#genuinely spreading information and talking about the BAD side of this where people DO culturally appropriate or invade spaces that arent | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

the-badger-mole · 3 years

Note

Let's say you're on the writing team for Avatar when it was just an idea Bryke had. They've stepped back, letting the writers do what they do best. While Bryke certainly offer suggestions, they don't try shoehorning in their ideas.

What aspects of canon would you change and keep the same??

Would you have elements of a one-sided Kat@@ng, with Aang learning to let Katara go, or not have it at all??

If you were to write Aang as a character you actually liked, how would you do it??

Oh! I like this ask. Bet! Get a snack, because this is a long one.

In Book 1, I would keep Aang pretty much the same, but I would frame certain things he did the way they should have been framed. Like his whole deal on Kyoshi, leaving Katara to do all the work so he could flirt. That would have much more of an impact on his friendship with her. Subtle at first, but it would be the first blow against Kataang. Katara would gradually over the course of that first season have to confront the fact that she's pinned all her hopes of ending the war on a child. I think that making her face that reality would open the door to more conversations about how he felt about what the world expected him to do, and that would in turn lead to Katara helping Aang to face what happened at the siege on the NWT, and what he was being trained to do honestly.

Book 2 would be where Aang is confronted with his duty as the Avatar and what "ending the war" would mean. By this point, he knows in no uncertain terms that he's expected to kill Ozai at the very least, and his crisis of conscience happens here, and this is where he would start trying to figure out alternatives. At the same time, the people he's meeting talk to Aang and his friends honestly about what they've experienced in the war- famine; disease; loss of homes; seeing loved ones suffer and die brutally.

It all has an effect on Aang, and makes him cling tighter to Katara. Katara interprets it as platonic and doubles down on mothering Aang, even trying to shield him from the worst of the realities of the war as much as she can. When Aang tells his friends once again that he isn't sure if he can kill Ozai, someone snaps at him- Sokka I think- and tells him how the war has affected all of his friends personally, and that they don't have the luxury of feeling bad about Ozai dying, and what did Aang really think the army they were trying to gather was going to do on the battlefield, have a tickle fight (yeah...this feels like a Sokka moment). Here is where Aang finds out about Kya, I think.

Aang still goes to (the much less racist version of) Guru Pathik, and still fails to let go of his attachment to Katara. Zuko and Katara still have that moment in the caves. I haven't decided if Zuko still turns on them- on the one hand, I do think him joining the Gaang here could work. on the other hand, I think he needed to go home and see how much it doesn't fit him anymore. I could go either way. Aang still gets shot by the lightning and Katara still saves him.

As Aang and his friends travel through the Fire Nation, they spend more time with the poorest citizens. They find out how much they've suffered because of the war, and how much they also want it to end. Katara's stint as the Painted Lady lasts much longer, and she becomes a sort of urban legend, which may or may not get back to Caldera. If Zuko is on their side at this point, they start planting the seeds of rebellion on the promise of ending the war (none of the FN citizens know who he is of course). The Footloose episode doesn't happen. It's stupid and adds nothing. Instead, there's more focus on the propaganda and fear the FN leaders are spreading and finding out that there's already a rebellion brewing among certain pockets of the people. Piando plays a much bigger role in this season. He knows who they are, and helps connect them with a growing resistance movement.

Aang is still hung up on Katara, and still hasn't told them that he can't enter the AS or why. On the DoBS, he figures it won't matter since neither he nor Ozai can use firebending anyway. He keeps it too himself, and lies to his friends about being prepared to kill Ozai (well...not so much lying as telling them he's going to do what he has to and letting them assume). He still kisses Katara. They still lose this battle. The adults still sacrifice themselves for the kids to getaway.

When they get to the Air Temple, things get heated with Aang and Katara. Aang tries to run off and go play immediately, but this time, Katara lets him have it. She reminds him that she just lost her father again because he and so many other people surrendered to give them the chance to escape. She lays into him about his laziness and disregard for the people around him and tells him that he needs to shape up, or he'd get everyone killed. She becomes a lot stricter with his training at this point. Not cruel, but she's a lot less likely to tell Toph or Zuko to go easy on him, and she raises her expectations for his waterbending.

Aang gets his feelings hurt and he goes off by himself deep into the temple. He finds writings on AN culture and philosophy and actually begins learning about his people. He learns about airbending techniques he never learned. Some of it is clearly meant for battle. Aang learns that his people's views on the sanctity of life and killing aren't as black and white as he'd believed. This is also where he gets a hint of energy bending.

The Firebending Masters, Boiling Rock, and TSR still happen. Mai does not rescue Zuko and Co- that was something that never made sense to me. But then, most of Mai's characterization after CoD makes no sense to me. She's a character that needs a redo, too.

Katara and Zuko get closer during this time. Same as they do in the show. It's not quite yet a crush on either of their sides, but a lot more focus is given to the development of their friendship. They quickly become each other's go-to person in the group for support and to just hang out. Aang sees this and does not like it. It also makes his reaction to the play make a lot more sense, because he's already starting to suspect there's something between them. He confronts Katara about his feelings for her, her feelings for Zuko, and the kiss they never talk about. Katara says she doesn't really know how she feels about any of it, and she doesn't think this is the time or place to talk about it. Aang kisses her again. It's bad. Katara probably hit him this time. They don't talk alone again.

Aang is once again confronted with the expectation that he's going to kill Ozai. He has to this time, because Ozai is going to be at the height of his power, and won't hesitate to cancel Aang's subscription to Life. His friends finally realize he never actually intended to kill Ozai on DoBS, and demand to know what his plan is now. He still hasn't got one. He still hasn't told his friends about the AN philosophy scrolls he found at the air temple. He still insists that he can't in good conscience kill Ozai. Then his friends point out that millions more people will die if he doesn't. Aang goes off, gets kidnapped by the lionturtle and has the conversation with the past Avatars. They tell him he not only should kill Ozai, but he also has to let Katara go so he can use the Avatar State. Aang doesn't want to do either. Then the lionturtle gives him another way. Energy bending

The lionturle's way has consequences, though, and Aang is informed upfront that energy bending would bind him to whoever he used it on, and that it's influence was corrupting. If Aang wasn't careful, he could become as big a threat to the balance of the world as any Fire Lord had ever been. Aang doesn't understand that warning. He chooses energy bending and goes off to face Ozai.

It does not go well. There is no Rock of Destiny to magically give Aang access to the AS. There is just hyperpowered Ozai- with his decades of experience bending, and Aang, whose firebending is also strengthened, but who can't control his power as well as his opponent. He tries some of the battle techniques he read about in his scrolls. He hasn't got them down either, and some of them just feed Ozai's flames, but he manages to trap Ozai in a ball of air and suffocate him and the fire. He doesn't kill Ozai. He just leaves him disoriented long enough to energy bend him. Battle's over.

Aang brings Ozai back to Caldera, expecting to be hailed as a hero. He isn't at first, but then Iroh, Hakoda and other older and wiser people agree that it's better that Ozai gets to stand trial for his crimes. He ends up being sentenced to die anyway. Aang is furious, and then he discovers that some of his anger is Ozai's. He's bound to Ozai and now Aang has to work really hard not to let that bit of Ozai influence his personality. It's difficult, because Aang is genuinely angry enough that he can't tell what's his feelings and what is Ozai. Aang is now dealing with the fact that despite being the Avatar, people aren't willing to take him seriously, and won't not kill Ozai. He also has still not gotten over his crush on Katara and can't control the AS. On top of that Katara tells him that she doesn't feel the same way about him, and later he finds out that she's fallen for Zuko. Hard. Stupid hard. Like, they've already decided to get married in a few years, hard.

It's a bad time to be Aang. Book 3 would end with him being overwhelmed by his hurt, disappointment, and anger. Roku comes to him and suggests that he go back to Guru Pathik and learn from him. And so the last scene is Aang slipping away without telling anyone he's leaving. Toph may or may not join him. IDK.

#atla #atla critical #alternate version #not really #anti aang #but i know some people still won't like this so...#aang's arc could have been so interesting #imagine a world where he had to face the darkness inside of him #idk this universe might end with taang #i don't ship it but it might work here #zutara #because you KNOW once those two figure out they're in love they'd want to be together forever #they'd be the Crofts of the ATLA universe #persuasion reference #background jane austen au #anti kataang

145 notes · View notes

ironwoman359 · 3 years

Note

Okay smart ass. How come you and the other big blogs aren't saying shit about the racism and other problematic things happening in the fandom? Specially when almost all of you were always ready to put your opinions on something as petty as fans criticizing Thomas for how he wears a skirt.

Well, I cannot speak for other ‘big blogs’ because, while I am friends with some of the people who run the blogs that you’re lumping into the ‘big’ cateogory, we are not a monolith. We don’t have a secret group chat where we all decide “today we shall talk about Thomas wearing a skirt and ignore racism on purpose.” I can offer speculation that perhaps more people quickly added their own two cents on the skirt thing because when compared to everything else that was going on in the world, both on tumblr and off it, it was such a simple thing to digest. Everyone was craving something simple at that time, so it was an easy, cathartic thing to jump in and say “hey, don’t be mean in people’s inboxes” and proceed to stop thinking about almost just as fast. Anyway, like I said, I can’t speak for other people, only for myself. So since you apparently want me to, I’ll speak for myself.

“How come you and the other big blogs aren’t saying shit about the racism...”

I am white. It is not my place to speak over poc about racism. It is my place to reblog their posts, elevating their voices without commentary. That is something that I learned this year, and it is something I intend to continue to practice. I do recall making one post in early June, about not using the b/l.m tag on fanart posts, but after seeing several poc express that they wanted white people to talk less and listen more, I elected to make no more original posts about the subject and stick to reblogging without comment. If you’re looking for some good posts about racism in the sanders sides fandom, here are a few good ones. Though most of the posts about racism that make their way across my dash and subsequently onto my blog are less fandom focused and more broad.

“...and other problematic things happening in the fandom?”

This is where I must repeat what I said the other day; this could relate to any NUMBER of things, and unless you are more specific I have no idea what you’re talking about. Are you talking about callouts for specific creators? There were two that happened over the summer that I know about, but A) again, those were about racism, so I chose not to muddle the conversation with my voice, and B) the works being discussed in those situations were works I was personally unfamiliar with, and thus did not feel like I had enough information to state an opinion publically (which again, as I understand it, would have been unneccessary additions to an issue I have no authority to speak on).

So maybe you’re talking about the Twitter callouts, or the situation with the artists for the Storytime Madlibs video? Again, I felt as though I lacked sufficient need/information to make any statements about those issues. I have a twitter, but I barely use it, and don’t use it for the fander community at all. I had NO IDEA what any of that stuff people were talking about was, and still don’t, and since I don’t use Twitter and am not in that community, it seemed pointless to speak about. That is not to trivialize any hurt or harm that was caused or experienced during those events, just to say that I have nothing to do with them, which is why there’s nothing about it on my blog. (The joke I made about fandom twitter was supposed to be universal and relate to how all the twitter discourse these days seems to be a rehash of tumblr discourse from five years ago. Bad timing on my part I guess, oh well.) And, being 100% honest here, I don’t think I even watched the Storytime Madlibs video. If i did, I don’t remember much about it. I know that when it came out that the artists were underpaid, I reblogged one or two posts about how content creators should not be put on pedestals and are not perfect, but the rest of that situation was centered around the artists involved in that video, and since I was not one of them nor did I know any of them personally, it seemed like something that again, I shouldn’t bring up because I didn’t know anything about it. From what I understand, a solution is/was being worked out, but I haven’t heard anything recently.

Or by ‘problematic things’ do you mean the existence of remrom, or unsympathetic sides, or how I’ve been in this fandom for over 3 years and our anon hate problem has never gone away, or the rampant purity culture, or the pervasive ageism, or literally a dozen other things, some of which are genuine issues and some of which are simply differing opinions being handled with all the grace of an elephant on roller skates? I’ve said it over and over again on this blog, but this fandom is not perfect. No fandom is perfect, but this one in particular has a reputation for being ‘pure’ and ‘wholesome’ for some reason; a reputation that it has never upheld by the way, because, shocker, fandoms are made of humans, and humans are not flawless porcelein dolls. We’re incredibly flawed creatures, and mistakes are inevitable. The sooner we all accept that and start treating our mistakes as an opportunity to learn and grow and do better next time instead of a signal that we were always worthless pieces of garbage that had no chance to do anything other than fuck up, the better off we’ll all be.

And may I reiterate: look outside this website for a minute. There is SO MUCH going on in the world right now, every single one of us is utterly exhausted, we are suffering from a massive traumatic event, several massive traumatic events at once, actually, forgive me if my attention is spread a little thin at the moment.

I’ll readily admit, there have been posts in the past several months that I’ve seen, read, and then not reblogged. Often this is because I feel as though the post that I am seeing does not have the full picture, and that it would be irresponsible to reblog only that part of the ‘discourse.’ And most of the time, I just don’t have the mental energy to go looking for the full story on whatever the Issue of the Week is. And I shouldn’t have to. Because at the end of the day, what I put on my own blog is my business, and no one else’s. There’s not some rule list that magically appears once you pass 1,000 followers that tells you what you must and must not do as a blogger. I am not required to weigh in on every little thing that happens in this fandom just because a lot of people in it follow me, and in fact, NO ONE is obligated to reblog something regardless of how many followers they have. If you are dissatisfied with the posts I make and/or reblog, you’re welcome to unfollow, there’s no rule that says you have to stay. But my energy is so limited these days, and I’m not going to devote what little free time and headspace I have to figuring out the ‘Correct’ take on fandom discourse.

I’d like to end by once again reiterating what many have said beffore, that racism is not the same thing as fandom discourse. It is always my goal to not speak over the voices of poc, and if in this post I have done that in any way, I’d like to apologize. Poc are welcome to DM me so that we can discuss it in any such instance, whether on this post or any other from the past or that comes up in the future. I am still working on unlearning racism, and know I am likely to make many more missteps on that journey. Stay safe out there everyone.

#taylor talks #fanders #fandom discourse #racism tw #longpost #ask to tag #asks and answers

103 notes · View notes

that-spider-fan-over-there · 3 years

Text

Okay, as much as I like the TS community, I'm genuinely mad at you guys.

Yes, this is about the Storytime Madlibs, but I'm not calling out or defending Thomas or the animators, because 1) they're (as of now) solving their ish out and 2) I wasn't directly involved, and I'm not in the ground to say I was hurt. I'm calling out this entire community.

And it's because as much as we're frustrated, I gotta say: It's screwed up that you're more willing to cancel Thomas than to listen to the animators.

Look, it's fine if you wanna hold them accountable for this, believe me, I want to as well, heck, some of the animators are currently getting closure from them. But you didn't knew that because you thought it's more important to cancel the creators than support the people that were actually affected by it.

This isn't new, either: it happens within this fandom and we don't admit it. The discourse and drama happen because we don't learn that acknowledging that we have a bad side is one step to solving the problems. We drag each other down trying to end everything quickly rather than working towards justice.

And frankly, I'm baffled that when everything was laid out in the open, the first thing everyone thought was that cancelling everyone was a good idea.

Storytime Madlibs was a good concept that was poorly executed, to put it lightly. Who knows what happened behind the scenes, I honestly don't care. What's said and done is said and done.

Thomas should've been more involved. Quil could have handled things better. The whole team shouldn't have announced the date of release on Patreon before talking to the animators. And the Foster Dawg Team should've paid everyone 100% better and give credit better. Everything could've been handled better.

But it says a lot when we are quick to turn our backs on the person that is our inspiration, just because of a failed project. I'm not saying he is innocent in this. I'm saying that at the slightest hint of a bad thing he had a hand on, the blame game is on until death by cancelling.

"Don't you hate when the people you look up to turns out to be horrible?" - This isn't like Shane Dawson or James Charles, where they turned out to be horrible, horrible people. And we know that. We're smart enough to know this isn't like that.

But for goodness' sake, stop saying it was was abuse when you're not even listening to the actual people who were involved. Our job was to spread what happened and get Thomas' attention. (I didn't do it because by the time I found out what really happened, the team already was notified, so.)

Let's stop this idea that Thomas is a Harmless Little Baby Who's a Perfect Angel on Earth. He is a flawed human who made a mistake, and he's a grown-up 30-year-old man. We'll know when to call him out. And we did. Stop thinking cancel culture was necessary for this.

Maybe I'm too forgiving on Thomas. Maybe I just got too attached, or I can't bring myself to hate him... or maybe is because I'm not the one he needs to make it up to. But even with that, I know he needed, and would do something about it. Because that wasn't okay at all.

But isn't it fun to know that when a mistake is made, this fandom has a happy-trigger obsession on mispreading information and cancelling everyone out? /s (for this paragraph only)

Maybe that's one of the reasons a lot of people leave this fandom.

Rant over. I'm really disappointed.

#the spider rants #Thomas Sanders #Sanders Sides #don't say that this fandom is the most peaceful. it never was.

48 notes · View notes

clarenecessities · 4 years

Text

so shit’s fucked

here is a timeline

09/03/2019.

two people in a 70 person server discuss the SU movie in the general chat channel, using spoiler tags because it had just recently been released. this lasts five posts.

09/07/2019.

alyson comes into the general chat channel and says man, isn’t it a bummer that SU is n*zi apologia and racist and actively harmful?

Donnie says yes, it’s harmful, but drop the n*zi comment because RS is jewish (alyson does not, then or the other two times donnie asks, despite donnie being jewish himself). He later says he doesn’t care about SU at all

Synth says it’s understandable that people would drop the show because of poor handling or the racism issues, but agrees that n*zi is too far when there’s genuine propaganda out there

Beta says yes, the writers could have handled things better, but reducing the message of the show to “n*zi good” is a deliberate misinterpretation

A fourth person comes in briefly to say they also don’t care about SU and that this should probably be in the discourse channel.

About halfway through the conversation, after his second request to stop calling SU apologia was met with a sourceless insistence that other jewish people criticized it (though alyson did not specify whether they used the term n*zi apologia), Donnie told her she was taking this very personally, which Alyson met with “Am I? I said a thing, said it was unpopular, and left it. and then got swarmed?”

At this point she held ~46% of the conversation.

She then abruptly left, saying, “like. Hooooboy, there's so much assuming and passion and defensiveness going on here, so I guess I'll leave since I've seen this all before and know for a fact that no one is going to let it rest.“

She held 41% of the final conversation. Everyone who weighed in was either explicitly open to criticizing SU or completely indifferent, and were simply asking her not to refer to the work of a Jewish nb woman as n*zi apologia.

09/10/2019

Alyson writes a post. The introduction is more or less “if you uncritically like SU, unfollow me” and goes on to say she underestimated how few people in the neopets fandom recognize its harmfulness. She says she’d been thinking about leaving the Neolodge discord for a while, but her mind was made up on the 3rd when she saw "a lot of hype and support" (5 posts), four full days before she posted in the general chat. She says she "was swarmed by questions asked by people who didn't want to hear [her] answers." (there were two questions asked of her: “did you just kind of want to get mad at us for enjoying steven universe?” and “were you venting?")

She says that SU is her “litmus test” of sorts, implying--possibly by accident--that she was then testing the Neolodge by dangling some SU-discoursey bait.

The post was tagged #the problem isn’t liking a thing and #it's denying anyone from not-liking it for very valid reasons

Except the problem was demonstrated to be specifically that she was asked not to use a particular term to describe that not-like

7 months later, 4/16/2019

There is a Neolodge board on our own neopets.gov. Alyson shows up and is polite & sociable until more people that she recognizes filter in. She neomails hollis to broach the subject of what had happened in september, saying “from what i remember it was mostly synth who was very reactionary and aggressively posting at me because i criticised steven universe“ which, if you’ll review the logs, is both not about synth, who only posted twice (probably an honest mistake), but also grossly mischaracterizes the nature of the incident. Over the next day or so she and Hollis discuss the nature of the lodge and what transpired in September. Hollis emphasizes that the Neolodge has never been a place for bigots or their sympathizers, and Alyson goes radio silent.

4/24/2019

Alyson writes a new post. It tells a different narrative than we see play out in the logs. Her summary of events is as follows:

So, when wondering on the chat if anyone else was critical of the franchise, instead the chat suddenly sped up and i was swarmed by a bunch of anti-criticism fans who almost immediately -instead of reading my beginning attempts to elaborate on where i was coming from- posted over and over again that rebecca sugar is a marginalized voice and as such, immune to criticism, and how dare I insinuate a jewish woman of writing nazi apologia.

To reiterate, she began a discussion. Every person who responded was either openly critical of SU or indifferent. They were not suggesting RS is immune to criticism because she’s marginalized; they were in fact largely agreeing with the criticisms that Alyson raised, but asking her to be more conscious of the impact her choice of terms could have (and in fact was having).

I (a neurodivergent, mentally ill, pansexual aromantic woman, aka also a marginalized voice) was talked over and treated as if i ate babies. Obviously, I left the neolodge discord after that.

Again, she held 41% of the conversation--and by her own admission had already been planning to leave the Neolodge, and had thrown down this final ‘litmus test’ despite not wanting to engage with the results.

Now, obviously marginalization isn’t a contest. There’s no “I have more problems” or “I have worse problems” that will ever get us anywhere constructive. As I said in my own reply to her post, this was not a matter of RS being untouchable because she’s marginalized, but of Alyson’s behavior when asked not to draw the comparison between RS’s work and literal N*zi apologia.

Hollis refused to read and think about what i had said and the information i linked to, despite apparently going back in the discord chat and viewing the whole mess, where i had also laid out information to back up my observations. Instead, my voice talked over, my words and concerns discarded, I was treated as if I had committed some heinous act, and if i had changed as a person then maybe they might let me back in to the neolodge.

Now being privy to the entire conversation, I can assure anyone reading this that Hollis read & thought about everything Alyson said very seriously. We had an in-depth and nuanced discussion, and ultimately realized that this was not simply a matter of whether or not SU is a poorly handled cartoon or full-on apologia. It was a matter of Alyson’s unwillingness to engage in a discussion she herself began, her repeated refusals to respect the comfort and wishes of our Jewish members, and her later misconstruals of the conversation as a ‘bombardment’.

Alyson insists she did not call RS a n*zi, and that critiquing the show is not equivalent to doing so, but unfortunately ended that thought with this:

Words mean things: look up apologia.

Now, I’ve already pointed this out, but apologia means “a formal written defense of one’s opinions or conduct.” Thus, every time Alyson has insisted SU is actual, literal N*zi apologia, she means that a Jewish nonbinary woman conceived of and executed an explicit defense of fascism, n*zis, the H*locaust, regardless of how involved she was or wasn’t in the production of the show itself.

Personally, I choose to believe that Alyson herself is unaware of the definition, and instead meant that SU makes excuses for fascism, or alludes to n*zis, or much gentler (if still harmful) language. I choose to believe that she’s conflating it with an apology, and simply didn’t follow her own advice.

The Neolodge is home to actual children/minors/underage people and most of the people in the incident were younger than 21. That is children. I was getting annoyed at young non-adults.

This is blatantly false. The Neolodge has always been a minor-free space, and there’s been discussion of upping the minimum age to 20. That Alyson herself is 30 may have skewed her perception, but as you can see in our response to this angry anon, we have always been concerned with the protection of minors & the promotion of a safe, comfortable atmosphere.

Alyson goes on to say that she had liked & trusted Hollis, and this came with no prior warning--presumably because Hollis had been polite and even friendly when she came to our board, and they hadn’t interacted much over the previous months since her exit from the discord.

So if you’re like me, and don’t put up with bullshit, and refuse to lie down and let bigotry get further footholds into western culture and be lauded for it, consider staying away from the neolodge and users like hollis and synthaphone

I still don’t quite understand how we got here, tbh. People standing up against a stark refusal to respect someone’s comfort as a Jewish person has somehow been skewed to mean they’re the bigots, and “western culture” is in danger, specifically from this gay nb & their nefarious lesbian pal, who spoke the least of anyone in the conversation.

I can’t speak to what’s going through her head right now. I don’t even know if she read the replies enough to know she was spreading misinformation about the Lodge’s age restrictions, let alone her (hopefully accidentally) drawing an obliquely antisemetic portrait of RS. I’m not even mad at her at the moment so much as confused. I genuinely don’t understand her rationale or what she thinks would motivate us to do the things she says we’ve done. I don’t think she’s a bad person, or even that her actions would be unfair if the situation were what she’s purported it to be.

But the fact of the matter is, it isn’t. She tried to start a fight seven months ago and has been hanging onto it since, convinced that she was in the right, never considering the express opinions of the people she claimed were so passionate about the show she so loathes. She’s attempting to drag Hollis’s name through the mud because they were kind enough to give her a chance to explain her side of things & she squandered it by instead parroting the talking points of the video we had all watched back in September, when she originally posted it.

She’s throwing Synth in for good measure, because they’re the only person she could be bothered to identify.

It’s not a true account of events, she made no effort to have a good-faith conversation at any point (particularly about her own behavior), and frankly it’s unfair. It’s easy to dump snippets of DMs and announce that you’re blocking anyone who disagrees with you, sure--it can even be good for you. But in this case it’s more of what we saw all those months ago in the discord, when she tried to stir the pot and left after scarcely 30 posts had gone by; it’s cowardice. It’s a way to frame the narrative in such a way that she can maintain her illusion of moral superiority, secure in the knowledge that everyone who has criticized her or her behavior is a bigot and and writes n*zi "apologia” apologia.

She’s isolating herself from the community one group at a time, and I still don’t know why, because she won’t talk to me about it. She won’t talk to any of us about anything that isn’t SU, and I don’t care about SU. I care about her & her motivations, and I’m starting to accept I’m never going to truly know either.

#neolodge #neotag #skidget #cthulhusquid #bam-monsterhospital #drama #long posts #i did math for this you guys #you don't understand

28 notes · View notes

musesandmagick · 4 years

Text

The Violet Gala

In collaboration with @the-siren-saga and @penthepoet

Ah, the Violet Gala. The social event of the year, many said. The rarest of occasions, when the doors of House Aversen were opened to any and all-- well, so long as they had the means to pay. Of course, not everyone bought the official PR. It was well known, in certain circles, what the true purpose of this “celebration” was, and there were those who wanted nothing more than to undermine it in the most glorious ways possible.

Among those were the famous information dealer, Moirah Averil, and her assistant, Uvall. Their purpose? Espionage, mostly, and support for Laen Adaire, who had come looking for his sister.

“Moirah, you look absolutely ridiculous,” Uvall said, looking at his boss’s Gala attire, a deep blue silk sari held together by a pin in the shape of a diamond encrusted scarab. “Beautiful, but ridiculous. I think I’m just surprised to see you in a dress.”

“That’s the point, though, isn’t it?” Moirah asked. “They see me… like this, they won’t know it’s me. It’s like, um…” She searched for an example. “How no one knows Clark Kent is Superman until he takes the glasses off. Yeah, that's exactly it.”

Uvall was a bit confused by this remark, not being quite as well-versed in human pop culture. “...Come again?” he asked.

“Oh, never mind. Here, put this on, it’ll let us stay in contact more easily.” She handed him a small circular patch, which he then stuck under his ear. It quickly changed color to match his skin tone, becoming completely invisible. “Wireless invisible communicators. U.M.E.E.C. tech. How’s it working?”

Uvall jumped in surprise as Moirah’s voice came out in his ear. “It’ll take some getting used to, but I think we’re good. You should go see how Leo and Laen are holding up.”

Leo Burton and Laen Adaire were in another room of the apartment, talking amongst themselves about how terrible of an idea this was.

“I give it an hour, maximum, before one of them figures out who we are,” Laen was muttering, voice entirely deadpan and not at all hopeful despite the way he was already reaching his mind out as if ‘feeling’ for his sister would be any easier in such a messy-minded place. The only thing it was accomplishing was making his headache worse. “Even less time for my brainwashed sister to raise the alarms when she realises I’m here. Remind me why I agreed to this...”

"Because the hour it'll take for someone to figure out who we are is more than enough time to get in, reestablish a link with your sister, and get out?" Leo asked, ever the strategist. "No one is going to suspect a thing, I promise you. Your cover story is that you're here as a reporter for the society column of some newspaper in Mistria. Go around asking people banal questions about who designed their gowns and shit until you find her, it'll be fine."

“Empty promises followed by banal questions.” Laen sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “My two favourite things.” Glancing up at the sound of movement outside, he breathed a relieved sigh as Uvall came into view. “Are we ready? Can we get this over with yet?”

"Yeah, I think we're ready," Uvall said. "Moirah told me to give you these. Just stick them below your ears so we can all hear each other." He handed each of them a communication patch. It was clear he was worried about this after his last encounter with Marchosias at the re-education facility, though he hid it well. "I also feel like we need to lay down some ground rules. Rule number one, don't talk to Marchosias. Don't approach him. If he approaches you, make up an excuse, pretend you see your date across the room, whatever. Just do anything you can to minimize contact with him as much as possible. Rule number two, do not draw attention to yourselves. Everyone here is trying to catch his eye. Only be as ostentatious as you need to be in order to fit in. Rule number three, this should be obvious, but do not break cover. As far as anyone knows, you're Aliya Friel and Lochlann Kenzou, society columnists."

Leo pouted. "I had a different cover story."

"You did, but it was a bad one."

“Got it.” Laen nodded sharply, obedient despite himself, and quickly applied the communication patch, trying not to actively wince at the thought of yet more voices in his head that weren’t his sister’s. “If that’s all, let’s get this done.”

Leo applied her patch as well, though she was grateful for the ability to stay in contact with the others. "Yeah, let's. I'll be right here if you need anything, Laen." She gestured to her comm patch, in a somewhat inelegant way. "Don't go disappearing on me," she said, trying her hardest not to reveal how terrified she secretly was of something happening to him.

“I won’t if you don’t,” he hummed, just barely a joke.

The three of them walked out to meet Moirah, who was waiting by the entrance. "Uvall, did you give them the patches?"

"Yeah. We're all set," he answered, offering his arm to Moirah, which she took. You know, the most insane thing about this whole plan is how anyone's gonna buy that we're straight.

Tell me about it, Moirah thought back at him, cracking a smile. "Let's go on in, then."

Laen had never seen anything so grand in his life, and for a moment he could see why Laurien was so taken by it all. A huge ballroom, bustling with activity; people from all walks of life dressed lavishly in the nicest silks and lace. Purple drapery and beautiful music… His sister had always been fascinated with the more indulgent things in life and this looked like what he imagined her paradise would be.

The more indulgent things in life made Laen sick to the stomach. And to know how this came about, and the purpose behind it all, only solidified that feeling. Just about suppressing a grimace, he was glad -- and not for the first time -- that he at least would have Leo’s more-.. positive attitude to lean on.

There were other well-known Dekn Masters there, too. Pruflas, for example - the Dekn Master of Quarrels and Shapeshifting - was standing tall with a drink in his hand. Or, rather, his paw - he did have on a glamour that made it look as if he were a humanoid lion. By his side was the most anxious-looking assistant imaginable - Juniper Azure Ancarra, already being spoken of in the Courts as a person of great potential.

“Juniper, my fellow, cheer up!” Pruflas’ voice boomed, making Juniper’s eyes widen. Pruflas handed Juniper a glass, urging them to “drink, please - it will help you loosen up.”

The lion-headed Dekn Master paused, looking around before lowering his voice. “Look, I hate this as much as you. But you have to at least appear as if it’s the finest night of your life. We can slip out after Aversen makes his important announcement, I won’t be indulging his foolishness any longer.”

Leo was either the most convincing actress in the Lathrym, or genuinely enjoying the decadent scene that lay spread out before her. "I wasn't expecting it to be this beautiful," she breathed, dragging Laen by the hand to a buffet where several Dekn delicacies were available for sampling. Laen briefly wondered if it was like the human legends of the Fae, and one bite of these strange and appetizing dishes would cause him to lose his appetite for anything else. "It's like walking into a dream. I can understand why so many people get a taste of this world, and just… disappear into it."

"It seems so superfluous to me," Laen said with a visible cringe, wisely choosing to abstain from any kind of intoxicating beverages for the time being and giving his companion a disbelieving look when she began to pour herself a flute of champagne. "What were you expecting, if not this? Don't drink that, by the way. We need our wits about us tonight."

Leo shrugged her shoulders in response. "I dunno," she confessed. "I guess I was expecting a little less Pride and Prejudice and a little more Eyes Wide Shut."

Laen briefly glared at Leo, then walked off to "interview" the most un-Purple Rose-like person he could find, a vibrant, intimidating woman with striking auburn hair. If he was going to waste his time suffering through the Violet Gala as a society columnist of all things, he was at least going to waste it on someone with something between their ears.

"Ma'am? Excuse me ma'am?" He called, putting on his best 'annoying but curious' voice and trying not to outwardly grimace at himself. "Lochlann Kenzou, society columnist. Mind if I ask you a few questions?"

She’d been talking to an up-and-coming actor in the Dekn theatre and opera scene - Ariarathes, a youth of incredible musical prowess who was dressed in a peacock-hued, flamboyant robe complete with actual peacock feathers. “I.. I really admire you, Morgaine, I think your work is stunning and I really look up to that series of photos you did..”

The intimidating Dekn woman swiftly turned to face Laen, her sharp eyes looking at him– into him– in a somewhat invasive manner. "You're looking for someone else," she simply stated, lowering her voice so as to not be overheard by prying ears. "It's written all over you. And I know it's not our gracious host you're looking for." Her voice seemed laced with sarcasm, as if she didn't want to be there any more than he did.

Laen deflated a bit. Less than ten minutes into the evening and he'd already gotten himself discovered. He was terrible at this. "Who is this person?" he whispered.

The voice of Moirah Averil echoed through his earpatch. "That's Morgaine Cyprien," she muttered. "One of the biggest names in the avant-garde art scene right now. Marchosias hates her… I wonder why she's here?"

Morgaine cleared her throat in a more conspicuous manner. "Why, yes, I would be honored to be interviewed for such a prestigious publication," she said more loudly this time, in a manner that made abundantly sure that those around could hear her, as she firmly grabbed Laen's upper arm. "I'm sure that by the grace of the Master of Beguilement, a room has been left open for more… private activities?"

Laen gave Morgaine an indignant look. "An interview," he clarified to those present, "she means an interview."

Of course I mean an interview, Morgaine's voice sighed in his mind. Everyone here has a highly specific image of me in mind, and I've learned quickly that the best way to avoid suspicion is to give them exactly what they're expecting.

That was fair, he supposed, brushing off the deep crawling under his skin that telepathy with anyone but Laurien gave him. Just about managing not to glance around at the eyes he knew must be burning into his back right now, he offered her a gracious nod and what he hoped was a knowing-but-not-suspicious smile, he followed where she led him.

Where she led him turned out to be a sitting room with an easel and canvas set up. "You can stop pretending to be a society columnist now," she said once the door was shut and locked. "I can plainly see that you couldn't care less about what goes on here. If you did care, I wouldn't have let you near me." She led him to an armchair and crouched in front of him, then did that thing again, fixing her eyes upon him in a way that made him feel like his soul was being laid bare before her.

When Morgaine next spoke, she seemed entranced. "You're a strange one. Such depths of caring and protectiveness, but something's standing in the way. And that power… beautiful. An inheritance, passed down through generations and finally finding its way to the two of you." She swept a stray strand of hair out of his face, her hand brushing against his cheek in a way that would've seemed like a maternal caress if he had known her for more than five minutes. "Twin souls, united across the great divide. Would you indulge me by sitting for a portrait?"

A portrait? Laen quirked a brow at that, blinking a few times as her touch startled him. Quite without thinking, he shuffled to sit; staring at her with a mix of curiosity and disdain. “How do you know so much about me? And could you, perhaps, stop?”

"I see into people," Morgaine stated simply. "I see their light and shadow and all that lies between. To stop myself from seeing it would be like giving up the ability to perceive color." She began to work on the portrait, murmuring softly to herself. "Marchosias himself once volunteered as one of my subjects," she divulged as she worked, "and I thank the Hethe every day that he wasn't yet powerful enough to do anything but throw a tantrum when my work showed him as he truly was rather than how he aimed to be seen."

“So what are you doing here?” he wondered, frowning just a little, “I doubt Marchosias would be too happy to see you at his Gala. Or are you one he has a sick fascination with -- I’ve heard he likes to keep lists of people he thinks he’ll have eventually.”

Morgaine seemed more focused on her work than on him, but still, she answered. "I doubt I intrigue or threaten him enough to get a spot on his little list," she said coolly. Laen couldn't decide how to read her tone. "But year after year, the bastard invites me, and year after year, I've declined."

"So what makes this year different?"

"Intuition told me that there was going to be something different about this one." Morgaine closed her eyes for a moment, pausing her work. "Laurien Adaire. That's her name, correct? The other half of your soul?"

“The other half--” Laen’s throat went dry at the thought of that. It was what they’d called each other for years, no? But somehow, now, in the midst of all this trouble, the thought of that actually being a truth and not some child’s fantasy was-.. Painful to think about. “...yes. That’s my twin sister.”

Morgaine opened her eyes, looking to Laen with… sympathy? Pity? Whatever it was, he couldn't decide if he cared for it or not. "There is an invisible thread connecting you. It grows thinner by the day. If you can get to her tonight, if you can reach her for long enough to strengthen the link… you will sustain her, even if only for long enough to bring her home."

“And how do I do that?” Laen couldn’t help the urgency in his voice as he leaned forward; the desperation and impatience that seemed to permeate almost everything he said these days, “How do I even get close to her here, without her raising the alarm?”

"Most are not so perceptive as I. I only saw you because I was looking for you. You have a gift– you can slip into the crowd unnoticed and emerge from it untouched." It was then that Morgaine ceased her work, looking deeply into Laen's eyes once again. "Use this gift to your advantage."

★

Outside in the main ballroom, Leonora Burton was enjoying the gala as if she were any other attendee, partaking of various delicacies, dancing with other guests– "don't worry, my date for the night said I could feel free to enjoy myself!" she would say with a rather convincing girlish giggle– and, of course, keeping a sharp eye on the Purple Rose members and their admirers who stood clustered around the central stairwell.

It took her a little while to be certain, but she finally realized what she'd suspected all along. The one standing on the far left of the platform was the one they were looking for.

Oh, fuck, oh fuck, do NOT make me go up there, I don't want this, I'm supposed to stay away from him, this won't end well–

She took a deep breath and made her way up the stairs to the platform where Marchosias was holding court with his many admirers and worshippers. With every step, she found it harder to think, harder to look away from him. It would be so easy to disappear into all of this. She refused. She had a mission, and she intended to complete it.

"Are you Moss Rose?" she asked, coming to stand next to Laurien. "I'm Aliya Friel, my boyfriend's a society columnist from Mistria. We're both very interested in the life of an Arkn member of the Society of the Purple Rose. Would you be so gracious as to grant us an interview?"

Laurien had to admit, she’d been so enthralled by watching the people dance and all the lovely decorations that she hadn’t even noticed the stranger approach before she’d started talking. With a start and a wide grin, she offered ‘Aliya’ a welcoming nod; frantically trying to remember her etiquette while in such esteemed company. “Yes, that’s me! It’s so lovely to meet you -- I’m happy to answer any and all questions you might have.” Glancing around again, she frowned as if she’d only just truly noticed where she was. Tucking a carefully-curled strand of hair behind her ear, she gave a startled giggle, unnerving in its innocence. “Oh! It’s so noisy here, though: perhaps we should head further into the hall? I know there are some quiet spaces somewhere here, for discussion and such -- our Lord’s graces permitting, of course~”

Damn it, she needs his permission. "Well, then, I see no reason why we shouldn't ask," Leo giggled, still playing the part of the giggly, somewhat ditzy socialite as she made her way to the spot on the platform where the fog was densest. Every step seemed a constant fight not just to maintain control, but to seem as if she wasn't trying at all.

Malistrade and Montezuma, two other members of the Society, appeared to be gathered at a cocktail table nearby, Malistrade keeping an eye on Laurien before he turned towards Montezuma. “Montezuma, I see you looking at Tea. Please, I’d advise you to ensure our Master doesn’t see you.” Montezuma couldn’t help but sigh as he turned away, missing Leo walking up to Marchosias, with Laurien trailing just behind.

"Master of Beguilement," Leo said with a respectful nod as she approached the center of the platform, Laurien following closely. "It's an honor and a pleasure to be here tonight. I'm Aliya Friel, I'm here with Lochlann Kenzou. May I please have permission to take Moss Rose for an interview?"

Marchosias gave a charming smile, reaching out to stroke Laurien's cheek as casually as one would pet a cat. "Of course you may," he answered. "Just take care to bring her back soon. My little Moss Rose gets somewhat upset when she's away from me for too long." Right at Marchosias’ arm was Tea, who seemed to be wearing what looked like an incredibly intricate torque-collar and leash. “Yeah,” Tea chimed in, “please bring her back to us safe and sound! She’s like a sister to me.”

Leo tried not to think about how wrong the entire scene felt to her as she got away from Tea and Marchosias.

Leo. Leo, what are you doing? Uvall's voice crackled through the earpatch. I saw you talking to him.

"Hey, I didn't expect to have to ask permission to take her off of the stairwell, okay? And I'm fine."

Laurien, meanwhile, was deeply engrossed in how romantic this all was. So many people gathered, dancing and talking and drinking and laughing and they were all so beautiful. A pretty woman wanted to take her from her Lord’s side just to speak with her, about her, and her Lord had allowed it! She felt beautiful. She felt admired. She felt like the jewel in a crown, so shining and decorative in such valuable surroundings, and as she led her new friend through the crowd she beamed at all who passed; being sure to show the joy and grace her Lord had taught her -- practiced and poised, but a little clumsy, just to show she was still His child and could never outshine Him.

"Do you like my dress? My Lord Himself picked it out for me!" She gave a little spin, giggling gleefully as she led Leo into a quiet side room and closed the door. Her wings, constantly manifested as a show of how very special she was to be an Arkn here among her Lord's court, shimmered and shook with her glee; shining pink to match her pastel purple dress. "Isn't all this so wonderful!"

"You look beautiful indeed," Leo agreed with an enthusiastic laugh. Gods, she was not prepared for this, not prepared to sit across from a woman who was once so full of life and who now looked like a porcelain doll. Disguising her motion by tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, she reached to turn on recording– and also, to allow the others connected through the earpatch network to hear what Laurien was saying. "So, to start… A lot of the inner workings of the Society of the Purple Rose are shrouded in mystery. Most don't really know its true purpose, but when you see a crowd of beautiful people who seem to have been hand-picked by the Dekn Master of Beguilement and Debauchery, it does get the mind going. Is there any insight you can provide into this mysterious, intriguing world that so few are ever privileged enough to see?"

"Oh! Well, the Society is many, many things to different people," Lauri hummed, her posture growing practiced and poised even with the childish grin that accompanied her words, "To me it's a refuge from the people who would hurt me and make me something I'm not -- my Lord has given me an environment where I can truly be myself without judgement, and I fit in here in my own way without having to change who I am for someone else."

"Bastard." Laen's voice muttered through the network, listening intently to his sister as she spoke (though indirectly) to him for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

"But as a whole we are a refuge, home, and a movement really! There are so many terrible people across all of the realms and my Lord wants to change that -- to unite everyone, Dekn and Arkn-" She gave a proud shimmy of her wings at that, "-and maybe even humans someday soon! All He asks is our love and devotion, and in return he will shape and love us all as we are, not as the other powers think we should be."

"About humans," Leo said. "There are… well, there are reports that SEEKER has gotten involved in Purple Rose activities in the past? I'm sure these are just rumors, but if your Lord has been meddling in the Seeds… You don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but is it true? That SEEKER has investigated you."

The mention of SEEKER had Laurien paling, her gaze lowering to the floor for a moment as her mind travelled back over the events before the Gala. "SEEKER have no business with my Lord," she said, her voice almost a whisper, and left it at that.

Even Laen remained silent, the guilt and fury he felt almost tangible even through the network.

Leo tried to hide the fact that her heart was breaking. "Well," she said briskly, changing the subject. "On a different note. Do you think you can tell me a bit about what your life is like in the Society, day to day? I know that a lot is probably meant to stay private, but my readers want to know." She gave another girlish laugh, finding it almost disconcerting how easily she slipped into the role of happy-go-lucky society columnist.

Taking in a deep breath, the speed at which Laurien's darker thoughts were shoved aside was practically visible in her eyes as she plastered on another smile, her already heavily-blushed cheeks darkening with the question. "Well I couldn't possibly tell you everything, but… well, most of my days I wake up, say my thanks to my Lord for the blessings I'm given, then go about my devotions. He lets us do what we like, so it's different every day! Sometimes I work on my poise and appearance, sometimes I help other Society members with their troubles, sometimes when I'm particularly lucky or upset I just enjoy His company and His Divine energy. It's-- not so easy to explain, really! My days are so different and wonderful, it's like whole weeks go by in seconds~"

"So… the Society of the Purple Rose has quite a high opinion of Baelbaurith Aversen," Leo said, taking great pains to refer to him only in mortal terms, rather than making any indication that she could possibly be persuaded to see him as some kind of deity. "Calling him 'my Lord' and such. Does it bother you that people outside of the Society might consider this all to be… you know…" A cult? she wanted to ask. "A bit over the top. After all, he is known for his ego, among other things."

"My Lord Elucidis is prideful it's true, but not to the point of losing humility and charity," Lauri insisted, a little defensive despite her carefully welcoming tone. "I can understand from the outside why our Society would seem strange -- I thought it suspicious myself, when I was misguided and naïve." The bitterness in her voice was audible, but the smile on her lips remained gentle and excited, "All I can say to those who are suspicious of us is to come and see for yourself. It can be hard to understand real, positive change until you experience it firsthand."

"This goes without saying, but don't listen to her," Moirah said coldly through the earpatch.

"I'm aware," Leo muttered. "Yes, that's very good advice, I'll be sure to put that in my write-up on the Society! Anyway, I think it's about time for my partner to come in– he's doing the profile on you specifically, I'm just researching the Society as a whole." It was amazing how well the lies flowed from her lips. "Lochlann, we're ready for you," she said through the earpiece.

Laen didn't hesitate. With scarcely a gracious goodbye to his current company, he hurried (as inconspicuously as possible) to join Leo and Lauri in their room, hesitating for a moment outside the door. Their family relic, tucked safely in his inside pocket, was buzzing with energy the closer he got to her, and not for the first time he was terrified to see her again. He knew how much she'd have changed, and to see her that way…

Clenching his jaw, he pushed the door open and stepped inside.

His heart all but shattered with how long it took her to recognise him. He watched her gaze shine from curious welcome, to dull shock, to silent outrage, and for a moment he panicked -- unsure now he was here what he should do.

"Laen. You--" Laurien glanced between Laen and Leo, putting two and two together with the blistering speed he was used to seeing. "Moirah put you up to this, didn't she? Your friend is SEEKER too isn't she! Oh, I should have known, wait until my Lord hears about-"

Moving on sheer instinct, Laen shot forward, tugging their relic from his pocket and holding it towards her. In an instant, Laurien fell sharply silent, swallowing heavily as she gazed upon the strange little thing, littered with runes and tied as it was to the rope they used to take it in turns to throw around themselves. They made it quite the fashion accessory as children, didn't they…

Laen took her hand, pressing the artefact between their palms.

'You still feel me, don't you," he murmured, breathing out the breath he held as she nodded. "Do you still hear me?"

"I do."

"This is who we are, sister." Laen glanced at Leo as they communicated, offering her a nod to show it was working, before returning his attention to Lauri, "Whatever he made you is a lie. Through everything, this is us. We are together for all time. You know that as well as I."

"I'm happy here."

"You're living somebody else's lie."

"I chose this."

"You can choose to walk away."

"I don't need you."

"I know. But I need you."

The twins stared at each other for what felt like days, identical eyes burning into each other with the kind of silent understanding that only came with time. Laurien's eyes watered and overflowed with the force of her brother's emotions, and his with her's. For a time, all that existed was them.

But just as it always had, it came to an end. The muffled music outside changed to a gentle, mesmerising tune, and Laurien glanced towards the door with a shaken gasp.

"You two should leave," she murmured, sullen and dejected as she forced her hands from his, avoiding eye contact with either of them. "If He finds out who you all are and that you're here…"

She blinked and shivered, sucking in a breath as she put on the practiced poise once more. "Just go. All of you. If I find out Moirah is here I won't hesitate to tell my Lord."

For the first time, that felt more like a warning than a threat.

This didn't go unnoticed by Leo, who looked furtively towards Laen. "We should, um… we should go. Now."

Laen watched his sister leave the room with a clenched jaw and a dark snarl, lifting a hand automatically to his patch to speak with the others. "We're pulling out. I got what I came for. I'd rather not see what comes next."

But Marchosias’ voice stopped them before they could, as well as the crowd of people going up towards the front of the room to hear his announcement. “Ladies and gentlefolk, I have a wonderful announcement to make.”

He was up at the front, dressed in the finest attire of the evening - a traditional, incredibly-formal black Dekn suit with gold accents. His smile was like a lion baring its fangs: both incredibly beautiful and incredibly terrifying to see. His hands were clasped, his eyes trained out at the crowd.

“Here in the Society of the Purple Rose, we have.. rituals, one might say, that help us determine the finest amongst Lathrymites to crown as Esteemed - those from whom we can learn and grow. The highest of the high, after all, can climb ever higher in the heart of our little family.” He walked up to where a huge curtain was obscuring something.

"Can I set his suit on fire?" Leo hissed. "Please?"

Laen grunted in response, but the message was clear. Don't do anything that could draw attention.

“You see, during one of these rituals, my Consort came upon a most talented youth - a boy who knew more about fine Lathrymite literature than any other on Ersis, a boy of such talent that he endured eternities worth of torture and came back having carved out his captor’s hand and eye! What resilience! What a fire.” His eyes seemed to have a rather covetous, amused glint to them as he continued.

“We here at the Society of the Purple Rose can all learn from his tenacity and keen cunning. Therefore, I am beyond delighted to present to you our symbol of the canonization, and our announcement, of our newest Saint..”

He pulled down the purple curtain, his grin growing even wider as it dropped.

What was underneath was a gleaming stained-glass window of a cloaked figure, wrapped in thorns and holding what appeared to be a falling star.

“The Scholar!”

"Oh, he's going to love this," Moirah muttered to her disbelieving assistant.

Leo smiled innocently at her companion. Just as Marchosias was reveling in his triumph, his suit just so happened to catch fire.

A perfect ending to a perfect evening.

#arknverse #arkn x #arkn legacy #arkn #pink and purple #society of the purple rose #v:arkn #drabble

10 notes · View notes

larstenobar · 4 years

Text

Okay so I mentioned it in the tags but I kinda wanna talk about my experiences with So/uth Pa/rk. I say this as a cis, gay, non-Jewish man. I also say this as someone who used to actually engage with the forums on the main site. I also say this as someone who played. both the two major video game RPGs. So I am speaking not from reaction to other people’s reactions but from my own personal knowledge. This post is incredibly long so it’s under a read more. In it I provide what I believe are the actual effects of South Park on its viewership but I need to stress that I think it’s the wrong energy to blame parents for letting their children watch the show.

Don’t blame the parents, blame the show.

That show is genuinely horrible. I’ve seen a lot of people questioning how anyone could let children watch it - and to that I say you’re not adding anything to the conversation by shaming parents for letting their children watch that show.

My own parents weren’t even out of their twenties when I watched the show, and many other parents grew up with the show as a non-issue. Young parents make mistakes.

At the time it came out and its early years only extremely vigilant parents realized how problematic the show was and the news was hard to spread without social media. At best you could inform your parent friends and hope they listened.

The show’s main characters are children, many parents found/find it hard to believe that a show with children as the main characters could be bad for those children. If the show were exactly the same but the children were college-aged then it would be another raunchy show they could easily see is not meant for their kids.

There’s a good portion of children who watched the show that weren’t actually allowed to watch it because their parents weren’t as tech savvy as them and therefore didn’t know about pirating/streaming until it was mainstream. We who grew up with YouTube knew you could put in [show] episode 1 part 1 and start watching. (this is gonna be another point later btw)

I know that it’s hard for you guys to even know all the reasons it’s problematic because you all barely scratch the surface of it’s problems. But before we even get into the meat of its problems (Science Denial, Homophobia, Transphobia, Ableism, Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, etc.) we have to look at the very premise of the show.

The main characters begin in fourth grade. Fourth Grade. There’s a phenomena in our culture where we believe that children saying stupid stuff is harmless, and we forget that when children hear children speak - even animated children - they are hearing their peers. And peers learn from each other. This is why the show is so insidious, because it makes it easier for children to digest the messages.

Another thing that’s very important to note is that - while it’s labelled satire, every single joke is played straight, and the straight man character (usually either S or Ky) are ridiculed by the culture they’re surrounded in. Don’t believe me? Think I’m over-exaggerating? Think about the election episode, where they had to pick between a literal piece of shit or a douche. Our Straightmen were constantly saying how ridiculous the situation was, but everyone around them was telling them they were the ones who were stupid for not particpating in the election until they eventually break and submit to the absurdity. This is a light example, but it’s the typical formula. If they aren’t actively participating in the absurdity around them, they’re ridiculed until they break. What this tells the audience isn’t that the people who were particpating were stupid, but that they were right.

Now that we’ve looked at the show premise, let’s get into the details. A note: This is just what I remember from approximately age 5-18, the latter years I’d been turned off from it slowly so I wasn’t as engaged but it was not any better then. Since this is just what I can remember without looking through episodes or looking up articles, this is going to be a small sampling of things that stuck with me. Be assured, there was much, much, much more.

Science Denial and its effects on the viewers.

This is the lightest thing I can recall, and probably going to be the smallest section as it’s mostly centered around their stand-in for global warming, a cryptid figure called M/an/Be/ar/P/ig. Al G/ore was painted as a desperate, raving lunatic for believing in the phenomena, and was even implied to be making it up by having him dress up as the cryptid. I don’t have to explain why this is wrong, but we need to look at the effect this had.

On the one hand it made fans think that Global Warming (as it’s something A.G. believed in) was a hoax. Furthermore, it made them believe that anyone who believed in it was telling lies, which was overwhelmingly the most progressive people. A direct effect of these jokes (which they apologized for but never stopped propagating btw, MBP was still a joke when I stopped watching) was that progressives were seen as over-dramatic and stupid.

Now, I am not saying people watched these shows and immediately thought “oh wow, how fucking stupid of A.G. I don’t believe in climate change anymore.” It’s more like this: “Oh haha, S thinks A.G. is annoying, I like S so I agree, A.G. is annoying. You know, A.G. is kinda annoying with all that global warming, maybe there’s something to him being over-dramatic? Gosh why can’t these progressives see that it’s not that big of a deal. If they trust A.G. then they MUST be blowing other things out of proportion.” That’s the thought processes it trains its viewers to have.

LGBT+ Characters

Okay so there’s actually a lot of things that go into the Homophobia of S/P. And it goes back to the very beginning of the show, and is both explicit and implicit. There is a huge problem with these, but the main problem isn’t so much that they exist, but the show’s attitude towards their own ‘jokes’ and the ways in which fans suck up that thought process.

Before I get into this, there were some things that I need to say in favor of the show - not because I think the show deserve praise, but because there were some things that I latched onto and showed a surprising nuance. There’s like one thing, really but it is, of course, attached to something that’s a much larger issue within the show, so while it is a small glimmer, it’s in no way outshining any of the problems in the show.

For a while, the teacher underwent gender reassignment when he (the teacher currently identifies as male from my last interaction with the show) got breast implants and presumably bottom surgery (I vaguely remember a surgery but honestly that could be an invention) he was in a gay relationship. His then boyfriend had a very heartfelt and difficult conversation about how he still cared about him and how he’ll never hate him for being the woman that he wanted to be, but there was no way that he could pursue a relationship with him. I thought that this was a very mature depiction of a very difficult situation that is never really talked about. However, as I implied earlier, this is attached to a larger issue. Before any of you start having second thoughts about your ideas about S/P’s portrayal of gay and trans people, immediately after getting broken up with the teacher became violently homophobic as a backlash, I vaguely recall a group being formed.

Our main examples of LGBT individuals in the show are these big four (five?):

The afforementioned teacher

The teacher’s boyfriend, who wears leather gear at school and can’t stop talking kink even in front of the child characters

A character called B/ig G/ay A/l who is just as stereotypical as his name implies.

T/weak and C/raig, who are classmates of the focal characters. There’s a lot of reasons this is problematic, none of them being the age of those involved in the relationship - but the portrayal of them is hugely problematic.

Since I’ve already touched on the teacher, we’ll get into them first. When he was introduced, he was a sort of ambiguously gay character who was very bitchy and spoke with a slight lisp that eventually became a canon gay character with his relationship with the Kink Character. He was violently hateful towards his class, verbally abusing them all the time and often particpating in bullying children. Furthermore he’s seen as incompetent. This is problematic not because he’s a gay man doing this (though it’s not great either) but because this taught children that teachers don’t care about them and that they shouldn’t listen to them because they don’t know what they’re talking about anyways. This goes into their anti-intellectual stance mentioned earlier. It enforces the idea that education systems are useless, not because of the institutional problems they have with racism, but because of the incompetence of the system.

Going back to the point of this, still with the same character, let’s further explore the problems they had when the teacher had an arc as a trans woman. Honestly, I didn’t pay much attention to it, but the show made a point to let you know that the other characters were uncomfortable when Mr. G became Ms. G. The most damning thing about this, however, is the fact that Mr. G detransitioned bc he realized he wasn’t a straight woman, just a gay man. I think this is problematic because it frames transitioning as a sexual strategy. I don’t think I have to go into detail on why that’s problematic. And while this isn’t actually a tie into how horrible their handling of this character is, it should be noted that he’s the character that went on to be their T/rump stand-in.

The next character is the Kink Man.

God, the character’s personality isn’t actually all that bad. He’s loving and caring and empathetic and actually usually on the right side of topics, but. He doesn’t separate his kink from his personal life. He’s always strutting around in leather-daddy gear and has a lisp. His name is literally Mr. S/lave. There was an episode where he shoved a hamster in his ass. To viewers, he represents the dirty gays that keep shoving their sex-life down their throats - and this view is never, ever, ever subverted, so since the show never makes fun of people for having that view it reinforces that idea in their minds.

Honestly the least problematic character of the LGBT characters that I mentioned was BGA. He’s still a stereotype, yeah, he has a gay dog and is super flamboyant and constantly talks about how proud he is but honestly that’s not really all that bad. I can’t directly recall anything bad about him except that he’s incredibly flamboyant, speaks with a lisp, and loves to call things he owns “BGA’s Big Gay [noun].” Relatable. That doesn’t mean there was nothing problematic, it just doesn’t immediately come to me.

Now, for the next most problematic “representation” in the show. First, T&C showed no signs of actually being gay before. I do recall them both being my favorite characters before they became a couple, however. T is a coffee addict which has some suspect aspects we’ll get into later, and C used to flip everyone off. This was why they were my favorites. They became gay literally when fangirls started shipping them in the show. I’m sure there was an actual fandom movement, but their getting together was incredibly forced - that was part of the joke btw, that gay shipping is always forced. What’s horrible about this is that this was in an episode about ya/oi.

Now, let’s try to dissect this issue. First off, what this tells viewers is that being gay was not a natural part of who they were, but was an active choice (if you’re being kind) or something society forced on them (if you’re not.) The two were actively fighting with the narrative that they were gay and in a relationship. I think their actual agreement for being boyfriends was more of a mutual public display than an actual relationship, but it’s a fuzzy memory because that whole episode felt like a fever dream.

What’s worse about this, is that the show actually displayed ya/oi depictions of these children within the show. Nothing NSFW, but clearly sexually charged situations were definitely shown. At the time, they were 5th graders. 9/10 year olds for those not in the states. This emboldened actual CT shippers “If the show could do it, then so can I” was the general mentality on the forums I was on. So we can talk on pedophilia to reasons why this show is awful.

And those are just the named recurring characters. Another commonly recurring character is a prostitute with a deep voice who is very sloppy looking that, from my recollection, is implied to be a transwoman. This might have just been a conclusion I drew when I was young however - but even that is reason to be critical of the character, that such a conclusion could even be drawn means it might have played a factor in the character’s inception.

They also “Solved Overpopulation” with a gay orgy. I don’t have the language to define why this sat so wrong with me, but I remember being very deeply hurt by it. I think it has something to do with the idea that homosexuality is a choice and that it should only be accepted because of the potential benefits it has for population control.

Islamophobia and Racism

Okay so I’m just gonna come out the gate by saying that they fought hard to depict the prophet Mohammad. Like, hard. And they did it twice - one time went almost unnoticed but the second had a huge backlash from the Islamic people. For those who aren’t aware, it’s sacrilege to depict Mohammad. It’s like desecrating a church, maybe worse - I really have no frame of reference for how bad it’s viewed, but however bad it is, it still boils down to being a strict taboo that S/P broke not once, but twice.

Now, as I keep reminding, my memory gets hazy for many things, especially things I wasn’t aware of being insensitive early on. I have vague memories of terrorists being depicted in traditional Sikh garb, and similar instances of directly relating Islam with terrorism. I don’t recall the show ever making fun of anyone for relating Muslims with terrorism, for all those fans out there saying they make fun of everyone.

There was an episode where the characters wore blackface. There’s a black character literally named t/oken b/lack. Sure, that could be satire and maybe even be defended if they subverted the trope, however it should be noted he’s not the only black character in the show! There was an episode where there was a child adopted from Africa whose name escapes me - he was emaciated and devoured food at an alarming rate and generally was a nuisance if I remember correctly.

There was an instance where one of the main character’s father was on Wheel of Fortune. The category was people who annoy you. the letters on the board were ‘N_ggers.’ You know where this is going, the father said the N-word. The word was really naggers, but the rest of the episode was a sympathetic journey with him dealing with being ostracized. He became known as an ‘n-word guy’ which was treated as a worse term within the universe. I say this because a law was passed where the phrase was outlawed and they said you had to have a space of at least 5 words between ‘n-word’ and ‘guy’. Also, the n-word was said multiple times by a number of white characters. Now, I know the argument people make about this episode. They say that we were supposed to find the scanario ridiculous, but the issue I take with it is more that we’re led to feel sympathetic to racists who’ve had their lives ruined for being racist. That’s the issue with South Park’s brand of ‘satire’. It satirizes one issue, but doesn’t touch on the problematic things used to support that satire.

Almost every single Mexican character is a stereotype of some sort. Either a laborer who can barely speak English, a gangbanger, or some other stereotype. There was an episode where they had C’s hand become a famous Latina popstar by singing about Mexican Food themed songs, like the actual songs ‘T/aco F/lavored K/isses’ and ‘T/aco B/urrito’. The hand’s name was Jennifer Lopez, I don’t know of these songs are direct parodies bc I’ve only heard Jenny From the Block.

And while S/P tends to stay away from very direct anti-black jokes, they don’t shy away from other races. There’s an asian character whose business is called ‘c/ity wok’, but he always pronounces it ‘shitty’ because the joke here is ‘oh haha asians have funny accents’ and literally nothing else. I honestly believe that asians receive the WORST treatment on S/P when it comes to facing racism, but I’m not qualified to make that claim. Other examples of anti-asian racism: There was an pokemon episode where they said that Japan was using anime to indoctrinate youth, they literally had the kids operate fighter jets to make an attack on the U.S. What’s worse about this, is that whenever the Japanese execs were questioned about this, every time, they dropped their pants to show how small their penises were and how they should be pitied for it. Another instance, I very strongly remember a depiction of asian characters as being lemon yellow with eyes like this: \ /. There was an episode where they had Asians violently murder whales with glee. They lean into anti-asian racism so much harder than any other form of racism - the only thing they’re worse about is their antisemitism, which will get its own section later.

Antisemitism

God there’s so much. Jew Gold, nazi imagery, the entirety of c/a/r/t/m/a/n as a character and there are so many posts on this website by people much more qualified than me to delve into what exactly is wrong with this and the depictions of it, so I’m mostly just going to catalog what comes to mind and then speak about the actual factual instances of S/P inspired antisemitism I’ve witnessed and been party to.

There was an episode devoted to Jewish people having a secret bit of gold around their necks. This was proven true in the universe when Ky gave up his ‘J*w Gold’ to C.

Ky’s mom is such an overbearing harpy who bulldozes over everyone, this was later explained as her having Jersey-Blood (yes this was a Jersey Shore joke) but before that it was completely because she was a proud Jewish woman.

Ky’s father is depicted as weak-willed and piddling. He always wears a yarmulke no matter the situation.

Ky is often depicted as being whiny and non-commital

OF ALL THE CHARACTERS, KY IS THE ONE WHO IS DEPICTED AS A HYPOCRITE THE MOST

Ky’s cousin with the same name is depicted as in poor health, complains about everything, whines about things not being fair bc they don’t go his way, and has caricatured Jewish features

As mentioned above, there are hosts of Nazi imagery associated with C

C has said every Jewish slur I have ever heard. In fact he introduced me to the concept of antisemitism

Ky, in a Christmas episode, is depicted as wishing he could celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah is depicted as a sort of consolation prize that’s Not As Good.

Ky’s father was an internet troll, and the trolls were. literal trolls. with certain features that are not great.

The following image is the Prophet Moses:

And there’s more and more and more. I will not accept anyone saying that this is just jokes because I know firsthand how insidious their treatment of Jewish people is because this show literally made me think it was okay to engage in Antisemitism. I made greedy jokes, like saying a got J**ed when i was screwed over, or that someone who was being greedy was being a J*w. I am not proud of this, and I think I grew out of it relatively quickly as I dropped that language in middle school.

But not everyone did. Even some of my closest friends were still saying they got J**ed when we were graduating high school. There were no Jewish people at my school, so there was no humanizing face for the Jewish people for us. Thank god for the Nanny or who knows what kind of person I’d be now. There were people even worse than me, I should mention. There was one person in my school who literally used J*w as a stand-in for loser because of this show. This show was the only interaction with the Jewish faith that most of my classmates ever had, and the same is true of many rural towns in America who have only Protestant populations.

Fatphobia

All the most unlikeable characters are fat. C. Ky’s mom. The gun-toting republican. And there are other specific episodes where they equate fatness to not being healthy. In their episode partnered with WoW (don’t forget that happened, y’all) the main antagonist was depicted as a no-life having loser and he was, surprise, fat. This show draws a very direct line between being fat and being unlikeable.

Sexism

God, the portrayal of women is so horrible, literally my only entry here is going to be one single link:

youtube

Note all the other isms depicted in this btw.

Substance Abuse

The prostitute mentioned in the LGBT section would wander into scenes screaming about how she wanted crack. There was an episode where they created a league of basketball players who were comprised entirely of ‘crack babies.’ I’m being generous by not putting that in the racism section because most of the babies were BIPOC which says something about the kind of people that M/att and T/rey think are addicts.

The character T/owelie is supposed to show an addict, but his addiction is literally just weed which means they’re claiming weed is addictive.

I can’t even begin to describe the show’s relationship to alcohol. As a child of an alcoholic, I can say that it’s not fucking cute that they made S’s dad a violent drunk. It’s genuinely scary to see your parent fly into a rage because of their alcoholism and them reducing it to a joke was, I think, one of the points where the ‘it’s just a joke’ mentality started to break for me personally.

While we’re on the subject of parents, C’s mom was literally a crack addict who was also a full service sex worker. The correlation is not sympathetic in the slightest. And even worse was Ke’s parents. They were depicted as abusive, neglectful, drug-addicted rednecks. This was sometimes played to make you sympathize with Ke, and it worked because even now I can hardly think of how Ke himself was problematic rather than the situations he was in. (He’s the one who gets gruesomely murdered every episode) I don’t know if this is because of selective memory, if he was genuinely just the least problematic in the show, or if I’m waxing nostalgic for the show. Regardless, as I said, his situation was mostly played for sympathy. However, it was also played for jokes almost as often.

Pedophilia

The children are put in sexual situations a nonzero amount of times, they make priest molestation jokes, and they made jokes about MJ.

Slurs

Yeah they said them a lot. There was the aforementioned N-Word Guy episode, but there was also an episode that thinly mirrored immigrants coming to America for work and the people (time-travelers) were called ‘Goobacks’. I think the word ch*nk was used a nonzero amount of times, C used every slur for Jewish people in the book. None of these were censored by the show, any censoring was done by networks.

Why make this post?

Because I know people know this show is garbage, but I think it’s important that people know why it’s garbage with specific and nonspecific instances of why the show was problematic.

2 notes · View notes

louthegreatfurrry · 6 years

Text

And I just finished my part of art trade two, this one ALSO with the awesome @justafictionalthing !! This post doesn’t cover the full trade yet, as this one was one piece from me and several pieces from her, so I’ll add the rest of the pictures when I receive them.

THIS is the first picture, a fanart of my fanfic “Be my Flower, be my Sun”:

Drawing two; self-indulgent hug because everyone has bad days.

Drawing three; Marvin with wings for my fanfic “broken wings”

Drawing four, for my fanfic Into Enemy Land (A Harry Potter crossfic; as you can see both Claus and Marvin are headcanoned snakes)

Drawing five, also for my fanfic Into Enemy Land.

Drawing six... also... for my fanfic Into Enemy Land (i like this one okay)

As always, art trades are open!

You can find the 6k Megamind fanfiction underneath the cut.

When you’re an incredibly handsome criminal genius you end up inventing and building a lot of technical machines – some big, some small, some neither. You sort of have to be used to your inventions backfiring. And Megamind is used to it.

But this time it’s different.

The machine is a big beast of wrenched and warped metal, and when it fails, sharp blue light explodes from the engine in a shockwave of chaos and distant shimmer.

The force of it throws Megamind off-balance – he falls to his knees to brace himself, and in the process his cape wraps itself around his head –

by the time he manages to straighten himself up again, the string has already tied itself around his thumb.

The blast of iris blue light had spread across the whole globe, allowing billions of people to see the strings; both their own and others. Suddenly thousands of red threads connect the people of Earth – and no one has any idea why.

Until someone manages to pinpoint the source of the blast to be Metro City.

Megamind becomes the number one suspect, mainly because of the color of the blast.

He’s ready to ignore it all, to just continue on as normal and let the humans figure it out themselves, but a young adult posts a video on YouTube, asking him for an interview. “Not anything about your career,” promises the young interviewer, “just about this recent development of… you know.” They hold up their right hand – a string is tied around their index finger. “Promise,” they add, shooting off a charismatic grin towards the camera.

Megamind agrees, but only because they seem to perform well under stressful situations.

(The stressful situation being ‘talking to Megamind, incredibly handsome criminal genius and master of all villainy’, of course.)

(it’s the grin; it’s absolutely the grin; anyone who can grin when faced with Megamind must be able to face death itself without a flinch)

“We have established that this phenomenon can be traced back to you, Megamind. But the thing we’re all wondering about is,” the interviewer says, looking comfortable and at ease in their chair, “do you have a string?”

(do you, not who is it linked to)

(are you capable of love, not who do you love)

(are you worth loving, not who loves you)

Megamind glances down at his hand. A string is tied around his thumb, loose enough to not hurt but tight enough to stay in place –

“No,” he says, voice steady though it wants to shatter.

(it’s better this way.)

The humans’ strings are red; fierce red, like embers glowing in the night.

Megamind’s is a blue-ish purple thing that looks like it’s made of plant-fiber rather than cotton.

‘Strings of fate’. That’s what the humans call them. It’s wrong, of course. Megamind doesn’t know a lot about them, but – there had been some cultural information stored in his pod, and – and nudged in between dances and rituals there’d been a mention of ‘strings of blood’. They connect people with the same lights glowing within their hearts. The same roots, if you will.

It’s why his string is pale indigo and the humans’ red.

And - all hearts sing about pain and horror and pleasure and hope, but different hearts sing in different melodies.

That’s why no one can see Megamind’s string; their hearts just don’t sing in the same melody.

(Megamind wants so desperately to believe this, he does, but he can’t, he can’t, it’s never that simple)

(they can’t see his strings because –)

(because –)

(because Megamind is so broken)

(There’d been a moment, a shift in time, where Megamind had thought –)

(he’d hoped, for just a tiny bit, that –)

(that he wasn’t alone.)

(But that was wrong, of course, the string doesn’t go into the sky, after all, so the person must be on Earth, they must –)

(oh no, Megamind had thought, after that moment of shimmering hope had passed, oh no.)

(of course, he thinks later, of course he can see the humans’ strings –)

(it’s not because their melodies sound the same; it’s because he’s tied to one of them –)

He tries to break the string.

First the scissors pass through it, then the blast from the dehydration gun, then the flames from the flamethrower – the jackhammer ruins his cape, but ultimately does no damage to the string –

not even his alligators can snap through the blasted thing.

But he can feel it and hold it if he so wishes – it seems like it only registers his body as real, and nothing else –

when he realizes this, Megamind tries to gnaw it over. He tries to tear it apart and to file through it with his nails – but nothing works. Nothing. The string remains pale indigo and unscratched against his skin, and –

Megamind sits underneath the cool spray from the shower and Does Not cry.

(the poor, poor person his string leads to – )

(they don’t deserve –)

(and Megamind doesn’t deserve it, doesn’t deserve this bent and twisted hope –)

(doesn’t deserve love)

“Sir,” Minion asks once day, fins fluttering nervously. “Sir, do you have a string?”

Megamind, who’s slouched over his drawing board with the imprint of a pencil on his cheek and a pair of goggles askew on his forehead, blinks. “You can’t see it?” he asks, tired and weary and –

(he just wants to go home, wherever that is –)

Minion flutters a bit more. “Sorry, sir, no.”

(it’s because their hearts don’t sing in the same melody they don’t sing in the same melody they don’t sing)

(but Megamind –)

(he –)

(can’t bring himself to believe it.)

Megamind kidnaps Roxanne Ritchi the next day, and it’s easy to pretend that nothing’s changed, easy to pretend that everything’s okay –

(he’s been doing it for so long, after all)

– until Miss Ritchi cocks her head at him. “Huh,” she says, “you really don’t have a string.”

“And I see you do, Miss Ritchi,” he drawls, gaze lingering pointedly on the tie around her pinky finger.

She shrugs. “Almost everyone does.”

Almost.

Megamind continues with the scheduled scheme and can just barely keep from scowling.

Later, when Metro Man is carrying Megamind towards the prison, he gives Megamind a stoic look. “It’s good you don’t have a string, buddy,” he says, sounding far too honest for Megamind’s taste. “It’s what’s best for all.”

(and he’s right he’s right he’s right –)

(but Megamind lies in his bed at night, staring at the string shimmering faintly in the dim light – and he wants, wants, wants –)

Over time, it becomes obvious that the string changes color. It’s mainly blue-ish indigo, but other times – usually when he steps out of the Lair – shades of red bleed into the color, changing it from blue to a warmer purple.

It doesn’t take long before Megamind understands what it means.

Humans’ strings are red. His is blue.

Red and blue make purple.

The closer he is to the person he’s tied to, the more of their red is added to his blue.

(and if he feels happier the bluer his string is, he doesn’t mention it to anyone.)

Megamind originally made the holowatch as a way for Minion and him to run errands without people shrieking and running away in terror.

Now he uses it during days when the walls close in on him, when the darkness becomes too pressing, when the lonely silence of the Lair rings like a siren in his ears.

Today is one of those days.

He’s walking through the streets of Metro City, watch strapped around his wrist. He’s supposed to grab donuts for later, but he can let himself stroll at a casual pace. It’s not like there’s someone waiting for him at the Liar – Minion is busy on the other side of town, placing orders for more bot-parts.

It’s an accident.

He’s reading a sign he’s passing, too busy to notice the way his string slowly fades into a faint magenta, and suddenly he’s face-to-face with a pair of brilliant eyes.

The world halts, freezes, tilts –

Megamind, terrified and worried, glances down at the open space between the woman and him –

a purple string hangs between them, one end tied to his left thumb, the other to the woman’s.

“Ah,” Megamind says, focus snapping back up to the eyes.

“I – hey,” the woman says, sounding a bit unsure of herself but otherwise –

(disguise, something whispers in Megamind, she’s looking at a disguise –)

She sticks out her hand. It hovers in the air between them, an outstretched olive-branch, a bridge, a scathing hope – “I’m Cat,” she offers, smiling a smile that’s just a tad too genuine to be mere politeness.

Megamind’s hand reaches out to shake Cat’s on its own accord.

(shit, shit, shit, whispers Megamind’s heart)

(quick! yells Megamind’s mind, say something stupid – chase her away – anything, something –)

“Bubsy,” he blurts.

Cat blinks, obviously taken aback – but then she swallows her surprise and beams. It looks only a little bit forced. “Alright, cool!” she says.

Megamind’s still holding her hand, he realizes, and releases it so fast that you’d think it had bitten him. “Ha, yes, cool, right – ” he stutters, brain still trying to catch up with things –

“Hey, uh – I don’t have the time to talk right now,” Cat says, glancing to the left in a twitchy move, “but what do you say about getting a coffee sometime?”

(yes, Megamind’s heart whispers)

(NO! Megamind’s mind yells, loud enough to deafen the small flutter in his chest)

“I – ” Megamind tries, “I don’t – ”

“Cat!” comes someone’s impatient cry.

Cat startles. She throws a look in the direction of the cry – her hair, long and tawny brown, falls over her shoulder. “Hold on!” she calls, before hastily turning back to Megamind again. “Uh – ” She blinks, then lights up and begins to dig through her pockets. After a hasty search she pulls out a slip of paper. “Here; my phone number. Get back to me, will you?”

(Megamind’s mind shuts down.)

(yes, whispers Megamind’s heart –)

Megamind accepts the offered paper.

“Gotta go, bye!” Cat rushes, before turning on her heel and hurrying over to a small group of people, some of them scowling impatiently and the rest looking intrigued.

Megamind walks away so fast that he nearly breaks into a run.

(shit, he thinks, shit, shit, shit –)

(he lies in his bed that night, staring at the string shimmering in the dim light – and he thinks of that beaming smile and those brilliant eyes and he wants –)

Three days pass before Megamind does something about his newly acquired slip of paper.

He’s laying in his bed, covers tangled around him and sleep a million miles away.

(he shouldn’t sleep shouldn’t sleep doesn’t deserve the blissful unawareness of temporary death –)

Hands clenched into fists; nails digging into flesh – Megamind twists, desperation and depression and terror clawing up through his throat –

his gaze lands on the crumbled paper resting on his bedside table, and his breath catches in his throat.

(hope; blinding and brief but there –)

His fingers shake when he punches in the numbers on his phone.

The message – a simple ‘hi’ – is sent before he can hesitate or rethink his actions, and then he falls back against his pillows.

A hurt noise falls from his lips.

(she gave you the wrong number, some part of him whispers, a slow and dark drawl, no one wants to be with you, come on, not even in disguise)

His phone dings.

Megamind scrambles to unlock it –

hey! bubsy, right?

Ah, right – well, too late to do something about now –

yeah, he sends back. sry, did I wake u up?

nah, comes the reply, couldn’t sleep anyway.

Something eases in Megamind’s chest.

He has no idea how it happens, but Cat somehow manages to rope him into a coffee.

A date.

(he should’ve said no, should’ve said no, should’ve said no -)

But – it doesn’t hurt to – to just talk, right? Nothing bad can come from that. Just so he knows who he’s bonded to – that’s all. Getting to know each other.

(it feels like a lie.)

(…)

(and it probably is.)

“Minion,” Megamind says as he’s preparing for the date the next day.

Minion’s heavy suit clanks loudly when he comes out from the kitchen. “Yes, sir?”

“I’m going on a date; I’ll be gone for a while.”

When Minion blinks, it’s slow and hesitant. “A… date, sir? Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

(it hits too close to home – it isn’t a good idea, it isn’t –)

“Oh, relax, Minion,” Megamind exclaims, waving his hand dismissively. “It’ll be fine! It’s not like she’ll hurt me!”

“Alright, sir,” Minion says slowly, sounding even more uncertain than he was before, “if you say so.”

Megamind has no idea how to act on a date.

Cat meets him outside of the coffee-shop; a small and cozy thing called ‘a Thousand Paws’. She was the one to suggest it – Megamind’s never heard of it before. “Hey,” she greets him warmly. “How are you?”

Megamind has no idea how to small-talk, either.

(I’m horrible, he wants to say, I’m bad and I’m evil and I’m Megamind - )

“I’m fine,” he croaks. “You?”

“Superb,” Cat replies. “Come on; these guys make their mocha just perfect.”

Megamind has no choice but to follow her into the café. He stays a little behind her when she goes to order; he’s wildly unprepared to face a crowd in this state – he’s brought no weapons that he can reach in his disguise, and he’d… rather not drop it, for obvious reasons.

By the time he’s done worrying, Cat has placed their orders and is making her way towards a table.

Megamind follows her dutifully.

“-okay, but how’s this,” Cat says. The coffee stands untouched between them. “She said she didn’t believe me.”

Megamind bursts into laughter. “No way!” he says. “No way!”

Cat nods determinedly. “Yes way; and then – ”

Upon taking a sip of his coffee Megamind grimaces. It’s grown cold, all the warmth faded from it –

(just like the warmth faded from you, the part of Megamind whispers thickly, just like warmth fades from everything you touch - )

“Bubsy?” Cat asks, and worry has crept into her voice. “Something wrong?”

Megamind forces himself to shake his head. “No, no,” he says. “Ko-fee’s gone cold, is all.”

“Oh!” Cat says. “Do you want a new one?”

(no, no, no, don’t spend money on me –)

“I’m fine,” Megamind says. He sets down his cup again. “Anyway, what was I saying?”

“The library,” Cat swiftly reminds him, “and the guy from your class.”

“Ah, yes – and he – ”

Cat snickers. “You know, this is really cliché, but – ” She cuts herself off and shakes her head, a faintly amused smile on her lips. “Your eyes are very pretty.”

Megamind blinks, taken aback – “You think so?” he asks, barely keeping his voice from trembling.

“Yeah!” Cat exclaims eagerly, sitting straighter in her chair. “It’s strange, they kind of remind me of - ” Her gaze flickers. “- emeralds.”

Emeralds?

(what do you say when you’re gifted with a compliment – what do people say – what – think human)

“Thank – thank you,” he stutters, grateful that the disguise hides the small blush.

“Say,” Megamind says, gesturing towards Cat’s right hand, “that’s a pretty ring you have there.”

“Hm?” Cat looks down at her hand. “Oh, yes! It’s silver; my best friend gave it to me.” She uses her index finger to shuffle it off her thumb, and proceeds to hand it over to Megamind.

It shimmers briefly in the light; it looks worn and loved –

(unlike him, who’s only worn and hated)

oh.

“It’s pretty,” he says, handing it back over.

“Thanks,” Cat replies, easily slipping the ring on again. “I used to wear it on my left hand, but…” She nods to said hand; Megamind looks at it almost against his will.

The purple string rests unbothered on the table between them.

“Ah,” Megamind says, throat clogging up. “Right.”

Cat tilts her head; her hair drapes itself over her shoulder. “I wonder why it’s purple. Do you know?”

(yes, Megamind thinks, yes, yes, it’s purple because I’m wrong and you’re not)

He shakes his head.

Cat hums tonelessly and shrugs absentmindedly. “Worth a try,” she says. “Can other people see it from your angle?”

He shakes his head again.

Cat shrugs again. “Oh, alright,” she says. “Don’t suppose it matters much anyway.”

“Indeed,” Megamind whispers, and his voice is only a bit shaky.

Afterwards, when they’ve downed two cups of coffee each, Cat and Megamind stand outside of the café. Cat closes the door behind them, and then turns to him with a smile – a small, hesitant thing that emits more warmth than light. “I had fun today,” she admits.

Megamind –

(fun fun fun how can she have had fun)

“Oh,” he breathes.

“And, uhm… I’d like to meet you again, sometime,” Cat continues, oblivious to Megamind’s shock.

“Ah?” he says.

Cat snickers. “I’ll take that as a yes, then,” she grins. “If my presence has left you speechless I’m better than I thought.”

“Jhh,” Megamind sounds.

Cat’s expression is fond; lit up and emphasized by the amusement in the twist around her eyes. She shakes her head – but it’s with a smile, and she giggles as she does so. “You have my number,” she reminds him. “Text me sometime! Or call, I don’t know.”

Even though his mind has been reduced to jelly, Megamind manages to nod. He can… text… words… yes.

“Alright, then,” Cat says. “Bye!”

“…bh… bye,” Megamind manages to get out. His lips are numb, his fingers are numb, his whole body is numb –

Cat disappears around the corner.

(she had fun with him she had fun with him she had fun with him –)

(she wants to see him again.)

“Sir!” Minion greets him cheerfully. “How did the date go?”

“Ah,” Megamind says. “I – she wants to meet me again? And – I – it went good. Great.”

Minion bobs a bit in his headpiece, maw split in a wide and toothy smile. “Wonderful news, sir!” he says. It sounds a bit forced.

Megamind can’t blame him.

Less than five days go by before Megamind snaps again.

(it’s too much, the pain and the cold and the horror, and he needs, needs, needs –)

sure! Cat replies to his request of another meet-up. just say when :)

(Megamind doesn’t trust himself to take Cat to something she’d like, so he asks her – over text, because his voice would break otherwise – what she’d like to do)

are museums okay? ^^

Megamind is majorly relieved about this development.

There’s a museum opening downtown – it has sections about several different time-periods of the Human era, but if its advertisements are to be trusted, at least two stores are dedicated to Egyptology.

Megamind knows, within moments of seeing Cat, that she’s more than just a little bit interested in Old Egypt. Excitement and joy crackles in the air around her, and she’s bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet when he nears.

“I’m so fucking excited,” she says, grabbing Megamind’s hand to pull him into the building.

(his hand she took his hand –)

Megamind chuckles. “I can tell,” he mutters, grinning when Cat turns to pout playfully at him.

And Cat tugs him through all the rooms, ooh’ing and aah’ing at small tidbits of information. She explains things with loud words and grand gestures, a delighted heat in her eyes. When Megamind asks a question the answer comes immediately, happily, and enthusiastically – and as they progress from room to room and see mummies, masks, stones engraved with hieroglyphs and golden caskets, Megamind stares at her in awe, this wonderful and amazing person he just barely knows –

the string hangs between them, deep magenta when Cat holds his hand and of a softer shade whenever she rushes ahead –

(when Megamind looks back, he can safely say that this is where he begins to fall in love.)

(he loves easily, Megamind does, easily and fiercely when he finds something he wants to protect; and this person who shows her interest and excitement so intensely and who burns so brightly –)

(she deserves the world and he can’t give her that, but he can give her hope)

(Megamind, of course, doesn’t realize this just yet. He’s oblivious and drunk on the warmth of Cat’s hand in his –)

(and that’s okay.)

Afterwards Megamind takes Cat to her favorite café again. The last date was on her, this date is on him, he says, and she grudgingly accepts.

When they’re enjoying their drinks in a silence that already feels comfortable, a man walks by and sneers. “Ugh, man,” he says, and his eyes are on Megamind, “your black ass don’t deserve a beauty like her! Leave the birds to us real men, go get a hoe from Africa or somethin’.”

Megamind is ready to sneer back at him, has a response ready at the tip of his tongue, but he shoots Cat a glance, first, in case she doesn’t want him to make a scene.

Her expression doesn’t freeze, doesn’t turn horrified –

it trembles, for a moment, but hardens in a calm mask of determination. Then she stands up in one smooth motion, grabs her cup of coffee, walks over to the man, and throws the hot beverage in his face.

Gasps echo throughout the room. The man himself cries out in surprise before making a dash for the restrooms.

“Don’t listen to him, hun,” Cat says, loudly and forced through gritted teeth, staring at the retreating back of the man, “he’s just a bigoted piece of shit.” She returns to her seat and mutters, so quietly that Megamind can only barely hear it, “motherfuckin’ cock sucking son of a crack whore -!”

Megamind blinks. “Uh,” he says, “your, ah, your coffee?”

Cat waves her hand dismissively, even as she peers into her now emptied cup. “Don’t worry,” she says, “I gave it to charity.”

He laughs, grateful for her anger and her fire.

(he’ll always remember this day with fondness; the day someone first fought to protect his dignity)

Cat hugs him after their third date. They’ve been to the movies and haven’t done much talking the last two hours, but Cat held his hand when the worst scenes were on screen, and he held hers just as tight.

When she says goodbye to him, afterwards, she wraps her arms around him and holds him – tight, tight, close.

(warm she’s warm and she’s hugging him)

There’s a moment where Megamind – hesitates –

(what if she figures it out by his touch what is she figures it out what if she figures it out what then)

(please, whispers Megamind’s heart –)

– he hugs her back.

(an explosion of warmth; of joy; of home and this is his fated –)

Hugs come easier to them after that. Megamind rarely initiates them, doesn’t want to startle Cat too much – but she appears to be fine with touching. Hand-holding, too, becomes more common – and the string hangs between them, intense magenta when their fingers intertwine.

(but Megamind twists in his bed at night, guilt tearing through him and ripping him apart, because –)

(what if she finds out, and she will find out you moron, and you need to tell her before it’s too late but he doesn’t want to lose her, and he should pull away, should say it’s enough, should run before he can make her cold –)

Minion is worried. Understandable, as Megamind’s life slowly starts to revolve around Cat, rather than defeating Metro Man.

But Minion, loyal fish as he is, doesn’t say anything. He keeps it down to uncertain flutters and disapproving looks and lingering, concerned glances. Megamind pretends like he doesn’t notice. Minion pretends to not know that Megamind is pretending.

And things aren’t okay.

(Megamind’s phone dings with a message; it’s from Cat, and it reads hey hun I have sum extra time tomorrow wanna hang out at my place)

But they’re better.

(and Megamind knows, he knows that Cat still looks at him as only a friend – an exceptionally good friend, perhaps, thanks to the string tied to their thumbs, but – nothing more than that –)

“Hey, hun,” Cat greets him at the door. She smiles one of the many smiles Megamind has learned to appreciate – not the beam from their first meeting, nor the pleased grin whenever she drops an awful joke, but the soft one that translates to welcome home. “Come on in.”

Megamind dips his head and accepts the invitation. He’s been in her apartment before – not a lot, but enough to know the layout of the place. He steps into the room – the living room is, for some strange reason, the room the apartment opens into. Really; a hallway would’ve been far safer.

Cat steps aside from the door and throws herself onto the couch with a tired sigh. “You will not believe the day I’ve had at work today – gods, it was fucking terrible – ”

“Oh?” Megamind says, shrugging off the jacket he’d slipped on over the disguise. “Do tell,” he encourages, moving over to sit beside her on the couch.

“It’s nothing big,” Cat says, opening her eyes to give him a fond look, “just, you know. Work.”

(he thinks of big robots and long nights and flashes of light and bloody near-fucking-death –)

“Anyway,” Cat says, before Megamind has the time to react to her previous statement, “I found a new movie I know you’ll absolutely love, if you want to watch it with me?”

Megamind is fully aware of the fact that his features brighten considerably. He doesn’t care at all; Cat deserves to see the positive impact she has on the world. And besides, watching movies with her is always fun. “I accept your humble offer,” Megamind says formally, shifting in the couch to find a better position. “What movie shall we watch, my dear?”

Cat’s cheeks turn a few shades redder, but she grins through the blushing. “I’d prefer it to be a surprise, if you don’t mind, sire.”

Megamind waves his hand lazily. “That is no problem at all,” he notes snottily. “Now, turn on this – thehle-wish-on.”

A few moments pass where nothing happen. Puzzled, Megamind turns to Cat, eyebrow raised –

she’s staring at him, but there’s no humour in her gaze anymore, only cold contemplation. “…television,” she says softly. “It’s pronounced television.”

(testing him she’s testing him)

“Ah,” Megamind says –

(everyone knows that Megamind pronounces words wrong sometimes)

“Thank you,” he finishes. “Television.”

Cat smiles, and the humour is back again. “Alright, then, sire – your wish is my command.” She reaches for the remote, and moments later the screen flickers to life. A beat, pictures start playing on the TV, and –

A delighted gasp falls from Cat’s lips, and then she drops all the games and blurts, “can I see this first?”

“Sure,” Megamind promptly says.

He shouldn’t have agreed so fast, he realizes, when the pictures on the screen pans out, and –

it’s him. Without his disguise. Bad and blue and bald and cackling at Metro Man, who’s in the process of striking a heroic pose.

Megamind recognizes the pictures to be from his most recent Evil scheme. It’s a week or so since it happened, however… this must be a delayed report.

Cat leans forward and makes an intrigued noise.

(interested in his destruction; in his downfall –)

The cameras zoom in on him; he turns to face them, grinning the grin he’d practiced for hours beforehand.

Cat lets out a high-pitched giggle.

Wh -?

The pieces snap into place.

“Wait,” Megamind blurts, puzzled and befuddled and filled with blazing hope, “are you seriously –? Over m – Megamind?”

Cat tears her focus away from the screen in favor of glaring at him, and Megamind realizes with a start that it’s only half-joking. “And why not?” she asks, and now she sounds defensive –

(but – but – but Megamind is Megamind, how can she – how – what –)

(the look in her eyes, the adoring affection – he’s seen it before on her, knows that it’s genuine –)

“First of all,” Cat continues, “he’s fucking adorable.” She says it as if it is the truest reality; as though she knows that if everything else fails, this will still hold true – “Look at those eyes, and his smile – ” She gestures wildly for the screen, motions sharp and short and angry. “There aren’t many guys who could pull of his style and look that good!”

On-screen Megamind raises his leather-clad hand, and a swarm of brainbots rise like a stormy and vengeful cloud behind him.

Megamind begins to gather his wits; he has to give her a reply that makes sense – a garbled mrph? won’t hold against her –

“Second,” Cat says, the word trembling with the weight of her emotions, “give me one bloody example where he’s actually hurt someone – or even tried to!”

He opens his mouth to say that he hasn’t been following a lot of Megamind’s moves.

“And Metro Man doesn’t count!” Cat interrupts him harshly, jabbing a finger in his direction. “He’s bloody fucking invincible. You’re just judging a book by its cover! Like everyone else!”

The notion that Megamind is judging a book by its cover is so surprising and hilarious that it startles all his wits back into place.

He laughs; mostly at the thought that he’s judging himself wrong. “Okay, okay!” he says, before chuckling a bit more. “I didn’t…” Now he hesitates; the confusion and disbelief settle heavy in his stomach. “I didn’t know you felt so strongly about him.”

(she must’ve defended him before, against other people, she must’ve, if she gets so mad –)

Suddenly it seems to dawn on her what she’s said; one last flare in her eyes, and then she slumps over, a sheepish grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Yeah,” she says. “Well. I think he gets the short end of the stick, sometimes.” She looks over at the screen again, the sheepish expression tilting into a softer, more regretful one.

On the screen, Metro Man boasts proudly about how he won the fight. Megamind is sulking in the background, chained and soon-to-be confined by the prison’s four walls.

“I don’t think he’s evil,” Cat whispers, even as screen-Megamind scowls at the Mayor’s back. “I don’t think he’s evil at all.”

Megamind… has a lot to think about, the following days.

(she thinks he’s adorable she thinks he’s adorable she thinks he’s adorable –)

His greatest worry had been Cat discovering his true identity and then promptly leaving him to himself, mad at him for lying and mad at him for being him.

He should tell her – he really, really should – and now that he has proof that she’d be okay with him being, well, Megamind, that choice should be easy to make –

but she’ll be mad, she will, because he’s lied to her about who he truly is since day fucking one –

and the guilt, the tearing, the ripping, the mind-numbing remorse and terror –

it gets worse.

“She thinks I’m adorable,” Megamind admits to Minion the following week. His voice… might have been just a teeny tiny bit dreamy.

“Well, sir,” Minion says, putting down the coffee cup with a little more force than necessary, “you’re dating. I would expect her to think so.”

“Oh, no!” Megamind exclaims, sitting straight in his chair. They’re in the kitchen, Megamind sitting by the table and Minion standing over by the oven, watching over some bacon sizzling in a frying pan. “No, no – she thinks I, as in Megamind, incredibly handsome criminal genius and master of all villainy, is adorable.”

Minion stops what he’s doing. He’s not facing Megamind, he can’t see his expression –

one nervous heart-beat.

Two.

“Sir,” Minion says, turning in his head-piece to fix Megamind with a stern look, his voice soft and dangerously quiet. “I expect to meet her as soon as possible.”

Minion has used this voice only twice before; once when Megamind was a teen, and once after one of the earliest battles with Metro Man. Both had been caused by an intense overload of worry from his dear fishy friend.

“Yes,” Megamind says, not even thinking about the consequences. “Of course.”

Minion nods approvingly, turns back around, and continues to watch over the strips of bacon.

bubsy do you have time to come over today

Megamind looks at his desk, littered with half-finished blueprints and somewhat-thought-out plans for his next scheme.

ofc, he replies, anything for u.

Cat doesn’t say what’s bothering her, she only opens the door with a tired but welcoming nod. Maybe she thinks that he doesn’t notice, but he’s her bonded, there’s a string made of plant-fiber painted purple that says they’re meant for each other, and during the last few months he’s gotten familiar with her expressions.

He sees the hesitancy and remorse and worry in her eyes –

and for the first time in his life, he initiates a hug.

Cat clings to him, arms wrapped tightly around his torso and forehead pressed into his shoulder. Megamind doesn’t say anything, only holds her closer, ready and willing to be her anchor and her strength.

After an embrace that lasts for centuries and seconds Cat lets go. “Bubsy,” she says, quiet and unwavering and eyes downcast, “I’m falling in love with you.”

The world halts, freezes, tilts –

(he’s been terrified of breaking her, terrified of doing something wrong to her, but the months spent by her side has shown him just how much he can love, just how great he can be –)

(he wants to be good for her, wants to give her the world, and he’s no longer afraid of breaking her because he knows he makes her happy, but –)

“No,” Megamind says, taking a step back with a small headshake. He’s over by the door; he could run, if he wanted to. “No, you’re not.”

(she doesn’t love him she loves Bubsy she loves the disguise; she thinks Megamind is adorable, thinks he’s cute, certainly, but she doesn’t love him, and –)

(Megamind isn’t Bubsy, he’s Megamind –)

Cat heaves a shuddering breath. “I – I know this thing – ” She gestures towards the purple string tying them together. “ – only means that we – that we’re – platonic soulmates or what-fucking-ever – but these months – I’ve fallen in love with you, Bubsy – I know you don’t – love me back, or whatever, but – ”

“Don’t love you back?” Megamind asks, shocked and terrified – he’d thought she knew, thought she could feel the love in every brief touch, in every lingering glance, could hear it in every little joke and word – “Don’t love you back?” he repeats, voice rising in pitch. “Cat – I love you, with every fiber of my being – ”

His throat clogs up.

(say it, whispers Megamind’s heart, say it, tell her.)

(do something, begs Megamind’s mind, something, I don’t care, anything – )

Then his vision begins to blur. It’s too much, the pain and the horror and the dark cloud of self-hatred that had just begun to lift with Cat’s help, and it’s too fucking much –

(human he should’ve been human he should’ve been human so he could’ve loved her with everything he has, but he can’t because he’s –)

Megamind –

– twists the dial on the holowatch.

And the disguise fades.

“That’s not the problem,” he whispers.

Cat’s eyes are blown wide within seconds. “– Megamind?” she breathes.

It’s strange – Megamind can pinpoint the exact moment she understands. He sees it in her eyes, sees it in the way she shifts her weight. And then he sees something – else – something tilts, in her expression, something tilts and cracks and mends again, and –

she takes a step closer; cranes her neck to look up at him. “You love me?” she asks, voice a mild whisper void of hesitation or horror.

Megamind forces himself to nod.

“And you’re Bubsy,” Cat says.

It’s not a question.

Megamind nods again.

“Wonderful,” Cat breathes, and then she kisses him.

Megamind has never understood why people describe kissing as something that shoots sparks – it’s a kiss, it’s pressing lips against lips, there shouldn’t be sparks –

– but now he gets it.

He’s willing to bet money that the kiss was supposed to be soft and short and sweet – it’s the sort of thing Cat would do, taking it nice and slow before exploring more –

but the moment he kisses her back, months of tension and guilt and longing flare in between them.

(a pulse of need that doesn’t come from either of them; a warmth; a desire; a wish)

(the feeling of home, and this is his fated – )

Cat’s hands are on his shoulders when she pushes him against the door behind him, mouths working on mapping each other out; she pulls back, just enough to draw a sharp breath and gasp, “ – Megamind – ” She moves to kiss him again, but she pulls away once more before Megamind can respond to the kiss. “ – I suspected – didn’t know, of course – ” Another kiss, more desperate this time, fingers tightening on his shoulders. “ – I do love you – ”

“ – I – realize – now, yes, that – ” Megamind manages to stutter, the next time Cat pulls back. He – desperately – wants, needs –

“ – Megamind – ” Cat repeats, diving in for another brief kiss before seemingly forcing herself to stay back.

Megamind gets it; he wants to talk about this, about them, wants to understand her –

but the bond between them, the string, the plant-fibre that ties them together – it has other plans, and it wants those plans set into action now.

“ – Cirrus – ” Megamind gasps out, “ – it’s – my name – Cirrus – ”

Cat rests her forehead in the nook of his neck for a moment, heaving for breath, the moment a brief second of calm – “Oh, Deus,” Cat whispers, and the words fan across his skin, “that is – ” She presses her lips to his skin, hot and soft and – “ – that is fucking beautiful – ”

“ – ah – I – thank?” he stutters out, half his mind focused on keeping him upright and the other focused on what Cat is saying. There’s not much brainpower left to help him speak in coherent sentences.

“ – Cirrus – ” Cat repeats, pulling back long enough to look him in the eyes, “I – Cirrus, I love – that, love you, fucking – ”

(Megamind needs –)

He kisses her, keeping it careful and soft and slow. It takes Cat by surprise; so much that she doesn’t try to deepen the kiss. “Less talking,” he whispers, when he ends it a moment after, “and more doing.”

Cat laughs; it’s a beautiful sound, even amid all of this, and Megamind captures the sound with his mouth.

(they barely make it to the bedroom.)

(Minion’s wish is granted the next day. He beams, Cat beams, they all beam, and Cat holds Megamind’s hand just as tight as he holds hers when Minion first calls her ma’am.)

(it is, they all know, far from the last.)

(and Megamind lies on the couch in Evil Lair, wearing nothing but a t-shirt and shorts and a pair of socks Cat bought for him. She’s sleeping on his chest with her arms slung around his torso, a content smile on her lips and socks matching his.)

(and Megamind lies on the couch in Evil Lair listening to a heart sing the same melody as he –)

(he glances at the purple string resting between them, shimmering faintly in the dim light – )

(and he has.)

#art trade #meg og mitt #my writing #hakkebakkeskogen #the huckybucky forest #klatremus #mikkel #claus #marvin #clarvin #megamind #commisionwork

15 notes · View notes

hockey-jews · 6 years

Text

For anyone who wants to learn more about Judaism! Also, kind of a post about how to deal with some Things and Stuff. This is a long post so I’ll put it under a read more for those interested:

This is really for an anonymous message I got that described struggles with things that I think many of us struggle with or have in the past: not being “Jewish enough” in the eyes of other Jews due to your heritage being on the “wrong” side (read; on your father’s side), yet still experiencing antisemitism from goyim. Not learning very much, if anything, about Judaism as a child but wanting to learn more as an adult. Not being comfortable with some traditions or laws of Judaism because you are a) a feminist b) LGBT c) an atheist. Living in a place with few to no Jewish spaces. Not feeling welcome in the Jewish community due to any or all of these things.

Book recs!

If you’re the kind of person who enjoys reading (or can at least tolerate it) I highly recommend these books! They’re all books that I have either read/started reading/or plan on reading. (Please keep in mind that none of these are Jewish texts such as the Torah or the Talmud and that I do understand the importance of such religious texts but am not recommending them because I feel those are obvious sources of information)

A Bride for One Night if you aren’t familiar with the Talmud, it’s a collection of writings and explanations of Jewish laws and traditions and it’s old as balls. The author of this book, Ruth Calderon, takes a bunch of Talmudic stories and makes them into these wonderful beautiful stories that are easier to read than the original ones from the 3rd and 6th centuries. Even if you don’t know anything about the Talmud this book is so fascinating and fun to read.

The G-d Who Hates Lies is literally perfect for you if you have issues with how women are viewed and treated in the most traditional sense of Judaism. It’s a really great criticism by people who are extremely qualified to make those criticisms (both are rabbi’s and I think they both have doctorates in theology, specifically Modern Orthodox Judaism, which makes for a really cool viewpoint). I can’t find anything about the third author of this book, who is a woman, but it’s comforting to know that a woman had a part in this as well. Obviously these people love Judaism, they just want to see it adapt to modernity. Just in general it’s a really thoughtful book that challenges dogma.

Jewish Literacy was recommended by an anon (thank you!) The rest of the title is “The Most Important Things to Know about The Jewish Religion, Its People and Its History” so like. Ya get what ya see here folks. HOWEVER I did see a review that mentions there is some Islamophobia and hostility towards Jews who are antizionist. It does genuinely look informative and I haven’t read it myself so I can’t attune to whether or not that review is accurate, but maybe be cautious if you read this in knowing that the author may not be objective.

Book of Mercy made me openly weep and feel something tender and weird in my heart and like. Okay so it’s not informative so much as it’s a book of poetry by Leonard Cohen (he was Jewish if you didn’t know!) He calls his poems “modern psalms” and honestly this would be a good read even if you aren’t religious at all because his writing is just so gorgeous. But it does have references to Judaism and his identity as a Jew

Understanding Judaism is really a “building blocks” kind of book to me, if that makes sense? It’s really informative but also really basic and is fantastic for people who know very little about Judaism or just want a well presented understanding of the core aspects of the Jewish religion. Even if you aren’t a Jew who’s looking to learn or someone who is considering conversion it’s still a good book if you’re interested in world religions regardless of your faith or lack thereof. (man I’m starting to sound pretentious lmao I just mean like, if you’re an atheist or Catholic or whatever, it’s pretty interesting and also this guy is kinda dorky-funny so it makes for an easier read than some other books about religion)

Shmooze I think this is meant to be more for a group to read an discuss, and like, also maybe meant for a younger audience (I’m talking about teenagers so not really that young, but if you’ve been reading dull infodumps by 90 y/o Jewish rabbis with doctorate degrees this is gonna be a change of pace lmao) I should mention that I’ve only read like two pages of this book because I saw it at Barnes and Noble and just kinda briefly checked it out so I don’t know a ton about it but it stuck in my head and the reviews look positive so

Obvious I don’t think you have to read all of those because I haven’t even read all of those so maybe just check one of them out if it seems like it could be helpful to you.

Judaism here on tumblr dot com:

Okay so like. This is really my personal diced onion so take it however you will but keep in mind that this really only reflects things I’ve come across and how I feel.

Obviously there are a lot of really great blogs about Judaism but I don’t have any specific ones to recommend I’m sorry :O I really really hate ~Discourse~ and like, in-depth arguments about the Holocaust because I get so wrapped up in it and let’s be honest, tumblr is all about the discourse and ignorance. That being said, I like to follow other people who are Jewish and blog about whatever because that usually leads to safer discussions and also is a great way to find really helpful thoughts and discussions by other Jews about topics like being LGBT, being a woman, being an atheist, etc. These are just nice to read and also if you aren’t familiar with certain Yiddish or Hebrew terms that are commonly used it’s a good way to see how and when they’re used in certain contexts.

I’m going to tag anything like this that I post here as “good info” just so me and anyone who wants can find this stuff easier. No they won’t necessarily have anything to do with hockey.

Also please be very careful when you’re reading a post that is presenting certain things as facts, always double check what someone is saying because misinformation is spread so quickly, and it’s almost always unintentional. The things that I find genuinely helpful/safe/fun involve opinions, common feelings and experiences, little personal stories and jokes, cool stuff like that.

I’m Jewish on my father’s side :0

Me too boo. Unfortunately that’s an unending discussion, and one that is often held by matrilineal Jews and doesn’t actually include patrilineal Jews, nor does it consider our thoughts/feelings/experiences. Without sounding like an idiot, it is absolutely buckwild to me that there are people who have been raised Jewish, have never known anything other than Jewish tradition, have been subject to antisemitism, but still aren’t considered Jewish.

And then this is where I see matrilineal Jews who hold this viewpoint bring up Reform Judaism, which is one of the three main branches of Judaism and does recognize patrilineall Jews as Jews. I’ve seen some discrepancy as to whether or not patrilineal Jews had to have been raised Jewish in order to be considered Jewish. This is all well and good for Jews like me whose family practices Reform Judaism, but for patrilineal Jews who wish to practice in an Orthodox or Conservative synagogue, it gets tricky.

Basically, yes this is a huge topic that inspires a lot of disagreement, and that sucks, but here’s what it comes down to. No one else is allowed to make you feel inferior because of your heritage. So many people, even modern Orthodox Jews, recognize that certain aspects of Judaism need to adapt to today’s society. I don’t want to offend anyone here, but I really do feel that most matrilineal Jews who don’t consider us Jewish are extremely hypocritical (for a lot of reasons but mostly like...y’all really follow every aspect of Jewish Law? Like do you really? All of it? Girl do u? Or are you maybe just being elitist). Learning about your heritage, talking about shared experiences, combating antisemitism, these are all things that are fair game for you (especially for the anon who said they were atheist) and going to Shabbat services, praying, participating in holy days. That’s all yours if you want it, bubbeleh.

Can I be an atheist Jew?

Sure you can! I, personally, am not an atheist so I wasn’t comfortable finding specific resources about this because I don’t really know much about it? It’s fine with me if you’re atheist that’s none of my business, I just don’t want to direct you to a bad source. But yes, many Jews are atheist, many are secular, I’m sure there are many here on tumblr. It’s absolutely okay, Judaism is an ethnoreligion, and while you may experience Judaism different than the rest of us, you’re still a Jew and still belong.

Here’s an excerpt from a short lil synopsis of Judaism:

These three connotations of Judaism as a monotheistic system, as a literary tradition, and as a historical culture are sometimes viewed separately. For example, there are Jews who see themselves as culturally Jewish, but who are also non-religious or atheist, often identifying more strongly with Jewish “peoplehood” than with traditional understandings of God and Torah. Even so, all Jews would recognize that these three points of reference have shaped and guided Jewish experience through the ages.

Jewish “peoplehood” that they talk about is like. Culture, customs, food, art, history, etc.

One last little note on this, you’ll hear a lot that Judaism focuses more on actions than on beliefs. This is an excellent article that is pretty short and worth reading that I want to include because I think that even if you don’t believe in G-d or even if you are seriously questioning, the focus on just. Doing good. Actively doing good things and trying to be a good person (I know that’s objective but bear with me) is a such a huge part of Judaism that you can try to incorporate into your life without having to subscribe to any sort of dogma or beliefs that you don’t hold. “Judaism is certainly a faith-based tradition. Belief in G-d is central to our religion. It just isn’t a prerequisite. If you are Jewish, you are so regardless of belief.”

But I’m a feminist....

As you should be. This is probably another personal statement you gon’ wanna take with a grain of salt, but I think Judaism, especially in the last 50 years or so, has made huge strides in this. Especially Reform Judaism, but that kind of goes without saying.

Example, my synagogue was founded as a Conservative synagogue. Our website still says we are. I’m not actually sure tbqh, like I said, my family are Reform Jews, and so are most other families in our congregation I think but this is literally the only synagoge for like hundreds of miles so. Anyways our rabbi is female (Rabbi Shaina!) and she does great work, we all love her. She’s really adament on teaching kids that gender shouldn’t keep you from anything, that Judaism is for all Jews, that it should enhance our lives. She wears a tallis, lays her tefillin, and reads from the Torah.

My point here is that while this isn’t like, the end of misogyny in Judaism as we know it, it’s still a big deal in most religions to have a woman as their religious leader, essentially a position of religious power. For men to accept a woman as a religious leader is not something that is super common in most religions. And we’re like, a tiny congregation over a hundred miles away from anyone else, technically a Conservative synagogue, that’s super loving and accepting of a feminist running our shit... female rabbis are super common and I think it speaks a lot to how we’re progressing as a religion. Reform Judaism is going to be your best bet when it comes to tolerance but knowing that all three of the main branches are progressing, at least with this, is really comforting to me.

However, that’s an extremely one sided view and doesn’t really show the issue as a whole. This super short article (? not sure) is a bit pessimistic in my mind but presents the other side of things and gives a good explanation of the traditional sources of misogyny in Judaism, so this could further your understanding as well.

By no means are we perfect but we’re workin on it. Look into Jewish Feminism though, if you have the time. That article is just a lil intro to the topic.

I’m Q*eer/LGBT and I’m not sure y’all are gonna be cool with that...

Well this one’s a doozy.

I’ll kick this right off by presenting an article that is objective and does not reflect the author’s opinion, just lays out the issues at hand. It also has some links to other good pieces, including one cool story about a transgender man, Rafi Daugherty, embracing his role as a father and details his experience with pregnancy and giving birth. I should mention that I am cisgender so I’m interpreting this article through a different point of view, but it really does make a point of celebrating Rafi and his daughter and sharing their story. It does include a little cultural background context, but this is a positive story that I think deserves to be shared :)

Then there’s this statement from the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism that confirms its absolute acceptance and support of LGBT Jews.

On the other side of things, there are still homophobic and intolerant Jews. Conversion camps were not just a Christian thing, there were Jewish conversion camps as well, which is horrific. Idk what to say because I think homophobia and transphobia in Judaism is really similar to what you would find in Christian settings.

I’m bisexual and I feel completely welcomed by other Jews who know this about me, and I certainly don’t feel any less Jewish because of it.

I live in a place where Jewish spaces are rare.

I really hate to disappoint with this one but I don’t have any specific sources or anything like that. Alls I got to say is that’s why the internet is so great? I really don’t feel like that’s helpful at all, but I think for the most part, the Jewish side of tumblr is pretty accepting and welcoming. Obviously that’s not always gonna be true though idkdjaskfl;dj

I spose with this one I wanna encourage anyone who has any good resources for involvement or something like that to reply to this post or drop by my inbox and let me know! Or maybe just your thoughts on some Jewish spaces you’ve encountered?

I hope this was helpful

In conclusion, don’t let anyone make you feel less Jewish. Your sexual identity, gender identity, and even your belief in G-d doesn’t take away from your Jewishness. I’d like to say that since I started delving into Judaism a little more I’ve found a lot of peace. And yeah that sounds cliche and also vague but it’s really a breath of fresh air to learn about my family and know more about this community. Also if you’re comfortable with or willing to try prayer, even if you’re atheist, it can be a good way to decompress sometimes, a really therapeutic kind of way to voice your thoughts and feelings and reflect on them.

There’s so much information and culture to delve into but it’s so so worth it to learn and I’m really happy for you that you’re interested in getting more in touch with your Jewish roots.

If any of these links don’t work and you’d like to see them let me know!

#this took 78 years sorry #ok for anyone to rb #there are TYPOS galore I'm sorry #judaism

30 notes · View notes

violetsystems · 3 years

Text

#personal

The weather is back to being amazing again. This is the horrible curse about Chicago. For maybe five or six months out of the year, the temperature is gorgeous if not sometimes extreme. Now that the AC is on, my cat sleeps like a human in bed often. A little human. I wake up a few times a night to find her in different spots. Mostly just waiting for me to feed her wet food in the morning. I still feed the cat outside my door. My immediate neighbors do as well. I think when you think about common ground between people in society you have a good starting point there. They share the porch here. Sometimes it’s a little claustrophobic. But it is never trans or homophobic. I think people like myself who openly identify as straight and cis could do a better job at empathizing. But people are already bothered enough by society to where I try to tread lightly as to how I do this. Nobody wants to be patronized. It’s tacky. So it’s always the little things in this neighborhood that communicate the most. Hanging a plant for your elderly neighbor. Shoveling the snow early in the morning in the dead of winter. In the summer, it’s a little easier to be patient with the ways people try to communicate. And then there’s the glaringly obvious clues that people don’t really give a shit. I went to do the laundry yesterday. It’s a small building so not a lot of traffic down there. The trash is usually filled with laundry supplies. I went down there and somebody had deposited a U Kotex tampon box in the trash. This act alone baffles me but it’s such a familiar thing. I would call it a microaggression. And here’s how I would explain it. Back when I was shoveling the snow, somebody had scrawled a message in my immediate neighbor’s doorstep. Part of it had been snowed over but the message I could read simply said “Gay people live here.” I couldn’t tell who wrote it. I worried that my neighbors didn’t. In short, I cared silently about how this would be perceived. So I erred on the side of being inclusive and shoveled it last. Either way, it was information I could choose to respect or neglect. Months later, finding a tampon box in the shared laundry room when you know some of your neighbor’s identify as nonbinary at the least is sus. I did the same as I did back in winter. I disposed of it before anyone got the wrong idea. Again I’m no detective. But it’s obvious to me people don’t care about how that might make somebody feel. I do. I don’t go knocking on somebody’s door and loudly exclaim “why are you throwing your tampon box in the trash?” It could have been them for all I know. So like I do often, I fix the situation before an incident arises. And nobody knows it was me. I know for a fact certain neighbors of mine are completely passive aggressive. The couple behind me definitely gets off on not locking the gate behind them. It just so happens my immediate neighbors and I are the ones who seem to get targeted for package theft. I’m used to being targeted and smeared. When I see other people getting fucked with it largely concerns me. I can’t always erase the fact that people often play elaborate pranks on me in public. Where I live and sleep is a different matter. The problem with microaggressions in society is pretty simple. Bullying never went away. It’s normalized as a badge of courage. A rite of passing in society. A hazing and a reprogramming of sorts. Some of us feel pressured by society to fight back. To act up. To tear down. And then some of us have fought that battle alone for years only to be ostracized and explained away. I spoke with a friend recently about being bored with Chicago and alienated. They replied flippantly “Well everybody knows you aren’t really a big fan of being social.” Everybody also knows I flew to Asia fourteen times by myself over a five year period. The attention to detail only goes so far before it has jumped the shark.

Any sort of a sacred communication, writing or otherwise will eventually degrade into noise. People in Chicago definitely don’t like you being you outside of a clearly, organized group. I was reading something about Pride recently how the organizers did not want police involved at all. It sounds like a no brainer to me. Pride started as a riot. A necessary response to oppression and repression. As an aging straight white man I don’t really see myself at pride. Neither do I see police belonging there as well. And yet. The police feel left out or something? When Black Lives Matter makes a valid point about police being the number one threat to the very definition of the movement this is a threat how? When you’ve had your civil rights shredded daily in broad daylight just being a regular person and I mouth the words ACAB all of the sudden I’m a threat to society? Somehow me opening my mouth and speaking up for other people makes me a target. And yet I do it pretty clearly and succinctly under my rights of freedom of speech. It gets abused. Toyed with. Tampered with. Just like any basic infiltration of any cool thing or movement here in America. No matter how many years I see these people try to throw a wrench in independent movements thinking for themselves, I’m struck at how amateur they become. America can’t have you thinking for yourself without supervision. It bullies people into being afraid. It infiltrates with a smile and a well meaning look only to poison the well and look back accusingly. “Why aren’t you thirsty?” It sticks it’s fucking nose into everything and acts like its the champion or savior when it has done nothing except play the villain. Good cop. Bad Cop. Still a fucking cop. And it doesn’t actually have a leg to stand on. It uses other people to do it’s dirty work. Pits movements against each other to neutralize dissent. It takes over the core history and rewrites itself into the story as the main character. It buried people’s authentic narratives in favor of lumping them into a moderated congregation. It talks but never lets you speak. When it does, it talks over you and mansplains everything you’ve been saying all along wrong. It’s baked into the culture. Traditional American doublespeak is an advancement of Orwellian lying. People think they can smile so sweetly and say absolutely nothing of substance. That these little pockets of resistance need to be ironed out and managed. That autonomy isn’t an actual survival reflex. Of all the people you know who have been fucked with and survived. It’s me. And I am just some normal dude on the internet. And yet I can’t speak loud enough in mainstream society to get people to understand I have a point. That people gaslight, gatekeep, and gestapo their way into putting you in your place. The shit I’ve seen here in America let alone Chicago would have Germany in 1940 blushing. And yet, I don’t really put up with any of it. It’s fucking clown show level cosplay. Rich people who think they can walk through walls of ethics, privacy and culture to throw around their weight. People don’t like me these days because I interfere with them directly making a profit. Imagine that. I’ve been targeted for everything. Made to look like I’m crazy, old and alone. And now I have to deal with billionaires afraid of where I’ve invested my meager retirement funds. And I deal with it everyday. Sharks swimming around me in Teslas and T-Shirts trying to intimidate me into throwing in the towel. After the towel was thrown at me repeatedly. I can’t explain how ridiculous this is. I can explain how insensitive it is to throw a fucking tampon in the laundry room when your neighbors are gender queer. And then as an ally, people think it’s my job to confront this. I do. I put all in the trash where it belongs. Where the racoons and my civil rights still dwell. You don’t need these people in your business. You don’t need to feel guilted by the oppressor into thinking there is something wrong with you not trusting authority. They openly lie, plot and spread deceit. So don’t let them into your scenes, movements or personal lives and move on.

This is easy to say when you live outside the blast radius of culture war. I happen to enjoy the freedom of living in a city just as much as everybody. It is something else to manage the personal and organizational politics therein. New York to me is a little less pretentious and stuck up about the status quo than the midwest. The midwest is clingy and clumsy about how it asserts it’s power in a vacuum. And Chicago right now is just one huge lawless fucking vacuum. I would love to write about it. Maybe even sit down for a chat with the Mayor about how she plans to fuck up the next two years of being half in control. But we all know I’ll never make it as a journalist. I’ll never have the opportunity here to be acknowledged as a writer. I’ll never be recognized for anything I’ve ever done because it would require an inconvenient truth to be brought out into the open. You only make it in this town if you are connected. You only get to be free if you let the powers that be have their say. It’s only ok to survive if you are transparent in everything you do. And when you are, your information is spread out to the point it’s a liability at best. People already know everything about you including where you fit in the hierarchy of capitalism. I belong on the outskirts with all the “freaks.” Being bullied like it’s 1990 all over again. These people never learned to be better. So they simply get off on judging everybody else by their lackluster fucking standards. You can stand up to them. You can learn how to tell if someone is being genuine or trying to subvert your power. You can say no. You can not let these fuckers into your most trusted places and spaces. And you can fuck with them back if they do. For me, it’s not a good look for me to take the bait. This entire process has been hopeless to me. I have learned nothing good about how real society operates at its bitter core. What I can tell you is this. People tell you whatever they think will make you feel good. And if you question their motives, they will make you feel guilty first before getting caught in a lie. If you catch them in a lie, they act like you are crazy. And this is the rhythm of how protest, resistance, and freedom is squelched in America. Nobody is fighting back. I would know. Because I am literally exhausted making this point as an ally for years on the internet. We need to organize and yet we’re too busy ripping each other apart. We know we have common ground. We know we connect in genuine ways still. And people are scared to. They’re just coming out of their shells. I think the whole point of things like Pride were to create autonomous zones where people could feel free. To feel like they weren’t judged or watched. I know what it is like to be surveilled on levels I’m embarrassed to share. I live that hell every day of my life for reasons unknown. I don’t know how it was brought on me. It hurts. Every fucking day of my life to be watched and misunderstood. I created a sacred space for myself to communicate this. A place where I can be proud of who I was and talk about it. A place where I could catch my breath and continue to resist and to think. And there’s no shortage of right wing nuts who argue their stupid clubhouses need to be protected by a flag most people wipe their ass with. Respect is a two way street. I’m just directing traffic. And I’m warning people around my neighborhood specifically. I’ve seen the passive aggressive judgmental bullshit go too far and I’m not going to let it go by unnoticed. I know just who is completely full of shit out here and why. And people trust that I know because it’s my job to pay attention to detail. I don’t get paid shit to be a good person. But you don’t get away with being racist, homophobic, transphobic or any other shit like that on my watch. I will let you know on site. One tampon at a time. <3 Tim

0 notes

booksaremyoxygenn · 6 years

Text

Ready Player One: Book Review & Discussion

“We’d been born into an ugly world, and the OASIS was our one happy refuge.”

If you love video games and the 80s, you MUST read this book. USA Today’s comparison of Ready Player One to Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory couldn't have been more spot on, but instead of the inheritance of a man who owns a chocolate factory he is playing for the inheritance of a video game creator.

Overall Rating: 4.5 / 5 Stars

My biggest argument is that because there was so much info and teaching about the 80s and video game references it felt choppy and it was hard to get lost in the book. However I absolutely loved learning all of those fascinating pieces of information. There were surprisingly many great life lessons in this book and I feel like I am walking away more knowledgeable.

Age Recommendation: Well.... it depends on the child. It does curse a few times (but let’s be honest the kids already know the words, the aim isn’t for them not to learn it but to know not to use it.) However there is a bit of a lengthy section on things I would not even want my 13 year old sister reading on 193-194 so I recommend you take their book, rip that page out and then they are all ready to go. They will never even miss it. I think there are great life lessons in this book though for a young teen age group like the importance of logging off and living offline and not getting wrapped up in trying to constantly escape the real world. It talks about how people should be judged by their personality not their appearance. If we could simply choose out skin color, gender, and appearance like an avatar, life would be easier but life doesn’t work that way so accept people the way they are. You may surprise yourself with who your closest friends up being.

Spoiler- Free Review:

Wade just really doesn’t like his lot in life, whether that be in the real world when he’d rather be in a video game or that he is in the 2040s when he’d rather be born in the the 80s, or at the least before the Global Energy Crisis. Though he doesn’t mind living in OASIS soaking up the endless knowledge. The vast source of all books, movies, art, history, videogames, and, most importantly, information on James Halliday. OASIS is like the internet but with VR glasses only 10x more detailed, advanced, and infinite. Wade doesn’t even go to a real school he goes through the virtual reality of OASIS. “In OASIS, you could become whomever and whatever you wanted to be, without ever revealing your true identity, because your anonymity was guaranteed.” (pg 57) When James Halliday, inventor of OASIS, dies and leaves his fortune (240 billion dollars) to the first player to find the three keys hidden within his own video game, the world goes crazy in pursuit. Though after numerous years no one had found a single key, until Wade. That’s how the story begins.

I loved that Cline’s writing encourages readers who know nothing about the 80s or video games to read this book. That has been a massive concern for people before they pick up this book, that they won’t understand the references. To be honest, there were many hidden “eggs” in the text that I saw that I knew were references that I just didn’t understand. (Which was still cool and I enjoyed looking them up and learning more.) However, all of the big, important references he explains in the book and he doesn’t make you feel stupid for not knowing but explains it clearly for those of us who aren’t experts. I genuinely feel more intelligent by reading this book and now know a lot more about pop culture in the 80s. Who knows this all may come in handy on Trivia Night? I highly recommend this book for a fun, nostalgic read.

SPOILER Review / Book Discussion:

Isn’t it scary how possible this all could be? With virtual reality continually advancing (in real life) how much longer will it take until people go to school in virtual reality like Wade or before the internet takes on this new form?

Though obviously in Wade’s world as technology has advanced his real world has been given up on. The stacks, while a great concept and super cool looking on the front cover, are atrocious living conditions. Though I must give Wade kutos on his battery powered heater and computer but really just his van in general. It makes me want to make my own Bat Cave inside a van. This was when I knew what his advantage would be in this game, he was a self-teacher, self-motivator, and dedicated his whole life to the hunt.

One of my favorite parts about Cline’s writing was how it was constantly breaking stereotypes and speaking about important topics. I really appreciated the backstory that he gave Halliday. Especially how even though he wasn’t good at school he became a multi-billionaire. I am so tired of the assumption that being good at school has a direct correlation with future success. So many people who have changed the world never went to college, dropped out, or did poorly in high school. Another thing that I loved was the fact that this whole story wouldn’t have happened if Ogden Marrow (Og) wouldn’t have walked over to Halliday when he was sitting alone and invited him to play Dungeons and Dragons. It reminds me how much can change by a simple act of kindness and stepping out of your comfort zone to talk to new people. This whole story wouldn’t have happened, their world may have been drastically different if it wasn’t for Og’s invite. My favorite part though was how he had Asperger’s autism because my older brother has it as well and I could see the connections. Halliday’s lack of desire to express social skills, inability to step into other people’s shoes, and his few unhealthy obsessions were the most common traits. However I wish he wouldn’t have made the connections between Halliday’s crazy side and his Aspergers because that gives a bad name to this type of autism. (I mean you can’t win every battle right?)

One thing that really bothered my is how indifferent Wade was to risking everyone’s lives in the Stacks during his meeting with IOI. Once he realized he wasn’t actually gambling his own life because he wasn’t at home then it didn’t bother him anymore. He was willing to risk that. I understand that his aunt was cruel to him and that there were thieves and rapists roaming around the stacks but that’s not a good enough excuse as to why his conscious was clear about all those people he played a part in murdering. He said that there were no survivors. I understand that his other option was be enslaved to IOI but he is very smart, he could have figured out an alternative where hundreds of uninvolved people don’t die. (pg 146)

I personally love when authors put deep meaning into characters, places, animals and other things’ names. I loved that Art3mis was the greek god of the hunt and that Wade was Parzival. “On the day the Hunt began, the day I’d decided to become a gunter, I’d renamed my avatar Parzival, after the knight of Arthurian legend who had found the Holy Grail.” (pg 28) I love when author’s twist different stories together like that and give character’s deeply meaningful names. Like Alaska in John Green’s Looking for Alaska, or Katniss from The Hunger Games whose name is from a plant that is latin for archer. I prefer a bit more meaning than when Rainbow Rowell named the twins in Fangirl Cath and Wren because the mother didn’t know she was going to have twins so she split up the name Catherine. Though I do apprecaite it more than when authors just randomly name thier characters. (Also, Darth Vader’s name is literally Dark Father in Dutch so his name is a spoiler in itself.) I applaud Cline for his good choice in names.

The first task was where players went into the Tomb of Horrors from Dungeons & Dragons to play Joust against Acereak. It was amusing to me but as someone who doesn’t know the first thing about Dungeons and Dragons the references were lost on me. However this line really stuck me as funny..... “It suddenly occurred to me just how absurd this scene was: a guy wearing a suit of armor, standing next to an undead king, both hunched over controls of a classic arcade game.” (pg 82) The whole time after he met Acererak I just imagined him going from his scary, glowing eyes to his best friend playing a video game and them fist bumping each other. Like I genuinely wanted them to become friends. Haha.

The first gate was where players played Dungeons of Daggorath to open the gate where they had to say and act all the lines of the character David Lightman in the film WarGames. This was my favorite task / gate he had to do and I wish I had my own version for The Hunger Games where I could be Katniss. Anyone else agree? They called them “Fliksyncs” (112) and I genuinely think if they make something like it in real life, it could be my favorite invention of all time. You would get to walk, talk, and live the life of your favorite character, your heroes, or be 1/2 of your favorite OTPs. ( I would gladly be Clary to play besides Jace from The Mortal Instruments... just putting it out there.)

A really important message that spread throughout the span of the book was that the internet (OASIS in RPO’s case) can take over our lives. ”It had become a self-imposed prison for humanity,” he wrote, “A pleasant place for the world to hide from its problems while human civilization slowly collapses, primarily due to neglect.” (pg 120) How much truer does that get?? Than once Wade won the egg even Halliday admitted that that was one of his biggest regrets, not logging off and living life the way it was meant to be, truly using your senses and awakening your body instead of constantly trying to mute it and hide yourself. “I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didn’t know how to connect with the people there. I was afraid, for all all of my life. Right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be. it is also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real. Do you understand?” (pg 364) I think that is something people across the globe can relate to. We could all use a lesson in learning when to turn off our screens and fully engage in the world around us.

Another really important message was during that OH MY GOSH! AECH REVEAL!.... which at first I felt like it changed everything but that’s the whole point, it didn’t change anything. She was still the same person she had always been. We see what we want to see in a person when we make assumptions about them from what they look like. It’s just a genuine reminder of how the lines between gender are so fluid and it doesn’t matter what you are born but how you act. I’m not even referencing transgender specifically but just boys being free to like pink and girls feeling free to be obsessed with Star Wars and video games. Though there was another lesson in this which was how she chose to be a white, male avatar, because her mother told her it would help her get treated better, even in the virtual world. “In Marie’s opinion, the OASIS was the best thing that had ever happened to both women and people of color. From the very start, Marie has used a white male avatar to conduct all of her online business, because of the marked difference it made in how she was treated and the opportunities she was given.” (pg 320) Why is this so painfully true?? I really loved what Wade said after he found out, “We’d connected on a purely mental level. I understood her, trusted her, and loved her as a friend. None of that had changed, or could be changed by anything as inconsequential as her gender, or skin color, or sexual orientation.” (pg 321) Though I will admit I am glad that Cline made Ache a lesbian because I was worried she was going to confess her love to him and then Wade would have to choose.... and there just wasn’t enough pages left in the book for all that drama. Plus I really love when books allow guys and girls to just be friends without every liking each other romantically.

The final thing, that I wouldn’t dream of ending this review/discussion without talking about is... Art3mis. Can we talk about how she started out such a strong character who was a fighter, independent blogger and full time badass who knows exactly how she plans on saving the world with the prize money from the egg. But then as time goes on she transforms more into a love interest than a fierce competitor. I think she sees this as well which is why she leaves him to focus on the competition. Though at the very end when she finally meets Wade in person she does that thing that Reese Witherspoon talks about in her Woman of the Year speech. Where Art3mis, the female, turns to Wade, the male, and pretty much says, what do we do now? This is a phrase Reese says she hates reading the most and is usually written by scripts with no female involved in the writing. She says “Now you do you know any woman in any crisis situation.. who has absolutely no idea what to do?” Reese made a good point in saying that it’s top woman stop playing the damsel in distress because we so rarely are. Art3mis went from this total badass who could carry her own to a self conscious, love interest. However, I am so glad that Art3mis gave up Wade for the hunt in some ways because if she would have given up her passions and her life long goal for a boy, I would have been more insulted. Personally, I just really like strong, female leads and am getting tired of women being accessories to males. I’m also tired of the never ending line of self conscious characters (both female and male) who find their self worth and beauty once their romantic interests informs them that it exists. So thank you to characters like Celaena Sardothien, Alaska Young, and Margo Roth Spiegelman for showing the world that it’s cool to love yourself and know you are amazing. Though I was still rooting for Art3metis because of her strong will and good intentions for the prize.

In the end everything seemed to fall perfectly in place which made me so happy. No loose threads and a beautiful, sappy, happy ever after. The character development for Wade was so great and I felt happy walking away from this book knowing that things were going well for him.

Favorite Quotes:

1.) How the protagonist, Wade, feels about video games is how I feel about books...

"Playing old video games never failed to clear my mind and set me at ease. If I was feeling depressed or frustrated about my lot in life, all I had to do was tap the Player One button, and my worries would instantly slip away as my mind focused itself on the relentless pixelated onslaught on the screen in front of me. There, inside the game's two-dimensional universe, life was simple" (pg 14)

2.) Me when I get into a good book series....

“I was obsessed. I wouldn’t quit. My grades suffered. I didn’t care.” (pg 63)

3.) “Spending time with her was intoxicating. We seemed to have everything in common. We shared the same interests. We were driven by the same goal. She got all my jokes. She made me laugh. She made me think. She changed the way I saw the world. I’d never had such a powerful, immediate connection with another human being before. Not even with Aech.” (pg 174)

4.) “I was watching a collection of vintage ‘80′s commercials when I paused to wonder why cereal manufacturers no longer included toy prizes inside every box. It was a tragedy, in my opinion. Another sign that civilization was going straight down the tubes.” (pg 176)

5.) “And then one night, like a complete idiot, I told her how I felt.” (pg 179)

6.) “No one in the world ever gets what they want and that’s beautiful.” (pg 199)

7.) “I stood outside her palace gates for two solid hours, with a boombox over my head, blasting “In Your Eyes” by Peter gabriel at full volume.” (pg 203)

8.) “Art3mis had led me to believe that she was somehow hideous but now I saw that nothing could have been further from the truth. To my eyes, the birthmark did absolutely nothing to diminish her beauty. If anything, the face I saw in the photo seemed even more beautiful to me than that of her avatar, because I knew it was this one was real.” (pg 292)

9.) “In Marie’s opinion, the OASIS was the best thing that had ever happened to both women and people of color. From the very start, Marie has used a white male avatar to conduct all of her online business, because of the marked difference it made in how she was treated and the opportunities she was given.” (pg 320)

10.) “We’d connected on a purely mental level. I understood her, trusted her, and loved her as a friend. None of that had changed, or could be changed by anything as inconsequential as her gender, or skin color, or sexual orientation. (pg 321)

Discussion Questions:

1.) Would you apply for the virtual OASIS education like Wade?

When Wade talks about his classes and how he is able to travel through a human heart, visit the Louvre, Jupiter’s moons and more it makes me think that our education system could be so much better with this technology. For one, he discusses how discipline isn’t a problem, how Wade can mute out bullies, and how even the teachers liked the system so much more. It gives students the ability to do things like Wade did and go to chat rooms with his friends in his free time and hang out with people he likes and avoid / mute the ones he doesn’t. I think there are major problems like affordability and the fact that you miss out on real human interaction that scientists have proven is needed for a healthy mind, body, and soul.

2.) If you were a gunter, would you join a clan or stay solo?

In the end I think that part of the lesson Holliday was trying to teach is that you need other people to succeed. You need help and can’t do everything on your own. Why else would he have made the door only open with three keys?

3.) If you were Wade would you sell out to sponsors, movie and book people, and the Suxors? or would you risk it all on the chance of being the first to find the egg?

4.) What movie would you want to enter into like Wade did for the first gate for a “Syncflik”? Could you complete the dialogue for a whole movie?

5.) Did they fake drink at the bar at Og’s party because they hadn’t ever been able to eat or drink inside the OASIS before?

6.) Has social media become obsolete in their world or is the avatar practically their form of social media? Or instead of trying to impress people with how they went to the beach or the expensive Louis Vuittons they just bought, do they put their energy into impressing through their OASIS accounts?

7.) Doesn’t IOI trying to capitalize on OASIS sound a lot like the government trying to end net neutrality? I think this whole story is a lot more realistic than most of us would like to admit to ourselves. (pg 33)

Movie Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSp1dM2Vj48

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Scj3wiIcSu0&t=115s

I really hope they keep the Rocky Horror Show scene (pg 179) in the movie because I want to see them have fun and be laid back together. Plus it would be really funny. It was super entertaining in Perks of Being A Wallflower when Charlie has to be in the show. Also, I saw the zero gravity dance floor and the revamped Delorean in the movie trailer and can’t wait to see more of that. (pg 182)

The only thing that would make me immediately hate this movie is if they don’t give Art3mis her birthmark and so far in the trailer I noticed that they have only distinctly shown one side of her face but in the clip where she is sitting in a chair across from Wade you can see most of her face and I didn’t see any scar. What a missed opportunity? Unless they are having her cover it in the first half of the movie with makeup or something. The greatest parts of this book were the lessons learned and I think him meaning that he would love her no matter what she looked like in person because he loved who she was is a crucial part of the story and the birthmark plays a large role in that. It was an opportunity to give people who had similar situations like birthmarks have someone that looked like them in a movie to relate to. I think it really could have been something special.

The other thing that is a bit of a turn off is the body form they gave Ache in the movie because it means that she won’t be able to have that moment talking about how she chose a white, male avatar because of how she felt at a disadvantage as a African American woman and wanted her avatar to be able to escape that. Also the actress they cast is thin so it is another missed opportunity.

Also the choice of the song from Willy Wonka “Pure Imagination” was genius for the trailer. It was beyond perfect!

Side Note:

Also, if you would like to watch part 2 of this book... it’s called WALL-E. There are different characters but it is definitely what Wade’s planet earth is going to look like very soon. They were all absorbed in the internet and forgot about real life and how to make connections, just like this book. I mean Wade even notices his weight gain from being overly absorbed into the game. (pg 196)

18 notes · View notes

codecrafttechnologies · 4 years

Text

The Fine Art of Presentation

Thesaurus defines presentation as

A meeting at which something, especially a new product or idea, or piece of work, is shown to a group of people

Introduction

Let’s take out the obvious from this statement. Presentations happen at the gatherings of people. Usually, a large number. And it’s usually done by a single person or a small group of people. Presentations are made to showcase new products, provide information, update on progress, describe alternatives, etc. Depending on the context of the gathering, a presentation can serve different purposes. A presentation in a board meeting about sales figures helps in formulating strategies. A presentation to a group of students helps in teaching a new skill. A presentation in a conference like TED helps in spreading an idea. So we can see that irrespective of what a presentation is, it serves different purposes. The audience is diverse, the time and place of presentation will vary. Some presentations have to be brief, and some have to be formal. Some need humour. Some have to be precise. Thus it’s safe to say that Presentations do not have a one size fits all solution. Presentations are, in fact, tailor-made for a specific audience, gathering, and purpose.

Need for Presentation

What is the primary purpose of giving a presentation?

Why can’t the intended audience simply read and understand what the subject matter is?

It certainly will save time and logistics effort. As we discussed above, a presentation is done for a wide array of purposes. Students give presentations to show their understanding of a subject. A tech CEO gives a presentation about his company’s next best product. A government official gives a presentation to the media. It’s safe to conclude that all the presenters have something to share, to tell. The art of sharing, explaining, convincing is best conveyed through a mixture of communication mediums. Like dialogue, audio/video, images. All of which are central to any effective presentation. Unlike reading and learning which do not have all them. A presentation is dynamic by nature. It can be interspersed with humour, Q & A, trivia, genuine emotions to make it more effective. The goal that a presentation strives to achieve,

Inform or show, or teach or tell, can be done with other mediums as well. Like reading, watching videos, etc. But the element of human interaction in presentations and the synergy with dynamic elements like images, videos, facts, figures makes it more appealing

Best Practises

Even though presentations serve different purposes, the scale of a presentation matters, the size of the audience varies. As discussed above, a presentation does have a central tenet

To educate, inform, update, or convince the audience.

Hence there are certain best practices that any presenter can incorporate into his presentation to make it impactful. These best practices are classified into Pre Presentation Practise and during presentation practice.

Pre Presentation

This is the period before the presentation. Everything a presenter does before the actual presentation is summarised here. Let’s have a look at some of the best practices.

Know the Audience

Master the Subject

Timing and amount of data

Styles and Themes

1)Know the audience

This and the next point are perhaps the most important considerations for preparing a presentation. Who are the people who will be attending the presentation? Students, CxOs, Bureaucrats, Media personality, Housewives, layman, a mixture of everyone? Knowing who will attend the presentation will help prepare a presentation that caters to their needs. Other factors that need to be considered are the audience’s cultural sensibilities, the venue, the current mood politically, culturally, if relevant. Ask yourself, if I was in the audience, would I have loved to hear a particular point? If yes, then you have a good candidate for inclusion.

2)Master the subject

An absolute no brainer this one! If you are presenting something and someone is investing their time on it, it’s your responsibility to make it worth everyone’s time. This can only be done by mastering the subject. Understanding the nuances and subtle points about the subject matter helps deliver the information better to the audience.

3)Timing and amount of Data

While preparing the presentation, it is essential to determine at the outset, how much, and what information should be conveyed in the presentation. There are various rules of thumbs for this. E.g., a popular one by renowned venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki is

A presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.

Presentations should be concise. To the point, every word should have some purpose. General facts, widely known theories, repetition is a strict no-no. Remember to keep it relevant and to the point

4) Styles & Themes

It is necessary to have a beautiful, clean, and minimalistic presentation to convey your ideas/data/facts better. What is the definition of beautiful? It is a very relative term. The style, theme, colours of the presentation should match the information it seeks to convey. Colour psychology is an essential aspect of human understanding. The style and the theme of your presentation should match the occasion and mood of the event as well. Leveraging the power of a beautiful themed UX helps in building an excellent presentation. However, take care that it’s not over-styled as well. The theme should boost the presentation, not overshadow it.

Presentation

Now that the prep work is done, it’s time to walk the talk! It’s presentation time.

What are the best practices for that?

Rehearsing

Body Language, Interacting

Present Facts and Fiction

1)Rehearsing

This is not precisely a pre-presentation step, but rehearsing a presentation is of great help. Preferably with a mock audience like a friend. It helps to identify where more time is being spent.

Where does the pronunciation need correction?

What is the tone of the presentation?

Is the presentation speed okay?

Are there any typos?

Essentially, all such things that need a second look. By filtering or rectifying such things that we identify in a rehearsal, a presentation can be improved. Rehearsing helps in calming the nerves and helps you in identifying any unknowns in your presentation

2)Body language, Interacting

How you present yourself and how you present the subject influences the outcome a lot. The audience is always receptive to a confident demeanour of the presenter. Make eye contact with the audience, particularly the ones who are receptive. Avoid excess gesturing with hands. Just let your natural moments come and go as you present the facts. Equally important is the tone of your voice. It should be authoritative, yet sympathetic at the same time. A stressed-out, condescending tone will elicit a negative response from the audience.

3)What to present Facts and Fiction

An ideal presentation should contain just the right amount of facts wrapped in a description with examples. Avoid presentations which are nothing but slides and slides of numbers. At the same time, presentations should contain enough numbers and stats to prove your point. It should not be too informal. A presentation can begin with an anecdote, story, which is an indirect reference to what is going to follow. An ideal presentation should have an objective, description of what it’s aiming to achieve and a solution.

Bad Practise

What we saw are standard practices to give an excellent presentation. Similarly, there are some standard practices to avoid while giving presentations.

Over Explanation

OverSimplification

Negative Traits, talking about self

Being Nervous about being Nervous

1)Over explanation

This is a common mistake many presenters make. Over explaining a topic. Other than sounding condescending, it leads to a waste of time and a failed presentation. While researching a topic, a presenter should make certain assumptions about shared knowledge and facts. In the rare event of this being proved wrong, a presenter can extemporaneously explain the same.

2)Oversimplification

Over-explanation is a strict no-no. On the other side, we have oversimplification. Oversimplification is also a mistake. Never forget the presentation is intended to provide some information to the audience about which they have no concrete idea so far. Otherwise, there was no point in the presentation. The heart of the matter or the presentation’s crux must be conveyed in a simple and easy-to-understand manner. A vague description or passing reference to the central point will not go well with the audience, particularly the ones who are really looking forward to taking away something from the presentation. The line between oversimplification and over-explanation is relatively narrow. The presenter has to tread it carefully.

3)Negative traits, talking about self

Avoid being critical of anything. If your presentation’s objective is to highlight something wrong, highlight it constructively. Avoid blaming, mocking, or offending statements. Similarly, do not use the venue as a way of soapboxing your opinion or extolling personal virtues. Remember, the objective is to educate the listener about something. The objective is not to present yourself or your presentation as better than something. Let the audience decide that!

4) Being nervous about being nervous

Putting yourself in a position where it’s easy to be judged is fairly nerve-wracking for many. In all probability, the audience understands that. Moreover, it’s quite reasonable as a human trait. Please do not focus on what might go wrong; focus on the presentation matter. No matter how you see yourself, do not try to present it in someone else’s manner. Present it the way it comes to you vis a vis style, body language, tone. Practicing in front of small gatherings before the main event is always helpful.

Ending

Just like an exciting introduction that involves capturing the attention of your audience, the finale of a presentation should leave the audience asking for more. It should ignite their curiosity by making them ask questions to themselves long after the presentation is done. A fitting conclusion helps in solidifying the presentation in the minds of the audience. The ending should mark the beginning of something new in the audience’s mind. For example, something to question values, a poignant question to consider, a disturbing number/figure to spur action, a positively provoking inquiry.

Conclusion

Ultimately there is no single way of doing an activity, which is as personal as presentation. If it is a mechanical activity, it is easy to execute in a formulaic way. What will make your presentation effective is simplicity, accurate facts and figures, short and effective sections, and subsections? Plus, your own spin and style to it. Do not bother about your native accent, your tic, or any such thing you consider an impediment. They are not an impediment. It is you. Play to your strength, practice, be genuine, and consider your presentation, your story for the world, your gift to the world, and present it in the manner only you can.

#presentation #codecraft

0 notes

prissyhalliwell · 6 years

Note

Fairy Gardener prompt: The Blue Fairy comes looking for Belle or confronts Rumple when he's out somewhere about Belle. Rumple pretends to have no idea what she's talking about and protects his little fairy friend. :)

Author’s Note: Check out the amazing fan art of Fairy Belle by @rumpledspinster. You can also find this chapter on AO3.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Gossip travels fast in the Enchanted Forest, especially when carried on the speedy wings of fairies. Rumplestiltskin had expected the Blue Fairy to make an appearance within a day or two of their trip to the marketplace, so he was hardly surprised to find her on his grounds the next morning.

His only warning that the fairy queen had arrived was a squeal and a streak of white light as Belle flew through the open window to the other side of the Great Hall, hiding behind a fat tome on the bookshelves.

Rumplestiltskin grinned. He’d been looking forward to this meeting.

With a wave of his hand, a black dragonhide coat appeared over his simple silk shirt, covering him like armor. Blue was expecting the big, bad Dark One, so it seemed only polite that he should dress the part.

A moment later, he appeared silently in the garden. Big shows of smoke were for impressing those with little or no magic ability; such theatrics would be wasted on someone like Blue, whose power was in league with his own. Besides, if he was quiet about it, he had a much better chance of surprising her and putting her on edge. He could hardly pass up such an opportunity.

Unfortunately, the blue bug was waiting for him and didn’t so much as flinch when he popped into existence only four feet in front of her. He didn’t let it disappoint him for too long though, knowing there was still much fun to be had in the next few minutes.

“I’d say welcome to my humble abode, dearie, but we both know I’d be lying through my teeth.”

As disapproving as ever, Blue met his gaze and frowned. “You have one of my fairies. Return her to me now.”

Rumplestiltskin ignored her words, and began to circle around her, enjoying how she had to turn along with him to avoid leaving her back exposed. “I’m well by the way, thank you for asking. I’ve been having some landscaping done around the castle, as you can see. I have the most incredible gardener, Belle - ”

“Return Bluebelle to me at once, Dark One,” Blue demanded, her voice high and grating.

“Or you’ll do what exactly?” He stopped, giving her his most malicious grin, the one he liked to think reminded people of a crocodile. “You’d have killed me long ago if you could. We both know that’s not a real threat.”

He saw her eyes grow cold with fury, but she didn’t argue. As much as he disliked her, Reul Ghorm had walked this earth centuries before he had been born. She was not stupid.

“You’re fond of deals. What do you want for her?”

“She’s not for sale.”

The words left his mouth before he could think, but once they were out, he realized they were true. Belle was too valuable an informant - albeit an unwilling and sometimes unreliable one - to give her up, especially considering how anxious Blue was for her return. He wasn’t sure what use a garden fairy like Belle was to the leader of the fairies, though. Perhaps Reul just needed to keep up appearances so that her reputation as ‘protector of all’ wouldn’t be tarnished. Either way, her anger seemed to be genuine, whether she cared personally for Belle or not.

Then again, maybe she was just angry that he had gotten the upper hand for once. She seemed under the impression that Belle was his captive, which amused him to no end. He was looking forward to ridding her of that notion. Her expression when she discovered one of her own had joined forces with the Dark One willingly was sure to be one he’d cherish.

Blue scoffed at his words. “Everyone has a price. Even you.”

While that was true, he knew she’d never give him the one thing he’d trade anything for. She’d taken Bae away in the first place, after all. She’d never help him be reunited with his son. Just as he would never forgive her for ripping his family apart.

“What exactly did you have in mind, dearie?” he asked, interested in what she’d be willing to offer. Her answer would tell him exactly how much Belle meant to Blue.

“Perhaps if I knew why you kidnapped her in the first place, I could suggest something fitting.”

Rumplestiltskin giggled. Here was his chance to wipe that smug look off of Blue’s face. She’d never had a deserter in her ranks before, and the idea that someone would not only voluntary leave but defect to the enemy would be unthinkable to her. He’d imagined many times how she would react - would she go red with rage and start yelling at him? Or if he was really lucky, would the pressure be too great and her head would simply pop off? Unlikely scenarios, of course, but pleasant to visualize all the same.

He had just opened his mouth to tell her exactly what had happened, when a memory of Belle, face bright with terror and crouching behind a book, leapt to the forefront of his mind. If he told Blue the truth, Belle would never be able to safely leave the Dark Castle again. She’d be marked as surely as he was, and while he had enough power to protect himself from any magic Blue and her minions might throw at him, Belle did not.

In truth, he’d be signing her death warrant.

Suddenly, the prospect of seeing Blue blue in the face didn’t seem as important. He’d made a deal with Belle and if she somehow got herself killed, he would have wasted the last few months, not to mention jars worth of his favorite tea, for nothing. He wasn’t willing to risk that. The battle today was not important; the war tomorrow was.

“You know, I just remembered that I don’t make deals with annoying fairies.” He made a shooing motion with his hands. “Also, you’re trespassing on private property. And I don’t like you.”

She gave him an incredulous look. “You can’t be serious. How in the world could she even be of use to you?”

With those words, Rumplestiltskin saw his chance to have his proverbial cake and eat it too. He’d have to thank Jefferson later. “Why, she tends my garden, dearie,” he said, lacing his voice with all the innuendo and suggestion he could.

Blue’s eyes grew large and her mouth floundered open in what he thought was a fairly good impression of a guppy before finally regaining control of her voice. “You’re disgusting.”

He could tell she wasn’t quite sure whether to believe his insinuation or not, and that was fine by him. It was more important to keep Blue confused and questioning his motives. If she thought Belle and he were somehow involved sexually, that just meant her imagination was more creative than his, because he certainly had no idea how that would work.

Not that he was at all interested in such a thing. He was beyond those kinds of urges at his age. As far as he could figure, his affair with Cora had been an irregularity, most likely a mid-century crisis of some sort. Thank goodness he was safe from anything like that ever happening again.

“Well, I am the Dark One. Disgusting is one of the job requirements.”

Blue’s wings began to flap faster and for a panicked moment, he thought she was about to charge him. But she merely gave him one of those infuriatingly calm smiles of hers. “This isn’t over,” she said haughtily, before flying out of his garden.

He made sure she was truly gone before adding an extra level of protection spells over his grounds. It wouldn’t due to have her sneak back later and kidnap Belle. He hadn’t gone through this whole charade just to lose his best employee.

Appearing back in the Great Hall, he was surprised to find Belle not in the bookshelf where he’d left her, but sitting on the windowsill where she would have had a perfect view of his and Blue’s entire interaction.

She looked up at him, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “You didn’t give me away. She still doesn’t know I’ve betrayed her.”

Rumplestiltskin grunted. “She also thinks we’re fornicating in the rose bushes, so I wouldn’t thank me just yet.”

The blush that spread across Belle’s cheeks was rather adorable. He scolded himself for bringing up such a thing.

“Regardless of how you did it, thank you,” Belle said, sincerity shining out of her eyes. “For saving my life.”

The tight feeling in his throat was unfamiliar. He cleared it quickly. “No matter.”

His words did nothing to dim Belle’s smile. She flew up until she was level with his face and kissed him on the cheek.

It was just a brush of the lips, so feather light that it felt like he had only imagined it.

Belle’s smile was more self-conscious now, but no less bright. “Well, thank you anyway.”

Rumplestiltskin nodded once, slightly dazed, before disappearing from the Great Hall and reappearing in his lab. He had some books on fairy hierarchy and culture that he wanted to read through. Settling in for the foreseeable future, he tried to push away thoughts of the last couple days so he could concentrate. If he rubbed at the spot on his cheek while he read for the rest of the morning, he pretended not to notice.

He missed the next two meals, choosing to spend the remainder of the day locked away in his lab, reading late into the night. When he went down to breakfast the next morning, he braced himself, preparing to be greeted by an overly cheerful fairy. Instead, he found Belle sitting sulkily at the table in the Great Hall, her eyes suspiciously red.

Torn between wanting to know the cause of her crying and avoiding the topic at any cost, his cowardice won out and he pretended that this breakfast was no different than any of the dozens before it. Despite his attempts to make conversation, Belle seemed more interested in staring at her food than discussing the weather or her plans for the garden. He even tried baiting her a few times to see if she would bite, but the fight seemed to have gone out of her.

Eventually, he returned to his lab, hoping that whatever strange mood had settled over her would be gone by tea time. But when the afternoon rolled around, Belle was still moping the same as she had that morning. When she appeared at the breakfast table the next day, eyes just as red as the morning before, Rumplestiltskin began to grow truly worried.

“Is everything alright?” he asked hesitantly. “You haven’t been your usual annoying self lately.”

The comment earned him a brief quirk of her lips, but nothing more.

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

“It is not nothing,” Rumplestiltskin said, his voice coming out in a half growl. “You’ve been crying.”

Belle reached up to rub at one of her eyes, as if to rub the puffiness away. “It’s stupid.”

He gentled his tone. “I’d still like to hear it.”

She looked up at him then and he realized it was the first time she had met his eyes in over a day. He held her gaze for a long moment as she seemed to think her words over. “Alright, I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to laugh at me.” She took a deep breath before letting it out slowly. “At first I was elated after Blue left. I was so afraid she’d take me away and that I’d never see you-your garden again. I was so happy that I could stay here. But then…” She trailed off, suddenly interested in picking at the folds of her dress.

“Then you realized you could never leave here,” Rumplestiltskin said, finishing what he knew in his heart she had been about to say. Though he might have fooled Blue for now, she would most likely find out the truth eventually, and his little fairy would have a target on her back bigger than her wingspan. Belle was too kind to admit that the idea of spending the rest of her life at the Dark Castle with him had kept her up the last two nights crying.

“Sort of,” Belle said. “Let’s just say I realized there was only one path before me and it - it may not be the one I’m interested in.”

He nodded, hearing confirmation of his thoughts in her words. While he’d never been under any illusion that Belle and he were friends - theirs was a business arrangement after all - he’d thought they at least enjoyed each other’s company. Sure, he had been mistrustful of her motives and manipulated her for the better part of a month or so, but apart from that, they’d seemed to co-exist rather well together.

There had been a turning feeling in his stomach for a while now and he finally recognized it for what it was. Guilt. He had been the one to take Belle out on his deal and parade her in front of the other fairies so they could report back to their queen. If he hadn’t done that, Blue might not have found her for a while, if at all. He had effectively trapped Belle here forever. He’d taken her freedom away in one spiteful decision.

For once, he truly felt like a monster.

Wallowing in his own self-pity wasn’t going to improve their situation though. Belle needed a distraction, something that would take her mind off things. His thoughts immediately leapt to Jefferson and he decided to invite the man to tea. He inwardly groaned at the idea, but committed to it all the same. Clearly, he was getting soft in his old age. He never would have considered such a thing in his 200s.

He sent an invitation by magic to Jefferson within the hour, the envelope bearing his personal wax seal of the Dark Castle in black. It added a certain authority to his correspondence, something he could never have afforded in his former life. Belle had always teased him about how pretentious it looked until he had shown her Regina’s blood-red seal that was designed to look as if blood was dripping down the envelope. Belle had conceded that his wasn’t quite as tasteless as the Evil Queen’s and he’d considered it a victory.

As he greeted Jefferson at the door that afternoon, already anticipating the delighted expression that would appear on Belle’s face, he reminded himself of the real reason he was going to so much trouble. A happy fairy was a talkative one and Belle would be much more inclined to share her past history concerning Blue with him.

Within minutes of Jefferson joining them for tea, Belle’s spirits had already improved. By the time they finished their first cup, she was talking animatedly with Jefferson, her giggles filling the air as he related some of his more ridiculous adventures for her. The light had returned to Belle’s eyes and she gazed fondly at the Hatter as he began yet another factually inaccurate story.

Throughout it all, Rumplestiltskin sat at the end of the table, watching them with narrowed eyes. Perhaps, he reflected, this had been a bad idea, after all.

#rumbelle #rumbelle fic #fairy belle #the fairy gardener

20 notes · View notes