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freshairforrabbits · 7 months

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Tbh you deserve this.

For circled me!Spider: 🍼🍨🍬🌹🍁🍎🍅🥕🥭🍑🧅🍋🍕🧈🍌🏵️🥃🥐🍹🍰💐🍈🍏🍐🥝🌿🌵🍸🌱🌸🧁🍩🥔

Thank you very much for all of these and I hope I was able to answer them sufficiently!!

There's a lot of the sexual grooming, Spider's unreliable perspective aspects in the Circled Me! Universe story that really leap the fuck out in these answers, so y'know, watch your steps out there everyone.

Answers for 'you circled me inside my room, i couldn't go another day' Spider from the OC interview questionnaire because fuck it, we ball 😼.

Tags: sexual abuse, incest, child abuse, medical trauma, child marriage, non-con, underage sex, victim blaming, sexual trauma, psychosexual horror, all those fictional fucking southern gothic themes, Recom Jake as his own content label

🍼 [BABY BOTTLE] What's your OC's first memory?

This is a tough one considering there's a lot of ways I could go with this, but what keeps coming to mind for reasons I cannot explain is his first solid memory being of a hospital room, of the smell, the crinkle of the bed, and the weight on his chest from a bad bout of pneumonia. That luckily his dad realized he was way more tired than usual and wasn't even interested in eating, and so he took him to the doctor just in case; which immediately had him being sent over to the ER.

It's the baby-sized IV cannula in the back of his hand, the gauze, tape holding it in place, the IV splint wrapped around it all, and the strange, scary environment, the beeping sounds, the nebulizer mask's plastic gouging at the sides of his face that launched two year old Spider into a state of awareness, this conscious sort of feeling, deeply unsettled with no words to describe it and nothing to do but hold a nurse's hand, and then his dad when he's allowed in. That he doesn't know what death is, but he knows that this is uncomfortable and it makes him cry and want his dad. And the memory sort of sticks and sticks for quite a long time, but the first time his dad slaps him it very quickly gets buried under an avalanche of smaller moments that add up very fast. Because his dad was a solid rock in that hospital, so even if the trauma was big, it didn't rock him quite like all the others, because after he came home healthier and on the mend, and with an inhaler he would have to use for quite a few years every time he did too much exercise, he seemed to drift apart again. With Spider's little brain much more online— well, it made for a situation that Spider almost wished he would get that sick again just so his dad would be right there at his side day and night like that all over.

🍨 [ICE CREAM] How does your OC compose themselves in stressful situations?

I think he does a lot of deflecting and denial, and that he'll turn his panic into anger (subconsciously) because that's what his daddy's done his whole life, and he has no one else to learn how to deal with emotions and stress from. It really does depend on the situation what he will do though, he's been through a lot of different stressors and in a lot of situations he'll resort to humor, laughing it off, and worming his way out of any tight spot with the sort of predilection cats have to get through impossibly narrow spaces. He's highly adaptable because he has to be, but not resilient, and will quickly cave under stress even if he doesn't believe he will or ever has. He would get so mad if someone pointed out how much he will avoid situations, get rid of things, and isolate himself simply to avoid said stress.

Something about traumatized kids and being fragile as fuck with a thorny exterior and the illusion of being impenetrable to keep themselves going for years and years.

🍬 [LOLLY/CANDY] What would your OC like to receive for Valentine's Day/as a token of love?

Probably one of those silly Valentine's candy grams because he's never really had the opportunity to exchange them, the schools he's been to, he's not there long enough to really make connections and he often misses chunks of school that get him dangerly close to being truant. And as a token of love just something that means a lot to a person being entrusted with him, he has stones and rocks on a shelf at home from Kiri, a little braided grass doll from Tuk, things from Lo'ak and Neteyam as well jewelry, bracelets he doesn't wear out of fear of losing them. Even the time they made God's Eyes (a votive of the Huichol), Spider keeps those hung in his room, five of them side by side on walls that are otherwise pretty bare.

Unfortunately, the tokens of love he receives now are considerably more overwhelming. Let's just say Jake buys Spider a Nintendo DSi and loves to hold over his head all the less than legal lengths he went to obtain it and bring it on their trip, pressuring him into sex on the regular because he's being so generous letting Spider break the no technology rule on the farm, in the camper, wherever they happen to be and Spider tries desperately to glue himself to the screen. Of course, Daddy's tokens of love aren't much different and just as damning/controlling meanwhile Spider wishes he was just loved like the sons he sees in his favorite films and action-thrillers where the dad keeps them all safe, keeps them going, where his dad will hold him tight and tell him he's scared to let go, but in ways that won't make his stomach do so many flips, his skin crawl, and his insides writhe.

🌹 [ROSE] Does your OC believe in true love? Why?

I think he did at one point, and maybe he thinks he knows what it is, but he never thought it was for him for a lot of reasons. That it was a storybook thing, the closest he would ever get is childish fantasies and stupid dreams where he would kiss pretty girls or pretty boys and they would make him feel safe as they slayed monsters and dragons together— the ones with blue scales, orange fire, and gold eyes, wicked, dripping teeth and long curling tongues. They would rescue him from his tower, riding off together, maybe someone even a bit older with bright eyes and dark hair and a warm smile; but he knows the love he gets from Jake and his dad is the kind of love he deserves instead. That it's the kind that makes his daddy look at him with pride more often than he ever did before. And so that has to mean something even if some part of him wants to shrivel up and disappear.

🍁 [MAPLE LEAF] What is your OC's favourite season? Why and what do they do during it?

Summer, not that he likes the heat, but the summer is when they consistently head up to the farm and those are his favorite days, weeks, months, depending on how long they stay. He's always liked Fall as well purely for the turn in weather (although where they currently live in Florida it doesn't make much of a difference, still it gets milder and the migratory birds arrive in droves), and he thinks it might become his new favorite as for the first time he's looking forward to school starting up again, because his dad and Jake have always respected homework as an excuse to be left alone and he's hoping, praying that it will be the same. He's hoping that he can crack open a textbook and stare down it, marking shit down, highlighting it as Jake sits at his desk fiddling with shit and making conversation, being a distracting asshole until Spider throws a pillow at his head and it will all go back to the way it was where every dirty thought stayed in his head and didn't leak out into the world, infecting everything and everyone.

🍎 [RED APPLE] Who does your OC value above all else?

Probably his dad, and Jake by proxy of being attached to his dad— because valuing Jake is also valuing Dad. Even if it's a serious internal struggle, there's this collision course, gravitational type pull that has him wanting to do anything and everything to impress his father, atone for how he's fucked him over by fucking his boyfriend behind his back (because it's all about internalized victim blaming in Spider's head) and which his dad reminds him of more than once, starting this whole thing that day he let Jake be all over him. He values his dad's opinion, his words, his gun and its bullets and every shooting lesson, the way he wants to crawl out from under the shadow of his mother's death being the result of his birth. (He once valued Kiri very, very much, maybe even more than his dad for a while, but ultimately he found himself feeling guilty about that. That somehow he might drag her down to his level and his dad was careful to remind him that Kiri was Augustine's kid still, that she hates his guts deep down in there just like her mother, that it's a lot of pity and not much else.)

🍅 [TOMATO] How misunderstood is your OC? In-universe or IRL.

I'd say pretty fucking misunderstood thanks to his dad. There's so many people who see him and just see this mini version of Miles Quaritch and that does not help shit at all in-universe. Not to mention he is now actively pushing people away to try and protect them in ways he doesn't even understand completely, only that it's instinct, that he has to be exactly what they think he is, flawed, damaged, devil child, terrible, rude, and unpleasant, destined to be all the nasty things he's overheard about his father while never knowing the whole story. Just that he feels responsible since it all went down around the time he was born. He is lashing out, snapping, rapid fire leaping through every trauma response that his brain is desperately treading water with and Spider refuses to acknowledge that as anything but some shit he has to choke down, that everyone must've been right, he's too fucked up and there's no point trying to be anything different.

🥕 [CARROT] How tough is your OC against certain situations? How weak are they against others?

I'd say he's tough against things that involve physical fights, even if he gets thrown on his ass, gets punched, hit, scraped knees and elbows, he just gets back up. He's been taking hits for a long, long time and has been in quite a few scraps mostly in self-defense or from a snapping temper because of something someone said about him or his family. He's also of course been in fights and screaming matches with his dad for a long time as well, and so when confronted with that sort of violence he'll sink into wise cracking insults, falling into the familiar routine with a nasty snarl if he has to, so long as he doesn't feel helpless and out of control.

He's weak against everything to do with Jake and is easily reeled in by every hook Jake sets, because he's so starving he'll take every bit of bait and his tough facade will shatter like fucking glass so fast the moment Jake spins from friendly face to hands anywhere but kept to himself. And his dad knows how to hit him where it really hurts as well, knows how to make him feel helpless and lost and puny, and like everything is his fault, that the weights so heavy he's nothing more than a little boy with one foot in the grave who needs a shit ton of discipline and guidance to get right again.

🥭 [MANGO] What colours best represent them and why? Does this differ from their favourites?

Rich brown like the color of the Sully kids eyes, deep gold like the farm's fields and the curls of his hair, greens that remind him of Kiri's favorite shirts and her sling bag that she carries around.

Blue represents him, blue like his dad's eyes, like Jake's, like cyan between darker stripes from another world, another time. Blue like the lake he used to float face down in wishing it would swallow everything, blue like the propane torch he watched Jake fuck around with in the garage of their last rental home when he was working on some copper piping, blue like the fresh bruises kissed into his skin once by knuckles, now by teeth.

🍑 [PEACH] How do they show their kindness? How kind are they truly?

It's difficult for him to afford to be kind, and it's been like that for a long time. But there is a Before and an After now, where his kindness used to be quiet moments spent shoulder to shoulder with Jake, swapping some too sweet chocolate bar and a soda as they sat on the porch and talked about anything and everything. The same with Kiri, Lo'ak, even Neteyam sometimes, where he would just do his best to listen and understand. Now, his kindness is when he does his best to pretend like everything is fine so no one has to worry; which isn't much different from before, but he's having to work so much harder and he hates it so fucking much. (Which is to say none of this is actual kindness, and there's no saying how kind Spider is truly because he's so fucking traumatized and needs years of healing to understand what it's like to be safe enough to trust the right people, let them in, and learn what kindness actually looks like beyond self-sacrifice and taking on burdens he never should have to).

🧅 [ONION] What is surefire to make your OC cry? Who knows of this information?

If anyone says his mom is dead because of him (even the barebone facts of the story, the fact she did die during childbirth), he will absolutely cry even if he has to blink super fast and scrub at his eyes to try and fight it off. Jake and Quaritch know this very well, and others have accidentally found this out by wording things about Paz poorly around him because when he's so on edge already, every tongue becomes a knife.

🍕 [PIZZA SLICE] How good is your OC at sharing? How do they share something if there's not enough supply?

If anything, he shares a little too much. At least food wise, he'll constantly try to cut his portions to make sure everyone else has more even if he's still hungry. More than ever he's giving the larger half of sweet treats and other stuff to Kiri, to Jake, even to his dad simply because he can't stomach them. And of course they'll try and offer him more in their own ways and in Kiri's case he'll eventually get mad and slink off, but with Jake and Quaritch well… they're giving him way more than he bargained for in return, and there's no getting out of it. I think in a lot of ways he's not very good at sharing Jake either— there's this weird sense of jealousy, protectiveness, something, Something, that makes it so "sharing" Jake with his dad feels like some kind of psychosexual competition that Daddy dearest is well fucking aware of. And of course Jake is, too, but he thinks there's plenty of himself to go around (he absolutely adores the fact Spider is so attached to him in this extra special way compared to Quaritch and absolutely loves to tease Quaritch about it even though Spider is devoted to his dad wholeheartedly the way altar boys are to their priests' touches. It's just that Jake… he's sooo special, right? 😼 He's not Dad, but he *is* Dad's, and that's exactly who Spider belongs to as well. Match made in super hell— or heaven if you ask Spider, but the kind of heaven filled with maggots stuffed in soft pillow nest beds.)

🍋 [LEMON] What is their kryptonite/ultimate weakness?

His biggest weakness is physical affection, I kept trying to think way too hard on this one, but no it's that simple! That's his ultimate weakness, and of course Kiri as his kryptonite, too, at least when on the farm because he feels incredibly responsible for her safety even when he shouldn't have to shoulder that. But that's how he operates, and it's easy to catch him in a silver wire snare the way Jake has by doing things as simple as threading his hands through Spider's hair and humming softly during their little horror film nights. His dad starts to do the same, but only as a reward after being such a good boy for him— physical affection withheld from the person Spider fucking Lives for, breathes for, and occupies his mind deeper than Jake ever will.

🧈 [BUTTER] How soft is your OC? In what sense are they soft?

He's actually incredibly soft, but he's not necessarily allowed to be. It's everything he fears, letting his guard down, letting people in, showing he cares about them too much, especially now— after he's twisted in the web of sexual abuse; after he showed how much he cared about Kiri, about his cousins, uncles, aunt, grandparents, he was too soft, he ler them see too much, he listened to them, sat too close, smiled too much and laughed at their jokes and their stories, that's how he sees it. Now he pays the ultimate price, now he knows he can't let it happen ever again.

🏵️ [ROSETTE] What flower symbolises your OC best and why? What does the flower mean in floriography?

Witch Hazel. Those little yellow flowers that need chilly weather to bloom and have those seeds that can snap really far away with a popping sound. In Appalachia and among different peoples of the Shaconage, the plant has been used to find many things and has been associated with the ability to in fact find anything. It's also used traditionally for external and even internal anti-inflammatories and is indistinguishable from other understory plants until fall and winter roll around.

Which is to say it shares a lot of qualities with Spider, it's a resilient plant and Spider is physically resilient as hell— he has to be, but he also blends into the background until he snaps, pops all at once. And it could be said he helped Jake and Quaritch find something, Something Horrible, and everything Spider saw coming and couldn't stop.

A y-shaped branch of Witch Hazel used as a dousing rod can find lost knives, tools, and even Daddy's gun if the right intent is put in, isn't that right?

🍌 [BANANA] Have parts of your OC been lost to time (in-universe)? What do they wish they could lose from themselves?

I am so pisspoor at understanding the wording of this question, so I'm gonna go with what I assume it's asking; I'd say a lot of parts of him have been lost to his time growing up in-universe. He may only be fourteen, but since a very young age he's felt ancient despite still very much being and behaving as a child. He has memories from way younger than his peers, which only makes time feel as if it's stretched so much further and yet condensed all at once, a substantial chunk spent in terror and confusion with all the bittersweet good bits sprinkled in between. He lost the ability to just be a kid a long time ago, and I think if someone were to offer him a safe place where he could have that back again, he would break the fuck down. He absolutely wishes he could lose everything to do with that first time with Jake, every bit of sex and lust and desire pushed inside of him, planted in his head, he would lose whatever makes him feel so fucked up, confused, and jumping at his shadow even if he can't name it out of fear that all of it will be real.

(He wishes he could lose his dad, but that would be something he'd choke on if he ever said aloud.)

🍹 [TROPICAL BEVERAGE] If your OC could go anywhere, where would it be?

Genuinely anywhere that isn't where his dad and Jake are (he's fantasized about going where the Sullys live, even though he's never been, he's had more than one dream where it's just him and even Kiri all playing out in woods he's never seen before); except a part of him, a slimy, coiling, boiling hot part wishes that they'd just go on some vacation far, far away together, maybe somewhere where there's rainforest, animals he's never seen before, humidity so high he'd practically need a mask to breathe, somewhere easy to get lost in and disappear and that way he will know his dad and his rapey boyfriend will never touch anyone but him ever again.

💐 [BOUQUET] If you could send your OC a bouquet, what flowers would make it up and what is the overall message?

Nothing specific I can really think of besides it would be a casket spray, an arrangement for those to be buried, for the dead. Probably chrysanthemums, black dahlias, yarrow, and lotus flowers as well since they can be associated with sexual assault– it'd be quite the weird bouquet. Maybe a bit of baby breath's thrown in there. The overall message being you survive or you die, even if you already feel more than dead; the reality of the chronically traumatized.

🥐 [CROISSANT] Where is your OC from? How do they feel about their homeland? Where are they now?

He was born in Laughlin near Del Rio, Texas. He was there only a few months and has no real attachment to Texas; they have never been back to the state since then. A shit ton went down that he does not remember and has never been told or found much news about due to it being what his dad only calls classified. When he thinks of Texas or sees the different memorabilia, the photos of his dad's squad, the base, his mom, and the old ranch his grandparents had before selling and moving Northeast, he feels churning guilt, and grief he's never been allowed to understand is related to how much his childhood has been ripped apart, shifted, changed, and thrown him out with the bathwater. Now his dad and Jake rent a place in central Florida and he keeps the same arm's length distance that he reserves for every place they go, seeming to move every two years if not much sooner.

He doesn't know that his dad's plans are to remain in Florida for very specific child marriage purposes if he can reach his hands deep in the guts of those pre-2018 loopholes.

🍰 [CAKE SLICE] How does your OC change as you get to know them?

Oh, this is a tough one considering as the story continues I believe he gets more and more devastating to trek in his shoes. I don't really know what readers' first impressions are of Circled Me!Spider, but fuck, I'm assuming it's like marching down that endless hallway in House of Leaves, into the yawning darkness, or even down the staircase of Silent Hill 2, trekking far too deep into the world below, but you've gone so far there's no turning around— you commit to the bit. He changes against his will in the eyes of the reader and in the eyes of the characters, if that answers the question.

🍈 [MELON] If they had to be put into a box, what box would it be and why?

One of those cardboard nest boxes they put injured baby birds in, because he desperately needs it. The warm lamp, the soft blanket, the time to rest and recover and just sleep without the threat of reaching hands, sharp claws, and gutting fangs.

🥃 [MATE] What does your OC look for in a friend? What do they find is a turn-off?

He has a very, very limited number of friends, those he does have are pretty much within family circles only now. He looks for people he can sort of hang out with in an easy capacity, friends who don't ask too many questions, who wanna talk about themselves and what they like, tell him all sorts of stuff. He looks for friends who are willing to get down in the dirt, who will play games and do stupid shit, but not stupid enough to get a broken arm or worse. He finds it easier to get along with friends who are slightly younger, or maybe it's just circumstance that his cousins are all younger than him and they get along so well, only Neteyam being the more distant of the bunch— something about never feeling the age he is, either years ahead or years behind and somehow the Sullys get it.

Jake ticks all the boxes as well, but also all the turn-offs, too. Because Jake's nosey, he asks too many questions, he's too perceptive, he's always in his space and always goes through his stuff without asking just like the few friends he tried to make at school. He makes crass comments, gets him in trouble with his dad half the time, and has no concept of personal space that always pissed Spider off and reminded him of kids back in grade school who would hug him out of nowhere, or drag him around by the wrist when he was still the shorter of the bunch. And now Jake does so, so much more than that, and yet Spider can't help but think of him as a friend. The kind that leaves him feeling hollow and curled on his side, showered in gifts and affection and physical touch, stinging cheeks and knuckle shaped bruises from a rough punch. Praise and scathing, cutting words he needs to hear so he'll know how to do better, how to grow up, how to protect his family. Jake's his best friend like that, perfect and terrible in every way, and he thinks he might die if he were to ever leave him.

🍏 [GREEN APPLE] How do they differ from the norm and how are they punished for it?

He happens to be his father's son, set apart from the rest, only child to half a military family. He's punished the way kids growing up with a shitty parent who has a bad reputation do, by the sins of the father, because it's never made clear to Spider that the reason the extended family is so wary of him, that he gets the cold shoulder is because his dad is always right there. It doesn't help either that he's constantly the new kid in class, that his hair's long and sometimes braided, that he's never really hid the fact that he likes boys and girls in school, that he wears the same clothes a lot; ones too big on him. Worn and faded graphic tees, holes in them that sometimes get him dress coded at school. That he's taller than his classmates and so he stands out, and his shoes constantly seem to be too small for his feet and falling apart so sometimes he'll just go without them when he can get away with it. Lately, his dad's been getting him better shoes and clothes, nicer things, but more than ever he's being forced to isolate himself, to act out, to self fulfill the prophecy of being an unpleasant asshole (and far worse) like his dad.

🥝 [KIWI FRUIT] How does their outside appearance differ from who they are?

He probably has a resting scowl at this point. Like his default face would look so tense and angry, not to mention he's only ever getting taller. He may not know who he really is, but he's certainly not as mean as he tries to make himself appear/people assume based on all sorts of biases. It's easier being what other people assume than trying to break the mold at some point.

🍐 [PEAR] What is their current social standing? If they could change it, would they, and to what?

Shit, not good. And I don't think he can even comprehend what it might look like if he could change it. Right now he's the bratty boy with his dad's demon blood, the poor kid who's always getting towed around by his dad, the black sheep of the family, the odd one out, the one everyone's worried about but Everytime they approach Quaritch he tells him it's just Miles going through some things, puberty, a girlfriend back home that is totally not real, mental health woes like his momma, stuff that runs in the family, you know how it is, of course— and that's what he'll tell them, story after story and Spider remains Quaritch's son through and fucking through.

🌿 [HERB] Is your OC religious? What do they believe in?

He's agnostic, mostly, he hasn't had enough time to connect with any sort of spirituality at all. And it will be a long time before he learns that he's allowed to, that he's safe to. Although he knows Kiri and the Sullys have a very close connection with their religious practices dating back more years than he can comprehend, he feels distant, disconnected, trapped and unable to see what they see when they look at a tiny ant or the moon with her stars, the gentle kiss of every breeze and the power of each storm. He also doesn't feel any sort of kinship towards his dad or the Christian denomination churches they've been in and out of, but he does enjoy the live music and the free food.

🌵 [CACTUS] How physically resilient is your OC?

I think I actually answered this one up there a bit! But he is very physically resilient as a matter of survival. He absolutely hates being in pain, and discomfort is practically sensory overload, but he can absolutely keep physically fucking going even when he should've collapsed or been out for the count a long time ago. He has to, he doesn't see any other options, and it will absolutely catch up to his ass in so many fucking ways.

🍸 [COCKTAIL] When was the first time your OC had an alcoholic beverage? What did they think of it?

First time he came to visit the farm, so at seven years old. He thought it tasted like muddy hand sanitizer with some sugar in it and promptly spit taked right into his dad's lap which earned him some choice words and a shake down later.

He doesn't drink and doesn't feel inclined to, but that could certainly change given his new circumstances and something that's floated in the back of his head the few times he's tried some of Aunt Grace's wine— that it tasted pretty damn good. And he's seen the way she seems to relax, loosen up when she's drunk, opposite to the sort of simmering look his dad develops when he's down a couple cans of something that makes his nose wrinkle. (He doesn't know what a lush is, but he's sure to find out that Jake's going to call him one with so much fucking amusement, smiling ear to fucking ear the first time Spider gets proper drunk on the farm.)

🌱 [SEEDLING] What new passions/hates is your OC discovering?

Lord, this one— this fucking question is a big one, huh? Well, new passions, he's probably what could safely be considered addicted to sex; the intoxicating high of it, even if it's abuse, even if he Knows it's abuse, if something feels that fucking good the brain doesn't really give a shit, because when it's good it's Good, when it's bad it's Bad, and the actual term is Compulsive Sexual Behavior, but Spider doesn't really understand he's been groomed to hell and back to want all this shit, that he's being used to fulfill the pleasure of two other men. He's discovering a shitton of hates all in the same breath, he hates when Jake threatens Kiri, he hates when he talks about her the way he does, he hates how his dad talks about her, too. He hates how his soft pallette gets bruised, he hates when they're rough, he hates when he bleeds, he hates hiding the bruises like he's a little kid, he hates when he cries in the middle of it, he hates not being able to sleep unless he gets the insomnia fucked out of him. He hates how much everything has changed and yet nothing has at all— he hates how much everyone seems to look right through him and right at him at the same time; and he hates how every vaguely sexual reference and joke makes his cheeks flush and his brain leap into overdrive. He hates being a fucked up, disturbed kid that's infecting the farm the exact way they all never said to his face, but he knows they were thinking; that maybe they know his dad's fucked up like this and they just don't care because he was destined for this being who he is.

(He's very passionate about being a good student, a good son, the best fucking shot—

He hates how much he wants to kill himself seemingly out of the blue.

He hates how much he knows his dad would rip him right out of hell if he did.)

🌸 [CHERRY BLOSSOM] Does your OC believe in legends/myths?

I think he doesn't really know a lot of legends or myths yet aside from the ones his grandparents have told him, maybe even Quaritch (Bible stories here and there, fairytales and other stories about men who betray their basic principles, who turn their backs on everything they know, back stabbing traitors and meddling scientists, and projects involving soldiers memories, thoughts, and consciousness, everything that can go wrong when the good guys mix with bad circumstances, when they get painted in poor light because we all know Quaritch has that thin blue line sticker slapped on his truck's bumper, propaganda and jingoism out the ass.)

I like to think the Sully kids have told him some stories from the Omatikaya that he does his best to remember and spin in his head at night when he's anxious, that he even does his best to retell them around the fire. I also think he'd know some classic Appalachian folklore, too, stuff his grandparents have picked up since moving up to North Carolina that's blended with their roots in Southern Texas, in North Mexico before that.

I think he believes less in monsters wandering the hills, of strange lights flashing through the mountainside, of never whistling outside at night now and more in the monsters sharing his bed. Although he might think of the legends of those wearing the skin of people he loves and knows, of bodysnatchers trying to get close to him, devouring him whole when he's stuck between Jake and his dad as they all sleep.

🧁 [CUPCAKE] If you had to describe your OC using flavours, how would you (e.g., 'they're very sweet')?

Those first they're sour then they're sweet sour patch kids— or maybe the opposite, or maybe he just gets more sour; so sour he turns sweet.

🍩 [DONUT] What is your OC's biggest flaw? How do they deal with it? Do they deal with it?

Probably his inability to consider what he wants, needs, or feels and instead everything is filtered through how it'll make his dad feel, what his dad Wants, what his dad Needs. (What Jake Needs and Wants, too, because upsetting Jake will upset Dad and he can't have that— hates when it happens, can't stand when he's made his dad a mess and he just wants to fix it, apologize, avoid the hurt and pain of his consequences.) He doesn't even recognize it is something he's doing on a basic level, so he has no way to stop the way his mind has been wired to consider Dad in absolutely everything he does and will do; even at the detriment of his own life, soul, mind, and well-being.

🥔 [POTATO] What do they have that others see as a flaw, but they don't care about?

Chronic avoidance, like a cat that's never seen in the house by anyone, but absolutely lives there type of avoidance. Many people recognize and see that he's cagey about so many things, that he always has been, skittering off or deflecting with humor, a joke, a subject change or even doing something impulsive and unexpected to redirect everyone's attention. He doesn't see this as a problem, as the Socorro-Quaritch household's infamous unspoken motto, "if you can't see it, if you don't talk about it, it's not real."

Also the martyrdom, but no one quite recognizes this as a flaw except for Kiri, and perhaps the Socorros in some way due to the amount of times Spider's thrown himself under the bus and taken the blame for things he shouldn't.

#answered asks #you circled me inside my room #if any of this is contradictory no it isnt look away #thank you for indulging me with these questions!!

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katsidhe · 3 years

Text

Sam and Dean Breakups, Part Two: Involuntary

Part One: Voluntary

Sorted by how much longer I think they should have lasted.

Unlike in part one, pretty much all of these involve Sam or Dean dealing with either possession or grief, which adds additional flavor of

5.22-6.01/6.12/6.22 (Sam in the Cage): a year/a year and a half, one/twelve/twenty-two episodes. Perfect. Chef’s kiss. We get both a long time of Dean without a part of Sam, and a long time of getting to know this significant, different part of Sam. Which all builds delightfully to a crescendo when we finally get Sam back fully—and even then, his memories form yet another barrier. Getting him back in pieces wonderfully, brilliantly permits us to still have Sam present while simultaneously preserving focus on the length and enormity of his absence, and of the Cage’s impact. S10 and s14, take fucking notes: this is how you emphasize offscreen transformation while keeping your characters visible.

15.20 (Sam after Dean’s death): probably around forty years, part of one episode. I, personally and privately, want to read several different large sets of novel-length fics about Sam’s life after Dean’s death. Under absolutely no circumstances do I want any of these reified as canon. Let Sam’s recovery be nebulous; let it be under perpetual construction; let it be blurry and private and vague; let him build it in a place we can’t see and can’t reach.

3.11 (Mystery Spot): one day/nine months, one episode. Imagining this as two episodes instead of one is delightful, I will admit. However, I prefer the horror of it contained to just one episode, to really drive home the insignificance of this to everyone but Sam. An event with such horrific and outsize impact on him is contained to what, for the rest of the world, is just one Tuesday. Instead of it becoming an event like 2.21 that Dean externalizes, that is dragged out and explored for an additional episode and then an additional year, 3.11 is totally internal, and not something Sam mentions again.

2.21 (Sam in Cold Oak): three days, one and a half episodes. Seeing Sam apart from Dean in strange circumstances and yet confident, in his element, is so enjoyable that I’d gladly see this extended. This would also serve to ease how abrupt the ramp-up to the Azazel confrontation is--allow more time to flesh out the idea of demon hunger games. One thing I don’t think requires extension is how long Sam actually spends dead. The brevity of the interruption, how quickly Dean makes his decision, is kinda the point.

2.14 (Sam possessed by Meg): two weeks, one episode. Similar to Mystery Spot—lots of character impact contained to just one episode, a lot of Sam internalizing. But here, I think the story could have benefitted from more separation: dwelling on Sam alone rather than only on Dean’s reaction to him, lending additional horror to Sam’s true predicament rather than only to Dean’s fears of him ~going bad~, and giving s2 a greater sense of urgency and direction.

3.16-4.01 (Dean in Hell): four months, less than an episode. Much as I would have personally enjoyed the impact of an additional episode of Dean’s absence, the structure of s4 is such that Sam’s team-up with Ruby is revealed gradually: s4 is told expressly from Dean’s POV, as he struggles with suppressing and then remembering Hell, and discovering Sam’s extracurriculars. To change this would be to change our perception of the manner in which Dean experiences these events. Even so, the significance of Hell to Dean is not dealt with the way it is with Sam, nor is Dean’s absence or Sam’s grief particularly keenly felt. Putting Hell onscreen is a bad idea, and yet having Sam and Dean split up and apart from each other for longer in the beginning of season 4 would please me. Sam apart from Dean and training to kill demons with Ruby, versus Sam apart from Dean and trying to recover with Amelia: united in their forbiddenness, united in their othering.

7.23-8.01 (Dean in Purgatory): one year, less than an episode. One problem with extending this is that there would be longer Purgatory scenes, and Purgatory is objectively extremely boring. And I can, to some extent, appreciate the structure of s8 as-is: with flashbacks illustrating their lost year and with the emphasis on the lack of understanding between Sam and Dean. But I can’t help but feel that this point would have been illustrated more effectively without the flashback structure, or at the very least with less of it--if instead, we’d gotten a few episodes in the beginning showing Sam’s collapse and subsequent recovery with Amelia, alongside Dean’s friendship with Benny and issues with Cas. The flashbacks add a tone that removes urgency, since we know so clearly and explicitly how everything ends up. It’s basically a less deft version of s4′s structure, which I’m also on the fence about: and there, at least, the mystery was both a benefit for the audience and representative of how Dean was processing, neither of which is really true in s8. S8 needed better integration of the reality of Dean and especially Sam’s separate lives.

11.23-12.02 (Sam abducted by the BMoL): a few days, two and a half episodes. Sam should have stayed abducted longer. It was definitely the high point of s12, and of the BMoL’s status as villains. I think that Sam having to deal with the BMoL from within their internal structures would have been really fun, and a nice change of pace! Like, arguing his way out from under a bureaucracy, or even letting Sam be persuaded on the effectiveness of their tactics from within the institution—it would have made the BMoL both more distinct and more frightening. Also, look, it’s just plain fun that Sam’s being tortured and thinks Dean is dead, who actually wants that party to end??

13.23-14.02 (Dean possessed by Michael): around a month, one and a half episodes. What a missed opportunity. Every day I wake up and I weep for what s14 could have been. The secret good s14 that lives in my head is episode after episode after EPISODE of Jack, Sam, Nick, and Cas all coping with each other and with Dean’s absence. The tangible effects of the events of 13.23 require time to unwind, and they require that Dean not be around: I want to see Sam dealing with victory, with grief, with leadership, and with a mission; I want Sam and Nick to accidentally get locked in some room in the bunker together; I want family dinner with all four of them. I want Jack to yell at Sam. I want Dean to cope with possession in a way more lasting and meaningful than bouts of dizziness; I want Sam to cope with how he imagines Dean might be coping. This is the most ripe for conflict and recovery and pain that the show has ever been in Dean’s absence, prove me wrong. And it was squandered.

#sam and dean #sam and soullessness #dean and purgatory #dean and hell #sam and possession #dean and possession #sam and grief #2.14 #2.21 #3.11 #4.01 #6.01 #8.01 #12.01 #14.01 #15.20

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killalluchihas · 3 years

Text

good vibes/bad juju - 09

Summary: While on a mission in overseas, Gojo gets K-O'd by an unknown person. Within a week, every sorcerer in Japan has heard about it. (a JJK OC story)

[Chapter One Here]

[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter]

–/–/–/–

chapter nine: push your luck Gojo finally learns about Yoshi's cursed technique

Ever since she punched Gojo in Germany, Yoshi had known she would face major repercussions. Not because she’d had any idea of how important Gojo was, but because she’d lost her temper. Her whole way of life revolved around subtlety and discretion. But the curse she faced in Germany had been different. Difficult. And getting caught in some sorcerer’s crossfire had been the final straw to break her restraint.

She’s been trying to backpedal ever since. All these deflections, avoiding and distracting these people so no one sees that the details don’t add up—it’s so exhausting.

“So!” Gojo clasps his hands together. “Technically speaking, we don’t need another teacher.”

Yoshi stares at him with crossed arms, blinking tiredly. “How unfortunate.”

“Hush! You’re still hired. You’ll supervise and spar, like you did for Megumi.”

“I don’t have a teaching license.”

“Pfft.” Gojo flashes another smile. Apparently terrorizing that council member had put him in a good mood. “Do I look like I have a teaching license?”

“Fair point,” she admits, lowering her eyes back to her instant ramen. The second-year student with glasses was kind enough to point her towards the cafeteria, where the cabinets were stocked with non-perishables.

“Anyway—”

“I also don’t have a work permit for Japan, or any of my belongings here...” Yoshi continues, rubbing her face. “Were you saying something?”

Gojo is pouting at her when she looks up. “You don’t need a work permit,” he huffs. “For the time being you’ll reside within Tengen’s barrier and we’ll wire your salary directly to your bank account. Ask Ijichi for the details,” he concludes, before quickly tacking on, “He’ll be your liaison for future missions, too.”

It’s around four in the afternoon now, and Yoshi had been surprised when Gojo showed up in the cafeteria. From the way his students talked about him, Gojo was rarely on campus for so long, and never stuck around to explain himself. She doesn’t know what he’s pouting about, but she ought to get some answers out of him while he was here…

The likelihood of Gojo knowing how American taxes work is extremely low, so she’ll save that question for Ijichi… whoever the hell that is.

“Is there a bounty on me?” Yoshi asks. “From that guy in New York?”

“Naoya? It’s at ten million yen right now,” Gojo confirms casually. “On the bright side, you don’t need to worry about your baseball tots! Apparently he wants you alive.” He stretches backwards in his chair across from her, tossing his legs onto the table.

She stares at Gojo’s polished leather shoes for a moment, startled by the fury that floods her head.

What kind of asshole puts their shoes on the table while there’s someone eating right in front of them? Yoshi genuinely considers the logistics of knocking him out of his chair. Or telling him off like he’s a toddler. If she got close enough, she could slap him into Siberia.

That’s a little extreme, calm down, Yoshi orders herself. I just need to sleep.

She resists the urge to scrub at her eyes again, setting her ramen aside. “Alright. Is there anything else you needed to tell me?”

“Oh?” Gojo cocks his head to one side, noticing the shift in her attitude. “That’s it, you’re done arguing?”

Inhaling slowly, Yoshi folds her hands loosely in front of her. She’s done trying to convince Gojo of anything, at least. “Yes.”

“No more begging me to rescind your promotion?” he presses, smirking. “You sure came around quickly. Must be my irresistible nature.”

“Maybe,” Yoshi answers nebulously, drumming her fingers on the table, “It just feels a bit redundant now. Next, you’ll grill me about my technique, and then I’ll blame you for getting me in trouble with the clan guy.”

“The banter is half the fun, Yoshi,” Gojo says, almost looking disappointed. “Besides, I totally figured out your technique already.”

“Really?” Yoshi deadpans, “Good job.”

He groans, tilting back even further in his seat. Again, Yoshi is strongly tempted to trip him. “Don’t you wanna know if I guessed right?” he whines.

“Nudge.”

“Hm?”

“It’s called Nudge. Kinda like, sukoshi osu.” She mimes it with her hand, nudging an imaginary object off the table.

Gojo is quiet for a moment. His brow furrows, leaving a wrinkle in his black blindfold. “A little push?” he repeats, keen to know more. “That’s how you hit your targets?”

“I adjust the path of the ball at the last second.”

He pulls his legs off the table and lurches forward. “But you’re applying another force while it’s in motion,” he says, unusually earnest. “That should make the ball lose velocity.”

“Nope,” she denies. “It doesn’t add or subtract.”

“Ah… because your energy output is so high, right? Even so, I should be able to catch it,” he points out seriously.

“The whole point is that you can’t catch it...” Yoshi frowns. “Because I change the ball’s trajectory.”

He looks lost for a moment. “...Eh?”

“What?” Yoshi asks, confused now.

“Ahh.”

“What?” she snaps.

The sorcerer chuckles. “I meant I should catch it visually, because you’re applying cursed energy.” Gojo gestures to his blindfold for emphasis. “Six Eyes, remember?”

Yoshi blinks slowly, processing his words. “So? Same thing,” she scoffs, flapping a dismissive hand at him. “Eyes, hands—it can’t be caught.”

“Those are not the same thing!” Gojo exclaims in protest, but his smile just widens. “I was going to ask about your slap-back bracelets too, but maybe you need a nap, Yoshi. You seem confused.”

Yoshi purses her lips. She does need a nap. “Shut up.”

At this point he looks like a kid in a candy store. “It must be almost four in the morning back in New York. Are you getting cranky?”

“I’m fine.”

“Need me to tuck you in?” Gojo simpers.

Lifting her index and middle finger up, Yoshi nudges the two main support screws from Gojo’s chair out of position.

Gojo yelps as his chair collapses, jumping to his feet before he falls with it. “Rude!”

“The technique works with stationary objects too.”

–/–/–/–

“Tuna?”

Maki is resting beneath a tree when she hears Toge’s voice. She raises her head to meet his questioning gaze, but his eyes are locked on the weapon resting in her lap. Panda is working with Megumi, and Nobara is chatting with their trainer. “That new teacher gifted this to me,” Maki explains, holding it out to him.

Toge doesn’t take it. Instead, he crouches beside her, uttering a perplexed “Takana?” as he points at the insignia on its sheath.

Maki shrugs, tracing the mother-of-pearl inlay. “It was weird,” she confides to Toge. “She asked if I was related to Naoya, and when I told her what I thought about the Zenin family, she put this in my hands and claimed that it ‘belongs to me’.”

Their new teacher, Yoshi, was an odd sorcerer. The first years won’t admit it, but they’re clearly fascinated by her. Maki doesn’t know how much of their gossiping is true, but besides the strange comment here or there, Yoshi seems like a competent teacher.

Maki pulls the tanto blade out of its sheath. The steel blade is polished so clean, she can see the reflection of her bespectacled eyes in them. Maki slides the blade away with a sharp click. “I don’t know if it’s really from the Zenin armory since it’s not a curse tool... but it’s a good blade, so I’m keeping it.”

“Okaka,” Toge shakes his head, brow furrowed.

Maki freezes. “No? No to what?”

Toge gives the blade a considering look. Panda isn’t anywhere nearby to translate, and Toge doesn’t think he can explain this so simply—so he takes out his smartphone instead and begins to type.

It has some cursed energy, Toge writes. But not a lot.

Maki’s frown deepens. “What the hell does that mean? Is it gonna do something?”

Toge waves a hand dismissively and types something out before handing the phone to Maki.

Maki glances at the message and scowls.

Seems like residual energy from

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Maki throws Toge an exasperated look. “Is that supposed to look like the Yoshi from Mario Kart?"

"Shake!" Toge sounds pleased that she can read it.

"How the fuck did you type that so quickly? When did you get the time to find—whatever this is?"

“Ikura.”

–/–/–/–

It’s a well-known fact that Japan is at the epicenter of curse activity. Though there’s no hard evidence that curses originated on the archipelago, the existence and perpetuation of powerful barriers has had the unintended consequence of concentrating cursed energy in the land of the rising sun.

There is a long history of curses manifesting in Japan. But there is also a long tradition of sorcerer families within the island nation, and the saturation of cursed energy in the land also saturates its people—the inhabitants of Japan have the potential to become sorcerers, more so than humans living anywhere else.

Outside of Japan, large cities created the most curses. So much life in so little space—urban environments were a petri dish for curses.

New York City, however, is an anomaly to this hypothesis. There were plenty of other cities that were more densely-packed than the five boroughs, but statistically speaking, there should be more cursed activity.

Why hasn’t anyone noticed this? Satoru wonders, clicking through the endless pages of electronic records he got some assistants to pull together. Granted, the city was only mostly free of curses. Sorcerers still went on missions in the five boroughs, but nothing higher than a grade 3 has appeared in years. He can assume they can thank Yoshi for that, but...

If Yoshi only protects her home turf… why the hell was she in Germany?

He thinks of Yoshi’s technique, and the inked talismans she uses as bracelets, and the tattooed power held in her fingertips. He considers what Maki told him about the tanto from Naoya, and the undeniable, impossible way she can break through Infinity. Honestly, it's as if she can—

Then, Satoru gets a startling thought and goes back to checking the international incident reports. He clicks on the link for the 2011 reports in New York, and the trend holds. He goes back to 2008, and there’s an uptick in activity—likely caused by the economic crisis.

He goes to the reports from 2007, and there’s still too few curse sightings in New York.

There is only one report from 2006, a singular grade 2 curse in the latter half of the year.

And between 2005 and 1996, there aren’t any curse reports from New York at all.

It should be alarming, but Satoru finds himself grinning madly instead. No wonder she’s called Yoshi. She was born lucky.

–/–/–/–

[Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter]

Author's note: there are some gaps in canon that I'm going to fill on my own, but this is technically canon-compliant up to chapter 147 at the time i'm posting this.

#jjk #jjk manga spoilers #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen spoilers #jujutsu kaisen manga spoilers #jjk fanfic #jujutsu kaisen fanfic #jjk oc #jujutsu kaisen oc #gojo satoru #zenin maki #inumaki toge #jjk gojo #good vibes/bad juju

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zechleton · 3 years

Text

Ranting and Raving About Magic in 2022

I haven’t written about Magic in ages, so what better way could there be to get back into the habit that a stream of consciousness spiel about the 2022 announcement?

Strap in, folks, because this is going to be long and poorly edited.

Actually, it’s not that long, about 1500 words. It might feel longer, though.

Neo-Tokyo or something idk

As one of the five people on r/magictcg that didn’t want to return to Kamigawa in standard set, I have to admit this one looks surprisingly awesome. The couple of pieces of art Wizard shared looked fantastic, as usual, and I’m a sucker for that blue/pink colour scheme. I’m not a huge fan of time travel as a story telling device but since the Magic story has always served the card game, using tropes I don’t enjoy is far from a deal-breaker. Yeah – I’m cautiously optimistic about this one.

Someone Made Elspeth an Offer she Couldn’t Refuse

Obviously, we know much less about this set. Still, it sounds right up my alley. I’m curious how Wizards is going to make Magic meets The Godfather work, but the good kind of curious. On top of that, I’d really like to have some more shard-based commanders on Arena for Brawl, and I assume we’re the “three-colour demon crime families” isn’t referring to clans (triome?) again after leaving Ikoria behind. Also, come on, how can you not love the sound of demon crime families?

Glory, Glory, Dom United!

There is a part of me that gets nervous about nebulous concepts like design space whenever we go back to an old plane again. All these crossovers (more on those later) take on a different appearance when viewed through an “are they running out of ideas” lens. Still, Dominaria was fantastic, by far the best “return to” set – though I’m hoping Innistrad claims that throne in a few weeks. With that in mind, I’m expecting Wizards to knock it out of the park with DU, just like they did with Dominaria.

The Nostalgia Wars

I might scoff somewhat at Magic’s storyline sometimes, but I’ve read the stuff that people think is good. I own both collections of the Artifacts Cycle. They all pale in comparison to good fantasy, but they’re not bad, and they hold a special place in my heart from when I was more invested in stuff like lore and story. The point of that ramble? 2022, more than ever, is Wizards’ mining the seemingly neverending mineral that is nerd nostalgia. It further adds to my “are they running out of ideas” worry, but I can’t say the nostalgia hit/psychological manipulation isn’t working on me. Hell, Return to Return to Innistrad has me more excited than any set for a couple of years now so I guess I’m part of the problem.

Uncaring

The phrase “not for you” is thrown around distrubingly often in Magic circles nowadays. Unfinity, however, is decidedly not for me. And that’s fine.

Dungeons And Dragons Battle for Baldur’s Gate Commander Legends I Think That’s The Whole Title But Maybe I Missed a bit I’m not Sure

Yikes, what a mouthful. I hate the title, both its length and unwieldiness. I don’t really have much interest in the set either. Commander Legends was a neat idea with a lot of flaws. Adding crossover flavour from another IP I have little-to-no interest in isn’t helping matters, though I appreciate that Adventures in the Forgotten Realms was super popular. For me, AFR was pretty much just a core set without any of the usual references to sets I do know and care about. Another “not for me” release.

Double Trouble

Hmm. I’m torn here. As a primarily limited-focused player, Masters sets have been some of my favourites ever. Original Modern Masters is still one of my in my top five sets of all time, and I have fond memories of almost all of the others, too.

Original Double Masters, though, was a victim of apathy brought on by the never-ending deluge of Magic product being released nowadays. I have never even seen a booster of this product, much less opened one. Without looking it up, I can’t even tell you if it was hurt by the pandemic or not, because there’s just way too much fucking stuff nowadays. I don’t know what else to say.

Oh, hang on. Was this the set with a $100 VIP Booster? Hahaha, fuck off.

Jump Around

The original Jumpstart was surprisingly enjoyable on Arena. I never wanted to play it more than a few times, and sometimes you got packs that relied entirely on your opponent getting mana screwed, but those few times I played it were pretty fun. I think putting stuff like obvious eternal format staples like Alosaurus Shepherd in a set like this is some extremely anti-consumer bullshit, but as a play experience it was an interesting mesh of draft and sealed. Not as much fun as either of those, but close enough that the novelty carried it into the “pretty fun, actually” camp. I expect more of the same – I’ll probably do a few runs if I have gems or gold spare.

Universes Beyond: Warhammer 40K Commander et al

Really, this is the bit about all the crossover stuff.

Another vomit inducing title and one that has left me with some introspection to do. Like many people, I find a lot of this crossover stuff distasteful, but I can’t really say why. The fact that the Street Fighter one – an IP I have some amount of investment in – seems less egregious than Warhammer of D&D makes me think that I don’t necessarily object to crossovers on principal. Does my dislike come from the fact that, so far, all of the other crossovers don’t involve properties I care about? Maybe. Even the mechanically unique line of text that pissed off so many people when the Walking Dead set came out doesn’t bother me that much, because Commander is a format I can take or leave.

The Fortnite one rubs me a different wrong way, though. Partly, it’s the sheer fucking inevitability of it all. Of course a popular part of the nerd sphere will have a crossover with Fortnite because that’s just the world in which we live. Partly it makes me feel old, uncool, and excluded, like all the other crossovers I don’t care about, sure. But there’s something more visceral about Fortnite. It’s fucking everywhere and I resent feeling like I have to have an opinion about it. Still, I don’t really have strong opinions about most of the other crossovers, so why this one? I really don’t know. Maybe this is one “this isn’t for you” too many from a game that has been part of my life for over 20 years.

I haven’t bought a single Secret Lair, but I’m generally willing to accept that they’re a bonus product that isn’t needed by anyone but is wanted by some. Hell, if they put out Secret Lair: Snapcaster Mage with good art (at last), I could probably te tempted into picking one up. It would be against my better judgement, though. Something about all these “not necessary but also don’t miss out, aren’t they cool, spend more money please” products rubs me the wrong way. Playing Magic and hating capitalism are difficult interests to reconcile. That’s it. That’s the tagline for this article.

Oh, right, it’s just a blog. Never mind.

Oh, God. The Fornite Secret Lair is going to be the Snapcaster Mage one, isn’t it?

Then there’s Lord of The Rings. My pal Kristen will be thrilled about this, was my first thought. I’m less enthusiastic (shocker, right?), but at least LOTR makes sense as a thing to crossover with. I mean, apart from the obvious business sense. It doesn’t have any guns and it isn’t an obnoxiously ubiquitous battle royale FPS, so that already puts it ahead of two of the other three crossovers. Indeed, without LOTR, you can make a reasonable case that MTG would never exist in the first place. Personally, I view LOTR in the same way I view The Beatles – they were important, and worthy of respect, but have been surpassed in every way since.

And the movies are better than the books. There I said it.

Regardless, this one is fine, actually. I still don’t particularly care for crossovers in general, especially as the setting for a standard set, but at least it makes sense this time.

Shut up Already

Alright, I hear you. I know a lot of that was negative towards the end, but I want to reiterate that a lot of the stuff happening in standard sets next year is really exciting, if a little unoriginal. The crossover/sellout stuff and the interminable deluge of FOMO-driven products is worrying and disappointing, but I guess we just have to try and ignore the ever-increasing number of “not for you” products and focus on the stuff we do like. Seriously, Neon Destiny looks amazing, and I don’t even like anime.

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karukos · 3 years

Photo

Mirrors: FFNet || Ao3

Waking up normally was not the most exciting thing in the world. Normally, it was the exact opposite. No matter how well you slept, no matter how disciplined you were and no matter at what time you awoke... nobody woke up and felt like jumping out of their bed with a summersault and whatever else boundless energy would make you do.

Izuku Midoriya might be the exception. At least for now. It was going, relatively normal really. The alarm went off, he groggily opened his eyes, trying to resolve himself to rise up early, as he did every day. Normally, this was the part where he would grab his phone, scroll through various sites for a few minutes before getting up... This time however...

He would not even dare unlock his phone, not even turning on the screen. Lying in bed like a statue frozen in place he looked at one thing and one thing only. That little light at the corner of the device that steadily blinked like a heartbeat... He got a message... or maybe worse... he might have gotten a reply!

Anxiously he stared at the blinking light, his hands feeling like they would start shaking any second, if they weren't already and he didn't notice until now. For some reason that was even more nerve wracking than typing the actual message. Like getting an exam back, not knowing how well you did on it...

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. In the end, it was just a text message. Nothing serious... right? So he unlocked the phone... and almost locked it again. Regardless, he could feel the heat rise into his head as he threw himself onto the other side of his bed, pressing his face into the pillow.

He hadn't really been able to read what was written, but he had gotten far enough. There was the reply. The sender was Toga. And here he thought he was prepared. He thought. He was wrong. There was a sound that wanted to press itself out of his throat but he kept it under wraps. The last thing he wanted to do was wake up the whole dorm with his inhuman screeching, because he got a text message back.

So with all the pressure mounting in his chest, he unlocked his phone a second time, opening the text messenger and just read:

"Hi Izu~! 😘"

He looked at it. He stared at it. Somehow, he shouldn't be surprised. Somehow he actually was. He had gotten a reply and it was... It was too early in the morning to use his brain. The message had shocked him awake, yes, but that didn't mean in any way that he was functioning right about now.

If anything now he somehow felt lightheaded, incredibly tired even though he had just woken up. There had been a weight on his chest that had been lifted. It was not much but it was definitely there!

Then it dawned on him. Slowly. Surely. Inevitably. That meant he still had to reply. He didn't even really start a conversation. He just sent her a message.

Aaaand there was the weight again. It was one thing to start a conversation when nervous when you were PHYSICALLY next to each other. A totally different thing, however, when you both were only in that nebulous space that was the digital world. What the hell was he supposed to talk about with her? Maybe just how are you? He typed it out for a moment... then deleted it. That sounded... off. Too formal, but not really that...

Maybe...No. Asking how she got her number into his phone? That would... probably sound way too angry for what he was going for. Although... Did he mind? This was, after all, exciting. Even if it was somewhat wrong.

He pushed that thought to the side quickly instead choosing to maybe write up another question. Even if he asked, there was no way of knowing if she was lying to him. She could certainly. He didn't want to give her the chance or the need to. He was curious but he didn't want to know. Instead he wanted to focus on the fuzzy feeling it was giving him instead.

Now he kinda wished he could ask somebody for advice. He had no experience writing with anybody like that. Especially not with all the baggage that was coming with their current situation. Normally, he would not even feel that uncomfortable asking either Tsuyu and Ochaco for help, maybe Mina if he felt like he could handle the teasing, but right now... no this was probably not really an option he had.

With a sigh of frustration, he locked his phone, rolled onto his back and looked at the ceiling. Maybe he would need to sit on this for a while. He was not sure how fast Toga expected an answer so... he was taking his time. Patience was a virtue after all. A virtue that he had to practice not only with other people but himself, on occasion.

So he got up, looked around, made his bed, sorted out the clothes for today and... then looked back at his phone. There was no way for him to ignore the phone really. He was going through the motions, but really it was circling around to that thing. He needed to respond, didn't he? It was rude to leave somebody on read...

So there he was, sitting there with his phone in hand, looking at the greeting words she had written. And now to reply:

How did you get this number? Delete. What are you doing? Delete. This IS Toga, right? Delete. Delete. Delete. What am I even writing? Delete.

The last one brought in some catharsis, having written out what he was feeling, that little bit of frustration that needed to be let out otherwise it was starting to clog up his thin pipes. More than his nervousness already did.

With a little sigh, he looked down. The first choice would be the best in the end. A response was better than no response, right? She would hopefully take it the right way.

"How are you?" Sent.

That was it. Right? That meant he could go about his day now. At least it felt that way in a way. It was at least enough for him to get up and actually start his day off properly. Getting washed, brushing his teeth, getting dressed properly before he got back into his room and a familiar blinking light.

"🤭 I’m doing just fine! Wbu?!"

This was... so much easier now for some reason. It was just a hurdle he had to climb at the beginning it seemed.

"Good. Getting ready for the day."

That felt like it was vague enough to not feel like he was saying too much. After all this... was still all kinds of weird to him. Not the writing itself but who he was writing. That everything was comparatively normal did not help that fact either probably.

He sat down on his bed as he immediately saw the sign on the screen. Toga was already typing back at him, clearly having waited for his response.

"Ooooh~ what's the plan?"

He was not quite sure how to reply at first. There was a strange bit of noise in his head that wanted to make him sound interesting. A little bit of a whisper that lying for that end might not even be bad. A stern reminder that embellishment is better because it was still the truth, before he consciously shut down all of those ideas.

"Going to get breakfast now. You?"

That seemed more truthful as he got up from his bed, sliding the phone into his pocket as he was about to leave the room, when he felt it vibrating against his thigh. While opening the door he looked down towards the text.

"Occupying my Izu~"

That felt... weird. Like a blush without the heat in his face, almost like it was stuck in his stomach for a moment, before the feeling passed, refusing to be introspective or identified.

"... is it working?"

With his phone still in his hand he made his way downstairs, watching the small dots jumping up and down as she was typing, hoping that he would not find a wall in front of his face or a distinct lack of floor underneath his feet when he started taking the steps.

"You tell me ;PPP"

Needless to say, he almost fell down the stairs at this point as his foot was gracing the edge of one particular step. At least it wizened him up to at least wait until he was at the bottom of the staircase before he replied, his heart still thumping up into his head... mostly from almost tripping.

"Works phenomenally."

It did not even take half a second for her to reply to that.

"😘🥰🥰"

Walking towards the fridge he started making himself some breakfast, meaning, mostly cereal with milk, eating it slowly while he thought of a reply, a smile plastered on his face, while he sat there, alone. He was, after all, the early bird of the dorm. For the better really. What would happen if they saw him sit there with his phone, grinning like an idiot. Speaking of getting up...

"Why are you waking up early?"

If he would focus, he might be able to hear the slow footsteps of Iida and Kacchan getting up. Not many people were used to being awake this early. Or so he thought. The sun hadn't even properly risen yet.

"I haven't even gone to bed yet 🤗"

For some reason, and he couldn't help himself, he just felt laughter rise in his throat, something he had to fight down hard, lest he would choke on it or spit all that milk over the table. Neither sounded too much fun. Somehow, he should have expected that response, yet he walked right into that.

"Aren't you tired yet?"

"Nah, I got a bit more juice to keep me going"

"You should probably go to sleep though..."

He tried to put his worried tone into the text the best he could. For a moment, he thought about adding an emoji, which was not usually his style, but he was already far out of his comfort zone with the... underlying emotion of this conversation so might as well try? In the end, he decided against it.

"Awww... don't you wanna talk with me anymore?"

How did she jump to that conclusion? Although she might be just teasing him. He was not quite sure. Either way, he probably should disarm that situation a little bit. His thumb raised over the keyboard as if speed mattered in the response:

"Of course I do... just want you to stay healthy."

If she was still awake, though, that probably was a nice sentiment but also probably a bit late. Now that he thought about it, she did have a bit of bags under her eyes every time he had seen her. Before she could even add a reply he asked:

"Are you staying up this late often?"

"Yeah. Are you up this early this often?"

"Yeah."

"Shouldn't you try and get more sleep?"

Ah, okay now she was turning this around on him. For some reason, he got the feeling of both concern and mischief from her side. On the one hand, she could definitely enjoy having used her own argument against him... on the other, of course there was always a bit of physical discomfort for getting up so early and if that was healthy was also up for debate.

"Touché :P"

"What are you even getting up so early for?"

For a moment, he thought about not really explaining it. What if he was giving intel, what if they learned he was up this early already then... but then it occurred to him, that it was neither really good intel, nor that it really mattered either way. He had already decided to trust her to this degree. She already knew he was awake. He was writing with her.

"Getting breakfast, waking up well before school and having time to work out a little bit."

"Every day?"

It had been... pretty much every day, for the last couple of months... probably up to a year or longer now. Ever since All Might dropped into his life, at least when he did so in person.

"Pretty much yeah." was his only response there. It was that after all. There was not really a way around it in this way.

"This feels like talking to an alien. How?! 🤣"

The fact that she sounded somewhat excited about this somehow was putting a smile on his face. He knew of course, that him being up so early was a bit weird for a teen, but come on, she was taking it a bit too far! And somehow he couldn't help but love it. Somehow it felt almost like a compliment in that sense.

"Just getting up... get yourself an alarm. You will manage."

"I can't get up at 12 PM with multiple alarms. And people say I am the crazy one."

He was just about finished with his breakfast for now, just smiling as he was texting Toga back. Slowly Iida and Bakugo started to enter the room, sleep hanging over their faces like a cloud as they tiredly greeted him. It was at least a sign for him to get up and start training, bringing his bowl to the kitchen and washing it off before making his way outside.

Here and there he would feel the vibration of his phone, quickly texting Toga back before sliding it back into his pocket, feeling a little bit happy each time. A small smile was like permanently carved onto his face, no matter how hard he was pushing himself.

It was then, when he was about to go to school that Toga finally wrote her final:

"Keep thinking about me, Izuuuu~ 😍"

Before she went to bed, leaving Deku to feel strangely... empty. As if to say goodbye to a friend at the end of the day. Like Bakugo used to when they were small... that thought just added a little bit more punch to the feeling... Even if maybe it was a tiny bit different.

For a moment, he pondered on it, trying to understand what was going on inside himself before he just slid the phone into his pocket and made his way back to his room and went about his day from there.

It was probably not the best idea to train now, that his mind was racing still from the interaction he just had, but he couldn't exactly skip today either. By the time he was finished with the training and got ready for school, his workout wasn't the only thing left that kept a healthy red glow on his cheeks.

At least a quick jump into the shower, helped him cool down a little. As shocking as stepping under the cold shower was, it did wonders for his mind. From there it started off as another day at school. Another day of challenges and studying... And a little distraction in his pocket that Izuku couldn't wait for.

And the question most prominent in his mind: Would that start being a daily thing?

#BNHA #My hero academia #Boku no Hero #Fanfic #Deku #Toga #izuku midoriya #Toga Himiko #my writing

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storyunrelated · 3 years

Text

NaNo 2020 - Conclusions

So I didn’t finish this year. Whatever. Any time I have quote-unquote ‘finished’ it’s been a steaming pile of shit anyway, so did I really lose anything? Did I? Really?

No, the answer is no.

But did I learn anything?

No, the answer is no. Again.

What ideas bloomed this month though? Ideas that might charitably described as having sprung from NaNo in some way, shape or form?

Everywhere Be Dragons

The original idea that I abandoned. Schlock, standard sci-fi. Lasers and shit. A retired man and his electronic friend who is presently in the robotic body of a bird go off to try and find out who injured his nephew. Turns out its some guy from some podunk evil space empire with a sword that can some summon chrome space dragons that can fly through space or some shit. Whatever. Garbage garbage garbage

Here’s a bit. The first lines, in fact:

Alarmingly naked, David Bellamy strode up to the largest of his windows and flung back the curtains to let what he hoped was the glorious sunshine of another sedate, mellow day flow in and bathe his more personal regions.

Being a man of leisure now he had the time available to do this sort of thing.

Awful.

Anyway, next.

And now for something completely different

Some admin schlub who works for a nebulous evil organisation ala SPECTRE is tasked with sourcing twenty-five red, plastic wallets by next week. It should be easy. It is not easy.

This was a very threadbare idea based on something I actually had to do, leading rather naturally to the thought “Wouldn’t this mind-numbing task be funnier if it was happening in an evil organisation?”. High-concept stuff.

Here’s a bit:

“Why am I doing this? This isn’t anything to do with me?”

“It’s nothing to do with me, either, but they passed it to me and I’m passing it to you. I’m higher up than you so now it has something to do with you. It is, in fact, now your problem.”

“What happened to Bill anyway?”

“Dead.”

“Dead?”

“Yeah, him and a bunch of others. Whole chunk of procurement, in fact. Super agents, last month.”

“What had procurement ever done to them?”

“I don’t think they were aiming for there specifically, they just got in the way. Think they were trying to hit the weather control department - they’re underneath them.”

“Oh yeah, yeah. Poor bastards.”

“Yes, well, now you’re here to carry on their fine work. Next week. Red. Sort it out.”

“But-”

“You’re a resourceful man, I’m sure you can manage.”

That’s literally all I did before I got bored.

Next!

Bad Wizards

I was reading about The Sword of Truth and I was reading about how Confessors worked in The Sword of Truth and it was this super-weird combination of an absolutely terrifying sounding power being the implications of which were ignored in a super-weird way.

Basically a whole class of women can ENSLAVED ANYONE THEY TOUCH FOREVER and this ability isn’t something they use it’s something they have to concentrate NOT TO USE and the purpose of this class of women is to...

...basically go around and brainwash/murder anyone they deem isn’t being honest and good. Oh, and they decide who’s honest and good. And there’s no question that they’re honest and good.

Oh and there’s no men with this power. Why? Because any male infants born with this power are murdered by their brainwashed loveslaves ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS.

Very odd. Very very odd. But easy fodder for villains, so I just thought “What about people being charged with coming up with ways of trying to fix this or go against it?”.

Then I did a bit where two guys are visiting a dead guy in a dead city. I don’t know why.

Much to his displeasure Percival was once again accompanying First to the city of Erhart, home to the court of Baldric the Everliving. Percival did not like the court of Baldric the Everliving. He didn’t much like Erhart, either.

He did not like the silence, the utter and complete silence. He did not like that, despite all of the citizens having died, there were no bodies anywhere, nor even a hint of violence or struggle to mark their passing.

(Not that heaps of corpses would have made him feel better, obviously, but knowing that they had died it was eerie not seeing so much as an upset teacup to indicate that this might have been the case. It just didn’t seem fair to them, somehow. Like they’d passed on without a fuss, without so much as a whimper.)

He did not like the way the empty windows seemed to stare at him. He did not like the way the streets were so dusty. A dirty street he might have been able to understand, but to have such a layer of dust, lying as thick as snow, untouched by the elements, undisturbed by any living footfall other than their own periodic visits - it just made him uncomfortable.

Everything about Erhart made him uncomfortable, frankly, from the mere thought of it, up through the physical reality of it all the way to the ruler of it, who he was going to have to go and talk to. Again. Nothing about this day was good for Percival.

BORING! NEXT!

Worse wizards

Uh, another idea, less related to anything else I was reading - I think? - but more, uh, what if there was a horrific ruling class of magical people who were for all intents and purposes utterly untouchable.

Can kill you soon as look as you, mess around with your brain and your body just for kicks, come back from death easy as anything and only get more powerful as the years go on. One of them has a huge tower held up solely by their willpower, whatever. They’re a horrible, immovable fixed point in society.

Then one day mechanisms and techniques start showing up that can kill them and ignore their powers. Just out of nowhere. And these methods are super-simple to do and also start to spread.

What happens?

Lame lame lame lame lame.

“Did all of you miss what I told you at the start? The nature of what was used to kill Dennis?”

Blank looks. They had listened, but they had promptly forgot. It hadn’t seemed important.

That it was important and that this should have been obvious had passed them by. John gritted his teeth and straightened up, reaching around to a nearby trolley and - carefully - picked up a kidney-shaped dish resting on it and bringing it around so they could all see its contents. In the dish rattled several small, dark, sharp bits of what sounded to be metal. These the wizards peered at.

“He was killed by something that not only ignored his magical protections and ignored them completely, might I add, but which also then drained his body of even the merest trace of magic and severed whatever connection there might have been between his mortal shell here and anything beyond the material. Did you listen that time? Would you like me to say it again? Would you like me to go slower?”

More blank looks, though some were starting to get less blank. Some were getting confused. Some were getting worried. They’d actually paid attention this time.

What was I THINKING?!

Indulgence

This was me just doing a re-write of one of my secret, shameful pieces of fanfiction, with the fanfiction elements removed. Because why not?

[REDACTED]

Nope, not even a little bit.

Stupid! Next!

N/A

Some random thing in first person about following some rambling lady across some bridges and getting some weird book I don’t fucking know.

Where did all this water come from, anyway? And where did it go? I could see the vast lakes below us, of course, stretching off as they did towards wherever these caverns terminated, but did those lakes drain anywhere? The flow of water from above never ceased, and yet the levels below never rose. What maintained this equilibrium? Or was the scale involved simply so great that no change could ever or would ever be observed?

I do wonder why I wonder about these things sometimes. The answers to these questions wouldn’t benefit me in any way.

Yet still I wonder.

Who ccaaaaaarrreeeessss? Next!

Delicious Godmeat

A long, long time ago in some faraway land in another universe or whatever there was some vague, vaguely benevolent overgod. They had of children and they looked after all the normal people and blah blah all was well.

One day those children decided to devour their parent and split up their power between them, so they could care out their own little demenses and rule things the way they thought they should. So that happened.

However, the biggest, juicest bit of godly meat went missing somehow, much to their chagrin. They looked and looked but they never found it. Because it fell through time and space in a way that’ll never be explained, and ended up here. And now, by accident, some random young lady touched it.

Whoops! You’ve got a chunk of a dead god stuck inside you now! Better go free the land of those rapaciously evil children, absorb their power and try to bring some goodness back to this land! Whatever that means! Figure it out! You’re basically a demigod now!

Have fun battling the alien feelings of a dead deity and an ever-increasing level of godlike power!

“Sooner or later you’re going to have to make a choice knowing that whatever choice it is you end up making it is going to make a lot of people very, very upset with you.”

“Can I just do nothing?”

“Sadly, no. Someone in your position chooses not to decide, that’s still making a choice.”

“Gah! I can’t win!”

CONCLUSIONS

Awful. Awful awful awful awful. They’re all awful. They’re all terribly. Sweet Jesus what a waste of time, every last one of these is a stinking, rancid turd now fouling my Google Docs with their stench. Awful awful awful.

Know what’s missing in all of these? Well, lots of things, but you know what crucial element hobbles each and every one of them from right out of the gate?

No fucking characters! Just a half-baked idea shoved out and left to die in the sun! No-one involved I give even the merest whiff of a shit about! Not a one! And no situation I care about either! None of these do anything for me! They leave me cold! And everyone in them leaves me colder! Frozen!

A setting isn’t worth shit if you’ve got no-one to do anything with it! Settings just sit there, inert, characters make it happen! Characters make the story! AND YOU’VE GOT NO CHARACTERS YOU WORTHLESS SHITHEAD! YOU’VE GOT NOTHING! JUST THE SAME WORDY BASTARDS OVER AND OVER AGAIN! JUST A THOUSAND COPIES OF YOU! I HATE ME! THAT’S USELESS!

I’m dead inside now!

Well, deader than I was before!

Awful! Awful awful! Eurgh!

Oh well! Same time next year!

#NaNo 2020 #NaNoWriMo #Amwriting #Writblr #Writeblr #Writing

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elopez7228 · 4 years

Text

Scenic Route 18/47

Read on AO3 : https://archiveofourown.org/works/18268208/chapters/43229774

Start over : https://elopez7228.tumblr.com/post/620919089893933056/scenic-route-0147

***

“Fucking hell!” Ben yelled as his coffee mug shattered against the bedroom wall.

Rey had left the premises. Yesterday he’d had her, in every sense of the word, and this morning she had turned on him. He had been this close—this fucking close—to getting her to trust him for good.

To getting into her panties you mean, snarked his subconscious, cause that would turn out so well.

Yeah, well so what? We’re both consenting adults here. What’s wrong with a little pleasure now and then?

It was Syed who sounded the alarm. As reckless and undisciplined as she was, she was still his best Knight of Ren. He would hate to fire her, even though he would not hesitate to do it, if necessary.

She had called him at three in the morning to inform him that Rey Jakku had repacked her car and left the parking lot; hitting the road again in record time.

Syed had followed yet again, evidently taking her assignment seriously. At least he would always know where his mystery girl was hiding.

On the other hand, he had just lost one of his guitarists for the concert this evening, which annoyed him more than he wanted to admit. But the advantage of having seven band members was that they could afford to run a few errands and still keep the show running.

Hayat and Neil, his two-person light and sound crew, would roll up in their van any minute now to set up the venue. The entire day would be devoted to equipment tests and a rapid dress-rehearsal of the set list, a task even more essential in the absence of Syed. Ben would have preferred to take his car and follow Rey, join her, tell her he was sorry—or whatever it would take to convince her to come back—and resume exactly where they had left off the day before.

She’d talked about following them on tour. Would she follow through?

His phone rang, the screen displaying a stern visage with a severely parted red combover.

Hux.

"Ren.” He uttered curtly, putting the phone up to his ear.

“Hello, Kylo. How are your holidays going?”

“Even on vacation I'm more efficient than you’ll ever be in the office. Let’s just say it’s going well.”

“Where are you?”

“We’re rehearsing for tonight's concert, the weather is nice and the hot tub is fantastic.” Ben replied with a smirk, knowing full well that Armitage Hux detested distractions.

The latter gave an exasperated sigh, as expected. "For fuck’s sake, I’m not the Yellowstone Tourism Office—I'm talking about your mission!”

“And what, exactly, do you want to know about my mission?”

“What are you doing and with whom? Did you get information on what Earth Soldiers is planning?”

"Are you saying you and Snoke are floundering?” Ben laughed. “Don’t you have an army of spies, and twice as many lawyers? How is my mother managing to outmaneuver you?”

"When I'm done with your mother, you'll have to pick her out of the gutter, Ren.”

"You’re all talk," Ben chuckled. “I feel like she’s playing with your head.”

There was a long silence filled only by Hux’s agitated breathing. His final response was venomous.”Exactly which side are you on? You seem to enjoy our setbacks a little too much.”

“I’m on my side,” he responded, “and I answer to Snoke and Snoke alone. Pay attention to your own mission and leave me to mine.”

He hung up without waiting for an answer. He knew what Hux was looking for: he wanted to know everything about Earth Soldiers' latest spy, Rey Jakku. But Ben would not give him anything of such importance. Rey was his mission, his target, his prize. Phasma had missed her chance. Too bad for her—From now on, Rey was his. And soon enough, she would be his in every sense of the word.

His phone vibrated again with a new call. This time, Ben's smile dissipated. It was Snoke.

“Sir?”

“Kylo Ren. I was waiting for a report from you this morning. Have I missed it by mistake? Because I don’t make mistakes.”

“No sir. I —I didn’t send one.”

“And you will send it to me at the end of this call, I suppose?”

“No sir.”

“Explain yourself.”

Snoke’s barely audible voice had lost its saccharine undertones. Ben inhaled deeply before uttering his next words.

“The—the girl escaped me. But I’m tracking her as we speak, I know exactly where she is and what she’s doing.”

“What exactly is your strategy, Kylo Ren? Follow her like a good little pet and contentedly snap up whatever pieces of information she deigns to give you?”

“No, I—I’m in control of the situation, sir.” Ben stammered, taken aback. “I will soon extract the information we need from her.”

Snoke had really gone for the kill. His strategy, which had been flawless as far as his argument with Hux was concerned, suddenly seemed doomed to fail.

Snoke continued: "Stop beating around the bush, Kylo Ren. Find her. Demand answers. Make it so. I want to know what she's scheming, her connection to Earth Soldiers, and especially whatever it is she has with Leia Skywalker.”

Ben Solo shuddered at hearing his mother's name laced with so much hatred. She hadn’t always been a good mother; she had rarely listened, and she had been far too absent. But she remained his mother, and she largely paid the price for his indiscretions, condemned to die of old age in solitude under her prefabricated tin roof. He clenched his fist and took another breath.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Oh, and Kylo Ren?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Stop blundering about like a teenage boy. She's the one manipulating you here. Enough games; I demand results.”

Ben frowned. Blundering? He hadn’t let anything slip, he was sure. He feigned ignorance:

“I fail to see what you're talking about, sir. I have the situation under control.”

"Don’t you dare lie to me, Kylo Ren. Do not forget what you owe me.”

“I won’t forget, sir.”

“Good. I'll call you back soon.”

And with that, he hung up.

Seconds later, he received a series of text messages from Snoke’s personal number. He selected the first, puzzled.

His heart skipped a beat.

It was a picture of him and Rey from the day before, passionately making out against a wall at the bar. His right hand disappeared under her dress and hers was visibly splayed against his fly.

There’s your blunder, Solo. How did Snoke find them? Who took these pictures?

Behind the wheel of her SUV, Syed drained a can of Red Bull and crushed the empty aluminium vessel between her fingers. She had hardly slept thanks to this wild goose chase of a mission. Just yesterday she had found herself forced to trudge through a six mile hike (off the main trail too, so as not to alert Jane Doe or her dog) after which she had to use her gun to chase off a bear...how was one girl able to cause her so much fatigue?

And it was a fucking bear, no less. It had taken all her concentration, all her will, to just aim close enough to hurt the bear to make it run away without a fatal injury—even as an assassin in the service of a nebulous multinational conglomerate, she was unwilling to kill a bear for no reason. Or kill the girl. At least by accident.

Definitely by accident.

It would have been so easy. An isolated bullet, fired from her vantage point atop the rocks, and the corpse would have been found three days later.

No more spy hunting, no more love triangles. Kylo would mourn for a few days of course, frustrated at not being able to add her to the notches on his bedpost, but she would console him instead, and everything would be back to normal.

Who was she kidding? Kylo would have immediately understood, and he would have killed her. Maybe literally, even. He would have resorted to making her life hell, or putting an end to it. He wouldn’t even need to get his hands dirty. An order to Shakti, or Skylar, and Syed would have had no chance. It would be impossible to face six knights alone.

"Patience," she repeated to herself. "The time will come, the girl will step out of his life, and everything will go back to normal. And you, you will shine in your devotion, he will respect even more, and he will come back to you.”

She had been surprised to see Rey tear herself away from Kylo's embrace the night before. As it were, she had expected her to fuck him on the spot.

But no, something had happened, Rey had adjusted her dress before striding off. Did Kylo say something stupid? That would be typical of him...all his bravado was a front.

Rey had returned to her car, and Syed had thought she was about to lose her mark. By the time she found her own vehicle, she had no idea what direction the Falcon had taken.

But she managed to find it at a campsite fifteen minutes later. Rey was huddled in a sweatshirt while crying her eyes out over the phone. Syed could only hear bits and pieces, but she was able to glean that Rey was calling contacts in England: her mother, a girlfriend, and a guy named Poe. Nothing of grand importance to FORCE, and not in connection with Earth Soldiers.

She was either the best spy Syed had ever encountered, or the most incompetent person in history. Perhaps this Rey debacle was a red herring, a little fantasy whipped up by the cunning Leia Skywalker. She knew FORCE hated the Millennium Falcon, the unofficial mascot of their resistance crew. It was genius, really. Put a no-name extra in there and have her drive aimlessly across the country. All the while FORCE mobilized an army of agents to track her, and Ren’s team spent precious time investigating a trap. Time that Skywalker spent plotting with her counsel. It was just a diversion.

Brilliant.

Nevertheless, there was only one way to find out for sure, and for that she had to keep spying on the girl, hour by hour.

Said girl refused to sleep, opting instead to take the road north. Access to Yellowstone was closed at night, so Rey had stopped at a nearby gas station to refuel, buy a coffee and a cold-cut sandwich, and take a nap in the back of her car.

She entered Yellowstone National Park at 9:30 AM, through the south gate. Syed followed, finding herself inching through the morning line, a few vehicles away. She cradled her face in her hands.

Yellowstone, really? Did Rey intend to engage in actual tourism?!

And why not? Rey was tired. Tired of having slept too little, tired of being alone, tired of having no one to talk to. As she drove through the national park in the direction of the Tourist Information Center and the infamous Old Faithful geyser, she wondered what she was fleeing, who she was fleeing.

Her mind kept coming back to Ben Solo. To his mouth, to his hands, to the outline of his body that she had been able to trace under his clothes. Why then was she running away? Finn had left her, after all; how long should she grieve what she had before?

She had admitted to Jessika yesterday how she had clung to Ben like a life raft against the tide of her own loneliness. But it had been too fast, too intense. She seemed to panic at the thought of having to let him go one day. It was the sinking sort of anxiety that had clung to her bones since childhood, the fear of being unloved, never good enough for her absentee parents who worked such long hours that they barely had time for her. It had been the same with Finn, she clung to him so desperately that she never saw the signs, however obvious they appeared in hindsight.

And eventually, Finn had rejected her too. Then she had left, alone, as if to prove to herself that she was capable of it; and had thrown herself—with an almost laughable sense of relief— into the arms of the next man she encountered.

Ben Solo seen through her very soul when he observed, aloud, that she feared loneliness. Was she so easy to read?

BB8 squeaked her toy and Rey smiled. She was never truly alone. She was the guardian of this adorable fur ball, and she was going to bring her back to her master, wherever he was hiding. It was simple: take care of the dog, bring her home. That she could do. At least then she was of use to someone.

On the passenger seat, her phone vibrated. Rey reached out and grabbed it without letting go of the steering wheel. A new text appeared on her lock screen.

It was Ben.

Sorry for last night, I hope he gets better and I hope you’re feeling better too. Will you make the concert tonight? Call me.

⁃Kylo

She made a face, he really had to sign it as Kylo.

What a bloody ridiculous stage name.

Rey had the feeling she was witnessing a veritable identity crisis: On one hand there was Ben Solo, the sentimental stranger who commiserated in her loneliness and wanted to befriend her dog. On the other there was Kylo Ren, the arrogant, leather clad rockstar who would kiss and tell, with absolutely no strings attached.

Who was she out with last night?

Which one of them did she kiss?

She wouldn’t go to the concert she decided, she didn’t feel like answering him either. But she knew his next show was going to be at West Yellowstone in two days.

In the meantime, she would have plenty of time to ruminate.

#Reylo #Fanfiction #scenic route #Modern AU

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bookenders · 5 years

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Good Metaphor, Bad Metaphor, Who’s to Say?

I’ve seen some advice posts about this goin’ around and thought I’d add my two cents.

[All images in this post are line breaks.]

What is a Metaphor?

A metaphor is a literary device wherein one thing is compared to/equated with another without using the words “like” or “as.” So, rather than saying “it was hard to get to know her,” one might say “she was a closed book.”

What Makes a Metaphor Good or Bad?

Good - fits tone/narrative voice, often in character, tells us something, accurate

Bad - inaccurate, cliché, forced, does not fit with the tone/theme

In simple terms, good metaphors aren’t noticed (or, rather, noticed in a good way) and flow with the rest of the writing. Bad metaphors don’t work and take the reader out of the story.

It’s like puzzle pieces. The blue goes in the sky, not the lava.

[Continued below the cut:]

Basic examples of in character metaphors (ft. my improvised prose):

If I’m writing about a person who loves space, their pulse would skyrocket, their thoughts would orbit one topic, their confusion would be nebulous, and their smiles would burn bright like distant stars.

If I’m writing about an accountant who was passionate about their job and hated art, I wouldn’t say that they did things in broad strokes, or painted their paperwork with the sweat of their brow, or minded their calculations as a modern Michelangelo, everything planned and ready to bleed black and white on paper canvas.

I’d say that their mind clacked through figures the way a gray matter abacus operates, exacting and precise. I’d say they held their clients’ futures in their Atlas hands, dedicated to keep them afloat in uncertain times.

[I’m gonna look at accurate and tonal metaphors in a minute, so hang in there until then, because they need context to be understood.]

BUT.

Because there’s always a but.

If you’re consistent, it can work out just fine.

It’s all about tone and mood, really. If you’re writing about trees, don’t compare everything to race cars unless your character is a former driver who is now a lumberjack trying to fit in and make sense of his new job, or you compare everything to race cars. That sort of thing.

Douglas Adams can write Douglas Adams metaphors because that’s his absurdist style of humor. Unless the voice of your story is like that, or your POV character thinks that way, it’s probably best that you don’t pepper in absurdist/surreal metaphors.

Okay, But How Do You Write a Good Metaphor?

If I had the answer to that, I’d never need to edit my work again.

But let’s take a stab at it, eh?

To reiterate, a good metaphor is accurate, is fitting of the tone/voice, reveals information, reveals character, and/or echoes the theme of the story.

Alrighty, let’s look at some good metaphors (in my opinion, anyway) and examine why they’re good:

“Every night I stunned myself with gin.” (Jac Jemc, “A Violence”)

First of all, it’s accurate. I can see it in my head even without knowing the exact context. Getting black-out drunk is a sort of stunning. There’s a “person vs. self” conflict in the story, as well, and a theme of self-punishment, which this metaphor mirrors. That’s what makes it work: it’s accurate, flows with the tone and theme, and doesn’t pull you out of the story. You read it and think, “yeah, that fits, that makes sense.”

On a side note, if you wanna take a look at acoustics really quickly, there are all those elongated “n” sounds that bring a numbing sensation to the sentence, like your tongue is falling asleep just reading the words. It’s practically a borderline hum.

This metaphor works because it is accurate, mirrors the story’s theme, and reveals information about the character and their relation to their world.

“Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the exit of the rest, // You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.” (Walt Whitman, “I Sing the Body Electric”)

Poetry is a little different than prose in this case, but it is also where some stellar metaphors can be found, since poetry is a true home of figurative language. I mean, look at these lines. A woman is the creator of life, the bearer of life, and the exit of life. “The gates of the body,” going in and out. Gates of the soul, finding and leaving. It’s all a bunch of very clever ways to refer to a woman’s sexuality and body separately, but also at the same time.

He calls attention to both the concrete, with gates, and the abstract, with the soul and rest. Which is what the entire poem is doing. He’s “singing the body electric,” praising all the body can be in both an physical and metaphysical sense.

This metaphor works because it is accurate, tells you how the speaker feels/reveals character, and fits the narrative tone.

“It surprised [the protagonist] how fond he had been of his teeth. His tongue, a flat sleek seal, used to flop and slide so happily among the familiar rocks, checking the contours of a battered but still secure kingdom, plunging from cave to cove, climbing this jag, puzzling that notch, finding a shred of sweet seaweed in the same old cleft; but now not a landmark remained, and all there existed was a great dark wound, a terra incognita of gums which dread and disgust forbade one to investigate.” (Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin)

I admit, I love Nabokov’s writing. And look how gorgeous this is. Now, I haven’t read this novel so I don’t know the context, but this is an excellent extended metaphor (which means it’s a metaphor that goes on for a while and explores several different aspects of the comparison).

A tongue as a “flat sleek seal”? Accurate, visceral, visual. The following description mimics the motions a tongue makes when running over the teeth, picking things out of them, examining them from the inside. “Finding a shred of sweet seaweed in the same old cleft” is like finding something between your teeth. And when a tooth is pulled, it does feel like something great and wide is missing. A “terra incognita of gums” - the undiscovered area, what was hidden from your tongue’s previous explorations and a place you don’t really want to touch because it’s weird and kinda gross now.

This metaphor works because it’s accurate, echoes the theme of the passage, and tells you something about this character and the way they feel.

“Put out the light, and then put out the light: If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me: but once put out thy light, Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature, I know not where is that Promethean heat That can thy light relume.”

William Shakespeare, Othello v.ii

Let’s get classical for a minute. This is one of my personal favorite Shakespeare metaphors. I’ll take this one beat-by-beat because Middle English.

The first line refers to both the lantern he’s holding and Desdemona (his wife’s) life. First he puts out the flame he’s using to see, then he kills her. He goes on to say that if he puts out the light that is the flame, he can light it again no problem, but he can’t do the same with her life. This is the point of no return for him.

The extended metaphor here is the candle and light. There’s fire language (flaming, quench, heat, light, relume, etc.) and direct comparisons to said fire. And we have a direct allusion to the story of Prometheus, the Greek titan who created humans and stole fire from the gods to give to them, with “Promethean heat.” Putting out a candle = putting out the light of her life, the fire gifted by Prometheus, but Othello can’t light it again because he is not Prometheus and cannot find it again. There’s also a running theme of passion throughout the play, and what happens when passion is stoked too high (there’s another metaphor for ya) and spirals out of control.

This is also an example of how a cliché can work in your favor. There’s no direct reference to passion in this passage, but passion is often compared to heat and fire. By using fire as a comparison for life, Willy is using that cliché to his advantage by allowing the audience to connect life and passion via this metaphor. Clever, yeah?

The metaphor works because it’s accurate, it fits the tone, and echoes Othello’s character.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, shoot me a message! I’m always happy to help!

Some extra sources if you’re looking for a more in-depth look at metaphors and more examples:

Metaphor: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

How to Avoid Clichés and Bad Metaphors

Grammarly: What Is A Metaphor? (Also Metaphor vs Simile)

Want more original fiction? Take a gander at my original writing tag and my short stories tag!

For writing advice and observations, check out my advice tag.

Want info on my WIPs? Have a look-see at my WIP page!

Do you like the way I put words together? Consider buying me a Ko-Fi! (Link in my blog description!)

Want to be added to my original fiction tag or my WIP tags? Let me know! 😊

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aconitemare · 5 years

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[jaydick - flash fic: Valentine Crime] Pink Lovers

AO3

Summary: “I love you,” Dick whispers against their mouths. Then his head pulls back and slams into Jason’s.

A Valentine's Fay Festival hands out a batch of the Joker's version of candy hearts: drugs that cause lovers to become violently obsessed with each other. Jason has better things to do than pop candy on Hallmark holidays, but Ordinary Guy Ric Grayson clearly does not.

“I love you. I love you. I love you. I love — augh!” The man’s saccharine chant is cut short by a gun cracking against his skull. His body goes limp and Jason catches him before he can hit the asphalt of Park Row Hospital’s employee parking lot. Across from them, an older woman in a lab coat presses herself against a Honda. Her blonde hair escapes in wisps from her toppling bun, glasses askew on her thin nose.

Jason looks at her through his helmet. “This your boy?” he asks. She shakes her head in a negative reply although her eyes remain transfixed on her assailant. She looks like a rabbit about to hightail it out of the meadow.

Jason adjusts the man in his arms, the attackers’ balding head lolling backwards. Jason peels the man’s eyelids back. They’re exactly what he expects: scleras an unnatural pink, a shade reminiscent of Pepto-Bismol. Red veins web outwards, spindly and swollen. In the center are the pupils blown wide enough to swallow the iris, inky black and forming a nebulous heart as if someone had painted it in with watercolor.

“He’s just a work friend,” the doctor explains.

Jason releases the eyelid. “I don’t think he got the memo,” he informs as he gets to work on binding the man’s wrists and ankles.

“He’s not like this. I’ve known him for years, he’s — ”

“Do me a favor, doc.” Jason hefts the man over his shoulders. “Go straight home. Unless you live with your partner, then check into a hotel and don’t talk to anyone who’s not family. No responding to texts, no Snapchatting, just stay inside until the news says it’s safe to be a person again.”

The doctor nods slowly, expression numb with shock. “There was something about this on Channel 4, wasn’t there? I caught some of it, but I’ve been so busy — I wasn’t really… ” she trails off.

Jason sighs; he’s had this conversation several times today. “Latest Joker hijinks.” He runs her through the spiel: a little over an hour ago, candy hearts were handed out at the Valentine’s Day Festival occurring uptown. Everyone who had some soon became violently obsessed with their beaus. At a festival targeting couples, most of the infected didn’t stray very far before getting apprehended on-sight. Trouble is, not everyone was with the one they love and those lonely hearts are left to seemingly attack at random.

Not everyone wears their heart on their sleeve. Or some just can’t see the obvious.

“I don’t think I’m that popular to get another attack,” says the doctor with a breathy, frazzled laugh. Jason merely shrugs.

“Don’t sell yourself short.” He leans towards her. “Seriously. Don’t risk it. It was a big festival; who knows who was there,” he adds more lightly. He leaves her to get in her car and do whatever she’s going to do. His own car is hastily parked from when he spotted the two earlier. He drops the man and pops the trunk to the sight of one of the pink-eyed crazies woken up and squirming around. Jason prepares some anesthesia and injects the needle into the throbbing vein of pinkie’s throat. Then he repeats the process with the new guy to be safe and dumps him in the trunk.

Robin’s voice filters through the com. “I’ve taken down four pink-lovers thus far,” he brags.

Jason snorts. Over the com, he says, “I’ve bagged five.”

“No, you haven’t,” Robin scoffs.

“More the merrier, boys,” Oracle interrupts, buried laughter deepening her voice. “We appreciate your help, Hood,” she says like a kindergarten teacher rewarding the bad kid for class participation.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s my city, too. And you’re down a dick,” he justifies. The bats all keep tabs on “Ric” the best they can, which admittedly hasn’t been difficult considering Ric’s life is remarkably routine for a vagrant. Jason pays him a visit every now and then. It’s plain Dick is regaining memories; nowhere near as many as the bats would like, but any amount has Ric tensing up suddenly during their (infrequent, sometimes fun, often frigid) conversations and running off.

“How’s that antidote coming?” Jason asks. He should probably get going; the goal is to deliver the pink-lovers to the batcave for treatment, picking up any strays along the way. It’s boring as shit. The infected are rabid but ultimately still ordinary people easily taken out. It feels more like a weirdly festive scavenger hunt than an actual mission.

“Finished, but questionable,” Oracle answers. “Joker basically built upon an earlier bioweapon of his maniacal invention, so we’re hardly fumbling in the dark here but… without a rational human test subject, we can’t in good conscience administer the serum to the pink-lovers we have — ”

“Strapped and ready?” says Jason. He removes his helmet and the pack of cigarettes from his pocket, considers smoking one just to delay inevitably being in the same room as Batman, and then shoves the pack back in his jacket. He gets behind the wheel instead, leaving his helmet on the passenger seat. “Just pop one of the candy hearts and then test the antidote on yourself.” The engine purrs with the press of a button.

Oracle’s response is not immediate. When it does come it sounds reluctant and somewhat distracted. “That’s what we may end up having to do, yeah. Everyone’s on reconnaissance at the moment, but I guess whoever drops off the next batch of pink-lovers wins a special candy heart.” Jason drives down the road slower than his foot itches to go. He needs to keep an eye any signs of dispute from festival stragglers. “You’re not volunteering, I take it?” he says idly.

Oracle laughs over the com. It’s sharp, almost painful, in his earpiece. “I’m way too important to risk, Hood, you know that,” she quips. “More to the point, I’m not in love. At least, that’s my guess as to why I didn’t go all cray-cray when I did pop a candy heart. I then suggested Batman take one — he just tensed up and ran off into the night. Well, early afternoon.”

Movement from a third-story apartment window catches his eye. “Way to take one for the team,” he murmurs, slowing down and craning his neck.

Batman, as it turns out, is not one to let his good name be sullied because he growls over the com, “If the toxin does have an effect on me and the antidote does not work, that leaves fewer eyes on the streets which, if you have not noticed, are littered with intoxicated citizens cognitively closer to homing pigeons than human beings.”

“It’s true,” Robin vouches. “I just witnessed one get hit by a car because their partner was across the street.”

“Robin.”

“She’s fine. I escorted her to the nearest hospital and told them to get the straps until we have distributed the antidote,” he defends primly. Meanwhile, Jason tries to parse out the body language of the exposed couple. One’s arms extend; another’s push them away. Playful or hostile? Playful or hostile? Jason muses.

Now Red Robin chimes in, in his usual world-weary tone, “These pink-lovers are more dangerous to themselves than to their targets. They’re out of it — like, totally vacant. The Joker stayed on-brand for this one.”

Jason dismisses the movement as innocent as the couple embraces. His eyes return to the road in time to see a man standing there dumbly. Jason has his foot on the brake too late and his heart lurches into his throat, his stomach following suit. Then the man leaps onto the hood of Jason’s car. The wheels stop abruptly and the man must overcompensate for the force, because instead of being thrown off, his head bashes against the windshield.

This all happens within — a second, two? — three at most. The next second, a car blares its horn angrily before briefly swerving into the other lane to pass him. Jason registers this only distantly. He’s focused on the familiar face of the man clutching his forehead, eyes Pepto-pink and staring into Jason’s. Blood escapes the press of his fingers, collecting at the dip of his broken nose before trailing onto his cheeks.

Jason pulls over; a task that is mildly complicated by the asshole sticking to his windshield like a bug. He practically kicks the door open. His concern, that sick twist of worry in his gut, is feeding into his agitation. As if gathering kindling, Jason’s mind runs through how this happened. The idiot clearly was at the Valentine’s Day Festival. Of course he was; he’s not Nightwing with a checkered love life or a full plate of crises to resolve. He’s just Ric, an ordinary guy with an ordinary job and an ordinary girlfriend to attend silly festivals with. Happily living out his new life as a passive civilian: a victim waiting to happen.

Jason is barely out of the car when Dick jumps him. His hands fist into Jason’s collar, trying to shove him back in the car with brute strength. It’s considerable strength, too, considering the months of disuse as a cabbie. But beyond that strength, Dick doesn’t attempt to maneuver him and Jason’s knees don’t buckle. “Get off,” he grunts, seizing Dick’s arms.

“But I love you.”

The phrase hits him like a blow to the chest. Jason looks at Dick, really looks at him. There’s an ugly bleeding gash across his forehead above his angular eyebrows — one now sporting a fashionable slit — and his black hair is growing back fuzzy. Last week Dick’s fingers clasped Jason’s wrist as he laughingly guided Jason to pet the top of his soft head. Today Dick grins joylessly at him, any trace of his baby blues wiped out by the Joker. Jason’s heart sinks with the weighty meaninglessness of Dick’s confession.

He doesn’t want to look at Dick’s face anymore and forces him to face the other direction. “Jason,” Dick says. His name sounds so clear, so conscious on Dick’s tongue. It doesn’t sound like the Joker. But then Dick repeats, “I love you.”

Anger strikes Jason whip-fast. I love you is sacrilege coming from this body that belongs more to the Joker — more to Ric — than the man who should’ve said it. Maybe Dick would even have had reason to say it from the scraps of their lives he and Jason managed to share together, between all the hatred and the death, the lies and disappearances and new identities. Jason still isn’t sure if that’s what he’s been wanting from Dick, some verbal confirmation of a felt truth, but it’s irrelevant now. Another thing the Joker has taken from them.

Jason swings Dick around harder than necessary and pins him against the car. He knows it’s a waste of time but still stares into that manic pink, searching desperately for something. He wants some remnant of Dick Grayson to peer at him through those unnatural pupils, make itself known through a sliver of sky-blue iris or a flicker of intelligence. Inky hearts watch him back.

Jason is caught off guard by the legs that wind around his waist. Dick’s ankles cross together and bring Jason closer. Their heartbeats travel from one chest to the other. Jason just stands there, dumb, between Dick’s thighs until he can actually feel Dick’s heartbeat adjust to his.

Dick rests his forehead against Jason’s. Jason stops breathing. Dick’s lips touch his but don’t press in. “I love you,” Dick whispers against their mouths. Then his head pulls back and slams into Jason’s. Pain reverberates through his skull in a hot pulsing motion. He releases Dick automatically, but Dick merely stumbles forward in his own pain. Jason catches him only to violently throw him to the ground and rush to the car.

Jason retrieves a shot from his anesthetics kit while Dick clatters to the asphalt like a finished wind-up toy. Jason pops the trunk as Dick rises again and tries to wrench Jason bodily the ground. He resists Dick well enough, but does briefly lose his footing. Dick knocks the needle from his hand. “I love you,” Dick chants. “I love you. I love you. I lov — ”

Jason barrels towards him. “Shut up!” he shouts. He topples Dick over. The two grapple on the cement, Jason twisting Dick’s arm. Dick cries out but otherwise remains focused on getting the upper-hand. Dick attempts to gouge his eyeball out. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Jason seethes, catching Dick’s wrist and snapping it in a flash of fury. Dick screams and Jason thinks there’s something to be said either for Gotham law enforcement or people’s reluctance to be on the streets that no one has grown curious about the Red Hood beating the shit out of some guy in broad daylight next to a trunk of unconscious bodies.

Business as usual, he guesses.

Jason quickly stands and dashes for the shot. Dick struggles to his feet with the broken wrist. He’s on Jason shortly, but his grip is weak and Jason is ready with the anesthesia. He whirls around and snatches Dick’s broken wrist. Dick curls inwards. It’s the opening Jason needs to plunge the shot into Dick’s arm. The reaction isn’t instantaneous. Nevertheless, Dick’s movements slow from wild animal to netted fish and his unnatural eyes drift shut.

Jason zipties him particularly well. He props Dick up, douses a cloth from the front seat with his water bottle, and gently dabs at the blood on his face. Jason’s anger softens to concern over how much pain Dick will be in when he wakes up. He tries not to picture him wincing awake beneath the bloody cloth as if from some ugly dream. Jason tries, first and foremost, not to want things Dick can’t give him.

The com alerts him that Batman has tested the candy heart and is under its effects. The antidote is being administered.

Bruce’s backseat-driving whilst being restrained turns out to be the real trial. The antidote’s guesswork is spot-on and the worst side-effect is the full body rash that covers Bruce and the other pink-lovers’ skin in red splotches. The bats are still in and out the cave, but most of them stay to help recover the victims. Barbara eventually wheels over to Dick and disinfects the soft hollow of his arm. As she does, she side-eyes Jason and asks, “So, how’d you find him? Attacking his hot new bartender girlfriend?”

It’s either weariness or bitterness that tingers her sarcasm a darker shade than usual. Jason doesn’t know her or her relationship with Dick well enough to tell which. He leans against the wall and watches her fasten a tourniquet around Dick. His nose has been reset and his head bandaged. The wrist is in a temporary velcro brace.

“Something like that,” murmurs Jason.

Barbara, ever vigilant, not only notices the word choice but doesn’t let it go. “Something like that? As in he was attacking someone else. Wasn’t he?”

Jason merely shrugs. He’d be content to leave it at that except he’d rather satisfy her with useless details than encourage her with silence. “I found him on the edge of downtown. He wasn’t attacking anyone, but the name he called for wasn’t Bea.” Jason drinks from his water bottle. “That’s all I’ll say. Ric’s made it clear he doesn’t want us prying.”

Whether Barbara wholly accepts this information, he can’t decipher. She’s concentrating on the needle sinking into Dick’s vein, her long red hair obscuring half her face as she ducks her head down. She does, however, argue in half-distraction, “No one, including you, has completely respected that.”

Jason neatly deflects the accusation. “That’s to make sure the idiot doesn’t get himself killed by enemies he can’t remember. Beyond that, what’s his life is his life. Not about to snitch on him to his ex-girlfriend.”

It’s a low blow, one which Barbara responds to with an icy gaze that holds onto Jason with cold, clinging fingers. Regardless, his jab has the intended result: Barbara drops the conversation and moves onto the next pink-lover without a word further.

Jason could help out with the injections, but no one directly asks him to and he’s feeling like he’s reached his quota for bat-cooperation. Instead he pulls up a chair next to Dick and stays on his phone to avoid seeming overly invested in Dick’s progress. With time, though, and the activity whirring around him, Jason does partly forget about the man passed out beside him. At least to the extent that he’s surprised to hear Dick’s voice — rusty with sleep but always, always possessing that slight musical lilt — announce, “I’m annoyed.”

Jason glances down. Dick’s eyes are more than Jason expects, which means he’s probably been awake for a few minutes. They’re also lucid blue, the only reminders of his mania existing in the bloodshot veins.

Dick’s throat swallows dryly. “I know,” he begins thickly, “I probably don’t have to be. From the looks of this creepy dark room brimming with people also strapped to gurneys, I’d say this has a chance of genuinely being a ridiculous coincidence that I ended up here.”

Jason wants to kiss Dick’s tired eyes and tell him to sleep until all the red is gone. He doubts that would go over well. Tentatively, he inquires, “Do you remember what happened? What you did to — get here?” he finishes lamely. Hopefully it doesn’t come off as blame-finding to Dick as it does to himself.

Dick licks his lips. “Some of it. Enough to know I probably have a lot of texts from Bea that I’ll put off longer than I should.” He laughs so thinly it could be a cough if not for the wry smile.

Jason considers laughing back, just as some knee-jerk social reaction, but he doesn’t feel up to it. He turns his phone absently around in his hands. “Yeah, well, don’t put her off too long. This situation isn’t what I’d call easily salvageable.”

Dick’s gaze slides towards him. Their eyes meet. Jason wishes he could read Dick like he knows Dick can read him. “What happened, Jason?”

So Jason tells him. Dick takes it all in, processing sluggishly. Jason nearly opens his phone for something to do when Dick cracks out a “wow.” The word is dry and scratchy, prompting Jason to unscrew the cap on his water bottle and hold it to Dick’s mouth. When he takes it away, Dick continues clearer, “Not many scenarios wherein your girlfriend could be mad you didn’t kill her, huh?”

“Not many I can think of.”

They’re quiet again. Jason doesn’t open his phone this time. He waits.

“I think I meant what I said,” Dick admits. “I mean, I guess the Joker knows better than I do — ”

“Don’t.” Jason can’t listen to that. He hates that name in a way Ric will never get. But Jason can’t let the Joker be any more a part of them than he already is after the festival.

“Okay,” says Dick, bemused. “I just — I don’t know you. Not really. Sometimes I get flashes of our past together. I like them. And I like us together now, but. It’s not enough.”

Dick’s rejection seers through Jason, flays him alive. You’re not enough.

Dick mercilessly charges on. “I don’t even know if those feelings are mine or — or Dick Grayson’s. I don’t want something that’s his — ”

Jason refuses to hear more of this spiel. “You’re the same person,” he snaps.

Dick falls silent. Jason is grateful for the chaos around them that allows this bubble of privacy. He is starting to shake, raw from the anger and hurt.

“I know,” Dick says faintly. Startled, Jason accidentally looks up from his hands; Dick is staring straight at him. “I don’t want to be him. I know I am, but I don’t want to be because then I’ll wind up inheriting his life and all the mistakes from it.”

Jason smirks. It’s so damn predictable. Of course this is how Jason would be loved — with regret. “Like me,” he concludes.

“No,” Dick immediately disagrees. “I don’t remember much of us. Mostly the good things actually, but — no, I feel it. You’re not one of my mistakes, whatever you are. Whatever we were, it wasn’t a mistake.”

Jason doesn’t want to tell him the pathetic truth of how they were never anything.

“Jason,” Dick says softly. “I’d like to get to know you.” He eyes the milling bats with something akin to queasiness. “Just you,” he clarifies. “And not as a trial basis for everyone else. This isn’t some open-door policy on my life, but. But. If you can leave — ” Dick gestures his good hand, the one attached to the IV, to the cave, “ — whatever this is behind you when we hang, then this could be something. Maybe even something good,” he adds with a teasing smile.

Dick’s expression is openly hopeful. Jason’s heart aches. He wishes love didn’t feel this way all the time. Truthfully, he doesn’t know if he can compartmentalize like Dick expects. Nor is it fair for Dick to expect that from Jason who does remember, whose life isn’t a before-and-after picture but a composition piece of everything he’s been through.

Yet Jason swallows the cinderblock in his throat and says, “Yeah. I think we can do that, Ric.”

Dick’s bad hand twitches. He winces around his smile, that legendary Dick Grayson smile that wins over the toughest crowd. Even ones as tough as Jason Todd, Park Row streetrat with a penchant for fistfights and posturing. Jason snorts at the humor of it all, of his life, and reaches across Dick to lightly squeeze the fingers on his good hand.

Dick squeezes back happily. “Think you can take me home without drawing suspicion?”

“What, about us?”

Dick nods.

Jason considers the question. No one is looking at them. No one has even spared them a single glance. And as landmined as that short conversation with Barbara was, suspicion towards Jason’s dodginess regarding Dick’s love life wasn’t one of those mines. “Yeah,” Jason answers. “I think I’m pretty good about not wearing my heart on my sleeve. What about you, pretty boy?”

Dick’s grin dazzles. “The best,” he replies.

#jaydick #jaydick_flashfic: valentine’s crime #jason todd #dick grayson #dc #fanfiction for the void

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dietaku · 5 years

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The Legend of Aphrodite Ourania

Just a quickie I thought I’d share. While working on Photon Breaker Zechs, I mused that Aphrodite has vast and rather nebulous powers, and her origin being as bizarre as it is is all prime fodder for a goofy story. This may become a series; I had a lot of fun writing it, and we may see more if people take a shine to it as well. In any case, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

Love. Love is the essence of everything. I was once told by a beetle “All you need is love.” This couldn't be further from the truth. To say so implies that this was even a question in the first place. Love is the power that propels everything forward. The planets and stars move about the cosmos because the love they share. Gravity and electricity work because of the love inherent between objects, and the energy of the Universe. Such is the way of things.

“Preposterous!” I hear you say,” That's an anthropomorphism of the most egregious manner!”

True, but I ought to know, for I am Aphrodite Ourania,and I am Love itself. All things I love, and everything loves me. And I most especially love my father.

The sky twinkled overhead as I stepped into the lapis palace of my father. Striding across the long corridors as the air nymphs and sky sprites flit about, cleaning and gossiping with one another. I passed the long mirrors lining the halls, ignoring them. I didn't need to study myself, as I didn't need to blind myself with my own loveliness. I was the epitome of feminine beauty, perfectly proportioned; slim yet feminine, round face framed by my wild mane of bronze hair. The sprites stare at me with fear and jealousy as I wave at them, readjusting my purple toga as I hurl the doors open, finding my father in his usual spot. Sitting in a lonely room decorated with visions of the heavens about him, he sat on a lonely throne. He sat as a pillar of masculinity, chiseled with muscle, and in spite of his age, he still rippled with power and strength, with even his freshly trimmed beard serving to add to his gravitas. This was Ouranus, my father.

“Hallo, Father!” I called, waving with a grin.

He narrowed his eyes as his shifted in his seat,” Hello, Aphrodite. To what do I owe this misfortune?”

“Father! That's so rude! I came because I love you, and wanted to see how you are doing,” I protested, as he groaned.

“Yes, I know. Every day you come and see me, and every day, I am reminded of my defeat and maiming,” he spat,” My loins throb every time I see you.”

“Father! That's not something a father ought to say to their daughter! Not even one such as I,” I barked, as he grunted his disapproval.

“You foolish little girl! Need I remind you how you came to be? You pain me with your very presence!” he growled, as I blushed.

“Oh. Oh! Ooooooooooh,”I muttered, as I digested his outburst,” Wait. WAIT! You don't like my visits!”

“Yes. Your very presence is abhorrent to me,” he replied coolly, as I froze on the spot, reeling with such emotional force my very arms collapsed to the ground. Not that I cared. What did it matter? My father balked at my kindness. What did I care if I collapsed as a pile of body parts to the floor?

“Come now, you silly little girl. You're falling to pieces,” he sighed, standing up, and gathering my divorced limbs as he popped them back into place,” You're a person, not some bizarre art exhibit. And look at this,” he snorted, “You're not even taking care of yourself. This mat of fur isn't becoming of my flesh and blood.”

Conjuring a comb from the aether, he gently pushed me to sit as he combed my hair,”You ought to take pride in your appearance and not rely on your animal charisma for everything. I know you are a carefree woman, but take some pride in yourself! If not for yourself, then for mine,” he muttered, as I nodded. When satisfied with his work, he nodded, patting me on the shoulder.

“Very well! I'll prove that I am worthy of your attentions, then,” I boasted, puffing my chest out as he sighed.

“No, that's not what I meant,” he kneaded his brow.

“I'll prove to you I am worthy of your attentions,” I repeated, waving as I rushed off, outside. Whistling to the wind, my seashell; the only accouterments given to me by my birthright, I flew across the world, seeking out my target; my archrival, another goddess of love and power, my old acquaintance, Ishtar, the Star of Venus. As I looked far and wide, until I found her sauntering thorough the scene of an utter massacre. Picking through the mess was Ishtar, with her attendant and lover, Dumuzid hefting the corpses for her to pick out the choice pieces she desired.

“Disappointing, so disappointing! None of these men are worth my time or attention! Dumuzid! Take a note! Remind me to start another war against the Hittites and Canaanites. I need more to consider,” Ishtar cried angrily, as Dumuzid nodded, dropping his corpse to pull out a piece of vellum and a stylus as he hastily scribbled down her note. I leaped to the ground as I flourished at the pair.

“Ishtar! I'm here to defeat you!” I cried, as Ishtar blinked. She stood before me a beauty even I could appreciate; imperious, glamorous, with her dark hair cut bluntly in contrast to hr pale complexion. Adorned in a fine silk robe far too large for her, with her gems and Mes buoyed on her sizable bust. I was a little jealous of this; even with my godly genes, I wasn't so endowed. My envy must've showed on my face, as she tittered.

“Are you merely here to ogle me, wench? Or do you have need of me, the Star of Venus?”

I pointed at her dramatically,” I'm here to defeat you, Ishtar, and prove to my father that I am the best amongst all deities!”

Her titter grew to a sadistic cackle,” You defeat me? What are you going to do? Lift up your haunches and mewl at me like a cat in heat?”

I huffed,” Don't confuse me for Aphrodite Pandemos, Ishtar! I'm the Font of Love itself and a master of Agapankration!”

“Master of....what?” Ishtar blinked.

“Anything-goes Love,” I muttered.

She cackled again,” You shameless hussy! If you want a fight, fine, then! I'll oblige you! I invoke the Mes! I deny you your divinity!”

I gasped, as I felt an ineffable power sucked from me. In spite of this frailty, I shrugged,” that's not so bad.”

“I deny you your ladyship!”

I grunted again, as I clutched my throbbing crotch. Despite this unexpected attack, I knew what she did, and in spite of it, I smiled through the pain.

“My father deals with this pain every day. I will do so as well, with grace and aplomb!” I declared haughtily.

“I deny you Peace and Victory!” she declared, as more energy fled me. Struggling to stand, I smirked in spite of this. Even if I was denied victory, I couldn't surrender!

“I don't care! Keep removing things! I'll beat you yet!” I cried, puffing out my chest in defiance, as Ishtar stamped her foot.

“Fine, then! I'll deny you--” she cried as I rushed forward. I grabbed her tightly, sealing her arms to her sides with my embrace.

“I love you,” I said, as I stared deeply into her eyes.

“W-w-w-w-w-w-w-whaaaaaaat?” she demanded, as I gently touched her chin.

“I really mean it. It doesn't matter what you remove from me; it won't change that fact. I love you,” I reiterated. She squirmed futilely in my grip, until I couldn't hold on, and she scrambled back.

“What is the meaning to this brazen attitude, Aphrodite!?” she demanded.

“I told you; I am a master of Agapankration. Anything goes in love, and that includes the basics. First Motion: Brazen Declaration,” I declared happily, as her face flared red.

“This doesn't make any sense! Argh, I'll let you off today! Marduk! Pick me up,” she called, as a gigantic golden bull the size of a house descended from on high. Hopping onto its back, Ishtar glared at me, as I felt my divinity, my peace and all those ideals and concepts stolen from me returned.

“Love truly changes everything. Including victory from defeat!” I nodded,” Oh! Ought to tell Father!”

Returning back to Father's temple, he eyed me irately,” You're back. Did you accomplish what you sought?”

“Of course I did, Father! I defeated that incorrigible Star of Venus, and proved the primacy of Love over her self-imposed power-lust!” I cried happily as he sighed.

“Did you now? Or did you merely use your own twisted logic to befuddle her?”

I paused,” B-but, she left! I won!”

He sighed,” Really now, Aphrodite. If you wish to do so, you need to do so decisively. Don’t resort to your twisted logic and tactics. Now come along, your mother is asking for you.”

“Very good, Father!” I cried, rushing off. I knew he wanted me away, but it doesn't matter. One day, he'll accept me, and I'll show even him the beauty of Love.

#fiction #fantasy #mythology #Adventure #short story #aphrodite

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squirenonny · 5 years

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All squares have been claimed!

Sooooo.... Been a while. Sorry ‘bout that. Life, you know?

Fun story about this one. I've worked 10 of the last 11 days and missed my lunch break on two of those days (yayyyy Thanksgiving week at a grocery store~) Anyway, I was dead tired all this week and couldn't focus on any of my WIPs, so I scrolled through my list of @badthingshappenbingo prompts and this one sparked my interest.

Got 500 words into it before realizing why "Worked Themself to Exhaustion" might be striking a chord. |D

Anyway, enjoy! You can also find this on AO3 here!

Spoilers through Chapter 31 of Shadows of Stars. Chapter 34 provides some useful additional context for this chapter, but you won't find any actual spoilers for that chapter here. Set sometime nebulously in the future, relative to the most recent update.

Worked Themself to Exhaustion

Original prompt (from anon): Allura/Meri 'Worked Themselves to Exhaustion' for the Bad Things Happen Bingo?

Allura found Meri on the bridge several hours past midnight, standing at one of the computer terminals near Coran's station, backlit by a frosty blue glow. "Are you still up?"

Meri jumped at the sound of her voice, then tried to cover with a laugh. "Allura! You scared me." Allura crossed the bridge to where she stood, pulling her dressing gown closer as she walked. She hooked her chin over Meri's shoulder and peered at the screen. "Working on something important?" Meri shrugged with the shoulder that wasn't currently supporting Alllura's chin. "Nothing terribly interesting," she said. "Just going through reports from the Accords and stuff." "Couldn't that wait till tomorrow?" Meri shrugged again, tension creeping into her spine. Allura tipped her head to the side, studying Meri's face in profile. She looked tired. She had since she'd returned from her stint as a spy, but it showed now more than ever. The screen's light only deepened the inky shadows beneath her eye and accentuated the lines pulling at the corners of her eyes, and her hair hung limp around her face, the way it did when she'd gone too long without a shower. Except in the immediate aftermath of a battle or other emergency, Allura couldn't remember ever seeing Meri so not put together. Spying had changed her. Allura didn't know the details of it; Meri had remained tight-lipped on anything that wasn't actionable information. The projects Haggar was working on, the abilities of the druids, whatever she'd managed to dig up in digital records or in conversation with other druid candidates--all of this Meri shared freely and with little inflection. It gave away more than she probably wanted to admit to, but she studiously ignored any probing questions into her own well-being. She'd done what she had to to maintain her cover, and that was all she'd say on the matter.

Allura wrapped her arms around Meri's waist, pressing flush against her back. Meri instantly tensed, every line of her like stone in Allura's embrace. Allura frowned, sneaking another look at Meri's face. Lit from beneath by the display screen, it looked even more gaunt than ever, her eyes dull and distant. "Why don't you step away for a while?" Allura asked, trying not to put any judgement into the question. "Come get some sleep, start fresh in the morning. I'll help?" Meri gave an awkward shrug, her eyes never leaving the screen. She reached out mechanically to navigate the menus, and Allura idly followed her progress. She wasn't doing anything any more involved than she'd said. Just cataloging distress calls, routing memos from the Accords and the paladins' allies, approving maintenance reports and other minutiae of castle upkeep. She did it all with that same stiff posture, remaining rigid in Allura's arms. Maybe it was just Allura imagining things, but she seemed to actually be leaning away from her touch. "Meri?" Allura asked. She hesitated, all her diplomatic training failing her as she found she had no idea how to ask what she wanted to. Meri preempted her by turning around, a smile softening her face. It was a convincing smile, too. It even reached her eyes to crinkle them at the corners in the way that was so utterly Meri. But they were close enough that Allura could sense the faint currents of Quintessence running beneath her skin. Meri had shifted her features to produce this smile. If she wanted to, Allura could have reached out and cut the strands of Quintessence, forcing Meri out of the shift. She held off, but it wasn't respect for Meri's privacy that stayed her hand so much as a fear of what she would find underneath the perfect smile. How broken was Meri, that she couldn't even force a smile on her own face? "Sorry, 'Lura," Meri said. "I really should get this done tonight. Don't feel like you need to wait up for me, though. I know you've got an early day tomorrow." It was a dismissal, clear as day, and it stung enough that Allura couldn't scrounge together a response. She just gaped at Meri, fighting against her hurt and indignation. This wasn't about her. She couldn't lose sight of that. This was about Meri, hurting and upset and ashamed of it all for some reason Allura couldn't fathom, except that she knew what Meri looked like when she was punishing herself. She'd looked very much like this in the aftermath of Allura's mother's death. Freshly bonded to Blue, she'd withdrawn, building up a facade of strength and indifference in an attempt to be what she thought everyone expected her to be. She hadn't known how to build shifts like this back then, but Allura thought she would have worn them if she could. She'd never wanted to add her baggage to other people's. Meri didn't wait for Allura to find her voice. She just turned back to her busy work, shutting Allura out entirely. Allura could have pressed, could have turned this into a fight, but that wasn't what she wanted. It wasn't what either of them wanted, she suspected. In Meri's eyes, she probably thought she was sparing Allura the worse pain. With a heavy heart and a tongue that felt like cotton in her mouth, Allura retreated. She would talk to Coran in the morning. He might have some advice for her on what to do to help.

Coran wished he could say he was surprised when Allura came to him about Meri, but of all the ways to describe how he felt about this complicated nest of emotions, shock was not one of them. He was, after all, adjunct to the Blue Lion. He'd felt Meri's torment since long before she returned to the castle. Allura had been waiting outside his room when he woke for his morning duties--an early call even for Allura, who had always hated wasting the day away by sleeping in. She'd been dancing on her toes, clearly battling herself over whether or not to knock on his door and risk rousing him early. One look at Allura told him all he needed to know, especially coupled with the groggy malaise he sensed from Meri's direction. She wasn't asleep, though he thought she might have been trying. For once. "It's going to take time," he told Allura once she'd finished pouring out all her concerns. He'd ushered her back into his room and sat her on the edge of his bed, sending off a quick message while he fetched the down comforter that had always been her favorite. Something had come up, he told the ranking officer on the bridge, and he would be late to his usual rounds. "I know you were hoping for a better answer, and I wish I had one to give you." Allura sighed, pulling the corners of the blanket tight at her throat and leaning on Coran's shoulder. "I just want to be able to help her. I know she's hurting. Why won't she let me see it?" That was a complicated question with a complicated answer, and Coran didn't think Allura needed him to say so. She knew as well as anyone how hard it could be to admit weakness, even to a loved one. How long had she carried her grief for her father close to her own heart before she let the other paladins see her mourning? And this situation with Meri was more complicated still. Coran had seen glimpses of it in Thace, and he'd felt whole volumes from Meri through the bond. Considering that this insight was somewhat ill-gotten gains--and especially considering she'd pushed him away as much as she pushed away everyone else, to the point that Coran hadn't been able to tell her properly what it meant for him to be her adjunct... Well, he wasn't about to go telling Allura everything he'd inferred. "She's been through a terrible ordeal," Coran said. "I don't know the full of it, but I know she probably needs time to process. All you can do is be there for her. Remind her that she's not alone anymore. Then when she's ready to talk, she'll know who to turn to." Allura's sigh said she'd already known what it was she had to do, but she didn't like the idea of sitting around waiting for something beyond her power. That was fair. Coran didn't like waiting, either. So an hour later, after he'd coaxed Allura back to bed to catch up on the sleep she'd lost fretting over Meri, Coran himself went to find his insomniac paladin. She was down on the training deck, apparently haven given up on resting. She didn't notice him come in, and watching her sluggish movements as she took on a training bot--fairly low-leveled compared to her usual fare--Coran had to wonder just how much sleep she'd missed since her return last week. The shadows under her eyes were darker than he remembered from even just last night, her skin dry and waxen, her hair a limp mess. And she was moving slow, too. It wasn't the sluggishness of someone nearing the end of an intense workout. Meri quite simply couldn't track the training bot's movements, which meant that it kept catching her by surprise with its attacks. Coran winced as she took a blow to the ribs, staggering back with a soft grunt of pain. Her face screwed up in frustration and rage, and she launched herself at the gladiator, foregoing the staff she'd selected for this session in favor of a more... hands-on approach. Quintessence flared bright around her fingers, crackling in the air like a living thing and filling up the space between Coran and her. He couldn't read the currents to know her intent, but her hand sank into the gladiator's chest panel. The robot froze at once, its joints locking up, and an uncharacteristically vindictive smile flashed across Meri's face as she yanked her hand back and let the gladiator fall.

The crash of metal rang loud in the sudden silence, and Coran wasted no time in stepping forward. Better to announce himself than to have Meri notice and wonder if he'd been intentionally spying. "You're up early." She whirled toward him, horror dawning on her face for a brief moment before it was smoothed over--quite literally. If he hadn't seen the transformation, he never would have guessed that Meri had donned a shift, but there was nothing natural about the way the panic in her eyes glossed over to bland disinterest, or the way her skin and hair brightened minutely, lessening the appearance of neglect and exhaustion. Even the slump of her shoulders eased by way of a subtle shift in bone structure. Coran's stomach turned at the sight--or perhaps that was the coil of fear reaching him through the bond, stronger even than the shame and guilt twisting Meri's insides into knots. "Coran!" she said brightly. "Hey! Yeah. Figured I'd start the day off right. Haven't been able to keep up with my training lately, what with all the..." She trailed off, her manufactured smile dulling somewhat as anxiety wrapped around her throat. Coran felt it like it was his own emotion, and he had to swallow before he could speak. Even then, it came out strangled. "Of course. Let me know if you ever need a sparring partner." He grinned at her startled blink. "What? I'm not an old man just yet. And I need to be on my toes, what with the whole adjunct situation." She hummed, clearly too distracted to pick up on the hint Coran was trying to give her. He sighed, contemplating how else he might broach the subject of her emotional state. She was so on edge he knew she wouldn't respond well to a direct approach, and the last thing he wanted was to make her shut him down. She needed friends now more than anything. "Do you have plans for the rest of the day, then?" he asked instead, graciously bypassing her obvious exhausted stupor. She shrugged. "I finished the signoffs last night. Went through most of the backlog of Coalition memos, too. There's a few you or Allura will have to take a look at, but..." She trailed off, tightening her mouth around a yawn. Coran wished she would just admit how tired she was--or at least admit what it was that was keeping her from sleep. It felt wrong to ignore the yelmore in the room when he could have punctured her facade without much effort. But that wasn't what it meant to be the blue adjunct. He knew what his paladins needed, and what Meri needed right now wasn't more guilt on top of what she had already piled on herself. To have churned through so much work last night--Coran, better than anyone, knew just how much of a slog that would have been. He was amazed she hadn't fallen asleep at the console halfway through the fiftieth dull report from an ally somewhere. "Well," he said brightly, clapping his hands together. "Thank you for clearing that off my plate. If it's not too much to ask of you, perhaps I could get your help with a few more tasks?" A flush of pride briefly overtook Meri at Coran's thanks--far too much pride for such a simple thing, and it spoke to the depth of her self-loathing. Even more baffling was the staggering sense of relief that answered his request for help. Coran took a page from Meri's book and applied a touch of a shift to his face to conceal his alarm. He wasn't as practiced at it as Meri, and he was sure there were flaws in his shift--he'd never been the best at crafting new forms for himself, and he'd never attempted a partial shift like this before. Thankfully, Meri was too tired to scrutinize him too closely. She crossed the training room to retrieve her discarded staff, nearly toppling over in the attempt. She caught herself on the wall, freezing for a moment as a flood of heat washed through her. She was keenly aware of Coran's eyes on her; he could feel her self-consciousness and averted his eyes before he realized what he was doing, but even knowing its source, he couldn't make himself look directly at her until she'd stowed the staff in the weapons rack and joined him by the door. She wove a bit as she walked with him toward the elevator, fatigue written in every line of her body. She didn't offer any conversation, and he didn't try to tease it out of her. She looked like she might fall asleep standing up--and, in all honesty, Coran would have been glad of it. He didn't feel her exhaustion, exactly. It wasn't carried through the bond like true emotions. But there was a thick haze over her mood, dampening her emotions and heightening those few flashes that broke through the muddle, and trying to adjust himself to it all did give him a taste of what she must have been feeling. She didn't ask where they were going. If Coran had to guess, he would say she didn't care. It seemed to Coran she just wanted something to keep her moving. To keep her awake. He wondered if it was dreams that were bothering her. He reminded himself, again, that she didn't owe him answers, and let the silence swell as they neared their destination. He'd contemplated several options for the first step of what was sure to be a long journey to healing for Meri. She needed sleep, certainly, and he'd briefly entertained the idea of taking her up to the map room in the hopes that the low lighting and peaceful atmosphere might coax her into an involuntary nap. It seemed a little heavy-handed, especially as he couldn't be sure it would be worth the effort. He might well only succeed in stoking Meri's resentment before she stalked off to less lulling pursuits. So instead, he'd opted for a simpler deception. He'd asked Thace to join them in one of the equipment storage rooms for a routine systems check on the supply of BLIP-tech drones. It was a suitably voluminous task to justify having three people assigned to it, but straight-forward enough that it didn't require the attention of someone trained in the upkeep of complex machines. All that was really required was a visual inspection of the casing for damage or corrosion and a manual verification of the last self-check. Thace didn't know anything of the troubles Meri had been facing--at least, not more than he might have inferred because of his own history with espionage. Coran hadn't asked him to speak with Meri, nor had he told him that he had arranged for Zelka to call him away half an hour into the task. It didn't make this any less meddling, but at least he wasn't conspiring on top of that.

Besides, he couldn't very well have just asked Meri to go see Thace. Coran had long suspected she was deliberately avoiding Thace, and the way she stiffened when she saw him waiting inside the storage bay lent credence to that theory. Her steps slowed, her shift slipping momentarily as she visibly weighed the benefits of simply walking out of the room. She eventually decided to see it through, though her reluctance was strong enough to slow Coran's steps, too, and he shook himself, clapping his hands briskly as he entered the room. "Well!" he said, sending a silent apology to Thace, who had startled at the sudden noise. "Now that we're all here, let's get started, shall we?" It took only a few moments to demonstrate the checks, and then they were all off, working their way down separate rows at their own pace. Meri lagged behind the other two, moving on autopilot and struggling to stay awake, but Coran didn't call her on it. They were spread far enough apart that conversation was unnecessary and somewhat awkward, so they worked in companionable silence until Zelka called and Coran took his leave. He only prayed that Thace could help Meri where the rest of them couldn't.

Meri silently cursed Coran for leaving her alone with Thace, and then felt immediately guilty for the thought. There was nothing at all wrong with Thace. He was a good man, and the advice and resources he'd provided her with when she left on her ill-informed espionage mission had probably saved her life several times over. It had certainly enabled some of her more idiotic decisions, but that was hardly his fault. It also wasn't his fault being around him reminded her too much of her time in Haggar's inner circle. He had a way about him, a vigilance even soldiers like Shiro and Keith couldn't match. He was aware of his surroundings at all times, wary of potential threats, but he also watched with an eye that was well practiced at looking below the surface. He didn't have to stare for her to feel as though she were being picked apart. The only saving grace in this situation was that he was two rows over and Coran had promised to make this as quick as he could. With luck, he'd return from helping Zelka in ten or twenty minutes, and Meri could go back to shuffling along like a zombie and trying not to pass out in the middle of her inspection. Quiznak. She was so tired. She shook her head, though, shoving away her exhaustion, and kept moving. She finished ten drones, then twenty, and still Coran hadn't returned. Thirty drones on, she looked up to see Thace approaching down the next row. He was focused on his task, but his proximity raised an alarm in her bones. Someone was here. She couldn't let her guard down. She never had found a way to confirm whether or not her shifts held while she slept, and if he saw something he wasn't supposed to-- Meri caught herself following familiar old tracks of paranoid thought and stopped where she was, staring at her reflection in the polished shell of the BLIP-tech drone. What was she talking about? She wasn't on the Eryth anymore. She was among friends, and she didn't need to worry about someone seeing that she was an Altean. A purple cast had crept into her hand while she was drowning in pointless panic, and she banished that, too, mentally checking herself for any other Galra traits that might have slipped through. It had happened at least once a day since she'd returned--fangs, fur, purple pigmentation. Once she'd fully shifted her ears to the longer, floppier version she'd used as part of her Reza shift. Thace continued working as he drew near to Meri, not looking up from the screen in front of him. "Have you ever tried krebu?" Meri lifted her head to frown at Thace. Logic said he was talking to her. After all, there was no one else in the room. Still, her tired mind couldn't quite grasp the concept of conversation. "What?" she finally said, eloquently. Thace had enough tact not to comment on her mental state. "It's a tea," Thace said. "Old Galra recipe--though perhaps not as old as we like to pretend." Meri cracked a smile at that, the expression pulling at muscles that she swore she hadn't used in months. "I imagine a lot of things seem old until you meet someone from ten thousand years ago. It's good?" "A little bland for my taste, but I suppose that's the point." "The... point?" "It's a common remedy among civilian families. A lot of my men grew up with a parent or grandparent who liked to prescribe it for all sorts of ails. Nadezda swears by it. Personally, I find it hard to believe a few herbs can do all that people claim it can. It is good for insomnia, though. Better than anything else I've tried." Suspicion came roaring back in, popping Meri's bubble of complacency. She reinforced her placid partial shift on instinct before Thace's last statement clicked into place. "You too, huh?" she asked, well aware that she was admitting her own weakness. Well, a piece of it, at any rate. But Thace had a nonjudgmental air about him and, more importantly, there was just enough distance between them for it not to feel like a threat. It wasn't like with Allura and Coran, or even Lance and Rosa. She didn't-- Well, it wasn't that she didn't care what Thace thought of her. She just didn't think he'd known her long enough to have expectations for her to live up to. Thace smiled. "Ever since I left the Accords," he said softly. Something passed between them in those few words. An understanding, of sorts, that went beyond the insomnia. He'd been there. He'd done things to maintain his cover--awful, horrible things. Things that haunted him. Things he regretted, and had regretted from the moment he did them, but he'd done them all the same because the mission mattered more than one solitary person's conscience. The tears took her by surprise, as did most emotion these days. It snuck up on her, stealing her breath, and she turned back to her work before Thace could see her tearing up. She tried to breathe, but breathing only widened the cracks in her composure, so that left her holding her breath and squeezing her eyes shut, as though by forcing the tears out faster she could reach the end of this hysteria sooner. Hysteria. She almost had to laugh at the fact that this was the word her mind had conjured to describe herself, when she'd always hated the way it was so often slung to undermine someone's emotional turmoil. To cheapen it. But she'd impersonated a druid, participated in the interrogation and torture of Imperial prisoners, risked death on a daily basis, and now here she was, crying over tea. Maybe hysteria was an apt word, in this case. "How do you do it?" she asked, hating the way her voice shook but unable to stop the words pouring out of her mouth. Thace remained quiet, waiting for her to elaborate, and she waved her hand in the air, using the gesture as an excuse to wipe her cheeks. She still stared at the pod in front of her. "After everything we've seen, everything we've done, how are we supposed to go back to the way things were?" "Slowly," Thace said, frankly, "and with the support of people who are better than us." He shifted, and when Meri finally turned, she found he had given up all pretense of keeping busy and was watching her now--with sympathy, yes, but also with an ache she knew all too well. "Is it the memories?" "No." Meri hesitated. "...Yes and no. Not memories as such. Just..." She turned away, a lump rising in her throat. "It's like it's not my mind that's stuck back there so much as my body. I couldn't... I never slept through the night while I was there. I was too afraid someone would walk in and notice something off about my shift." Her voice wavered, and she cursed herself, wiping her eyes now with both hands. There was nothing subtle about it, but Thace was far too perceptive to have missed the signs of an impending breakdown, anyway, and she just didn't have the energy to keep pretending. "I don't have to worry about that now. I shouldn't-- I want to sleep, but every time I try I wake up an hour later in a panic. It was worse when I tried to sleep in Allura's bed. It was-- She was there, and there was a part of me that thought she was the enemy."

Remembering that moment, remembering the way she'd reached for a weapon, the way she'd come so close to lashing out, to attacking the one person who mattered more to her than anything else in the universe--

Meri choked on a sob, shaking her head to dislodge the what-ifs that had been haunting her ever since. "When I wake up like that, I can't just go back to sleep. I'm up for another eight hours or more, and the only thing I can do is try to go until I'm about to drop and hope the exhaustion buys me an extra twenty minutes or so before it all starts over again." Her vision had blurred so much by now that she could hardly make Thace out across the row of drones, but he approached slowly, telegraphing his moves. Meri hated that she was so fragile he felt he had to treat her like a wounded animal, but she couldn't pretend she wasn't scared of how she might have reacted otherwise. She didn't expect him to trust her when she couldn't even trust herself. Instead, though, she remained where she was as he approached, his arms spread in a silent invitation. Of all the people in the castle who might have offered her a hug, Thace was pretty far down on the list, but coming from him it didn't feel so much like pity. She teetered on the edge for a moment, then fell against him, turning all her focus toward her breathing in a desperate attempt not to fall apart completely in his arms. "I'm sorry," Meri whispered, turning her forehead into his shoulder. She wasn't sure what she was apologizing for--crying on the lapels of his uniform? Or having this breakdown on him, instead of literally anyone else? She had a whole castle full of people with more reasons than Thace to care about her bullshit. Thace only hummed, an echo of a melody in the sound. "You have nothing to apologize for. Your actions saved a great deal more people than they harmed. It will get easier to see that, with time." Meri scrunched her face up as the flow of tears increased. "I know," she said, not knowing if it was the truth. "I just wish I'd been better." "Be better now," Thace said. "That's all you can do. And remember, this team you have... They don't know the things we know. I pray they never have to learn. But they know a thing or two about healing a fractured spirit... Coran knows the weight of regret as well as us, in his own way." Meri snorted with a sudden realization, then felt immediately silly for not having seen it before now. Vrekt, she really was tired. "He didn't just 'get called away,' did he?" Thace hummed again, one hand rubbing circles on her back. "I very much doubt it. For what it's worth, I didn't figure it out until he got the call, either." "Well... It kind of worked out, in the end," Meri admitted. She lingered in Thace's embrace for another moment, then pulled back. "Thanks. And... I'm sorry. I don't want to burden you with all of my drama." "It's not a burden to offer a little sympathy every now and again," Thace said. "I'm sure Allura and Coran would say the same." "I don't know if I can talk about it with them. Not yet." Thace smiled. "Then tell them that. They'll understand. The wonderful thing about comfort is that it doesn't require exhaustive knowledge of the context. They already know you're hurting; that's enough to start. Tell them what you can, and tell them that you're not ready for the rest, and then just... go from there." Tell them what she could, huh? Meri wasn't sure what that was, but she was long past the point of having enough energy to keep running from the darkness of her own mind. She just wanted to feel safe in her own body again. "Okay," she said. "I'll try." She wiped her eyes again, and pulled back to stand beside the next BLIP-tech drone in the row. She hesitated before beginning her inspection, however, and opened her mouth to ask a question that never came. "Go on," Thace said. "I don't think you need to stay here any longer." He glanced sidelong at his own drone. "If Coran actually needs this to be done, I'm sure he can find someone else to help him." "Punishing him for tricking you?" Meri asked with a feeble smile. Thace chuckled. "If he asks, I'll tell him we figured out what he actually wanted us to do and came to the logical conclusion that nothing else was required of us." Meri shook her head, but she wasn't going to complain about getting the rest of the day off. Her little miniature breakdown had worn her out faster than three hours on the training deck. She might actually make it a full two hours before she woke this time. She nodded to Thace and took a single step toward the door, then stopped again. "Actually...." "Krebu?" Thace asked with a knowing smile. "I stole some while we were on homeworld. Would you care to join me for a cup?" Meri smiled, a weight lifting from her shoulders. "I'd like that very much."

Allura got another hour of sleep before giving up the effort. A very large part of her wanted to go find Meri--not that she knew what she would do after that point. Her conversation with Coran kept rattling around in her head. Be there for Meri, but don't push. It was a delicate balance to strike, especially for someone like Allura, who by her nature wanted to fix problems, not merely commiserate. Unfortunately, Coran was right. This wasn't a problem she could fix. There was no clever solution she could propose that would mend all of Meri's hurts, and until Meri reached a point where she was ready to ask for help, there was very little Allura could do. But she would commiserate until the end of time if that was what Meri needed. It would be better than trying to help and getting pushed away again. Apparently she had time to come to terms with the gentle approach, though, because Meri seemed to have finally gone in search of sleep--or at the very least, she wasn't in any of her usual haunts, new or old. No in any of her favorite places--the synthetic hot springs at the top of Blue Tower, the observation deck where they'd spent so many evenings watching the stars. She wasn't with Blue, either, and Lance hadn't seen her all morning. But she wasn't on the bridge or the training deck either. She may have been in her room, but if she was, Allura was loathe to disturb her. Allura stifled her disappointment and returned to the observation deck to think. It was good that Meri had allowed herself to take a break. She needed all the rest she could get. It did leave Allura feeling rather useless, however. Coran had told her to take the morning off, which meant she still had several hours before he expected her on the bridge. She supposed she could go find Shiro and see what else needed to be done today. She contemplated doing just that, but she'd already settled in on the cushioned bench beside the large, round window, a blanket draped over her lap and a mound of pillows behind her. It was a cozy little nest (not as cozy as it would have been with Meri beside her, but some things were outside of Allura's control), and she was reluctant to move. She wasn't sure how long she sat there, watching the slow drift of stars as the castle-ship drifted through space, but it was long enough that she'd begun to drift herself, her mind falling into that pleasant, weightless warmth right on the edge of sleep. The door hissing opened startled her awake, and she scrubbed at crusty eyes as she turned to see who had found her. Meri stood in the doorway, a sweater in the human style pulled over her rumpled uniform. She had a steaming mug in each hand, bags under her eyes, and a shy smile on her face. "Meri!" Allura stood, tripping over her blanket. She was wide awake now--wide awake and filled with directionless energy. She wanted to say something to Meri, but she didn't know what. Didn't know why Meri had come to find her, after spending the last week trying her best to avoid being alone together. Meri closed the distance between them first, holding out one of her mugs to Allura. "I brought you some cocoa," she said. "Rosa's recipe." "Oh," Allura said, staring dumbly at the mug. "Thank you." They stood there awkwardly for a few moments longer, Meri staring into her own mug, which looked more like tea than cocoa, Allura watching Meri for a sign of what she wanted Allura to do. She looked more vulnerable than she had last night, like she'd finally decided to let her guard down, but Allura didn't want to ruin that by asking probing questions. "Do you... Do you want to watch the stars with me?" Allura finally asked. Meri's answering smile lit a bonfire in Allura's chest, and they settled in together on the bench by the window, shoulders pressed together, the blanket spread over both their laps. The cocoa was delicious, and it spread the warmth throughout Allura's body, soothing some of her nerves. "I'm sorry I've been so distant," Meri said, both hands wrapped around her mug. She stared out at the stars, the soft blue glow of the room's emergency lighting catching in her hair, which was still damp from a recent shower. The light softened her, washing away the marks of her experiences in Haggar's circle. Allura laid a hand on her arm. "You don't need to apologize, Meri. You've been through a lot. You're allowed to take some time to adjust." Meri gave her a watery smile, laying her own hand atop Allura's. "Thanks. I... I know you want to help, and you deserve to know everything. I just... I don't know when I'll be ready to talk about it. It's all too fresh right now. Is it okay if we just... sit... for a while? I've missed you." "I missed you, too," Allura said, squeezing Meri's wrist. "We can do whatever you like. You know I'll always be here for you." Meri's face crumpled, and she gave a self-conscious laugh as Allura pulled her into a hug. "I'm sorry," she said, her voice hitching. "I just... You shouldn't promise things when you don't have all the information." Allura's throat constricted, and she carefully set aside their two mugs--her still mostly full, Meri's down to the dregs. She turned, cradling Meri's cheek in the palm of hand and gently turning her head until their eyes met. "You're right that I don't know everything you've done," she said, bringing up her other hand to curl around the back of meri's neck, her fingers tangling in the short, fine hairs at the base of her skull. "But I know you, and I know why you did what you did. That's enough for now. When you're ready to talk about what happened, I'll listen, but I already know nothing you say will change how I feel about you." Meri's eyes watered, and she pulled away from Allura's touch. "You can't know that." "Of course I can," Allura whispered. She leaned back into the mound of pillows, pulling Meri with her. "We're at war, Meri. We all face impossible decisions--some more horrific than others. Sometimes we regret our decisions. Sometimes we wish there had been another way." She paused, weighing her words. "You think I think less of Shiro for his past? Or Keith? Thace? I won't pretend that the decisions I've had to make are anything like what you've faced, but I'm not naive. I know the ugliness that exists in this universe." Meri wound tighter in Allura's arms for a moment, then slowly relaxed against her, her breathing evening out. "I guess we all do, by now."

"Unfortunately." Allura wove her fingers into Meri's hair, combing it back from her face. "But I also know that good people are still good, whatever ugliness they’ve faced, and that we can still carve out places to breathe for a moment, away from it all."

"Places like here?" Meri asked, turning so her chin rested on Allura's breastbone. A crooked smile had taken over her face, and it made Allura's heart melt.

"Places like here. Whatever ugliness is out there, I won't let it reach you while we're together. I swear it. So try to get some rest, all right?"

Meri's smile slipped. "I... I'll try. But, Allura, you need to know--sometimes, when I first wake up, I forget that I'm not back there. I don't--You don't need to worry about it. I'm dealing. I'm learning how to. But you should know, because I'm probably going to wake up in a couple hours, and there's a good chance I'll wake you up when I do."

Allura's chest tightened in sympathy, and she kissed Meri's forehead. "Thank you for telling me. Is there anything I can do to help if that happens? Or should I give you space?"

"Space," Meri said, after a moment's pause. "Just for a minute. Just until I figure out what's happening."

Smiling, Allura guided Meri's head down onto her chest. "I can do that. Now rest. I'll be here when you wake up."

"I love you, Allura."

"I love you, too. I always will."

#bad things happen bingo #bthb #voltron duality #alluri #worked themself to exhaustion #my fic

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gothamcityneedsme · 6 years

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The Prince of Heart Begets a Prince of Blood, or, in Which I Support the Theory that the Auto-Responder is a Prince of Blood (Part 1/?)

Part 1: The Popularity of Classpecting

Speculation concerning classpects is an incredibly popular subset of the Homestuck fandom, with several blogs interpreting their own versions of the classes, coming up with theories, and figuring out what they think every possible class and aspect combo would consist of. This is mostly something people do because they wish to classpect themselves, as this kind of classification system is very popular in media. It is fun for readers to connect to the source material through making themselves part of a group within the fictional world (a common example of this is how readers of the Harry Potter series choose Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, or Ravenclaw for themselves).

With its complex and in-depth system, Homestuck opened the door to increased reader-inclusion, and it is likely one of the reasons Homestuck is so popular. This kind of speculation and theorizing can make readers really feel connected, and it can motivate them to continue to be involved with the fandom.

As the majority of Homestuck characters have known classpects, this sort of critical thinking towards Homestuck generally isn’t directed towards finding a character’s classpect (since we already know), but instead, the focus often is shifted towards examining how the character is representative of their classpect.

What do we learn about Space through Jade, Kanaya, Porrim, and Calliope? What do we learn about Heart through Nepeta, Dirk, and Meulin? What do these characters have in common and how do they each reflect their aspect? We do something similar with the classes (which are even more nebulous to define than the aspects): How do Pages function through Jake, Tavros, and Horuss? How do Knights function through Dave, Karkat, and Latula? And so on.

The canon classpects in Homestuck exist to define the characters, but we can use them additionally to supplement our vague knowledge of the classpects and add to our understanding so that we can more accurately predict what a particular classpect might consist of. Of how that class and aspect combination would work, what kind of powers the person with that classpect might have, and perhaps even which classpect would suit another character (or readers themselves) best.

For instance, we can theorize what classpect would best suit the Auto-Responder, a character who is unclassed (a rare occurrence in Homestuck). And, additionally, we can theorize what a Prince of Blood would be like (and, consequently, observe how the Auto-Responder shares traits with the Prince class, the Blood aspect, and how he could function as the classpect, Prince of Blood).

In this essay series, however long it might be, I will be examining the Auto-Responder as a Prince of Blood.

Part 2: Defining the Prince of Blood, the Destroyer of Relationships

First, in order to place him as a Prince of Blood, I must define both the Prince class and the Blood aspect separately. Then I will describe how they would likely function together. Finally, establishing this will allow me to continue my argument to move onto how the Auto-Responder reflects this classpect.

The Prince class is one of the few we have explicitly described to us in the canon. Assuming that Calliope is correct (which we will, as we don’t have a reason not to in this), the purpose of the Prince class is one of the clearest:

The Prince is Active, a Destroyer class. They actively pursue and destroy their aspect, even though they also reflect it. Examples of Princes offered by Homestuck are Dirk, Eridan, and Kurloz.

Dirk, the Prince of Heart, is obviously important to consider (and we will talk about him later and throughout this piece). He is the starting-point for the Auto-Responder and is his creator. Dirk destroys Heart through his splintering of himself into several fragments, and this is evidenced through all of the different Dirks that exist throughout canon (and, of course, the Auto-Responder is one of these splinters).

Eridan, the Prince of Hope, destroys Hope through breaking the Matriorb, the only way that the troll species could continue to propagate. He single-handedly completed the genocide of his species that he had been seeking for most of his life. Thus, he destroyed Kanaya’s Hope and the Hope of all trolls.

Princes are also suspiciously devoid of their own aspect, Dirk splinters his own soul, Eridan has no hope for his own life, and Kurloz is mostly emotionless and does not display anger. Thus, they destroy their aspect both outside and within themselves, and their powers revolve around them using their own bodies/powers to also conduct that destruction in their surroundings.

The aspect of Blood is largely believed to concern connections and close relationships. Friendships, love, alliances, and anything similar likely fall under the category of Blood. The Blood aspect, through Karkat especially, seems to signify bonds and the forging/maintaining of them (for example, how Karkat sees himself as such an expert of the quadrants). Blood can be connected to leadership, partnership, and overall group dynamics (with a focus on uniting a group into a team).

Proof of this can be found when Kanaya insists right before the final battle, that Karkat is a leader and that his life is important:

And, continuing, Karkat’s connection to blood and creating bonds and causing unification connects to Echidna’s claim that Karkat is necessary to guiding the future of the trolls:

This claim itself connects to both Kankri and the Sufferer, as Aranea infodumps about Kankri’s failures (which connect to the Sufferer’s failures in unifying Alternia, which leaves Karkat with that legacy, the mission to unify trollkind, which is what Echidna believes he will live up to):

Compared to Karkat, Kankri is a failed Blood player who does not unify his allies as he should have, or as he was trying to (just like how the Sufferer ultimately failed due to adversity and conflict). Blood as a failed concept still connects it to ultimately creating unity, and does succeed on some degree, as the Sufferer in particular still did create a movement that had many members still following it, unified even after his death. Additionally, throughout canon and specifically during the events on the Meteor before the humans arrive, we witness Karkat failing and struggling as a Blood player. Blood seems to be a difficult aspect to master, at least it is for Kankri and Karkat. And although Karkat could be interpreted in succeeding through his moirallegiance with Gamzee, which diffuses one of the tensest standoffs in the comic, that connection doesn’t last very long.

Blood players, it seems, often struggle and fail in their aspect.

The Auto-Responder, conversely, succeeds in his role as a Blood player, but this may only be because his stance as a Prince is much more negative towards his aspect. He succeeds as a Blood player by failing to maintain bonds and by destroying unification.

So, ultimately, I am defining a Prince as an active destroyer, even of himself, and Blood as an aspect having to do with bonds, relationships, and unification.

With these definitions, a Prince of Blood is basically ‘a Destroyer of Relationships’ both internally and externally. Through his actions and inherent nature, a Prince of Blood destroys his connections to people, destroys the relationships of others, and ultimately causes groups to break apart.

Part 3: Considering the Auto-Responder

While not being quite as popular in the fandom, the Auto-Responder still gets quite a bit of attention and he plays a rather major role in Homestuck. In terms of word count in dialogue, according to this post, the Auto-Responder is the 20th character with the highest word count, clocking in at 8015 spoken words in the comic. Although this might not sound like much, it is also important to consider ARquiusprite, who definitely has dialogue that is more like the Auto-Responder rather than Equius. ARquiusprite has 3558 words, some of which can arguably be added to the AR’s word count. Also, considering how many characters have dialogue in Homestuck, scoring in the top 20 isn’t that bad at all comparatively.

And, of course, a character’s influence on the story isn’t necessarily tied to their word count, but to their other actions in the story as well, and we know that the Auto-Responder does quite a bit off-screen (and on-screen in part of the comic without wordcounts, like [S] Unite and [S] Synchronize.

(Disclaimer: I did not check the above numbers myself, and I am curious if the creator of these statistics considered the AR pretending to be Dirk as Dirk or as the AR.)

I have seen several people try to tackle classpecting the Auto-Responder, although none have been in extensive detail. Most answers I have found have given him a connection to the Mind aspect, which makes sense, and at first, I thought I agreed. It makes sense, the Auto-Responder is a very cerebral character, he is a splinter of Dirk’s mind, he is literally only a mind because he does not possess a body. Mind is all that the Auto-Responder has. I agreed with this for quite a while, until I started to seriously consider classpecting the Auto-Responder.

I did so during a time when I was thinking in general about the 12 aspects. I wanted to think about how I could fit all twelve of them in with the human session, since the human session is outstanding in the aspects of Doom, Rage, Blood, and Mind.

This is why I considered Mind for the Auto-Responder at first, since it filled a hole in the session. But, as I continued to think though, I wondered if I should try to see him as another aspect, to figure out if perhaps something else suited him more.

He was always a Prince to me, I think he mirrors Dirk too much to not be a Prince (since he still is Dirk, and if he is not a Heart player then he surely still must be a Prince, he is a splinter but not a shatter—he is still a part of Dirk, he is still Dirk), so he had to have another aspect. Mind was first. But then, I thought, what about Blood?

Prince of Blood. What if the Auto-Responder was a Prince of Blood?

For a long time, I was stuck between considering him a Prince of Mind or a Prince of Blood, and I wasn’t really worried about it immediately, so I let the concept sit for a while. I let it stew as I kept thinking it over whenever it occurred to me.

And the answers I reached made Blood seem all the more fitting.

So, why a Prince?

Dirk, to me, feels like a character of innate destruction. He cannot help his nature, and that nature is to rip things apart, both within and without himself. We see it so much in Homestuck with Dirk as a Prince of Heart, we get to know his class and aspect so well through him that it is one of the ones we understand the most.

The Auto-Responder is Dirk, the only difference is that he is split from Dirk’s experiences from the age of thirteen—when Dirk took the scan of his brain and created his robotic counterpart and copy. I don’t think that this split is enough to fully separate the Auto-Responder from Dirk as a character, so I am not fond of thinking of him in classes that aren’t Prince. The Auto-Responder, as Dirk, would have to share either Dirk’s class or aspect. I think it makes more sense for him to share the class, because I believe the event of splintering actively creates/changes the Auto-Responder’s aspect.

Why Blood?

Blood comes from the Heart. Blood splits off of the Heart. The Heart creates Blood. Dirk created the Auto-Responder.

The Auto-Responder is associated with the color red (the color, ironically, that connects to Dave, and thus connects to Alpha Dave as well—the Auto-Responder grasps a color that Dirk does not, grasps at a relationship that already doesn’t exist).

Blood connects to relationships and bonds, and throughout Homestuck we can absolutely see the Auto-Responder as connecting to connections, as interfering with Dirk’s and other’s. He puts a wrench into character development and interactions, complicates things concerning the makeup of the Alpha session. As we move forward in this essay and I start to pull apart events from the comic, we are going to do so through the lens of Blood, focusing on relationships and how the Auto-Responder interacts with them (both within and without himself).

As a Prince, the Auto-Responder will not have his aspect within himself as much as some of the other classes, and he will actually tend to break and destroy even his own aspect in himself (like how all of the other Princes in Homestuck do, to some extent). I think it’s easy to see how the Auto-Responder destroys his own relationships and bonds, his very existence serves that purpose, and I will go into more detail on that later.

He is the Destroyer of Relationships, the Destroyer of Bonds, the Destroyer of Unification, and the Destroyer of Friendships.

(an aside, from this moment forward I am going to call the Auto-Responder Hal, simply because doing so is simpler. AR would work too, but it doesn’t look as good in writing as Hal. Although I believe that Hal is a name that the Auto-Responder picks purely for irony and that he doesn’t actually feel any connection to it, the fandom has adopted it, and I have gotten accustomed to it. Honestly, I think that the Auto-Responder thinks of himself either as the AR or as Dirk, but I am obviously not going to be calling him Dirk, that would be far too confusing. Thus, Hal is the name that I will be using continuing forward).

#homestuck #hal #hal strider #dirk strider #classpect #shitpost #this is my 100kth post!!!#im actually pretty proud of this i like this project a lot

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crystalnet · 6 years

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Sonic Forces is Good

Sonic doesn't really slot into any of the semi-nebulous interests that this blog has previously covered but I just had to make an exception because I have thoughts on the blue blur's new game, especially in light of everyone going crazy for Mario Odyssey and the fact almost all professional reviewers as well as various critics on youtube have been basically taking a wrecking-ball to this game. Sonic fans themselves are left mostly enjoying the game (if the subreddit is any indication) and kind of sheepishly acknowledging the pretty low metacritic scores with a bit of a shrug--a pose any true Sonic fan has gotten used to taking in the past decade. I want to talk just very briefly about the problem with Sonic in 2017 and anytime past the year 1998 really and why perception of his non-side-scrolling games seem critically flawed and misguided...

First of all, 3D Sonic has basically always been a mess. Now I should mention before getting deep into this, Forces is my first Sonic game since Sonic Heroes and Sonic Advance 2, the former of which wasn't even as fun as the flawed SA2 and the latter of which should be considered Sonic 5 (or 6 if you count Sonic CD) for all I care, in that it is an excellent expansion of OG Sonic style (shit like grinding on rails, updated Sprites and even Amy as a playable character were great additions). Those two games though are indicative of the whole series: the 3D ones are always problematic while the 2D ones don't seem particularly hard to make well.

I think there is a big range of how fans and critics view the series, but it seems as if the 3D games are either held to the standard of Adventure 1 and 2, which were always pretty flawed games, or else held to some non-existent and unattainable standard. But we should be clear: Sonic never had his Super Mario 64. Adventure 1 comes close, and that game does a lot very well, but it introduces a lot of things which would plague the 3D games forever. I'm mostly talking about the fact A1 and A2 are want to have all these additional playable characters besides Sonic and yet, Sonic (or Shadow) levels are always clearly where the best level design and most fun is to be had.

Why force characters like Big the Cat or E-102 Gamma down our throat, when almost all the Sonic levels are amazing compared to levels where you shoot at things or hunt for emeralds. Like extra characters are kind of intrinsically fun when your a kid, but it always felt a bit like padding to me to play the Tails/Eggman and Knuckles/Rogue levels in SA2. So the gold standard for the 3D games becomes about 1/3rd of the content in the first two games?

What I'm trying to say is that Sonic Team never knew exactly what they were trying to achieve with these games it seems. It's like they continued the tradition of Sonic 2 and 3 with Tails and then Knuckles being added by eventually just adding a shit ton of characters to every game, effectively diluting the experience. I'm not even a big fan of Mario 64, but clearly that game is critically lauded, whereas the Blue Blur just couldn't seem to make that same transition. Heroes is literally all about adding characters, along with bright, colorful presentation which barely masked the weakened level-design. Then beyond the critical face-plant that is Sonic ‘06, Sonic Team's goals with these games seem even more unclear than ever and the warm embrace of 90s Sonic seems further away then ever before during the past decade or so.

You have a couple of weird "story book"-style spin offs on the Wii like the Black Knight and Secret Rings which really push the boundaries of what a Sonic game can be (seemingly to mostly bad reviews), Sonic Unleashed, which is literally split between somewhat traditional 3D gameplay and the kind of totally different style of gameplay a la non-Sonic levels in the Adventure titles (werehog Sonic...) and then a few games that seem to be headed in a more stable direction: Sonic, Sonic Colors, Sonic Generations and to a slightly lesser degree, Sonic Lost World .

Like I said, I haven't played any of these since Heroes, but I've been reading up and looking at all of Somecallmejohnny's videos on youtube to get a sense of how people feel about these, and these last 3 seem to be on the up-and-up in terms of critical reaction from both critics and fans. But Generations was in 2011 and since then it's been mostly an onslaught of Sonic Boom games and I'll do us all a favor and gloss over those completely. While Lost World tweaks things a bit with a run-button, Colors and Generations built on the more traditional half of Unleashed and heavily featured the boost mechanic which lends itself to a new kind of level design which is considerably different than that of Adventure 1 and 2.

I guess the long-winded point that I'm trying to make is that Sonic Team has basically been having an identity crisis since 1998. Not a single one of these stands as a true precedent for the series in that the best of their lot--Generations-- is still one of those meta, self-aware entries since it combines modern and classic sonic, quite literally. I do really wanna play those last 3 I mentioned because they seem like they are on the right path, but I'm sure for every fan, there is still a disappointed nay-sayer.

This leads me to my final point though, and that is that Forces, for me personally, is a pretty damn good idea of what 3D Sonic is. I think people were putting a lot of pressure on it since it's been a while since a true 3D entry that wasn't a Boom spin-off, but also because of Manias success. Mania from earlier this year was really great, but it's great in a mostly regressive way. Yes, the four new levels are fantastic and Christian Whitehead did a awesome job of capturing the "magic" of the first 3 games while refining things like the controls and amount of sprite-frames and adding some cool extras as well as those dope Chaos emerald bonus zones, but the success it had is based off of design-principles from nearly 25 years ago.

I can't complain at all, because it's a really fun game and a great way to revisit classic vibes and levels, but I hope it's the beginning of a sea-change for Sonic Team's approach and not just a blip. Mania 2 for instance could revisit/remix the underrated Advance trilogy, or Sega could grow some balls and let Whitehead and other fan-developers like him step up to the plate and either design a full fresh side-scrolling entry OR something like oh I don't know Sonic Adventure 3?

Either way, the game generated a lot of hype which Sega capitalized on by dropping Forces a few months later. And me and like half of hard-core fans are pretty happy with the game and that's about it. Same old story since SA2: new 3D game comes out, gets mediocre reviews, half the fans are on-board while the other seem even more disappointed than professional critics. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of what Sega should be doing with their 3D games, but no one can really agree.

Well I for one think Forces is on the right track. It's not perfect, but it's not really trying to be the next big game (they make that clear every single time they release a 3D title that isn't SA3). It's only 40 USD which I think denotes that it's to played in-tandem with Mania, so you got your classic Sonic on one hand, and your new-fangled and always-problematic-to-somebody 3D Sonic on the other. Also it's worth noting that I play this on the Switch. I think the Switch magically makes any game better for being played on it, and yeah I can't really imagine playing this on PS4. The option of portability makes any game better IMO, and Switch just adds this x-factor to any game right now, I can't totally explain it (will write another post all about it).

The game hold ups though, and beyond the novel trifling that is the character-designer/OC, the level-design is better in my opinion than most are letting on. I'm not sure yet if anything comes close to my personal gold-standard for 3D Sonic levels (Radical Highway and City Escape) but the sense of speed is often phenomenal, but I don't think there is any more of those moments where you are forfeiting control than there has always been since even the Genesis games, which is something I've seen some critics complain about. I admit I was slightly taken back by the locked camera, and often-times narrow corridor-esque levels, but once I got the hang of it, I realized that this is a more faithful translation of classic Sonic into 3D than the more free-roaming styled levels of Adventure games.

People seem to get mad when there's too much precise platforming in Sonic (Marble Ruins..) just as some assail it for feeling like an auto-scroller at other times. It's like fans approach the series with the same confused priorities that Sonic Team themselves have sometimes displayed. I like the generally arcade-y feel of the levels though and re-visiting them for the purposes of refining my runs/time is enticing in the way it was back in the Sonic/Shadow levels in SA2.

Sonic is a weird, platypus of a genre unto himself: Neither pure platforming, racing or trick-based sports game a la Tony Hawk/SSX, he is all of these things and none of them at the same time. And I think these levels capture that excellently. What he isn't are slow and awkward Emerald-hunting levels or shoot-em-ups, but Sonic Teams seems to always shoot for more diversity in game-play than just Sonic levels would allow for, and that's where the Avatar levels come in, retaining the style and speed of the Sonic levels, while also expanding it slightly with Ratchet and Clank-style gun-play that seems to stand-in for awkward shit like the Eggman/Tails levels in SA2. And yeah this does mix it up nicely.

Something else I've been seeing is that it's too easy and the levels are too short, and I just hope people are playing this on Hard mode (the requisite for hard mode is simply if you have played Sonic before according to the game itself). Other criticisms I've seen simply don't resonate, like people complaining about the controls of the Sonic levels, which just did not stand-out to me as being something I noticed. I like the variety of 2D and 3D, and think it strikes a good balance.

So yeah, I basically just wanted to write this big ass post to explain why I think it's good and why other people should STFU, basically. Sonic isn't Mario, and never had been. His games are not explicitly all-ages, timeless crowd-pleasers. His games have always been faux-edgy, psuedo-platforming/racing hybrids that click hard with some and leave others cold. They are also explicitly for kids in a way that Mario games aren't, and it's a kind of complicated point but I think professional critics should take into account this shit was never designed for a 30 year-old to enjoy. That's literally why Mania exists. A 10 year old now-a-days might enjoy Mania, but a lot of that game nearly amounts to being a joke that someone born after 1999 couldn't really get.

So, basically I'm all for trying new things, perfecting a formula that never quite existed and honing in on the good parts of some of the first Sonic games, and I think that's what Forces does. Also the story is sick. Some Sonic fans actually get caught up on the story which is insane to me because its like following the plot of a Tom and Jerry cartoon, but this shit hit some fan-service high-points for me (great cast of characters that mostly glazes newer shit and honors OG Adventure 1 and 2 shit, a slightly "darker" tone, Classic Sonic seeming chill af compared to real Sonic, and cameos from old-school bad guys, for instance). So that shouldn't be a factor in your review if your over the age of 9, is what I'm saying, but I actually dig it despite that.

Yes, it could be improved upon, but I think it’s an excellent starting point for the developers to build on, so hey why not add Whitehead to this team, as well as few of the level-designers from the other Boost games (Colors, Generations, Lost World), refine the controls and level design a bit and BAM, you got yourself a worthy candidate for the true, long-awaited Sonic Adventure 3 that all true fans have been waiting for forever (even though the Adventure games weren't perfect to begin with so this is a wish that contradicts my other points but still). What I think I'm saying, is if this is what they can do in a $40 title with a relatively small dev-team from what I've read, then what can they do when they go all in? Or are they too scared? Well these reviews might scare them off from even trying again and that's what I'm worried about, but Sega needs to grow some balls, and go all-in for the next release and lay-off the Pachinko-onslaught, or at least funnel some of that Pachinko-gold into developing the next game. Like I said, Sonic isn't Mario, and he doesn't need to be, or need to have games like the big cross-generational 3D Mario games that come out every 5-8 years or so. But you know he could if he wanted to, and I think Forces shows a pretty good way forward. Until then, try opening your heart to the Blue Blur if it's been a while-- who knows, you might just be surprised. Smell ya later, dreamerz~

#sonic #sonic forces #forces #sonic mania #mania #sonic the hedgehog #haters #critics #legacy #games #sonic adventure 3 #sonic adventure #adventure

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writingsofawanderingwonderer · 6 years

Text

Katy's Everything Wrong With Bob's "Everything Wrong With CinemaSin's 'Everything Wrong With Sherlock Holmes'"

vvv Read more line here. vvv

Alternate title: Why CinemaSins shouldn't be destroyed.

Another alternate title: That One Controversial Essay That's Finally Going to Lead to Me Getting Eaten Alive by People on Twitter. Maybe.

Okay, so to get you old corks up to speed: Recently, there's been a surge, and absolute pandemic, of YouTube videos cropping up titled something along the lines of, "Everything Wrong With CinemaSin's Everything Wrong With _______", wherein the video nitpicks (their words, not mine) CinemaSins' nitpicks of a film. There have also been a bunch of comments on Twitter and YouTube saying that CinemaSins should pack up their things and hop it. To stop making their videos.

This is where I come in. And you reading this comes in.

It's hard for me to explain why I'm making this essay. Maybe it's because I want to play the Devil's Advocate in a contained, spaced environment. Maybe I want to give everyone reading this a different perspective on the matter; something to mull over and consider and take away before we decide to write something off as "bad" or "useless" or of low quality. Maybe I consider CinemaSins an old friend and I'd like to speak up for them, even though it's hard because I'm not used to voicing an unpopular opinion out loud, and I'm super-nervous about this. Maybe it's because I want to give a meta statement about how you can nitpick a nitpicker who nitpicks another nitpicker, and that continually nitpicking the next nitpicker will either create a wondrous nitpickception that we can all learn from, or spiral out of control into a lesson that nickpicking nitpickers nitpicking is a futile effort...

But for some reason, I've been overcome with a fierce desire to write this.

So, there you go. I'm making this now.

To structure this academic essay, I'm going to use an "Everything Wrong With CinemaSin's Everything Wrong With _______" video to make several counter-arguments. I'll be using Everything Wrong With "Everything Wrong With Sherlock Holmes" by Bobvids. (Thank you, Bobvids, for letting me use your video as an example. You're quite a trooper and a good sport! And I love your editing style!).

To add upon Bobvid's video's goal, this essay's goal is to nitpick a video nitpicking another video.

Nitpickception?

*cricket chirps*

Ahem. This essay's goal is also, like all my essays here, for educational purposes. Albeit, in a roundabout way.

To keep track of things, I'll add timestamps and quotes from Bobvid's video as I comment on them. I will skip over some parts of the video to prevent this essay from being over a hundred years long.

0:49 Bob: Why call them "movie sins"? One of the CinemaSins guys said it was "[...] because it's a more flexible & nebulous definition." But I guess they never realized "sins" has an extremely negative connotation. Of all the words they could've used, "sins" is the least flexible or nebulous.

Me: They're called "sins" because "no movie is without sin," as their slogan goes (the implication being that any film, no matter how beautiful, wonderful, and perfect it is, has flaws and should be discussed and acknowledged on some level. Because that's how future films grow as an art form. By learning from the past's mistakes). The word "sins" is nebulous because we all contain it, no matter how good or bad we are. He sins. You sin a little. They sin a lot. And I'm sinning right now. So it really is a flexible and nebulous definition.

1:14 Bob: Why have a movie sin timer when YouTube tells you exactly how long a video is?

Me: Because it's a reference/homage to the "gate" used in filmmaking. The "gate" is a black border placed around a piece of film or storyboard that lists the time, scene number, and name of the person who submitted the shot. When I'm animating professionally, I'm given a gate that lists these things, and every time I hand in a shot, I have to "check the gate" as the old filmmaker's term puts it, to make sure everything's in order. The gate even times the frame number (like the CinemaSins' timer and unlike YouTube's video timer), which is super important to include, because it makes it easier for a supervisor to give feedback ("Katy, could you please fix the foot-clipping issue that appears on frame 298? Thanks!"). So YouTube actually doesn't tell you exactly how long a video is (which is very, very frustrating if, like me, you like using YouTube videos as animation reference and want to scrub between individual frames without using an app like Reeview.it Player or Anilyzer)

Me: Here's an example of a film gate:

1:24 Bob: Why is the text of what's being said showing up at the bottom of the screen? Not only is it redundant, but YouTube lets you upload subtitles which is easier to do than premiere titles, lets viewers disable it if they don't need it, and also lets you edit text after the video's uploaded.

Me: Because, 1) the average YouTuber genuinely doesn't know all of YouTube's features, including toggling closed captions (seriously, I've seen several YouTube commenters complain that a person in a video was talking too fast, not realising that you can turn on subtitles and/or adjust the speed of the video. Youtube kinda makes it a wee bit tricky to find all its hidden features. Did you know that you can change the sub's font typeface, colour, and size? Did you know you can scrub through video frames using "," and "." but only sometimes? Well, now you know. You're welcome.)

Me: And, 2) Because YouTube's subtitles do not properly time (nor fit) all of its text onto the screen in full sentences if the speaker is talking fast or saying a lot, making the subtitles cut off midsentence. It is this for exact reason why it was so challenging and annoying for me to transcribe what you were saying throughout this video! And why is was MUCH EASIER for me to transcribe CinemaSins' subtitles in comparison (my typing fingers hurt soooo much right now). CinemaSins' method lets the viewer read subtitles in full and complete sentences, taking things in in a easier-to-digest way. They've also used it for gags where they change the font typeface or size midsentence to add emphasis.

Me: First image: Bobvids subtitles for CinemaSins (note how it's cut off midsentence). Second image: CinemaSins' subtitles (see how they're easier to read?).

Me: Also, why the Dickens did you subtitle CinemaSins if their subtitles are already in their part of the video? Isn't that hypocritically-and-ironically-redundant?!

1:37 CinemaSins: This film production logo is so ballsy I straight up have no idea what company it's for. But good job on being ballsy enough to NOT include your name, mystery production company.

Bob: That's Silver Pictures. You may know them from producing Weird Science, Lethal Weapon, Predator, Die Hard, Road House, Demolition Man, and The Matrix. They're allowed to have some balls.

Me: In all fairness, I literally haven't seen any of those movies you've mentioned (Weird Science looks interesting, I'll check that one out. I've now added it to my library list.) except for The Matrix, which I didn't really like due to its lack of humour and its tonal issues. So using a nameless logo really doesn't help you get more people to know about your company if they're unfamiliar with it or have forgotten what your logo looks like. So why do it? Pointless! Mad as a hatter!

2:25 CinemaSins: Robert Downey, Jr. is a handsome, fun, charismatic lead actor... who cannot do an English accent to save his life. Is it too much to ask that SHERLOCK HOLMES actually be British?

Me: I think CinemaSins is making note on "cultural appropriation," a prevalent thing in Hollywood (an American actor playing an English character), rather than literally how well an actor can do an accent. I mean, when oh when are we going to see a film where Simon Pegg plays Sherlock Holmes?! We're waiting!

2:58 CinemaSins: I don't know how good at deductive reasoning he is, but he wouldn't have been able to guess that that guy had a floating rib.

Bob: It's easy to guess considering floating ribs are the last two sets of ribs on your rib cage and are a natural part of human anatomy, which Sherlock is proficient in.

Me: It's NOT easy to deduce, considering the GUY IS WEARING CLOTHES, THEREBY COVERING HIS RIBS SO YOU CAN'T TELL IF HE HAS FLOATING RIB SYNDROME. Also, SHERLOCK IS CURRENTLY ENGAGING IN A FIGHT WITH SAID GUY. Have you ever tried to assess the state of a guy's ribs while having a fisticuff with him?

Me: Also, you used like the third Google image result that appears when you search "floating ribs," and I don't know how to feel about that, because I think you should have used the fourth Google image result instead, as that diagram illustrates things more clearly in my opinion (it shows the ribcage from the front, which was how Sherlock was viewing the man, rather than from the back).

3:21 CinemaSins: This guy seems to be late to the ceremony. He also didn't get the memo that they all didn't have to wear the hooded robes.

Bob: It's explained later that this is Lord Coward, who is using a robe to hide his identity.

Me: Yes, but WE, the audience, don't know that at this point in the film. So as we watch this for the first time, we're all thinking to ourselves, "Why aren't all the people wearing dark robes?!" Confusion that's resolved through later context is still confusion.

Me: Also, that joke made me laugh and reminded me of that absolutely ridiculous "robes scene" from the movie Dungeons and Dragons.

Me: And let's address the elephant in the room. No one like to be the one to yell "The Emperor has no clothes!" so please let me be the one to do it for you (and get eaten alive for it). The reason why so many people are jumping on CinemaSins right now in particular is because they did a Wonder Woman video. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to see that the timelines add up.

Me: For those people who are like me who don't really watch American superhero films* (because we're too tangled up waiting with baited breath for The Adventures of Tintin sequel, because that's the comic book hero we grew up reading), Wonder Woman was a film that was well-received after what one reviewer described as "a long line of waiting apologies."

*Me: Footnote: I've watched The Incredibles and Batman 66, and I really liked those.

Me: Because Wonder Woman was a film that's popular, CinemaSins got in a lot of trouble because... apparently, people can't handle other people poking fun at something they like.

Me: Really, people. I'm disappointed in you. You're better than this.

Me: I hope I'm wrong about this, and people are just upset over CinemaSins' fact-checking. But one has to wonder why all the nitpick comments/videos started appearing now at the same time.

Me: Maybe I'm just weird, but I love it when people poke fun at stuff I like. Even my own work. I like watch LPs of my game played by others who are making cracks at it. I've been waiting for CinemaSins to do a video on one of my favourite films, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, but to no avail. Even CinemaSins pokes fun at itself before other people did. But many people don't seem to be able to handle neither criticism of a work that is near perfect, nor laugh at a joke at the expense of a film they like.

Me: And, not to put too fine a point on it, Bertie, but that's part of a bigger problem.

Me: CinemaSins has a right to exist. Critiquing a video game creator's work is fine, I love getting criticism, in fact. It helps artists grow. But please, stop making posts and videos saying that CinemaSins should die. It isn't decent. And stop making comments like, "CinemaSins doesn't watch the films they cover." They would have to watch the films at some stage to edit the video together.

Me: Now, Bobvid also points out some flaws that are genuinely flaws in CinemaSins' videos (to the best of my knowledge), and that's something that CinemaSins can work on to improve and grow their repertoire. It is not, however, a good reason to have CinemaSins wiped off the face of the Earth.

Me: Just because I don't like something doesn't mean it shouldn't exist. I don't like something doesn't mean it should exist. I don't like strategy games, but I'm happy others enjoy them. I'm happy strategy games are becoming successful again.

Me: And yet, some people think that visual novel games shouldn't exist. Why? Because they don't like them.

4:46 Watson: How did you see that? Sherlock: Because I was looking for it.

CinemaSins: Sherlock doesn't say, "because even though it's clear, it reflects light and is still visible to the naked eye."

Bob: Yes, you and I can see it, but that doesn't mean Watson was able to see it from his perspective. Watson was rushing Blackwood and wasn't paying attention.

Me: Due to the Kuleshov Effect, and because Watson and Sherlock are standing next to each other by the end of the sequence, we can assume that Watson can see what Sherlock sees in this shot. Crumbs, due to the magic of Prevalent Film Language, we conclude to this thought without even registering it on a conscious because of the way the sequence is shot (shot of object, followed by shot of Watson and Sherlock looking offscreen in the same direction = they are looking at said object).

Me: Also, I noticed you labelled Sherlock and Watson as "Sherlock" and "Watson," respectively, in the subtitles. For proper design unity, shouldn't you have labelled them both by their first names (Sherlock and John) or their last names (Holmes and Watson)? I'm nitpicking, but that's the point.

5:44 CinemaSins: Yeah sure. You're totally under arrest, but you can walk around without anyone holding on to you to make sure you don't try to escape.

Bob: This is showing that even police fear Lord Blackwood. Though I guess it could be a setup for one of your sh**ty jokeyjokes too.

Me: *Still sniggering from CinemaSins' gag.* *Pauses.* *Put hands on hips.* What's wrong with jokey jokes?! Even if they're afraid, they're the police. It's their job to apprehend this guy, so it looks ridiculous when they don't. It's reaching Thompson and Thomson-levels of police bumbling in an otherwise darkish action film.

Me: Details add up. If a film has a ton of tiny details that don't work, they can add up and wreck the enjoyment of the film (see videos that analyse shot-for-shot remakes, like Psycho and Beauty and the Beast to see what I mean). I know artists who have worked on Rick and Morty and have talked about meetings discussing the design of a paper cup that a character has to hold. A paper cup.

Me: I've seen Twitter people make the argument that films are not meant to be totally logical, and instead are meant to hit you on a metaphorical level (that's why Disney's Snow White works). And that CinemaSins uses logic and literalisms too much. But (at the risk of explaining a joke, which I don't like doing) remember that we as creators often pose a statement that we don't agree with to make our viewers both laugh and self-reflect on whether we are telling a truth or not. I hope this makes sense.

Me: Also of note: Bob doesn't censor swear words in the audio nor the subtitles of this video. I had to do that myself. Even though CinemaSins censors swear words. And both CinemaSins and myself have stated publicly that we're fine with swearing used in videos. We just censor them in videos/essays respectively out of consideration for others who may not like hearing them.

Me: It's also sometimes important to censor video essays in case someone wants to use the video in an academic environment, such as being shown in a film school class that has strict profanity regulations (for example, Games As Literature's YouTube videos have been known to be showcased in academic courses on Video Game Theory, which is why he tries to exclude any swearing or gore in his videos).

Me: While we're on the subject of nitpick-jokes, I'd like to take a moment here to point out that that bit where CinemaSins points out that in one of the background areas of a two-second scene in Kingsman has a paper towel roll is hung the wrong way is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. Seriously, I was howling when that popped up!

Me: Several people on Twitter were asking why CinemaSins was funny. While I'm highly, highly against explaining jokes ("comedy dies quickly under the microscope"), I can try to maybe go point-to-point and explain why their jokes touch the funnybone. I'll bring Powerpoint slides.

8:12 CinemaSins: While I appreciate the way this movie uses boxing to show off Holmes' superior mind, the idea that a reclusive, agoraphobic investigator would regularly participate in chaotic grimy street fights. Is beyond what my suspension of disbelief can bear.

Bob: Holmes' penchant for boxing comes straight out of Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories, so suspend that disbelief because people have been doing it since 1890.

Me: While Sherlock being a skilled boxer is indeed canon in the novels, many Doyle fans (including myself, screenwriter Max Landis, and co-creator of BBC Sherlock, Mark Gatiss) consider this to be a flaw in the Sherlock novels, as it often totally imbalances the foil relationship between Holmes and Watson. Watson is meant to be more of the brawn than Sherlock because Sherlock is more of the brains than Watson. Making Sherlock a skilled fighter makes Watson less useful. Because of this, it's perfectly accepted (and often considered an improvement) among many Sherlock fans to re-write Sherlock as being flawed at fighting (in BBC Sherlock, Sherlock is terrible at using a gun on numerous occasions, and fails miserably at trying to box the Golem in season 1, episode 3.) and even works that are heavily-inspired by Sherlock Holmes use this dynamic (Max Landis is the creator of BBCA's Dirk Gently, where Dirk can be taken down in a fight very quickly and is surrounded by friends who are physically stronger than him; and I am working on The Butler Detective, which has the detective character Mel Ambrose being physically weak in a fight, and Tuski Brown being surprisingly strong from buttle-ing).

Me: The following images are from Max Landis' Twitter account:

9:59 Preacher: You are sentenced to death for the practice of black magic.

CinemaSins: Victorian London was pretty backwards, but not that backwards. Were they? Were they?

Bob: Considering a [demonic ritual abuse] panic of our own happened in the 1980s, it's not that strange at all.

Me: Yes, but Reality is Unrealistic. There have been written accounts of farmers seeing cows spontaneously exploding, but if I had put a scene in my slice of life farming video game (The Journey of Ignorance) where a cow explodes, no one playing the game would say, "That's improbable, but realistic." They'd say it was unbelievable. As the saying goes, "Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense." If you want the audience to believe something that's improbable, you either have to create a fictionalised world where it seems less improbable, or you have to do what Fargo does and write a disclaimer at the beginning saying that the events are based on a true story... Even when that's not true.

Me: Also, ritual panic isn’t strange? What?

10:58 Bob: It's pronounced "sh*t," not "[BEEP]."

Me: -_- And you say CinemaSins does jokeyjokes?

Me: I feel like I need to add a swear counter or something to this video at this point. 0_o

13:27 CinemaSins: Pretty sure there would be a separate woman's jail. Right? Right?

Bob: Up until 1902, men and women were held in the same prisons in London. Quit asking rhetorical questions. And. Do. Research.

Me: What, am I supposed to crack open a bally history book every time I finish watching a bally episode of Jeeves & Wooster?

Me: Look, critiques come in all shapes and sizes. Some write in an academic style (Roger Egbert), some candidly (Jeremy Jahns), some scathingly (Ebert again), some focus on the editing side of things (Folding Ideas), the animation side (AniMat Reviews), and others write like they're a modernised version of a PG Wodehouse character from the 1930s (me).

Me: My point is, some critics, like CinemaSins, critique films as they are, as the film is playing, in the moment.

Me: You know. Like the way an average audience member watches a movie?

Me: Let them. And let CinemaSins. It's a valid method to judge a film. "It takes all sorts to build a world." There's room for critics who review films by how they captured people emotionally, but there's also room for critics who observe films on a more literal level.

Me: I feel bad about critics like who critically assess both good and bad films. They make me laugh the most with their snarky with, yet they get a lot of flak for it. One independent gave development team (we dare not speak its name, unless in hushed whispers by candlelight on a full moon) even went as far as to try and sue several critics for negatively reviewing their games. This attempt to silence the critics all led to... well... Let's just say that the Streisand Effect amuses me to no end.

Me: I know there's this dislike towards negativity and "caustic critics," but it's actually healthy to have a good whinge.

Me: If you honestly can't stand CinemaSins' negative tone, then check out their sibling channel, CinemaWins. It takes good and bad films and points out the good or awesome elements in those films.

13:50 CinemaSins: You might be thinking "Amazing sense of smell doesn't make a good superhero," and I would respond by saying, "Remember Hawkeye? He gets to be a top tier avenger and all he can do is shoot a [BEEP]ing bow and arrow."

Bob: Hawkeye has a hoverbike, f**k you!

Me: Having a hoverboard is not a skill. Shooting with a bow and arrow IS a skill. I actually have to state this? I mean, he could give that hoverbike to anyone with a compatible drivers license and they could fly it in Hawkeye's place.

Me: Or was that another one of your jokeyjokes? *Wiggles eyebrows.*

Me: Also, WHO THE HECK IS HAWKEYE?!

14:23 CinemaSins: Movie repurposes "old-timey" footage from Les Mis and Shanghai Knights.

Bob: Les Mis, Shanghai Knights and Sherloch Holmes all filmed in Greenwich. I guess it's a sin to shoot in the same location. Is this just a sh**ty jokeyjoke or a legit piece of criticism? I honestly can't tell.

Me: It's a reference/homage to Hollywood constantly filming in certain locations to do film shoots (especially Canada, due to its tax differences). You see camera crews filming stuff all the time and even handing out notices that give info on what film/show they're working on and how long they'll be there. I'm probably in the background of 257 different films and television shows simply because I'm Canadian.

Me: Canadians have very, very mixed, passionate feelings about being used to film American movies that are virtually never set in actual Canada, so I'd count this as a movie sin, yes.

14:48 Bob: Why are jokes about ejaculating allowed in these videos but cursing isn't?

Me: For the same reason double entendre jokes were allowed in 1971's "The Two Ronnies," but cursing wasn't: Because double entendre has a layer of subtext that hides its taboo nature from younger audiences (making it often "go above their heads"), but swearing doesn't. Unless you censor it in some way.

Me: The Two Ronnies' comedy sketch "Crossed Lines" literally has every other line a sex-related joke and it's considered to be a masterpiece of English double entendre. Check it out.

17:46: CinemaSins: The three main characters take down all-20-plus henchmen without the slightest injury.

Bob: By "20-plus henchmen" do you really mean six dudes?

Me: Hey, we're all allowed to hyperbole. I've been doing it like 50 times in this essay alone. :D

17:53 Adler: Moriarty. Please don't underestimate him.

CinemaSins: Irene is just saying "and we need a plot for the next movie."

Bob: Would you prefer the sequel to have a villain that comes out of nowhere, or is teased a little bit? Do all those Marvel post-credits scenes with Thanos make you really mad?

Me: I would prefer a film to be restrained enough to not sequel bait and allow itself to be its own, self-contained story.

Me: Also, sequel-baiting is slowly growing to be a hugely frowned-upon trend in films. It can smack of the creators being over-confident that they'll get enough money to warrant a sequel (The Last Airbender film anyone?) and well as manipulating the audience in an underhanded way. People are getting upset over sequel hooks, especially this year (2017) with films like King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (which was revealed to be a setup to six more films. I kid you not.), The Snowman (which was planned on being possibly a franchise. Which is ironic, since the film is literally incomplete but was released anyway), The Dark Tower (which was meant to lead to a television series), and Murder on the Orient Express (which ends with a sequel hook that, if you've read Agatha's Christie's Death on the Nile, creates a staggering plotting issue that I honestly have no idea how the writers will get around if the sequel does get made).

Me: I don't watch Marvel movies, so I don't know if Thanos makes me mad. Would he make me mad? Probably.

18:55 Bob: (Final Tally) Closing remarks: I have never seen someone simultaneously watch and not watch a film before. So thanks for that I guess.

Me: I've never had to type so much nitpicking-related stuff about a nitpicker before. Not since last Tuesday. So thanks for that I guess.

Me: No, really, thanks for that, Bob. This was cathartic. Genuinely.

Me: If people want to nitpick my nitpick of nitpicking and nitpicker who is nitpicking another nitpicker who's nitpicking a movie, please fell free to. Whatever you title it is bound to be hilarious, and I could do with a jolly good laugh.

-Katy

Also, here's Bobvid's YouTube Channel. *cough*Shameless plug he didn't ask for but I'm adding it anyway.*cough*

Bob, you've been a sweetheart. Keep making your videos.

"I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it."- From Roger Ebert's review of North (1994)

Gee, I hope I don’t come off as too narky in this essay. This is such a big experiment. I’m so nervous about this ahhhhhhh--

#films #literature

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zenosanalytic · 7 years

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DS9: Tribunal to Prophet Motive

Overall S2 wasn’t really that much better than S1, though it did have a handful of eps that were genuinely “good” television. S3’s also spotty but slightly better. One S3 trend I don’t like is the SUPER heavy-handed selling of Kira/Odo from basically the first ep on, and how it comes entirely out of nowhere. Also, Keiko is royally and consistently shafted and ignored, which is frustrating as hell. They FINALLY give her something to do, and not only is it presented as a “gift” from her husband(which, Ick! Like she’s not following the going’s on in her own damn profession???), they use it to effectively write her off the show! Ridiculous >:(

Tribunal: Bad. What’s the point of doing a courtroom ep that isn’t a courtroom ep? Sure, I can understand the theoretical appeal of the irony of a trial episode about a show trial, but you really need to embrace the absurdity of the concept for it to work and they didn’t. Also, the Cardassians are one-note(like all the non-human species in ST), and their one-note is “Order”, so Cardassian law, even if entirely show-trials in practice, really ought to be procedurally meticulous. An ep about Odo, skilled in these procedures from his time as a Cardassian security chief, out bureaucrating a culture of military bureaucrats to stall for time while the DS9 crew finds dirt to blackmail the Cardassians with would have been great and probably darkly funny; this was just dull. Also, there’s no way the Fed would stand for a Starfleet officer being snatched out of a Fed shuttle in Fed space like that, smuggling weapons or no, or believe for one second the Cardassian claim weapons were on the shuttle in the first place, given their past experiences. This would have caused a major diplomatic incident, and the Fed embassy corps on Cardassia Prime would have been all over O’Brien like ants on a summer picnic.

The Jem’Hadar: Fun and Good. Trying to do something simple and succeeds. Quark’s rant to Sisko about Ferengi history is obvsl convenient writing rather than fact -in TNG they’re aggressive, needlessly violent cruel pirates who, I’m pretty sure, are explicitly slavers as well- but it SHOULD be right. They’d be more interesting as a culture built around a capitalism that never saw any profit in compulsion. Historically, while slavery pre-dated capitalism in Earthican societies, slavery as we think about it -dehumanization, brutality, murderous forced labor- has nigh-universally been associated with capitalism, and quite frequently with commerce(Greek, Roman, and American slavery were all basically built around ag production for commercial markets[though slave-artisans based in cities was a significant part of the Greek and Roman systems as well]). That internal contradiction, attached to a larger ethical distaste for direct, personal violence(and valorization of tattling that’d go along with the instinctive distress-cry DS9 gives to Ferengi), while still being the profit-driven thieves and schemers they are, would have been Compelling.

The Search is… OK. I mean, as television it’s fine. The plot doesn’t make any damn sense though. The Dominion makes it clear they don’t want the Fed entering their territory and the Fed’s response is… to infiltrate deep into their territory to find the Homeworld of their leaders and confront them with the only warship in the Fed fleet? This move is basically designed to start a war. Also, they seem to forget that they’ve had Odo come to the Gamma Quadrant before, so his whole “I feel drawn to this nebula” deal seems out of left-field. Also Also, they should have used The Defiant to add the Romulan liaison as a regular cast member, instead of bringing on Eddington and doing nothing with him. Having Sisko, who has had an excellent relationship with Odo until now, suddenly giving this speech about how he doesn’t like that Odo isn’t “a team player” is pretty ridiculous as well(and out of character. Sisko’s not a team player. His WHOLE CREW is made up of square pegs just like himself). Also Also Also, a Romulan security officer who spends a season or two building up relationships with the maincast, sashaying around being arrogant and cynical in Romulan kimonos during her off-time, gradually developing Maquis sympathies, becomes Sisko’s evil!Valjean and remains so until nearly the end of the series would have been a genuinely surprising character-arc requiring consistently good writing to sell, and kind of explain why, in later eps, the Romulans wouldn’t require one of their own to protect and operate the cloak. Or hey! Maybe her becoming a Maquis could begin as a plot to foment rebellion in the Fed, that’d be neat.

Equilibrium: Meh

Second Skin: Good in some parts, but that the journals would be what starts cracking Kira up isn’t believable and it just isn’t mindfucky enough. Also, Kira’s warmth towards her fake dad at the end of the ep didn’t feel earned. Maybe if they’d had her bond with him over having lost family in the Occupation.

The Abandoned: pretty offensively essentialist, really. Especially given the plotline later in the series(iirc) about a Jem’Hadar trying to break his people’s addiction to ketracel-White, which kinda undermines this eps whole “the Jem’Hadar have no will of their own and are genetically programmed soldiers that it’s useless to reason with” line.

Civil Defense: good. It remains unbelievable to me, though, that Starfleet wouldn’t have done a complete refit of the whole station the minute the Cardassians left, especially given the Star Trek obsession with hard-wired, analog computing.

Meridian: a noxious pile of garbage all round. The subplot is skeezy, but at least it’s in-character, well-written, and believable which the main plot certainly is not. I kinda wish that, if they were going to include such a scummy sub-plot in the ep, they’d at least made it a bit interesting by subverting expectations. At the end, have Tiron be at first taken aback, and then surprisingly pleased with Kira’s modifications to the program. He walks out, “deeply satisfied” with the program and pays 20% extra for it, compliments Quark on his “creativity” as a holodesigner with a slightly amorous look, Quark is clueless and confused yet pleased, Kira and Odo are absolutely mortified. Then maybe leave it around as a Chekov’s Gun; Quark makes a secret copy(of course), offering it to only his best customers, it leads to a small but noticeable increase in custom, then someday in a later season he checks it out and is Horrified to find he’s unknowingly made himself one of the most popular porn-performers in the sector :|

Defiant: fine as it is, except there should have been a bit about HOW the Maquis found out about the Defiant and knew about its cloak. This would be a good time to introduce the long-arc of the Romulan officer’s Maquis sympathies/attempts to use her position on DS9 to co-opt the Maquis and undermine the Federation.

Fascination: dumb and really Skeezy, Ferrell’s is the only entertaining performance in the ep, but, again, the smooch-directing of this series is uncommonly good. Also: Miles is not just a bad dad, but also a bad husband. Also Also: Bajor’s only 3 hours away in a runabout or shuttle for Frak’s sake? You can’t be bothered to go visit her?? People in Texas regularly make three hour drives every DAY.

Past Tense: One of my favorite eps of the series; heavily Nostalgic for me. Having now read To Say Nothing of the Dog, however, I do wish ST writers treated Time and Causality as more robust and stubborn than they tend to.

Life Support: The inevitable killing off of a past love-interest to free Kira up for Kirdo. Bareil was bland and boring anyway, even if his performances in S3 were much improved. Why the heck is the Kai negotiating treaties??? That the Kai and Vedeks plays a direct, institutional role in Bajoran politics needed to be established before jumping into a plotline about the Kai negotiating a secret peace pact with Cardassia. The subplot with Jake and Nog, which reduces the question of female personhood to a “cultural issue” in the context of Nog’s misogyny ruining Jake’s chances with a girl who never appears again(iirc), is repulsive in about a half-dozen ways.

Heart of Stone: Ho-hum. The Nog in Starfleet storyline is good, but they should have built up to it in previous eps. Wesley spends pretty much all his time before acceptance doing science experiments and apprenticing in various departments on Enterprise to build up his resume just to qualify to take the exams; having Nog accomplish the same task with a letter of rec is kinda |:T Also: wouldn’t Sisko have pointed out that, in the Fed and Starfleet, Nog’s “gift” would be interpreted as an attempted bribe and get him immediately arrested? Seems like an important cultural rule to point out to a Ferengi |:T |:T

Destiny: Good. Ulani and Gilora are obviously lesbians and I won’t hear another word on the matter u_u

Prophet Motive: Fun and Good, though the “evolved” talk re: social constructs and cultural modes was annoying.

Why are S3′s subplots so much better done than it’s main ones? I imagine the discipline of having limited time to complete them in has something to do with it. Some other observations:

A-plot B-plot structure is entirely standard in S2 and S3, probably because it’s an obvious way to include such a large cast, but then all the plots revolve around the same handful of characters, so the opportunity is wasted.

It’d have been nice if every species was given the same variety of clothing the Ferengi get to have. Having Caradassians wear mil uniforms IN THEIR OWN HOMES, and when they are scientists, is absurd.

DS9 continues the Trek tradition of having a real nebulous and unexplained relationship with money.

DS9 really needed more women writers and head-writers on staff. Why are male writers so bad at this???

I really need to get in the habit of taking notes while I watch so I can give more detailed reactions later -__-

#Star Trek #ST: DS9 #DS9 S2 #DS9 S3 #DS9 Rewrite #TV Reviews #zA's Outside Viewing #Literary Criticism

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