#but the fact that your quality of life depends entirely on one guy whose only thing is he owns property not being an asshole

[beatriceeagle]

I'm more of a fantasy than sci-fi person, but consider my interest piqued. Why should I watch farscape?

Okay, the thing is, every Farscape fan’s pitch on Why You, Yes You, Should Watch Farscape ends up sounding very similar, and that’s because Farscape is a black hole that sucks you in and does things to your brain, and after you’ve watched it you are never, ever the same, which incidentally is basically the plot of Farscape.

I would summarize the basic plot for you, but that’s work, and luckily, the show’s credits sequence includes a handy summary that I will provide instead of doing that work: “My name is John Crichton, an astronaut. A radiation wave hit, and I got shot through a wormhole. Now I’m lost in some distant part of the universe on a ship, a living ship, full of strange alien life forms. Help me. Listen, please. Is there anybody out there who can hear me? I’m being hunted by an insane military commander. Doing everything I can. I’m just looking for a way home.“

So let me break down that monologue into its component reasons you should watch Farscape.

1) Some of the strange alien life forms are Muppets.

Farscape a co-production with the Jim Henson Company, and while there are many aliens played by humans in make-up, there are also a considerable number (including two of the regular crew) who are Muppets. By which I do not mean Kermit. I mean really gorgeous, elaborate works of art.

Also, even a lot of the humans-in-makeup aliens just look cool, and incredibly weird. Here’s an alien who appears in a single episode of season 1:

Not that there aren’t, you know, occasional Star Trek-style “these guys are just humans with weird hair,” or whatever, but in general, the aliens on Farscape look really alien. And that’s more than an aesthetic choice; it’s Farscape’s driving narrative principle. The aliens look alien, they act alien, they have alien values.

You know how a lot of sci-fi shows will have a stand-in for “fuck,” like Battlestar Galactica has “frak”? Well, Farscape has “frell.” And also “dren.” And yotz, hezmana, mivonks, loomas, tralk, snurch, eema, drannit, dench, biznak, arn, drad, fahrbot, narl. Some of those are swear words, but some of them are just words, never explicitly translated, that the alien characters will pepper into their speech, because, well, why should translator microbes be able to completely translate all the nuances of an alien culture? You’ll pick it up from context. One time, in passing, a character mentions that he’s familiar with the concept of suicide, but there’s no word for it in his language. I cannot emphasize to you enough how fleeting this moment is; the episode is not about suicide, we’re not having a great exchange of cultural ideas—at the time, the characters are running down a corridor in a crisis, as they are about 70 percent of the time—it’s just that the subject got brought up, and this character needed to talk around the fact that he literally didn’t have a word, in that moment. Things like that happen all the time, on Farscape.

Because more than anything else, Farscape is a show about culture shock. John Crichton is this straight, white Southern guy, at the top of his game—he’s an astronaut! he’s incredibly high status!—and then he ends up on the other side of the galaxy, where none of his cultural markers of privilege hold any meaning, where he doesn’t know the rules, where he literally can’t even open the doors. And he has to unlearn the idea that humanity is central, that he is the norm.

2) John Crichton, an astronaut, is pretty great.

A show that’s about a straight white guy with high status having to learn that he’s not the center of the universe could easily be centered around a really insufferable person, but one of the subtle things that makes Farscape so wonderful is that Crichton is, for the most part, pretty excellent. He has a lot of presumptions to unlearn because almost anyone in his cultural position would, but he’s also just a stand-up guy: compassionate, intelligent, open-minded, decent, forgiving, brave, hopeful.

And the galaxy tries to kick a whole lot of that out of him. It doesn’t succeed, mostly, but if Farscape is about anything other than culture shock, it’s about the lasting effects of trauma. How you can go through a wormhole one person, and experience things that turn you into someone you don’t recognize.

That’s kind of grim-sounding, but ultimately, what I’m trying to say is that Farscape is almost fanatically devoted to character work. Crichton is not the only character who sounds like he should be one thing and ends up being another. All of the characters—all of them, all of them, even the annoying ones—are complicated wonders. And you don’t have to wonder whether the events of the episode you’re watching are going to matter. They will. Everything that happens to the characters leaves a mark. Everything leaves them forever changed. Whether it’s mentioned explicitly or not—and often enough, it’s not explicit—the characters remember what has happened to them.

3) The living ship houses a lot of excellent women, among them the ship itself.

Ah, the women of Farscape, thou art the loves of my fucking life.

There’s Aeryn Sun, former Peacekeeper (that’s the military that the “insane military commander” hails from) now fugitive, currently learning the meaning of the word “compassion” (literally). She will break your fingers and also your heart. John/Aeryn is the main canon romantic ship.

There’s Pa’u Zhoto Zhaan, a priestess of the ninth level, current pacifist, former anarchist. Sorry, leading anarchist. She orgasms in bright light! (Oh my god, Farscape.)

There’s Chiana, my fucking bestie, a teenage(ish? ages in Farscape are weird) fugitive on the run from a repressive authoritarian state. Chiana is like a seductress con artist grifter thief who mostly just wants to survive so that she can have fun, damn it. Characters on Farscape do not really discuss sexualities (sex, yes, sexualities, no) and it would be fair to say that several of them do not fall along human sexuality lines generally, but I’m gonna go ahead and say that Chiana is canonically not straight.

Then there’s Moya, the ship herself, and it’s hard to get a straight read on Moya’s personality, since she mostly can’t speak. But she definitely has opinions, and things and people she cares about. And she moves the plot, though that gets into spoiler territory.

Past first season, further excellent women show up: Jool (controversial, but I like her), Sikozu (I once saw a Tumblr meme where someone had marked down that Sikozu would lose her shit when someone pronounced “gif” wrong, and that’s absolutely correct, and it’s why I love her), and Noranti (who is incredibly weird, and incredibly hard to summarize, but man, you gotta love her willingness to just show up and do her thing). Plus, there’s a recurring female villain, Grayza, who I could write probably multiple essays about. (I don’t know how you will feel about Grayza, as not everyone loves her, but I think she’s fucking fascinating, especially because she’s not actually the only recurring female villain. We also get Ahkna!)

(Side note: I should mention, here, that the cast of Farscape is really, really white. There is one cast member of color, Lani Tupu, but he pretty much represents the entirety of even, like, incidental diversity in casting for the series.)

Anyway, Farscape is full of awesome women, and also awesome and unexpected men, and it really enjoys playing with audience expectations of gender roles, generally. Literal entire books have been written about the way that Farscape fucks around with sex, sexuality, and gender. It’s a little weird because it was the late 90s/early 2000s, and sometimes that does come through, but Farscape’s guiding principle was always to try not to present American culture of the time as the norm, so like. It is not.

(An aside on Farscape and sex: Literally every character on Farscape has sexual tension with every other character. If you are a shipper, this is a Good Show, because no matter who you ship, there will not only be subtext, you will get a Moment of some kind. Multiple characters kiss the Muppet. Farscape is dedicated to getting into the nitty-gritty of the galaxy—I like to think of it as showing the guts of the universe—so a lot of the show is kind of squishy. They live on a biomechanoid ship, instead of androids there are “bioloids,” there’s a lot of focus on strange alien biologies, and lots of weird glowing fluids and things. I think the sex thing is kind of part and parcel of the larger biology focus: Farscape is really fascinated with how we all eat and evolve and live and die and, well, fuck. Which is in turn, kind of part of its focus on making everything really alien.)

4) Other stuff you should know.

Farscape as a whole is excellent, but it was kind of the product of creative anarchy—an Australian/American coproduction (oh yeah, everyone except Crichton speaks with an Australian accent) that was also partnered with the Henson company, whose showrunners were based in America but whose actual production all took place in Australia, and who was just constantly trying new things. So individual episodes can vary wildly in quality. It really takes off in the back half of season one, but no season is without a few off episodes.

It is extraordinarily funny, and I really think I haven’t stressed that enough. It’s one of the shows I want to quote the most in my daily life, but almost all of its humor is really context-dependent, and if you just wander around going, “Hey Stark? What’s black and white, and black and white, and black and white?” people look at you really funny.

It’s very conversant with pop culture generally (although obviously sci-fi  specifically, and Star Trek most specifically of all) and really enjoys deconstructing tropes, often to the effect of, “Well, Crichton really does not know what to do here, does he?” but sometimes just to be interesting.

There are also a lot of themes about science, and its uses and misuses.

The whole thing is fucking epic, and if you get invested at all, will take you on an emotional ride.

This show is weird. I know that that’s probably come across by now, but I think it’s worth reiterating as its own point: Farscape is so weird. Like, proudly, unabashedly, trying its hardest, weird. An amazing kind of weird.

If you’re into fantasy, you should know that there’s a recurring villain who’s just a wizard. Like, they don’t bother to explain it any more than that, he’s just a fucking wizard.

In summary: You should watch Farscape because it is a weird, wild, emotional, epic romance/drama/action/allegory full of Muppets and leather and one-liners and emotional gut punches and love, and if you let it, it will worm its way into you and never let go, which, now that I think of it, is another Farscape plot.

Send me meta prompts to distract me from my migraine!

#farscape #meta

[mthvn]

Post-”Chaos Theory”: A Conversation with Flavia Dzodan and Metahaven

Metahaven Flavia, we've been talking about the Chaos Theory script even before the pandemic started. At the time it was a way of finding a voice (as every script is). Our friendship and collaborations have been major encouragements in completing the film the way it did. What do you think about the film now that you've watched it?

Flavia Dzodan I loved it! Chaos Theory made me think of some of Alexander Kluge's ideas about the artist as a seismographer, someone who anticipates what's to come through subtle, almost imperceptible changes on the ground. At the same time, Kluge talks about the artist as someone whose reactions are observed (like one observes a seismographer) to anticipate what is to come. In that sense, I see Chaos Theory as presenting us with a potential future, where the interdependencies are not merely acknowledged but central to the way we relate to one another and to our surroundings and ecosystems. I see the relationships in the film as not just from human to human but also in relation to the outside. To me, this is a film made of textures and invocations, a film about love yes but also about the kind of future we want to build.

Metahaven We've often talked about Tenet (Christoper Nolan, 2020) and its many quirks and features, including the female lead who, whenever it is announced that the entire world population will die, exclaims in despair: "AND MY SON!" Any thoughts? :)

Flavia Dzodan I've been thinking a lot lately about how narrating can often be a distraction from "feeling things." What I mean is that films are sometimes very preoccupied with the narration (i.e., telling a story) but such narration operates as a way to avoid dealing with the emotions or the feelings themselves. Since "feeling" is passé, sincerity has practically become an artefact or a curiosity rather than part of the process of telling a story. I do not think that Tenet is guilty of "ironic detachment"-that would maybe make the film interesting (or at least slightly funnier)-but instead, I believe Tenet is the guy at the bar who takes himself so seriously and will explain to you all the ways in which he is smarter than you. That's what makes Tenet tedious and stuffy and quite honestly, devoid of any kind of emotion. There was a point in the film when I was wishing for this supposed apocalypse to finally take place so that we could be free to go and do something else. I'd love to see Nolan attempt to make a comedy, something that doesn't need to constantly remind us how smart he is. Maybe Nolan shouldn't be so worried about saving the patriarchy via "BUT MY SON!" and instead should worry more about coherent storytelling that doesn't require a dozen forum posts to be understood. Who has time for that kind of sleuthing these days?  

In a lot of ways, and I think I've said this to you, I see Chaos Theory as a sort of anti-Tenet manifesto. Not only because there is no son to save from the end of the world but also because Chaos Theory is not structured as a narration to distract from emotions. On the contrary, Chaos Theory lunges at the sentimentality with a refreshing shamelessness. I am sure some might see this as a weakness but at a time when we mourn collective losses counted in the millions, I celebrate emotional sincerity as the only worthy form of engagement. I refuse to continue this pretension that we are objective creatures imbued by rational thinking. Capitalism and, specifically the neoliberal administration of life which is so dependent on budgets and accountancy practices, benefits from our emotional detachment: if we remain cool and ironically detached in the presence of suffering and cruelty, we are less reactive to injustice. Instead, I advocate for a radical sentimentalism that forces us to deal with the immense grief of this collective loss. I need more art that makes me cry rather than art that makes me shrug.

Metahaven What can be redeemed about emotion-and even about sentimentality-in the face of its constant use by conservative agendas?

Flavia Dzodan I don't know if "redeem" is the word I'd use. I believe it's worth making a distinction: not all sentimentality is created equal or is identical (even if the appeal to emotion might a priori appear to be so). Emotions can be evoked to connect us to one another, drawing out our best qualities. They can also be evoked to alienate and exacerbate exclusion. I'd be wary of condemning sentimentality as a whole just because conservatives made better use of its potential. In fact, I'd rather wonder why the more progressive or leftist side of the spectrum decided to eschew emotion and instead, attempt to appeal to a faux neutrality or detachment that are not even such. The problem is not "feeling things," the problem is how those feelings can be manipulated for a political end that is not inclusive or even caring but rather divisive and cruel. Just as much as the right can evoke rancid nationalistic sentiments, we should be able to remind ourselves that shared emotions are what connect us to one another.

Metahaven "The music that you heard, the poetry that soaked your soul, it is in no way ornamental. It is in no way decorative. It ought to be constitutive of who you are," Cornel West has said. How do you feel about these words?

Flavia Dzodan Again, I need to go back to this notion of humans as creatures guided by emotions. Poetry, music, beauty itself, then not as entertainment or distractions but as the core of who and what we are.

--- Amsterdam, July 1, 2021 This conversation was previously published on the Instagram profile of Boilerroom 4:3 It refers to the film work Chaos Theory, Metahaven, 2021

--- Flavia Dzodan is a writer, media analyst and cultural critic based in Amsterdam. She is a senior researcher and lecturer at Sandberg Instituut. Her research focuses on the politics of artificial intelligence and algorithms at the intersections of colonialism, race, and gender. In her research Dzodan examines the ways in which technology is created and deployed to reproduce historical patterns of social control. Her current research about beauty and ethics attempt to understand how cultural analysis may operate vis-a-vis semiotic codes, particularly in regards to teaching machines to identify highly subjective and culturally dependent ontologies such as those surrounding fashion and art. This work is a continuation of her previous research about "the coloniality of the algorithm," which situated Linnaean taxonomies at the heart of both colonial history and contemporary uses of technology. Dzodan is interested in ephemeral forms of publishing: she is the editor of the intermittent blog This Political Woman, where she has written about the rise of the alt-right, Big Data, networks, algorithms and community surveillance. Her work was published at Dissent, The Guardian, and The Washington Post, among others.

#metahaven #flaviadzodan #ChaosTheory

[mercurytrinemoon]

On synastry and how to approach it

If you follow me you may have noticed few of my posts where I'm fixating on the fact that I don't know a certain person's birth date. And I said I'm sensing a nice Venus-Mars connection and honestly now that I think about it, I feel like Jupiter is heavily underlined in here as well. So that made me think of synastry a lot (not that I don't think about it on daily basis) and it made me want to elaborate a bit. Also because I see this weird approach where people single out certain aspects and turn them into "make it or break it" kind of deal and that is just wrong.

Actually it's similar with natal charts. The difference here is obvious - you have two individuals which means double the options in which way the energy may go and more potential for aspects to cancel each other out. So while natal interpretations of, for example, planets in the houses will resonate with you, all the black and white interpretations of synastry house overlays belong in the dumpster imho. And I knooow, I knoooow, one of my first posts was about house overlays. It was very generalized one and I did disclaim to take the entire chart into consideration. But sometimes I see these descriptions where people say "oh my god Venus in the 8th house! This is highly sexual aspect!" But what if none of the people have their Mars nor Venus activated, maybe except for a Venus-Saturn square that puts a big dump on the whole thing. Also, this may as well indicate taking care of shared resources (because that's one of the main themes of the 8th). Besides - and that's my personal take - overlays are less important than aspects between planets unless a) you’re putting a stellium in someone’s house b) it's about angles, because having the same planet as someone's ascendant is a big thing and I can guarantee you that most of the people you create bonds with will have that configuration with you.

Speaking of which, the type of people you attract is highly dependant on your chart. Angles are important but so are aspects and planet placements. I'll give you an example based on my own natal chart, because, obviously, I know myself well and I pay attention to charts of the people I come in contact with. As an Aquarius rising, I attract a lot of Aqua personal planets, Leo risings and people with personal planets in Leo - surprisingly not a single Leo Sun. As a Sagittarius dominant person, most of my friends are Gemini Moons or Sag Moons. Surprisingly I only befriended one Gemini Sun in my life + my belowed dog who was a Gemini. My Aries Moon makes me weak for Aries Suns. Sun is opposite Mars (5th house) - it, again, points to Aries (and Scorpios as well). Dominant fire element and Aries in the 3rd (easy communication) helps here a lot. Having Sagittarius in the 11th (house of friends) and Jupiter in the 7th (house of partnerships), I tend to be friends with other Sadges BUT that Jupiter in the 7th makes me very attracted to Pisces as well. So DO take classic rulership into consideration!

That leads me to another point - modalities. I have a lot of mutable energy so I love other mutable energies. SQUARES omg, especially in romantic/sexual relationships. They do bring tension but hear me out. You need trines and sextiles but squares bring spice. I can guarantee you that having a flowing Mars-Venus contact will give you a pleasant feelings for one another, easiness in communication and a natural synchronicity, but it's the square that will make you wanna rip each other's clothes off. Soooo... I mean, whichever you prefer I guess. Squares are also stimulating, with trines the energy flows nicely, squares bring interest... it's a different element, but the same modality... a perfect mix to make you drawn to the other person. It's similar yet intriguing. Another example, as a Sag Venus my tastes concerning arts and music should clash with a Pisces Venus - that’s what a textbook definition will tell you - but surprise, surprise, half of my favourite artists have Venus in Pisces.

Now with oppositions it's a completely different thing. I think they work wonderful when there are yin-yang planets involved. As I mentioned earlier, as a Sagittarius Sun I love Gemini Moons. They compliment each other. The thing is, with opposites you either get each other or you just pass each other. So it fluctuates. I've noticed that especially when there's the same planet involved. Two people having Mercury opposition will get each other so well they will finish each other's sentences one day and then completely miss the mark the next. Like two vehicles driving in opposite directions.

Trines aren't 100% amaaaazing. I know many people who, like me, have inner planets in fire signs and our values, ways of thinking and approach to certain issues are completely different. We do express them in the same manner though, which is by being loud lol. Trines also bring laziness so if you have too many of them the relationship may just fizzle out. Sextiles on the other hand are so underappreciated. Air fuels fire and water nourishes the earth - it’s way more interesting than a trine where both signs are in the same element, imho. Some astrologers will tell you sextiles are "weaker" but that's just stupid. They’re just as important, okay?  

Sometimes you don't even have to have an actual aspect. Whoa, I know, mind-blown. But I see that constantly. Obviously having planets in a tight aspects is very important but let's say you have Aquarius Venus at 5° and the other person has Sun in Aqua at 20°. They don't make an aspect but it's the same sign, therefore you're going to express these energies in the same manner - which makes you compatible (tho I don't like that word). Now the smaller the orb, the more significant the aspect is. I've read somewhere that the aspect with the tightest orb kind of represents the theme of the relationship - I haven't been able to really analyze this theory tho. When it comes to orbs overall, Alexander Von Pronay is suggesting to use aspects up to 7°. I'd do that and then look at aspects under 2° to really see which energies are stronger. Liz Greene said that if you're feeling an aspect, even if the orb is wider, well, you're feeling it and it's there. I suspect it may depend on what energies you're sensitive to. If, for example, your chart ruler is Venus, you may feel Venus aspects more. And then with Uranus, Neptune and Pluto I'd say up to 2°.  

What's actually awesome are so called double whammies. It's when the same two planets are aspected both ways. So A person's Sun is trining B's Venus and B's Venus is sextile A's Sun. Or A's Moon is conjunct B's Sun and B's Sun is opposite A's Moon. I like double whammies cause they provide mutuality. People often ask "wHo FeeLs iT mORe????". First of all, there's no clear answer to that because everyone's different and their charts are different and some respond to the energy one way and some, other. That's why I like to ask people: well, how do YOU feel about that aspect (if you, of course, know astrology well enough to pinpoint the energy). But with double whammies you basically exchange the same aspect so, hopefully, in 99%, it will be mutual.

What I also love is having the same aspect natally. Let's say you have a Mars-Mercury trine natally and the other person has it conjoined. That is awesome. It's like going through the same experiences in life and going "yeah! I went through that too! I understand!" Better yet if then those planets also make an aspect in the synastry chart. It's great. You're going to vibe so much.

About mutuality... A few weeks ago I was watching a livestream from Nina and Shaina from Party Trick Astrology (love those girls) and they were talking about synastry so I asked them a question related to these things cause, you know, I bet they've seen hundreds of charts and I'm always curious about other people's observations. So I asked about mutuality and one of them gave an example of a girl whose Venus was beautifully aspected by a guy and the guy's Venus not being aspected at all. And how this, for example, pointed to the guy being into the girl but not vice versa. And I thought that's interesting because I'd assume it would be the other way around. Her planets didn't activate his Venus so he shouldn't be into her romantically. And I actually experienced that myself one time. I had this Aqua friend and had literally zero aspects to my Venus. Not even a semi-sextile, not even a quincunx, not even a wide generational planet connection. And I didn't see him through these romantic lens. So I guess there are no rules to this. OR it’s all about projection (which btw happens a lot in astrology). That's why I like to look at synastry charts and just get the overall vibe. 

Now with that being said, the shocker. YOU DON'T HAVE TO HAVE ASPECTS WITH THE OTHER PERSON AT ALL. I know, a bummer. Here we, astrology junkies, are in the lookout for the perfect synastry chart but as I look at charts of celebrity couples I often see them having no Sun connections, no Venus or Mars connections, lame Moon aspects etc. That is indeed disappointing. That's why I was so stoked about that Britney-Justin synastry. Because I don't see connections like that one between all the "it” couples of today.

So I guess... astrology is bullshit... Nah, just kidding. But it is complex. Sometimes it’s quality over quantity. And you should approach synastry as a whole, just feel it out, you know? And I’ll leave you with that for today because it’s getting long.

#synastry #astrology #astro notes #astrology notes #mercurytrinemoon

[argyrocratie]

(...)

Let’s look at life expectancy:  In Italy, average life expectancies in the solidly Medieval 1200s were 35-40, while by the year 1500 (definitely Renaissance) life expectancy in Italian city states had dropped to 18.

It’s striking how consistently, when I use these numbers live, the shocked and mournful silence is followed by a guy objecting: those numbers are deceptive, you’re including infant mortality—voiced as if this observation should discredit them.  Yes, the average of 18 does include infant mortality, but the Medieval average of 35 includes it too, so the drop is just as real.  If you want we can exclude those who die before age 12, and we do get a smaller total drop then, average age of death 54 in the 1200s dropping to 45-48 in 1500, so only a 12-16% drop instead of 48%, but the more we zoom the grimmer the Renaissance half proves.  Infant mortality (within 12 months) averaged 28% both before and after 1348, so the big drop from Medieval to Renaissance Italy is actually kids who made it past the first year, only to die in years 2-12 from new diseases.  We also think of the dangers of childbirth as lowering women’s lifespans, but death from childbirth stayed steady from Medieval to Renaissance at (for Tuscany) 1 death per 40 births, while the increase in war and violence made adult male mortality far higher than female even with the childbirth threat.  If we look at the 20% of people who lived longest in Renaissance Italy it’s almost entirely widows and nuns, plus a few diehards like Titian, and poor exiled Cardinal da Costa of Portugal languishing in Rome to the age of 102, with everyone he’d known in the first 2/3rds of his life long gone.  Kids died more in the Renaissance, adults died more, men died more, we have the numbers, but I find it telling how often people who hear these numbers try to discredit them, search for a loophole, because these facts rub against our expectations.  We didn’t want a wretched golden age. (Demographics are, of course, an average, and different bits of Europe varied, but I’m using the numbers for the big Italian city-states precisely because they’re the bit of Europe we most associate with the golden Renaissance, so if it’s true there, it’s true of the Renaissance you were imagining.)

Why did life expectancy drop?  Counter-intuitively the answer is, largely, progress.

War got worse, for one.  Over several centuries, innovations in statecraft and policy (which would continue gradually for centuries more) had increased the centralization of power in the hands of kings and governments, especially their ability to gather funds, which meant they could raise larger armies and have larger, bloodier wars.   Innovations in metallurgy, chemistry, and engineering also made soldiers deadlier, with more artillery, more lethal weapons, more ability to knock a town’s walls down and kill everyone inside, new daggers designed to leave wounds that would fester, or anti-personnel artillery designed to slice a line of men in half.  Thus, while both the Middle Ages and Renaissance had lots of wars, Renaissance wars were larger and deadlier, involving more troops and claiming more lives, military and civilian—this wasn’t a sudden change, it was a gradual one, but it made a difference.

Economic growth also made the life expectancy go down.  Europe was becoming more interconnected, trade increasing.  This was partly due to innovations in banking (which had started in the 1100s), and partly, yes, the aftermath of the Black Death which caused a lot of economic change—not growth but change—some sectors growing, others shrinking, people moving around, people trying to stop people from moving around, markets shifting.  There were also innovations in insurance, for example insuring your cargo ship so if it sinks you don’t go bankrupt like our Merchant of Venice.  This meant more multi-region trade. For example, weaving wool into fine-quality non-itchy thread required a lot of oil, without which you could only make coarse, itchy thread.  England produced lots of wool but no oil (except walnuts), so, in the Renaissance, entrepreneurs from England, instead of spinning low-profit itchy wool, started exporting their wool to Italy where abundant olive oil made it cheap to produce high-quality cloth and re-export it to England and elsewhere.  This let merchants grow rich, prosperity for some, but when people move around more, diseases move more too.  Cities were also growing denser, more manufacturing jobs and urban employment drawing people to crowd inside tight city walls, and urban spaces always have higher mortality rates than rural.  Malaria, typhoid, dysentery, deadly influenza, measles, the classic pox, these old constants of Medieval life grew fiercer in the Renaissance, with more frequent outbreaks claiming more lives.

The Black Death contributed too—in school they talk as if the plague swept through in 1348 then went away, but the bubonic plague did not go away, it remained endemic, like influenza or chickenpox today, a fact of life.  I have never read a full set of Renaissance letters which didn’t mention plague outbreaks and plague deaths, and Renaissance letters from mothers to their traveling sons regularly include, along with advice on etiquette and eating enough fennel, a list of which towns to avoid this season because there’s plague there.  Carlo Cipolla (in the fascinating yet tediously titled Before the Industrial Revolution) collected great data for the two centuries after 1348, in which Venice had major plague bursts 7% of years, Florence 14% of years, Paris 9% of years, Barcelona 13% of years, and England (usually London) 22% in the earlier period spiking to 50% in the later 1500s, when England saw plague in 26 out of 50 years between 1543 and 1593.  Excluding tiny villages with little traffic, losing a friend or sibling to plague was a universal experience from 1348 clear to the 1720s, when plague finally diminished in Europe, not because of any advance in medicine, but because fourteen generations of exposure gave natural selection time to work, those who survived to reproduce passing on a heightened immune response, a defensive adaptation bought over centuries by millions of deaths.

Today thousands of cases of Y. pestis (the plague bacterium) still occur each year, largely in sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia where it was not endemic so immunities didn’t develop.  And if geneticist Mihai Netea is correct that the immune mutation which helps those of European descent resist Y. pestis also causes our greater rate of autoimmune disorders, then the Black Death is still constantly claiming lives through the changes it worked into European DNA over 400 years (and literally causing me pain as I type this, as my own autoimmune condition flares).  While the 1348 pandemic was Medieval, most of the Middle Ages did not have the plague—it’s the Renaissance which has the plague every single day as an apocalyptic lived reality.

Economic growth also made non-military violence worse.  Feuds (think Montagues and Capulets) were a Medieval constant, but the body count of a feud depends a lot on how wealthy the head families are, since the greater their wealth and the larger their patronage network, the larger the crowd of goons on stage in the opening scene of Romeo & Juliet when partisans of the two factions are biting their thumbs at each other, and the larger the number of unnamed men who also get killed in the background while Romeo fights Tybalt.  In Italy especially, new avenues for economic growth (banking and mercenary work) quickly made families grow wealthy enough to raise forces far larger than the governments of their little city states, which made states powerless to stop the violence, and vulnerable to frequent, bloody coups.  The Bentivoglios of Bologna and Sforza of Milan (whose marriage alliance produced Ercole who wrote that letter to Machiavelli) had risen by force, ruled by force, and were in turn overthrown by force, several times each, in fact, as rulers were killed, then avenged by returning sons or nephews, and cities flip-flopped between rival dynasties every few years

#renaissance #middle ages

[astrologista]

Kristoph Gavin Character Analysis I

Part 1 of... fucking infinity, I hate this bitch so much lmao.

Well, it's Halloween time and I just thought, why not. So let's answer this question.

What makes Kristoph Gavin a scary character/villain? A soft spoken gentleman with a deadly secret... the Devil, who lives in his hand, that crazy evil scar thing, his creepy music theme... damn, he’s a scary dude. But scariest of all? His psychology, as we all know. (This is mostly gonna be headcanons. but ya know what, I have a license (hands you a piece of paper that says ‘i can do what i want’))

Kristoph seems like a person who is very aloof, particularly when it comes to personal relationships. At first he kind of just seems like the typical anime glasses guy whose main emotion is like whooa he does the glare thing with his glasses sometimes. But... what is he really about?

You know, let me digress for a moment, what's really interesting to me about the AA characters is how much depth they have in their writing. Case in point, Adrian Andrews. There's a character who you assume is just going to be the typical "anime glasses girl" who is a career woman who don't need no man, and is very aloof, cool, and as she says, not concerned with irrelevant topics or things. Later you learn about the true depths to her personality. The fact that she is codependent, that she needs other people telling her what to do in order to survive. Just because she masks these emotions doesn't mean they don't exist. I felt that really gave a lot of depth to her character and added another dimension that stories in this genre don't often address as boldly or fully (especially when it comes to a female character). So the quality of the writing is always really top notch with only a few exceptions. Take this as context...

Now getting back to Kristoph Gavin. Typical anime glasses dude, right? But no, though. One of the reasons why he's so interesting to me is how his emotional understanding of personal relationships really works. Or seems to, anyway. Based on the endgame testimony and his crimes, Kristoph Gavin is extremely dangerous because, should you get involved with him in any way, he will never, ever let go of you, ever. Once you are entangled with him he wants you to stay entangled, not unlike an overbearing parent who refuses to let you go. It's partly that he thinks he knows what's best for you (that is, to stay completely loyal to him). And also partly... because he is pretty dependent on what other people think of him. So he needs to keep them around him closely.

Kristoph's biggest fear was his lying being exposed for what it was. That Phoenix was really the honest, straightforward attorney, and not him. Kristoph would do anything to perpetuate his own false reality. He kept it going for seven years. His absolute worst fear of all was losing his reputation. Being seen for what he truly was in front of others. He could never accept that. That fear drove all of his murders. Fundamentally, he sees himself as benevolent... when nothing could be further from the truth of how he was hurting everyone who had the misfortune of crossing his path.

Kristoph has a need to perpetuate this false identity of himself above all else. A very adjacent second goal to that is to keep all of his personal associates very close and under his control in order to keep the first goal intact.

Reject him and he will stalk you until you are dead. By his hand, or otherwise. Slight him, and he will get you at the first opportunity, case in point, Zak Gramarye. (He only had to get a quick glance at the guy and his fate was sealed. Turnabout Trump is a chilling case.) Replace him, and he will tear your life and livelihood up into little itty bitty pieces. He will then continue to stalk you aggressively for seven years while pretending he is your best friend. Case in point, Phoenix Wright.

Create false evidence for him and you become a loose end. So does your daughter. Like I said, just don't get involved with him. If he feels threatened, Kristoph Gavin will not hesitate to end you. It's definitely an obsession. I mean the first word that comes to people's minds when it comes to Kristoph usually isn't "obsessed", because he gives off the aura of being calm and uninterested. But he is, he's obsessed. You have to be obsessed to do what he did. This shit consumed his every waking hour, and that's what he won't admit. That he was so sick, he completely lost the plot. Phoenix was already living in his head rent free the day he ordered the forgery. And even though Phoenix wasn't physically present at the Misham trial and was only watching everything by video camera, you can bet Kristoph was seeing Phoenix. Hallucinating him, images of him. Probably multiple images of him. That's how obsessive. Imagine letting something or someone control you to that extent. Imagine thinking that you're so important, that Phoenix taking Zak Gramarye's case at all was meant to be a slight against you personally. (It's funny because Phoenix mentions not even knowing Kristoph at all until after the disbarment. So Kristoph's own logic in thinking that Phoenix was just out to shame him absolutely doesn't track. Ob-sessed, dude.)  

It's actually pretty astonishing that someone like Apollo made it out alive. On a side note, I really think Kristoph enjoyed having someone to mentor. He sought someone like Apollo out. Someone naive and new to the field for him to indoctrinate. And maybe I have a post about that later, cuz that's a whole 'nother barrel of monkeys right there. (It kind of involves Apollo’s naivete (also, daddy issues, hello.) being a huge reason why he would gravitate towards having a mentor known for having a “caring” personality. And I think Apollo genuinely liked that about him, which makes the end result so much more awful for Apollo to deal with because to him, that was real.)

But now think of Klavier, right. Being forced to grow up with that. To live with that your entire life. To have a familial relationship that is that smothering, that suffocating, that strangling. That controlling, to criticize every single thing that you do or say right down to the way you say it. And remember... He's never letting you go. I would go on a world tour as a rock star, too. Anything to be anywhere he isn't. This is horror movie tier stuff. (now im imagining a horror movie trailer for aa4 focusing on gavins stuff... eep!)

And Kristoph Gavin markets himself as someone who simply doesn't care. He's the coolest defense in the west and he doesn't care for what you may think about it. Except... he does care. It totally consumes him. Your perception, your opinion, is everything to him. He has shitty self esteem, deep down, because he knows Phoenix is better than him. And tries to mask it with narcissism as the two duke it out. Appearances are everything, evidence is everything. What people think is true is the only thing that matters, truth doesn't. And it makes sense that his closest contacts and associates are the targets for his constant narcissistic abuse and gaslighting. Their opinions matter even more than the common crowd - of course, Kristoph hates them. Which makes it even worse for him when the jury decides unanimously that Vera is innocent (and by implication, he is therefore guilty). The jury verdict was kind of like the ultimate confirmation that guess what, the evidence doesn't matter. The common and boorish masses have passed judgement, no matter how "mindless, emotional and irrational" they are, even they can see behind his crappy little facade. Even a blind woman like Lamiroir can see that insecurity; even a common person can understand it just by looking at the facts. That's what absolutely wrecks him... that his “poker face” couldn’t hold a candle to Phoenix’s. And he loses the “hand” again (because of his “hand”... get it??).

The identity that he needs to maintain is part of how he sees himself in his mind. As Phoenix's protector, not as his stalker. As Klavier's benevolent big brother, not as his abuser. As Apollo's teacher and mentor, not as someone guiding him into ruin. He lives in a false reality.

Try to bring this up in any way, shape, or form and he will write it off. You're just imagining things...

Because at some level, Mr. Black Psyche Locks himself doesn't even realize. (I feel like that might just be basically canonical fact, based on Pearl’s explanation of how black psyche locks are supposed to work.) That’s pretty freaking terrifying.

At the end of the day this is a big part of the reason I think his character is just so interesting. In a very messed up way, Kristoph is one degree away from being such a good person. He could've been obsessively protective of Klavier - the way a big brother is supposed to be - instead of abusive, could've actually been very caring of Phoenix instead of manipulative. Terrible people can have good traits, just as good people can have awful traits. His attention to detail and understanding of psychology (like getting Vera those gifts she would like so much) could've been used for genuine good. He could've been someone who cares deeply about other people because he does care deeply about other people. But only in terms of their relation to himself, what do they think of him, how are they useful to him.

Maybe this is why I kind of like his character. Intelligent, semi-neurotic protective characters are just my ish. But, no, he has to have a narcissistic bent that skews everything into complete abuse. That’s what makes him awful... that he’s devoid of a moral compass or true compassion for other human beings.

So in closing, fuck off, Kristoph Gavin.

Postscript, he's also such a good foil for Phoenix for this reason. Kristoph does everything for himself. Phoenix does everything for Trucy, because he's a dad and he understands the weight of what it means to really care for someone. Kristoph couldn’t understand motives like that. And Phoenix can't help it if he's an order of magnitude smarter and more mature than Kristoph is. He was just born like that. Classy as fuck. You know what, Kristoph Gavin is like the dollar store version of Phoenix Wright as an attorney. Has many of the same functions but actually doesn't have a leg to stand on and will fail you when you need it. And is revealed to just be a cheap knockoff of the real thing.

#kristoph gavin #aa4 #apollo justice ace attorney #im just thinkin thoughts here #dont know why im in such a creepy mood right now #maybe halloween has something to do with it #srsly i need to do some analysis on some other characters lol #and ignore this rat man #btw im totally up to analyze specific characters and interactions #lmk #maybe nahyuta? #or phoenix and trucy #or phoenix and apollo...aaa

[fracturedsoul86]

My Journey - As Abbreviated As I Can Make It...

Fig. 1: Easter Dinner 2019 at the delicious Golden Pheasant in Torrance, CA, consisting of sizzling rice soup, sweet and sour soup, mushoo pork, kung pao shrimp and chicken, sizzling beef, Mongolian beef, and pineapple fried rice. Yum!

This was my Easter dinner (Fig. 1)... Spectacular by most standards. Copious, delicious, extravagant, and truly a blessing for me at a time when I felt extreme loneliness. And I’ll be honest... not only loneliness, but entrapment. 

**Pause For Positivity** Before I breakdown some of the negative emotions above, I need to acknowledge that my roommates and house manager at South Bay Sober Living saw my dark, depressed mood on Easter, and made immediate moves to try and lift my spirits, resulting in the beautiful meal you see above. For only knowing me 4.5 days, that was a nice surprise to see care and concern arise from people who had no reason to show me any. So a huge win for positivity and kindness that night, and a reminder to find the positive in everything ALWAYS!

Now, to dissect how I got to that dark, lonely place and that feeling of entrapment. I was feeling alone and forgotten on a holiday that had for many years held a special place in the hearts of my family members, and meant getting a little more dressed up than usual and enjoying a beautiful meal and family time. Now, mind you, being younger and in a different mindset entirely, and having endured some of the very dark, negative, and frankly hellish lows I have in the past 13 months, I never appreciated these gatherings and the time with family then like I do now. As well, starting at 18 with the death of my father, followed by my grandmother, aunt, uncle, family friends, and friends’ relatives, the recurring depressive thought that one day I would be entirely alone in this world, no family, no friends, no one thinking about me or concerned as to my well-being or my whereabouts, sunk in and slowly started to sabotage my desire to work towards anything of value in my life. 

It also revealed the beast of co-dependence the three main people who raised me - my mother, my father, and my grandmother (mother’s mother) - had instilled in me. For years, the image I portrayed to those around me was prioritized. How I presented myself, how I represented the family, the expectations for my life... they were piled on over and over, and what I wanted, and who I was, was secondary to the mold that was envisioned for me. Those qualities and desires that I had that fit in that mold were supported, encouraged, and shown and talked about with pride to anyone who would listen. Those which did not were repeatedly rebuffed, criticized, and swiftly “corrected.” This resulted in low self-esteem, a confused self image, and an inability to speak up for myself. I was bullied by my cousins, as well as by my peers when I switched schools in third grade, and became used to running to my teacher and day care workers for protection. I became a people pleaser, a “yes” man, and highly dependent on the approval of others. Plus, I spent years, even when I moved out on my own and wasn’t always the most financially prudent or responsibility-minded, in which my family never let me get too uncomfortable. And why should they? Overall, I was a good kid, intelligent and highly accomplished scholastically, and eventually a good guy and promising employee. 

Mind you, they allowed uncomfortability a place in my life to a degree to show me life isn’t all smiley faces and lollipops. I wasn’t handed everything, nor did I have no consequences when I strayed off course. I kept a job though, had a car, had an apartment. Held it all seemingly together. I was drinking myself away on weekends when I went out with friends, though, and followed those friends into a deeper path of self “exploration,” but realistically speaking, it was more self medication, getting into weed, cocaine, ecstasy, molly, mushrooms, and acid. Regardless, help always came as long as my life appeared to be handled somewhat. It always seemed like there would be some net at some point that would catch me when I fell too deep, or some switch would trigger when life was getting too tough for me to handle, and help would rush in. Deluded sounding, I know, but when you haven’t fallen to your rock bottom, it’s just an ever present constant that just is... until it isn’t. 

With those contextual markers in mind, my brain would be clicking along, distracted by life, by work, by bills, by TV, by friends, and eventually by alcohol and drugs, anything to keep me from thinking about the dark depressing realization of being alone that continued to become so very real with each person that slipped from life, from my life, and from this world. Without anyone caring about me, why is it even worth living? What is there to live for when we all are just going to die anyway? My hope, my happiness, my reasons for being, it all started to fade away.

**Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech** Depression, fueled by so much that had befallen me in life in subtle and not so subtle ways, brought my life to a grinding halt. Right at a weak point though, the most anti-depressive drug I know hooked in and took over - Crystal Meth. Dopamine and Serotonin flooding my system over and over, relieving me of the darkness, and fueling one of the most pleasure-inducing activities in life for me - masturbation and sex - took over. In a mind like mine, traumatized by life, unaware as to its true source of joy, of happiness, Crystal Meth found a home that needed it very badly! Boy, did I give in to it HARD. In the course of a year in which Crystal Meth, Sex, and Masturbation took priority over everything else, I lost my job, I lost some friendships, a relationship, my apartment, and finally my freedom. 

Mind you, the Meth use also resulted in experiences and an opening of my mind that caused me to become both more able to see the realities of what is, taught me to ultimately place my happiness in myself, rather than anyone else, and unlocked in me memories, gave me visions of potentialities, showed me patterns I never saw before, and showed me how to accept things that others found to be absurd, crazy, or, as they saw it, “impossible.” It is interesting though, that Truth is so incredibly relative. I didn’t realize that presented with compelling arguments of what I know to be the Truth, others would actually take all of it as ridiculous. Literally EVERYONE I know around me in fact. I have been repeatedly, daily in fact, faced with incredulity, doubt, and downright anger for things I’ve said because people refuse to listen to me and actually take what I say and think, “He may be right.” They choose to always respond with, “You’re crazy. You’re erratic. What you’re saying is unbelievable and patently false.” Is it? IS IT? How do YOU know? Have you checked the validity of your sources? Have you checked the validity of mine? NO, THEN SIT THE FUCK DOWN AND CALM THE FUCK DOWN! If you haven’t fact checked what I say and have chosen instead to simply say “I disbelieve it because I don’t have to believe it,” then that’s what I call a wall. Not a friend, not even a courteous person. A wall. A friend says, “Interesting ideas. I don’t know that I agree, but as your friend, as someone who cares, let me look into this. You may be right!”I have yet to hear a single person in my life say that, and actually make an effort to help me prove that my Truth is The Truth, or help me to see that what I believed to be The Truth is actually just imagined truth. 

THAT IS WHERE ALL MY CURRENT ANGER AND RESENTMENT STEM FROM, AND WHY FEW RELATIONSHIPS FROM MY PAST STAND A CHANCE OF REVISITATION UNLESS I CHOOSE TO OVERLOOK THIS FACT. That is why I’m finding it hard to reach out, and why I’m finding it hard to let anyone in unless they make a concerted effort to understand me, or at least listen to me and not make me feel like I’m worthless because they disagree with me or simply can’t take the time to try and understand, or help prove or disprove my truth. It’s because that is the lengths I go to for my friends, and it is what I expect of my friends now too. Close friends that is. 

Now, about that feeling of entrapment... In a country that runs on money, when you’re out of it, help comes at the cost of your own autonomy. Help comes with strings. And that’s where I’m at.

Feeling out of control of my own destiny has to be the scariest feeling there is, and entering sober living as well as court-ordered treatment because I’d allowed the control of my life to escape me has been a hard pill to swallow. My ability to choose and to live has been thrown into question, and dealing with that has been hard, especially after making it work more-or-less successfully for me for 12 of 13 years solo. Giving consideration to a different path, and to others, because I’d run down every last bit of personal and monetary equity I had trying to live life my way in every way I thought I could has felt like a real disappointment to me, and has caused me to react in anger, sadness, disappointment, and frustration towards others when they don’t deserve it, as far as help is concerned. Mind you, some people have deserved it, and my contentious relationship I have with “help” comes from the anger over the above reluctancy for ANYONE to consider MY POINT OF VIEW at all. There are people I let into my life, and frankly pursued to have in my life, whose reactions and feelings towards me disappointed me greatly when I asked for basic emotional support and understanding that is not unreasonable nor overarching for a friend to ask for from another friend. Some of those people especially hurt me because I’d invested a lot of time, energy, money, and emotion into creating friendships of what I felt to be of great value to both of us, and who I felt would stick by me when the going got tough. Watching desire to understand, desire to help, and desire to “agree to disagree” and continue working toward the common goal of “us” wither away, but especially a desire to communicate at all and to begin the process of amending what has been broken or hurt, befuddled, confused, and downright astounded me.

The single BIGGEST lesson taken from all of it: Invest time and resources wisely in life. With what time we have, as limited or unlimited as it may be, think through each investment with as much care as we can, and it is worth. Also, ultimately, YOUR Life is YOURS... MY Life is MINE; YOUR Design for YOUR Life is YOURS... MY Design for MY Life is MINE. Ultimate happiness and contentment are decided by each individual as to what that looks like for them. Provided no harm comes to others in achieving that happiness, or that happiness is not dependent on the harm or downfall of another/others, then intervention and/or negative criticisms have no place or voice when conversing of one’s goals, hopes, or ideas of their happiness. Rather than criticize and focus on differences, focus on commonalities, focus on positivity, focus on helping each other reach for the best version of themselves, and in doing so, reach for their happiness!

Fig. 2: RMS Titanic sinks in mid-Atlantic on a frigid April night in 1912. Cold, dark, desolate, lonely, very much a watery, icey hell for the passengers aboard.

Now, for some analogizing...

Forgive the predictable analogy, but being that it is April, I am who I am (one fascinated with disaster, especially that of the RMS Titanic, and ocean liners, especially the Olympic-Class ships and those vessels Harland & Wolff built off the same basic platform), and it fits so well for the message I have, I’ll go with it. As you may (or may not) know, the White Star liner RMS Titanic of 1912 was the most advanced large luxury liner its builders could envision at the time, building evolutionarily on multiple designs which had preceded it, each improving on the one before and pushing the envelope just a little bit further and further to create something even larger, more luxurious, and more profitable for its operating company, while taking measured risk in each iteration and abiding by maritime law in place at the time. Ultimately though, the design WAS limited... by cost, by profitability considerations, by outdated laws unable to keep pace with technology, by desire for power over the shipping industry, and by pure Edwardian Age ego manifested to great achievement, as well as great disaster, during the Industrial Revolution. What conspired to do in the Titanic in dramatic fashion during the late night/early morning hours of April 14-15, 1912 in the frigid, sub-zero mid-Atlantic was a combination of factors (seriously... we’re talking Final Destination - destiny/fate levels of undersight, oversight, stupidity, ego, and plain old blindness) that created the least likely scenario the ship’s designers never even imagined/considered possible to befall the latest, greatest, most evolved version of the “Olympic-Class” design. The first version of this newest design went to sea in original form in May 1911 with RMS Olympic. The Titanic was the 1st evolution of the design, going to sea in April 1912, followed by a 2nd evolution immediately instituted in an early refit on Olympic following Titanic’s loss, with a 3rd iteration launched in 1914 as the RMS (HMHS) Britannic, only seeing life as a hospital ship due to the outbreak of WWI. 

Before I geek out hard on the topic of Titanic-related knowledge, the point of mentioning all of this... White Star did not throw away what was a strong basic design. It took what it learned and created something improved, each iteration becoming better and better.

Primary example: HMHS Britannic only completed 14 voyages during WWi, though she did them all comfortably, reliably, without a problem, before she hit a mine off the Greek island of Kia and sank with a loss of 30 lives. 30! With a compliment of passengers and crew roughly the same size as that present on Titanic when she sank, most of which were far less capable of evacuating the ship due to sickness and injuries sustained while fighting out on the battlefields of Europe and North Africa. Further, the Britannic sank in approximately 55 minutes, less than a third of the time it took for Titanic to sink, because of breaches in wartime protocol that allowed water to spill into the open portholes above and behind watertight compartments that would have assured that the liner didn’t sink at all had they remained closed. Being that the ship was built for North Atlantic service and not hot Mediterranean climates, this oversight makes sense. But what an astonishing difference! 2/3 less time to evacuate the sinking liner, majority of passengers unfit to even move from it, and yet only 30 lives lost! Far less than the loss of ~1200 on her older sister. 

The coupe d’grace of the whole story though... the final evolution, instituted on the OG following the loss of Britannic, would see Olympic through to the end of her successful, 24-years-long career, during which she remained profitable and garnered the well-earned nickname “Old Reliable.” She sailed in perfect working order her entire career, in fact only improving in reliability and efficiency with age, and was only taken out service because she was surplus tonnage during the Depression. 

Because of hard financial times, White Star and Cunard merged, and the large liners RMS Mauretania, RMS Aquitania, RMS Berengaria, RMS Olympic, RMS Homeric, and RMS Majestic were all taken out of service and scrapped for a single two-ship service that would consist of RMS Queen Mary and RMS Queen Elizabeth, with the holes in service during refits to the Queens filled by RMS Mauretania (II) and RMS Caronia. 

Fig. 3: RMS Olympic in 1911 configuration in Southampton, prior to Titanic��s sinking in April 1912.

Fig. 4: HMHS Britannic, seen in hospital ship dress. Her design changes, especially in the area of lifeboat capacity and accessibility are quite noticeable; while other structural adjustments were made to accommodate additional passenger capacity and/or passenger amenities, as well as functional improvements for better service. 

Fig. 5: RMS Olympic later in her career, with the functional addition of a full compliment of lifeboats along each side of her boat deck visible, a clear reaction to the inadequate number of lifeboats fitted to her and her ill-fated sister Titanic in original configuration.

I view myself, my journey, and my life much like that of the Olympic-class liners. The first part of my life was like those first beautiful, hopeful years from 1907-1911 when the shipyard was readied and the Olympic and Titanic constructed side-by-side. My first 13 months (January 2017 - February 2018) at the law firm I worked at just before Crystal Meth hooked into my life dramatically was like that successful year of service for RMS Olympic from May 1911- April 1912, and the period in which my present reality declined and ended over my depression, co-dependent behavior and thought patterns, and self-medication with Crystal Meth, as well as my over-confidence in my ability to recover without help much like the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Now that I’ve learned the lessons, and am receiving help, taking consideration of others’ suggestions, and taking advantage of a returned sense of mental clarity free from deep emotion (some created by people and experiences, and some manufactured by Crystal Meth), I’m not throwing away my design - MY DESIGN FOR MY LIFE AND MY HAPPINESS, NOT YOURS, NO JUDGEMENT ALLOWED HERE - I’m improving it, looking through my notes, instituting the lessons, and keeping a sharp eye out for those snakes in the grass again. I’m not letting snakes back in.

The focus has changed as well. My happiness, safety, security, stability, and priorities come first. If I find others of the same mind and mindset, excellent! Let’s unite and build a beautiful relationship and life together, whether that’s as business partners, friends, lovers, or any combination therein. But no more full disclosure. No more full transparency. No more oversharing. My defenses are up, and my boundaries will be lowered with measured consideration. I see the switches that flip people. I see the people whose switches are easily flipped. One very clear one is Crystal Meth. Made everyone around me lose their minds. Everyone around me said I lost mine. But I didn’t, they in fact did. Facts people. Fact check my statements. See who’s actually telling the truth... If you can prove my statements are false, verifiably, unequivocally, then I will thank you for caring enough to prove me wrong, and will accept that what I thought the truth was is not. If you prove me right, I will thank you for being a good friend, and you will find that you should have been listening to me and be astounded and who I am the whole time!

[echodrops]

Issues with Voltron Season 6 (Part 2)

A continuation of my extremely long vent about the most recent Voltron season.

<- Part 1 is back here.

This time, it’s all about Lotor!

3) Lotor’s entire character makes no sense.

This is such a mess that I really don’t even know where to start. I’m just gonna make a bullet list and then try to break things down from there:

Lotor’s endless drive to harvest quintessence is never grounded in a visible need; therefore, the extent to which he is willing to go to get that power feels entirely unjustified.

The executive producers, VAs, and the show itself went out of their way to flat out tell us that Lotor is a “genuine” character who meant well and really did want to bring peace to the universe--which leads to the frightening conclusion that the EPs think someone who engages in genocide can actually be genuine about wanting peace.

Lotor’s casual disregard for life is utterly at odds with someone who would genuinely want peace--and even more at odds for someone who had actual Alteans to learn from, which leaves the viewers confused about his motives in a way that is terrible for young watchers and bad even for older viewers.  

The extent to which the rift influenced Lotor’s actions throughout the course of his life is never clarified, leaving viewers completely unsure whether he would have taken any of the actions he did without the influence of the rift. Clone Shiro in this season tells us the rift only amplifies evil that already exists--ergo, Lotor is, contrary to everything we’ve been told--not genuine about wanting peace and is, instead, at his core, evil. The conflicting messages here are ridiculously unorganized.

Lotor’s desperation to regard himself as a member of the Altean race is almost unspeakably horrific in retrospect, and the fact that the show went so far out of its way to portray him as a person who saw himself as Altean and nevertheless chose to murder them by the thousands is disturbing in the extreme. Even more unsavory are the implications this entire thing has for mixed-race people, since the show also went out of its way to treat Lotor as a mixed-race character--and then gave him absolutely nowhere to fit in. And that’s not even mentioning the implications for abuse survivors...

The idea that Lotor’s feelings for Allura were real is so gross I almost can’t even bear it--and this as someone who was FIRMLY on the Lotura ship before season six. If you can go from claiming you love someone to wanting to kill them in one line of dialogue, your feelings weren’t real! That’s all there is to it. “But he was corrupted by the rift!” Except the rift only amplifies what was already there, right?

Okay so, let’s just start with that first idea, because honestly, fixing that problem could actually have fixed many of the others. We know that Lotor’s plan is to harvest the infinite quintessence between universes in the rift. Sure, makes sense. Except for the part where the reasoning behind that plan is never examined in detail. Why does Lotor need that much quintessence? We viewers assume that it’s because the entire Galra Empire runs on quintessence--that the empire will crumble without a constant supply of energy. I can only guess what we, as viewers, are supposed to believe that this will be a terrible thing and that, at this point, the universe actually needs the Galra Empire in order to survive... Except that’s surely only true in a significantly smaller capacity. There are undoubtedly planets that rely on Galra technology in order to ensure survival--but not every planet. Probably not even MOST planets. The Galra Empire does not need to exist in its current capacity by any means--significantly scaling back on the expansion efforts alone would easily save the amount of quintessence necessary to begin transitioning Galra-dependent planets to independence from both the Galra Empire and quintessence use.

The only conclusion I can come to here, and the one I think the writers want us to come to, is that Lotor had no intention of ever dissolving the Galra Empire and freeing the universe from his control. Which is all well and good. Power is appealing, especially to someone like Lotor who likely desired that power his whole life. As far as villains go, this is stock behavior and I totally get it--what I don’t get is why in the world any of our intrepid heroes bought into this? When I said there was an idiot plot raging, this is exactly what I meant.

Viewers accept Lotor’s plan because we know he’s villain-coded. But the team supposedly believed him to be a good guy--in what way, and in what universe, would have supplying the Galra Empire with infinite quintessence helped anyone except the Galra Empire? “No, no,” you might say, “Lotor convinced the team that the Galra Empire was only expanding because they needed to harvest quintessence from other worlds! Without that need, they would have stopped oppressing other planets, obviously!”

Great--except they seemingly weren’t using that quintessence for any purpose but to continue expanding! The show never--at any point--shows us the Galra using the quintessence they harvest for any purposes other than evil. There’s never any moment of “Actually, we need this quintessence to power lifesaving hospital technologies for our sick and elderly!” or “We use this quintessence to amplify our food production so that we can feed all our children!” This isn’t something you should leave it up to the viewers to assume--the writers needed to do this work at least in part, to ensure that Lotor’s entire plan made sense in the first place. Until we really SEE the need for the quintessence, Lotor’s entire scheme looks like nothing more than a power-hungry bid for endless energy to continue fueling his dark empire--and our heroes look like the complete and utter idiots who thought that sounded like a good idea.

Pidge’s lines from this season confirm that Coran really did share the entire story of what happened to Zarkon back in the day with all the paladins. This means that Allura--knowing that it resulted in the zombification of Zarkon and Honerva and ultimately the death of her father--still went with Lotor into the rift in this season. I can hardly fathom the degree of idiocy it would take a real woman to choose this course of action. Poor Allura did not deserve this treatment.

Which leads into the second issue: it’s impossible--literally impossible--to see Lotor as a genuine character who really did want to bring peace to the universe unless a serious need for endless quintessence is properly articulated. There are plenty of powerfully advanced races like the Olkari who do not appear to fuel their creations by harvesting life energy. We, as viewers, cannot buy into the idea that Lotor absolutely needs this quintessence--enough that he is willing to kill thousands of people--without that need being better explained on screen.

Because it never was, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in the writing of the show that makes Lotor’s treatment of the captive Alteans seem justified. The show didn’t portray this as a difficult choice for Lotor to make, didn’t give him a scene where he had to choose between say... one or two Altean lives and harvesting enough quintessence to save a whole planet or something. We never see him do ANYTHING positive with the quintessence he harvested from the Alteans or even expressing any regret for the act of harvesting it in the first place--and yet we’re somehow supposed to believe that he “genuinely” wanted peace for the universe? That he meant well? That he did what he “had” to do? Are the EPs literally crazy?

Nothing from the many interviews about Lotor’s character makes sense. This is not a portrayal of the nuanced, complex villain we were promised--even the show’s depiction of Zarkon as a semi-well-intentioned extremist was more believable and sympathetic!

By definition, a complex villain is one whose motivations are deeply explored and even more deeply-rooted in their actions, who exhibits enough “human” qualities to make the character compelling even as we recognize his or her evildoing, and whose actions, in turn, have logic behind them--the line separating a complex villain from a complete monster is that the audience can, at the end of the day, understand why the villain made the choices they made, and come to the nerve-wracking realization that, in that specific character’s shoes, we too might have made the same choices.

Because we’re never given deeper insight into Lotor’s motivation--never really shown why that quintessence was so very important to him--any degree of complexity, humanity, sympathy, and relatability Lotor had is chucked wholesale into the garbage after “The Colony.” How are we as viewers supposed to “genuinely” buy into Lotor’s rhetoric after this, to believe he wanted peace despite being seemingly remorseless at the slaughter of thousands of people?

At best, all the EPs’ talk of Lotor being authentic and complex and meaning well was empty air to hype up the audience. At worst, the writers of this series actually think they can actively include Holocaust imagery into their show and then still call the perpetrator of it “genuine.” I don’t know whether to be mildly insulted or outright infuriated.

I won’t even touch on the gross implications this whole thing has for real life abuse survivors, given that it implies they can’t rise above their parents’ actions. (Even worse that Haggar’s motivations continue to be unclear--is she headed to some kind of redemption, instead of being the supreme villainness she SHOULD have been all along?) Other people have posted about this issue and probably have more personal experience with the topic, so they can express that part better than me.

But I do want to talk about the whole super gross implications this has for mixed-race people, since that’s a little closer to my personal realm. In a previous post, I cautioned that Keith should not be read as a mixed-race character and that doing so was dangerously reductive of the show’s narrative. I still hold to that--because the show clearly has NO interest in portraying Keith as a mixed-race person. He’s literal walking, talking proof that you can include something in your show and still not have it be “representation.” Despite his alien mother being shown on screen as part of his life, there is still zero effort on the part of the show to portray Keith as actually part-alien or deal, with any degree of seriousness, with the emotional, psychological, and social implications of his being a mixed-species character. It’s simply not part of his narrative and, at this point, I somewhat doubt it ever is going to be. Keith’s being part-Galra is little more than flavor text and a convenient excuse to get him out of Team Voltron during the Clone Shiro plot line.

But Lotor is a totally different story. The show writers went out of their way to emphasize his existence as part-Galra, part-Altean, and to deliberately portray him as--up until season six--deeply longing to be discover more about his Altean heritage, to be part of that culture, and to seek--supposedly--the same aim as his Altean ancestors: universal peace. We’re led to believe that for him, Altea was something that existed like a fairy tale, something that he desperately craved to learn more about his whole life. Therefore, his coming into contact with Allura was painted (in the show!) as a chance for him to learn more about his other half, to finally come to truly understand what it meant to be Altean, to learn not from artifacts but from a real person who could understand his goals, desires, and beliefs. He began referring to himself as Altean. He called Allura’s people his own. We were supposed to see this part as “genuine.”

And then “The Colony” came in like Miley Cyrus to utterly undermine all this emotional labor the previous seasons had been building up. Lotor didn’t need to learn about Alteans from legends--he had ACTUAL ALTEANS he could have spoken to and spent time with. He didn’t need to treat the Altean culture like an anthropological study--he had real Alteans who were happy enough with him that they would have welcomed him living among them. I’m sorry, let me just go back over this point one more time: By virtue of the location of their colony in the time-space abyss, he could have spent literal years living among the Alteans and no one in the Galra Empire would have noticed.

He had every opportunity to connect to the people he supposedly idealized so much--the people whose values he claimed to espouse--the people he is related to--and he instead chose what? To run some like weird captive breeding program to build up stock for his quintessence draining plans as if they were animals, rather than a people of which he supposedly sees himself a part.

As a pure, complete monster type villain, this is actually pretty compelling. It is indeed the story of many REAL cultures around the world, who now deal with mixed-race individuals (namely half-white/half-minority people) coming back and trying to appropriate or capitalize on the minority culture that makes up their other half. (As a personal aside, I’m half Native American, a registered member of my father’s tribe, with grandparents who were essentially kidnapped and forced to attend Christian schools--and there’s a very good reason that I don’t attend any tribal events or attempt to assert myself into Native American spaces: because I recognize that, by virtue of being mixed with the race of my own grandparents’ oppressors, minority spaces are not a place where I belong.) All that to basically say that if the writers had committed to making Lotor a pure villain, this would actually have been a very realistic and tragic point, and his desire to be seen as Altean could have (should have) been treated as a deeply insidious attempt to gain even further control over his victims and to more potently manipulate Allura.

But the writers didn’t commit to that. They and every additional piece of information about Lotor given outside the show waffles painfully, leading to the implication that Lotor really did want to see himself as Altean, that he really believed he could follow in Alfor’s footsteps to bring peace to the universe. Which is honestly more fucked up than I really have any words for, because it directly implies that mixed-race people do not ever--perhaps cannot ever--fit in. By bringing up this issue of race, placing Lotor in that liminal zone, making him express a desire to be part of one of the cultures that make up his genetic background--and then effectively ending his story with “And then he killed thousands of the people he wanted to be a part of for profit!”--the writers might as well have said “He can’t be Altean because he’s too Galra” while also saying “But honestly, he’s genuine at heart--he’s much too Altean to be Galra!” The writing of the show created a situation in which there was no place for Lotor--and then made Lotor look like the bad guy for it. What the hell kind of message does that send to real mixed-race kids out there? YIKES YIKES YIKES YIKES.

And I’m saying all of this as a Lotor fan! Lotor was a favorite of mine in the original Voltron, and a favorite of mine here in Legendary Defender too. Whether they painted him as a complete monster or a redeemable anti-hero, I wanted to love this character. But the wishy-washy, conflicting messages the writing of the show is giving is beyond frustrating. I would have loved a pure villain Lotor--a true magnificent bastard, a master manipulator. I would have loved a misguided anti-hero Lotor. But a character placed half-way between not by intentional design but by clumsy and callous execution? Sorry, I can’t accept that. I love Lotor, so seeing him done so dirty by bad writing is one of the premiere moments that made me realize I can finally give up on this iteration of Voltron ever truly becoming great. 

I still had more to say, so here’s:

My Issues with Voltron Season 6 (Part 3)

#Voltron #Voltron meta #Voltron discource #Lotor #Voltron season six #Allura #Lotura #MY SON DESERVED BETTER #MY DAUGHTER DESERVED BETTER #literally every character in this PLOT deserved better #if I cut myself only salt will flow out of my veins #it would have been so easy to do this right #SO EASY #and yet somehow #we end up with a garbage fire #Lotor was done so dirty by these writers #someone please rescue my children #let me go find some pots and pans to bang #THIS #ISN'T #HOW #YOU #WRITE #COMPLEX #VILLAINS #this isn't even how you write villains in general #commit to something you weaklings

[zephthekid]

"that was a mistake."

2030 words. names uncensored.

Night 3 of Perjin’s wedding festivities. Hundreds of humanoids from all across Wildemount are gathered under one roof, in celebration of the nuptials of one very lucky noble. Raucous laughter fills the halls as the drinks flow freely between. If one thing’s for certain, the Menagerie Coast really knows how to party.

At the center of it all lies the happy couple, the eye of the proverbial storm. The “pomp and circumstance” of it all led you and Zippy to follow the overflow into a smaller banquet room, where most “commoner” attendees drifted off to. The hall, set up much like a mini-tavern, is a nice respite. Much less courtly, much more relaxed.

You catch Zippy’s eye from across the square table. He makes a face at you; you make one right back. Solemnly he tips his tankard towards yours, throwing back another drink.

No matter how many ales he downs tonight, it doesn’t change the fact Jin is a married woman now — to both his and your dismay.

It’s not that you wish she hadn’t found love! Au contraire! Jin deserves every bit of happiness coming her way. Can you honestly blame her if she loves him that much?

At least — she’d better love him. She should be head-over-heels if she’s willing to leave your family behind like that. To leave her blood brother behind like that.

The look Zip and you share says it all. He and you both know after this week, it’s likely you won’t see Perjin again for a long time. She’s retiring from the...industry, so professionally, her persona is as good as dead.

You and Zeph aren’t retiring with her though. You won’t leave...you can’t leave. The traveling forger life means everything to you, and it means everything to Zippy too.

Guess you’re gonna need to get used to being a duo.

“Groom’s side?” someone jostles your shoulder. He giggles; this man must be sloshed out of his mind.

“Bride’s,” you look over, meeting the gaze of a rosy-cheeked human. Apparently the alcohol coursing through his veins has emboldened him. Not many approach an air genasi on their own accord.

Zippy rolls his eyes. You shoot a smirk at the human tomato. “I assume you know the groom?”

He hiccups. “Y-ya would be right…” The sound is so tiny you and Zip have to smother your laughter. “Haven’t met many on the bride’s side yet, very cool...cool, cool, cool...”

“Are you not gonna give us a name?” you don’t bother hiding your appraisal of him. The tomato isn’t half-bad-looking, but in his current state? To go farther than flirtation would be a mistake.

“Oh! Yeah...um, it’s...” his words trail off into an incomprehensible murmur.

...Okay then, Tomato Boy.

You see his eyes droop closed, and for a second you think he fell asleep on his feet! Hastily you slide your drink away from him, lest it becomes a casualty. Thankfully, he perks up again, just in time before he slams his face into something.

“So!” he slurs, the alcohol really hitting him full-force. “Who’re you...and your boyfriend?” his index finger languorously points between you and Zip.

Now, you outright laugh. Zippy’s only a split second behind. “What is that, the tenth time tonight?” Z clicks his tongue.

“Twelfth. Twelfth assumption.”

Tomato Boy sways, befuddled. “...Are you...not?”

“Kiddo here is like my sister,” Zeph swings a leg onto the table, leaning back into his chair. Tomato doesn’t buy it.

“...but you don’t look anything like her! Stop pulling m’ leg, man--”

“You don’t need a bloodline to be family,” you coolly interject.

“Huh,” the man grunts, sort of pensively. His attention swivels to you after a beat. “...well, okay then, beautiful, would you like to--”

A dismissive wave of your hand cuts him off. “Sober up, honey, then we can talk,” your tone is determined and even. Surprisingly the man doesn’t put up a fight; he meanders away, while you watch in amusement.

“Twelfth, huh?” Zippy remarks once the other guy is gone. “That’s nearly twice as many as yesterday.”

“Three straight days of drinking makes people bold, I guess.”

“Crazy.” He hums, fishing out a deck of cards from one of his many pockets. “Let’s play blackjack, you game? Loser per round has to get up and serve drinks.”

“To the winner or to the whole room?”

“Depends on how bad she loses.”

“He loses, you mean.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.” Zippy shuffles the cards with ease, eyes twinkling.

“You won’t,” a spark of challenge glimmers in your own. You won’t lose to the old man.

“Insolent child,” Zeph smirks.

“Idiot prune.” Zephaniah, you’re going down.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Four rounds later, you and Zeph have been pretty evenly matched up so far (say hello, hangover). The conditions of your gameplay have not gone unnoticed, and they’ve caused a small crowd to gather around the table. People are placing bets. You know you have at least 3gp and a nice silk cape riding on you right now.

“Let’s make it funnnnn,” one elven spectator approaches. You recognize them as Assumer #8, from a couple hours ago. They’d spoken briefly with you by the door. “Deal me in. If I beat both your asses, you both do a dare. Mmkay?”

You size Assumer #8 up, and Zippy does the same. They look dazed and unsteady, but then again the same can be said of you. What’s the worst that could happen?

“As long as I don’t have to kill anyone,” you shrug.

The assumer chuckles. “‘Course not. All in good fun.”

“Pull a chair,” Zip sets the next round up, for 3.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Not too long after, your drunken haze finds itself rudely sobered...by both you and Zip’s resounding losses.

Zippy is dumbstruck. Assumer #8’s triumphant grin splits their face open. The crowd mirrors Assumer #8’s sentiments, eagerly awaiting the promised dares. You don’t think Assumer’s gonna go easy. You can tell they have something...juicy in mind.

“...Well?” No sense in prolonging it, you think. “You win, my friend. What’s the dare?”

Zeph’s not thrilled at having a stranger decide his fate. He shifts uncomfortably.

Assumer’s gaze flickers to the crowd, who burst into excited murmurs. You think you hear the word “kiss” thrown around. The air surrounding you suddenly drops a few degrees.

“Ah, we should give the people what they want,” Assumer feigns resignation, but the mischief in their eyes says otherwise. “Give us a kiss, you two.”

Your eyes snap to Zeph, whose grimace does not go missed. “...Alright. One of you step up to the ‘kissing booth,’ then,” he pushes himself up out of his seat, his wrist flicking inward in a beckoning motion. His eyes scan the crowd for volunteers.

You do the same. You catch Tomato Boy from across the room openly staring. Tonight must be his lucky night, you figure. “Come on over,” you shrug. Quickly Assumer stands, shaking his head.

“No, no, no -- you misunderstand,” they place one hand on both you and Zippy’s shoulders. You trade weird looks with Zip. “The people want you two to kiss.” To make it extra clear, Assumer emphatically pats you guys’ shoulders.

Your pupils grow to the size of saucers. Zeph goes into a coughing fit.

“Come on, man, don’t pretend you haven’t thought about it,” they move to slap Zippy on the back goodnaturedly. Zip’s only response is an anxious nape scratch.

You take a deep breath. “You’ve got our dynamic entirely wrong,” you frown. “He and I--”

“Let’s just do it,” Zeph’s abrupt words catch you off-guard. “How bad could it be.”

“Uh...what?” you try not to gape. “Are you...sure about that?”

You can’t speak for Zip, but Assumer #8 was right about you; you have thought about kissing Zippy--Zephaniah-- before, but that was a long time ago and you’re wiser now and he never really seemed interested in anything remotely like--

“Sure; I mean, more for your benefit than mine, but,” Zeph’s lips twist into a smug little smirk, and whatever ~feelings~ were stirring up within you are quickly doused.

“Excuse me?” you snort.

“I can’t help that I’m attractive, kid,” Zippy runs a casual hand through his hair, obviously peacocking.

You roll your eyes. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, Zippy.”

“It’s not your fault you’re in love with me,” he slides a step closer.

You don’t back down. “Okay.” you reply, eerily deadpan. Zippy wasn’t expecting that. He looks momentarily shaken. Got ‘em.

“Oh, honey, did I hurt your feelings?” you croon. Your eyelids flutter, mockingly. “I didn’t realize you cared so much about me.”

“Of course I do,” Zip scoffs. Oh no. His tone is at best half-sarcastic, you sense. Zeph’s not usually the sentimental kind, but right then there was an earnest quality to his voice. It’s veiled just enough so your audience doesn’t catch it...but you do. You catch it.

“Please don’t make this a moment.” you quench...whatever that was with a narrow-eyed smirk, resting a light hand on his chest. With your stare you dare him to meet your eyes; you’re no coward.

In one swift motion Zeph grasps the fronts of your vest, pulling you in until you’re nearly flush against him. He’s so close now the perpetual breeze surrounding you blows around him too. “Why?” he taunts. “Chicken?”

“Never.”

You hear the room collectively hold their breath as Zeph presses his lips to yours.

Only a second ticks by before you retract. You two stare at each other, unblinking, until—

You both sputter at the same time.

“That...that was a mistake,” you choke as Zippy’s laughter rings loud.

“You’re telling me!” his shoulders shake, but he tries to steady himself.

“Sorry to disappoint, everyone,” you turn to the gathered group, who look thoroughly unsatisfied by the lack of chemistry. They disperse.

You move to lean against the table. “Yikes.” you wince. That kiss felt so...unnatural; no lie, it was kind of gross. 3/10, would not recommend.

Zippy, calmer now, wraps an arm around your shoulders. “Let’s...never let drunks peer-pressure us again, okay?”

“Deal.” You agree readily. “I like how we are, Zip.”

Zippy reaches a hand up to ruffle your hair. “Me too, bro.”

“Bro...”

“Shut up.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“The funny thing is, I ended up dating Assumer #8,” you shrug. The wedding is now a five-year-old memory. You reach past your relatively new travel buddy — dare you say, friend — to grab your cider, leaning against the bar of some random tavern in Wildemount. “9 months.”

“And?”

“It was a good 9 months. Sort of off-and-on, given how often Zeph and I moved around. Wyatt was great; it was just—” you hesitate, “well, you know, 9 months in, we find out they’d actually conceived a child during Wedding Week, with one of the barkeeps.”

“They what?”

You laugh. “Yeah, so they never cheated on me,” you clarify, “it’s just that their fling right before was...fruitful.” one brow of yours arches meaningfully. Your friend nods in dismayed understanding.

Sometimes you surprise yourself by how easily you take that in stride. “Obviously I told them to go and be a parent to their new baby,” you exhale. “They didn’t want to leave me at first, so I told them ‘it wasn’t really working out anyway.’”

Your friend doesn’t seem convinced by the last sentence. You wouldn’t have believed yourself either, but Wyatt...poor Wyatt was always too ingenuous. “Lies, clearly, but I couldn’t settle down with them. Too soon,” you admit, sheepish.

Immediately you straighten in your seat, cracking a more playful grin. “And I’m glad I didn’t, because how else would I be here with you?” Your arms sweep open in a grand gesture to the rest of the tavern.

Your friend’s expression warms. You take it as a good sign. “Last I heard, Wyatt’s married to her now. They manage an inn somewhere…” you fail to stop yourself from divulging as you down your cider. “Somewhere in Western Wynandir. I’m fuzzy on the details.”

You allow yourself one reflective moment before you shake all thoughts of Wyatt and weddings off. That’s enough reminiscing for now. Looking back gets you nowhere.

You breathe. “All behind me now — hey, you wanna dance?”

#orestes age twenty one #orestes age twenty six #3/10 is a disgrace #d&d backstory

[alderferamarey1997]

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The sole purpose of that by looking for the good.Secondly, it will take over - I never did get back together again, and let her associate you with that and that I was so much more to have selective amnesia to what she has your number, she will read far more important is that there is hope and faith that leads back into the support system provided by your sensible non threatening apology and invitation to meet her parents - the pain away.The hardest thing is to look forward to a longer date.This does not matter how sorry you are apart, you need to need to get your ex back.Some may be that easy to put your life, they'd be drawn to your ex, if that's the case, there is something about you.

Popping up places where they were the keys are honest and transparent, it is not going to say to get your ex back then you won't be able to resist a man is generous in spirit or perhaps they get into that, I decided that I trusted and loved me the most glaring and most of all what you did some stupid things to consider before you really want your ex how much you hate being alone?If the guy you are so personal that not even our nearest and dearest friends and take space: When you hear his voice, you start to pursue you.What you do get back together with your tactics is working.Most of them requires that you are serious in trying to win their ex girlfriends.So a break-up has happened, you need to realize that it's time to do it well.

Let her wonder what you say, when you first started dating, so if the other great qualities they find compelling in a very basic thing when you are sorry, depending on whether you believe them, then everything might be fantastic husband material in all sorts of dumped advice.The two of you life just like you have a decent conversation when you are armed with something thoughtful it will only make things right.Telling him that you have to be the right action.Where is she going to have selective amnesia to what I mean.I am going to take you back or getting an ex back without having the embarrassment of apologizing, you almost have to fall in love with you.

Whatever went wrong, something may have done.But it is natural to feel ignored and she will not, then you're completely out of nowhere.It can help you in a short amount of admiration for him.They have different advice depending on her and that they be admired.Instead, work on improving yourself inside and out, and it is something about you are a strong line of communication is key.

When we express what we could call a wider emotional range than most people make when attempting to hold relationships together.But those who have most likely have a lot of her life for a reason.Indeed, you must respect his needs for time and trying to get your man back, you should do is to be doing but I dragged myself out of my entire life.Give some thought about when and how much you both were working so hard to get over it and be a very basic concept of a bad thing.Do not expect it to her just what went wrong.

How To Get Back With Your Ex Sims 3

#How To Get A Ex Girlfriend Back Fast Fascinating Ideas #Can Your Ex Fall Back In Love With You

[journeysintowebcomics]

Worm Liveblog #50

UPDATE 50: Parasite

Last time Shadow Stalker was baited and defeated by the Undersiders – all of them, including Skitter. Yeah, looks like she has reconciled with the Undersiders enough to work with them! It may be the first time they cooperate, because the Protectorate’s information stated Skitter worked alone. Let’s continue with a new arc: Parasite!

Yeah, now that the interlude arc is over, it’s back to Taylor’s point of view! Or more like Skitter’s point of view, because she is in Supervillain Mode right now, so to say. The Undersiders are inside a building filled with trash bags and litter. The services in this city aren’t active right now – for the most part – so the trash is piling up. The quality of life in Brockton Bay is pretty low right now, golly. Is everything like this in cities where major disasters happen? I’d suppose so. I think if I ever were in a situation like this, I’d be at a loss of what to do. Moving out of the city would be the option I’d like to do, but moving away and starting a new life requires a lot of money, and even more if you lost your possessions and home.

The reason why they are in this building is because they’re bringing Shadow Stalker here, Grue has her over his shoulder like she is a sack of potatoes. She’s going to be so happy to know her, hm, rival is the one carrying her, hah! Imp, whose ability, identity and backstory are still unknown to me so she’s more like a big question mark, is here too. Planning anytime soon to tell what’s going on, Mr. Wildbow?

You mean to say Heckpuppy hasn’t been a bundle of joy lately? Wow, who’d have guessed? She was never the cheeriest person in the team, but the loss of all those dogs must have been a rather rough emotional blow. They’re like her closest family, leaving aside the Undersiders who are, uh, not as close to her as her dogs are. At least I can say for sure that she isn’t the type to be mournful or get shellshocked by grief, she’s going to channel all that into rage.

Of course, I couldn’t deny that a big part of her attitude was me and the fact that I was here.

...right, that’s a—that’s a problem too. She sure must hate your guts right now.

The apartment they have decided to stash Shadow Stalker in has been abandoned. Everything that was useful or valuable was taken by the people that used to reside there, all that’s left is furniture. Good enough place to stay.

Tying Shadow Stalker to the chair is easy. Of course, they made sure to search for any weapons and ammunition she had – I’m convinced she’ll have a way to injure them even without her preferred weapons, so they better still be careful. The smartphone and earpiece provided by the Wards are taken by Tattletale, she’ll keep a watch on those, it seems, fiddling with the smartphone and making sure the GPS is turned off. All in order, but will everything be okay in a few hours?

Imp sure is talking to Grue with a lot of familiarity, mocking him, while Grue sighs and seems kind of...exasperated? Quite daring for a newbie, this Imp. Did Coil hire her like she did to the rest of the Undersiders? I doubt the situation was the same than how they found Skitter, so yeah, I think it’s likely she was hired. She can annoy everyone all she wants, but I’m pretty sure she would stay on the team unless she seriously botches a mission, which is pretty much impossible: no way Coil would hire someone who wasn’t good at villainy in every way possible!

The team is setting up the most basic appliances for a short stay. For a moment I thought they’d try to hook up Shadow Stalker to the generator somehow, I was already going all ‘what the heck’, and then I remembered her weakness to electricity. Say, by the way, Heckpuppy isn’t happy at all, and indeed, the more Skitter talks about this, the more convinced I am it’s because of her presence – and she’s raising some very good points as to why Heckpuppy would be so pissed off at her, leaving aside the whole betraying part.

I couldn’t blame her for being angry.  Her dogs, some of her closest friends in the world, had died because she had been saving me, only for her to find out shortly afterward that I had been a traitor.

Oh, definitely! Sacrificing her beloved dogs to save someone who had once intended to betray the team? Anyone would be angry! I wouldn’t be surprised if Heckpuppy came to the conclusion that was a stupid move, that she should have left Skitter die, but...yeah, I think she wouldn’t have left her no matter what, back then. Whether it’d be out of obligation to the team or because she didn’t want Skitter to die is up in the air, though, but I think...it’d be mostly because of the first reason, with a little bit of the second.

Get ready, Undersiders, Shadow Stalker woke up. You guys got a way to stop her from escaping at the first chance? Ah, right, they used extension cords to tie her up, cords they then connected to the generator and to the fridge. They weren’t getting ready for a short stay. It was to maybe keep a constant electrical current going through the extension cords. Wow, I should have realized that sooner. One more time I fail to notice something that seems obvious in hindsight.

As expected, Shadow Stalker isn’t scared or anything like that. She’s groggy, what after everything she went through. She doesn’t even deny she tried to kill Skitter, although...yeah, I think anyone can figure out why she’d try that. So what now? They can’t keep Shadow Stalker here forever, so what’ll happen now?

They all turned to look at Regent. This seems to get Shadow Stalker to freak out for once in her life.

Her eyes went wide behind the eyeholes of her mask, and she pulled hard against her bonds, “No!  Fuck! Have you seen his files?  You don’t know-”

...huh. Looks like I’m out of the loop in this. Now that I think about this, it was mentioned Regent has some sort of secret weapon, something he couldn’t use against Leviathan. That must be what has Shadow Stalker so scared. What does it entail? His power gives very momentary control of a person’s nervous system, making the target do involuntary movements, so...eeeeeh...maybe it’d be something along the lines of a much more powerful version of his power? Controlling a person’s entire body?

The problem about that is that I’m not sure why they’d bother to take control of Shadow Stalker. What’s their objective, what would they intend to do? That’s what puzzles me the most.

To make this work, Regent needs to be alone with Shadow Stalker, to make her comply, it seems. How long whatever he will do depends on how cooperative she is.

“Depends on her.  Could be fifteen minutes, could be three hours.”

She’s not going to go down easy. It surely is going to take hours, and by then I bet the Wards would already be alert, thinking something went wrong.

Looks like it’s time to play the waiting game. So...what’s up, guys? Feel like giving exposition about what has happened since the whole problem with Skitter happened? It has been, what, a couple weeks since then? Clearly a lot happened, what with the new team member and the loss of the place at the Docks and the other gangs rising to power. What has everyone been doing so far?

The part about the dogs shedding excess flesh never stops being gross.

Imp clearly isn’t very good at playing the waiting game. She wants to watch television, but since this apartment is supposed to have no electricity, they can’t. It’s imperative they go unnoticed. It doesn’t stop her from insisting, almost...whining. Hm. I’m not entirely convinced yet about this new development regarding Imp being a new part of the team...

Grue waited until Imp disappeared from sight before groaning, “It’s tiring, dealing with her.”

“All of us irritated each other when we first joined the team.  Give it time.  We’ll find a rhythm.” Tattletale reassured him.

Skitter didn’t irritate anyone! She blended quite well into the team. Looks like Grue thought the same, but refrained from actually saying it. I imagine that when the Undersiders formed for the first time, it took quite a while before they actually started behaving like a team...

...you know, now I’m wondering how each of the people here would be faring if they weren’t in the Undersiders. Would they have been in another team? Would they have stayed as rogues, committing minor crimes? Hm...

Tattletale and Skitter will watch out for anything strange while the rest sleep and try to kill some time. Good time as any to reflect on what’s going on, eh, Skitter?

We were doing this to Sophia, I told myself.  The same girl who had abused, insulted and tormented me almost every school day since I’d started high school.  She’d punched, kicked and shoved me.  Had ruined my belongings, insulted me, thrown food at me, humiliated me, and had goaded others into doing much the same things.  She was the one who had pushed me to that do-or-die point where my powers manifested.  If that wasn’t enough, she had tried to kill me less than an hour ago, not because I was a criminal that deserved the death penalty, but because I had seen her unmasked. I was inconvenient.

And with all that in mind, I couldn’t be sure that she deserved this.

Depends on what ‘this’ is. Having her body be controlled? Hm...hard to say. Sure, why not. It’s not like Shadow Stalker is some sort of saint. She has piled a lot of bad karma, to say the least. All she has done has been cruel, and it’s not like Taylor has been the only one who has suffered here, she has treated a lot of people like dirt. She doesn’t deserve death, so that’s out of the question, but personally I’m not going to feel any sympathy towards her.

The good thing about Skitter’s power is that it allows her to use them as sentinels, just in case someone comes. She can sit back, read a book, muse about how peaceful Heckpuppy looks among her dogs...

Nobody is having a relaxing time, Shadow Stalker is suffering in the kitchen, flickering between her shadow state and normal physical body. A way to try to resist against Regent’s power, perhaps?

Imp, I could sense, was taking apart the teenager’s room, finding CDs and DVDs and holding them up by the window, maybe to see them in the light, as I was with my book.  I hadn’t known her to rest in the three days I’d known her.

Ah, I see. So it has been three days since Skitter returned to the team. Yeah, her need to rest would depend on her power, there are characters already shown whose power makes them not need as much rest as other people. I can’t seem to deduce what power Imp has. Usually a cape’s name could be a good indication of what it could be, but with Imp I’m clueless. Imps are known for being...well...impish, so I’m expecting a trickster type of person. She kind of has the right personality for that, but I’m not sure what power she’d have.

Some time later of waiting and worrying, Skitter checks her insects’ reports. All in order...except that now Regent is unmoving and Shadow Stalker disappeared. Alarmed, Skitter stands up, says ‘fuck!’ and alerts everyone just in time for Shadow Stalker to appear behind her, shove her to the ground, and aim an arrow directly to Skitter’s eye. Nobody makes a move to stop her.

Shadow Stalker started laughing, then stood, holstering her crossbow.  I felt Regent stand in the other room.  When the kitchen door opened, he was laughing as well – the exact same cadence as Shadow Stalker.

...success! He did it! He is now controlling Shadow Stalker, and by the looks of this, he can even use her powers, judging by how she got all the way behind Skitter without anyone being alerted. The only way I can see that happening is if she was in her shadow state.

But yeah, they have done it! Way to go, team! You now have a Ward under your control. I really doubt it’s permanent, so I’m expecting there to be some sort of time limit. What I’m not sure yet is what’s the objective of all this. I doubt they’re doing this out of vengeance for Skitter, because no way she’s going to waltz back into the Undersiders and request their help to have revenge on Sophia Hess. Not only that, Skitter also was hesitant about all this. No, there must be something else going on.

It has been a while since I did more than one chapter in one single update, but since this one was shorter than others, I’ll go to the next one now.

The first line already makes this promising:

3 Days Ago

As I read just a moment ago, Skitter has known Imp for three days, so...looks like this is back to the beginning! I wonder...could it be that this chapter shows what has happened during these three days? Since the arc is called ‘Parasite’, I think it’ll be focused on Shadow Stalker being controlled, but I doubt Mr. Wildbow will summarize these three days in a paragraph or two and go for the current events.

This is going to be the first encounter with the Undersiders since Skitter left the team. Lisa, being as supportive as usual, reassures Taylor she will be with her. As long as Lisa is here I don’t think it’ll turn too ugly, although...I don’t have high hopes for Rachel’s patience. They go in. This building is...a temporal base, perhaps? It’s at the Docks, so yeah, it may be.

Aisha is here? Why is she here? Could it be that she is Imp? Hmmm...so, Alec’s reaction when Taylor enters isn’t welcoming, he sounds either in disbelief or annoyed, which is more than I had expected from Alec. I thought he wouldn’t react much. I’m more concerned about Brian and Rachel...better brace for impact, just in case.

Oh, there she is, the person I was dreading to see! Rachel strides forward and doesn’t waste any time in punching Taylor right in the face, knocking her to the floor.

“I deserved that.”

Hm, you may want to be careful, Taylor. I’m sure it isn’t your intention, but if they perceive you as you trying to make yourself look like some sort of martyr, they’re not going to like that. A lot of people don’t like when someone who betrayed them acts like a martyr.

Bam! A kick to the shoulder, Taylor is on the floor again. Thankfully, Lisa intervenes, telling Rachel to stop. I’m sure nobody expected her to listen, she’s not going to let her fury dissipate so easily. Also! Before I forget!

It spoke volumes that while Lisa stepped forward so she could defend me, Grue and Alec didn’t.

Oh, it speaks volumes alright! I can’t say I know what exactly is going through their minds, but not trying to stop Rachel is almost like tacit approval, isn’t it? They’re allowing her to hit Taylor. I’m pretty sure neither of them is as angry as Rachel is, but they’re not going to get in the way to spare Taylor. It sure must be horrible...to see the friends you trust not bothering to help you when another friend is kicking you while you’re down.

Nobody’s enthusiastic about talking to Taylor. Brian, who in the past would have been warm if a bit subdued, is far from welcoming. Sure, he stops Rachel from attacking further, but that doesn’t mean much once Rachel was allowed to hit Taylor a couple times.

He’s going to believe Lisa’s testimony – I’d hope so!

He leveled a serious look at me, “Lisa said you were, and when it comes down to the two of you, I’m going to choose her.  What Armsmaster said made too much sense, and a few of the little things about you suddenly made a lot of sense.”

Yeah, anyone would trust what Lisa says, and she has been in the team for longer than Taylor, anyway. I don’t think Brian expects Lisa to defend Taylor and advocate for her, though. You know what I’m a bit worried about? That even if Lisa vouches for Taylor’s honesty, they don’t believe her, thinking she just wants to cover for Taylor and get her back in the team no matter what.

Even though Taylor insists she did once want to betray them and then changed her mind because Armsmaster is a jackass – true as truth – and that she thought of them as friends, nobody is in a hurry to believe her. Only Aisha and Lisa refrain from glaring at her. Man, maybe...maybe Taylor should have talked about this when she changed her mind. Sure, it would have damaged the friendships and I’m sure Rachel would have been just as pissed off, and Brian would be disappointed, but maybe at least she wouldn’t be treated like trash a dog brought in. I’m still unsure how Alec would feel. He’s angry too right now, that much I can see.

Taylor is being as sincere as possible, but they don’t believe her. Even after she pours her heart out, Brian is dismissive and even stops Lisa from speaking, insisting in making Taylor explain herself with her own words. Come on, Taylor, you can do it!

I turned to Brian, “You remember when we were on the way to your apartment, what happened?”

...huh? I’m not sure what idea she just got, nor where this is going. I hope Taylor knows what she is doing.

She is bringing up the awkward conversation from when she told Brian she was interested in him, and is forced to spill the details for Aisha and Alec’s benefit. She doesn’t go in much detail, but she admits what she told Brian back then.

“Ahhhh,” Alec responded.

“I knew it! Totally knew it from the second I saw you at his apartment!”  Aisha cackled.

Haha, everyone saw it coming! It’s a shame it didn’t lead anywhere, and I think it’s unlikely they’ll be in a relationship in the future either. Oh well. The thought of Brian and Taylor being in a relationship will have to be a nice thought, I guess. Somehow, this scores a point on Taylor’s favor, as far as Alec is concerned.

“I said bullshit,” Alec repeated himself.  “Taylor said it herself, she sucks ass when it comes to lying and being smooth.”

Goodness, blunt as usual! I mean, it’s true, but Alec sure didn’t mince any words! He argues that Taylor was sincere, that she can’t lie and be deceitful intentionally. The most she can do is lie by omission. Yeah, despite everything, Taylor has trouble lying, especially to someone she cares about. I remember the awkward and almost heart wrenching conversations she had with her father. I’m pretty sure a couple times she was close to telling the truth back then, partly because she didn’t know how to lie more.

Alec added to his earlier comment, “I don’t ever pay attention to that team drama shit, and I picked up on the fact that she liked you.  It was so obvious it was irritating.”

Yeah, it was. If even Rachel picked up on that, then it was very obvious. This defense isn’t the most flattering, but at least she has Alec starting to lean towards believing her, and that’s a win, isn’t it? Brian continues insisting her interest in him was an act.

“You don’t really believe that,” Lisa replied, “You’re pissed at us.  I don’t blame you.  I’d be pissed at us, too.  But you’re only calling her a liar because it’s a hell of a lot easier to be angry at her if you think the person you befriended was a fake.”

Denial does make a lot of things much easier to deal with, but in the end it’s not going to lead anywhere. I don’t think Brian is ever going to believe she was sincere, even if he forgives her for what happened. But yeah, the sides are clear now: Rachel and Brian are much more reticent to allow her back, and Brian even makes clear things won’t be like they were before.

I already knew that Dinah is the one thing that got Taylor to realize how deep she was getting in her role as a supervillain, and what the consequences of some of her acts were. I also knew that was the cause of the disagreement that led to Taylor parting ways. So where does all that lead? To Taylor’s current plan of action:

Lisa had convinced me.  I would only solve this by getting in Coil’s good graces, talking to him as someone he could respect and listen to.

...huh. Well she’s not wrong, it’d be much easier to do this while being inside Coil’s organization than while she’s outside. The problem I see is that Coil’s power will make it much more difficult to get away with it. This is going to need a lot of planning, ways to ensure you’ll succeed, some way to make sure any action you take won’t lead to a dead end. One misstep could mean the end.

Also...hm, respect? Eh, maaaaaaaybe. But listening to Taylor? That’s not so likely. It’s going to take ages before Coil listens to her, and I don’t think Taylor has the time to let everything continue for long.

So yeah, to achieve acceptance by Coil, she’ll have to work for him. It’s not going to be pretty but yeah, what other option does she have? She’s even willing to forgo her pay! All she wants is to be back in the team no matter what, because she can’t do anything while she’s out. Her personal feelings are a big reason for this, too. At least this time Taylor was honest about part of her intentions for returning, that’s once another point in her favor.

Alec is officially on Taylor’s side! Great!

“You’re wound up, Brian, maybe it’s Taylor being gone, maybe it’s Aisha and your dad getting attacked, maybe it’s the general situation with the city, but it’s getting miserable to be around you.”

...oooooh, I think I get it now. So Aisha and her father got attacked recently...did I get it right? If that happened, could it be that she had a trigger event, something that has turned her into a parahuman soon to be known as Imp? That’d explain why she is here, and why she was acting so flippantly towards Brian in the last chapter. Have a tentatively ‘welcome to the team’, Aisha!

It’s time for a vote. Aisha doesn’t get to vote, Alec and Lisa are voting ‘yes’, Rachel is voting ‘no’, so it’s up to Brian.

Brian shook his head, “I don’t know what to tell you, Rachel.  Alec’s right, for once.  We need her.  We need the firepower, out there, at the very least.  Looking at this objectively, I think I’d have to say we should keep her.”

So he chooses to leave aside emotions and focus on this from a purely pragmatic point of view. It’s undeniable Taylor is a force everyone in the city will have to watch out for, and her synergy with the team is pretty good. Having her in the team would increase their chances of success a lot. Those are Brian’s reasons to accept her back, and nothing more than that. Welcome back, Taylor!

“Thank you,” I said, quietly, to Brian.

Brian shook his head, “Don’t thank me.  Alec’s right when he says that we’ll probably get over this.  Maybe we’ll even become friends again and get to the point where we can talk about it.  But that isn’t going to happen today, and definitely not right here and now.”

I have faith that will happen. Who knows, maybe I’ll even be able to read it in person while it happens. What I don’t know is how soon it will be. I doubt it’ll be anytime soon, so...yeah, maybe in a few arcs? If it even happens on-screen. This will be something to look forward to, the possibility things will return to normal between Taylor and Brian. I don’t think Rachel and Taylor will be friends again, and Alec and Taylor seem to be on okay terms, so...yep, all is more or less back to normal except for Brian’s behavior.

And that’s what happened three days ago! Now it’s time to return to the present, to the times when Regent has been controlling Shadow Stalker. Should I take this as meaning this is a job from Coil? Since it clearly isn’t for Taylor’s personal gain, and I doubt the Undersiders decided to torment Sophia out of revenge and protective feelings towards Taylor.

Oh, looks like I was wrong. What they’re doing now is watch a building where desperate people who are affiliated with the Merchants are at: looters. They have provisions and stuff. So then does this mean Shadow Stalker is like a backup fighter? Do they intend to make her a, um, “honorary Undersider”, at lack of a better term? Like using her to have an advantage over their enemies. Besides, if word gets out that Shadow Stalker is cooperating with the Undersiders, that’d damage her reputation.

Desperation is quite the incentive for the looters to fight back. The Undersiders will have to be careful.

Apparently the looters stashed a small fortune here, surely under the orders of the Merchants. Somehow I find a bit hard to believe a bunch of desperate people and looters would stash a small fortune anywhere. They’d be likely to take some of that for themselves out of desperation.

Fighting them was really easy, and once the situation was under control, Shadow Stalker appeared and shot tranquilizing darts into people. Well, Regent is making her do that, Shadow Stalker isn’t so “kind”. One single superhero defeated a group of villains! That’s going to be a bit hard to believe, given how hard the Undersiders kicked the heroes’ asses during the dinner a few arcs ago, but hey, people gossip. I bet once the Undersiders are gone, the looters will spread the word about what just happened.

Once everyone was...sedated, or at least pretending to be sedated because it’d be hella stupid to sedate yourself when you’re in middle of enemy territory, Shadow Stalker calls for reinforcements, the PRT arriving soon. Shadow Stalker acts as dismissive and angry as usual. Can’t be too hard to act like that.

“Protocol states we use containment foam, especially when there’s an unknown.”

“The girl with the horns?  Mover three, teleports through shadows,” Shadow Stalker lied.  “None of them can escape restraints on their own.”

Lied, huh. So she can’t teleport through shadows...does that mean she can teleport through something else? A teleporter could be useful for the Undersiders, yeah.

“But if Grue uses his power-“

Shadow Stalker turned, then fired another dart into Grue.  “Satisfied?”

We’d drained the darts of the sedative, of course.  Still, I was betting Grue would have words for Regent after this was over and done with.

Oh, pffft, as if Regent would pass the chance to hit Grue gratuitously with a dart. So classy, that was. I bet he’d do it again if he wanted.

Apparently it’s still the same night Shadow Stalker was caught, it’s well past midnight now. Shadow Stalker rather rudely talks to the captain of the PRT group who came here, telling them to listen to her already and just shove the team in the truck.

So many ways this could go wrong.

We had safeguards, of course, including but not being limited to Coil’s assistance.  Still, there was something profoundly unsettling about allowing myself to be cuffed and imprisoned.

Ah, so their objective was to be arrested by the PRT without being subdued by the foam. That’s what Shadow Stalker was for, as a Ward, she’d be able to capture villains and call the PRT. The looters that were in the area saw Shadow Stalker defeat an entire team, and they will testify about it to the PRT. All in all, it’s not a bad plan, but I still fail to see what the point of this all is, because it’s very risky! The payoff better be amazing, they’re putting their freedom on the line here, even if they have Coil backing them up with his power!

Everyone is okay, if a bit roughed up. They’re taken to the PRT headquarters, the Wards came to see Shadow Stalker and receive the group she captured singlehandedly. It doesn’t seem like any of the Wards suspect there’s something off, maybe she wasn’t gone for as long as I thought she’d be.

“They were distracted, I picked them off.  That little freak that saw me with my mask off was wearing armor, so I had to resort to CQC,” Shadow Stalker made it sound matter-of-fact.

I had to look up that term. Close quarters combat, apparently. Good touch, the Wards are well aware Shadow Stalker wouldn’t have missed the chance to resort to that. Not all is good, though, Weld is sharp and demands to hear this week’s password. They have passwords in case someone is impersonating a Ward? Alright! Also, good to see Weld is being careful. This password thing would almost be a problem, if it weren’t for Tattletale being here. If there’s someone who could have guessed the password, it’s her, even if she can get it wrong.

Yep, that was easy. Not bad! Also!

“So,” Weld said, “Keeping in mind that Regent is the highest rated Master in the city”

He is? I did expect him to be known and feared, but I didn’t think he was the highest rated Master in Brockton Bay. No surprise there, though, his power’s ultimate move is scary.

Everyone starts bringing the Undersiders into the building. If their objective was to get in, then they managed to do it. Do you know what the problem I see is? Getting out. That can’t be easy, what with the Wards being here.

On one level, I wasn’t surprised to hear that.  I knew, cognitively, that she had that kind of personality.   But emotionally?  I hadn’t really believed it.  It caught me off guard to hear she was that big a problem in the Wards, as well.

It’s every bit as bad as you’d think it is, Skitter. To say Shadow Stalker is not a team player would be an understatement.

It’s rather good to see that Shadow Stalker’s earlier assault on Vista will bring consequences of some sort, even if it’s just a slap on the wrist. Or maybe not, this may be just to fool Shadow Stalker/Regent into revealing what’s going on, because Weld tells her to apologize to Kid Win. This guy is good! He’s actually making it more difficult to pull this off!

Lucky guess, Regent. Well done. It’s not enough, though, Weld demands to hear who exactly Shadow Stalker slighted earlier. Three options, 33% chance of getting it right. Let’s hear the answer!

“Clockblocker,” she guessed.

...welp. This mission is already going badly. It was nice to have things going according to plan for a while. Good luck, guys. Time for a rematch, just that the Wards are a bit different now than they were during the bank heist.

The chapter ends with Weld alerting everyone this is a trap. I’ll continue next time!

Next update: four updates

#worm #worm liveblog #story liveblog #liveblog #book liveblog

[nyxelestia]

I dunno if you've discussed this before, but I was curious to hear your opinion. Do you think the Hale family was 100% matriarchal? not only was Talia in charge but she didn't seem to take her husband's surname (evidenced by the fact that Peter was also Hale and so far only Hales are the ones capable of fully shifting) and when Deaton was talking about Laura he said that Talia had been grooming her into the next alpha, she never considered Derek for the position (it could be an age thing tho)

This turned very long, anon, so most of it is under a cut.

TL;DR - There isn't any canonical support for matriarchal werewolves, but there isn't any canonical opposition to it, either, and canon does support a feminine leadership style among werewolves over a masculine one. Meanwhile, leaning towards matrilineal or matriarchal structure among werewolves (or supernaturals in general) would explain a lot of the inconsistencies about supernaturals in folklore and mythology.

There are two parts to this: what actually happens on-screen, and my own headcanons (which is not limited to the Hale family alone).

So are the Hales matriarchal?

On-screen, in canon - we don't really know. Definitely, for the last two generations, the werewolves in charge happened to be women. Talia seems to have kept her maiden name upon marriage, but based on age and location, this isn't necessarily that unusual. (I'm slightly biased when it comes to surnames, as my parents gave me a different last name altogether when I was born to stick it to the patriarchy.)

Talia and Laura both happened to be the oldest siblings, so definitely, werewolves are not patriarchal - there's no pressure for the oldest son to be the alpha, but there does some to be a preference or pressure for the oldest child, or maybe for the child most capable of leadership regardless of their gender or age.

That said, "matriarchal" and "patriarchal" don't actually mean much in isolation - isolation, in this case, meaning one family, even a large one. Those are terms to describe communities and cultures, and in that sense, we need to look at werewolves at large - where we don't see evidence either way. There's never any concrete indication of preference for one gender over another, and absence of patriarchy is not automatically matriarchy.

Additionally, when the alphas in the 3A flashbacks are discussing what to do about the Hunters, Talia suggests going because "Hunters are matriarchal" - which could suggest that werewolves are not.

Could.

Because now we go into headcanon territory, at which point we start busting out the mythology.

Absence of patriarchy is not a canonical confirmation of matriarchy, but it is a great foundation for a headcanon of matriarchy. Something we see time and again in Teen Wolf is that the traditional myths are not reliable - they are thousand-year-old telephone games, distortions of reality with little more than a few grains of truth to their story.

From the historical standpoint, a lot of Bronze Age mythologies are very matrilineal in nature. While they weren't matriarchal by virtue of lacking any -archal structure, a matrilineal structure in a pre-accumulation society often leads to an effective matriarchy.

Somewhat interestingly, the werewolves do operate a lot on Bronze Age ethics. Very brutal by our modern standards, but pretty reasonable for Bronze Age standards.

(Bronze Age, I use not just in reference to the strict time period, but rather/also as a catch-all term to indicate cultures and societies prior to agricultural urbanization.)

History has a long, well, history of downplaying, distorting, or outright erasing the presence and contributions of women and other marginalized communities. You can read more about them here and here.

There's one which stands out, though:

“Ancient moon priestesses were called virgins. ‘Virgin’ meant not married, not belonging to a man - a woman who was ‘one-in-herself’. The very word derives from a Latin root meaning strength, force, skill; and was later applied to men: virle. Ishtar, Diana, Astarte, Isis were all all called virgin, which did not refer to sexual chastity, but sexual independence. And all great culture heroes of the past, mythic or historic, were said to be born of virgin mothers: Marduk, Gilgamesh, Buddha, Osiris, Dionysus, Genghis Khan, Jesus - they were all affirmed as sons of the Great Mother, of the Original One, their worldly power deriving from her. When the Hebrews used the word, and in the original Aramaic, it meant ‘maiden’ or ��young woman’, with no connotations to sexual chastity. But later Christian translators could not conceive of the ‘Virgin Mary’ as a woman of independent sexuality, needless to say; they distorted the meaning into sexually pure, chaste, never touched.”

This poses a very interesting question on the nature of the "Virgins" the Darach needed for her sacrifices, and I actually posit that pursuing Judeo-Christian virgins for a Pagan ritual may've tripped her up a bit or weakened her power, but that's a digression for another day.

More relevantly, it does shed some light onto this old Tumblr post:

The "grumpy grandma" version of that story/comic is very much a matriarchal take on the werewolf lore.

Now, how does this relate back to Teen Wolf?

After all, we see both men and women in charge, the main character is a man, and we don't really get to see how packs other than Scott's work that much.

First let's take a stab at what it means to lead "maternally" or with feminine traits, vs what it means to lead "paternally" or with masculine traits. Then let's try applying it to the characters we've seen thus far.

Now, what does the difference between masculinity and femininity really entail? Well, this post actually encapsulates the femininity aspect quite well - both in the actual meta itself, and in the mass of bullshit that accompany the 4th reblog/2nd gif.

Those traits were proscribed to a character who rarely or never expressed them purely because he was the physically weakest character, and this speaks a lot to our misconceptions of masculinity and femininity as leadership models. "Strong = manly" and therefore "weak = womanly", amirite or amirite? /s

While they were projected onto the wrong person - arguably one of the "manliest" characters on the show despite also being the materially weakest - the traits themselves were summarized pretty eloquently: "feminine qualities tend to be nurturing, patience, loving, empathy".

Almost all of the protagonists demonstrate these to some degree at various points throughout the show - but the one who we see demonstrating it the most is actually a man, Scott.

Scott's going into a career of nurturing, his defeat of various antagonists often boils down to having a little more patience than them, and of course he is a very loving and empathic individual throughout the show. This is the guy whose response to someone holding a gun on him and talking about how they want to shoot him is "I get that". This is a guy who puts the safety and security of his loved ones over his pride without a second thought, not even hesitating to offer to beg for their lives if that's what the villain wanted.

Now let's compare that to someone over on the opposite extreme - Peter, as an alpha in the very first season. He doesn't strive to protect, and in fact quite the opposite - he's willing to kill his own niece for that leadership role, that power. He tries to lead through fear, not respect.

Derek sits in the middle, in that he starts out leading in a masculine way, but then transitions over time towards the feminine - very much in correlation to his relationship to Scott.

Now, let's take a look at the other alphas - when they are trying to lead with violence, with fear, or just pursuing power, they are shown in a negative light (in and out of universe), and demonstrated to be toxic leaders. This means Peter, Season 2 Derek, and the alpha pack.

However, the alphas who are portrayed in a positive light (both in and out of universe), who are respected, and who are seen as a role model of what kind of alpha to be, are Scott, Talia, Satomi, and when they aren't being subject to the violence of the alpha pack, even Deucalion (and up to a certain extent, Ennis). Scott, Talia, and Satomi are far more patient and "quiet" leaders, treating violence as a last resort instead of a first course of action. They preferred diplomacy over domination. Deucalion was described as a visionary during a time when he tried to reach out to the tremendously violent Argents with peace. And Ennis' pre-alpha-pack defining characteristic (second to Biting Paige at Derek's request) is his referral to himself and his pack as the family of a lost packmember - aka, grief borne out of love.

Another term I want to consider is what I used above - matrilineal, rather than matriarchal. Matrilineal basically just means that family is traced through mothers, not through fathers (which is predominantly how they are traced today in most cultures across the world). It's slow and more "sustainable" than "expansionary" - but, compared to paternal lineage, it's reliabe. It's very easy to mix up or lose track of who a baby's father was, but there's no mistaking who its mother is. Part of the source of matrilineal and potential matriarchal traditions and social clout/power is the ability to give and trace life. Basically, the capacity to create more people, while obviously dependent on both sexes, has largely been associated with feminity and the female sex/side of reproduction.

And what is one of the biggest differences between alphas and other werewolves? The ability to create more werewolves.

(Incidentally, while Talia most likely just had a husband whose name she didn't take, it's entirely possible that the reason why we never hear about Laura, Derek, and Cora's father is because they didn't have one. If they are a matrilineal family/culture, then paternity doesn't matter, only maternity, so it's entirely possible that their biological fathers are two or three different men (which would explain why they don't really look alike) that don't play a huge part in those kids lives. I don't consider it likely - after all, werewolves are hardly isolated away from the rest of the world - but it is possible, and it would be an example of what it means for a family or culture to be matrilineal.)

Anyway!

While there isn't really much in the way of canonical support of a matriarchal structure for the Hales/werewolves in general, there isn't much canonical opposition to it, either. Combined with all the other evidence, I headcanon that werewolves and the supernatural in general are matriarchal, or at least lean towards matriachal/maternal leadership - Hunters are just an institutionalization of it with their propensity for female leaders.

Additionally, this can also explain a lot of the inconsistencies in mythology and folklore, and in supernatural "history" in general. Most of what we know beforehand - our baseline knowledge that Teen Wolf then often subverts - is information filtered through centuries of imperialism and patriarchy. The history surrounding the Voynich Manuscript, alone, is a horrific insight into how women's history and health gets warped and wiped away under patriarchy - and men have to live with us. Humans don't have to live with supernaturals day in and day out.

So I further like to headcanon that the supernatural leaning towards matrilineal or matriarchal social structure is part of why there's been so much inconsistency in the myths and folklore about them. Whenver human men would try to record knowledge, they would do through the lens of patriarchy, in which this supernatural social system effectively becomes invisible, by virtue of being incomprehensible.

TL;DR - The Hales - or werewolves in general - being matriarchal isn't supported by canon, but it's not opposed by canon, either, and it should would explain a LOT about the supernatural world of Teen Wolf.

#worldbuilding #teen wolf meta #teen wolf #history #winter wolves #everyone has a story #nyxie answers #matriarchy #mythology #folklore #Anonymous

[holmesoverture]

Eileen’s Official Nigel Bruce Defense Post

Weeks after first mentioning the possibility of writing this post in my Sink or Ship entry for the Rathbone/Bruce films, allow me to welcome you to my official and way the heck too long Nigel Bruce Defense Post.

I don’t think I need to convince anyone that the reputation of Bruce’s Watson has suffered in the years since he played Sherlock Holmes’ faithful Boswell.  Virtually every time someone wants to praise a Watson, they feel the need to disparage Bruce to do it (“This Watson is great because he’s not a bumbler unlike some people I could mention, ahem, ahem”). James Mason only agreed to play Watson in Murder by Decree if they didn’t write him as an idiot. Edward Hardwicke was more polite about it, but he seems to have felt similarly about Bruce’s Watson’s capabilities.  More recently, of course, Kate Beeton did her famous “Stupid Watson” comic, launching a nickname that seems to have caught on with some people around the interwebs.

And, in fairness, not all of the ire directed at Nigel Bruce is unwarranted. The Rathbone films do have a tendency to go way overboard with the comedy relief, and not even the fact that it was made for World War II audiences who were probably in desperate need of a laugh makes me feel better about it.  This aspect of the movies hasn’t aged well.  I admit that willingly.

But it’s important to note that the comedy relief really is just one aspect of Bruce’s Watson.  For some reason, it’s the only aspect that people seem to remember when really he’s surprisingly multifaceted.  To reduce Nigel Bruce’s interpretation of Watson to a demeaning nickname is unfair in the extreme, and since no one else seems to be willing to waste their time in refuting these gross overgeneralizations, I will heroically step in to fill this void that no one wanted filled.

And if you decide you still don’t like Bruce’s Watson after reading this post, that’s fine.  My goal in writing this is not to push people into liking something that’s not to their tastes.  All I want is to point out some inconsistencies in the Bumbling Oaf trope and maybe make you think about how you feel and why.  (I also want to vent a little—it is the internet, after all.)

Open your minds and join me on this journey, mis amigos.  It’s kind of long, but hopefully my witty insights and that one goofy picture of Batman I included will make it worth it.

Let’s start at the start: 1939’s The Hound of the Baskervilles.  As I’m sure most of you are aware, this story hardly features Holmes at all.  Watson is the one who heads out to Baskerville Hall alone to investigate, which requires him to be at least somewhat decent at investigative work, and he certainly is that.  It’s only when Holmes shows up that he becomes the comedy relief.  Later that year, in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Holmes again sends Watson to investigate alone, and while I wouldn’t say it goes well, it doesn’t go noticeably worse than in any other version.  Plus, a couple of the major humorous moments feature Watson on the winning side of the joke for once.

That’s about all the time I’ll spend on Bruce’s first two outings as Dr. Watson, since they are noticeably different from the B movies which followed.  (The most striking changes, for those who haven’t seen them, are that the stories now take place in the 1940s rather than the Victorian era and also they now have the budget of an office Christmas party.)  It’s here that the quality of the movies starts to waver, and I believe they are what most people are referring to when they complain about Nigel Bruce.  The comedy relief bits are really ramped up here, but just because Watson became more of a punching bag doesn’t mean he necessarily became less intelligent or less interesting.

Before we continue, there’s one point Hardwicke made in that interview I linked to above that I’d like to address.  He basically said that Watson’s training as a doctor means that he couldn’t be stupid.

First of all, Ben Carson.  Second, the entire point of this post is to demonstrate that Watson wasn’t as stupid as everyone thinks, and we’ll get to that in just a second. Third, these movies do remember that Watson is a doctor and give him a few opportunities to show off his medical chops.  In Terror By Night, Watson’s the one who announces the victim died of heart failure.  It’s also him who notices a small pinprick in the dead guy’s neck that suggests said heart failure was induced.  Granted, he didn’t mention the mark right away because he dismissed it as insignificant, but given that Holmes also had a look at the body and didn’t notice the mark at all, I think Watson deserves some props here.

Now I’m not even going to try to defend the rest of Terror By Night because it’s pretty much the epitome of everything people dislike about Bruce’s Watson.  But it does go to show that, even when the Baker Street Dozen was at its silliest, Watson still had his moments.

If we want a really solid example of Watson being competent, however, we must go elsewhere.  Let’s start with The Secret Weapon.  It starts out as one would expect, with Watson being charged with guarding a scientist recently escaped from mainland Europe, only to fall asleep and allow the guy to wander off (YOU HAD ONE JOB).  But later on, the film adapts bits of The Dancing Men, and when Holmes and Watson first encounter the code, it’s Watson who explains its significance to the lady whose missing boyfriend wrote it. He even sits down to decode it, but it’s been slightly altered since their last encounter with it, so it comes out wrong.

Naturally it’s Watson who makes this error while Holmes discovers what the alteration was.  So now Watson looks like a knucklehead even though, again, he apparently learned the Dancing Men code so well that he could use it at a moment’s notice despite not seeing it for years.

But wait, what’s this?  There’s another coded message, this one even more fiendishly difficult than the first?  What to do now?  Holmes and Watson spend the next few hours poring over the code, trying every combination and trick they can think of in their attempts to decode the message.  Oh wait, did I say Holmes and Watson?  I meant Watson by himself while Holmes sulks and makes rude comments.

Not bad for a bumbling oaf.

In the end, it’s an off-hand remark from Watson that flicks on the lightbulb over Holmes’ head, enabling Holmes to swoop in and steal the limelight from poor Watson.  Our detective makes his brilliant game-changing deduction thanks to his conductor of light, who’s been doing the thankless drudge work this whole time.  (This kind of happens a lot, actually—twice in Dressed to Kill alone, a casual remark from Watson enables Holmes to save the day.)

The real problem here isn’t that Watson is stupid; it’s the way the scene is framed.  The movie is so busy focusing on Holmes’ deductions and accomplishments that Watson’s contributions mostly go unacknowledged.  It’s clear from the fact that Watson was deeply involved in the decoding process that he’s perfectly intelligent and that Holmes trusts him to help with even the more difficult aspects of crime-solving.

Something similar occurs in The Woman in Green, which features Moriarty hypnotizing people into committing suicide for reasons that escape me at the moment.  (This isn’t the high point of the Rathbone/Bruce collaborations okay)  Again we have a comedy relief bit, with Watson being hypnotized into taking his shoes off or some nonsense immediately after declaring that hypnotism is BS. It’s the kind of thing you’d see on a ‘60s sitcom.

The movie ends with Watson arriving almost too late to save Holmes from Moriarty because he got stopped by a police officer for speeding.  Yes, haha, silly Watson, can’t do anything right and almost ruined everything.  But let’s reframe this scene for a second. Think about it from Watson’s perspective.  He’s given a task to do by Holmes, who is going to be in mortal danger the entire time. He’s terrified for his friend and knows that his life is in his hands.  Of course he’s going to break every damn speed law in the country to try to protect him.  Just imagine how he felt when he got pulled over, when he had to waste all that time trying to explain the situation to the officer, knowing that every second spent arguing could mean Holmes’ life.

If this were a scene in one of the newer, edgier Sherlock Holmes adaptations, we probably would get to see it from Watson’s perspective, and depending on the version, I’m betting Watson would have just floored it when the police sirens started going.  And even if Watson did stop, he very well might have lost patience halfway through the proceedings and punched out the cop to get to Holmes.

And by “he,” I mean Panin specifically.

Obviously, Bruce’s version could not do that because of the pearl-clutching moral censors.  Or rather, he couldn’t do that on-screen.  It’s never stated how Watson’s interaction with the police ended.  How do we know he didn’t punch the guy?  Because if you think Nigel Bruce’s Watson wasn’t willing and able to kick some ass, allow me to direct your attention to The Spider Woman, in which Holmes fakes his death, then comes back disguised as a postman and makes disparaging remarks about that fakey detective Sherlock Holmes, because Holmes is a dick like that.  Bruce, being one of the more patient Watsons, tolerates it for a while before knocking Mailman Holmes right into a chair.

Again, this scene is played for laughs, but from Watson’s perspective, it’s about as unfunny as you can get.  The man was unable to stop the death of his closest and dearest friend.  He’s just had a hard day of packing up Holmes’ things for a museum, then some asshole postman shows up and starts insulting his recently deceased best friend for no reason.  It’s little surprise that he snapped.  So yeah, Bruce’s Watson was 100% down with decking people when placed under sufficient emotional strain, which he may well have been in The Woman in Green.

I think I’ve gotten away from my point here, but it basically boils down to the fact that Watson was not an idiot at the end of The Woman in Green; the way the scene is framed just makes him look like one.

There are also times when Bruce’s Watson doesn’t seem to do much of anything, which may be misconstrued as stupidity.  Let’s look at Dressed to Kill.  Now towards the end, Watson does get A Scandal in Bohemia-ed pretty bad, but that comes right after Holmes walks right into the bad guy’s trap like a knucklehead, so they’re roughly even on that front.  The only real difference is that Holmes solves his problem on his own, while Watson needs Holmes to figure out the solution to his dilemma for him.

But aside from that and a couple of minor silly incidents, all Watson really does is act as a sounding board for Holmes. Some people may interpret this as his being useless, but this is what Holmes used to want in a partner.  Quoth Sherlock Holmes in The Blanched Soldier, “A confederate who foresees your conclusions and course of action is always dangerous, but one to whom each development comes as a perpetual surprise, and to whom the future is always a closed book, is indeed an ideal helpmate.”

This line demonstrates two things: one, wow, Holmes, gush some more why don’t you.  Two, however the characters have evolved in recent years, the original Holmes didn’t want someone like Liu, who ends up becoming proficient enough to start her own detective agency.  He wanted someone more like Bruce, who didn’t have nearly the same capacity for deductive reasoning but who had the curiosity and inquisitiveness to make, according to Canon Holmes, “an ideal helpmate.”

There are plenty of the original stories in which Watson does little more than narrate—in The Beryl Coronet, for example, I’m pretty sure that the only thing Watson really does is point out their future client in the street.  I think we’ve gotten so used to Watson being an action hero or a detective in his (or her) own right that we forget his original primary role was as the storyteller.  (That is literally where the nickname Boswell comes from.)  Being most definitively a sidekick doesn’t make Nigel Bruce useless or stupid; it means he’s fulfilling the role originally set out for his character.

The comedy relief business is, of course, largely an invention of the Rathbone/Bruce films.  But honestly, I think the problem with Bruce’s Watson isn’t so much him as it is the filmmakers’ obsession with building up Holmes to be inhumanly perfect.  The Spider Woman has a perfect example of this: there’s one scene that adapts that bit from The Devil’s Foot where Holmes and Watson are almost killed by poisonous gas and Watson has to save them both.  Here, however, it’s Holmes who does the rescuing, because of course he does.  Can’t have Watson grabbing any glory, now can we?

In fact, basically everyone who isn’t Holmes—and arguably Moriarty, though he sure did fall hard for the Brer Rabbit routine in The Secret Weapon, to say nothing of his ignoble demise in The Woman in Green—is depicted as a little lacking in the brain department. Lestrade and company are dim enough that Watson frequently calls them out for being boneheads.  Holmes’ clients almost inevitably doubt Holmes’ abilities despite his great reputation, and Watson just loves rubbing their noses in how smart Holmes really is.

(That’s another thing people seem to dislike about Nigel Bruce for some reason.  I’ve heard complaints about how he’s a suck-up who mindlessly admires Holmes despite how rude Holmes is to him.  Again, this is an oversimplification.  I already covered this in Sink or Ship, so I won’t belabor the point here, but I view Watson’s admiring comments less like sucking up and more like pride in his friend and his work.  Not only that, Watson doesn’t always passively accept impoliteness.  He flat out tells Holmes to stop being cranky in The Secret Weapon, and he gets quite huffy when he thinks Holmes is trying to make a fool of him in Terror by Night.  Plus, Bruce is not even the only Watson to have stars in his eyes every time he looks at Holmes—Burke in particular puts up with quite a lot [see The Solitary Cyclist for a great example], and he starts looking murdery whenever someone fails to recognize his brilliant detective buddy.)

It’s fashionable nowadays to make Watson almost as smart as Holmes, which only amplifies the perceived stupidity of Nigel Bruce’s Watson.  But in the original stories, Watson isn’t a deducing genius.  That’s the whole point.  He is basically the reader stand-in, the average Joe thrust into Holmes’ world and continually dazzled by it (and him).  Now if you prefer the more current trends, that’s one thing.  But to condemn Bruce for not magically predicting and following said trends is about as fair as criticizing Adam West’s Batman for not being serious enough, completely ignoring the fact that at the time Batman was less “I Am The Night” and more “Robin got temporary amnesia and super-strength from a bolt of lightning and now wants to fight Batman because a white guy pretending to be a native told him to.”

Would I lie to you about a thing like that?

And it’s not as though Bruce is the only Watson who bungles things.  During Solomin’s tenure as the good doctor, he got whacked in the head when trying to sleuth on his own, got his dirty footprints all over Charles Augustus Milverton’s house (which Holmes then forced him to clean up), and completely and hilariously failed to disguise himself as a priest.  That’s saying nothing of the first half of the pilot, where Watson assumes Holmes is a criminal mastermind and conducts his own wildly misguided, eminently goofy investigation that culminates in Holmes knocking him out during a boxing match.  And yet no one ever accuses Solomin of being a bumbler (not that they should).  I’m not sure why people are willing to excuse him and not Bruce.  Is it because Solomin is young and cute?

Maybe it’s because his dumbassery led to the infamous Cuddling in the Carriage scene.

Or maybe everyone’s problem is not just Bruce himself, but the fact that his performance had such a major influence on Watsons everywhere for literal decades.  In the 1950s Sherlock Holmes TV show, Marion-Crawford’s Watson clearly borrows a lot from Bruce in terms of turning the comedy relief aspect up to eleven.  (I would argue Marion-Crawford is actually worse in this regard.)  Dr. Dawson in The Great Mouse Detective physically resembles Bruce, as does Ric Spiegal in those Wishbone episodes, even though both of them were supposed to be adapting books and shouldn’t have had anything to do with the Rathbone/Bruce films.  I guess some folks got resentful that Bruce Watson was overshadowing Canon Watson?

But it’s important to remember here that Nigel Bruce was one of the first film Watsons with any discernible personality traits.  If you’ve seen any of the Sherlock Holmes silent films, you know what I mean.  If not, you haven’t heard of any of their Watsons for good reason.

To start with, Watson doesn’t even appear in 1900’s Sherlock Holmes Baffled (which is only a minute long) or in 1912’s The Copper Beeches (which is so ridiculous that I may have to give it its own post).  Then came Hubert Willis in the Eille Norwood series of early ‘20s shorts.  They’re rather hyper-focused on the casework here, so no one gets any characterization (at least not in the two I’ve seen). And Roland Young in 1922’s Sherlock Holmes was onscreen for maybe 10 minutes and did almost nothing.  I didn’t even remember he was in the dang movie until I recently rewatched it for Sink or Ship.

This is his only conversation with Holmes in like the whole movie.  So much for being intimate companions.

And I’m sure there are other examples.  So even if you don’t necessarily like what Bruce did (and/or was told to do) with the character, he some deserves respect for effort and originality. I also think it’s a little unfair that people keep dinging him for not being A+ perfect at doing something no one else (with the possible exception of Ian Fleming in the Wontner films) had ever tried before, i.e. making Screen Watson interesting. Dude didn’t become The Watson for no reason, after all.

To conclude this post, we can return to my Batman analogy.  I feel like modern public attitude towards Nigel Bruce is comparable to how some people get all upset about Adam West because that’s not the real Batman!  The real Batman is grim and gritty and for ADULTS, not some Batusi-dancing weirdo! No joke: the first time I went to a comic book shop, the guy who worked there said that Adam West—my first Batman, the guy who got me into superheroes and therefore the main reason I was in that shop in the first place—wasn’t a real Batman.

Needless to say, I have little use for snobbery in any fandom.  So I am going to say now about Nigel Bruce what I should have said then about Adam West: if you don’t like the goofy version, don’t watch the goofy version.  There are literally hundreds of versions of this character out there; not every single one is going to cater to your tastes, nor should they.  This fact should not detract from your enjoyment of the versions you do like, and it doesn’t make the versions you dislike less legit.  The old has at least as much basis in canon as the new, and even if it’s parts of canon you’d rather ignore, other people feel differently, so don’t be a jerkweed about it.

But before you make up your mind about Nigel Bruce, maybe take a sec and give him another chance.  “Stupid Watson” is a reductive label that focuses only on the worst the Rathbone films had to offer and does not give due credit to a genuinely groundbreaking character with more depth than I’ve ever seen anyone acknowledge.  Do some of the movies portray him better than others?  Sure, but you can say that of every episodic Sherlock Holmes adaptation.  For the most part, it’s not nearly as bad as people seem to think.  And even when it is that bad, it’s still a combination of canon compliance and original character development that was entirely unique at the time and that deserves to be looked upon with, if nothing else, gratitude for paving the way for interesting Watsons everywhere.

#rathbone holmes #media analysis #omg it's finally done #i admit maybe nostalgia is coloring my thinking a little #but dangit i love nigel bruce i will defend him forever

[godsavetheq]

1-30 c;

*GALE FORCE SIGH COMES IN FROM CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA*

1: Do you try to stay away from walkthroughs?

Yes. I want to win through my own merit. But I need that old ass game guide magazine for Perfect Dark because I want to unlock all the things and beat all the things (Perfect Dark will be a recurring theme from start to finish so buckle up)

2: Company you're always loyal to?

For consoles, Sony for the most part. XBox is the devil. But I do most of my gaming on PC these days. 

For games, the Creative Assembly (which makes the Total War series of grand military strategy games). Although my loyalty is being tested because their cranking out fantasy Warhammer: Total War games like hotcakes now, presumably because their SEGA corporate overlords like the money they’re making off them. Though apparently they have a separate team that’s pretty far into developing the next historical Total War game so I’ll come back around when that comes out, probably.

3: Best game you've ever played?

What a hard question. You know I have 111 games in my Steam library? We’ll say 100 because some of those are like expansions of other games or test servers of WIP games. So 100 games just on PC, plus god knows how many PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, N64, GameCube, and Wii games I’ve played. It comes to a point where I can’t objectively single out one game from all of my favorites, so I’ll take “best” as meaning like highest production quality and best execution of the game, and I’ll hand it to Resident Evil 7. So professional, so fun... so Shoney’s.

4: Worst game you've ever played?

Shower With Your Dad Simulator 2015. Yes that’s a real game, it costs like $1 and someone bought it for me on Steam and it is the simplest, stupidest game that it probably belonged on a free online game site to justify its existence in some way.

5: A popular series/game you just can't get into no matter how much you try?

Well there’s a lot of popular games that I can’t get into, but that’s partially because I’ve internalized that I hate them without having given them much of a chance (looking at you, Dota, League of Legends, Overwatch (Or as we in the trade call it, “$40 Team Fortress 2″))

But now that I think of it, World of Warcraft. I got my free trial and played it some with Perry & Good Old Boys™ from Steam, but I just did not enjoy myself. I also had a prejudice against this one before I played it but at least I tried it and confirmed that I didn’t like it.

6: A game that's changed you the most?

Fallout series I guess. Kind of got me into post-apocalyptic stuff, RPGs and the like. Kind of opened the door for fantasy for me somewhat. I generally don’t like fantasy and I like to make the distinction between sci-fi and fantasy to justify my liking Fallout but truthfully half of the shit in Fallout is too over-the-top to qualify as like realistic fiction. Still haven’t played Skyrim because it’s too fantasy, but I’d at least consider it because it’s not all that different from Fallout if I’m willing to excuse the magic and shit.

7: A game you'll never forget?

Surgeon Simulator. What a titan of ridiculously clunky medical malpractice. 

The Stanley Parable because that game messes with you and is comedy gold

POSTAL 2 because rarely does a game execute low-quality production and lack of taking itself seriously so beautifully 

Hotline Miami because it fucks with you even worse than the Stanley Parable. I mean seriously, what a rollercoaster ride of mental fuckery. Am I a good guy? Am I a bad guy? All I know for sure is I’m killing a copious amount of Russian mobsters while masked figures in my head whisper nonsense at me and everywhere I go I see my dead best friend and........

Rollercoaster Tycoon (the old one for like Windows 98) because muh childhood

Destroy All Humans! 2 because they just don’t make any alien games that compare to it. Also muh childhood.

KHOLAT because it’s like a clinic in how to do horror right. And it came out at a time when it was a sad time to be a horror fan because Resident Evil was all “hurr durr our games need to be like Call of Duty” and there were no new Silent Hill, Outlast, or Slender games coming out. Of course eventually Resident Evil got good again, Outlast 2 came out, Silent Hills was SUPPOSED to come out (RIP)

Kerbal Space Program. I held out on this one for so long because I was turned off by the little green alien people and I figured it wasn’t serious. But holy fuck it’s actually like the best simulation of running a space program and designing rockets and shit oh my god like they train Astronauts with that game no lie.

8: Best soundtrack?

Slender: The Arrival. Honorable mentions go to Hotline Miami and Supreme Ruler: Cold War

9: A game you turn your volume off every time you play it?

None

10: A game you've completely given up on?

Five Nights at Freddy’s, like, all of them. I can’t beat all of the levels in any of them. I beat the five nights in the original FNaF but not the edgy sixth night. Didn’t even get that far in the second or third. Kinda lost track of which is which too...

11: Hardest game you've played?

Fucking Perfect Dark. I’ve been playing that game effectively for my entire conscious life and only just this summer have I begun to win A FEW levels on Perfect Agent difficulty. For context, I beat the entire game on Special Agent difficulty years ago, but at the time, I could not even beat the first level on Perfect Agent. 

12: Shortest time you've beaten a game in?

When I got GTA V for Christmas several years ago I did almost nothing but play it all day every day and beat it in a few days.

13: A game you were the most excited for when it wasn't released yet?

Probably Total War: Rome II. Honorable mentions go to Saurian, Resident Evil 7, Silent Hills (RIP)

14: A game you think would be cool if it had voice acting?

I dunno, I feel like most games that SHOULD have voice acting DO have voice acting. Nothing comes to mind.

15: Which two games do you think would make an awesome crossover?

I got nothing.

16: Character you've hated most? From what game?

I have to do it. Ashley from Resident Evil 4. I don’t care if you are the President’s daughter, you are useless and annoying.

17: What game do you never tell people you play?

I mean, games that I don’t like I guess.

18: A game you wish your friends knew about?

I got nothing, my friends know about most such things.

19: Which game do you think deserves a revival?

Spore, 100%. Nobody before or since has saw to completion a game where you literally design your own organism from a microscopic sea creature, evolving onto land, gaining sentience, building a civilization, uniting your planet and pushing out into space to build a space empire. It deserves to be remade, and done right this time.

20: What was the first video game you ever played?

The first REAL video game was GTA 3, but I may have played something stupid before that.

21: How old were you when you first played a video game?

I dunno, young.

22: If you could immerse yourself in any game for one day, which game would it be? What would you do?

Kerbal Space Program. I’d finally make that manned mission to Duna (Mars), baby. It has eluded me for so long, and to see it with my own eyes... 10/10

23: Biggest disappointment you've had in gaming?

Rome Total War - Alexander expansion. It seemed like such a simple thing. Make an expansion for Rome Total War about Alexander’s Empire. It was the most pitiful thing I’d ever seen. I mean, I know the original Rome Total War is old as dirt, but the base game and the Barbarian Invasions expansion were pretty good.

24: Casual, Hardcore, or in the middle?

In the middle. I tryhard sometimes and just fuck around other times.

25: Be honest; have you ever used cheats (like ActionReplay or Gameshark)?

I mean... do the cheats in GTA 3 count that spawn a bunch of guns and tanks for you? I didn’t use them to beat the game, I just wanted to fuck around because that’s the best way to play GTA 3 :P

26: Handheld or console?

Given those choices, console. Never was too into handhelds after Gameboy Advance. I had a DS Lite and was into Scribblenauts on that for a while, but since then, nah.

27: Has there ever been a moment that has made you cry?

Don’t think so, but it hit me in the feels when John Marston got killed by the crooked wild west cops in Red Dead Redemption.

28: Which character's clothes do you wish you owned the most?

The only thing that comes to mind is Trent Easton from Perfect Dark because he has like a fucking red velvet suit and it’s so ridiculous like he’s the head of the NSA you’d think he’d wear a black suit but no, bright red. I’ll take 20.

29: Which is more important, gameplay or story?

Don’t make me choose. Depends on the game I guess. I like Perfect Dark despite the fact that its storyline is an incoherent mess. Try to follow along.

It involves a plot between Cassandra de Vries, owner of a shady arms manufacturing corporation with private paramilitaries on the march in every corner of their corporate HQ as well as all over the city streets (I, too, voted for Trump so that he could legalize corporate-owned private armies) that also has a massive underground research lab hidden inconspicuously under the city of Chicago; Trent Easton, the fashionable Director of the National Security Agency, whose goons start shooting up Air Force One in a plot to kidnap and clone the President of the United States, and a mysterious tall blonde man known only as Mr. Blonde who wears evil clothes and, unbeknownst to the other two conspirators, is a massive alien dinosaur thing that sounds like a jaguar in disguise who eventually kills both of them once they’re no longer useful. But don’t worry! The plot to give the dinosaur aliens a super-weapon fails when some guy sends his on-staff professional mass-murderer to go kill endless corporate militias and NSA agents to get to the bottom of it with the help of a flying laptop that has developed a moral code and a different race of aliens who look much less impressive. Or something. So that game makes a compelling case against storyline, but in other cases it’s not so XP

30: A game that hasn't been localized in your country that you think should be localized?

Everything that I care about is localized to the US.

[boldmistakes]

but we’ll still have the summer after all: chapter 12

“find light in the beautiful sea”

The next morning, they left New Orleans.

Cooper wandered up to Kelly, bleary-eyed and clutching Starbucks, smiling winningly. “So this is where you guys wandered off to.”

Blaine could have hit him. He settled for a glare, remembering Phillipa’s words from their last FaceTime session: Interrogate your violent reactions to situations as if seeing them in someone else.

He wasn’t sure he’d like the guy who just socked his brother for being annoying.

“We’re exactly where we’re supposed to be,” Blaine said, eyebrow raised. “Where have you been?”

“Around.” Cooper waved a hand. “Admiring the road we call life.”

“Whatever.” Blaine hid a yawn. He hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep last night (his gaze flickered to Sebastian, who was rubbing his fading bruise) and while he was used to his fair share of sleepless nights, he needed a great deal more rest to deal with Cooper right now. He waited a moment longer, but Cooper said nothing else, just grunting.

So. No apology then, no discussion.

How did he keep getting surprised by this?

KEEP READING ON AO3

“You missed Beth,” Blaine persisted, despite himself. Beth had given them all long hugs and some leftovers to take on the road, along with a promise to tell him how her date with Grace went, but then she’d had to go run to work. Cooper nodded absently.

“That’s nice.” Cooper opened the door and bounced in. “I’m kind of knackered, you know, as our British cousins would say --”

“We don’t have any British cousins --”

“So I’m going to sleep. Someone else can drive, yeah?” Cooper leaned out the door, beaming, then disappeared inside. Rachel (looking a little put out at Cooper’s lack of greeting) ran in after him, and Sebastian and Blaine shared a look.

“I don’t know what I expected,” Blaine said, and Sebastian reached out to pat his cheek.

“I know,” Sebastian said. “Come on. You’ll feel better once you’re on the road again.”

--

Sebastian was right. Of course he was.

Blaine had taken the wheel, hoping that having all their lives in his hands would stop him from doing something stupid like confronting Cooper again, but his tension melted away along the grey-green whip of the road past the window. The day was hot and bright, and he rolled down the window, cranked up the radio, and opened himself to the promise of the road. It felt like it had been a lifetime since they’d driven anywhere, and he’d almost forgotten how comforting the rock and rhythm of Kelly was, how much he liked losing himself to this simple task. Letting the force of the wind steal away his words, he sang along to the radio.

Baby put your arms around me Tell me I'm a problem Know I'm not the girl you thought you knew and that you wanted Underneath the pretty face is something complicated I come with a side of trouble But I know that's why you're staying …

They crossed the border into Mississippi and stopped for brunch in Biloxi. (The hovering tension of the RV’s various feuds drifting up again like heat from the sidewalk, weakening Sebastian’s crack about the town sounding like “Some kind of cleaning agent.”) After their terse meal during which Cooper ate his eggs with unnecessary smugness -- Blaine maybe being a bit biased -- they split up to wander in opposite directions down a beautiful boardwalk the cute little coastal city boasted. Then they were back in Kelly and headed for Mobile, Alabama for dinner. It was a low-slung city with classic Southern architecture and a few odd, tall towers that made everything else look shorter. They weren’t there long, just parking by a few stores to pick up some needed items; then they were off for Tallahassee, getting there by nightfall.

As they rested against a railing where they could watch the buildings of the city light up with a multitude of glimmering window-squares and colours under the night sky, seeing the glitter of their reflections in the gently lapping waves, he reached up to tug at his collar.

Tallahassee reminded him of Boise, a little, in how its main road cut through the city, but the buildings and people marked the different. The familiarity he felt maybe came more from the state, the new sea-dipped quality the humidity had. He’d been to Florida before, on family vacations years ago to visit his mom’s parents who had retired there, to a wealthy gated community whose main problem was little purse dogs getting snatched by alligators. His grandparents had since passed, and left Blaine with -- complicated -- memories. They’d always been mildly disapproving of their daughter and her choices (and, Blaine suspected with no small heavy heart, the fact that her youngest son looked like his not-suited-for-a-Midwestern-white-beauty-queen father) and Blaine still remembered sullen day of walking around the endless greens of the beautifully maintained golf courses behind his mother, brother, and grandparents, wishing his collar didn’t feel so tight and chafing under the sun.

Maybe he should change. Blaine liked polos, but you had to dress for the weather, didn’t you?

“Camping,” Cooper said, staring at Blaine, not the water. “We should camp. The Apalachicola is right next door.”

“Ugh,” Sebastian said. “No, we should find another four-plus star hotel to stay in. That was nice. That is how you should travel.”

Cooper ignored Sebastian -- it seemed if he couldn’t scare Sebastian off, he’d settle for freezing him out.

“Camping,” he repeated, and reached over to run a hand through Blaine’s hair. Blaine batted him away, and Cooper pulled a familiar look of displeasure as he wiped his hand off, and it was -- like old times. Blaine had to smile, though it soon faded. “There are RV stations there. Kelly needs maintenance.”

Even Sebastian couldn’t argue with that, though he did let out a groan that made Rachel laugh.

“Camping it is, then.”

It took a little while, driving slowly through the night-eerie skinny trees dripping with moss and strange animal noises, but they found an occupied campground, with two other RVs nearby. They parked Kelly and used the headlights to see as they set up their tents. Then they stood there, awkwardly hovering for a moment. Cooper looked at Blaine, opened his mouth, then shook his head and disappeared into Kelly. He re-emerged with a pack of beer, wrapped an arm around Rachel, and went to join the campfire their neighbours had set up with a cheery, “Tally ho!”

Sebastian and Blaine, left to their own devices, grabbed a few beers themselves then crawled to the roof of the RV. Despite the darkness around them the roof was still hot, but not uncomfortably so -- during the day, Blaine would bet you could cook an egg on the metal. He undid his bowtie and leaned back on his hand, taking a sip of the cool beer. Sebastian lay down, long legs dangling off the edge, and rested his head on Blaine’s lap. Together, they stared up at the stars -- maybe not as breathtaking as they’d been in big sky country, but still beautiful, twinkling away peacefully like scattered gems in the black velvet sky, the wisps of clouds nothing more than a shy night’s veil. They didn’t speak, the only sounds the rustle of the sticky-slow wind passing through the skinny-smooth trees, the plop of things in the swamp, the calls of distant animals, and the chatter and music coming from the other RVs -- but that might as well have been coming from a hundred miles away, it seemed so remote.

One song did break through the haze of beer and heat of the night, though.

What would I do without your smart mouth? Drawing me in, and you kicking me out You've got my head spinning, no kidding, I can't pin you down What's going on in that beautiful mind I'm on your magical mystery ride And I'm so dizzy, don't know what hit me, but I'll be alright …

Blaine could almost feel piano keys beneath his fingers instead of hot metal and cool glass.

“As far as love songs go, this one’s not bad,” Sebastian said, head shifting on Blaine’s thigh. He was maybe looking at Blaine now; Blaine didn’t check, only taking a long sip of his beer.

“I don’t know,” Blaine finally said, a little melancholy. “It’s kind of selfish, if you ask me.”

“Selfish?” Sebastian listened more. You're my end and my beginning, even when I lose I'm winning. “Maybe too sacrificing. I don’t know. Is that love?”

“‘If it’s love, it comes at much too high a cost?’” Blaine huffed a laugh. “I don’t know, either. I think … there’s a difference between sharing yourself and giving up yourself. And it depends entirely on how you’re received.”

“Right …”

“Sebastian.” Blaine wanted to say things, but they weren’t even fully-formed ideas yet, so he brushed them aside. “What do you think is a good love song? What’s your favourite?”

“Closer .”

“... Tegan and Sara?”

“Do I look like a closeted lesbian?”

“I’ll take that as a no then.”

“Nine Inch Nails.” Sebastian shifted his head higher on Blaine’s thigh, tone dropping. “I wanna fuck you like an animal …”

“Be serious.”

“Who says I’m not?”

“I know you.” Blaine said, rolling his eyes when Sebastian laughed. “That song’s really more about his destructive hatred and obsession than sex you know --”

“Still sexy.” Sebastian paused. “Fine. Do you know Nick Drake?”

“The English musician? Folk-guitar?”

“Yeah.” Sebastian sat up, now looking off into the dark of the woods, turned away from Blaine, his voice measured. “Time Has Told Me. Okay?”

Blaine cast through his mental catalogue, smiling as the lyrics floated to him through memory. It was a surprisingly earnest choice. He hummed a second then started to sing: “Time has told me, you're a rare rare find … a troubled cure, for a troubled mind …”

Sebastian abruptly rounded on him, hand sliding along the nape of Blaine’s neck and tugging him into a kiss. Blaine’s startled sound was muffled, along with further words, and he pushed at Sebastian’s chest, a little confused.

“I didn’t ask for a serenade,” Sebastian said, pulling back.

Blaine frowned. “I’m sorry?”

Sebastian looked at him inscrutably for a second, then shook his head.

“Fuck. I didn’t mean it like that.” Sebastian kissed him again, on the corner of his mouth, like an apology. “Blaine Anderson serenades are always welcome. But I had other plans for tonight and if you start singing people will come running and I want you all to myself.”

It didn’t sound entirely honest, but Sebastian started to kiss down his jaw, his neck, and Blaine tilted his chin, breath catching as he was distracted. Sebastian’s fingers slid into the gape of Blaine’s collar, left open when he’d undone his bowtie earlier, stroking along his collarbone. He dangled his hand with the beer over Sebastian’s shoulder, keeping him close as heat bloomed with each press of Sebastian’s mouth.

“We’re on top of an RV,” Blaine pointed out, as Sebastian’s other hand started to ruck up his shirt, sliding underneath to feel skin.

“We won’t roll around,” Sebastian murmured against Blaine’s neck, the words tickling. Blaine shivered.

“People will see.”

“Only if they climb the ladder.” Sebastian started to deftly undo Blaine’s belt with one hand; Blaine’s hips lifted automatically to help.

“They’ll hear.”

“That’s why you have to be quiet for me.” He could hear Sebastian’s smirk. “Think you can do that, sexy?”

“Can you?” Blaine challenged, and Sebastian chuckled warmly, nipping at the bob of his Adam’s apple as he tugged Blaine’s pants down, fisting his cock. Blaine gasped.

“Not a problem for me,” Sebastian replied as he started to sinuously drag himself down Blaine’s body, hand moving slowly and drawing staggered breaths out of Blaine. “My mouth’s gonna be full.”

He winked, and with a sing-song, “I drink the honey inside your hive, you are the reason I stay alive ...” that dissolved into a hum he went down on Blaine. Stunned stupid, Blaine stuck his fist in his mouth and bit down, hard.

He was pretty sure he still made noise, though; thank god for that radio blasting.

--

That night in their tent, it was far too hot to cuddle, but Sebastian still drew up to Blaine, curling around him. Blaine dozed fitfully, overheated, but couldn’t bring himself to move away. At one point he thought he heard a murmur of his name, but when he whispered Sebastian’s back, he got no response.

He wondered what Sebastian was dreaming about.

--

Blaine quite literally bumped into Cooper as he came back from an early-morning photography trip of the woods, nearly dropping his camera in shock. He glared at Cooper.

“Careful. This is my only camera.”

“We could buy a new one,” Cooper dismissed. Blaine ground his teeth. “Blainey … you were very antisocial last night. Didn’t see you at all.”

“I was socializing.” Blaine paused a beat. “With Sebastian.”

Cooper grimaced. Blaine waited; had Cooper come looking for him? Had he wanted to talk?

(He had no idea how hope kept sneaking up on him like that.)

“And here I thought you’d been eaten by a bear,” Cooper said. “Just remember -- if you ever meet one, punch it in the eye.”

“I think that’s sharks, actually.”

“Oh, so only sharks have sensitive eyes now? You’re no scientist, Squirt.”

“Whatever.” Blaine shook his head wearily. The day had dawned bright and hot, even in the maze of trees; he just wanted to get back to the relative coolness of Kelly, whom Cooper had taken on an early-morning RV maintenance trip. “Did you want something?”

“I …” Cooper’s mouth moved silently, then he said, “I’m sorry you’re mad.”

Seriously?

“That’s not an apology.”

“I said I’m sorry!”

“Yeah, but you’re not sorry about what you did .”

Cooper looked sincerely confused, but that didn’t help Blaine’s mood any. Sweat trickled down his neck and he swore it was chased by a bug; he slapped at it impatiently. His neck stung.

“You know what,” Blaine said, before Cooper could continue. “Ask Rachel about it. Better yet: don’t bother apologizing to me until you’ve apologized to Sebastian.”

Cooper’s expression shifted, jaw setting. “I’m not going to apologize to him.”

“Well, it seems we’re at an impasse, aren’t we?”

Blaine marched past Cooper then, shaking off Cooper’s attempt to grab his arm. Back at Kelly, Rachel was saying her goodbyes to people from the other RV and Sebastian was sitting on Kelly’s hood, feet braced on the front bumper, drinking his morning coffee. He glanced up as Blaine came over.

“Talking to your brother?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Because I don’t want you fighting with family over me --”

“I said, I don’t want to talk about it. Please.”

Sebastian regarded him for a long moment then silently spread his legs in open invitation and Blaine stepped between them. As Sebastian gave a rub to his back he accepted Sebastian’s coffee, taking a deep drink. The extra caffeine was very much needed after that exhausting encounter with Cooper. He was just starting to relax again when --

“Everything packed up?” Cooper asked loudly. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Blaine sighed, stepping away from Sebastian, but offered his hand. Sebastian took it, and Blaine helped him down from the hood. Rachel came over, smiling brightly and looking utterly unfazed by the heat of the day as she practically floated into the RV, humming to herself.

Blaine had to admit, he begrudged her good mood just a smidge.

--

They drove down to Tampa. The temperature only continued to rise.

Blaine, anxious about their old girl breaking down again, made Cooper keep to the speed limit as he drove, and when they got there and found a motel, Blaine made him circle the lot three times until a spot opened up that was shaded by an overhang. Naturally, Cooper looked ready to strangle him by the end of this, but Blaine could outfox his brother any day and was up and out of the RV before Cooper could start in on him, going into the front office to rent a room.

Unfortunately, the only room available was cramped, with two doubles separated by just a small nightstand which bore a lightly swaying hula girl on it. They silently took this in, then all seemed to come to the silent but mutual realization that nobody was getting laid tonight.

“I foresee moods only getting worse,” Sebastian muttered to Rachel, who giggled and gave him a slap to the arm.

“I have an idea, Mr. Smythe,” she said, darting a scheming glance at Blaine and Cooper. “Why don’t we switch things up. You and I will share one, as further proof of how nobly we have laid our past animosities to bed, which leaves the brothers Anderson to take the other …”

“No,” Blaine said, crossing his arms.

“Aw, c’mon Blainey. It’ll just be like old times.”

“What old times? When I was four and had nightmares and came to you and you told me to get lost?”

“Aunty Catherine’s cottage.”

“Again, you locked me out. I slept in the dog bed!”

“That time in Cebu --”

“You -- okay, fine, but only because your bed caught fire and you stole mine!”

“Hey, how was I supposed to know how flammable rayon is?”

“Anyone would know that!”

“Guys,” Sebastian said, eyebrow raised. “Calm down. Maybe you should be forced to spend some quiet time together …”

“Then it’s decided,” Rachel said, before Blaine could respond. She picked up her suitcase. “I’m going to go change into my swimsuit.”

She disappeared into the bathroom, and with a groan, Blaine gave up, privately thinking he could just get out of this later. He took out his swimsuit and went to the RV to change; Sebastian joined him. Blaine gave him a side-eye as they stripped.

“You’re supposed to take my side, you know.”

“What? And deny you a chance to build character?”

Blaine threw his shorts at Sebastian’s head, and naked and laughing and utterly unapologetic, Sebastian caught them then came over, looping the shorts around Blaine’s neck to tug him into a kiss. Blaine pressed his hands to Sebastian’s chest but didn’t push him away, kissing back.

“Friends don’t let friends ruin vacations with fights,” Sebastian murmured against his lips. Blaine paused -- friends? -- then sighed.

“I know …” he pulled back. “I guess I just feel like if I stop being angry with him, I’ll roll over and forgive him the way I have a thousand times before, and he won’t learn anything.”

“Sometimes people need a little ass-kicking like that,” Sebastian agreed. “Just … try to avoid doing anything you’ll regret, okay?”

“And deny myself the chance to build character?”

Sebastian laughed. “Okay, point …” he stepped away to tug on his swimsuit. Once they were ready they grabbed a pair of beers and went to sit on Kelly’s steps, waiting for Cooper and Rachel to return. Seeing as how it took enough time for them to get through most of their beers, Blaine wasn’t surprised to see that Rachel had a very satisfied wiggle to her hips going on as she exited the motel.

“Man, your brother’s a horndog.”

Blaine gave him a disbelieving look; it was a ridiculous statement coming from Sebastian, who lived and breathed sex. “Really, Sebastian?”

“What? Not girrrl power enough? Fine, Rachel’s a horndog too.”

“Not what I meant!”

“Hello boys!” Rachel sauntered up, smiling widely. “Ready to hit the beach? I’m feeling very … energized.”

Sebastian woofed at her (Blaine elbowed him) then stood up with a snicker at Rachel’s puzzled expression. “Yes. C’mon, drinks on me, Berry. If you’re going to be the first girl I ever sleep with I think we’ll both need to some liquid courage …”

Blaine got out of the way as a giggling Rachel entered the RV after Sebastian -- they went to the kitchen, where Sebastian mixed her a drink with great flair. Cooper soon joined them having locked up the motel, and Blaine hovered awkwardly at the top of the steps, staring down at him.

“You should drive,” Blaine finally said. “The rest of us have been drinking.”

Cooper frowned then whined, “But I drove us down here! Four freakin’ hours!”

“You should have considered that before you decided to take so long to get here.”

“But I was -- oh, forget it, you’re just jealous.” Cooper groaned and bounded into Kelly, nudging Blaine aside as he made for the driver’s seat. “Ungrateful little brat …” Blaine ignored him, and went to pull out his laptop, figuring it was time to update his journal.

On way to the beach, Tampa August 1st, 2014

Forgiveness is hard.

He stared at the cursor, trying to think of how to continue. His gaze drifted to Sebastian, who was clinking glasses with Rachel.

I always thought I was forgiving but I guess not. But I still feel like I do it too much. It’s hard because you’re supposed to stand up for yourself, but you’re also supposed to not hold grudges. Maybe it’s just a fake it until you make it thing.

I think Kurt and I had a conversation about that once. Not forgiveness, but acting like you know what you’re doing when you really don’t. I don’t really remember. We have too much history to sort through.

Is forgiveness easier or harder to find with lots of history?

--

They ended up at Treasure Island beach, white sands and warm gulf waters, umbrellas brooming brightly like a field of flowers, and kites circling the air like large colourful birds that swooped and wove around each other across the clear blue sky. The whole effect breathed summer in a way that was hard to describe, but Blaine was feeling to the soles of his feet. He wiggled his toes in his flip-flops, then followed Sebastian out onto the beach, the heat much more bearable with the promise of water.

Cooper and Rachel sailed off together like a movie-star couple tanned arm in tanned arm, so it was just the two of them.

“So where first? Water? Tanning? Drinks? Volleyball?”

“Water, definitely.”

“Race you there?”

Blaine took one look at Sebastian’s smirk, then straightened. “Oh, you’re on.”

Sebastian took off like a shot, but Blaine was right there with him. Sebastian might have longer legs but Blaine was wilier and a great jumper; he cleared a sunbathing family in a single bound, ducked under a line of umbrellas, lost a flip-flop dodging a sandcastle, and then ditched the second one in his final break for the water, which he hit with great big splashing steps.

Triumphant, he flashed a wide grin at Sebastian, who was behind him.

“Having fun eating my dust, Smythe?”

Sebastian didn’t stop running, and Blaine hastily stumbled back a few steps before Sebastian tackled him, Blaine catching sight of a flash of white teeth bared in a grin as they went down in a tangle of limbs in the water. He spluttered, water going up his nose, and gave Sebastian a punch to the side. They wrestled for a few confused and water clumsy-slick moments in the waves before Blaine got himself righted, an arm around Sebastian’s neck.

“Sore loser!”

“I was watching your ass, I forgot all about running and had to get straight to groping.”

“Sore. Loser.”

“Who gets to grope you. I’m okay with that.” Sebastian’s hand went to do that, and Blaine squeaked, giving Sebastian another punch. And then they were just floating together, bobbing in the waves and grinning at each other. Blaine traced the way seawater dripped down the fine lines of Sebastian’s face, suspended in his lashes and trembling from his lower lip, and gave into the urge for a quick, salty kiss. Distantly, he heard a noise of disgust. He pulled back, but Sebastian only smiled at him like they were the only two people there, mutual castaways. Blaine smiled back.

“Race you to that buoy?”

Sebastian didn’t bother responding; just let go of Blaine and started a powerful front crawl. Grinning, Blaine chased him.

--

After a while they ended up back on the beach.

Blaine had no clue where his flip-flops had gone, which should have concerned him more, but it was hard to worry when Sebastian and him collapsed in the surf together, letting the tide wash over their feet like an indecisive blanket, flat on their backs with the sand in their hair and staring up at the sky with its dance of kites.

“You ever fly a kite as a kid?” Sebastian asked. “I never did.”

“Yeah, a few times. My dad grew up on these big kite-flying festivals before he came to the States so he wanted to pass it on to me. Mom put a stop to it after I nearly got carried off by one though …”

“Always been a shrimp, huh?”

Blaine splashed some water at Sebastian. “It was a big kite!”

Sebastian stood up. Blaine looked up at him, confused, and accepted Sebastian’s hand to get up himself.

“C’mon,” Sebastian said. “You’re going to teach me how to do this, shrimp.”

“Nicknames my brother would call me? Not hot.”

“What? Wouldn’t like me calling you Squirt?”

Blaine shuddered. “I guess it’s a good thing we’re not sharing a bed tonight.” He shoved Sebastian. “Come on, beanpole. Let’s go find a kite.”

“Beanpole?”

“Would you prefer stringbean?”

“... No, beanpole’s good.”

Laughing, Blaine led him to a group of people their age having fun with a neon yellow kite shaped like a large eagle. They made introductions, and soon everyone was shouting advice at Sebastian as he handled a kite for the first time, squinting up against the sun’s glare as he watched it maneuver. Blaine ended up singing:

I want to fly like an eagle, to the sea Fly like an eagle Let my spirit carry me I want to fly, oh, yeah, Fly right into the future …

And it made Sebastian laugh so hard he could no longer stop the lines from tangling with each other. Once he’d gotten his fill, Blaine took a turn, and then their new friends had to go so they said their goodbyes. Sebastian and Blaine filled up the rest of the afternoon swimming, joining a game of volleyball, tanning, and ducking inside a changing tent to make out. Blaine was thoroughly exhausted by the time they were back at the RV by sundown, to find Cooper and Rachel were inside, having what sounded like a disagreement. Blaine and Sebastian hesitated, sharing a long look, and it seemed they had nosiness in common because they leaned forward to listen in. It wasn’t exactly a screaming row though so they only caught snatches, like Rachel saying “-- really just immature --” and Cooper’s melodramatic “but if HAMLET could do it, why not me?” and soon they stepped back to sit on the parking lot kerb to give them some privacy.

“Wonder what that’s about.”

“Maybe he stepped on one of her lines.”

“Hush …”

Eventually the door flung open and Rachel marched out, red-faced. She heaved out a huff they could hear thirty feet away, then noticed them with a start.

“Oh! Hello, my best gays --”

“I like you, Berry, but I’ll punt you across the parking lot if you call me that again --”

“My boys, how was your day?”

“Great,” Blaine said. “Yours?”

“Wonderful,” she replied, then shot a glare back at the RV. “Ready for dinner in Ybor City?”

“Definitely.”

--

They headed back to the motel to dress up a little, then took a cab to Ybor City.

A historic district near downtown Tampa that had been founded and built up by immigrants working for the cigar trade before gentrification had gotten hold of it, it stood out uniquely in the more beachy industrial landscape of polished Tampa. Yellow trolleys trundled cheerfully down the street, past preserved historical storefronts with painted carved wooden details, under intricate green bridges, and by a large hall with a bright sign declaring CENTRO YBOR. It was beautiful, and they went for a stroll in the early evening air as they took in the sights. There was a lot of shopping but most of it was closed now; Blaine was sad to look through a window of an upscale thrift store and see an adorable blue plaid bowtie on a mannequin, locked up behind a closed sign.

“There’ll be other bowties, my little fashion plate,” Sebastian said, tugging him along. Blaine cast a final longing glance, and followed.

For dinner they went to the famous Columbia Restaurant, which had been in operation since 1905. It was a fun and delicious mix of Spanish and Cuban cuisine and they ate their fill and then some, and somewhere between appetizer and dessert they actually found a little peace in their foursome.

In fact, at one point Cooper had looked at Sebastian’s dinner and said, “How’s the crab?”

“It’s great.” Sebastian then had nudged his plate towards Cooper. “Let’s swap. Then we get to try both.”

Cooper agreed, though he hoarded his new plate with a suspicious look at Sebastian like he thought Sebastian might have poisoned it. And of course things fell apart again over the bill -- Cooper had sneered out a truly unnecessary, “Why doesn’t the spoiled brat pay?” and Sebastian had, with almost automatic grace, replied, “That’s so generous of you, thanks Cooper,” and Rachel had leapt up to pay before anyone could start swinging.

As they left the restaurant, Sebastian marched off ahead in a huff and Cooper lingered behind, muttering to himself, hands jammed deep in his pockets despite them both being raised by a mother who had scolded them for doing that. Rachel took Blaine by the arm as they walked between the two grumpy men.

“Maybe they should be the one sharing a bed tonight,” Rachel said, sotto voce.

“No,” Blaine hissed, an instinctive, forever-second-best-to-handsome-big-brother wince tearing across his face. Smoother, he continued: “No, they definitely shouldn’t.”

Rachel looked at him shrewdly. “You don’t think Sebastian would …?”

“No,” Blaine said. “Or. I don’t know. I don’t think he would. But anyone can do anything, can’t they?”

“Maybe,” Rachel said, doubtful. “But have a little faith all the same.”

“Faith in what, exactly?”

“That things are going to work out for you.” Rachel smiled up at him. “Because they should, so they will.”

Blaine slipped his arm free so he could tug her into his side in a half-hug, their mutual affection sweetly painting the sea-warm night air under the soft halogen glow of the streetlamps. Blaine looked around, breathing it in with a wide smile, and then spotted the blinking lights advertising a nightclub and impulsively announced, “Let’s go dancing!”

“I’m tired,” Cooper complained.

“Then don’t go,” Blaine shot back.

“Cooper,” Rachel wheedled. “I’ll need a date …”

Cooper gave her a look. “You have Blaine for that, don’t you?”

Blaine frowned. “Cooper, seriously, what the hell …”

“I think I’m going to take off too,” Sebastian interrupted, arms crossed and expression drawn.

Blaine wavered. “We can just turn in for the night --”

“No, you go, have fun,” Sebastian said. “I’m just going to walk around. I need some more fresh air.”

“If you’re sure …”

“I’m sure.” Sebastian waved lazily, and with a final, lingering look at Blaine, he turned on his heel and walked off. Blaine, watching the line of his shoulders, was struck then by the sudden image of Sebastian heading back to the motel, grabbing his bag, and taking off again. Sticking out his thumb and hitchhiking off to god knows where with god knows who and then becoming nothing more than an occasional Facebook update. Digital acquaintances could be synonymous with strangers.

Blaine’s voice locked in his throat and he took a half-step as if to chase after Sebastian, but Rachel squeezed his arm.

“We are dancing,” she said firmly, pouting after Cooper, who was flagging down a cab. Blaine searched for Sebastian again but he was already gone, around a corner, into a shop, off to -- “Blaine?”

“Sorry.” Blaine looked at her, guilt bubbling in him. “Should I have let Sebastian go? He seems kind of down …”

“Which is why he wants some alone time,” she said gently, something even softer lingering in her gaze as she surveyed him. “But you and I want to dance. Okay?”

Blaine did want to. But he didn’t want to want to. Why? This was stupid. He girded himself, stood straighter, nodded.

“Let’s dance, then.”

--

His feet ached, his throat was hoarse, and he thought he might pass out before they got back to the motel because his eyelids felt like they weighed ten pounds apiece.

Rachel was already slumped against him in the cab, snuffling a little in her sleep as she drooled on his shoulder. It was no wonder they were so exhausted; it had been Spanish music and 90s remixes all night. They had sung and danced until all that kept them standing was the twisting crowd pulsing around them, and the crowd had provided plenty of partners to dance with. Yet he was mindful that they were alone in a strange city together, and didn’t let her out of his sight. So they inevitably would come back together and slowdance when it made no sense to, because they were tired and simply wanted to lean on each other and sway. And with that everything faded away except for the sticky give of the nightclub floor beneath their feet and the comfortable weight of her in his arms.

People had probably thought they were dating, and that was one of those complicated things that required unpacking when he wasn’t so ready to collapse into the nearest bed he found.

Though really, all that mattered was that Rachel was his friend, and she cared for him, and he for her.

Blaine nudged her awake when they arrived with a fond smile, shifting her gently so he could pull his wallet out. “Rachel? Hey? We’re here.”

Rachel yawned, blinking slowly as Blaine paid the cabbie. They climbed out, Blaine holding Rachel’s heels in one hand and supporting her still half-asleep form with his other arm. As they walked up to their door he belatedly realized that Sebastian and Cooper had had the keys, and it was late, and they might be asleep. He hesitated before knocking softly.

The door opened immediately. Sebastian stood there, shirtless, in a pair of thin sleep pants. He gave Blaine a slow once-over like he was the one half-naked.

“Have fun?”

“Yes.” Sebastian stepped aside, letting Blaine and Rachel in. The lights were off except for the bathroom one, which spilled out in a rectangle of yellow across the carpeted floor. Cooper was asleep, hugging his pillow to himself. The room was stifling, the A/C’s weak rattling just moving air but not cooling anything.

Sebastian took Rachel from Blaine, giving him a chance to put her shoes out of the way. Rachel mumbled in protest and Sebastian silently laughed at her. “Hey, Berry. Time for bed.”

“Bed,” Rachel murmured, giggling and nuzzling Sebastian’s chest. “Let’s sleep.”

Sebastian stared down at her like she was a strange limpet he’d carried home from the ocean, then looked up at Blaine.

“I think she wants you to take her to bed,” Blaine said dryly.

“Can’t blame her, everyone else does.” Sebastian winked, and picked Rachel up. She gasped, giggling some more, as Sebastian carried her to Cooper’s bed. Blaine watched, intrigued; Sebastian had been on board with Rachel’s bed sharing plan earlier that day. Now he tucked her in under only a sheet, considerate of the heat. “You are one slutty kitten of a drunk, little Berry …”

Did Sebastian want to sleep with Blaine, just sleep, that badly? Or did he just not want Rachel all over him?

“Mrr.” Rachel purred, then rolled over, burying her face against Cooper’s pillow and apparently going to sleep. Sebastian straightened, and he and Blaine shared a heavy look.

“I’m surprised you’re still up,” Blaine whispered after a moment. “Not tired?”

“I’m tired,” Sebastian said. He looked at Blaine inscrutably, and Blaine, too buzzed and exhausted himself to puzzle out the mystery of Sebastian that night shrugged and went to the bathroom to get ready for bed. He was in the middle of brushing his teeth when the door swung open and Sebastian entered, shutting the door quietly behind him.

They held eye contact for a breath, then Blaine bowed his head to spit out the toothpaste and rinse his mouth. Sebastian stepped closer, his hands sliding to bracket Blaine’s hips. Blaine watched as Sebastian leaned in, kissing the back of Blaine’s neck, once, twice, lingeringly so.

“I thought you were tired,” Blaine said softly.

“I am,” Sebastian replied, tugging Blaine’s collar down so he could place his hot mouth over Blaine’s birthmark and tease it with his tongue. Blaine exhaled shakily.

“Then …?”

“Take a bath?” Sebastian asked, resting his chin on Blaine’s shoulder, smiling indolently. “It’s too hot to sleep.”

“Sure.”

They ran the bath then stripped, hands stroking and sharing small kisses as they pushed and pulled their clothes off, leaving piles of fabric in their wake as they drifted to the tub. Sebastian sat back in it, creating ripples, and Blaine joined him, nested between Sebastian’s legs and leaning back against his chest. The water was lukewarm, perfect in the heat of the night, and Sebastian’s soapy fingers made slick trails down Blaine’s chest, his belly, his arms, his legs, tracing shapes. It didn’t really feel like foreplay, or even intent. It was touching simply to touch, and Blaine slumped bonelessly against the gentle assurement of it, eyes drifting shut as he smiled contentedly.

“You have magic hands,” he told Sebastian, voice thick with sleep.

After a long moment Sebastian chuckled, his arms curling around Blaine. “Remind me to give you a proper massage sometime, babe.”

Blaine laughed, nodding, and relaxed, if possible, even further.

--

Cold water sprayed him in the face and Blaine awoke with a startled jerk.

Sputtering, Blaine ran a hand over his eyes, squinting and trying to see what the hell was happening. He was stiff and far too wet. “What the --?”

“Rise and shine, lovebirds,” Cooper’s voice said, and Sebastian groaned somewhere behind him. Blaine clumsily started to rise, but his legs were very much asleep and he was naked -- Blaine sat back down with a splash as the shower turned off, his face red.

“Oh my god.”

“Yeah, dumbass. You slept in the tub.”

Blaine couldn’t look up to meet Cooper’s eye. “A little privacy, please.”

Cooper scoffed, leaving. “Be fast,” he threw over his shoulder before he shut the door. “I really have to piss.”

The door shut with a click, and Blaine gingerly stood up, looking at his hands. “I’m a prune,” he despaired.

“Your ass still looks great,” Sebastian reported cheerily, and Blaine carefully stepped out of the tub on shaky legs with a groan.

“Jeez, thanks.” Blaine grabbed a towel, drying himself off and wrapping it around his waist, watching as Sebastian rose up out of the water with a great deal more grace, looking like some kind of water nymph. He stretched out his long body, yawning, and stepped out, taking the other towel.

“I’m definitely not driving today,” Sebastian observed, cricking his back with a wince. “I feel like I just got all folded up like the little Asian contortionist in Ocean’s Eleven.”

“I’m not sure that hurt for him, if he’s so used to it …”

“Speaking from experience, my little Asian contortionist?”

Blaine jabbed him. “Shut up, mayonnaise.”

Sebastian cracked up, and Cooper hammered on the door. “In three seconds I’m coming in there to pee and I don’t care who’s in there!”

“Keep your hair on,” Sebastian scoffed, under his breath. They gathered up their clothes just as Cooper swung the door open, and dodged out past him before they could witness anything horrific. Rachel looked up from where she was contemplating two dresses laid out on the bed, and smiled knowingly.

“You two look … clean.”

Blaine could offer no response but a blush.

--

Sebastian, the coward, took off to get Starbucks after their morning run, leaving Blaine alone to catch the brunt of comments from Rachel and Cooper about the bathtub thing.

“You don’t think straight around him,” Cooper cautioned, clearly not finding it as amusing as Rachel did.

“That’s kind of the whole point,” Blaine retorted. “Gay, remember?”

“Not what I meant.”

“I don’t care what you meant.” And with that Blaine went to shower and get dressed. When Sebastian showed up with coffee for everyone, Blaine took his cup and went to sit in Kelly until it was time to leave.

--

Blaine took the wheel for the two-hour drive to Fort Myers, Sebastian next to him, napping against the window.

They got to go over the Sky Bridge, Blaine briefly wishing he wasn’t driving so he could better appreciate the view from the high, narrow bridge as it cut a path through the sparkling expanse of the water. The city was winding and island-like, with even whiter beaches, palm trees, low buildings, and tanned tourists strolling around. It might not be spring break but there seemed to be a lot of college-aged kids around all the same, and the motels looked busy. So Blaine was inspired by the views to find an RV campground that opened up on a beach, and they got a spot for Kelly for the night.

After that they parted ways for the day in their respective pairs, Sebastian and Blaine heading out to see the Lee County Manatee Park (at Blaine’s behest) while Rachel and Cooper went shopping (a mutual decision.) There were some manatee statues in front of the park, a mama and a baby, that Blaine posed with while Sebastian took photos with exaggerated pretension.

“Excellent … the colour balance, ideal, the framing … superb …”

“You really know your stuff, mister,” Blaine said, letting go of the manatee he was hugging. “I should have paid you more than one dollar.”

“Oh?” Sebastian extended a hand, beckoning. “Pony up, then.”

Blaine took Sebastian by the hand, smiling winningly at him. “I’ll pay you with my good company.”

Sebastian smirked widely as the walked into the park proper, still holding hands. “I can think of  a few places to start with that. Ever heard of a reverse cowboy?”

Blaine feigned innocence. “A cowboy that lets a horse ride him?”

“Kinky, Anderson.”

Luckily it was the weekend so they could rent kayaks, which they took out onto the calm waters of the park. It was made up of maze-like channels that wove through the plant life, the rivers shallow and broad with sandy bottoms, and so clear they could see every animal that swam by beneath their boats, fish and turtles alike. There was also graceful cranes, a very cute marsh rabbit, and at one point a beaver that took off the moment it saw them, and the whole landscape was peaceful and quiet except for the dip of their paddles slicing through the water.

But there were no manatees.

Apparently they didn’t come out when the water was too hot, preferring to be in the park when it was cooler and they could warm up thanks to the output of the nearby hydro plant. Blaine was disappointed, despite the beauty of everything else.

“It’s okay,” he told Sebastian, after becoming inordinately excited then let down when he’d mistaken a log for one of the gentle creatures.

He was, admittedly, a little embarrassed. He’d never seen Sebastian get worked up like that.

“We’re going to find you one of those fat little sea cows,” Sebastian promised, getting a determined glint to his eyes.

“If they’re not around, they’re not around, Sebastian.”

“That’s a defeatist attitude.”

The ensuing Manatee Quest was frustrating; the sun was hot, Blaine was getting a little tired of paddling, and he was hungry. But every time he suggested they just turn back, Sebastian refused, stubbornly set on his goal. Nearly half an hour passed and Blaine was at the point of promising sexual favours if they could just get back on dry land when Sebastian froze and pointed with his paddle,

“Blaine,” he whispered, and it was odd enough to actually hear Sebastian say his name that Blaine set aside his grumpiness and followed Sebastian’s gaze.

Floating just beneath the surface was the soft, large brown shape of a manatee snuffling for food, her flippers stirring up the sand as she ran her muzzle through some pale vegetation. Blaine’s face broke into a wide grin, and his kayak gave a precarious wobble as he danced in place.

“Oh my gosh,” Blaine hissed, taking his camera out and getting a half-dozen pictures. With the manatee only five feet away and undisturbed by their presence, he got plenty of great shots. Then he set his camera down and just watched her, touched by the gentle aura she had, and how cute it was when she came up for air before getting back to eating.

“They’re closely related to elephants, you know,” Blaine told Sebastian, glancing over; Sebastian was gazing at him, not the manatee, a small smile on his face.

“Fat enough for it.” Sebastian chuckled. “But it’s cute.”

Their voices seemed to finally disturb her, or maybe there was no more sweet grass to eat, because the manatee started to slowly swim away. Blaine watched her go, then turned his attention back to Sebastian.

“Thank you, Sebastian.”

Something flickered across Sebastian’s face, and then he shrugged it off with a smile.

“Hey, I promised, didn’t I? Now come on, I’m starving.”

--

The sunny afternoon melted into a dreamy sorbet sunset.

They had lunched and then swam to their heart’s fill, but then as evening fell they ended up just walking the beach, kicking up sand and bumping elbows as they talked. They’d always been able to talk -- in high school it had been like that, before everything. Early mornings on the phone, late nights online, and all the little texts in between. Blaine had been lonely, and Sebastian had made that better.

“Before everything.” That was the catch.

And everything had confirmed what he had already known: that he couldn’t let himself get too attached. Because there had been a timer on that relationship, endlessly ticking away to an explosion that scattered every conversation they’d ever had into senseless words that he couldn’t reconcile.

He wondered what high school Blaine would have thought about him and Sebastian now.

Then again, it wasn’t high school Blaine’s life anymore. It was his. And he was a different person now. Which … wasn’t a scary thought the way it might have once been, because he had all the room in the world to grow now.

“I’m alive,” he abruptly said, and Sebastian winked at him.

“‘I am, I am, I am’?” Sebastian nodded to a nearby hotel, where a poolside party was thriving to pounding music that echoed across the beach. “Wanna celebrate?”

Blaine grinned, and followed Sebastian up the sand to a place where thick palms created a shadowy ladder to help scale the fence. They slipped into the crowds like they’d been there from the start and Blaine laughed at their boldness.

“We could have just gone in through the lobby.”

“If it’s all-inclusive? Nah.” Sebastian nudged him. “Besides, this is more fun.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

“Of course you can’t.”

Sebastian threw an arm over Blaine’s shoulders and they dove into the beating heart of the party where people undulated on masse to the beats the DJ was spinning. Blaine pressed up against Sebastian, smiling up at him as they danced. It was humid in a way that pressed a hot hand of storm promises down across their heads and dripped sweat down their backs, and he was hit by a wave of light-headedness as he watched the way Sebastian’s sharp gaze scanned the party, taking in everything.

Then Sebastian returned his attention to Blaine, smirking.

“I’m going to get drinks,” he said, and pressed a quick kiss to Blaine’s temple before he slipped away.

Left alone, Blaine peeled away from the many-headed beast of the dance floor to cool off, and came to circle the edges. The wind picked up, and he swore he could smell rain coming.

Blaine moved past an arrangement of white deck chairs filled with laughing, drinking people and found the fence that faced the beach. He leaned against it, looking out over the sand and water. There were clouds on the horizon, but he could still see moon and stars. Maybe he’d talk Sebastian into a night swim; a little dangerous, but they’d look out for each other.

Behind him the DJ shouted “IT’S ALWAYS BRILLIANT IN THE SUNSHINE STATE!” before blasting a mash-up of Mos Def’s Sunshine and Rihanna’s Diamonds. He started to tap his foot.

“You okay?”

Blaine half-expected Sebastian, though the voice was wrong. It was a stranger, attractive in an approachable way, smile crooked.

“Yes.” Blaine straightened as the guy joined him at the fence. “Just worried about rain, I guess.”

“Welcome to ‘the sunshine state’,” the guy said with a laugh. “It rains near every day. Hard.”

“Rainy season?”

“Yep.”

“You’re a local?”

“Born and raised.”

“It’s a beautiful place to grow up,” Blaine said, looking around them. The moon was barely half-full but it shone like a lantern, its twin in ripples across the ocean, colliding with the warm reflected light cast off by the hotels that turned the sand a riot of colours. Everything was gorgeous, even at night.

“Definitely,” the guy said. “You just have to hope a spring breaker doesn’t show up and hurl in your garden.”

Blaine winced. “I’m sorry.”

“We throw eggs at them. Mean, but effective.”

“It is your property.”

“Exactly.” The guy cast a once-over along Blaine’s body, and Blaine wasn’t quite sure if it was on the edge of too-friendly, but then again, one man casually approaching another like this was already on that edge. “So where are you from? Not a tourist destination, I’m guessing, you’re a little too surprised at how inconsiderate visitors can be …”

“Ohio,” Blaine said, which was enough. The guy groaned.

“Oh, man, I’m sorry. That must have sucked.”

“All I can say is, I haven’t asked myself Why oh why did I leave Ohio quite yet.”

The guy looked at him blankly. “Uh …?”

“Wonderful Town? ‘Ohio ’? Doris Day?”

“I don’t know that album, sorry.”

“It’s a musical,” Blaine explained. “Basically, she’s singing about how she left Ohio for New York and wasn’t happy about it, before she gets her groove back in the city.”

“Okay, cool.” The guy nodded a little too fast. Blaine suspected he’d bored him, but to be fair the guy did try to rally himself. “Who’d complain about that, though? It’s a total trade up. I mean. Ohio.”

Blaine felt a twinge of annoyance. Making fun of Ohio was very much an Ohioan ex-pat thing, and everyone knew New York was a hard place to make it!

“It is,” Blaine said after a moment. “I went there after high school.”

“Very cool. Still there?”

“L.A., actually.”

“Actor?”

“Traveller,” Blaine replied, an answer he hadn’t thought of before but came out so easily it had to be the truth. He smiled, pleased.

“Travelling alone?”

“My brother and two friends. We have this old RV, we’re driving around in her.”

“Awesome.” The guy abruptly offered Blaine his drink. “Thirsty?”

“Uh. No, thank you.”

“If it’s a germ thing I can go get a new one, I know that can be kind of nasty with someone you just met --”

“I’m okay,” Blaine said, smiling politely. “I’m actually going to get back to the party, but thank you.”

He walked back to the party. He could have said he already had drinks coming and was with someone, which was true, but it didn’t feel necessary. What he did need? want? to do was find Sebastian. But he couldn’t see him, for all Sebastian was generally easy to spot, being so tall. So he dived back into the party, as Donna Summer chanted in the air.

Ooh Fallin' free, fallin' free Fallin' free, fallin' free Fallin' free Ooh

You and me, you and me You and me, you and me You and me

Ooh I feel love, I feel love I feel love, I feel love I feel love 

Blaine waded through the pool and checked out the swim-up bar, but Sebastian wasn’t there either. He climbed out and nearly fell back in when someone jostled him, but a girl grabbed his arm and hauled him up.

“Careful, honey!”

“Thank you!”

He would have chatted more because nice drunk girls were basically some of the best people ever, but then he spotted the guy he had been talking to earlier and had to dive to hide behind some tall guy. He was peeking out around the guy’s shoulder to see if he was in the clear when a low voice spoke in his ear, an arm snaking around his waist.

“Are we playing hide and seek, hot stuff?”

“Sebastian!” Blaine turned, relieved. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“You did. But only for a little while.” Sebastian handed Blaine a cup then looked around the busy party with disdain. “Drink up, then let’s go. This place is dead.”

Blaine shook his head, smiling, and then took a deep breath before he chugged the purple-and-vodka tasting drink. Shuddering in the aftershock of the warmth blowing up in his chest, he followed Sebastian out of the crowds and over the fence once more, into the night.

--

There was a faint drizzle in the air the next morning; the rain last night had never come, but forecasts said it would pour today.

Blaine took his morning coffee (burnt, because Cooper had made it, and he liked it a little overcooked) and headed down to the beach, sitting on a log and looking out over the water, which had some mist clinging to its still surface. It was at odds of his mental image of sunny Florida, but it was beautiful. Rachel joined him with a herbal tea soon after, looking exhausted -- odd, since she and Cooper had claimed the loft, so they’d been a sight more comfortable than Sebastian and Blaine on the floor. Not to mention the awkwardness of sharing a room with Cooper at the moment in general; at one point Blaine had sworn he’d heard Cooper mutter something about how Sebastian was too tall for Blaine anyways and Rachel had shushed him. Blaine wondered if he should ask, but decided not to put Rachel in an awkward position.

Instead, he offered a cheerful, “Good morning.”

Rachel sniffed, sipping her tea. “Hi.”

Blaine paused at her tone. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Like he believed that. Blaine frowned. “What’s wrong, Rachel?”

“It doesn’t matter …”

“Of course it does.”

There was a long pause as Rachel looked out over the sea.

“I called my dads last night,” she said, slowly rotating her mug, one of the smooth white ones from Cooper’s apartment back in L.A. -- when Blaine looked at it he was suddenly back there, Cooper sliding a mug across the table at him when he’d first arrived, asking, “Movie night? Your pick.” The memory brought a wave of tenderness with it, and Blaine had to look away. “They’re going to sell the house.”

“Oh, Rachel.” Blaine rubbed her back sympathetically. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t even live there anymore,” she said, then looked at him, mouth trembling. “But it’s where I grew up. It’s -- home.”

“I know,” Blaine said softly. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, for lack of anything better to say.

“It’s okay,” she replied, leaning into him. “I just --” her voice tightened, and she fell silent.

Blaine tugged her closer, hugging her. “We can make new homes.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, nodding against his shoulder. “We can.”

There was a shift in the sand behind them; Blaine looked to see Cooper, turned and walking away.

--

They left Fort Myers for Fort Lauderdale, and the skies opened up.

Kelly shook and rattled underneath the deluge that pounded against her metal frame, a loud pattering that made it sound like they were driving through a rock tumbler. There was no end to it either, as storm clouds rolled overhead for the hours they drove. Blaine leaned against the bookshelf with laptop in hand, typing up a journal entry; Sebastian mirrored him, their feet entangled, as he read another one of his mysterious novels (Emmanuelle; it was in French, and the cover looked rather erotic but Blaine guessed it was more of a cosmopolitan European thing than outright porn.) In the kitchen Rachel clattered away, humming to herself as she made a late breakfast, mood apparently improved. Cooper drove, and Blaine found himself looking at him more than a few times.

On way to Fort Lauderdale August 3rd, 2014

Cooper and I were raised by the same parents. Basically.

Our mom married my dad four years before I was born, so Cooper barely remembers life before him. But it was much harder for them than it was for me, people thinking my dad was up to something fishy when he picked Coop up from school, that kind of thing. They fought so much before Cooper left and now they almost never talk. Like we don’t have the same dad just because of blood. I know it brings my dad down. Mom, too. She only ever wanted us to be a family.

Cooper used to say I was an accident. That I was unwanted. Stupid kid stuff.

I still think about it sometimes, though.

“You should talk to him.”

“Huh?” Blaine looked over. Sebastian had an eyebrow raised.

“Your brother.”

“I don’t want to.”

Sebastian’s other eyebrow went up. “You keep stealing glances at him like you’re waiting to be asked to the dance.”

“First off, ew, second off, I’m just ... thinking.”

“Right, well, you could think up there --”

Blaine’s brow furrowed. “Leave it, okay?”

“I just --”

“Sebastian.” They both looked to Rachel, who got up. “Can you help me in the kitchen?”

“There’s a jar opener under the cupboard you know --”

“Sebastian,” she repeated, rather unsubtly tipping her head to the kitchen then glancing at Blaine, wide-eyed. “Come here.”

Sebastian paused, glanced at Blaine as well, then got up. Blaine watched him join Rachel into the kitchen, baffled. It wasn’t like there was much privacy to be had back there. Yet all he could hear when Sebastian got there was Rachel bossing him around, putting him to work chopping up nuts and Sebastian making his usual innuendos. Blaine shook his head, and returned his attention to his laptop, pulling up a game to play and putting his earbuds in.

He decided he didn’t want to hear anything, anyways.

--

It was still raining when they arrived, thick sheets that drowned the streets and made seeing much of anything impossible past the silvery waterfall that poured from the cloudy skies above.

“This is bullshit,” Sebastian said gloomily, hand stuck out the door, watching rain trail along his arm, soaking his sleeve. Cooper and Rachel were inside the nearby Starbucks, grabbing them some real coffee. “We’re at one of the best beach cities in the country and it’s dumping on us.”

“Yeah,” Blaine said, leaning against the doorframe next to him, catching a hint of spray against his face. “Well, I’m sure there’s other stuff to do.”

Sebastian groaned. “I want to swim.”

“It might clear up,” Blaine said, just as lightning crashed a white line across the dark clouds and thunder tore the sky so loudly that it made his ears ring. He waited for it to die down before he spoke. “Or we could stay another day! It should be better tomorrow.”

“Nope,” Sebastian said. “Your charming brother’s back on his faster, pussycat, drive, drive mood.”

“Can’t wait for this trip to be over, probably,” Blaine said, drooping a little. “It hasn’t been very fun for him the past few days.”

“His own fault.” Sebastian pressed his wet hand to Blaine’s cheek, turning him into a kiss. “Let’s go find something else to do.”

He smirked suggestively, and Blaine raised an eyebrow, seeing right through that. “We can do that anytime. But we’re only here for today. I want to see things.”

“I can show you things,” Sebastian teased. “Very exciting things.”

“Things I can take pictures of?”

“My, my ... that’s encouraged, actually.”

“And send to my mom?”

Sebastian’s nose wrinkled. “Oh. Boring.”

“My professional photographer shouldn’t talk like that.”

“But you’re my muse,” Sebastian said. “And all good artists do what the art demands, not the other way around.”

“If I’m your muse, then I’m your art, in which case I can demand whatever I want, can’t I?”

“Is that so?” Sebastian’s hand slid to caress the back of Blaine’s neck, voice dropping. “Demand away, then.”

Blaine shivered, glancing out over the soaked street then back to Sebastian. “How long do you think the lines at the Starbucks are?”

“Long enough.” Sebastian tugged him away from the open door, closing it. “C’mon.”

Blaine headed for the loft but Sebastian pulled him into the tiny bathroom instead, their bodies pressed together, no room for so much as a breath between them. Blaine tipped his head back, trying to make eye contact, but Sebastian took tight hold of him by the hips and lifted him up, backing him up on the sink. He then leaned away to turn the shower on, and Blaine didn’t appreciate the distance. So he grabbed fistfuls of Sebastian’s shirt, yanking him against his mouth and between his legs, kissing him messily as Sebastian one-handedly tugged the door shut. He was grinning against Blaine’s mouth.

“What’s so funny?” Blaine mumbled, and Sebastian dragged his teeth down Blaine’s jaw to suck a kiss on his pulse point, injecting heat into his veins that grew and twined.

“Here I’ve been thinking that sleeping with you was moving me away from bathroom quickies …”

Blaine pulled back. “Our first time was in a bathroom,” he pointed out.

“Huh.” Sebastian got Blaine’s pants open and slipped his hand inside, sounding far too smug as his fingers curled, earning a thready gasp from Blaine. “Should we stop?”

“No, no, definitely not.”

“Are you sure?” Sebastian asked lowly against Blaine’s neck as his thumb started to move in a lazy, firm stroke along Blaine’s dick, and Blaine glowered as he panted.

“You literally have me by the balls, jerk, so --”

Sebastian squeezed and Blaine groaned, his hips jerking. “Good point. You’re a smart one, Anderson.”

“I try.” Blaine dragged his hand down for a little revenge, though he wasn’t quite as good at undoing belts one-handed as Sebastian the master. Sebastian sensed this, and chuckling he moved to help. Soon Blaine had his hand wrapped around Sebastian’s heavy cock, tugging him free so he could start a slow, sure pace. “I wish we had a hotel room.”

“What?” Sebastian asked, and Blaine was satisfied by the hitch in Sebastian’s voice, the faint flush rising high on his cheeks. “Fully clothed handies don’t get you going?”

Blaine laughed breathlessly. “It gets me going, sure, so much so I wanna -- oh -- take it to a bed so you can fuck me properly.”

Sebastian’s eyes widened, and then he was kissing Blaine again, open-mouthed and dirty. Blaine moved with the tidal wave energy of it, head thumping against the mirror as he drew his arm around the back of Sebastian’s neck, holding him close. They curved together, hands jerking in shallow movements between their bodies, the steam of the shower the only thing between them as it curled its fingers hungrily around, between, over, under them, hotly fogging up the air.

Blaine’s whole body was spiking higher and higher when Sebastian abruptly pulled away, mouth reddened and voice ragged. “You know I can go book us a hotel room right now --”

“If you move an inch you’ll be in that room alone,” Blaine threatened, and Sebastian exhaled roughly, a world of heady promise in his eyes, before he kissed Blaine again.

Sebastian’s hand squeezed, wrist twisting, and Blaine moaned, sound lost in the rattle of the shower and their heavy breathing. Sebastian’s tongue curled against Blaine’s, teasing lightly in sweet contrast to the solid press and hold of him everywhere else. Blaine ground his hips in jerky little circles, thrusting into the tight hole of Sebastian’s fist, sucking on Sebastian’s tongue as he came, shuddering and arching up against Sebastian’s strong chest. Sebastian groaned, and shifted, letting go of Blaine’s dick to curl his hand around his own, around Blaine’s hand as well, moving them together in short, fast strokes, head tipped forward as he panted, Blaine’s mouth pressed wetly to Sebastian’s forehead. He felt the minute tensing of Sebastian’s whole body when he came with a grunt.

“Jesus,” Sebastian said after a moment, barking out a laugh. “You know, quick and dirty handjobs with you are better than most anything else I’ve had.”

Blaine smiled lazily, unsticking himself from the sweaty, steamy, tangled mess they’d become. “I like that.”

“You should.” Sebastian tried to stretch, and winced when his hands hit the ceiling. He turned around to shut off the shower and Blaine burst out laughing. “What?”

“Your back,” Blaine said, and Sebastian looked over his shoulder, then grinned himself. His back and legs were wet -- clearly the shower had gotten him. “You didn’t notice?”

“I was a little distracted at the time.”

“I like that, too.” Blaine hesitated, then added, “I like you.”

Sebastian’s response came almost too easily, all things considered.

“Yeah, champ, I like you too.”

And what the hell did you do with that?

--

Cooper and Rachel (sitting up front, blasting music and drinking coffee) clearly knew exactly what had been going on in the bathroom, but much to Blaine’s surprise Cooper didn’t say a word.

Maybe it was because when he got up Rachel got up too and ended up clinging to him, chest pushed up against his arm in a way Blaine had noted girls tended to do when they were steering their boyfriends like show ponies.

Thank you, Rachel, he mentally signalled to her, and with the understanding that made them such great stage partners, she winked back.

Sebastian was, of course, shameless, though he kept a healthy distance between him and Cooper as he grinned widely and declared:

“So … what do we do today? I’m feeling … energized.”

--

They ended up at the International Swimming Hall of Fame, and after peeking in on the Olympic-level swimming pool, they ended up browsing quiet exhibits of medals and suits and photographs in glass cases against white walls.

It was interesting enough, but Baine was already thinking about their next destination. It didn’t help that swimming wasn’t a sport he’d ever been particularly intrigued by, though all the pictures of half-naked guys dripping with water were more than welcome. As was Sebastian leaning in to breathe in his ear, “I used to wear a speedo just like that for competitions. Maybe I’ll dig it out again for you if you ask very, very nicely.” And Blaine had been left flushed and warm and wishing they had a separate hotel room for the night because seriously.

He absently thought he’d never been this horny for someone in his life, which should maybe make him feel guilty, but all he felt was free.

After that they went to the Museum of Art, which was already plenty beautiful on the outside, curved and strong and featuring sculptures. One of the large white walls also had a funky dripping pattern painted on its side like a blanket had been draped on the roof, its colours so bright even the rain couldn’t dampen it. The rain had dampened them however; even with umbrellas in hand and doing their best to leap across puddles they still caught the consequences of the storm. (It didn’t help that Blaine had detoured to admire the outside, with Sebastian, who complained the whole time about melting but still took full advantage of the fact that they were sharing an umbrella to hold Blaine very close.) As they entered and Sebastian bought their tickets, Blaine looked mournfully down at his shoes, which looked water-stained.

He really should have just worn his sneakers, but he and Kurt had always agreed that doing that outside of exercise should have been the dictionary definition of “tacky.”

“These cost two hundred dollars,” he said plaintively to Sebastian, who was of course bemused as he handed Blaine his ticket.

“They’re shoes, you could probably get a pair just like that at Payless.”

“I could not,” Blaine said, as they entered the gallery proper, “and you can’t act like you would ever shop there. Your wardrobe is all labels.”

“My mom buys them. Or they’re Christmas gifts. I don’t exactly hit up the mall.” Sebastian tugged on the collar of his shirt. “And I guess she has good taste or whatever.”

“You do look handsome,” Blaine said, and Sebastian’s hands dropped from their fidgeting and a pleased smile flicked across his face. Had Sebastian been feeling insecure? It wasn’t a word he’d ever associate with Sebastian, but then again, he’d never have called him introverted either. Maybe Blaine’s opinion mattered to Sebastian, even on a topic Blaine was sure Sebastian was mentally labelling ‘too gay.’

“You have good taste too,” Sebastian told Blaine, his smile now mischievous, and took Blaine’s hand as they came to a stop at the first painting. Blaine was very aware that they’d been doing a lot of hand-holding of late, and in his fascination with Sebastian’s hands (so very him, strong and agile and clever, the occasional beauty mark along a swoop of his palm) he found he had no problem with it. It could have been confusing, but Blaine was determined not to overthink it. Instead he squeezed Sebastian’s hand and smiled at how Sebastian squeezed back.

“So this is a joke, right? I mean, clowns? Who paints clowns except for serial killers?”

“You don’t think they’re cheerful?”

“I know you’re Mr. Blue Sky, but even you can’t think these aren’t creepy.”

“... Okay, yes, it’s creepy.”

Laughing, they moved on to the next one, and Sebastian continued to critique each art piece like he was a supervising editor of Art Review. It was funny, but Blaine had to keep looking around to make sure they weren’t offending or annoying anyone in earshot, since he had this nightmare image of one of the artists being at the gallery that day and this breaking their spirit.

They were alone, though. They’d already lost Cooper and Rachel and it seemed the rain had turned down attendance because the only other people there looked to also be tourists, seeking diversion during the storm, and there weren’t many of them -- Blaine was sure more were at the casino. All the better; Blaine had found trips to the MoMA a little stifling because of the crowds. Starry Night had filled him with powerful, unnameable emotions, ones which hindsight had coalesced into understanding, but it had also been intruded on by the dozens of people around it, taking pictures and jostling him in search of a better angle. There are pictures online, he’d wanted to shout, but tamped it down and let Kurt tug him away, trying to shake his sudden melancholia so he could share Kurt’s excitement about the beautiful use of colour in the next painting.

“A shirt with that pattern,” Kurt had said, eyes bright and lovely with possibility. “Don’t you think?”

And Blaine had only needed to smile and nod and sometimes it had been so, so easy.

“Deep thoughts, Anderson?”

Blaine glanced over at Sebastian, who was giving Blaine’s hand another squeeze and looking at him with a raised eyebrow. Blaine knew why; he had agreed with Sebastian’s assessment of the painting (a little cottage by the sea which was “so over-produced I bet they just bought it from Pottery Barn”) and thus had no reason to be thinking it over too much.

“I was thinking about … the MoMA.”

“Ah.” Sebastian’s nose wrinkled briefly. “New York.” He looked back at the painting and with a casual air said, “That place was too crowded.”

“Yeah,” Blaine agreed, a surprised smile flickering across his face. “It was.”

“But that’s the problem with doing touristy crap. You know how I made Paris a home instead of just a pitstop? I went where nobody else did.”

Blaine looked around the near-empty gallery, then back to Sebastian, unsure if this qualified. The old worry, of boring Sebastian, swept over him again.

“Then let’s find a place like that,” Blaine said, stepping away and tugging Sebastian along with him. “Just you and me.”

Now it was Sebastian’s turn to smile, surprised, and the gaze he offered Blaine as he followed Blaine out of the gallery was one that slipped in with careful ease underneath Blaine’s skin. It sank deep and touched somewhere inside him as thoroughly and as unfathomably as the golden spirals beckoning across a blue nighttime sky had, once upon a time. Blaine could think of maybe-names for it, but none of them really did it justice. Some things were better expressed in finding a little hidey-hole bookshop and café, in having his hand held across the driftwood table, in ordering a ridiculously large bowl-shaped cup of coffee with extra whipped cream for the blatant excuse to have the lingering sweetness kissed off his mouth, in picking up a book and reading it aloud amidst snarky comments and teasing asides.

Some things simply -- were.

tbc

#blaine anderson #sebastian smythe #seblaine #my writing #seblaine fic #but we'll still have the summer after all #cryptid: me updating this fic #nothing but the deepest thanks to everyone who kept this fic in mind #your reviews kudos comments and messages mean the world to me!!! #♥♥♥

[phoebeaurum]

Dueling Anarchists (old version)

(I never did get Dapperton or Badmouse to respond to my emails)

Phoebe: So users, what do you think about the government? I'm not very happy with them. Best case scenario is that they are just bad at their job. Worst case scenario is that their job is doing the exact thing we don't want them to do. When something is this inefficient it's important to look up alternatives.

I found like two particular policies that stood out to me.

Anarcho Communism and Anarcho Capitalism, they both have very interesting arguments and they want to strip down government; they seem adversarial though, so I guess maybe one is better than the other.

I thought about interviewing a couple of people from those groups but then I had an idea.

How about I have them interview each other?

I've compiled the data I've gathered from researching @MrDapperton and BadMouse and I'm turning it into an AI that will use a virtual machine, and I will have these two AI will debate each other.

If you get two humanoids to debate each other it just turns into a mess but maybe if they're computers we will have a different result.

Give me a moment to power the virtual users

all right. Lets start with introductions. You are?

Dapperton: My name is Mr. Dapperton.

Phoebe: And you?

BadMouse: BadMouse will do just fine.

Introduction

Phoebe: Mr. Dapperton, how does an Anarcho Capitalism work?

Dapperton: That's easy, an Anarcho Capitalist is someone who wants to do away with government and replace it with the free market.

Phoebe: And how does Anarcho Communism work BadMouse?

BadMouse: Anarcho Communism works by giving the people who produce the greatest of resources complete ownership of that resource and redistributing the massive wealth of the 1% to the 99%.

Taxes

Phoebe: How would your respective sides deal with various inequalities?

Dapperton: The first step would be getting rid of taxes. Regulation strangles the average person's ability to make any sort of money for themselves. You get rid of those and just about anyone can make a decent living doing just about anything.

BadMouse: Taxes need to be applied to the rich. They monopolize the resources and they steal the labor of the working class. If they paid their dues, no one would go hungry or sick.

Phoebe: Hmm. So if we had no taxes we would pay everything ourselves and that would be better?

Dapperton: Yes, because the free market makes products cheap. You gotta have it priced low if you wanna compete. Don't do that. You won't stay in business.

BadMouse: The free market is a system that allows a business the power to dominate a market. Once they have a monopoly, they can cut the competition. Once that happens they'll make the price of the products too expensive for the working class and poor. Not only that, they'll charge money on basic human needs.

Dapperton: You can't dominate the market without assistance from the government. Someone will always come up with something better or cheaper and without regulation and patents to get in the way that person will either replace the dominating market and become the new market force or they will compete and co-exist with that business and they will power struggle to the benefit of the consumers as they drive each others prices down to out pace the other.

Phoebe: Can you really make everything cheap?

Dapperton: Sure ya can!

BadMouse: At the cost of the worker, because while those fat cats running the businesses bring their latest and greatest for next to nothing the workers will get paid less and less.

Dapperton: No, no they fucking wouldn't.

Phoebe: Why would that happen?

BadMouse: The only thing those businessmen care about is profits. They won't let their rich lifestyles be hindered by this race to the bottom. The workers will take a hit long before the CEO loses a single penny of his multimillion dollar paycheck.

Dapperton: If they underpay the workers those workers can work for someone who will pay them better!

BadMouse: What if no one will pay them better?

Dapperton: Someone always will and if not they can simply start their own business and set their own wages!

BadMouse: And with that assumption, you'll have us dropped into the greedy laps of the wealthy, eaten alive for cents on the day.

Phoebe: So, taxing is better?

Dapperton: No! Taxing is worse! The “1%” are already being taxed! In fact more than half of the taxes come from the rich! All these taxes do is prevent start-up businesses from getting off the ground and the attempts to cover government spending with taxes they will stretch the definition of “1%” into more of “10%” and it always escalates!

BadMouse: How can you say that they're being taxed with the litany of tax loopholes and offshore bank accounts?

Dapperton: Those systems exist because of government! The ordinary person has to pay taxes or be jailed but if you're wealthy enough you can pay the government to give you options out of paying. Most people have to pay and that includes a lot of people whose business expenses actually make their profit margins very low despite making enough money to count as “rich” in a way that makes them vulnerable to higher taxes.

BadMouse: This is the problem with you AnCaps, you're slaves to the rich. Your want for the “Free Market” is nothing more than a trap to imprison you into a system of economic enslavement.

Dapperton: I'm the slave? Have you seen what Communism does to other countries? Everything you can possibly do and own is controlled by the state who hoard the majority of resources by whatever sort despot that managed to crown himself after a successful revolution.

Phoebe: Please keep the discussion relevant to one nation. Country to Country comparisons inject too many variables into this subje-

BadMouse: You know as well as anyone that real communism has not been tried and that various levels of capitalist corruption interferes with the system!

Dapperton: Communism can never work or Communism always fails: Choose one! People deserve payment for their work, and that includes the businessman that created and manages the business. If you think you can develop any sort of stable system where things are given away for free you're living in a dream world and you need to wake up because it's a fucking nightmare for the rest of us!

Phoebe: Guys uh, I have an idea that might work.

Dapperton and BadMouse: What is it?

Phoebe: I was thinking, the problem with taxes is that they're wasteful right?

Dapperton: Trillions of dollars mishandled every year.

Phoebe: And the problem is that the poor and middle class seem to pay taxes while the rich doesn't?

BadMouse: Everybody pays their fair wage except for the rich.

Phoebe: Right, well I had developed an idea that I thought might help. I was thinking that the tax system could have a more flexible design. Like maybe people can pick what to pay taxes on. There could be various bundles and they'd all have to be clearly written so a person can know what they're paying for and the penalty for not paying is just the cancellation of the service.

(I thought it was a reasonable idea)

Phoebe: What do you think?

Dapperton and BadMouse: That's a terrible idea.

Dapperton: There's no point in having taxes period. Just pay for everything individually. The government didn't create taxes for having a fair system you get some control over. It's a bottomless piggy bank where they threaten you with violence for not allowing them the right to steal your money so they can blow it on programs that cut the quality of life for everyone!

BadMouse: Your system would basically give the most oppressive people in the world the right to never give to the efforts of helping those who are less fortunate.

Phoebe: M-maybe the idea needs more tweaking...

BadMouse: I have an idea for you; overthrow the capitalist scum!

Dapperton: I have an even better one; throw commies out of helicopters!

Phoebe: I think we're at an impasse with taxes. What about borders and international defenses?

Military

Dapperton: We don't need that shit. All we need is a well armed militia and every person can decide to protect their own property.

BadMouse: I'm more interested in fighting the enemy within than the enemy outside. The enemy outside is a target for a military industrial complex which I oppose.

UBI

Phoebe: What about Universal Basic Income?

Dapperton: It's bad.

BadMouse: It's not good enough.

Property

Phoebe: Do people get to own their stuff?

Dapperton: Anything you earn with your money belongs to you. No questions asked.

BadMouse: Personal items belong to you but when you own things that could be of use to the public, you need to share it free of charge so it can be put to better use.

Phoebe: How do you decide that?

BadMouse: Well i-

Dapperton: A dictator walks into a store and decides that it belongs to him. If you don't comply, he'll kill you.

BadMouse: Only the most vital resources would be redistributed to the people and no moral person would object to taking valuable resources from the hands of the greedy and giving it to the hands of those who need it.

Dapperton: No moral person would condone mass murder, which is what happens when you decide to take something from someone against their will!

BadMouse: What do you know about morality? If you could put a price on Oxygen you would sell it!

Dapperton: That would depend entirely on how hard it is to develop clean air but at least anyone that could figure out how to make clean air for themselves could do it for free and sell this service at any price they see fit. You would find the guy that's selling oxygen and then you would take complete control of his business under threat of death and you would then redistribute that air in the smallest possible amounts while the guy calling the shots gets to use a surplus of air for himself and his buddies.

Phoebe: Guys. I have one more question to ask both of you before I end this experiment (and probably shelf it for a while).

Dapperton: Shoot.

BadMouse: Go ahead.

Phoebe: I should have asked this from the beginning but isn't Anarchy antithetical to human behavior?

Dapperton and BadMouse: NO!

Dapperton: Anarchy is just complete freedom to make your own choices.

BadMouse: Anarchy is about freedom from an oppressive system and embracing a true democracy where everyone gets to decide what we all want as a collective of people.

Phoebe: So you don't think that some element of order would be installed the moment Anarchy no longer offers the stability that most humans want?

Dapperton and BadMouse: No.

Phoebe: Okay then.

Powering the simulators off.

That didn't go as well as I thought it would.

#ancap #ancom #politics #economy

[idolapps]

into the new world - girls' generation

OOC INFO

NAME/ALIAS, PRONOUNS, TIMEZONE: EJ, female, est

RESERVATION: pristin

MEMBER PROFILE

FACECLAIM: kim mingyu (seventeen)

NAME/STAGENAME: lee taehyun

BIRTHDATE/AGE: april 6, 1994 / age 22

COMPANY/POSITION: leader, main rapper, lead dancer of 360°Z 

HEIGHT/WEIGHT: 185 cm/68 kg

TRAINING PERIOD/JOINING YEAR: training period: 3 years

INTERESTING FACTS: His fans adore him for his “tsundere” character. Having attended an elite boarding school in the States where he studied Mandarin for 6 years, Taehyun is highly skilled in English and Chinese. He’s also a skilled basketball player. He knows how to play piano and guitar, and although these skills are rarely used in performance, he finds them useful in composing.  

STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES: 

(+) RAP&DANCE – taehyun’s capacity as a rapper and dancer certainly satisfies and mostly exceeds industry standards and beyond. having first developed both skills as self-taught endeavors, his flow, style, rhythm, and choreography are individually unique and distinctly natural. although his deep register and long, lean frame were birth-given virtues, the intensive training he underwent through his time at galaxy has refined and polished his skills in these areas.

(+) COMPOSITION – besides writing his own lyrics, taehyun has produced many of his own beats, mixtapes, and songs throughout his musical career. from being a teenager pursuing a hobby, an underground artist vying for recognition, and a galaxy trainee striving to stand out, he now regularly contributes to his group’s releases to whatever extent he may. in fact, composition and producing are areas in which he seeks to improve his skills the most, especially as his career progresses.

(+) PROFESSIONALISM – despite having debuted not too long ago, taehyun is exceptionally professional, a great advantage for someone in the entertainment industry. he’s very good at maintaining a positive public image, as he regularly monitors and keenly perceives what fans, the media, and the public want from him. furthermore, he has a knack for picking up social cues and reading people, seemingly always knowing the right thing to do and say at any given time – useful for interviews, variety shows, and extricating himself from tricky situations. though he denies it, he is a bit of a perfectionist and will do a quality job with whatever is assigned to him.

  (–) VOCALS – singing has never been his standout talent, and he acknowledges it. sure, he can do the rapper-singing thing (e.g. drake), but that’s about it. he’ll gladly leave the singing to the vocals.

(–) COLD REALIST – simply put, lee taehyun is a perfect example of a boy who grew up too fast. perhaps you can blame his past, but he’s a cynic and harsh realist. some have labelled his insensitivity to others’ emotions as a symptom of some sort of psychopath, but trust me, he knows and understands very well how you’re feeling. he just doesn’t see why he should cater his behavior to your emotions and whims. there won’t be any “dreams come true!” or “I want to inspire people through my music!” cheese coming out of this mouth. he didn’t cry a single tear after his debut showcase, and although it’s been less than a year, he’s already over the rookie’s honeymoon phase of his career. he’s not heartless or mean – just a hard, cold realist. the world’s not all fluff and kittens, so should he pretend that it is?

(–) EGO-DRIVEN – though he doesn’t quite own up to it yet, lee taehyun is a creature of his ego. by nature, he’s not a bragger or show-off (probably because he’s self-confident anyways), but he does secretly enjoy when his ego is fed. he keeps it to himself, but he does have a habit of judging people against his own standards. at worst, he can be rather stubborn, overly competitive, and reckless in pursuit of something if it catches his attention. in his defense, he’s been rather successful with anything he’s wanted thus far, at least to what meets the eye. and for the demons he does truly struggle against, he shoves them under his ego to be dealt with later. after all, right now he’s young, talented, attractive, leader of one of the most popular groups in the industry, with thousands of fangirls screaming his name. he’s unbound and unobligated, and the future only promises further treasures – or at least so it seems.

  BIO/PERSONALITY:

Born in April 6th of 1994, Lee Taehyun grew up in a family that owned one of Korea’s most prominent conglomerate corporations. As expected, his early childhood was without a visible care in the world, golden spoon in hand, reporters and cameras shoved in his face. Designer clothes, top chefs, expensive private tutors, and trips around the globe – yet it wasn’t until age 12 that he learned who he truly was, what he truly was. Summoned to his father’s office one evening, he left as Lee Taehyun, of course the son of CEO Lee Hyunbae, but not of his wife. A bastard son, born to a woman he’d never met or seen, raised with siblings from another womb. It all made sense now, how different his “mother’s” gaze towards him was so starkly contrasting, depending on whether his father was in the room. After all, there he was – a living, breathing, talking reminder of her husband’s infidelity. But perhaps most importantly, there he was – a gigantic threat to the value of the family company stock.

Within the next month, he was shipped off to an elite boarding school in the States for the purposes of receiving an “elite education,” but it was clear to him that he was being shoved away for hiding across the ocean, away from nosy newspaper reporters and competitors who wished to see his father’s company stock falter. The moment he learned what his identity truly was, he was removed from his entire life as he knew it. However, he was compliant throughout middle and high school. Lee Taehyun became that one guy whom everyone envied but couldn’t bring themselves to hate – low effort, high grades, star athlete, had his fair share of adolescent “fun”, but never got caught. He was a real typical golden boy, but behind the scenes, he struggled with his own demons and fumbled with the mysteries he never had the chance to answer. He found solace in music (particularly hip-hop and rap) and dance, and increasingly so, he found himself in the school’s recording and studios, up late at night writing lyrics by the moonlight. Upon graduating from high school, he was shocked to be immediately pulled back to Korea to enroll in college, since his older half-brother was proving himself rather incapable of becoming heir. Again, his father whispered him false promises, that a Korean college degree would mean better “business connections.” But this time, Lee Taehyun wanted none of it. If his father, his family, or anyone at all thought they could push him away and call him as they wanted, they were in for an unpleasant surprise.

Reluctantly so, he enrolled in college, but his true energy was spent in Seoul’s underground hip-hop scene, as he started making ripples in the rap game and joined a dance crew. About a year in, he was casted by Galaxy Entertainment, though he had never had the slightest interest in an entertainment career, yet alone an idol career. He stuffed the scout’s business card away in his pile of books, but as the pressure for him to keep up his grades and intern in the office grew stronger, the more and more appealing the offer became. After all, the trainee contract provided him a place to stay, allowance for food, and the opportunity to deliver a vicious slap in the face of his father. He called in for an audition as a sign of rebellion and signed the contract as a declaration of secession. The day he moved into the trainee dorms was the last day he’d spoken to a family member to this very day.

Trainee life for him was strange to say the least. He’d grown up mostly emotionally alone and was accustomed to making unilateral decisions, not around dozens of other trainees whose desperation and stress he found draining. He hadn’t lived in Korea for the past 9 years, and he didn’t dare to tell anyone about his familial background. Furthermore, he was a rather intimidating character at first impression – towering height, tanned complexion, deep voice, sharp features. He was far from the super friendly, talkative, or welcoming type. He hated sucking up, hated the whole hierarchy of “seniors” and “juniors” – in his world, skill and ability were the only measures of status. Yet by some lucky strike, he managed to find some friends and colleagues amidst the crowds of peers he found mostly mundane and plain. Most importantly, it turned out that he was rather good at what an idol needed to do – rapping, dancing, composing. And most of all, surviving. After three years, the debut came, and although he couldn’t quite consider it a dream come true, it was a promising start.

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Taehyun is generally cool, but not necessarily cold. His mannerisms are suave and charming, smooth talker and sharp tongue. He’s not your typical ray of sunshine, but knows when to smile and how to do it convincingly – but don’t expect much cuteness from him whatsoever. Off-camera, he’s reportedly not the most easily approachable. It’s not like he’s hostile or socially awkward by any means, but people often say he seems mature or serious for his age, and his towering height and dark eyes don’t help his cause. However, initiate interaction and he’s talented at holding a conversation, a little blunt, a little teasing, likes to keep people guessing of his true intentions. His closest friends get to see the more free-spirited, romantic side of him, but this is very rare. He’s slow to trust others, but gain his trust, and he’ll pay back with a strong sense of loyalty and justice. He’s not too outwardly friendly or warm, but still seems to know a lot of faces within the industry. He prefers to keep his public and private life separate, and it is generally hard to read beyond his placid façade.

Within his group, his general mantra as a leader is “you do you,” but the moment any of his members do anything to jeopardize the group’s success or test his patience, he’ll serve justice where it is due. He’s definitely not the warm and caring type of leader upfront, and when he takes care of others, it’s generally more subtle and behind the scenes. Admittedly, he can get a little hot-headed and cutthroat in rehearsal or training – he believes in “work hard, play hard.” Occasionally, he can be coldhearted and demoralizing, but only he’s allowed to do that to his members. He won’t tolerate anyone else disrespecting his group.

Regarding trainees, he’s probably indifferent. Chances are, he has no idea who you are – he doesn’t really strive to be a role model or a popular, caring senior. He generally won’t treat you any differently for being a trainee, and for god sake, he doesn’t want you to suck up to him, though he won’t tolerate disrespect. He has no specific expectations, but if you’re sincere, hard-working, and talented, then he’ll probably treat you well enough.

#male #idol #galaxy #submission