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phykios · 3 years

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honesty and promise me, part 10 [co-written with @darkmagyk] [read on ao3]

“If you don’t talk to me, I’m not going to leave you my keys.”

Annabeth looks at Piper from behind the loom, glaring through the threads. “Then you won’t come back to ten bolts of fabric.”

In fairness, it was sort of an empty threat. Piper has all the good stuff: the surger, the embroidery machine, the industrial sewing machines, plus a million sources for fabric that aren’t Annabeth’s stress weaving. Annabeth only has her own shitty sewing machine at home that she’d gotten for Christmas when she was fourteen.

Also, Piper wouldn’t actually lock her out. She needs those fabrics.

“Why don’t you just not go?” Annabeth says. “If you stay, I promise to tell you all the gritty details.” She’s joking, but the second she says it, she’s hit with a strange wave of desperation.

She wants to tell Piper all the gritty details. How she had giggled and smoozed and looked so pretty on Luke’s arm, tattoos and undercut and everything else so carefully concealed. She never wanted to tell Thalia the gritty details. The dirty ones, sure, particularly when the dirty things didn’t involve Thalia’s beloved younger cousin. But she had spent two years, two hard painful years, hiding vast swaths of herself from Thalia.

She thought of the night of the gala, of Thalia telling her family she knew Luke from college. NYU. They’d been actors together.

Annabeth hadn’t been the only one hiding things.

It had stung, in all sorts of ways.

Piper stares, narrowing her eyes. “How dare you tempt me into giving up my creative retreat for gossip.”

Annabeth shrugs. “It’s one or the other.”

The glare at each other, stubborn as all hell.

Piper throws up her hands. “Fine. Just make my fabric and call Leo if you’re having another crisis.”

The truth is, she will tell Piper. Eventually. She knows she will. It will probably be in eight months, when she gets back, when hopefully the shame of her false life and the devastation of losing Percy has lessened, but she will tell her. But eight months is a long time. “I do have other friends, you know.”

“Then call Luke. Or Thalia.”

It takes absolutely everything Annabeth has not to wince at the names.

She would never have told Thalia. Not really. Even things like this, even if it hadn’t involved her. Thalia wasn’t… good at relationship stuff. Not like Piper. And she never knew all of Annabeth’s romantic history--not like Piper did, anyway.

And it wasn’t just romantic relationships.

Annabeth might have been able to share her pain, and share her pain with Thalia, but it had, in many ways, only been a surface level thing. Thalia saw her pain after Annabeth’s mom had rescinded her approval of her life, but she'd taken Annabeth’s silence as the end of the matter, and responded to it by acting out, and arguably drinking too much.

But they never talked about her mother. They never talked about Thalia’s, either, and if there was something Annabeth learned from Hazel’s gala beyond how unfairly handsome Percy was going to look in thirty years, it was that there was a lot going on there.

It is a little hurtful on reflection. Making her feel less close to Thalia, but also less guilty about what she never said. And less willing to accept her reactions.

Her emotions have been all over the place the last few weeks.

Piper notices, because of course Piper notices, but she is an angel, and has known her for a long time, so she doesn’t badger her too much. She also doesn’t mention that Annabeth’s measurements all seem to be off. Not even to say something about beauty at every size or her well publicized efforts for diverse bodies in fashion.

But it was still nice to spend time with her. It felt like the old days, staying up too late making the next thing in fashion, and then passing out together, surrounded by bobbins and bagels, Gossip Girl playing on TV.

It did make Piper’s impending departure that much harder, though.

Two weeks into November, she meets Piper and Leo for dinner, and then sees Piper off to JFK for her eight-month creativity retreat in Oklahoma. “You know, like how you decided you couldn’t have a doorman for creative reasons,” she’d said with a raised eyebrow when Annabeth had questioned the move. Piper likes to treat the last two years of Annabeth’s life like some sort of creative exercise. Her dad had done that too, once, when she bothered to answer his call.

Not that she’s not doing anything other than helping Piper pick stitches, and sewing hemlines Piper is too important to deal with herself. She wishes that earlier estimation had been true.

Since the gala she’s been living on Uber Eats at Piper’s, unless she gets bullied home, in which case it's the same but less varied selection with more meat, so the night out with Piper and Leo the night before Piper’s flight feels like a radical departure from the norm. Even though they just go to dinner.

Which does not stop her from feeling hungover the next morning.

“You had half a glass of wine last night,” Leo points out from the door of her bathroom.

“I remember,” she agrees when it lets up for a moment.

“If you get me sick,” he says, “I’m sending you the doctor's bill.”

“Fair,” she chokes out.

Leo doesn’t hug her goodbye, but he does tell her he hopes she gets better before heading back to Boston.

Annabeth, hugging porcelain, wishes she could go with him.

She was very seriously considering it a few days later. Magnus would take pity on her and Alex was always fun to hang out with. Plus, they’d probably think she was too pathetic to be called on her shit. She only did not make plans to go up to Boston because on Wednesday Luke texted her: Already a shit week, brunch this weekend? And she knew if she ran off to Boston, she wouldn’t leave Magnus and Alex’s guest room until they forced the issue.

But it would be nice to talk to someone in New York City who doesn’t hate her guts, she thought.

So, on Sunday morning, she throws up the wonton soup she’d ordered in for dinner the night before, gurgles some mouthwash, uses the expensive concealer to hide the dark circles, and over does the mascara in hopes that she mostly looks awake.

“You look terrible,” are the first words Luke says to her.

“You have no idea how to talk to women,” she says, slumping down across from him.

“I do,” Luke says, “I just know not to bother with you.” But he frowns at her, taking her in. She’s broken out a Chanel jacket, but she isn’t sure when she last washed these jeans. A real winning combo, her.

“But really,” Luke says, “you look miserable. Is it about what happened on Halloween?”

She shrugs. It isn’t not that. Percy’s words still circle through her head, his sad, defeated face as he bemoaned the, how did he put it? All the rich girls who fucked him to make a point. Made all the worse because she believes them. Probably not the same points as those princesses, but… probably not as different as she would like.

She wonders if Europe is full of very wealthy aristocratic women who are all secretly and shamefully still in love with Percy Jackson. And Frank Zhang.

It makes her feel hollow and nauseous all at once.

But she’s been feeling nauseous for weeks now, so at least it's not a new feeling. If it keeps up, she’s going to have to go to the doctor soon.

She hates going to the doctor. It feels like cheating when she just goes and pays and knows other people can’t. She had once lied to Thalia about getting money for a side gig, and then given her two hundred bucks for a trip to the clinic. Now that Annabeth has spent many hours in his cousin’s apartment, and has heard Nico talk about his yearly income on top of the money his dad gives him, she’s not sure how it came down to her.

“Not really,” Annabeth says, “I mean, I still feel just as terrible, but that’s mostly the problem. I feel sick.”

“It's been three weeks.” Luke looks genuinely concerned. “What’s going on?”

“I’m exhausted and nauseous all the time,” she says, groaning at the thought. She was okay right at this moment, but she knew it could come back at the drop of a hat.

Luke frowned at her. “That’s all?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“I mean…” He looked at her, his eyes gazing lower, to her body. Luke had never really come on to her in any kind of real way. But she’s not sure he’s ever looked at her with less lust than he does right at that moment.

It is calculating. She’s gained some weight, she knows. But if Luke points it out, she’s going to kick him in the nuts with her steel toed boots. Or maybe make him explain himself and his relationship with Thalia.

“Annabeth,” Luke says, his voice lower, a frown on his face, “please don’t freak out.”

She can feel her heart pick up, just a bit. “That’s a terrible place to start.”

“Have you been feeling… emotionally volatile lately? Having a lot of mood swings?”

She frowns. She’d maybe been crying a little more than normal at sentimental hulu ads, but she always has a soft touch for that kind of thing, and she’s going through some stuff. “I don’t think you should ask a woman that.”

“You are really not going to like my next question, then.” He leans close and says, “Are your… breasts tender?”

“You’re right, I don’t like that question,” Annabeth says, crossing her arms over her chest. Even though they are. “I don’t know why you thought that, and how you knew.”

Luke looks at her with such pity, she feels like she’s suddenly eighteen years old again, and crying on his couch at the end of freshman year about the greatest heartbreak of her life. (It had moved to second place. Lucky it. The boy in that bar had only been theoretical, mostly.)

Luke reaches out, grasping one of her hands, and for a second, Annabeth is sure he is going to tell her that she’s dying.

“Have you considered you might be pregnant?”

She yanks her hand away. “I can’t be pregnant,” she says. “I haven’t had sex in weeks.”

“Have you had your period since then?” Luke asks.

“Not that it's any of your business,” she says, “but I haven’t had one in years.” They do talk about sex sometimes, but periods had long been off the Luke table.

Luke grimaces. “Well, you’ve been sexually active recently…”

“It’s been more than a month!”

“When did you start getting morning sickness?” Luke asks “You were throwing up at Halloween.”

“That wasn’t in the morning,” she snaps, “and I feel fine now.”

“You know morning sickness doesn’t just happen in the morning,” Luke says. “And with the rest of your symptoms, well--”

She shakes her head, glaring at Luke. His judgement would have been better than his patient mansplaining. “You think I don’t use birth control?”

Luke shrugs a little. “I mean… you’re… not great at things like daily medication. That’s what happened last time. And if a condom broke or you didn’t use one…”

Last time. Oh, last time. Last time had been the worst four hours of her life, in between realizing that she hadn’t been remembering her birth control pills every day, that her period was a few days late, and that she’d definitely been having unprotected sex with that boy in Luke’s cohort who was probably too old for her. Last time had been her having a panic attack on Luke’s Cambridge apartment couch while a very reluctant Leo was sent to buy a pregnancy test or twelve, and Piper reassuring her via speaker phone that it would be ok, while Luke rubbed her back and reminded her to breathe.

“I do remember what happened last time,” she says. “That’s why I got an IUD. Which, if you don’t know, from all your girlfriends' pregnancy scares, has the same failure rate as permanent sterilization, less than one percent. So…” So it would be okay. She couldn’t be pregnant. That’s why it had been okay for Percy and Annabeth to start fucking without a condom.

“When was the last time you got a new one?”

“August.” She says, thinking back. She was almost sure. “I remember because it was before the Eta thing--Leo called me to tell me about the ceremony while I was at the gyno.”

“So you were distracted and being a bad patient when they were trying to put it in?”

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

But she won’t give Luke, of all people, the satisfaction. “They are professionals. They should know what they’re doing, even if I was on the phone.”

Luke gives her his most disappointed dad face. It is worse than Annabeth’s own father. “You’re the one who always tells me I need to not make people’s jobs harder by being a bad client,” he quietly reminds her.

She fucking hates him.

But despite herself, she pulls out her phone, and begins googling misplaced IUDs and pregnancy.

They haven’t even ordered yet, but Luke is already standing up, probably based on the look on her face as she manages to fight through the dyslexia and figure out what it says. “Come on,” he says, helping her out of her chair, even though she’s not an invalid. She just might be pregnant.

She pushes that thought away as she follows Luke into a cab and then up to his apartment. He makes her some tea and hands her a banana while he goes to get her a pregnancy test, because Luke’s not quite shameless enough to have one at home. She waits for him in a living room straight out of American Psycho and reads up on IUD pregnancy complications online. Which she probably should not have done.

By the time Luke gets back, she is crying again. He’s gotten her 3 tests, which is very considerate of him, as she’s going to need them.

Walking into the bathroom, she’s shaking hard enough that she needs to brace herself on the wall. He lets her use the nice one off his bedroom, though it's not like she needs the jacuzzi tub.

When she’s done peeing, she sets a timer on her phone and sits on Luke’s bed. He tries to speak to her several times. She doesn’t respond.

It isn’t the longest ten minutes of her life, because the truth is, she knows.

She already knows.

When the alarm goes off, she shrugs off Luke’s arm and silently walks back into the bathroom.

Luke got a digital readout, because what else was he going to do. And so she looks at the little screen and just barely processes the word pregnant.

She doesn’t need to take the other tests. She doesn’t need confirmation or to be convinced.

She reaches down and pressed on her lower abdomen, lifting her shirt. She had noticed a slight change. But she’d also changed a lot of her daily routine lately, had eaten a lot more ice cream. Right now, she can’t see any kind of bump, not really, but she can see a shift. Something flat gone fuller.

Annabeth is pregnant.

Annabeth is pregnant with Percy’s baby.

Percy’s baby.

She bursts into tears all over again.

An eternity later, there is a knock on the door.

“Annabeth,” Luke calls, “can I come in?”

She manages to choke out a yes.

Luke finds her sitting on the edge of the tub. He looked at the test still sitting on the counter.

“Let me make a call,” he says, sitting next to her, resting a hand on her arm. “I know a doctor. He can get you a pill or maybe even see you if you need it. Probably today or tomorrow. We can get this all taken care of and then I’ll buy you ice cream and we can watch Legally Blonde, and you can complain about how it doesn’t accurately reflect the admissions process.”

Normally Annabeth would pre-complain, and point out that given Elle’s GPA, LSAT, and extracurricular activities, she would have been a shoe in for her program, and the movie was dismissive of her prior academic achievement. But she’s too busy parsing what Luke is saying.

He squeezes her hand in support. “It's going to be okay,” he says, sweetly.

“No.” She says. But not because it won’t be okay. “No, I’m not going to have an abortion.”

“It's okay,” Luke promises. “I would never judge you. And no one else would ever have to know. This isn’t something you have to do.”

“I know that,” Annabeth says. “I don’t have to do anything.” She detangles her hand from Luke’s and rests it on her stomach, where her uterus waits under her skin. “I want to do this.”

Luke looks at her hand. “Poseidon Olympianides’ son?” he asks. “That’s the father?”

She nods.

Blowing out a breath through his teeth, he sighs. “Well, you’ll be able to get some good child support out of him at least. That family is loaded.”

“Don’t say that,” she nearly screams, and Luke actually jerks back a little. “He doesn’t have any money. He’s his dad’s bastard kid,” she says, feeling a little bad about revealing his family history, but knowing that the word would spark something in Luke. “I don’t know if I’m even going to tell him.”

It feels like something cheap and shallow, trapping a man with a lie, then a baby.

She’s still crying and tentatively, Luke reaches out and wraps his arms around her, pulls her to him.

“Come on,” he says, pulling her up. “You still need ice cream and a movie.”

Annabeth cries. And she doesn’t fight him, but it feels so strange. Half way through her Caramel Sutra and the Legally Blonde proshot, she realizes what’s different.

For the first time since Percy walked out of her apartment without a good-bye kiss, Annabeth Chase is happy.

She’s pregnant with Percy Jackson’s baby.

She’s going to have Percy Jackson’s baby.

She’s not sure if she’s ever heard anything as wonderful in her entire life.

And if she’s going to be worthy of it, worthy of her baby, then she’s going to have to get her shit together.

#my fic #ballet au #pjo #pjo fic #percabeth #percabeth fic #darkmagyk #perseannabeth #goooooooooooooooooooood morning all!

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theletterkite-blog · 6 years

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(he may have been the first one to die, but I’m the one who paid for it. I’m the one who paid for it)

Here it is for you. For those of you who have been asking and even for those of you who haven’t. What am I doing? What happens next?

Let me bring you up to speed.

This summer I wrote and completed my thesis for my degree. I wrote on leadership at arts and cultural organizations undergoing substantial change.

It was completed in August. My marks came back in October. It passed with Distinction.

I am very proud of it, and as such, will be revising the work for publication. (That in itself is a long road and a different story for another time.)

And to answer a popular question: no, you may not read it right now.

At the time I was finishing said thesis, I had the pleasure of working for the Edinburgh International Festival as they put up their landmark 70th season this August. It was quite a new experience working on the press team and working through a festival that was spread out across the city and compacted into four weeks, as opposed to ten.

That opportunity there was worth the investment of coming to undertake this degree. I can hear some of you now raising an eyebrow about the value of work experience versus academic institutions, and I’ll tell you that by a long series of complicated and convoluted UK working laws, that experience would not have been possible without undertaking the degree.

Since that time I have been working at various locations that don’t need going into, as I have hunted for a more permanent position here. To be clear, I have been hunting for such position since April of this year and one can surmise that rejection after rejection might make a person feel rather defeated. And given this, it took me quite a long time to realize that I was not the problem. It took the Director of Development at a Scottish National Performing Company telling me that I had a strong application and did several things that the application required that no other candidate had done to realize that though I was young, fresh out of school (again) and seemingly too eager, I was playing in the same league as other Edinburgh arts managers. The problem, as people have been telling me, and as I have now realized, is not me. The problem is the system.

You would not enjoy me going into the details of what it would take for me to secure a full-time, permanent job in the arts and cultural sector here. Feel free to research it on your own, but essentially it comes down to UK Immigration Rules Appendix J: codes of practice for skilled work, which is a document that limits the categories of jobs eligible for sponsorship under a Tier 2 working visa. There are other requirements of the sponsoring organization, such as who can be hired from outside the UK or European Union without having to undergo the Residency Labour Market Test. Essentially, there are about four large, immovable factors that bar me from being employed here long-term. And due to this, I am returning to the United States.

[Those of you who do NOT want to hear me pontificate on this matter, this is really all you need to know. See you soon.]

This has been hard for me to stomach, especially while watching the successes of my friends. Any of my pals from mainland (or island nations) Europe that are from countries with in the EEA who are reading this, you’re about to be mildly offended. You don’t know how easy you have it. You can move and work freely within the EEA without trouble. There’s potential to even be employed in two or more EU nations at once. Unless an organization wants to go through the time, money and paperwork of making a case to the Home Office for me to remain here in the UK, I cannot get a job. I don’t have the luxury of a fancy legal loophole by which I can trace my ancestry back through to Europe and thereby apply through said European country’s US embassy for citizenship: all of my ancestors who might serve as proof of such are dead. No tricks, no workarounds for me. You can see why the complaints of Europeans not being able to find a job in Edinburgh’s oversaturated arts market fall on deaf ears with me. You can work abroad so easily, experience different languages and cultures with so much more acceptance. I know many of you want to stay in Edinburgh but YOU CAN GO WHEREVER IN EUROPE YOU WANT.

Some of you might make (and have made) the argument that I am able to work wherever in the US that I want (true), and that each state is like its own tiny little nation (not exactly), and isn’t that the same thing? No. That’s like saying the cultures of Kentucky and Montana are as different as those of Ireland and Greece. I think you’ll find that if you went there, Kentucky and Montana are actually quite similar in a lot of ways and then go ahead and tell an Irishman he’s basically the same as a Grecian. See what happens. However, without the lived experience of working in the US, I suppose you’ll never really understand, no matter how plain I make my explanations. You’ve never been refused letting of a flat in the UK based on your nationality because your status as an EEA citizen supersedes it. It makes your application, from one important angle, irrefutable (Well, at least for now.)

So yes, we’ve all had it bad. We’re a crew of smart people who have been shot into a market already teeming with talent in our field and because we are millennials living in an age still controlled by Baby Boomers, they expect us to rise to the top as they did when they “were your age.” As they did when $6 an hour working in a mailroom but them through college. Today, to put oneself through college at any reasonably-priced university (because hey Europeans!, I could never go to uni for free!) we would need to be making $18 an hour. Too bad the Federal minimum wage in American is only $7.25. But the fact of the matter is, that I have to return home because the UK will not move mountains to employ me, and strangely, I believe that is because it simply does not want to.

This, I find absurd. Long have we Americans hailed Great Britain for its utopia-like public funding for the arts, purely because their government has chosen to make arts and culture a policy priority longer than the US has. (And the Prime Minister, unlike the current US President, has not tried to entirely defund the National Endowment for the Arts in a political budget move...) American arts managers have had to contend with steadily diminishing budgets for years, and that mentality has now more visibly crept into the UK as well, with the rise of far-right values that hearken back to a darker age of Westernized war. “Devastating” arts cuts in the UK may be coming this January, as the public and the policymakers begin to question whether continued publicly funding for the arts is worth it. To combat this potentiality, I have watched as organizations here have scraped their budgets for salary money to hire fundraising managers to pilot, embolden, or overhaul individual giving programs. One would think that these organizations who haven’t had to grapple with the task of asking audiences for additional funds on top of what they pay in taxes, would be most interested to take on someone who has experience in working at organizations who have had to stake their livelihood on these exact kinds of donations. Just the other day I was told “Try and get some experience in fundraising, the UK is looking for fundraising people right now with all these cuts.” This individual, clearly unfamiliar with my background (I may not be the Region’s Best Individual Fundraiser but I’m not stupid) completely underscores my point. With such a demand for individuals with these skills, why on earth would they evict someone with these skills, when that person could be of great assistance?

Because of UK Immigration Rules Appendix J: codes of practice for skilled work. That’s why. If you’re not British, not working in hard science, and don’t have a PhD, you’re nothing. There, I just saved you having to read all 26 pages of the document.

It’s lunacy. Here I am, a smart, capable person, now defeated by a webpage that says “you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” What to do as a monolingual in modern Europe? Little. You try getting an EU Blue Card (yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like.) That prospect is tragically unlikely. So back I go, to a political nightmare in which fetuses are due to be classified as individuals for TAX REASONS upon passage of the #goptaxscam, 13 million Americans will lose health care coverage with the rescinding of the PPACA individual mandate, and the Federal Communication Commission is so interested in providing flawless internet services to only the wealthiest that without a job, and without a reasonable income, I may never be able to afford to update this blog again.

So here we are, right at the end. That’s the story, that’s the update. And it makes me mad. I undertake one of the best experiences of my life, and as a result, find that upon reentering society from the haven of academia that society wants to remind me:

YOU’RE NOTHING

The older and wiser of you reading this are likely thinking “That’s what we call life/it’s not always easy/you just have to figure it out/take your lumps/can’t expect to have everything handed to you.” You probably think I sound like a self-entitled millennial. But I didn’t come here to please you. I came here to put down my thoughts, to take one last wallow. To metaphorically prepare for battle through extended complaint.

I didn’t write this for your pity. I didn’t write this for your comments. I wrote this to explain to everyone why when I say I’m leaving I don’t want to see you pull a sad face and say “Don’t go!” “Don’t go” is not an option anymore. I have to, and you know that. It’s a first world problem for sure, being able to hop right back home to a welcoming family in what seems to be one of the only states who actually knows what they’re doing: don’t think I can’t see my privilege (white, and otherwise) in all of this. But this is not a joyous homecoming. This is a return marked by having been defeated by a sector that has been influenced by a government that hate and fear have crept into. America is the cause. And while others my run from it to the other side of the ocean with their bought passports or observe from far away, fortunately-fated with a heritage they didn’t get to select, I will be flying into the thick of it. Biding my time. Preparing my next move. I will celebrate the turn of the new year and cope with the coming age. And when the UK’s arts cuts come and Edinburgh finds itself in need of someone like me, I might pause to glance at the news. Until then, I’ll leave this place that opened me to academia and then turned around and told me I was nothing and return to the fray. (How’s that for a “Welcome to hell?”)

It’s been something, Edinburgh. Thank you, David. See y’all on the other side.

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kinetic-elaboration · 4 years

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January 7: Mr. Robot 1x01

Started my rewatch of Mr. Robot tonight. I haven’t seen the last season yet but I have seen the finale, and I encountered a few additional spoilers while reading finale reactions. But I wanted to rewatch S3 before I watched S4 and since I’m doing that I might as well start at the pilot lol.

A few quick and dirty thoughts:

(spoilers for the whole series)

It seems so obvious that Elliot and/or the Hacker are putting together this scheme for Angela, or at least inspired by her. I mean targeting debt specifically when one of her first lines is about her student debt--and then deciding to tentatively go along with the fsociety plan after looking up her bank accounts, and then ultimately going through with framing Colby after he humiliates Angela. I guess this was probably obvious the first time I watched too, but it just struck me more now because I know that the Hacker exists to protect Elliot, and yet his plan seems so tailored to Angela.

Speaking of debt, how does one get 6 figures into debt going to Brooklyn Technical College? No undergrad degree should cost 6 figures.

I was trying to figure out how much of the episode was the Hacker and how much real Elliot, because I don’t think we’re only seeing a personality in S1. I am most sure we see real Elliot considering going to Angela’s party; I think the moment he turns away is when the Hacker takes over. Such a big deal is made out of making the choice to hack Ron over trying to socialize, it just seems like an obvious divide.

More tentatively, I’d say Elliot crying was the real or OG Elliot, and so was the conversation with Gideon. And maaaaaaybe the time at the server farm. (Although maybe not because the narrative at this point is introducing two personalities to each other, and that was a pivotal moment for the Hacker in learning about fosciety. So I rescind that one.)

All of the social engineering, the hacking, and the time at fsociety HQ was the Hacker. Any time we see Mr. Robot, we’re seeing through the Hacker. I don’t think the Hacker knows who Mr. Robot is or ever sees him.

The information sharing between personalities trips me up a little... if we see any of the real Elliot, he must know some things the Hacker knows: who Flipper is, for example. It seems like the Hacker is actually the most in the dark.

This is why I prefer to call him the Hacker instead of the Mastermind, because that name confuses me. It makes it seem like he’s the most powerful personality when in many ways he seems the weakest. It also makes it seem like he’s the real head of the hack and fsociety and all of that, when at least initially, Mr. Robot pretty clearly is (I mean that’s the ‘twist’ of S1--that it was this one body all along.) Of course, the Hacker is the only one who takes over Elliot for months or even years, and the only one who forgets he’s a personality--I think a part of me sees this as or mistakes this for power.

Then also I guess the series as a whole might be the Hacker forming and gaining power and control.

I think Darlene recognizes that Elliot has disappeared again as soon as she sees him come into fsociety. The look she’s giving him is too knowing. And if I’m right about that, their conversation by the door later is really quite sad.

I don’t remember so much smoking in this--did all of these characters quit before the end of the series lol?

Tyrell obviously has a huge crush on Elliot from the very first moment. I was never super interested in him as a character but I do feel vindicated knowing I was right about basically everything regarding him and his purpose in the narrative.

Really robbed of a scene of Angela and Elliot getting high and watching Back to the Future. That it never happens should probably itself have been a clue that time travel was never real lol.

eta: Fuzzy screen jumping in and out of focus at the end, like a movie reel sputtering out.

#the year 2020 #2020: mr robot #2020: fandom thoughts

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interrum · 7 years

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June 22nd, 2017

Tried playing some video games today; Ultra Street Fighter IV. Kind of worked well, prior to that I was trying to abate the sadness I was feeling over a whole bunch of things. I demonstrate sadness pretty reasonably I think. There's not a whole lot to it I imagine, you tell the person you are sad or demonstrate somber feelings comparably equipped with disengagement and sorrow. Sometimes I cut myself but I have to have the energy to do that, today I didn't so I didn't bother. I like to feel that people sometimes view me as a person with only two emotions: joy and anger. If I'm not feeling one, I'm occupied with the other; this is a coarse debasement. I enjoy the full range of emotions afforded to normal people, I cry, I laugh, I shriek and feel great levels of intrigue; I even have moments where I am in love. For the most part I feel that I am pushed and pulled constantly under the stresses of these two emotions until I am exhausted and unwound, like a wire ready to fray under the slightest nick.

Anyway the day has only just started and I'm finding lots of new ways to keep myself interested and free from suicidal behavior. I took reading back up, much more voraciously than before and I even have a little journal that I like to write in, so as to make sure my handwriting does get better, even when it's not necessary. There used to be a lot of heroes back when I was a kid, people who would draw from their sadness and seek virtuosity in combat instead of fueling themselves with rage and wild abandon. With me, I think I can be like that, but I feel my sensibilities are really high energy, so there probably is confusion or dissonance between what I am feeling and what my activities suggest. I had this problem before when I was a small boy. Then it happened again when I was a teenager, and now it's been happening more frequently in my twenties. I feel like one of those sociopathic people who go to nightclubs and have a brooding aura that no one wants a part of, when really I am just sad and desirous of something humbling and cathartic. It was because of this problem that I took up writing and reading much more seriously, depending on the two to express sensibilities I was otherwise incapable of communicating effectively with other people.

I used to go to school with a lot of people who had this sort of mentality: "if you are feeling down it's because you're weak and unable to substantiate your abilities in the real world," the immediate response to sadness was not to get cucked or some other vagabond humiliation, lest you spiral further into sadness. So no one really ever learned how to overcome sadness, and eventually became prioritized by it and fueled by other fearful emotions. I wasn't really raised like that, I was always taught to express myself fully and wholly no matter what I was feeling, so I guess that left me emotionally capable as a person, this would probably explain why have such an eclectic social circle. When you feel sad you are supposed to express the feeling and fully. People win awards for being able to do this, many people are awarded great sums of money just for honestly expressing the sadness they feel inside. Would a pauper run from an opportunity to make money? Or does he no longer feel sadness and fears that his financial ruin is his own doing?

I'm an INTJ for the most part. I've taken the test over a handful of times and I seem to be introverted very excellently. I keep to myself and am on top of my emotions with high acuity. My ability to plan and derive results from these plans is also highly efficacious. One thing I am bad at is playing with others as a team, I've since been trying to fix this problem and I have gotten a lot better at it. I can understand the emotions of others and use them to propel problems into places where solutions can be applied, but I am by no means an ENTP, I am most formally an INTJ; and if allowed, a silent ENTP. I'm not scary, very few people are afraid of me. I feel at home most anywhere, even if I get homesick very quickly I can maintain myself and my comfort. Maybe my personality would be good for sightseeing. I've tried sightseeing before, it didn't suit me very well.

Right now, my penis hurts. I don't know why, it's been like that for a long time now. It shouldn't really hurt this much, but every time I get an erection it is painful. Maybe there is a problem with the blood flow or something. I get to feel sad sometimes because of piety, other times it's because of simple failures in productivity. Sometimes I am forced into exchanges which are neither prolific or exhaustive, but I must participate or else things will only get worse. Kind of like how you could explain the fruitlessness of fighting with someone, and they still charge you, and even if you knock them out it doesn't bring about resolution or any sort of commendable answer to the disagreement. I've been known to cut myself, bike ride intoxicated, dangle in and out of oncoming vehicles such as trains, cars and buses, and I was often quoted to have done these things because "I wanted the attention." I probably did, but I don't really remember why or how. When I was young I used to cry for it, but as I got older it kind of became redundant and I'd only expect the worse, wishing for death or anything close to it. Sometimes people think this is a dark way of thinking but it really is a plaintive kind of logic. Not hopeless, but exhausted; confused but not bewildered. I could be attention seeking, but I fail miserably at getting other people to be concerned about my well being, probably because it's not the first thing on my mind when I am thinking about anything suicidal. That sounds selfish, well it ought to be. I wouldn't want to worry about the fragility of the economy if I were pressed upon a knife.

Oh, I hear voices a lot more now. I hear them outside, in the street, when I'm at the store, sometimes when I'm getting my bike repaired I hear voices dictating my actions or commenting on what I should be doing. I used to think it was just someone playing a prank on me from my computer but now I have certainty that I am in fact experiencing hallucinations which is ranked mildly schizophrenic. The voices don't really tell me to do stuff, they have small insouciant comments like "shit," and "are you serious?" I feel like these things nudge me in directions I am not comfortable, which would explain why I feel a lot worse lately than I should, but I haven't the slightest clue what I had done or have done to other people to deserve any of this. I suppose I am to feel a deep sense of betrayal and remorse, funded by anger in hopes of revenge, but an exhausted person is not a cooperative one. Even if I wanted to cooperate with the things I'm hearing, I have frequently run into the problem of not having enough energy to carry out each and every whim. So I'd end up more exhausted than I were originally and forced into creative submission. This type of thing was bound to happen anyway. The amount of pressure I get between home and anything occupational is insane. I went to this community college once and I remember the look on my professors face when I told her I was rescinding the class, as if I couldn't let her down because I was "too smart to fail," which was exactly the reason I was dropping the class in the first place. I can't stand being like that. I can deal with some pressure, but when the ends are undermined by the causes then I really just drop everything. I just don't see the reason in pursuing solutions that are created by the problems themselves. It used to be frustrating but now I just don't do anything anymore. If at the least, I'll try to give advice in the best way I can; which is to set an example of what I would do or what is preferred.

Back when my brother beat me up the first time, he recommended I take rispiridone to help with the anxiety, but I hadn't told him I was hearing voices (at least I don't think I was). After looking up the drug, it's something they offer people with autism and schizophrenia in order to alleviate the symptoms. It's an anti-psychotic drug, not a anti-depressant. Looking back I should have taken the prescription but I wasn't really hearing voices then. I was spacing out a lot more then. And then to make matters worse, he beat me up a following four times over those next three years, for situations that had nothing to do with him. I still feel he isn't all okay in the head, I know I am not but there's nothing sensible about that behavior to me. Remembering it would make me angry, but now I just don't care. I'm entirely saddened by the thought and just choose to distance myself from it. I used to look up to him for a while because there weren't many people I could, but now I wish I never had crossed paths with him in the way I did. Whenever he does beat me up my mom just kind of watches and expects the worst only after I've resigned myself to the beating. One time he just kept punching me after I stopped fighting back for a whole two minutes, the headache was unreal. Then I had to be taken to a hospital and spend the night there because my family was "worried" or something. I've been to the hospital by parsons three times now I think. The first time was the worst. The second time I went, I got a totally different evaluation which said I had nothing wrong with me. I don't remember the third time so it probably hasn't happened. I wanted to talk to the doctor about my cutting and suicidal behavior but they kind of carted me out of there on my own volition. As soon as you say you're ready to go they go back to their work and find you an ambulette. I still have the papers from the hospital visit, and the report is still with the precinct that took me so I could file a complaint if I wanted, but I figured it would iron itself out somehow.

I grew up being a misfit, I was a misfit at home and at school and at summer camp. I went into high school not quite fitting in and made friends on the bias that pushed us together. I don't think there's a better way to explain that people are forced into sociable circles, but that was the way I had developed. Even after expressing a very reasonable range of abilities, failing to excel in those that people cared about made me less of a interesting person to talk to; then again people who naturally excel in these areas aren't very interesting to talk to either so I guess that's the kind of game being played. I don't think I'm really bad at making friends. I have a hard time keeping them but as I get older I think it's less to do with my inability and failings as a person. I used to think I couldn't keep friends because I was always so quiet and only watched others, but that wouldn't change the way people depend on me. Maybe it's because they expect me to say something, even during something idle like walking home, and I'm content with just saying hi. I know what that feels like, but it's really not going to get either of us anywhere by being insincere. It could also be a guilty meditation that forces me to feel like these relationships fail, but I have been trying to feel less guilty about stuff that isn't my fault. For the most part I feel no remorse for anything I've done, partly because I did it in full belief and also because there isn't anyone else to blame. I used to regret everything: asking girls out, requesting money for food, buying food for friends, talking to friends, hanging out with friends. Everything came with regret and at some point I just gave up trying to categorize it all and told myself it didn't make sense. It wasn't worth it. Neither the blame or the fatigue. Now I live more guilt free and have nothing to fear, but it's also an empty life. Nothing shines in its original color anymore, all my favorite events are dulled out and less enjoyable than they used to be. Regret shouldn't have that kind of power over me but it did establish a great deal of roller coaster relationships, most of which were imparted on me and forced me to behave like one, a roller coaster.

My brother would always say there are three things he doesn't like to talk about: sex, politics and love (or something to that effect). I think he was saying those are touchy subjects. Politics are touchy because they can put you in places that you don't want to be. Even if you're not doing anything wrong and participating exactly how you should be, you are a force that others will find disparaging and offensive. Simply talking about politics is another hurdle in itself, imagine being offensive and having the gall to communicate about how offensive you are; it's heretical. I think that was predominantly the point, but I could be wrong. Anyway, politics to me is a topic that bears no weight. I'll talk about most anything because it's just who I am, but more and more I find myself unable to comment on anything effectively. Simply concluding a small matter in sociological development doesn't fix the problem, no matter how biting the comment. Eventually I got into the mode of trying to fix these problems with large sums of examples and argumentative practices, which both proved very useful. I was never good at teaching other people how to do things, but apparently I was really exceptional for setting an example for how things should and shouldn't be done, so I used this to my effect without much effort. I think I may be destructive to my environment because I'm like this. Due to my inability or refusal to commit to pithy events that don't fix the problem, I'm causing the problem much more exposure which makes people upset a lot of the time. But I don't want to whine and complain the problem away, I want to fix it. There's nothing to be gained from expecting life to bend over for you. It sounds really pious and noble which is another failure of my personality but I'd rather not fix problems that were created solely for the solutions existence. Can you imagine a problem that's been engineered solely to bring about a convenient solution or worse, a profitable one?

#june 22nd #2017

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