Tumgik
#anyway like I said in part 1
apparitionism · 4 months
Text
Bonus 2
Here’s the second part of a holiday story, begun in part 1, about how Myka and Helena, in a vaguely season 4 world in which nobody’s going to go to Boone but through which they have thus far been separated, are reunited for a day-before-Christmas-eve retrieval in Cleveland. Helena has been summoned by Claudia to serve as Myka’s backup, for Pete is spending some holiday time with his family... but as it turns out, the retrieval is necessary because—plot-semi-twist!—Pete Christmas-gifted his cousin, who is a bigwig at an accounting firm, with an artifact, a pen that apparently has something to do with Santa’s naughty/nice list. Which said cousin used to confer end-of-year bonuses—and penalties. As this part opens, Myka is just beginning to process the fact that the whole situation is Pete’s fault...
(And no, I didn’t manage to bring this thing in for a landing in this part. Nobody faint from the surprise.)
Bonus 2
“Okay,” Myka acknowledges, because what else can she do? The fact is that in any Warehouse-related context, “coincidence” is a non sequitur, and she begins formulating a plan to Christmas-gift Claudia with a T-shirt featuring that sentiment. How fast can she get a custom T-shirt made?
The irony is that Claudia would know.
“Yeah,” says Pete’s cousin—Pete’s cousin! She might be affirming the Claudia-irony in Myka’s head, or the situational irony Myka is now stuck in, or any of the vast array of ironies that make up the Warehousian unfolding of time itself. Myka would not have expected Pete’s cousin’s words to contain multitudes. And yet.
“He told me it was the kind of thing he thought I’d like,” that cousin continues, “and he was right. Effects aside, it’s a gorgeous implement. Perfectly balanced... which I guess works on an existential level too, doesn’t it? Naughty, nice.” She shifts the pen to rest a delicate crosswise on an extended index finger, testing its equilibrium as a chef might a knife.
The pen—or is it merely a different species of knife?—basks in Nancy Sullivan’s regard. “Resonant little instrument,” she says, with clear affection. “Anyway, we were talking about Pete.” A different sort of affection now colors her voice. “He went into this big production-number apology about it being sort of secondhand.”
“Oh?” Myka says, distracted by pens, knives, resonances... but, right, secondhand. Of course it’s secondhand. No new item could be an artifact. Or could it? This seems like a Steve-conversation topic.... and it certainly beats “H.G. is god knows where” for philosophy.
“Not because it’s not new,” Pete’s cousin says, apparently reading Myka’s mind, “but because he initially was thinking he’d give it to somebody else.”
Myka repeats her interrogative “oh?”, but she’s getting a feeling again.
“Yeah,” says Nancy Sullivan, and Myka really has to applaud her talent for broadly applicable affirmation. “He said he wanted to give it to his partner because, and I quote, ‘she likes the old-fashioned stuff,’ but then he realized he shouldn’t because, and I also quote, ‘she’s got this whole family feathery-pen dealy-thingy and I don’t want to upset her.’” She waves the pen again, this time directly at Myka, like a conductor imploring the oboes to pick up the pace. “And he told me his partner’s name,” she concludes.
“I’m sure there are lots of Myka Berings in the world?” Myka tries, weakly, raising her hands as if to offer Nancy Sullivan all those other Myka Berings. The last vestige of defensibility... then her hands drop, because really. She looks at Helena in apology, with only an indistinct, tangled sense of what she’s apologizing for. I’m sorry I occasioned this is part of it, yet there’s a deeper fault she feels but can’t quite ideate, one more consequential than an anodyne “oops.”
“Listen, he’s a really good guy,” Nancy Sullivan says.
“I agree completely,” Myka assures her. But in the interest of full disclosure, she adds, “Mostly completely. I mean, I’m going to kill him for this.”
Helena says, “Are you.” Her tone brings Myka up short: it’s impossibly knowing, suggesting insight into everything Myka has been thinking, about someday and talking and things.
Again with the reading so right.
Myka would love to have the panache to do more than glance furtively at Helena, to pull off a playful, similarly knowing response, like “that depends on my backup” (or something actually clever that will doubtless occur to her during some post-holiday post-mortem). Instead she goes with a not at all interrogative “Oh.”
Nancy Sullivan looks from Myka to Helena. Then she says, “Okay, revision: A really good guy who might be hanging onto some unreasonable hope.”
Myka wishes she could keep from glancing yet again, now, at Helena—now as she grasps the fullness of her underlying error, now as she formulates a hopeful plan regarding someday saying out loud “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize that he had any such hope and that I didn’t make completely clear that any such hope would never have been anything but unreasonable”—but the wish doesn’t work. She glances... thus proving Nancy Sullivan’s point.
“He didn’t mention you,” Pete’s cousin tells Helena. “I think I see why.”
“I’m both offended and pleased,” Helena says, with her customary little thank-you head-bow.
Rather than luxuriating in the familiarity of that head-bow, Myka tries to head off a more detailed discussion of Helena’s role in it all (and what a nondescriptively limp phrase that is) by observing, “The sixth-sense thing is quite the family trait.”
“Ah. Sure. You’ve had experience,” Nancy Sullivan says, a little droop in her voice.
Has she taken Myka’s words as criticism? Myka hurries to reassure, “Sometimes it’s very helpful.”
“But. Other times.” This is heavier, and now she must be referencing her own vibe-related experiences.
“Your family get-togethers must be really... charged?” Myka tries.
Nancy Sullivan offers another all-encompassing “Yeah.” Then she laughs. “But at least we don’t have a feathery-pen dealy-thingy like your family does.”
Helena clears her throat, an attention-garnering ah-ha-hem, as if it’s in the stage directions preceding her next line in some farce. She inclines her head: more stage-direction drama. Finally, “You do now,” she says in benediction.
Nancy Sullivan’s jaw drops. “Wow,” she says, and “wow,” she repeats. Then she laughs again and says, “He really should’ve mentioned you.”
Myka might laugh too, but she is preoccupied by the way in which Helena’s well-chosen articulation has persuaded her body to remind her that it and she have reached no mutually satisfactory agreement about appropriate reactions.
And that in turn sparks Myka to a realization: once the retrieval is accomplished, there may be a nonzero chance that she and Helena could enjoy a bit more of that liminal together-presence...
Myka’s body makes its best effort to crash through the gauzy ideating her brain would prefer to do about what such time could entail, and after no small amount of nethers-vs.-cerebrum struggle, she manages to propose, truce-wise, a simple Let’s just hope it exists.
Surprisingly, body and mind are willing to shake on that, giving Myka leave to slip on a glove and pronounce, “Just give us the pen. Then it’s over. Mostly. The money will probably revert... so you’ll most likely have to redo the bonuses the old-fashioned way.” Hearing herself, she amends, “Well. The regular way.”
“I don’t mind redoing. But reverting...” Pete’s cousin tightens her fingers around the artifact, pulling it near to her body as if she might be considering, for one last “maybe,” the idea of punching her way out.
Myka tenses, and she doesn’t need to cast a glance to know that Helena is doing the same.
She glances anyway... and indeed, Helena alive with wiry readiness is a sight worth the seeing. So worth it, in fact, that Myka is genuinely, if improperly, disappointed that said sight doesn’t cause the truce to collapse.
After a moment, however, color returns to Nancy Sullivan’s knuckles, and Myka removes the pen from her slackened grip.
But then Nancy Sullivan cocks her head. “Is it really over though? I feel like something else might be happening.”
No. No. Absolutely not. “Something else is always happening,” Myka says, affecting nonchalance as she slides the feathery foolishness into a static bag, ignoring its yipping sparks of protest. “Don’t worry about it.”
Nancy Sullivan casts a skeptical look at the barky little bag. “If you say so. Anyway seeing Pete’s face when I tell him you and I –and he and I!—are fellows in family feathery-pen dealy-thingies now? Might end up being the second-best end-of-year bonus of all, given everything.” There’s a little mockery in her voice, echoing the cousin Myka knows so well.
“And the best such bonus?” Helena inquires.
“Docking Bob’s pay,” Nancy Sullivan says instantly.
Myka snorts, and Nancy Sullivan turns back to her and says, “Are you okay with me being glad we met?” Like she’s mostly but not entirely sure of the response she’ll get, and that’s another echo.
“Only if you’re okay with me being glad too,” Myka says, her own voice sounding a familiar note—one she’s pretty sure Pete would recognize.
After a nod, Nancy Sullivan turns to Helena. “I’d say it to you, but I feel like there’s something extra going on with you, like—”
Myka steps in: “Honestly, always,” and then she’s hustling Helena out of the office even as Helena chirps, “I’m both offended and pleased by that as well!”
Back in the elevator, Helena speaks first. “I did not expect that,” she says, sounding entertained by—practically bubbly about—the entire scenario.
“I should have,” Myka grumbles.
“You’re too hard on yourself.”
“Oh god no,” Myka says, involuntarily. “Too easy if anything.”
Helena’s eyebrows rise, and her eyes accuse. “I’ve known you for no small amount of time,” she says.
Myka’s previous review fights that statement, but she doesn’t speak of it.
Her lack of response prompts a heavy I-am-no-longer-entertained sigh. “Must I return to the phrase ‘your truth’?”
“Please don’t,” Myka says. That’s also nearly involuntary, but it sounds too harsh, like she’s dismissing as unimportant that bookstore interaction, as well as the entirety of those in-extremis manifestations of herself and Helena. Rather than apologizing for that, for surely it would prove far too entangling, she tries to draw Helena’s attention back to the entertainment. “I like Nancy Sullivan. She reminds me of Pete and his mom.”
“Pete’s mother? I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”
That’s a bit more jousty, backed by curiosity. Good. “She’s a Regent,” Myka says, for it’s the most salient piece of information she has about Jane Lattimer.
Helena stills. Her jaw hardens. “Then perhaps I have indeed had the... pleasure.” Cold. Cold. Cold.
You idiot, Myka scourges herself. Why couldn’t she have done the normal thing and left Pete’s mom as “Pete’s mom”? But now, but now: now she’s seen this wound, down there under the ice, and she wants to test that ice, but she can’t, regardless of her wish and want to know know know, to know everything Helena has been put through, so as to know whom to hate (and she hopes that doesn’t include Pete’s mom) and whom to someday thank (and she double-hopes that does include Pete’s mom). “Anyway I think the cousin had the right idea,” she says, pushing back to the now, to what just happened. “Using an artifact to do what are really decent things, even if they were judgmental.”
“Rather Old Testament,” Helena says. “Strangely inappropriate for this holiday, no?” She asks that like she’s really thinking—wondering—about it.
Myka congratulates herself on having provided a distraction, however minimal, from whatever Regent-pain her unthinking reveal caused to surface. “I hadn’t thought about Santa being more Yahweh than Jesus,” she says, to enhance it, “and I’m not sure what it says about my position on salvation that I genuinely wish we could have let her keep that pen. Or even better, if we could maybe ferry it around to deserving arbiters... wouldn’t that contribute to the greater good, even if it’s in a judgy Old-Testament way?”
Helena’s face moves as if she’s about to answer, but before she can, a rupturing screech of metal-on-metal complication resounds decisively through the space, and their ear-popping descent slows, slows, slows...
...and stops.
After an appropriately irony-bearing pause, Helena says, “This elevator seems to disapprove of your suggestion. Or perhaps it’s your theological indecision that displeases?”
All Myka can manage is an extremely resigned “I am not surprised.”
Efforts to summon help strengthen the “disapproval” interpretation: they’re fruitless. No one answers the emergency line, and this mirrored box is, according to both their phones, the place where cell service goes to die. Or where that service is interfered with by a theologically offended pulley-based mechanism.
“I genuinely cannot believe we’re stuck in an elevator,” Myka says. It may be the most true statement to which she’s ever given voice.
After a beat, however, she concedes, “But of course I can.”
Helena casts her gaze around. Once again, exaggeratedly stage-direction-y. “At least it’s reasonably well-appointed. For an elevator in which to be... stuck.” She seems to relish articulating “stuck,” so she’s back to being entertained. Not quite bubbly, but definitely entertained.
Myka can’t get past her annoyance with the elevator’s disapproval, so she says a peevish, “I don’t like mirrors.” She’s painfully aware now that they cover not only the walls, but also the ceiling. She can’t even look heavenward in supplication, sarcastic or otherwise, without regarding herself. It really is too much.
Given that no other communication technology is working, she resorts to the Farnsworth. She gives thanks for Warehouse mojo, or whatever enables it to elude the elevator’s wrath, when Claudia answers with, “No info on ‘lists, making them’ yet.”
“We dealt with that,” Myka tells her. “New problem.”
“Another artifact?”
“Who knows? Maybe Pete’s in an elevator somewhere else in this town making bad decisions, and they’re redounding to our detriment.” She’s vamping. Stuck in an elevator with Helena, she’s vamping. Instead of simply basking in such fantasy-made-fact, she’s vamping.
She doesn’t bother wondering whether Helena knows she’s doing that; if this little adventure has done nothing else, it’s reminded Myka that Helena always knows. It’s both wonderful and terrible to be so legible, particularly to someone Myka so often finds frustratingly illegible.
“I’m not following,” Claudia says.
Speaking of illegible: Myka, heal thyself. “We’re stuck. In an elevator,” she clarifies.
Claudia makes a noise that, impressively, marries a gasp and a snicker. “Are you really? Or did you push the stop button, like people do?”
“Like people... what?”
“When they want to have a little uninterrupted chat,” Claudia says, pedantic, as if now she’s the one who’s “clarifying.”
“Nobody does that in real life,” Steve says from offscreen. Myka is pleased to know he’s around.
“Myka just did,” Claudia insists in his direction. “Didn’t you,” she insists at Myka.
“If I did,” Myka says, “why would I be calling you to get us out of here?”
“Yeah, why would she?” Steve asks, but from farther away.
Don’t leave! Myka wants to exhort. She would never admit to needing backup in a counter-Claudia sense... but she does appreciate when Steve provides it.
“Oooh, because maybe the chat didn’t go so well,” Claudia says with great, and to Myka’s thinking entirely inappropriate, relish.
Trying for calm pragmatism, she says, “Wouldn’t I just... unpush the stop button then?”
“Myka,” Claudia says. It’s the most chiding, disappointment-laden use of her name Myka has ever heard, even when measured against all the times her father has uttered those two designating syllables. “Believe me when I tell you I’m a fan,” Claudia goes on, turning mollifying, “but you really need to lean in when it comes to tropes.” Myka can’t imagine how to respond to that, so she doesn’t. Claudia sighs—seemingly everyone’s preferred go-to when Myka fails to produce words—and says, “Did you try calling maintenance? Pushing the emergency button? Using your cell?”
“Yes, yes, and no service. Do you genuinely think I don’t understand modern communication technology?”
“I think you pretend you don’t understand newfangledness all the time. Particularly when you’re trying to show off how sympatico you are with H.G., who incidentally doesn’t seem to be piping up like I’d expect. Did you knock her unconscious after your terrible chat? Or maybe during it?”
Helena has indeed been very—very surprisingly—quiet while Myka has explained the situation to Claudia. And she doesn’t step in to help Myka out now. So much for any counter-Claudia backup.
“There was not a chat,” Myka says.
Helena is regarding herself in the mirrored ceiling.
“But there could be one now?” Claudia nudges. “Let me see if I can see what’s up. I’ve got cell service.” She disconnects.
Helena abruptly abandons her ceiling self-contemplation, focusing her gaze upon Myka. It’s disconcerting. “Are you attempting to avoid an uninterrupted chat?” she asks.
Myka can’t suss the question’s sincerity. And notwithstanding all her ideas about talking, she suffers a cringing internal “yes.” Externally, however, she says, in what she hopes offers at least a veneer of sincerity of her own, “No.”
She doesn’t follow up by asking “why would I be doing that,” because Helena would probably have a guess. And because that guess would probably be accurate: “You are a coward,” Helena might say, and Myka would regrettably have to either tell the truth and agree, or lie and disclaim any emotional investment in whatever the outcome of such a chat might be.
Silence. Longer than it should be... or is it as long as Myka deserves?
You wanted time together. Don’t bellyache about the form it takes.
“Your objection to mirrors,” Helena eventually says.
“What about it?” Myka asks. Her very soul flinches.
“What is it?”
Myka has never before stated her dislike of mirrors aloud, and she regrets having done so now. To play it off, she says a dismissive, “An artifact.” And yet the truth is that despite the unnerving nature of her interaction with Alice’s mirror and how it continues to prey on her mind, it isn’t really that—or rather, that only intensified her dislike.
But when Helena proposes, “Yet another ‘dealy-thingy’?”, clearly (and preciously) trying the phrase out in her mouth, Myka misleadingly (intentionally misleadingly) nods and says, “They’re all dealy-thingies.”
To that, Helena says, “Interesting.”
Myka would probe that word, but to do so might destabilize the ground, here in an elevator. Instead, for the moment, she tilts her head in the direction of the Christmas muzak, the literal elevator music, being piped in. “Oh, sure, that still works.” She gestures at the speaker, a thin dark stripe between two mirror-panels, from which the sound is emerging. The elevator is nothing if not insistent.
In truth, she doesn’t mind Christmas carols. She does mind the bowdlerization thereof, and isn’t that an attitude the dogmatic elevator really ought to share? O holy night, the stars are brightly... synthesizing? It’s wrong.
Now even her mind is vamping. Great.
Helena tilts her head toward the speaker, however, and Myka appreciates her willingness to be redirected. At least for a moment.
In fact, for all her vamping, mental and otherwise, Myka finds herself absurdly content to simply stand against a mirrored elevator wall and regard Helena... who in that instant of Myka’s acknowledged contentment seems to accept their predicament as unlikely to be resolved in a timely fashion: she sits down, of course elegantly, resting her back against her side of the box and stretching her legs (her legs, Myka’s body notes, just to let her know it’s still paying close attention) out in front of her.
The looking-down perspective is a bit disorienting—although at least this time it has nothing to do with being stuck to a ceiling—but Myka has no time to process it, for Helena’s next salvo, looking up, is, “You’ve been expecting me to remark further on naughtiness, haven’t you.”
Reading, yet again. “I kind of have,” Myka admits. It seems an overly judgmental statement, particularly given that Myka has to deliver it as if from an elevated bench. And yet... she kind of has.
“I’d rather not fulfill that expectation,” Helena says. “If we could speak of other things.”
Myka is a little thrown, but thankful. “That is entirely fine by me. What do you want to talk about?”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly,” Myka says, meaning it as an answer to either interpretation of Helena’s interrogative: Are you asking what I want to talk honestly about? or Are you asking, with honest intent, what I want to talk about? She hopes Helena will respond similarly.
“Something that interests you,” Helena says.
That’s not in any way what she was expecting. “Really?”
“Really.”
It’s a word similar to, yet very different from, “honestly.” What, in a real sense, interests Myka? In this moment, all she can think to say is “you.” And perhaps because her normal inhibitions are disordered, here in this stopped elevator, that’s what she blurts out.
And that seems, incongruously, to take Helena aback. “What about me?” she asks.
Myka can’t say “everything.” It’s the real answer (really), but it’s far too... big. For an unexpected reunion, an unexpected uninterrupted chat—although Claudia or rescuers could at any point interrupt it, which Myka should hope happens (should)—it’s far too big.
So: smaller. What occurs first to Myka is “where have you been”—but that would most likely seem accusatory. She needs something else. Something something something...
In the aftermath of the Warehouse not being destroyed, she’d felt herself full of hard-earned wisdom and bravery: enough, surely, to stop hesitating. Enough, surely, to act. Or enough, at the very least, to articulate.
“Wisdom” and “bravery” now seem nothing more than labels on empty containers, and so “faintheartedness” is the fullness with which Myka here initially accuses her today self. But as Helena breathes and waits for an answer, Myka revises that, gentling it to “caution.” And she adds “care.” Because she is trying to attend to, to appreciate, that breathing. And that waiting.
These might be nothing more than self-indulgently comforting shifts in vocabulary... but then again they might be akin to the shift from “Christmas” to “end-of-year.” Gentle. Inclusionary.
The something something something that occurs to her—because in attempting to avoid her own reflection, she is confronted instead with multiple Helenas—concerns a topic she probably should censor but doesn’t: “When you were a hologram... or a projection, or whatever we should call it... did you have a reflection?” She then reflexively backtracks, “It shouldn’t matter? But I don’t know.” That last, she means both ways. She doesn’t know: whether the reflection existed, or whether it matters. But maybe it’s a sneak-up on things, because she shouldn’t ignore things, and because a seemingly inconsequential tangent might tiptoe toward importance.
“I don’t know either,” Helena says. “I suppose I would have?” Her face contracts. “Or perhaps not, as I don’t know how that holographic projection of myself was... projected. But I do intend to look into it.” She says this last as if Myka has caught her in some inattention, a recklessly uncompleted assignment.
“I never even started majoring in physics,” Myka laments, which is true but also, she hopes, reassuring in an I didn’t do the homework either sense, “so I don’t know the optics of it. Projections. Light and mirrors. “ She doesn’t mention that in the wake of Pittsburgh, she had indeed tried researching such things... she’d got as far as some advanced volumetric displays, ones using dust particles as screens onto which lasers projected light, but at a certain point, a tipping point, the idea of Helena existing as—being relegated to—nothing more than light and dust screamed a surpassing insult, a degradation conjuring death, and it was more than she could bear.
For now she puts that away. She shakes her head, shakes it free, and changes tack. “Anyway, that’s probably the wrong approach. This is Warehousey, so thinking outside physics, the laws... okay, all I know about reflections, unphysically, is that vampires don’t have them. So if you didn’t have one, then maybe all holograms are vampires?” Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. She would have done better to speak of dust, that and light and despair. Going with vampires instead? Talk about vamping...
“Presumably not vice versa,” Helena observes, seemingly taking Myka’s words far too seriously. “Certainly fictionally. Also not overly flattering, in the syllogistic sense of ‘Helena was a hologram, therefore.’”
“They’re very popular though,” Myka temporizes.
“Stoker’s novel was all the rage,” Helena allows.
The chat stalls out. Interrupting itself?
Myka nevertheless feels pressure to fill the silence: it’s her fault. Will a simple truth suffice? “I didn’t expect to be spending the day before Christmas eve with you,” she says. “Or any day with you. In Cleveland.”
A small smile from Helena marks this as a more welcome fill than a question about reflection. As do her next words: “Nor I with you. In Cleveland, or any place. Equally, I didn’t expect to be sent on a mission with you.”
“That part of it went well.” Myka gestures at her bag that contains the artifact.
“We did—and now do once again—make a good team.”
“I’m glad we got the chance to do it again. Glad, but also... relieved.”
“Relieved,” Helena echoes.
That wasn’t a question, but Myka answers anyway, “Well, obviously, first,” she says, feeling herself launching into an explanatory babble that she fears she’ll be powerless to stop, “because you didn’t have to talk anybody out of using Joshua’s Trumpet, so that really makes a difference in terms of how we—”
“‘First’,” Helena quotes, interrupting (stopping), conveying her full knowledge that that too is a vamp. “And second?”
“That we still are.” This, Myka says simple and frank.
“A good team?”
That is a question. Myka knows “yes” is the only sensical answer, so she tries to say it. But the depth and weight of the ways in which she and Helena “still are” choke her: they “still are” in the basic sense of existing, which was never a certainty; and even better, higher, these hours they’ve spent together today have made clear, to Myka at least, that they “still are”... well. She’d like to finish that with something like “in love,” but instead she tries to leave it, even in her head, at “still are,” with their time-crossed, maybe-destined predicate undefined.
“A good team” should be good enough—true enough—for now.
So after a stretch of time during which Myka knows she’s been focusing her gaze far too intently on Helena, she manages that “yes.”
Helena waits to speak.... are her eyes glistening more brightly than usual, or is Myka hallucinating? “I’m relieved as well,” she says, and Myka chooses to simply delight in whatever prompted such a saturated sparkle.
It draws her closer.
She crosses the small-yet-large elevator-width that separates them. “I need to either sit down beside you or help you up,” she says. “Do you have a preference?”
“For?” Helena’s eyes continue to glow.
That shine... Myka has hopes. They may not be realized, but she has them, the product of relief, “still are,” and an unknown predicate. “Whatever’s next,” she says.
A bit of time passes, with Helena now being the one focused most intently. “I’ll stand,” is her verdict.
Myka reaches down with both—both—hands, offering, and Helena reaches up, accepting. Their fingers meet and clasp, and too cold, Myka thinks, for both of them have a chill in those extremities... but first impressions of temperature promptly fall away as the new reality of the clasp roars into precedence.
Myka has never been so certain of, so certain of and enchanted by, what must and will happen next in her life. Never in her life so certain, as the clasp tightens, as their torsos lean, as Myka’s body begins an at-last congratulation, one that will become a celebration—
A voice from somewhere overhead barks, “Everybody okay in there?”
TBC
30 notes · View notes
Text
the real tragedy of tlou is that in saving ellie’s life, joel dooms their relationship. it’s not tragic that he killed a hospital of ppl and prevented a cure bcus we have no emotional attachment to any of those people or the notion a cure might actually work and fix the world. we’ve travelled across that world with ellie and joel and seen how it’s in pieces and how unlikely it could ever be fixed the way the fireflies imagine. but emotionally we ARE with joel and ellie and as we see them in that car and hear joel tell his lie and see ellie’s face, we know that things can’t be the same for them again. i am now and have always been of the opinion that joel lies in that moment to protect her from her feelings of guilt and the burden of thinking she has 2 save the world (and ive always said too he should have told her the truth eventually instead of her having to force his hand to get it), but regardless of that the choice joel made and the lie is always going to be between them. things will always be a little different now. an unspoken thing that eats away at the space between them, making it bigger and bigger. and that’s why it’s really tragic because joel picked ellie’s life over and above anything else cus he loved her and thus knew her life had value independent of being a cure to save the world and she should get to live it, but whilst she is living it (something she is only able to do cus he saved her), he has to watch from afar. he saves her and loses her at the same time.
1K notes · View notes
skyppl-e · 3 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
oh yeah.... im making aus now.... florist au but al haitham is a part time employee at the plant nursery tighnari owns and kaveh keeps running into him
188 notes · View notes
Text
i have this really stupid idea in my head that im frankly a little obsessed with and the idea is this: trent crimm doing a drunk history episode on ted lasso's first tenure at richmond. is that how drunk history works? i don't think so. do i care? absolutely not. it's a special episode who cares because this image is not only hysterical to me but treasured. i treasure this image. i hold it close in my heart and also laugh and laugh and laugh.
#ted is played by what is very visibly a butch lesbian in a huge fake mustache.#roy is inexplicably played by himself in a wig.#ternt drunkenly and passionately explaining this whole thing. he says his own line and the trent actor (who also has a wig) gets to act it#trent waving his hands as he's explaining all this. the host being like 'not very often we get to have someone include the part where They#come into the story' and trents like [dorkiest finger guns]#also yes i said first tenure bc this scenario lives in post canon fantasy fix it land where ambiguously ted comes back to richmond#at some point. and also both bc my tedependent heart is obsessed and bc it's really funny#marries trent. just bc i want this to end with trent--hammered and pleased as punch--being like AND THEN I MARRIED HIM!!!!!#[falls back on couch happily] :)#also in the line of that great 5+1 social media fic#by jessjessthebest. a sequel thats just like a youtube video like#'we made ted lasso and trent crimm watch that episode of drunk history about them' and trent is just. head in hands the whole time.#ted is DELIGHTED.#anyway i rotate this in my brain fucking DAILY. it's so goddamn funny to me.#ted lasso#tedependent#tedtrent#trent crimm#the line in question being 'is this a fucking joke' i just realized i did not clarify that#no but really im obsessed with this it's so fucking funny#also any image trent had left of being a ruthless ex journalist is thoroughly ruined#all of his former colleagues have seen him and drunk and giggling and fully admitting what he was thinking at the time and oh boy#hes a disaster <3
202 notes · View notes
royalarchivist · 10 months
Text
Roier: I'm cold, I'm cold, I'm cold, ayyy....
Cellbit: Come here, it's alright, it's alright, I'll warm you up, everything's fine now...
304 notes · View notes
icecreamsodaaaaa · 1 year
Text
Thoughts on different dragons having cultures and different languages?
425 notes · View notes
rainbowpufflez · 1 month
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Lusaman,,, Rose,,,, Girlus,,,,, Womandre,,,,, and a bonus Womanmore
52 notes · View notes
jichanxo · 4 days
Note
sooooo... *twirls her hair* how many asks should i send until kuwagami art. jk as well. the real question will be: does it happen often that someone else’s art inspires you? in fandom spaces specifically
well you see it’s like a loyalty card program, every 10 asks or so you get a complimentary kuwagami
just kidding you can just breathe in my direction and I’ll be tempted to draw them. kuwagami blast! (you've caught me on a... just okay art day lol)
Tumblr media
(people still like kabedons, right?)
anyway for my actual answer: in terms of direct inspiration, it doesn't really happen much? the last two times i did art directly based on someone else's work is probably this one from this fic, and also that time i drew art of someone else's judgment au. oh! and there's that moriohpsycho art based on this comic! (filthyguts' work is so very. hgngngghh. very good.) nothing else really comes to mind, and when i think of the other things i've been into recently there hasn't been as much opportunity for that to happen...
flex and herds = strong fixation but lmao. almost nobody else made stuff about them. nobody is surprised umineko = surprisingly i don't read much umineko fanfiction? and in terms of illustration, i certainly picked up imagery and indirect inspiration but nothing concrete enough for me to give an example... now that i think about it, i did once draw andromalius from redaction/sunny, but that was years ago, and also mostly because i was acquainted with the writer. ...i don't have that artwork on hand right now death note = didn't really get involved with the fandom + i enjoyed my own ideas well enough! ...i can't recall if i drew long-hair-L art before or after seeing other artists do it. and as for everything else the same kind of reasoning applies. didn't really get involved with the fandom or wasn't really compelled to make art in response to stuff i saw, or i just don't remember anymore.
buuuuuuut if we're opening this up to just... pulling ideas from other people? then yeah, all the time, though that kind of goes without saying when you have a creative hobby. ...it's probably going to be hard to come up with examples of this since it's more ambiguous.
there's uhhhhhh... kuwana listens to nickelback which was a @/four-white-trees invention, wasn't it? (EDIT: and @/overdevelopedglasses!) (not tagging in this post so he doesn't feel obligated to read my big ass ask responses 💀) as of writing this, it's not posted but i did end up making kuwagami art based on a nickelback song so. yknow. there's that LMAO
for sawashiro and arakawa, i do sometimes go reference @/todayisafridaynight 's art to help me with my own. ("how did he draw this part of the suit? oh, like that huh? hmm" <- this kind of thing)
and um. i'm not trying to pander to you (at least not this time), but genuinely it's one of the few examples that come to mind at this moment. but when i was writing my first kuwagami fic, i could feel the influence of the ever-changing on my brain... was turning over some of your ideas there...
you remember this? (you even pointed it out in your comment on my fic, and i should've said something then, but whatever i'm saying it now)
Tumblr media
that was absolutely because of this
Tumblr media
(obligatory poke at anybody else reading this post that you can read passthroughtime's fic here.)
so, um. yeah. not really sure what else to add to that. pretty self evident i think. (i'm always talking about the ever-changing but i don't think i can overstate the impression it left on me at the time)
anyhow there aren't really any other examples off the top of my head! these are all recent examples so they're not so difficult to recall, but there are probably others i've forgotten...
#jitxt#started writing this unsure if i could give many examples and i ended up with more than i expected. nice!#sunny is a very good piece of umineko writing and i should reread it with the author's notes toggled on. and also read redaction#“shouldn't you have read redaction first” n-no. shut up! (besides i think renall said it was fine)#nobody remind me of that 20k note post that's just an uncredited screenshot of sunny. it'll piss me off#as cosmic balance i ought to shill sunny as much as possible#anyway uhhhhhh. the everchanging.#i am awful about receiving compliments (i never know how to respond aside from a rehearsed “thank you”) but i sure am great at giving them!#apologies if i'm laying it on too thick but#1. i am being truthful and#2. i figure it's reparations for all the time i spent as a lurker on the kuwagami ao3 tag#the explosion in my brain when i realised that “the nice person who leaves lots of tags on my kuwagami art”#and “the person who wrote that REALLY FUCKING GOOD FIC” were one and the same. crazy. and now we are mutuals ❤#it is a little funny thinking of when i'd read your and four-white-trees' work before meeting you#real life foreshadowing for me meeting you both....#i still have these discord messages of me telling a friend about both your works#basically: (reading an update to the everchanging) wow that was depressing (reading a joke in four-white-trees' fic) nevermind i'm good now#i ought to reread the everchanging and take detailed notes on all the parts i like#just so you know your impact on my brain lol#kuwana calling yagami a pretty boy and meaning it sincerely oh my GOD. rewired my brain
14 notes · View notes
mcybree · 1 month
Note
Flower husbands relationship with martyn in 3rd life? Why did they hate him so much? Why did Martyn try to get Jimmy to leave Scott that one time? Why did Scott say him and Martyn were going to sleep together once they were both dead? Many questions that plague me at night
IM STILL ON MY SCOTT 3L REWATCH THE. THAT FOURTH QUESTION???? HELLO???
(^ edit: anon clarified, ask was referring to the “I wanna cuddle together before we die” comment from martyn)
16 notes · View notes
skrunksthatwunk · 5 months
Text
aurghhh ok still rewatching '97 and the way guts and casca only have the room to breathe and really come to understand and care for each other in griffith's absence because he has such a strong hold over them both.... and the way their mutual dedication to him is what causes them to bicker for years (casca thinks he's not serving him well enough, guts thinks she doesn't get that he cares/how much he cares, casca's jealousy over griffith's feelings for guts, how he won his heart without even trying or being aware of it or doing anything with it) and is also a big part of what brings them together (earlier when guts deviates from the plan to save griffith and she commends him, in the cave casca opening up about griffith and her's past, showing that vulnerability, while it's mostly confrontational, leads to guts kinda getting her better, and his efforts to save and protect her (falling off the cliff with her, taking on the 100 men so she can escape, encouraging her to return to griffith so she can help him because it's what she feels she's meant to do (her dream, the direction in life guts shares and yet is questioning because of griffith's speech at the fountain, whether or not it's enough to serve him if it means he'll never be a true friend in griffith's eyes because he's not an equal), supporting the idea of her being with griffith/being his most important person like he won't because he doesn't view it as a competition like she has been since day one) leading to her realizing that he's kind of not that bad a guy and they have a lot more in common that she thought. and how the bonfire of dreams conversation is guts opening up to her in kind, the answer to her talking about how griffith saved her, how she feels. how neither of them ever call it love but it's something they know they both have for griffith. how it's something they're beginning to have for each other, different in ways they couldn't put a word to. because they're equals this time. the way griffith kind of becomes less and less important as they find other reasons to live and fight, as they become less singularly obsessed with him. how griffith is unable to stand it, guts' personhood, that agency and peer-to-peer equality he claimed to want (and perhaps truly did) that disappeared guts from his life, his plans, his side. how it barely even matters to griffith how casca changes because he never wanted her like she wanted him. god i can't fucking stand their shakespearean nonsense drama (<- hopelessly in love with their interpersonal dynamics)
#god they're the only healthy part of this unholy mind-palace love triangle/throuple aren't they#they could have been the worst qpr/throuple in your social circle. like just insufferable when they're not getting along#if griffith hadn't [oh god oh fuck oh jesus christ] all over everything even remotely good in his life anyway#poor casca's in love with a gay man and then falls for his not-quite-boyfriend and when not-quite-boyfriend reciprocates said gay man fucki#g. Does The Eclipse Stuff. at least partially to get back at you two. oh my godd#i'm sorry i'm so not normal about them. it's starting to leak out into the blog bc i'm finally having a Berserk Moment since starting tumbl#but whewwwww. gotta get this outta my system#hope this wall of text makes sense oops <3#berserk#berserk 1997#how do i even tag their thang. their disastrous just horrible agonizing 3 guy dynamic. hm.#gutsca#griffguts#don't even know if anyone tags for griffith and casca. fair because 1) he raped her. yikes 2) he just straight up isn't into her#and i don't know if there's a tag for the three of them but trial and error led to nothing#but i wanna talk about their dynamic. their. (gestures wildly) whatever. it's not about thinking griffith should kiss anyone it's about lik#the agony. the pining and the torment and whatever miura so beautifully crafted for me specifically. sheesh#hope it's clear that i Don't Want Them To Be An Uwu Little Polycule Bc Casca Should Not Be In A Cutesy Throuple With Her Rapist#it's more that i think they kind of are or almost are part of this (gestures wildly again). Thing. with each other and i wanna talk about i#same with griffguts like oh man they should NOT be in a relationship. but i have this deep intense Need to study them and frankly they're#kind of crazy about each other for a while. like they care about each other so so much it's crucial to all three of their characters.#so it's kind of unavoidable. and i wanna talk about it. and have this read by people who also want to talk about it. yeah? yeah.#(and yeah i think griffith raping casca was about her and guts. like 'fuck you for making him okay with leaving me' type of vibe. even#though it wasn't her fault he's just. god. but it sure as hell isn't Mostly about casca because griffith's making eye contact like the Whol#time with guts. he makes him watch. it's just. shooooooooooo aughhhhghhghh fucking. jesus christ. that or it's the fear that his two most#important pawns are going to leave him Together and he just. can't deal with that. especially after the torture internment thing.#he's so weak and he was so close to his dream and now it's falling apart and they're leaving him and he can't even move. it's about making#damn sure they can't escape him or forget him ever again.#or maybe it's even a 'you can't have her she's mine' to guts but it's still largely like. spiteful/about possessing her as a soldier/human#because i don't think you could convince me it's about having her as a lover or about controlling/hurting/possessing her body.)
38 notes · View notes
nguyenfinity · 1 year
Note
hey if rinne can have his mum and niki can have his can himeru have kaname back
Tumblr media
He nii-chan jacket too big for he gotdamn he,,,,,
83 notes · View notes
astranauticus · 9 months
Text
Tumblr media
oh lol i forgot to post this robit sketches! because i have one (1) bit and im sure as hell gonna commit to it apparently
#rolling with difficulty#art I made#'shut your up' is a verbatim quote from an ex classmate i just thought it was funny#i dont think it was intentional i think he was just so angry that Words Failed on him#anyway im absolutely not keeping that maxim design. god i fucking hate clothing design *so* much#austin: 'hes a gold plated mechanite dressed in blue and grey robes' me trying to figure out colour placement: 'what FUCK'#i had one (1) good idea and that was 'skeleton shaped robit' and every other part of that design went to hell apparently#bc all the other mechanites we've had were either like... flesh..? shaped?? like that sorta silhouette (basically most of the old crew)#or more mechanical/geometric (vr-la's designs and like.. k-lb? i guess? if that counts)#so. therefore. bone shaped mechanite. also if i was gonna try that concept on anyone it may as well be maxim if you think about it#idk i thought it would be interesting. and also undertale was my first fandom so uh#ANYWAY. MOVING ON FROM THAT THOUGHT.#this started as a 2am intrusive thought of like#'we (artists in the discord) keep joking abt how k-lb would be a nightmare to draw but like.. how hard is it really'#anyway as you can probably expect. famous last words#i mean genuinely mad respect to noir but i think i said to one of my friends when i showed them this sketch#'i mean this in the nicest way possible but you can just tell he was designed for an audio only storytelling format' LMAO#if anyone is unwise enough to attempt this (so basically @ my future self lmao)#do the lineart and colouring for the wires in front of the inner electricity skeleton (???) and the ones behind it on SEPARATE LAYERS#drew the wires all together then the electricity and had to painstakingly go over the electricity with an eraser it was a fucking nightmare
44 notes · View notes
wiki-howell · 4 days
Text
guess who managed to mention dnp in his a level media exam 🔥🔥
#okay it was relevant i promise#basically okay the question was about to what extent is it vital for media products to identify and address a target audience to be#successful and we study 2 radio products#one is newsbeat which is by the bbc it's like a news radio show that's meant to target age 15-29#but the average listener is 30#so . it is Not effectively targeting its audience#it gives . how do you do fellow kids#like it tries really really hard to appeal to young adults/teenagers but it's . painful to listen to sometimes#the bbc have been trying to target this age bracket coz it's the one they don't have a secure audience in#I SAID that they used to have a slightly bigger younger audience in the early 2010s#bcos they had the dan and phil show on radio 1 which was very popular and attracted their mainly teenage/young adult presold audience#they used the popularity of the internet to their advantage by having dnp run a show#but now they've lost a lot of their younger audience To social media platforms#as now what are called digital natives in media (people who have grown up with the internet/don't really remember a time before it)#for the most part prefer to get their news off social media rather than radio#a lot of this is general i know not Every young person Hates radio#but in general it's losing popularity esp amongst younger target audiences#media 🔥🔥🔥🔥#that was only like . a mention in one paragraph tho#coz unfortunately we don't study dnps radio show we study Newsbeat 😔#anyway the exam was overall good for the most part#yay :3#joeyposting
8 notes · View notes
latejulys · 1 month
Text
someone just commented on my physical appearance UNPROMPTED????
7 notes · View notes
licorishh · 1 month
Text
Replayed Modern Warfare 3 2011 on Veteran tonight and goooooooood night. Blood Brothers never gets any easier to watch no matter how many times you've done it and the ending really never misses huh
I apologize for the amount of yapping in the tags I reread it all on mobile and started giggling because it went on for so long but eh. Blessed are those who won't shut the freak up and all that
#call of duty#modern warfare 3 2011#i just. wow. wow wow wow wow wow#i've played these three games so many times over the last several years and i just.#they literally. never get old.#loose ends and blood brothers will never not make me cry and endgame and dust to dust will never not make me smile so hard#ending it with price smoking the cigar like he did in the first mission in the first game wHEN HE FIRST MET SOAP JUST UGHHHHHH.#i know y'all don't care but i don't care that y'all don't care i could literally yap about this until i shrivel up and die#i have never ever ever in my LIFE seen poetic justice played out so beautifully like it is at the very end#JUST. WOW. WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW. WOW WOW. WOW#they do not frickin make games like that anymore DADGUM#i also forgot how frickin sad down the rabbit hole is?? like jeez louise they didn't have much screen time but gosh#i also have never in my life heard such gut-wrenching anguish from a grown man in my life like price in that one scene#I KNOW Y'ALL KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT THAT MAN MAKES ME FULL ON S O B IN THAT PART HE HAD NO BUSINESS#anyway i'll keep cutely living in denial and pretending literally any of the main characters besides price and nikolai are fine <3#foley and dunn and their team seemed just fine at the end of modern warfare 2 so i will accept that small mercy#at this point these games have taken everything else i love away from me so#y'all probably think i'm wild for how insane i get over these games but the nostalgia bit is a big part of it as well#like they're honestly in my opinion genuinely the greatest video games of all time#but the fact that i have that connection with my dad makes it so special#crazy cause he said he also cried in blood brothers and my dad is 54 and i have seen him cry one (1) other time in my entire life#heck infinity ward but also bless them i hope the devs live long beautiful wonderful prosperous delightful exciting fulfilling lives#Lord bless them and their entire bloodline for the contributions they have made to humanity not even joking#AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE FREAKING SOUNDTRACKS DO NOT GO THERE OAUSYDJAKAKDN#MW2 AND MW3 CREDITS. EXTRACTION POINT. COUP DE GRACE. RETREAT AND REVEILLE. CONTINGENCY. PARIS SIEGE. PRAGUE HOSTILITIES. RUSSIAN WARFARE.#UGHHHHHHHGHHHH everything about these games is so unbelievably perfect and immaculate#i have got to get over my art block NOWWWWWWWWWW#makarov is also the best villain i've ever seen idc bro he's frickin awesome#i mean obviously he's horrible and a disgustingly evil human being but as a character he's stupidly well-written
7 notes · View notes
indigodawns · 1 month
Text
.
8 notes · View notes