didn't hurt you, did I?" she asked as Midas took her hand. "That last hit was a bit much for how much aura you had left."

Midas met her worry with an easy smile as he walked over to grab Resplendence. "No need to worry about me, I'm durable!"

Lazula huffed in amusement. "You're not bad. That was fun." She looked to the crowd that began to fill the sparring court, then back to Midas. "How do I join the team?"

Midas shook his head with another smile.

"After a fight like that, you're in."

#rwby #rwby oc #rwby oc fanfiction #rwby fanfiction

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succubused · 5 years

Text

until i see you again

i’m afraid that i'm miles away from yesterday and I'm alone

“You ever heard of multiverse theory?” Jotaro said carefully, still looking down at the book that lay open in his lap. The page he had been staring at for the past twenty minutes may as well have been written in a foreign language.

Kakyoin’s footsteps halted. “Multiverse?”

“Mm.” Maybe this was a mistake.

“I’m…not unfamiliar.” Papers shuffled against a table. “Though I couldn’t tell you that I understand it very well. Why do you ask?”

“Something Josuke said just—” Jotaro grimaced, momentarily grateful for the fact that he was facing away. “Don’t know if it matters too much.”

“I was going to say.” He heard the smile in Kakyoin’s voice. “I didn’t realize those starfish of yours would provoke such abstract thought. Could you pass me that pen?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank y—” He frowned. “Jotaro, you’re shaking.”

For a moment they both watched the tremor of the ballpoint pen he held that had betrayed him. Gently Kakyoin lifted it from his fingers and wrapped both of his hands around Jotaro’s, who had no way of knowing whether the cool palms would stop the trembling or make it worse.

“I guess it does matter,” he murmured. “What’s got you so upset?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“I—forget it.” He pulled his hand away. “Not important.”

The temporary silence almost allowed him to believe that Kakyoin would listen for once, until he felt him sit down on the couch beside him and remembered that he knew the man better than to think that was possible.

He crossed his legs. “Still think you can get away with that, do you?”

“I think I can try.” Jotaro smirked despite himself.

“You never learn.”

“Part of my charm.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I said forget it.”

“And I’m telling you that’s not going to happen.”

Reflexively he reached for the bill of a hat that wasn’t there, ran a hand through his hair nervously instead. When he finally looked up, Kakyoin was watching him with a look that was more concern than it was exasperation.

“You shouldn’t be worrying about me,” he said at last.

“I’m just going to get more and more insufferable until you tell me, you know.” He bumped his shoulder against Jotaro’s, eliciting the closest thing to a real smile he’d seen all day. “What did Josuke say?”

Jotaro paused, dropping his eyes back to his own hands.

“He’s the same age we were,” he muttered. “He’s just a kid. They’re all just—kids.”

Kakyoin remained silent, waiting.

“He’s a kid who had his best friend die in his arms. He’s pretty upset about it.”

“Well, I think that’s only to be expected,” Kakyoin said slowly. “But Okuyasu’s all right. He knows that.”

“But he was in a world where he had lost Okuyasu.” He tried in vain to stop his leg from bouncing. Too many nervous habits formed by a man who lived in terror of fear showing on his face. “Even if it was only temporary. He still—he won’t really admit to it but I think he’s messed up by how real it was. He was saying that he feels like both things are true at once.”

They stared at each other. Kakyoin opened his mouth and closed it, temporarily at a loss.

“And that’s why I started thinking about how he might not be wrong.” He swallowed. “You know. Multiverse means everything that could happen has happened. Somewhere.”

“I…see.” He looked at Jotaro’s hands. They were still shaking. “That’s what’s bothering you?”

“I…” He felt as though his teeth might start grinding if he clenched them any more tightly, but the prospect of saying it out loud made him nauseous, even though he knew he no longer had a choice in the matter. “Not exactly.”

Kakyoin hadn’t seen Jotaro like this in a long time. He almost seemed like a teenager again, unsure whether or not putting things into words was what made them real, too afraid of what might happen if it was to take the risk.

“Everything that could happen.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “It’s quite the concept.”

“If there’s a version of us for every possibility there’s a version of us where you didn’t make it.”

He looked up, surprised. Jotaro was glaring at the table again as thought it had insulted him personally.

“Oh,” Kakyoin said finally. “So that’s what this is about.”

“You could easily have died from the shock before I got to you.” Jotaro closed his eyes, trying to put the memory somewhere it couldn’t touch him. Pulling Kakyoin’s mangled body from the water tower for a moment in which he was both dead and not dead, both with him and gone. “You didn’t have a pulse.”

His hand drifted unconsciously to his stomach, resting on the heavy patch of scar tissue. “I seem to remember you taking care of that yourself.”

Jotaro smiled weakly. “Yeah, but…”

“But I see what you mean.” Kakyoin’s expression grew serious. “There are versions of those events where we were not as lucky.”

“It feels so close sometimes,” Jotaro muttered. “It feels like that’s what happened. Or that I’ve lived half a life where it did happen. Sometimes I wake up and I don’t know if I’m me or if I’m him up until I look down and you’re…”

Cool fingers laced into his own once again and he looked up to see that Kakyoin had buried his face in his hand, despite having a disarmingly strong grip on Jotaro’s with the other.

“…and I just keep thinking about…how alone he is.”

“You’re wrong.” Kakyoin lifted his head. “He may be lonely, but he’s never alone.”

Jotaro tried and failed to speak, overcome suddenly by the fear of what words might allow the burning in his throat to turn into.

“I’m with him.” His grip tightened. “If it’s me who he lost, then I’m with him. No matter what version of me or what version of you, it doesn’t matter if I’m alive or if I—if I, I’m dead. Or if we never met at all. It can’t change this. Do you understand?”

He nodded mutely.

“And I can tell you that in any world where I died up there I died with no regrets.” Kakyoin shook his head. “Though there would have been…a lot of things I wanted to say to you. And it would be painful to know I had to leave without saying goodbye.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Jotaro mumbled. “You…help.”

“You don’t…”

“What?” He blinked at the sudden drop in tone. “Noriaki?”

“You don’t think there would be a version where—where it was me who lived?”

“You mean—”

“Just me.”

“Ah.” Jotaro considered him for a moment. Kakyoin had taken his glasses off to pinch the bridge of his nose, having gone very pale. “I…”

“You don’t need to lie.”

“…Yes. I assume so.”

Kakyoin shuddered, and Jotaro pulled him into his arms instinctively. It struck the two of them, as it did so frequently, how close they had come to losing one another, how a split second of hesitation meant being brutally torn apart in any outcome but their own. And it felt horribly correct, that everything that they had narrowly escaped in order to remain by one another’s side was something that had come to pass somewhere, somehow, closer than they wanted to admit was possible and a lifetime away. They had been lucky and doomed in equal measure.

“I hate thinking about it,” Kakyoin admitted, his face still buried in Jotaro’s sweater. “It breaks my heart.”

“I know how you feel,” he said, softly enough to hide the cracks in his voice.

“Do you remember what I told you?”

“Well…” Jotaro chuckled. “You might have to be more specific. You tell me things all the time.”

“Desert.”

“Oh, I could never forget that.”

It had been a breathless confession in a language unique to frightened, lovesick teenagers. For all of Jotaro’s airs, especially back then, he had, in the end, been even more terrified of it all than Kakyoin. Sometimes Kakyoin thought about his expression once he had finally overcome his own heart in order to offer that first nervous kiss, the mingled shock and panic and gratitude and the way the lines of his face had softened in a way he had never seen before. He remembered suddenly wondering whether Jotaro had ever allowed himself to be loved at all.

“I told you that you would never have to be lonely again.”

Jotaro looked down at him with raised eyebrows before a rare grin broke across his face. “Yeah, it was sappy. I think I remember telling you that I wasn’t.”

“Yes, and I told you that you were full of shit.” Kakyoin returned the smile and pulled Jotaro’s face down to kiss him on the cheek, pretending for the moment that he couldn’t feel the still-drying tears.

“That much hasn’t changed.”

It always came down to the color of the sky.

Whatever part of him it was that painted his dreams, no matter how vivid they were, could never quite get it right; something about the sky was always off, either too dark, or too warm, or the wrong color altogether. Kakyoin glanced up at the lavender beyond the windows and smiled to himself. He had always liked it more when it was obviously wrong. After all, he could watch the sky play by the rules anytime he wanted when he was awake.

He was sitting on the loveseat with his legs curled beneath him, watching the dream pass through, when he felt Jotaro in the doorway.

“Oh. Hello.”

No answer, only a silence that Kakyoin was vaguely surprised to find felt weighted with shock, of all things. When he turned to look, Jotaro’s knuckles were white on the doorframe as though he feared collapsing entirely if he released his grip even momentarily.

“Noriaki?” he croaked after a long moment had passed.

“You seem awfully surprised to see me in my own dream,” Kakyoin said.

“Your dream,” Jotaro repeated, a little faintly. He took an uncertain step towards the window.

“It’s funny, you know,” he said. “Usually when I dream about you we’re kids again. Never thought about what you would have looked like if you made it as far as I have.”

“If I…oh,” Kakyoin breathed, tilting his head to get a better look at the slight shift of the planes of the otherwise familiar face, the circles under his eyes that were just a little darker, the early shadows of frown lines more prominent there than the echoes of laughter that marked the Jotaro he knew. “You’re him.”

He seemed to have become incapable of anything but staring, but Kakyoin had never hesitated to meet him in the middle. They looked at one another, Jotaro’s hand twitching as though he wanted to reach for him, but his near-fearful expression told a different story.

“You’re not real.”

Kakyoin smirked up at him. “From where I stand it looks like that describes you, not me.” He shrugged. “I guess we have no way of know—”

The movement that pulled him in was almost more of a lurch than an embrace, the grip of his hands almost more desperation than love, and maybe it was just equal parts of each, maybe the distinction didn’t matter anymore. Maybe it never had at all. He was still so much taller, had to hunch down to bury his face in Kakyoin’s shoulder to hide the shine of his eyes that threatened to betray him. It was exactly the sort of thing Kakyoin had learned how to look for.

“…you okay up there, big guy?”

“Shut up,” he mumbled, voice muffled.

Even as a dream Jotaro was heavy enough such that when his knees gave out Kakyoin had no choice but to sink down along with him, but still wrapped around one another, neither was inclined to complain.

“I don’t think I care.”

“About what?”

“If you’re real.”

“Well…” He pushed Jotaro’s head off his shoulder, holding his face with both hands. “Whether I’m real or not, I’m here.”

“I tried,” Jotaro said in a low voice. “I—I didn’t—you were already…when I—I tried…”

“Oh…no, you don’t—” Kakyoin stared up with a look of dawning horror. “You don’t blame yourself?”

“I couldn’t—I was too late.”

He watched Kakyoin’s hand close around his own, trying and failing not to think about the last time he had seen those hands in person. He had no way of knowing how close he came, and it haunted him, the not knowing whether he had been seconds or minutes or hours too late. All that he knew was that he hadn’t been close enough.

“I couldn’t save you,” he muttered.

“But—you did.”

Kakyoin held his hand in both of his own, his grip a little too tight to be one meant to comfort alone. Jotaro half worried, as though from somewhere far away, that he would wake up.

“You did save me,” he said. “I don’t know what—I don’t know what happened in whatever—I don’t know what’s true for you. What’s true for me is that you pulled me down from that tower and you—and I, it was close, it was, and it’s not as though it doesn’t affect me even now, but I did make it. Because of you.”

It still felt as though there was something sacrilegious about seeing Jotaro in tears, and even though he had long since earned the right to be there for it, Kakyoin often felt as though it would be kinder to look away. This time, however, he held his gaze until Jotaro had successfully blinked the glittering edge away, and both took a deep breath.

“That’s what I tried to do,” Jotaro said. “That’s exactly what I tried to do…”

“And it was enough. Our truth is just a luckier one than this.”

“Ours…that’s right.” He tilted his head to the side. “How…old are you?”

Kakyoin smiled gently. “I’ll be twenty-eight in a month.”

“Twenty-eight,” Jotaro breathed. “I don’t believe it.”

“You look about the same.”

“I just turned—”

“Twenty-nine?”

“Yeah…”

“You didn’t want anyone to know.” Kakyoin chuckled. “For the record, I wasn’t the one who told them.”

“Yeah, they—wait.” He blinked. “How did you…”

“Joseph told Josuke and they weren’t about to let you have your last late-twenties birthday in peace.” He laughed again. “But you were good about it. Maybe even happy for a minute.”

“So it was the old man,” Jotaro muttered, then shook his head. “Good grief.”

“You can ask them. Ask Josuke. Then you can’t tell yourself I wasn’t real.”

“Could just be a really good guess on my dream’s part.”

“Oh, certainly. Of course.”

And at last, Jotaro cracked a smile. “Can you tell me something, then?”

“Anything.”

“What are…what are you like?”

Kakyoin exhaled through his teeth. It would have haunted him if he were in Jotaro’s place, the constant wondering about what he might have become had he not been ripped from the world so quickly. Who he might have been, both to himself and to others.

“I started painting again,” he said carefully. “I was in the hospital for a long time and even once I was released I…you, actually, it was you who suggested I figure out something that didn’t involve standing too much. Still have the—there’s a sketchbook, just has pictures of you. You were pretty embarrassed because they were mostly just drawings of you sleeping by the window. And by the time I could walk again I was so used to drawing every day that I sort of just kept it up.”

He rubbed the back of his hand against his stomach, considering.

“Your ex-wife and I get along great and it freaks you out,” he continued. “But she says she always suspected—first time she saw us in the same room. We think it’s funny, you don’t. And of course there’s Jolyne too.”

“Jolyne,” Jotaro repeated faintly.

“When you’re busy with your dolphins and your starfish and whatever it is you do down there she stays at home with me and she—I don’t think she was too sure about me at first but she’s warmed up. She’s a funny kid. Said she wants me to teach her how to tie cherry stems into a knot.”

“Still doing that, are you?”

“What, you’re still pretending you don’t love it?”

“You’d have to tell me.”

Kakyoin shook his head, smiling. “You know, you were just talking about this.”

He studied their hands rather than meet Kakyoin’s eyes. “About what?”

“Another truth. Multiple versions of events being real at the same time. About—you, I suppose, although it feels strange to say.”

“I have been thinking about it a lot,” Jotaro admitted. “But there isn’t really…anyone I would want to talk about it with.”

“That’s the worst part, I think.”

“What do you mean?”

“How alone you must feel.”

There was no point in lying to him. There never had been.

He felt, as he always did when he was close to tears, that he had crossed some invisible and catastrophic border, and it was one he certainly hadn’t come near in a long time. It was something about Noriaki, a distant enough memory such that he had nearly been able to tell himself he imagined it altogether; but no matter how close or far away, in this world or the next, he had always been everything Jotaro needed to feel safe enough to stop hiding the fractures that cracked his heart’s surface, if only for a moment.

It was a cruel trick, he thought, that the deepest of them had been caused by the loss of the only person who had ever been able to make him acknowledge they were there in the first place.

And yet, dream though he knew it to be, as he rocked forward to rest his forehead on Kakyoin’s shoulder, he couldn’t help but feel that the touch of his hands was too familiar to be entirely false. Not quite in the way of a memory, either. His palms were crossed with scars that Jotaro had only ever seen as open wounds, but he knew them all the same. It felt as though he briefly remembered moments from a lifetime he had almost, almost been able to call his own.

“I can’t imagine what you’ve been through,” Kakyoin murmured into his hair. “I’m so sorry.”

Jotaro took a deep, shaky breath.

“I miss you,” he said. “It’s been—and I thought—they said it would get easier. But it’s—it’s been ten years and I still—every day, every fucking day I think about you. I can barely even sleep because I see you when I close my eyes, I see…I see…”

Kakyoin tightened his grip when he fell silent, and he waited. For a moment they stayed like that, Jotaro trying not to think about the last time he had been held in such a way.

“You didn’t deserve go to like that,” he said in a low voice.

“And you don’t deserve to live like this.” Kakyoin stroked his hair. “It must be lonely.”

“…Yeah.”

“You’re not alone. You know that, don’t you?”

He shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.

“I’m with you. I’ll be with you until the end. You’re never alone.”

“You’re gone. You’ve been gone for ten years.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“I don’t know what I believe.”

“Did you believe in me?” He lifted Jotaro’s face one last time, such that he had no choice but to meet his eyes. “Even just once, the things I told you, did you believe them at all?”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I did.”

“I won’t leave that world until you do. I’m always with you. Do you believe me?”

“I don’t know. I wish I could say that I did.”

“Can you try?”

“I can try.”

“Then that will have to be enough.”

“I loved you, you know?”

“I know.” He reached up to brush the single, eternally uncooperative curl out of Jotaro’s eyes. “I loved you, too.”

When he opened his eyes, the loneliness that had faded into a dull ache over the past decade weighed on his heart as heavily as on that first cold morning when he had pulled awake into a world Kakyoin was no longer a part of. It had been all the more agonizing due to the space of a heartbeat during which he had forgotten, and had looked around reflexively for cherry-colored hair.

Jotaro stared at the other side of the bed, untouched as always. He had never thought to ask himself why it was he left it that way. He half expected to blink and see him there, older than he had ever had the chance to become, with the same too-wide smirk on his face.

Your legs could take up a king size bed on their own, you know.

Yeah. Good thing you’re short.

It was as though he remembered conversations that had never taken place, or that he had overheard himself having from a great distance.

I could learn to leave space for you.

When he locked his hands together to stop them from shaking, he wondered briefly why it was that he cared. He was alone, after all. If there were a weakness, it was hard to imagine a better place to show it than here in the silence that belonged to him.

Yet somehow, for the first time, the silence of that empty room was not only his own. It was defined by the absence of something more than just his voice, the absence of someone else who should have been there. Another voice, silenced so completely, and the empty spaces it had left behind, the space Jotaro had left in his life without even realizing he had been waiting for someone who could never come home to him.

The silence was Kakyoin’s as much as it was Jotaro’s.

In another life it’s your voice that breaks the silence, the way you always knew how. In another life I am not alone in this place.

He flinched when the phone rang, gazing down at it for a long moment before reaching for the receiver.

“Hey, Jotaro!”

Jotaro rubbed at his eyes. “Shit. Are they—are you waiting for me?”

“Kind of. I figured you were gonna meet us there but, you know.” Josuke’s voice rose in embarrassment. “Wanted to be sure.”

“It’s fine. I’ll be there. Tell them there’s no need to wait.” He paused. “Josuke?”

“Yeah?”

“Who was it who told you?”

“Told me what?”

“My—you know. My birthday.”

“Oh. Who’d you think? I mean, it was my—it was the old man.”

“It—was?”

Noriaki.

“Why’d you sound so—Jotaro, you okay?”

I wish I could tell you I’ll see you soon. I don’t think this world is through with me yet. I wouldn’t be vain enough to say that it needs me, more so that I can’t justify leaving so many things unfinished when seeing them through would leave things brighter or safer for the people who will stay behind when I’m gone.

“What? Yeah. Yes. I’m fine.”

“You sound kinda hoarse.”

I have so much to tell you.

“I—don’t worry about me. Just, uh, let them know I’ll be late.”

A million lifetimes away I’ll see you in the morning. In this one, where the truth is something colder, I can only remember to dream of you.

Until I see you again.

#jjba #jotakak #jotaro #kakyoin #legally you have to listen to the song while you read it #also writing jotaro getting in his feelings is one of the most difficult things ive ever made myself do #posts

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ammar-b-shakir-blog · 5 years

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Edison’s Life & Its Inventions

An article about Edison's life and its inventions:

Admiz Melton writes: One day Edison bought all of Faraday's writings and sat down to study the height and slept there. When my eyes opened in the morning, he was sitting and reading. We were both going to a hotel about a mile away for breakfast. What Edison did read was his mind wandering. Somehow he told me, Adams, I have so much work to do, and life is so short that I have to hurry so badly that I have to go to bed. Started running Most of the things we often use in our daily life are ancient and modern inventions of science. Behind all these inventions is the hands of great scientists and inventors who worked hard and achieved a high standard. One such name was Miss Elwid Yason. Edison was probably the greatest inventor in history. He attended school for only six months, but the invention of his bulbs and phonographs changed the lives of millions of people. Edison has patented 1,000 inventions in his life. In reference to Edison's great service to humanity, Henry Ford once suggested that distant life should be called the Edison covenant. Edison praised extraordinary intelligence in these words: a verdict on the idea and a nascent decision on a sweat. He proved this belief by working all the time that he was just at meal time. Edison seemed to find everything strange. He experimented with pharmaceuticals and proposed a program for people's comfort. He was very close to the invention of the Red U. and he used nuclear energy. Predicted about Edison always strives to create things that can work under normal methods without spoiling and easily repair and improve the inventions of other

Early Life:

Edison Milne was born on February 5, 1847 in Ohio. Samuel Edison and Nanny Edison were the seventh child. Edison's grandfather was Judith Holland and mother was from Canada. The family emigrated from Amsterdam to the United States in the 8th century. Seeing the boy's curiosity and passion, his family called him Elva. Elva used to ask them questions constantly. How does the bird escape from the chicken poop? What makes the bird fly? Why does the water extinguish the fire? His school teacher couldn't even answer some of his questions. If no one was able to answer his question, he would try to get the answer from his own experience. One day, Elva learned that bubbles fly because they have gas. So he sent a boy to sidelight. Feed three sauces of safflow Elva was convinced that when the boy's stomach was full of gas he would start flying. But instead, the boy fell sick and lay on the ground, and the world began to feel him spinning.

At the age of seven, Elva moved with her parents to Ho Chi Minh, where her parents started a grain and litter business. Elva entered a public school and hurried the teacher to ask a lot of questions. The teachers used heavy leather keys to kill the children who asked them questions. One day, Elva told the district school inspector Ho Edna's son, Hoyna, is dirty and unable to study. Elva ran home and told her mother. She would go straight to the teacher and tell her in incredible words (Elva is more intelligent than the teacher's entire body in little swallows) and she dropped him off from school. Thus, the regular recognition of Elva Edison lasted only three months. His mother intended to teach him by playing the game, which was unusual at the time. His mother made education a game for him. At first he was surprised at it, but very happy later. He began to learn so fast that his mother could not teach him any more. When Elva was nine years old, her mother introduced her to a book written by Richard Babe Parker, a well-known teacher of the mid-nineteenth century. Elva Edison refused to accept her writings. She repeated each experiment to prove the author wrong. Elva had more than a hundred smells of different chemicals. She had poisoned all the smells to keep her family members away from them. Charles Bachelor, a friend of Elva's, says: "One night I returned, and I was sitting at the dockside, and in front of it was a pile of alchemy and other books, some as high as five feet." He was studying all day and night. In a few weeks, he had looked at all the books and prepared a volume based on his abstracts. He also did many experiments on farms. From the age of nine to twelve, he spent many years in the history of Hume, England, the rise and fall of the Empire, Potter's Discovery of the Senses, and Tuton's Principal of Teacher, Fla. Now it was fall. At the age of twelve, he got a job as a train boy in a grenade trunk train. He used to save newspapers, candy, tea, and peanuts in the train (which runs between Port Huron and Detroit). Was. In his spare time, he experimented with merchandise and chemicals in an empty container. He bought a press and started publishing his own newspaper (the Herald Daily). Due to its unique nature, it began to go hand in hand. It was the first newspaper to be published in a moving train.

Chemical experiments in Elva's train hit him hard. One day, a fire broke out in the foreshore pen, causing a flare in the train's car. At this point, the conductor hit the powerful Elva's ear. Received and threw her out of the box with her chemicals, printing on it and other things. The incident caused Elva to become deaf. However, Elva attributed her deafness to another incident. While she was trying to board a moving vehicle, the conductor pulled her by the ear and brought her to the platform. Edison said a few years later (I He felt something break in his head.) My deafness started from then on and it only increased.

Edison, though not completely deaf, but in the last years he could barely hear the screams. His depression could have ended with a concussion, but he refused to have surgery. Edison did not mind being deaf but thought of an easy way to get one. Edison escaped Barmouth's mouth because of his ear impairment. It happened that Edison bought a large pile of old books in doodler and he took it and left for the house at three o'clock in the night. In fact, a watchman saw him and ordered the thief to be considered. Jason couldn't hear because he was deaf. The guard fired the bullet, but the bullet passed through Edison's ear. Thus the great inventor survived the target. After the train wreck, Elva started to save the newspaper at the stations. One day at the Clemens Railway station, Elva noticed that a freight train was moving towards the station at Mulla Zam's son. Elva rescues the baby in a timely manner. Thanks to the station, Mulazam taught Elva to use a telegraph in return.

.Early Inventions:

1868, In Boston, Edison worked as a telegraphist in Boston. He completed his first invention, which he sought to sell. It was an electronic voting machine that resembled a machine used in legislative assemblies in various states. It recorded the votes of members of the legislature on a large board. Elva Edison took it to Washington and Congress A committee heard it, but the chairman of the committee told him that the machine was not in the Congress's priority: it takes about 5 minutes to attend. Your machine had to make it work. Elva Edison was very angry with this behavior and said that no I will not invent anything that is not needed. And he kept the words of his words. After that time he committed himself to these words in urgent need of the world. Elva Edison emigrated from Boston to New York in 1940. She had nothing and obtained permission to sleep in the futures of an employee of the Goldandecar Company. Elva Edison used her time to understand the stock ticker most of the time. The telegraph was the kind of machine the company used to tell brokers about the price of cocaine. A few days later the stock ticker broke and Edison surprised the manager by fixing it because everyone else had failed to fix it. At that time, the manager offered him $ 5 for a supervisor job. It was great. Edison's busy brain continued his experiments on the stock ticker. It made it so much better that the president of the Goldland Stock Telegraph Company, Jazel Marcel Lefferts, expressed his interest. The leaflets sent Edison a payday and asked what amount he would take to patent his stock. Edison made a decision that he would say $ 5 and accept up to $ 5. He hesitated and said, "Well do Jazel Fur, you offer me .....", Leffer Toss thought for a moment and then said, "Do you accept 3 dollar ? For a moment Edison found it difficult to control himself. He grabbed the desk to keep himself upright and said gently yes! I think it will be fine.

Magic of Menlo Park

23 years ago Edison established his first workshop in Newyark, New Jersey, with money from Lefferts. It was there that he began to manufacture his own stock-ticker. In the year 2, he modified the typewriter's steel components with wood. It also corrected the intonation and ink distribution of words. Edison Improved Typewriter It was possible to write with machine speed much faster than Yes. Edison Menlo came in. That same year, he improved the telephone by adding a car bin transmitter. This was a very important step in making the telephone workable. Before this change people had to smell the telephone very loudly. Edison's inventive phonograph or record player has been named the most innovative invention in the world. In this regard, no one had ever made a practical model of phonograph, and the specimen was brand new and untouched. Edison has always called phonograph his favorite invention. The idea of a phonograph came about when he was trying to find ways to automatically record telegraph messages. He wanted to record messages on a rotating plate on paper pads. That disk is like today's phonograph. He was walking around. Edison learned from his telegraph analyst how the diaphragm is being made or how the discharge is triggered in the disc that reacts to the sound waves. He made an opening or one that had a caffeine attached to the cabin. On his neck, one of the elbows was opened in which the opening had been cut. I went or mine! Six o'clock baby eats. And I have promoted a ton of wood. Edison decided that he could recapture those moles rather than give them something. Then he can make the word abusive by saying that he has two. Edison made a note and ordered his cousin's footman to take a cue from Crowley or make it. Croatia did, however, confused her, but he confused her. He was asked to make something that was neither alchemy nor evil, but it was mica goodness. On the contrary, Edison did not destroy anything that could be completely mica-good. C could not imagine who used Edison to make this device but he took it and built it. When the C-C, the cylinder-shaped machine comes with Z. Edison's wings or you ask what it is. Edison unintentionally said, "Oh, this machine will smell. He wrapped the fort's foil on the cylinder's neck! The baby at six o'clock eats. He smelled this alphabet in the machine's silence. The machine gave Edison's words every chance. The croc's face turned white with movement. Edison, however, remains a diamond.

Electrical light (BULB):

Light bulb (bulb) Didn't I like the style of the new photo shot? Many two-headed people worked on this concept for years. The Russian-born Michael Najnier Paula Jiblo was persuaded by Pir's family to be archery at the time, but Edison wanted younger boys and girls who could be used at home and at home. Coin - in fact, it was the gas of the heart that was the main source of energy. In 1879 AD, Edison brought out a successful soliloquy of LED light. He did just that for the second time to observe all the flame minutes, which could illuminate the roaring light. The employee was sent to Azzone and another to the jungles of Japan. He had tried about three thousand things for a minute. On 19 October 1879 , after several attempts, Car Edison's fibers were finally able to be applied to the filament bulb. The bulb gave great light. By the morning of October 7, the precious bulb was burning. Finally on October 7, at 2:30 pm, Edison decided to raise two latches, which caused the bulb to burn. On the 5th of September Edison's lightning flashed a new invention of light. Edison became known all over the world as the magic of Menlo Park. Edison won the patent for electric light in January. Edison did more than 3 experiments for the invention of the bulb. In 9 AD, Edison moved to New Jersey, the large and modern Libya rotary of the West and Najj. He spent most of his time working on his new inventions. He organized many companies to develop his inventions. By the end of the decade, Edison began producing animated films and films. He made a comedy based on the inventions of George Eastman and others. In 2 AD Edison combined phonographs and cameras to create spoken pictures. The machine showed some flaws and Edison put it aside. Other people later fixed the flaws. At first people thought of animated films as a toy, but Edison saw them with the hope that it would be through education. He predicted that one day it would change other ways of teaching. Some of his later inventions and distortions include storage irons Tissimeters, cement mixers, duct phones and photocopying machines. From his first patented invention (Golden Artificial Plant to Artificial Rubber) to Edison's society Participation continued at the same pace. He died in the West and Najj on 18 October 1931 at the age of 84.

Edison’s Friends:

Edison had no special close friends. He often liked to be with Henry Ford, Harvey Fairestone and John Barrows. But he worked hard for hours, not having much time for friends. Used to be Throughout Edison's life, his work has always been a joy and a friend to him. Edison was a musician. Despite being deaf, he claimed he could hear the speaker of the phonograph with his skull. Edison was not a religious man but he believed in great intelligence. One time he told his friend that although he is known as a great inventor in the world, he cannot create even the simplest of life. Edison's most important work for the world was not only to invent electric light, but also to map the world's first power plant to reach millions of people. Edison received so many awards for his achievements that he had to say that I needed a mole to produce them. In 1956, Edison's laboratory was declared a national heritage. In 1959, her house was also declared a national heritage. The fact is that not only in life but also after death, the honor and fame that came to the part of Edison, which is very fortunate.

#informational

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preserving-ferretbrain · 5 years

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The I in Vampire: Joss Whedon and the Philosophy of Identity

by Dan H

Monday, 21 September 2009

Dan almost manages to say something nice about Joss Whedon~

Recently I did two things. I read The Pig That Wants to be Eaten - a nicely accessible book of philosophical thought experiments – and I watched Series five of Angel (review forthcoming from Kyra or myself, special exclusive spoiler preview, it’s shit).

One of the infuriating things about S5 of Angel is its blatant disregard for any of the show’s prior mythology (to be fair, this was partly due to network pressure). The girls at Boils and Blinding Torment get particularly furious about this, complaining about the way it craps all over the notion that vampires are in any way different to regular people. To quote them quoting Buffy

To paraphrase almost every character in Buffy ever: A vampire is not the person they appear to be. They walk like them, they talk like them, they have access to their memories, they might even do their hair like them, but it’s not them.

Which is pretty darn clear, and is, as the girls observed, spelled out in the first episode, and about every five episodes thereafter.

The thing is, while it’s spelled out like that, it’s pretty clear that it’s not like that. Jessee pops up in the second damned episode and seems quite convinced that apart from being “connected to everything” he’s still the same guy he always was. Angelus, while evil, still has a lot of Angel’s basic personality traits (“it’s just … you’re still the only thing he thinks about” is I believe how Willow describes it). Not only is there textual evidence against the whole “demon in a Xander suit” theory (and very little to support it except maybe that scene in series two where Angel’s “inner demon” beats up that other demon inside Angel’s body), there’s also some fairly fundamental problems with the whole idea of something that has your appearance, memories and personality being, in any meaningful sense “not you”.

Memory, Continuity, and Tom Riker

The question of who “you” actually are is a horrendously difficult one in philosophical terms. In practical terms, you know that you’re you, other people aren’t you and that’s an end to it. In the world of the philosophy of identity it’s far trickier.

One of the thought experiments presented in TPtWtbE is the teleporter problem. Suppose you go through a Star Trek matter transporter. It scans your body, and reduces it to data. Then it blasts you into atoms, and reconstructs you miles away from (presumably) completely different parts. None of the characters in Star Trek seem remotely bothered by this but it raises a lot of difficult questions. If the person who is reconstituted at the other end of the teleporter is made from completely different atoms from the person who went in, in what sense are they the same person?

The problem is compounded by the fact that the person who goes into the teleporter and the person who comes out are in fact capable of living independent lives. In a relatively famous episode, it is discovered that exactly that had happened to Riker. A transporter accident had split him into two people, both with exactly the same memories and experiences, and both believing themselves to be the “original” Will Riker. The Trek episode neatly dodged a lot of the nastier problems involved with this kind of conundrum by having the “other will” be one who had been stuck on a remote planet for several years, making it fairly clear to one and all that the Will Riker who has been, y'know, on TV all this time is the real one.

A similar idea crops up in The Prestige - Tesla's teleporting machine doesn't destroy the original, so you always get two copies, an Hugh Jackman solves the problem by drowning himself. This creates a terribly haunting image in the original film, but it's interesting that in many ways the machine functions identically to the “real” teleporter in Star Trek. It's just that the way it disposes of the “original” is less neat.

I understand that the way a lot of philosophers resolve such issues is with a concept called “Continuity of Consciousness” - broadly speaking if the individual coming out of the transporter remembers being the person who went into it, they can be said to be the same person.

Of course there are arguments against this definition (the two Rikers and the Tesla machine highlight one of them) but it's still extremely useful, and it's very interesting when applied to Buffy vampires.

The Buffy vamp remembers its human life. This is described in early episodes as “having access” to the human's memories, with the implication that the vampire knows itself to be a demon, and simply uses the human's memories to trick people into thinking it's something else, but this is clearly untrue. We witness the transformations of several vampires, and all of them clearly genuinely consider themselves to be the person who got bit, not some alien parasite. They have, in a word, continuity of consciousness. Not only that, but no vampire ever displays knowledge or memory of having existed independently as a demon.

Of course once a person becomes a vampire they are changed - they lose their soul (which seems to have a rather nebulous effect, certainly it doesn't seem to alter their sense of identity very much) and become Evil, but you can't really say that they're different people except in the metaphorical sense that we are all “different people” when we are – say – drunk.

This has particular consequences when it comes to little things like moral culpability.

Blame, Responsibility, and Evil

Even if you accept that vampires, whatever the show might say, are the same people they were when they were alive, it's still perfectly reasonable to say that they are the same people but evil(it's also perfectly reasonable to argue that the “but evil” segment of that sentence renders them not the same person at all, what isn't reasonable is arguing that they're suddenly a demon occupying somebody else's body – whatever the text says, Buffy vamps clearly don't work like that).

But even here we run into a bit of a stumbling block. Okay, vampires are evil. They kill people, because that's what they do, hence the slayage. Except that repeatedly, starting lest we forget in series two when Spike turns against Angelus, vampires have shown that they are capable of choosing to do good – or at the very least not to do evil. Now frequently they choose it for selfish reasons: Spike helps save the world because he likes being evil in it, and later fights demons because he enjoys hurting demons. The vampires at the dodgy place Riley goes to avoid killing people because it helps them stay under the radar. Harmony goes on the cowblood because it's a condition of her employment at Wolfram and Hart.

Now on the one hand, this makes the vampires that actually do kill people way more reprehensible. On the other hand, it makes killing vampires on spec a little bit dodgy. Yes, some vampires kill people, but a great many of them don’t, either because of artificial constraints (a chip in the head) emotional constraints (I haz soul! It make me sad if I do the killing!) or rational self-interest (killing people will get me fired, killing people will make them less likely to let me feed on them repeatedly). These, not to put too fine a point on it, are pretty much the three reasons that regular people don’t go around committing murder.

Now true, vampires are still much more likely to kill people than humans, but to get all formal logic about it, you can’t say that all vampires are killers – they are clearly capable of choosing not to kill – which leaves you only with “some vampires are killers” which is kinda useless. This means that staking vampires the moment they rise is basically a form of racial profiling. It’s effective racial profiling, to be sure, since they’re mostly going to go on to be mass murderers, but it’s much less cut and dried than the original remit of “a demon in the body of your friend”.

Dolls, Identity, and Consent

The whole philosophy of identity issue gets even more interesting (and even more problematic) in Dollhouse. Is that me saying something positive about the show? Well yeah, sort of. The actual philosophy of identity bit is kind of interesting – and on some levels it seems to be what Joss is interested in (q.v. the “it makes humanity irrelevant” speech in Man on the Street) – unfortunately because Joss is pathologically incapable of writing a show that doesn’t have EYE YAM TEH FEMINISTS scrawled all over the front in crayon, he muddies the water by making it something that is also about the abuse of women by men who aren’t him.

The problem with Dollhouse (why yes, I am recycling content from an old article) is that it brings up a whole lot of important rape myths and then not only fails to challenge them, but dips the whole thing in a the kind of abstract philosophy that dickheads use so that they can accuse feminists of being “too emotional”.

To quote one blogger whose name, weblog, and other identifying features I have totally forgotten: “the thing I love about this fandom is that you can always find somebody willing to argue that it isn’t rape if she was brainwashed”.

The problem is that “it isn’t rape if she was brainwashed” is actually part of several interesting philosophical questions about identity, free will, and perception. The problem is that rape is not in any way the right subject to be using as a vehicle for these questions. The concept of consent and complicity is complex enough in real world rape cases that it doesn’t need imaginary supertechnology muddying the waters. The abstract philosophy of the Dollhouse contributes to, rather than challenging, the prevailing notion that consent is so vague and ill-defined that anything short of a clear “no” counts.

One of the things I really liked about The Pig that Wants to be Eaten was the way in which it tempered its abstract content with pragmatism. In its discussion of the

Ship of Theseus

, for example, the author points out that the identity of the “real” ship depends on what you want to do with it. If, for example, you were looking for forensic evidence in a murder investigation, you would want the physical components that had been present at the time of the crime. If on the other hand you were looking for Theseus himself, you'd want the ship that was actually in his possession.

The abstract, philosophy-of-identity stuff in Dollhouse is at odds with the simple, practical fact that the Dollhouse is all kinds of fucked up. If the Dollhouse was more benign and less rapetastic, it could explore some of the interesting ideas about identity which are – in theory at least – part and parcel of the show. Unfortunately the nature of the Dollhouse makes abstract theorizing about identity an offensive disservice to its victims. Yes, you can wonder to what extent Echo's imprints are real people with volition, and to what extent therefore they are moral agents in their own right capable of, amongst other things, consenting to sex. The problem is that the house's “brainwash and bone” routine is so close to real-world date-rape that it becomes genuinely uncomfortable.

Which is a shame, because the actual ideas are rather interesting.

Themes:

TV & Movies

Sci-fi / Fantasy

Whedonverse

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Arthur B

at 14:18 on 2009-09-21

Uh, actually

the novel came first

. Though you are right that there's a particularly striking image that results from this, if it's the same one from the novel I'm thinking of.

That's a nitpick though, and I completely agree with the rest of your points here. I think the conclusive thing is that, whilst not a compulsive

Buffy

-watcher, I've seen at least a season or two's worth of episodes, and I've

never

even caught an inkling of the idea that vampires are not basically the same people they were before the Embrace (TM White Wolf) but with kewl powerz, simply because I never saw an episode where it was explicitly stated. Which I suppose is another good philosophical question: if you cut out the episodes which make the "they're different people" thing explicit, and a viewer can't work out that vampires are different people from the humans they used to be through observation, can it really be said to be true?

(The best example of using this plot point right, in my book, is

Dracula

; part of the reason the vampirisation of Lucy is so horrifying is that vampire-Lucy is so utterly different from normal-Lucy.)

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Dan H

at 15:36 on 2009-09-21Sorry, you're right, the use of the word "original" in that sentence is entirely specious. I think in my head i was using "original" to mean "before it was co-opted to be an example in a short article about the philosophy of identity".

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Niall

at 22:37 on 2009-09-21Must ... resist ... urge ... to debate ... Buffyverse ... mythology and metaphysics ... must ... resist ...

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Jamie Johnston

at 23:36 on 2009-09-21Ooh, interesting. Hmm. Yes.

Two very

obiter dicta

On the rape / brainwashing point, I sometimes wonder whether it wouldn't help to make the same sort of distinction as is made in law between theft (taking another person's property without permission) and fraud (using deceit to trick another person into giving you his property). The word 'rape' was until only a few decades ago almost entirely confined to violent and plainly non-consensual violation. That, of course, is only because society hadn't got far enough in reducing toleration of that extreme form of sexual abuse for it to even begin seriously looking at less obvious forms. But it does also, rightly or wrongly, cause a certain trickiness when we use the same word to denote sex where there is ostensibly consent but the consent is vitiated by, for example, incapacity. On the one hand using 'rape' in this broader sense is strategically shrewd because, now that everyone pretty much agrees that 'classic' violent rape is wrong and is a real problem, saying that something else is also rape immediately challenges people to think again about that other thing and may well shock them into new understanding. But on the other hand, as with assertions like 'meat is murder' or 'property is theft', there is a risk that people simply say, consciously or unconsciously, 'No, that's plainly not literally true and therefore I can ignore whatever point underlies it'. Whereas more progress might be made by treating the two things as separate and concentrating on getting people to acknowledge that the second is also bad. One might say that to some extent this panders to the tendency to regard 'fraud-type-rape' (if I can for the moment call it that without seeming to imply an actual analogy or to trivialize the whole business with my sloppy terminology) as less bad than 'theft-type-rape', it might at least make more progress in solidifying a consensus that 'fraud-type-rape' is actually wrong to some degree. I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a time when theft was recognized as bad but fraud wasn't; nowadays, though, fraud is often regarded as actually worse than theft because it involves an abuse not only of the institution of property but also of human trust. Anyway, perhaps this isn't the right article for this line of thought...

The second thing is that the two links in the article don't work because in each case the URL they're trying to point to has somehow got the URL for the Ferretbrain articles index tacked onto the front, in addition to the usual quotation-marks-coming-out-as-'&8221' problem.

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http://belmanoir.livejournal.com/

at 00:47 on 2009-09-22Actually, the Tesla machine functions entirely differently in the book--the duplicate that is created in the book is not really capable of functioning independently, so the philosophical/ethical issues are still present but very different. The movie DID come up with the image Dan is discussing.

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Arthur B

at 01:25 on 2009-09-22Ah, I was thinking of the image right at the end of the book, but now it occurs to me that that only happens in the framing story, which wasn't included in the film.

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Robinson L

at 22:00 on 2009-09-24It's perfectly simple, Dan. Removing the soul counts as an involuntary alignment shift to either Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil (I don't think there are many vampires I'd characterize as Lawful Evil). Side effects may include some changes in personality which go beyond those associated Character Alignment, although this has only been documented in one case (Angel), and as you point out, it's not like he's a different person—more like the same person under radically different circumstances.

Now, vampires can act outside their Alignment (Harmony trying to stay friends with Cordelia in Season 2 or 3 would be an even better example), although Spike takes it to ridiculous levels in

Buffy

Season 5. Evil is just the default.

Contrast with Russel T Davies' depiction of the Daleks and Cybermen in the new

Doctor Who

. You kind of have to admire the guy for sticking to the concept that they're without personality and totally evil—no matter how blisteringly dull this makes them as villains, or the stories they appear in. Whedon, on the other hand, through out the whole “vampires without personalities” angle (probably without even realizing what he was doing) pretty much as soon as it threatened his ability to tell an entertaining story. There's probably a lesson to be learned in all that.

Interesting question about whether vampires can be considered monsters in the moral sense, even without souls. Of course, ever since Season 2 (still referring to

Buffy

), I was wondering why the couldn't just restore the souls of all the vampires they encountered. Or at least a couple, like the Alternate Willow from Season 3.

If the Dollhouse was more benign and less rapetastic, it could explore some of the interesting ideas about identity which are – in theory at least – part and parcel of the show.

Yes, but they would also have to make the plots and characters and dialogue and trivialities like that more

interesting

, too. Even without the unfortunate implications of the Dollhouse-as-human-trafficking angle, there's still the

Dollhouse

-as-fecking-boring-tv-show issue to contend with. Without an engaging

story

with which to prevent it, all the deep philosophizing in the world is so much wasted screen time.

@Jamie: Really? The links work just fine for me.

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Jamie Johnston

at 22:54 on 2009-09-24

Really? The links work just fine for me.

This is because someone has fixed them. Presumably for the sole purpose of making me look silly. :)

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Rami

at 06:37 on 2009-09-25

This is because someone has fixed them. Presumably for the sole purpose of making me look silly. :)

Not at all. I've added some smarts to the Ferret so it shouldn't happen again.

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Arthur B

at 15:04 on 2009-09-25I confess: I used

seeecret poweeers

to dive in and fix the links for everyone's short-term convenience.

Which isn't to downplay the importance of Rami's unique ability to alter the ferret at will, or Jamie's keen bug-spotting powers.

TEAMWORK!

(picture of Captain Planet and cast goes here)

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Jamie Johnston

at 16:04 on 2009-09-27Go Planet!

Incidentally, I do wonder sometimes whether it would be kind to newcomers if it said somewhere on the site who has the secret powers. Or indeed who the editor is. But most of the time I enjoy the fact that it doesn't.

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http://pozorvlak.livejournal.com/

at 22:19 on 2009-09-29You might be interested in the Less Wrong post

Timeless Identity

. Spoiler warning: it turns out to be a sales pitch for cryonic preservation. But it's good up until that point.

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Dan H

at 11:18 on 2011-01-10Sorry, I know this is an old post but I was just playing with the Random Article function and I've just found the article linked from the bottom of this comments section.

ARGH ARGH QUANTUM BULLSHIT RAGE!!!

Firstly: you know somebody is a nutbag when they say "as we have seen in..." followed by a link to a post on their own blog.

Secondly: you can't solve the transporter problem by reference to quantum mechanics. Not only does quantum mechanics not really apply to macroscopic bodies, but it ignores the fundamental question of what identity is by clinging to the (completely false) notion that it is somehow impossible to distinguish between particles.

Thirdly: I love how this long winded nonsense about "rationality" ends in something little better than Pascal's Wager - sign up for cryonics because if you're right you get to be immortal and if you aren't you don't lose anything.

Fourthly: GAAAAH QUANTUM BULLSHIT RAGE!!!

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http://orionsnebula.blogspot.com/

at 17:41 on 2011-01-10The "less wrong" guy, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is fascinating. A lot of his stuff seems to be totally nutty, or at the very least exceedingly pretentious, like "the ten virtues of a rationalist." That said, some of his writing is really good.

http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth

is a hilarious essay on epistemology that I found pretty convincing.

He also wrote a Harry Potter fanfic:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality

which I thought was quite funny as well, even if he occasionally stops the story to complain about JK Rowling's plotting.

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Dan H

at 18:43 on 2011-01-10

The "less wrong" guy, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is fascinating

Fascinating he might be, but I find people who cite "quantum mechanics" in support of their personal ideologies extremely irritating. Quantum mechanics says nothing about the nature of identity except as it relates to sub-atomic particles. You certainly can't use quantum mechanics to prove that psychological continuity is the essence of human identity and you certainly-certainly can't use quantum mechanics to prove that psychological continuity is the essence of human identity by using it to argue, falsely, that physical continuity exists where it doesn't on the basis of the erroneous belief that all electrons are really the same electron.

Quantum mechanics *does* say that "identity" is not a measurable property of particles - when I say "this electron" what I really mean is "the electron that currently has these properties" and if I look at the electron again and its properties have changed I cannot meaningfully describe it as being either the same electron or a different electron.

The same ideas can be applied to human identity as well, and funnily enough they have been for years going back to the original Ship of Theseus. Quantum Mechanics doesn't offer us any new insight into the issue. Just because it is true that the identity of a sub-atomic particle depends only on its quantum numbers, that does not mean that the identity of a person depends only on the quantum numbers of the particles in their body (certainly it cannot be a *necessary* component of identity because I am pretty sure the quantum numbers of the particles in my body are changing all the damned time).

Sorry, personal bugbear.

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at 19:03 on 2011-01-10I don't disagree with any of that--I just really wanted to take the opportunity to pimp his epistemology essay, which is not about quantum.

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Dan H

at 19:21 on 2011-01-10Yeah, the epistemology essay is pretty cool, although it gets a bit straw mannish towards the end. Then again, if it's good enough for Galileo...

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http://orionsnebula.blogspot.com/

at 05:16 on 2011-01-11I see I should have specified why I find him "fascinating" in my first comment. I was going to, but didn't because I was too hungry.

On the man's main website he says that he "wears two hats." One writes about the "fine art of human rationality." Now, this is an insufferably pretentious way of putting things, and some of his articles follow suit, but most of his writings are actually quite good. What particularly strikes me is his phrase, "intelligence and learning are worth nothing if used to defeat themselves." He talks about the danger of trying to confirm ideas, various cognitive biases, and then, (this is the one that really got me thinking) the fact that even studying psychology is dangerous if you're not scrupulously honest, because the more you know about how people rationalize, the more easily you can find reason to discredit anything you don't want to believe.

The other hat is "concerned with artificial intelligence." And everything he says about this appears to be goats on fire. He supposedly works for the "Singularity Institute," a "public charity funded by individual donations." Sounds like a con man, except he's too obsessive.

It's just a jarring juxtaposition. I can't wrap my head around the existence of a person who can write at length about how to do good science, the cognitive flaws that generate wishful thinking, and the difference between a real explanatory theory and vague pseudoscience--then turn around and hit you with cloning, quantum baffle and singularities.

#Ferretbrain #Buffy the Vampire Slayer #Angel the Series #Joss Whedon #Dollhouse #Dan H

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auberginesdonthavelimbs · 5 years

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Phanniemay Day 9: World Building

Word count: 1457

“Papa, what happens when we die?” The man started, completely unprepared for this question from his young son.

“Why do you ask?” The child shrugged.

“I don’t know. I heard some people talking about it.”

“About dying?” The child shrugged again, and his father noted, not for the first time, that he was going to need to break that habit sooner rather than later. It could make conversations rather difficult. “What did these people say?” he asked, hoping the more explicit question would prompt a more explicit response.

“They said we were all gonna die if the hunters built a portal, because they’re gonna come in and kill everybody.” Than man gasped quietly, doing his best to hide his reaction from his son. Whoever ‘they’ were, their fears were valid, but they had no business discussing those fears in front of one so young.

“My child, you don’t need to worry about hunters. They cannot build a stable portal, and, even if they could, they wouldn’t get through. Daddy and I, and every adult in a thousand-mile radius, will fight to protect our home, and you. I promise you, you aren’t going to die. Do you believe me?” The child nodded, seemingly unconcerned. Thank goodness.

“But people die sometimes, right? What happens to them? Where do they go when they’re not here anymore?” The man sighed. He was glad that his son wasn’t afraid of imminent death, but that didn’t make this conversation much easier. Children liked simple, easy answers, and there were none of those to be found regarding such complex questions. Well, he supposed he had better meet his child where he was at, as it were. That could guide the conversation, at least.

“What do you think happens when people die?” Another shrug. Fantastic. “You asked where people go. Did someone tell you that people go somewhere after they die?”

“I guess. That's what people say sometimes, that someone isn’t with us anymore, or that he moved on, and stuff. So they must have gone somewhere.”

The father nodded. Yes, he supposed people did say things like that.

“Well, yes, a lot of people believe that, when a ghost dies, they go somewhere else. Some people speak of a place called the Timeless Realm, where everyone who ever died spends eternity. But people who are alive can’t get there, because we are still part of the natural flow of time.” The expression on his child’s face told him what he already suspected - this was too abstract, and the boy didn’t understand a word he was saying.

“It’s sort of like … you know how there are some types of things that we can pass through, and some we can’t? Well, imagine that the timeless realm is one of those things that we can’t pass through. But after a ghost dies, their body changes, so the two types are switched; they can only touch those things that are intangible to us, and they simply pass through that which we can touch.” The boy cocked his head.

“Like a human?”

“N- … sort of, but ghosts can’t become humans. It’s just a metaphor.”

“What’s a melaphor?” The man resisted the urge to put his face in his hands. To think, there had been a time not too long ago when he couldn’t wait for his child to start speaking.

“A metaphor means that you are using one thing to describe something different. Like, I might say that water is crystal-clear. I don’t mean that the water is made of crystal, just that it’s perfectly clear, in the same way that a crystal is perfectly clear. Or,” he continued as he reached out to ruffle his son's hair, “I might say that your hair is downy. Down is a type of very soft feather. When I describe your hair as downy, I’m saying it’s very soft, but I’m not saying that you have feathers. Do you understand?” He considered for a moment.

“So dead people are like humans in some ways even though they aren’t the same as humans?” The man hesitated, then shrugged and tilted his head in the well-recognized symbol of, ‘eh, kind of.’

“This metaphor is a little bit more complicated than that. I just meant that some people believe that the reason we don’t see dead people is that people change completely when they die, so that they can’t interact with the world in the same way that they did when they were alive. The Timeless Realm is an example of a place that the dead might go, based on the belief that they don’t move through time the way we do anymore.” He could see that he had lost the boy again, and he shook his head.

“But that’s just one belief. The truth is that nobody knows for sure what happens when we die, because nobody who dies can come back to tell us. Other people believe that, when a ghost dies, their body turns back into energy, and when a very powerful ghost dies, a new nova forms in that spot.”

“What do you believe, papa?” That was the question, wasn’t it? He didn’t want to tell his child what to think; he and his partner had agreed a long time ago to let their son come to his own conclusions as much as possible. But he did need to answer the question.

“I don’t know for sure. I can only guess like anyone else. But … why don’t you come sit on papa’s lap?” The child floated up and over, nestling easily into his father’s embrace. The man couldn’t help but remember a time when his son would spend most of his time in one parent's lap or the other’s, and he was painfully reminded of how quickly the boy was growing. He smiled at his son and ruffled his hair again.

“I do believe that our bodies are made of energy, and I believe that we become energy again when we die. But I’ve never felt the presence of an energy nova the way I feel the presence of another ghost.” He placed his son’s hand on his chest. “You feel that? The feeling of another person’s core is like nothing else in the ghost zone, no matter how much energy it has, or how concentrated that energy is. So, I believe that core energy is something different from regular ecto-energy. And I believe that when we die, our consciousness is no longer holding that energy together, so it dissipates.” He paused. This might be getting too abstract again.

“That means that it stops holding together. It’s like how water in a cup is held in place, and held in a certain shape, by that cup. If the cup breaks, there’s nothing holding the water together anymore, so it spreads out in a puddle.” The boy seemed to be thinking very hard.

“So our bodies are like cups, and our cores are like water. That’s another metaphor, right?” The man hesitated a moment, then nodded.

“It is a metaphor, very good. I was saying that our consciousness - our minds - are like the cup, but, yes, you have it basically right. And the thing about water is that it can always take the shape of its container, no matter what it was doing before. You can take that puddle and put it into a new cup, and then it will be in the shape of that cup.

“So maybe the reason that energy in the atmosphere doesn’t feel like a person is that it needs to be concentrated into a core to be felt, and it can only be concentrated like that when there is a mind holding it together. This core energy is all around us, but too diffuse to be noticed. Like how being surrounded by humid air feels very different from being submerged in water.

“But, sometimes, a new mind enters the ghost zone, like when a child is formed. And that mind can draw core energy to itself, and concentrate it into a core of its own. Of their own, I should say.”

“Is that what happened when I was formed?”

“Maybe. Like I said, nobody really knows. Do you feel like your core used to be somebody else’s?” The boy shrugged again.

“I dunno. I don’t think so.”

“Well, then perhaps I’m wrong. And you don’t need to know, right now, what happens when we die. Many people never figure out what they believe, and that’s ok too.” That prompted a pout.

“I wanna know, though.” The father chuckled softly.

“Yes, child, we all do. But, sometimes, we need to accept that there are some aspects of the world which will always remain mysterious.”

A/N: There’s a lot of fanon that I wouldn’t begin to know who to attribute it to, but, in this case, I definitely stole some shit from pearl84 on ffn again, this time from Dawning of a Sun. (It’s a very good, very dark, and very long story and you should definitely read it.) Specifically, I think I took the idea that ghosts can feel one another's essence, as it were, by touching their chests. Probably also the term “formed” to describe the creation of a new ghost, and the term “nova” or “energy nova” to describe the swirling green things in the ghost zone, and maybe some other vague things about the world. Again, tho, this isn’t necessarily meant to be set in that universe.

#danny phantom #phanniemay #phanniemay19 #phandom #my writing #looking back it was probably a mistake not to give the characters names #the dialogue tags and actions all feel very awkward #but i was trying to have the focus be on the #you know #worldbuilding #that is to say on the dialogue #rather than the characters themselves #there may have been a better way to do that #i may have omitted the internal commentary on the son's behaviour #and how fast he was growing up #for instance #i guess i really just cant help but write about characters #even when i'm trying to write about lore #maybe i'll do something like a script sometime #just dialogue and stage directions #no internal monologue #or even an excerpt from a book or something like that #pure exposition #that would have worked well for this prompt #and probably wouldn't fit any of the others #missed opportunity #ah well

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shipwreckseemssweet · 6 years

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10 Figure Skating programs I love

With the FS off-season--and all related drama revelations--in full bloom, what better time to look back on beloved programs new and old.

Here are ten outstanding pieces (singles disciplines only) from the last couple of seasons that I managed to find online. I feel a bit guilty about not having put in Marin’s Romeo & Juliet. :(

10. Wakaba Higuchi - Skyfall (FS)

youtube

The best FS performance of the 2018 Worlds! I must admit I wasn’t a big Wakaba fan until this season. In my prejudiced view, I considered her too rough around the edges. Then she rolled out this season’s programs and I was sold. What’s more, she owned her FS - a mix of Bond music including Adele’s Skyfall - more than any other of her competitors. From her sleek dress to her cool final spin, Wakaba makes a case for a Bond girl movie starring her. And if her electrifying performance is any indication, it’ll be one to remember. The choreography unleashes all her power while funneling it in purposeful and creative ways, never letting the tension disperse. The crazy fast 3Lz3T may be her main weapon, but it’s the step sequence that steals the show.

9. Patrick Chan - Dear Prudence/Blackbird (SP)

I couldn’t skip over Patrick, our newly retired King of Skating Skills. Dear Prudence/Blackbird by The Beatles signaled his last great season and a return to form. A very good return, despite his jump ailments. If anyone can measure up to 60s pop rock, it’s Patrick with his effortless, flowing, confident skating. His classic elegance and somewhat old-fashion charm seem to recall a bygone idyllic spring. These are songs about inner awakening and struggles; about finding a place you belong. They seem to reflect Parick’s journey to reinvent himself. At the same time, Dear Prudence is about the beauty of nature: "The sun is up, the sky is blue, it's beautiful,” and it’s the pure feeling of connection to the music that stays with you.

8. Javier Fernandez - Malagueña (SP)

Another great skater on his way out. Coming into Helsinki as the defending World champion, Javier managed to skate this short program cleanly in its two-quad glory. For me this is his finest, most sophisticated SP to date. (I welcome the absence of comical elements.) Certain programs can only be performed to their fullest potential when given another season to grow, and Malagueña is a perfect example. It’s all about getting into character, making every movement count. Obviously, having Javier perform the flamenco - choreographed by a Spanish ballet director - and go the extra mile on every element really adds to the authenticity of the program. His effortless skating is just a rung below Patrick and Yuzuru. This is what an energetic and mesmerizing skate looks like!

7. Mao Asada - Ritual Fire Dance (SP/FS)

youtube

If Mao can’t make you love figure skating nobody can. All my favorite skaters use their bodies as silent musical instruments and Mao is the leader of the pack. Her musicality, arm movements, footwork, versatility, attention to choreography and emotional projection are absolutely unmatched. In what turned out to be her swan song, all her best qualities shine through. Portraying a mysterious black bird, Mao transformed the piano version of Manuel de Falla’s ballet with her charismatic, soft interpretation. Every step and turn, every detail of the performance appears uninhibited yet polished. She has reached a level of fluidity and complexity where jump errors no longer detract from the overall quality. Also, I love the ponytail.

6. Boyang Jin - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (SP)

Boyang is one of my recent favs despite there being room for growth in his skating and other components. Beyond the excitement of watching a young skater evolve, I think he has great potential in every area and will just get better with time. His jumps are already prodigious, his performances iconic. Underlying this program is the idea to present a more complete (and serious) version of B for the Olympic season as well as blend in Chinese elements. Unfortunately I don’t think he got the recognition he deserved. Infused with the right mix of composure and energy, this is an atmospheric character-based program that wonderfully shows his refinements in interpretation and control of edges. That step sequence is *fire*.

5. Carolina Kostner - Ne Me Quitte Pas (SP)

A very sophisticated and adaptable lady. At 31 and having lived through many system changes, Caro brings new meaning to the word “veteran” in singles skating. She first hopped under the spotlight with her stunning jumps, but stayed on the stage until today thanks to her masterful skating prowess and evolving artistic “voice”. Her effortless glide and changes of speed/direction are done on the deepest of edges; her arms move like a painter’s brush. Every movement of hers is flowing, full of love for what she does. And rather than a competitive spirit, it’s the emotions and experience she brings to her performances that keep her in the sport. As Lori Nichol said, this short program allowed Caro to be the athletic and sensual woman that she is.

4. Yuzuru Hanyu - Ballade No.1 in G minor 3.0 :) (SP)

youtube

Yuzuru knows how to start off the Olympic season with a bang: breaking his own WR in his first performance at the Autumn Classic. A horifically difficult piano composition, Chopin’s Ballade No.1, with its dramatic chords, abstract motifs, dynamic rhythm and interwoven themes running from subtle to stormy, seems to fit our agile FS King like an elegant glove. Over the years, Yuzuru gave us not less than three different and perhaps equally iconic interpretations of Chopin’s favorite music. This particular one is all about the aura and intricate details. Every element is blended with the music. The final jump combo comes out of nowhere. This emotional peak then transitions into the StSq which is majestic in its smoothness; it rumbles and flows together with the fiery chords running down the keyboard. All doubts are resolved yet the mystery persists. Nothing can be added or taken away--this is perfection.

3. Satoko Miyahara - Madame Butterfly & The Planets/Princess Leia (FS)

I adore Satoko’s skating, despite her imperfections (read: jumps). The world needs skaters like her, whose elegance, musical flow, precision, and subtle presentation touch your heart. Her body lines and layback spin are gorgeous; her multidirectional skating effortless. (That reverse Walley into the Salchow!) Satoko is a strong character performer. I loved her Goddess/Princess Leia FS from 2016/17, how original the choreography was and how engaged and fast Satoko seemed. It’s such a difficult piece to skate to yet she managed to showcase different sides to her. This year’s M Butterfly was, given the circumstances, a safer skate, but her emotional projection only increased. Her showing at the JNats was the finest in that regard. Butterfly’s anguish and suicide seem to become Satoko’s own struggle with her injuries. But the piece ends with a spin to the dreamlike yearning of Un bel di vedremo, as if we’re witnessing both Butterfly and Satoko’s rebirth.

2. Kaetlyn Osmond - Edith Piaf (SP)

IMO, to her belong the two best ladies’ performances of the 2018 Olympics. With Edith Piaf Kaetlyn has finally found an iconic short program! You can tell when a skater is truly feeling the music and looking happy while on the ice, and this program has accomplished just that for K. We meet a French young lady, sauntering down the streets of Paris, wanting to be noticed by someone special. Accompanying her is the voice of Edith Piaf, who sings Sous Le Ciel de Paris and Milord. The program has it all: purposeful choreography, powerful skating, sensitive interpretation of music, ease of movement, the speed going into her huge jumps. Her outgoing character just floats up so naturally. Thanks to her charm, K could indeed give Cotillard a run for her money.

1. Yuzuru Hanyu - Hope & Legacy (FS)

During the 2017 Worlds, Max Ambesi proclaimed this as Hanyu’s best skate, and also the best skate in history. I couldn’t agree more, even if everyone has their own favs. It was an inconsistent season before Hanyu had surpassed himself to skate clean a program massive in ambition and complex in expression. It was as if he’d become an ethereal nature spirit. He was the air, wind and water contained within the melody. He made himself appear weightless and effortless on the ice, seemingly not needing any strength to execute any of the elements. A dreamlike aura surrounded him. I just love how the program highlights his natural musicality and attention to detail. My favorite part: the serene StSq followed by the 3F as the music rises.

Bonus: Alena Kostornaia - Stella’s Theme (FS)

What a talented Junior we have! In her first international season Alena has shown she has nothing to fear from the Seniors. Her charisma, skating skills, and arm movements are those of a fairy. Her jumps are spiced up with steps/transitions. Her spins sizzle with creativity. Nothing feels rushed or incomplete. I challenge anyone to watch her lyrical, immersive performances and experience “backloading” done right. :)

#figure skating #music #mao asada #yuzuru hanyu #art #kaetlyn osmond #boyang jin #wakaba higuchi

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nataandreev · 4 years

Text

Fragments from “The Pursuit of Art” by Martin Gayford

Way Out East 11 In Beijing with Gilbert & George

I had accepted a seat in the smoking section. A relatively recent non-smoker, I thought it would not make much difference. The result, however, was the periodically smokers came back to have a cigarette, sitting in the empty seat next to mine - and every one of them felt it would be polite to have a conversation while they did so.

No one seemed sure why this Gilbert & George show had been allowed.

by South Korean artists a while before, was forcibly taken down. G&C’s approach, in contrast, had beed accepted with alacrity - and here we all were.

whereby decadent, bourgeois art was expected to be abstract.

‘normal conservative rebels’ - would have baffled most secret policemen.

This show is said to help Peking’s bid for the 2000 Olympics.’

‘What is a Rembrandt? It is himself. All the inner feelings of the artist. Or Van Gogh. It’s just him, a completely maniac person. You see his mad vision and that’s it.

‘I think it’s very good we’re in the picture reminding the viewer that its not a boring artwork, only an aesthetic experience. It’s us saying something to them.’

Gilbert & George started out, proclaimed themselves one artist, and defined their idiom as ‘living sculpture.’

a community high in the Alps close to the border with Austria who speak neither Italian nor German. but a language of their own, Ladin.)

‘You mean the vision. We only believe in that, Even when you see a Michelangelo, it’s just his vision, that’s the important thing. Then you find your form. But the important thing is to have a vision.’

The globalization of the international art world had already, begun, and, like the economic variety, was to gather ever greater pace in the years to come.

Way Out East 12 Naoshima: A Modern Treasure Island

‘The art, the building and the environment should work together to wake up the viewer.’ The phrase he used - ‘wake up’ - recalls the term satori, meaning ‘awakening, comprehending or understanding’, used in Japanese Buddhism.

It was made about 500 years before the modernist architect Mies van der Rohe remarked that less is more.

how oriental Claude Monet really was. After all, he was a collector and lover of Japanese prints, which hung all around his dining room, 6,000 miles away in Giverny.

Monet’s western identity was already blending with the east. The freedom of his paint strokes might seem just a flourish of the brush, but when you step back they become plants, water or reflected sky.

I had a moment of satori. I could see that Monet’s subject was everything - growth, change, light, dark, heavens, earth - and nothing (just passing shadows on few feet of pond), which is very Zen.

Way Out East 13 Travelling in Chinese Mountains

the Sea of Mist from the peaks of Huang Shan, the Yellow Mountain range. In its way, this is a sight as fundamental to Chinese culture as the Pantheon is to the Greek, or the Pyramids to the Egyptian. In a way it is the subject of Chinese art.

There, in the excellent Shanghai Museum, for the first time in my life I saw a large collection of classic Chinese painting.

Anish Kapoor cited them as one of his sources of inspiration; the poet Kathleen Raine suggested that the Chinese masters of the Song Dynasty were perhaps the greatest landscape painters of all.

Chinese thinkers believed - rather before Albert Einstein - that matter and energy were one. Everything was a manifestation of divine energy or qi (pronounced chee). Literally, the word means air, water or breath: a life-force powering the cosmos.

Just as the Innuit are said to have fifty different words for snow, Chinese commentators on art distinguished a whole thesaurus of ink marks.

Such vocabulary, incidentally, is sadly lacking in European languages, which is one reason why it is so hard to discuss painting with precision.

Xunzi, born about 310 BC, there was a hierarchy of qi. Such elements as fire and water had qi, but not life. Plants had qi and life, but not understanding; animals and birds have all three, but not ‘propriety’, or a moral sense of how to behave and shape the world. Only human beings have that.

The Chinese phrase for pilgrimage means literally ‘paying one’s respect to mountains.’

But these are not warring forces like good and evil in the Middle Eastern Manichean - and Christian - view of the world, but complementary forces. The sinologist Rolf Stein translated them as ‘shady side (of a mountain)’ and ‘sunny side (of a mountain)’. They were necessary the each other.

This was, he argued, quite distinct from the European, post-Renaissance system of fixed-point perspective, which automatically also fixed the spectator in a certain spot in relation to the world.

The viewer navigated, as we do in the real world, through ever-shifting surroundings using our senses and our intuition.

the point was why this kind of sight meant so much to the Chinese. To them, it seemed to be a direct experience of the universe at work. The landscape came and went just as all things do: people, dynasties, empires, event mountains. Only the swirling energy is immortal. As a view of the cosmos, it is astonishingly up to date.

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cc-kouga-blog · 6 years

Text

These Are The Days 6/9

For @quietrook

One Sunday after church, Ronan finally talked to Declan about his plans. His older brother gave him a complicated stare. It was 1% incredulous, 1% disbelief and 98% pride. Ronan had trouble dealing with a proud Declan. For so many years the only emotions he inspired in Declan was disapproval and disgust. It was a sobering moment for Ronan, to see the genuine smile on the oldest Lynch’s face. More so when it echoed the smile Niall Lynch used to give his middle son. It reminded Ronan that Declan was as much as his father’s son as Ronan himself.

“I can help with the business plans and the licenses. But how are you going to separate the farm with this?” Declan made a motion to indicate the Barns and it’s many dream secrets.

Ronan brought out the schematic farm plan he had made with Adam’s help and spread it on the kitchen table. The Lynches property was vast and it gave plenty of space between the Barns and the proposed farm. Ronan and Adam had planned it so the farm would have its own access road, water source and electric line. The farm could operate independently without anyone coming close to the Barns. Declan gave him another smile and approving look.

“So you’ve been thinking about this seriously.” He remarked as he poured over the paper.

“Yeah, otherwise I wouldn’t bring it to you.” Ronan said with only half his usual barb.

Declan only hummed in response. Then he pulled out his phone and scroll through his contacts.

“I’ll start calling people on Monday. In the meantime, you need to set up a bank accounts and get in touch with an accountant.” Declan tapped some more. “There. I’ve sent you the numbers for the local bank and an accountant firm.”

“Okay.” Ronan grunted. His relationship with Declan was better, but it hadn’t reached a point where he can say ‘thank you’ without wanting to wash his mouth afterward.

When it was time to leave, Declan gripped both of Ronan’s shoulders. “I’m proud of you.” Then he kissed Ronan’s cheek and climb into his Volvo.

Ronan made a show of wiping his cheek, but once the car was out of sight, he gave in to the urge to grin. He used to think of his future in a somewhat abstract way, re-build Cabeswater, raise Opal, marry Adam. But now, he had a more concrete way of building up his future, shaping it into one he wanted and could have. It felt big, it felt significant, and he was ready for it.

Three months later, Ronan Niall Lynch was the proud owner of Lynch Farm. Declan must have pulled some strings to get all the licenses and permits issued so quickly. Ronan sent Adam a pic of Opal holding up the legal papers.

‘We might just survive if this brat can keep herself from eating the important looking papers.’

Adam’s reply was a pic of himself surrounded by piles of books.

‘I might just survive if these books can keep from eating me.’

Feeling mischievous, Ronan sent another pic of himself sticking his tongue out obscenely.

‘The question is, can you survive me eating you out?’

To which Adam sent a selfie of himself glaring at the camera, cheeks flushed, middle finger raised.

‘Fuck you Lynch. I’m blocking your number until I’m done with my tests.’

Two minutes later another text from Adam arrived.

‘And I would totally survived it. The question is, can you survive me swallowing you whole?’

Ronan had to groan and locked himself in the bathroom after that.

***

It took another month for Ronan to find a contractor to begin the construction of the farm. For the long term, Ronan had planned for several barns, hothouses and cabins. The cabins would eventually housed the workers, with one intended to be the office, although it would have a bedroom and a small kitchenette tucked in the back for his personal use.

For the first stage, Ronan had the contractor built the road and put up all the fences, but only built one barn, one hothouse and a cabin for himself. He would build the rest once he was more familiar with running a farm.

When everything was ready, Ronan went to buy the rest of what he needed to truly become a farmer. He bought packets of seeds, natural pesticides and fertilizers and the farm machines. He had his sight on a BCS two wheel tractor and it’s various implements. Once it arrived, Ronan took a picture of it and sent it to Adam.

‘My new Italian ride.’

‘What happened to the German one?’

‘I can’t fucking use her to till my farm Parrish.’

‘Is it a Lambo or a Porsche?’

‘It’s BCS you fucker.’

‘Huh. Bought it, or?’

‘Stole it from my fucking neighbor.’

‘Don’t turn me into your accomplice you asshole!’

‘Too late for that Parrish. They’ll know to pick you up if I get caught.’

‘Not if I turn you in first.’

‘Fucking traitor.’

‘Did you mean fucking tractor?’

Ronan laughed and sent Adam a pic of him shirtless, pushing the BCS.

‘I hope that’s not how you plan on doing your farming.’

‘Why not? Don’t tell me you’re jealous of my tractor?’

‘I’d like to see your Irish pale ass skin handle the sun Lynch.’

‘You like my Irish pale ass.’

Adam’s reply was a pic he took in front of the bathroom mirror. Adam was clearly just stepped out of the shower. His tan skin was gleaming with water and his towel was wrapped so low around his hips.

‘How do you like this?’

Ronan had to curse and scrambled back to his room for some privacy. He needed to appreciate the perfection that was Adam’s Parrish body, and he’d rather do it alone and behind locked door.

***

Three months later, Ronan overnighted a box full of his first harvests to Adam. He sent several heads of lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers. Two days later, he received a pic of Adam and his entryway buddies sitting around the common room. Each was holding a bowl of salad and a thumbs up.

‘Thx for the veggies. Do you think you can send us pumpkins and strawberries next?’

Ronan’s reply was a pic of him and Opal standing in front of a farmer market stall. There was a sign reading ‘Lynch Farm’ and several neat rows of vegetables off to the side.

‘We’ll see.’

***

For Adam and Ronan, there was one good thing about being in a long distance relationship. Though the separation was hard, it inadvertently cut their fighting time by a lot. Between Adam’s studies and jobs and Ronan’s farm, they didn’t really have much spare time, so whenever their free time aligned, Adam and Ronan spent it being as sappy as they could get away with, which was a lot. (Still, both vehemently denied of being a sap.)

They still bicker with each other, mostly through texts, but somehow it always ended up in shirtless pics being sent back and forth. Which led to sexting. Which led to either boy locking themselves in their room to relieve the tension.

Whenever they talk on the phone, it was always about hundreds other mundane things. They would talk about Opal or about the latest pic the Gansey trio sent them. They would gossip about Adam’s classmates and Ronan’s farmer market friends. They would commiserate over essays and the sudden shortage of manure in Henrietta. They would complain about nice customers and rude costumers. They would trade videos of their daily life. Adam waiting in line to get food at Annenberg Hall, sunrise as seen from the Barn’s rooftop, Adam doing a handstand, Ronan and Opal doing a handstand.

Some nights, they would Skype but have no conversation. Adam would study and got lost in his books, while Ronan finished his modules or re-reading his notes at the other end. They were too busy to talk, but it was nice to look up once in a while and saw your boyfriend’s face not one feet away though physically they were hundreds of miles away. It made the distance bearable.

There were days when one of them were too tired or too busy to even send a text, and that happened more often than both liked. Ronan hated those days. Those were the days where his doubts crept in and the ‘what ifs’ returned with vengeance. On those days, Ronan would take the BMW out and raced her on the backwater roads of Virginia. The older Aglionby boys knew better than to go against the charcoal gray car, and the newer ones who never even heard of Ronan Lynch’s name learned their lessons soon enough.

It was a good way of taking his mind off things. The adrenaline rush was enough to ease the restless energy thrumming under his skin and come morning light, all his doubts would seem silly. Especially when his phone had one message from Adam waiting to be opened. It was a pic of Adam in bed, wearing Ronan’s shirt, all sleepy eyed and mussed hair.

‘Thinking of you.’

Ronan saved the pic and started his day with a smile.

For Adam, days where he didn’t get in touch with Ronan in one way or another left him feeling guilty. It felt like he was forgetting Ronan or something. He knew it was irrational to feel that way, especially because they were two grown ups who built their relationship based on trust and mutual understanding.

The nights were the worst because that was when the dreams assaulted him. He often dreamed that wretched day where his hands wrapped around Ronan’s neck, robbing him of air, leaving bruises in their wake. He would wake up gasping, hands grasping the sheet so tight he almost ripped it.

Nights like those he was tempted to call Ronan even if it was three in the fucking morning. Most of the times, his finger was one tap away from making the call, but he always pushed down the urge. Ronan slept little enough as it was, Adam didn’t want to deprive him any further.

Instead, Adam would take off his clothes and wear one of Ronan’s shirt. He would take out the toy car and spin the wheels, letting the music filled his silent room. He would take out the photo album and looked at the smiling faces of his family. He would take out his phone and browse through the many pics Ronan sent him. It calmed him enough that he could finally drifted off to sleep.

When he woke up in the morning, he felt half better already. Then his phone pinged, signaling an incoming message. It was a selfie of Ronan and Opal. Opal was holding up a box of strawberries and they both were smiling ear to ear.

‘You fuckers are gonna love my strawberries.’

Adam laughed and forwarded only the pic to his group chat.

‘Strawberries are on their way.’

Adam prepared for class and he could already taste the strawberry on his tongue.

#pynch secret santa #quietrook #tatd

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xiz0r · 7 years

Photo

Evening Skinny-Dip at the Wounded Coast

Inktober Day 4 - "Underwater"

You can read the ficlet that was written to accompany this art by Lisakodysam.

“Come on, it’s not far.” Garrett tightened his grip around Fenris’s arm, assisting the elf to step over large roots and the organic debris that littered the forest floor. “We’re almost there.”

“Are you certain you know the way back to camp?”

Garrett shrugged, his mouth twisting into a smirk. “Probab—”

“Probably? That is unusually decisive for you.”

Garrett drew to a halt and turned to Fenris, who’d dug both thumbs into his belt, his lyrium-marked arms like moonlit wings as they bent at his sides. “Sarcasm does not become you, dear,” he said to the elf.

“Oh, but it does. After all, we’re half a mile out of camp with no clear sense of which direction we’ve taken.” Fenris pushed his chin out, an indication that he was not only annoyed, but sure of himself. “I thought I would warm us with my sarcasm, as we also have no means with which to make a fire. Tell me again where you intend to take us? And for what purpose?”

Garrett frowned a little. “It’s a bit late to be asking that, isn’t it?”

“Truly?” Fenris took a sharp intake of breath, which he let out in a chillingly controlled manner. “Have I not asked you that at several points along our journey, only for you to change the subject with, ‘Ooh, that’s a pretty flower’, or ‘get a lungful of that forest air!’ The forest air smells of dung and rotten leaves! I do not wish to ‘get’ any more lungfuls of it than I must!”

The mage held his hands up. “All right, I admit I was a tad evasive. I wanted it to be a surprise, that’s all.”

Fenris sighed and tried not to show his annoyance. “I understand that and I’m grateful for the thought, but you’ve been saying we’re ‘almost there’ for the past fifteen minutes. Isn’t it time to admit we’re lost?”

“No it isn’t, because we’re not.” Garrett pointed ahead. “See? The trees are starting to thin out.”

“And?”

“And… listen.”

“Listen to what?”

“Shh!”

Accustomed to indulging Garrett’s flights of fancy, Fenris rolled his eyes but did indeed pause to listen. “I hear nothing,” he said after a moment.

Garrett gave a melodramatic groan. “Oh, Fenris, you’ve no magnificence in your soul, have you?”

“My soul is too cold and lost in the forest to even think about such abstract and whimsical entities as ‘magnificence’.”

Garrett started to walk away. “Oops! He’s brought out the big words. I think I’m in trouble.”

Fenris, not wanting to become even more lost (if that was possible), started jogging after Garrett. “What was I supposed to be listening to, by the way?”

“Hm? Hey, look at this! A SEASHELL,” Garrett said loudly enough to wake the dead. “Have you noticed the ground’s getting a bit flatter? And sandier?”

“Will you do me the courtesy of giving me a straight answer for once, mage?”

“Mage!” Garrett chuckled. “Now I know I’m in trouble!”

“For the love of—ugh! Will you slow down?”

By now, Garrett was way ahead of Fenris, but he stopped and frantically beckoned to the elf. “Here! We’re here! Come on!”

“Where else would we be but here?” Fenris huffed but went after his infuriatingly-bouncy lover–he had nowhere else to go, after all. When he arrived at the mage’s side, he looked around, his brow crinkling. “We appear to be at the Coast.”

“I know! Look over there–the sun’s about to set!” Garrett slung an arm around the elf’s shoulders, a huge grin on his face. “Isn’t it brilliant?”

Realising this must be Garrett’s surprise, Fenris decided he’d better muster up some enthusiasm, as much as he’d prefer to be seated around a fire with a fur draped over his shoulders. “It’s… nice. Thank you for bringing me here.”

“I thought you’d appreciate some privacy and quiet. That’s why you’ve been grumpy, isn’t it? I know Izzy and Varric have been a bit boisterous. Uh… I know I’m boisterous, too, but I figured one was better than three.”

At this, a genuine smile graced Fenris’s face. “You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble. I appreciate it, though. No one’s ever given me the sunset before.”

Garrett placed a soft kiss on Fenris’s temple. “I’d give you the moon if I could. Might be a bit heavy, though.” Garrett beamed at Fenris’s ensuing chuckle. “I do love it when you laugh.”

Fenris looked up at the mage, snuggling against his broad chest. “No one but you can make me laugh. Not really.”

“It’s a gift.” Garrett kissed Fenris again and released him. He then began unbuckling his pauldron.

Fenris watched for a minute or two as straps, leather accoutrements and pieces of metal were cast to the ground. “Um… what exactly are you doing?”

Garrett did a double take at the elf before pulling his tunic over his head. “We’re going skinny dipping! Why else d’you think I brought you here?”

“Skinny dipping? What’s that? And why are you…” Fenris gulped as Garrett unbuckled his belt and, in one movement, pulled it off and threw it down. “Why are you…” Fenris’s mouth gaped open, his tongue dry and sticky.

Garrett’s boots were kicked off and he slid his hands down his hips, taking his trousers with them. “I’m afraid this is the only moon I can give you for now.” The trousers fell and the curve of muscular buttocks was silhouetted against the setting sun. “Prepare yourself!” Garrett warned. “I’m about to unleash… The Beast! Behold!” He spun around, giving Fenris a full view of his meat and two veg.

The elf immediately sprang forward to preserve his lover’s modesty. “There are bandits and Tal-Vashoth in these parts! What do you mean by exposing yourself in this fashion?”

“I already told you! We’re going sk—ohhh. You’ve never been skinny dipping before, have you?”

“Of course I have,” the elf protested. “Danarius regularly held skinny dunking tournaments—”

“Dipping, not dunking.”

“Oh. Skinny dipping tournaments at his estate in Minrathous.”

Garrett crossed his arms. “You don’t know what skinny dipping is, do you?”

“No.”

Garrett nodded, biting down a smile. “Well, usual procedure is to get naked. That’s the ‘skinny’ part. You know, skin?”

“Skin. Of course.” Feeling a little foolish, Fenris looked over his shoulders. “As I was saying, we are likely not alone here. You know my feelings about disrobing in public.”

“Look, I told you I was drunk that night, and Varric egged me on. He wanted to check the statue of me at the docks was in proportion.”

“Only, the statue at the docks doesn’t have its wedding tackle out.”

Garrett shrugged. “Not my fault if the sculptor was a prude. I did offer to model for her.”

“Of course you did.”

Garrett bent down to pick up his staff. “If you’re worried about the Tal-Vashoth screaming in terror at the sight of your willy, I have the perfect solution.” He raised the staff to the heavens, directing a buzzing blue arc of electricity at the clouds over the forest and hills. Then he dropped his staff and raised an arm above his head with a flourish, providing him and Fenris with a barrier against the rain that suddenly started falling in sheets. “There. No one’s going to see us in this rain.”

“Well, when you put it that way, I suppose I have little choice.”

“I suppose you don’t. Now get those clothes off.”

With a long-suffering sigh, the elf started the laborious process of removing his armour. “And the purpose of skinny dipping is… what, sex?”

Garrett spluttered a laugh. “Well, sometimes, but not always! It’s just… fun, you know?” He grinned at the elf’s blank expression. “Oh, I forgot… you’ve never had fun before either, have you?”

Fenris pulled his leggings down and stepped out of them before holding them out to one side. “Are you saying I’m…” He let the leggings drop, “… dull?”

Garrett noisily cleared his throat and exhaled. “You’re as dull as dishwater my darling, but by the Maker, you’re naked!” He lunged at Fenris and scooped him up, roaring with laughter as he carried the wriggling elf towards the shore.

“Unhand me, you unconscionable oaf!”

Garrett winced. “Ouch! That was a really big word! Well, if I’m in trouble, I may as well make it worthwhile!” He ran the last few steps to the water’s edge and powered into the ocean, waiting until he was thigh-deep before hurling Fenris forward, shielding himself from the impressively large splash the elf created.

A few seconds later, Fenris surfaced looking like a furious drowned rat. “Now I’m all wet, you swine!”

“Well, that’s the point, isn’t it?” Garrett dashed the water out of his eyes and scanned the water’s surface. “Love? Where are you?” He turned full circle, his eyes darting here and there, but the elf was nowhere to be seen. “Fenris? I’m sorry? Love?”

At the same moment there was a swell of water behind Garrett and, like a majestic elven marine god, Fenris surged out of the water and latched himself onto the mage’s back, sending him off-balance.

“Oh, no! I’m going to…” At the last second, Garrett bent at the waist and threw Fenris over his shoulders. Both of them crashed into the water, but only one of them was laughing when he surfaced.

“Bastard!” Fenris hissed, charging through the water towards the mage, not knowing what he was actually going to do to the man who stood almost a foot taller than him. Stopping in front of Garrett, he opted for a hard chest shove to save face. “I’m bloody frozen!”

“Hey, don’t worry! Our clothes are over there and… and…” Garrett’s face fell. “Oh, shit.”

“They’re in the rain.” A few tiny wrinkles formed on the bridge of Fenris’s nose. “Of course they are.”

“This isn’t exactly going to plan,” Garrett said good-naturedly, rubbing the nape of his neck and grimacing. “It was supposed to be fun, but you look like you want to murder me.” He cringed a little. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to get you away from everyone. You look adorable, by the way.” He slicked Fenris’s sopping-wet hair away from his eyes.

Fenris’s nose wrinkles receded slightly, but his frown remained in place. “I… I know what you were trying to do.” He sighed. “Perhaps you’re right. I don’t know how to have fun.” He looked away from Garrett, his frown deepening as he looked beyond the mage’s barrier to the surface of the water, which was being lashed with rain.

“Fen?” Garrett moved closer to him. “Are you all right?”

“The water… it’s… dancing.”

Garrett looked on in delight at the elf’s awed expression. “You like it?”

The elf slowly nodded, his eyes moving to the horizon as the sun went down in a blaze of red and gold glory. “It’s like a lake of molten lava. It’s… wonderful. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“This was entirely planned, you know,” Garrett said from behind the elf, his insides glowing when he saw the tiny vibration of Fenris’s shoulders.

“Of course it was.” The silent vibration grew to a quiet snigger and he let his head fall back against Garrett’s chest as a pair of large, hairy arms wrapped around him. “I believe you, even if no one else would.”

“And that is why I love you.” Garrett pressed a kiss to the crown of Fenris’s head and gently turned him around so they were facing each other. “And the reason you love me is because I give you such amazing memories. We’ll look back at tonight and you’ll say, ‘Oh yes, the night we saw fire dancing on the water, walked naked back to camp and caught hypothermia. Good times.”

Fenris bowed his head, laughter wheezing out of him. “If it were anyone else but you…”

“Now, come on, love. There is no one else like me.”

Fenris rolled his eyes, but he was still laughing. “Isn’t that the truth. What are we going to do about the clothing situation?”

Garrett looked into Fenris’s eyes, the dying sun reflected against emerald glass. “You know, at this moment I don’t really care. Maker, you’re beautiful.”

They kissed, the fiery rain pattering against Garrett’s barrier.

#inktober #fenris #garrett hawke #dragon age 2 #Xiz0rArt #underwater #fanfic #collaboration

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zoomchen · 4 years

Text

Treatment and Story Beats

Working Title: Alone Together

Treatment: Audio plays of a phone call being made. The phone call plays over the scene. A boy and a girl sit alone in an apartment, their bodies pressed as far as away from each other on the tiny couch. The soft sunset throws the apartment room in a warm golden glow. Shadows climb up the walls as the couple’s silence fills the room. The boy asks what’s on the girl’s mind. She responds that she has been feeling extremely anxious and overwhelmed about their relationship. Believing breaking up is the only way for them to be truly happy. She pulls her gaze away for a second to look at the boy. The girl on the couch places a hand on the boy’s shoulder, but to no response from the boy on the couch. The boy responds in okays, only acknowledging her words but not really responding. However, the boy on the couch reaches for the girl’s hand but just misses it. She becomes extremely frustrated at his lack of a response. The boy gets frustrated at the girl, not knowing how to respond to this situation. Telling her he’s doing his trying his best, but he really doesn’t know what to do. The room begins stretching the couple miles apart as they raise their voices at each other. The boy tries to explain he’s happy with her but cannot beg her to stay. He looks down and sees his legs slowly being engulfed by the couch, tries to pull his legs out only to begin sink faster. The girl tries to grab the boy’s hand. She cries she loves him but she doesn’t know if she’s happy. They fall though the coach and fall into empty space. An ugly pause holds as they fall into darkness. The couple’s fingers are inches apart but cannot reach. Their hands morphing into various fluid shapes and colors, dancing around each other but never touching. Their bodies become engulfed but the abstract matter like a fluid kaleidoscope. They constantly push and pull on each other and crash into each other like waves on a beach, hands push out of the matter trying to touch each other. They start crashing into the furniture from their apartment as it rains down around them. They dance around the furniture, morphing into scenes from their relationship, surprising one with flowers and making each other coffee, and cuddling on the couch. The boy apologizes, stating he’s doing his best to state his emotions and that he loves the girl. She apologizes back, saying she still loves him. The ground quickly approaches as they splash back into their apartment. They return to their separated sides of the coach. The boy tells her that he really enjoys hanging out with her, he turns and looks at the girl. She turns and looks at him, telling him she enjoys hanging out with him too. He stands up, offering a hand towards the girl and offers dinner. The girl reaches for his hand.

Story Beats:

1. Audio plays of a phone call being made

2. The boy picks up the call, apologizes for missing the earlier call, telling the girl he just made dinner, he asks what’s on her mind

3. The scene opens with a girl and a boy are sitting far apart on a coach in their messy apartment. They are turned away from each other.

4. Girl explains how she is overly anxious about their relationship

5. The girl reaches out for the boy on the coach, she places a hand on his hand

6. The boy does not know how to respond and apologizes

7. The girl pulls her hand

8. The boy reaches for her hand but just misses it

9. The girl becomes frustrated at the boy’s simple response

10. The boy becomes frustrated because he doesn’t know how to respond to the girl in this situation

11. The room begins stretching the couple further apart as they raise their voices over the phone,

12. The boy starts to sinks through the coach, begging the girl he is happy with her

13. The girl tries to grab the boy’s hand and misses, and she falls through and they fall into the coach and into the void, the girl says she’s not sure if she’s happy

14. There is an ugly pause between the couple as they fall

15. Their hands begin morphing into graceful shapes and colors, dancing around each other

16. Their bodies become engulf by the fluids as they dance around the space

17. Objects from the apartment fall around the mass,

18. They form in loving poses around the furniture, such as cuddling on the coach, or dancing in front of the window, and kissing in front of a mirror

19. Each time they push and pull each other, constantly reaching for each other’s hands as they fall

20. The call continues, the boy apologizes not knowing how to share his emotions

21. The girl apologizes, the mass finally hits the bottom as their apartment

22. They return the same position from the start, sitting apart

23. The boy tells the girl he really enjoys hanging out with her, turning to look at her

24. The girl responds she enjoys hanging out with him too, turning to look at him

25. The boy offers the girl some dinner, holding out his hand

26. The girl accepts, she reaches for his hand

Working Title: One Summer’s Day

Treatment: Two young boys, Pai and Di, stand triumph in front of a riverbed. The rocks crunched underneath them as they acquired their target, Farmer Shushu’s watermelon patch. The boys slip off they’re shoes and strip themselves down to their underwear. Pai pushes Di into the river and jumps in. They paddle their way across the bed. The current pushes them furiously down the river but they triumph the waters. They climb out of the bed and shake themselves dry. They roll over a few melons, checking the yellow spots for maximum juiciness. The boys choose their prize. Pai raises “his” melon over his head and smashes against the rocks. Delicious red split from the shell. Di follows suit. They sit by the bed and enjoy their bountiful feast. They have a contest on who can spit the seeds the furthest into the waters. Suddenly they hear the roar of a truck coming down the road. It’s Farmer Shushu coming after the thieves. He pulls up in his blue truck and starts yelling at the boys. They scramble into the waters and desperately swim across with their treats. Farmer Shushu starts throwing items form his truck such as baskets and hoes. The boys make it across the river. They gloat over their prizes in face of the steaming farmer.

Story Beats:

1. Two excited boys, Pai and Di, stand above a quick river

2. They playfully push each other into the cold waters

3. They jump into the river and swim across to a watermelon patch

4. The boys try to find the juiciest watermelon

5. They pick up a watermelon each

6. Pai smashes a melon on the ground splitting it in half

7. The boys enjoy they’re feast

8. The Boys hear the farmer’s truck roaring towards them

9. The Boys run with their stolen goods and then swim across river again

10. The farmer throws objects at the boys

11. Boys tease the farmer as they get away with their goods

Working Title: Homecoming

Treatment: Manny's eyelids flicker as she is slowly pulled out of her slumber. She turns over and curls up on the tile floor, turning away from the bright lights. Wait a second, why was she on the floor? Manny’s eyes flew wide open. Above her, the white ceiling is beaming with fluorescent lights. Manny sits up and looks around her. She is surrounded by rows of grocery shelves. She climbs to her feet and peers around the shelves. There is nothing but more shelves. They shine in the blinding lights and reflect the white walls around her. Manny begins walking past the rows, peeking into each one to see if they were stocked with anything. She sighed and slumped down against one of the endless shelves. She picks at the ends of her dress, it was white, just like the white walls and the white shelves and the white lights. Suddenly, she heard the faintest sound of a beep. Manny scrambles to her feet. She heard another beep. She climbs on top of one of the shelves. She peers into the distance hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever is making that sound. She starts walking on top of the shelves, following the faint beep to its source. She finds herself in the checkout aisle. Manny looks around and something large catches her eye. She screams and tumbles off the shelf, banging her way down to the floor. There is a creature behind the register. There is a mask covering its face making the eyes black and hallow like an endless tunnel, its neck pushes over the its shoulders and towards the girl. Its hands pick up nothing and carry it over the register, it makes a beep sound and the creature places nothing down. It continues this motion while never breaking glaze with the girl. A force grabs the front of Manny’s dress and pulls her towards the creature; she desperately tries to yank herself away but fails. She is forced to stand face to face with the creature behind the checkout table. It reaches out a single dark hand out the girl. She steps away, only to knock herself into a door. A door has appeared behind her. A single red door standing in the middle of the nothingness. The creature's crawls behind Manny, moving limb by limb. She turns the handle and pulls the door open. There's nothing. But this nothing was dark, black and endless. She turns to the creature; it is sitting patiently like a dog.

"Please I don't want to go." She tries to close the door, but the handle is no longer there. She tries pushing the door, but it doesn't budge.

She chokes out a sob, "Please I'm so scared." The creature reaches a hand out. Manny flinches away. She loses her footing and slips through the door.

Story Beats:

1. A girl, Manny, wakes up alone in an empty white grocery store

2. She walks around only to find it endless

3. She hears a beep in the distance

4. She climbs on top of the shelves and follows the sound

5. She comes across the checkout area, there is a creature there

6. She falls off the shelf in shock

7. The creature is checking out nothing while never breaking gaze with Manny

8. Manny is pulled by and invisible force to stand infront of the creature

9. It reaches a hand out to Manny who steps away

10. Manny bumps into a red door

11. She opens the door to black nothingness

12. The creature walks behind her

13. She tries to close the door, but the handle disappears

14. Manny begs to not go through the door

15. She tries to escape but trips into the void

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lanadelreyfiles-blog · 7 years

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Lana Del Rey: Read NME’s exclusive interview with the modern icon. Lana Del Rey’s new album ‘Lust For Life’ is her most ambitious yet. Mike Williams meets her in the city that inspires her the most, Los Angeles – a place, she says, that “enhances something in me that’s already cooking” – to talk about music, happiness and witchcraft. Interview by Mike Williams. Photography by Neil Krug. It will surprise no one to learn that Dr Dre has very good speakers in his studio. And when I say very good, I don’t mean very good in a pricey and popular headphones kind of way. I mean very good in a “holy s**t, I can hear every individual speck of space dust in this galactic wall of sound” kind of way. It’s how we would all listen to music if we were billionaire music industry moguls. Dre has given us permission to use his Santa Monica studio – across the road from the legendary Interscope Records – to hear ‘Lust For Life’, the latest Lana Del Rey album, for the first time. The inside of the studio is clad with expensive-looking wood. The lights are seductively dimmed. It looks both like Don Draper’s office and the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. There’s a bubbling lava lamp next to a Bruce Lee lampshade on top of the main desk. The drinking water is perfectly cool. It’s totally LA. It’s a fitting place to listen to Del Rey’s coming-of-age record. Huge in scale in every sense – sonically, vocally, thematically – it’s the culmination of two years of relentless work. Writing, editing, discarding, rewriting, tinkering, erasing, rebuilding. As she’ll tell me the following day: “I kind of felt when I started I was going to be in this whole new zone when I was done, a whole new space. I’m really proud that there’s a shift in tone, a shift in perspective. There’s a bit of reflectiveness on what I’m seeing and it’s integrated with how I’m feeling. Normally I’m just, ‘Let me just put this all out there,’ and then I’m really surprised when people are like, ‘You’re f**king crazy.’”

Del Rey has been Interscope labelmates with Dre since October 2011, when she bought herself out of her contract with 5 Points Records, where she’d toyed with different identities and different sounds. Six months earlier, she’d become an overnight star when her aesthetic clicked and she released her debut single proper, ‘Video Games’. In the space of three acclaimed albums (2012’s ‘Born To Die’, 2014’s ‘Ultraviolence’ and 2015’s ‘Honeymoon’) she’s gone from lo-fi internet queen to fully formed Hollywood superstar. And now she doesn’t just have the songs – they’ve been there since the first day Lizzy Grant looked in the mirror and Lana Del Rey winked back – but also the production, the ambition, the pulling power and the brass balls to make ‘Lust For Life’. I hear nine tracks through the big speakers – ‘Love’, ‘Lust For Life’ (Ft. The Weeknd), ’13 Beaches’, ‘Cherry’, ‘White Mustang’, ‘Groupie Love’ (Ft. A$AP Rocky), ‘Coachella – Woodstock In My Mind’, ‘Beautiful People Beautiful Problems’ (Ft. Stevie Nicks) and ‘Tomorrow Never Came’ (Ft. Sean Ono Lennon) – before driving up to a rooftop bar in Hollywood to order drinks from wannabe film stars and looking up towards the hills to meditate on what I’ve just heard. Shoo-wops, doo-wops, wall of sound production; tender moments, angry moments; sex, cars, uncertainties; opulent LA life. If you squint, you can see the famous Hollywood sign in the distance. If you close your eyes you can see Del Rey looking out from her window right inside the middle of the H. The next day we’re in a different studio in a different part of town, this one belonging to Del Rey’s longtime collaborator and producer Rick Nowels. He greets us at the door with a massive grin and ushers us into the main room where the album was recorded. It’s untidy, in a warm and homely way. He wants to know what we think of the record. He’s excited to talk about it. Nowels is a 57-year-old music industry legend who’s worked with Madonna, Tupac, Stevie Nicks and more, but it’s obvious that there’s a particular space in his head and his heart reserved for Del Rey, who he repeatedly describes as “special” and “remarkable”. Del Rey arrives. She’s wearing a crocheted T-shirt and jeans. We sit down in a side room and both press record on our phones. There’s a book about Manson Family victim Sharon Tate on the table that neither of us notices until after the interview is over. I ask her if she’s as happy as she looks on the cover of the new album. “Yeah…” she says. “That was my goal, you know, to get to that place of feeling like in my daily life I had a lot of momentum. Like a moving-on-ness from wherever that other place was that ‘Honeymoon’ and ‘Ultraviolence’ came from. I loved those records, but I felt a little stuck in the same spot.” How did she move on? “I just felt a little more present. Writing a song like ‘13 Beaches’ – it’s a little bit of an abstract notion, but for me it took stopping at 13 beaches one hot day to find one that nobody was at. And I just thought, you know, the concept of needing to find 13 beaches might seem like a luxury problem for someone, but that’s OK, I’m going to go with that.” It’s a key song on the album. Her voice has never sounded bigger or more emotional. “I usually do things in a few takes,” she says, “but I took a lot of takes to do that. The mood that I needed to convey was better than what I was doing. I knew it was important that I came in straight as an arrow with that one. I always feel like I’m creating a new path when I’m doing a song.” Writing, editing, discarding, rewriting, tinkering, erasing, rebuilding. Not that Lana Del Rey has been completely reinvented on ‘Lust For Life’. The title track, the first of five collaborations on the album (no previous LDR album had ever featured a guest artist), may not come from the melancholic cool world of ‘Video Games’ or ‘Terrence Loves You’, but it’s just as nostalgic. Nostalgia can be sad and nostalgia can be happy, and at her best – and let me put it out there, I think this song could be her absolute best ever – Del Rey taps both at once. Does she agree? “I’m thinking about that. It goes in line with how I thought I was going to be in this more grown-up zone [writing this record], but actually I’m still somewhere right in the middle. When I think of that song I think of nighttime and this idea of, I don’t know, breaking into somewhere and carving up and kissing. That’s fun for me; like the place where I’m not 100 per cent in something really solid relationship-wise, where you’re still going out and meeting new people and all that stuff. And also, this Hollywood-centric environment is still an important thing that gives me life, being in town and the characters and the constant heatwave. It’s a little bit of a cliché – I totally get it; but I still feel like it enhances something in me that’s already cooking.” Hollywood and the sunshine can be quite an intoxicating cocktail really, can’t it? “It can. I’m naturally a careful person, so I like that the ambience… I wouldn’t go out and take a cocktail of pills or whatever, you know, but there’s something about the vibe of just being around that gives me a heightened feeling.” The biggest deal collaboration on the album is the duet with Fleetwood Mac legend Stevie Nicks. Del Rey says hearing her vocal takes made her re-evaluate her own tone. She was convinced Nicks would turn her down. She still speaks about it with a look of happy disbelief that it actually happened. But the most interesting duet is actually with the person who is, in their own personal right, the least famous and accomplished of everyone on the record, but by virtue of his surname, the most fascinating. “I’m a huge, huge John Lennon fan,” she says. “I didn’t know [his son] Sean. I got his number from my manager, who called his manager. I kind of was nervous about what he was going to say. I FaceTimed him – he was amazing. He was very excited.” The result is the sweetest song on the album, a tender folky ballad that gently taps through the fourth wall as they reference John and Yoko, then Del Rey sings, “Isn’t life crazy now that I’m singing with Sean”. There’s a story that goes with the song, where Del Rey calls up Lennon to tell him that she thought his part was perfect, and he says that he’s so happy because no one’s ever said that to him before. He’s John Lennon’s son, he’s lived his entire life in his father’s shadow, and Lana Del Rey has just given him his greatest ever compliment. There’s a tragedy in that, don’t you think? “Absolutely. It’s why I think it’s more than just a song for him – for both of us. He’s sensitive, you know. I assume that’s from his father and I think he would probably say that it’s been… some of his reviews have been difficult. I thought that was one of those moments on the record where it was a little bit of a ‘bigger than us’ moment. I told him, ‘I’m the one who’s honoured, I’m the lucky one; so I just want you to remember that, Sean, I’m singing with you.’” The interview goes off in lots of different directions. We talk about hanging in LA with Alex Turner and Miles Kane (“I randomly see Alex. I’ve been working with Miles”); about her deep friendship with Courtney Love (“I can call, and probably just ’cause she’s done so much crazy s**t, I can tell her something very weird and she’ll be like, ‘Been there, done that’”); her love of Kurt Cobain (“top influence other than Bob Dylan”); people watching (“I’m a weird observer”); detective novelist Raymond Chandler (“I’m a big fan, I love The Big Sleep”); and Californian independence (“I’m a proponent of keeping the country together, but it’s so its own zone it may as well be a different country.”) We end by talking about magic and the power of words. Firstly, Donald Trump. He’s still the president, which means that the hex Del Rey asked her Twitter followers to cast on February 24 hasn’t worked (yet). So did she get involved and do it herself? “Yeah, I did it. Why not? Look, I do a lot of s**t.” Do you cast other spells at home? “I’m in line with Yoko and John and the belief that there’s a power to the vibration of a thought. Your thoughts are very powerful things and they become words, and words become actions, and actions lead to physical changes.” The quirky video trailer that you did for the album (a magical Lana looking down on LA from her home in the Hollywood H, ruminating on the world and the space it takes to make a record) – it’s more than a trailer; it’s a personal manifesto, isn’t it? “There is a message. I really do believe that words are one of the last forms of magic and I’m a bit of a mystic at heart. And I’ve seen how I feel about changing those people’s lives and I’ve been on the other side of that as well – on the other side of well-wishes and on the other side of malintent. And I’ve realised how strong you have to be to be; bigger than all of it, even bigger than your own vibrations. “I like that trailer because I talk about my contribution, which is something you start to think about. I’ve got good intentions. It’s not always going to come out right – it hasn’t come out right a lot of the time – but at the core my intentions have always been so good. With the music or when I get into a relationship, it’s always just because I really want to. That’s what’s at the root of this really cute, witchy B-movie.” You make a point in the trailer of saying “in these dark times”. Is there more pressure to contribute something positive right now? “I didn’t like hearing that come out of my mouth. I have a song, ‘When The World Was At War We Kept Dancing’, and I went back and forth so many times about putting it on the record because I didn’t feel comfortable with what I was saying. I don’t like hearing myself say, ‘In error it’s the end of America’, ’cause it’s a troubling sentiment. I didn’t like saying, ‘In these dark times’ either…” We both stop recording but keep talking about the state of the world we live in. I tell her that I can see more and more artists starting to come to terms with the fact that they need to be more outspoken and opinionated. She agrees and says people need to be bold because there are consequences. For the next hour, she makes silly videos on my phone, eats a messy sandwich and helps me choose photos to send to the NME art desk. She couldn’t be less like the idea of Lana Del Rey that most people subscribe to. There’s a confidence in her that perhaps she didn’t have before, a confidence that comes, maybe, from knowing that she’s about to release her most complete album, but knowing too that there are tweaks she could have made, things she should have done differently, things she’ll make right on the next record, ideas she’ll try when she’s next in the studio with Rick. Writing, editing, discarding, rewriting, tinkering, erasing, rebuilding.

#Lana Del Rey #NME #NME Magazine #Magazine #Editorial #Interview #2017 #July 2017 #Neil Krug

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