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reanimatedcourier · 4 years

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How to Write Indigenous Characters Without Looking like a Jackass:

Update as of December 26th, 2020: I have added a couple new sections about naming and legal terms, as well as a bit of reading on the Cherokee Princess phenomenon.

Boozhoo (hello) Fallout fandom! I'm a card-carrying Anishinaabe delivering this rough guide about writing Indigenous characters because wow, do I see a lot of shit.

Let's get something out of the way first: Fallout's portrayal of Indigenous people is racist. From a vague definition of "tribal" to the claims of them being "savage" and "uncivilized" mirror real-world stereotypes used to dehumanize us. Fallout New Vegas' narrated intro has Ron Perlman saying Mr. House "rehabilitated" tribals to create New Vegas' Three Families. You know. Rehabilitate. As if we are animals. Top it off with an erasure of Indigenous people in the American Southwest and no real tribe names, and you've got some pretty shitty representation. The absence of Native American as a race option in the GECK isn't too great, given that two Native characters are marked "Caucasian" despite being brown. Butch Deloria is a pretty well-known example of this effect. (Addendum: Indigenous people can have any mix of dominant and recessive traits, as well as present different phenotypes. What bothers me is it doesn't accommodate us or mixed people, which is another post entirely.)

As a precautionary warning: this post and the sources linked will discuss racism and genocide. There will also be discussion of multiple kinds of abuse.

Now, your best approach will be to pick a nation or tribe and research them. However, what follows will be general references.

Terms that may come up in your research include Aboriginal/Native Canadian, American Indian/Native American, Inuit, Métis, and Mestizo. The latter two refer to cultural groups created after the discovery of the so-called New World. (Addendum made September 5th, 2020: Mestizo has negative connotations and originally meant "half breed" so stick with referring to your mixed Latine and Indigenous characters as mixed Indigenous or simply by the name of their people [Maya, Nahua].)

As a note, not every mixed person is Métis or Mestizo. If you are, say, Serbian and Anishinaabe, you would be mixed, but not Métis (the big M is important here, as it refers to a specific culture). Even the most liberal definition caps off at French and British ancestry alongside Indigenous (some say Scottish and English). Mestizo works the same, since it refers to descendants of Spanish conquistadors/settlers and Indigenous people.

Trouble figuring out whose land is where? No problem, check out this map.

Drawing

Don't draw us with red skin. It's offensive and stereotypical.

Tutorial for Native Skintones

Tutorial for Mixed Native Skintones

Why Many Natives Have Long Hair (this would technically fit better under another category, but give your Native men long hair!)

If You're Including Traditional Wear, Research! It's Out There

Languages

Remember, there are a variety of languages spoken by Indigenous people today. No two tribes will speak the same language, though there are some that are close and may have loan words from each other (Cree and Anishinaabemowin come to mind). Make sure your Diné (you may know them as Navajo) character doesn't start dropping Cree words.

Here's a Site With a Map and Voice Clips

Here's an Extensive List of Amerindian Languages

Keep in mind there are some sounds that have no direct English equivalents. But while we're at it, remember a lot of us speak English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. The languages of the countries that colonized us.

Words in Amerindian languages tend to be longer than English ones and are in the format of prefix + verb + suffix to get concepts across. Gaawiin miskwaasinoon is a complete sentence in Anishinaabemowin, for example (it is not red).

Names

Surprisingly, we don't have names like Passing Dawn or Two-Bears-High-Fiving in real life. A lot of us have, for lack of better phrasing, white people names. We may have family traditions of passing a name down from generation to generation (I am the fourth person in my maternal line to have my middle name), but not everyone is going to do that. If you do opt for a name from a specific tribe, make sure you haven't chosen a last name from another tribe.

Baby name sites aren't reliable, because most of the names on there will be made up by people who aren't Indigenous. That site does list some notable exceptions and debunks misconceptions.

Here's a list of last names from the American census.

Indian Names

You may also hear "spirit names" because that's what they are for. You know the sort of mystical nature-related name getting slapped on an Indigenous character? Let's dive into that for a moment.

The concept of a spirit name seems to have gotten mistranslated at some point in time. It is the name Creator calls you throughout all your time both here and in the spirit world. These names are given (note the word usage) to you in a ceremony performed by an elder. This is not done lightly.

A lot of imitations of this end up sounding strange because they don't follow traditional guidelines. (I realize this has spread out of the original circle, but Fallout fans may recall other characters in Honest Hearts and mods that do this. They have really weird and racist results.)

If you're not Indigenous: don't try this. You will be wrong.

Legal Terms

Now, sometimes the legal term (or terms) for a tribe may not be what they refer to themselves as. A really great example of this would be the Oceti Sakowin and "Sioux". How did that happen, you might be wondering. Smoky Mountain News has an article about this word and others, including the history of these terms.

For the most accurate information, you are best off having your character refer to themselves by the name their nation uses outside of legislation. A band name would be pretty good for this (Oglala Lakota, for example). I personally refer to myself by my band.

Cowboys

And something the Fallout New Vegas fans might be interested in, cowboys! Here's a link to a post with several books about Black and Indigenous cowboys in the Wild West.

Representation: Stereotypes and Critical Thought

Now, you'll need to think critically about why you want to write your Indigenous character a certain way. Here is a comprehensive post about stereotypes versus nuance.

Familiarize yourself with tropes. The Magical Indian is a pretty prominent one, with lots of shaman-type characters in movies and television shows. This post touches on its sister tropes (The Magical Asian and The Magical Negro), but is primarily about the latter.

Say you want to write an Indigenous woman. Awesome! Characters I love to see. Just make sure you're aware of the stereotypes surrounding her and other Women of Color.

Word to the wise: do not make your Indigenous character an alcoholic. "What, so they can't even drink?" You might be asking. That is not what I'm saying. There is a pervasive stereotype about Drunk Indians, painting a reaction to trauma as an inherent genetic failing, as stated in this piece about Indigenous social worker Jessica Elm's research. The same goes for drugs. Ellen Deloria is an example of this stereotype.

Familiarize yourself with and avoid the Noble Savage trope. This was used to dehumanize us and paint us as "childlike" for the sake of a plot device. It unfortunately persists today.

Casinos are one of the few ways for tribes to make money so they can build homes and maintain roads. However, some are planning on diversifying into other business ventures.

There's a stereotype where we all live off government handouts. Buddy, some of these long-term boil water advisories have been in place for over twenty years. The funding allocated to us as a percentage is 0.39%: less than half a percent to fight the coronavirus. They don't give us money.

"But what about people claiming to be descended from a Cherokee princess?" Cherokee don't and never had anything resembling princesses. White southerners made that up prior to the Civil War. As the article mentions, they fancied themselves "defending their lands as the Indians did".

Also, don't make your Indigenous character a cannibal. Cannibalism is a serious taboo in a lot of our cultures, particularly northern ones.

Our lands are not cursed. We don't have a litany of curses to cast on white people in found footage films. Seriously. We have better things to be doing. Why on earth would our ancestors be haunting you when they could be with their families? Very egotistical assumption.

Indigenous Ties and Blood Quantum

Blood quantum is a colonial system that was initially designed to "breed out the Indian" in people. To dilute our bloodlines until we assimilated properly into white society. NPR has an article on it here.

However, this isn't how a vast majority of us define our identities. What makes us Indigenous is our connections (or reconnection) to our families, tribes, bands, clans, and communities.

Blood quantum has also historically been used to exclude Black Natives from tribal enrollment, given that it was first based on appearance. So, if you looked Black and not the image of "Indian" the white census taker had in his brain, you were excluded and so were your descendants.

Here are two tumblrs that talk about Black Indigenous issues and their perspectives. They also talk about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia.

However, if you aren't Indigenous, don't bring up blood quantum. Don't. This is an issue you should not be speaking about.

Cherokee Princess Myth

"Princess" was not a real position in any tribe. The European idea of monarchy did not suddenly manifest somewhere else. The closest probable approximation may have been the daughter of a chief or other politically prominent person. But princess? No.

Here is an article talking about possible origins of this myth. Several things are of note here: women from other tribes may have bee shoved under this label and the idea of a "Cherokee Princess" had been brought up to explain the sudden appearance of a brown-skinned (read: half Black) family member.

For a somewhat more in depth discussion of why, specifically, this myth gets touted around so often, Timeline has this piece.

Religion

Our religions are closed. We are not going to tell you how we worship. Mostly because every little bit we choose to share gets appropriated. Smudging is the most recent example. If you aren't Indigenous, that's smoke cleansing. Smudging is done in a specific way with ceremonies and prayers.

Now, a lot of us were forcibly converted. Every residential school was run by Christians. So plenty of us are Catholic, Baptist, Anglican, Lutheran, etc. Catholicism in Latin America also has influence from the Indigenous religions in that region.

Having your Indigenous character pray or carry rosaries wouldn't be a bad thing, if that religion was important to them. Even if they are atheist, if they lived outside of a reserve or other Indigenous communities, they might have Christian influences due to its domination of the Western world.

Settler Colonialism and the White Savior Trope

Now we've come to our most painful section yet. Fallout unintentionally has an excellent agent of settler-colonialism, in particular the Western Christian European variety, in Caesar's Legion and Joshua Graham.

(Addendum: Honest Hearts is extremely offensive in its portrayal of Indigenous people, and egregiously shows a white man needing to "civilize" tribals and having to teach them basic skills. These skills include cooking, finding safe water, and defending themselves from other tribes.)

Before we dive in, here is a post explaining the concept of cultural Christianity, if you are unfamiliar with it.

We also need to familiarize ourselves with The White Man's Burden. While the poem was written regarding the American-Philippine war, it still captures the attitudes toward Indigenous folks all over the world at the time.

As this article in Teen Vogue points out, white people like to believe they need to save People of Color. You don't need to. People of Color can save themselves.

Now, cultural Christianity isn't alone on this side of the pond. Writer Teju Cole authored a piece on the White Savior Industrial Complex to describe mission trips undertaken by white missionaries to Africa to feed their egos.

Colonialism has always been about the acquisition of wealth. To share a quote from this paper about the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples: "Negatively, [settler colonialism] strives for the dissolution of native societies. Positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base—as I put it, settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event. In its positive aspect, elimination is an organizing principal of settler-colonial society rather than a one-off (and superseded) occurrence. The positive outcomes of the logic of elimination can include officially encouraged miscegenation, the breaking-down of native title into alienable individual freeholds, native citizenship, child abduction, religious conversion, resocialization in total institutions such as missions or boarding schools, and a whole range of cognate biocultural assimilations. All these strategies, including frontier homicide, are characteristic of settler colonialism. Some of them are more controversial in genocide studies than others." (Positive, here, is referring to "benefits" for the colonizers. Indigenous people don't consider colonization beneficial.)

An example of a non-benefit, the Church Rock disaster had Diné children playing in radioactive water so the company involved could avoid bad publicity.

Moving on, don't sterilize your Indigenous people. Sterilization, particularly when it is done without consent, has long been used as a tool by the white system to prevent "undesirables" (read, People of Color and disabled people) from having children. Somehow, as of 2018, it wasn't officially considered a crime.

The goal of colonization was to eliminate us entirely. Millions died because of exposure to European diseases. Settlers used to and still do separate our children from us for reasons so small as having a dirty dish in the sink. You read that right, a single dirty dish in your kitchen sink was enough to get your children taken and adopted out to white families. This information was told to me by an Indigenous social work student whose name I will keep anonymous.

It wasn't until recently they made amendments to the Indian Act that wouldn't automatically render Indigenous women non-status if they married someone not Indigenous. It also took much too long for Indigenous families to take priority in child placement over white ones. Canada used to adopt Indigenous out to white American families. The source for that statement is further down, but adoption has been used as a tool to destroy cultures.

I am also begging you to cast aside whatever colonialist systems have told you about us. We are alive. People with a past, not people of the past, which was wonderfully said here by Frank Waln.

Topics to Avoid if You Aren't Indigenous

Child Separation. Just don't. We deserve to remain with our families and our communities. Let us stay together and be happy that way.

Assimilation schools. Do not bring up a tool for cultural genocide that has left lasting trauma in our communities.

W/ndigos. I don't care that they're in Fallout 76. They shouldn't be. Besides, you never get them right anyway.

Sk/nwalkers. Absolutely do not. Diné stories are not your playthings either.

I've already talked about drugs and alcohol. Do your research with compassion and empathy in mind. Indigenous people have a lot of pain and generational trauma. You will need to be extremely careful having your Indigenous characters use drugs and alcohol. If your character can be reduced to their (possible) substance abuse issues, you need to step back and rework it. As mentioned in Jessica Elm's research, remember that it isn't inherent to us.

For our final note: remember that we're complex, autonomous human beings. Don't use our deaths to further the stories of your white characters. Don't reduce us to some childlike thing that needs to be raised and civilized by white characters. We interact with society a little differently than you do, but we interact nonetheless.

Meegwetch (thank you) for reading! Remember to do your research and portray us well, but also back off when you are told by an Indigenous person.

This may be updated in the future, it depends on what information I come across or, if other Indigenous people are so inclined, what is added to this post.

#fallout 3 #fallout 4 #fallout 76 #fallout new vegas #fallout 1 #fallout 2 #fallout: new vegas #ozhibii'ige

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jangofctts · 4 years

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Are You in Or Out?

Rated: Explicit

Word count: 11.5K yall I am SORRY

Warnings: good lord y'all here we GO-- smut, explicit language, violence and mentions of blood and gore, injuries, unprotected sex (don't be a dick, wrap that stick!), oral (m&f receiving), blindfolding, vaginal and anal fingering, vaginal and anal sex, double penetration, spit is used as lube but for the love of GOD doNT DO THAT, there are some dom vibes on Paz’s end

Summary: The job you’re on takes a turn for the worst--Paz comes to your rescue and you're brought to the Covert. There you meet Din Djarin. though during a good natured sparring session, you’re suddenly stuck between an age old rivalry that spirals out of hand. Hopefully an agreement can be met.

a/n: hey...how y’all doin....SO lemme explain you smthn. I said helmets must be OfF--giv me them LIPS BABEY so this is a slight AU in which mandos can see other mandos’ faces. ya get me? I also tHot that it would be nice and fun to set the timeline 5-6 years BEFORE the plot of the Mandalorian so we gots a younger din here. anyway, as always enjoy and I hope you like!!

Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes—

Some as little as burning your finger on the nozzle of a smoking blaster or tripping over your own shoelaces. Simple things. Mindless things.

Nothing that could ever compare to the catastrophic decision of picking up bounty hunting as a reliable source of income.

The little ones were easy—tax evaders and deserters of the Empire—most who’d yield and gladly follow without complaint just at the sight of your blaster pointed between their eyes. And the gag of it is—most of the time you never bothered to load the damn thing.

Reckless.

An invitation for disaster.

But skirting that precarious edge, one little slip up away from plunging head first into inevitable trouble is better than Bracca. Stars—anything is better than Bracca. There’s no glory in bounty hunting but there’s even less in ship scrapping. Abysmal pay in exchange for risking your life on rain slicked metal with only the Ibdis Maw to break your fall.

The guild you work for is considerate—scratch that. Greef Karga is considerate. Sure the flirting is a touch unbearable but it saves your ass in the long run. All easy money bounties set aside for you in exchange for a cheap drink, hollow laughs and sugar sweet smiles.

It’s enough credits to get by—more than plenty to rent a room and charter a ship.

But there’s only so many bounties to capture within the limits of the guild and oh so many people the empty blaster trick works on. And so the credits begin to thin; it gets too expensive to buy off a pilot and the debate over buying food or being able to pay for your room becomes more frequent than the scraprats that skitter inside the walls.

It’s suicide to snag a higher paying bounty because....well—these bounties shoot back.

Whatever.

Might as well die trying. Who knows, maybe you could score big time if you manage to pull this off.

Maybe.

-=-=-=-

You’re not sure who’s more surprised—Karga when you asked for the bounty or yourself when he actually gave it to you.

“Are you sure, kid? This could—“

“End in a fiery shitshow? Yeah—I figured that,” you sigh, swirling your drink with a little complimentary toothpick. “But I need the money.”

“Hah! You’ve got guts, girl.” He flashes you a smile and smooths down his mustache with his thumb and forefinger. “Tell you what. The last assignment was just taken but I’m sure if you run you could catch him. Work somethin’ out.”

Jumping from your seat, you throw on your coat and toss a couple credits onto the table to cover the drink. “What’s he look like?”

“Big fellow—Mandalorian. You’ll know when you see him.”

You shout your thanks over your shoulder and hightail outta there. The landing docks aren’t far, you can see them from here. It’s finding the guy that could pose a problem.

If he hasn’t already left, you bitterly think.

However, it seems the universe is on your side today. Karga was right. He is big. Stands out like a sore thumb against his ship that glitters dully in the overcast sky. Kinda like an oversized blueberry. A yellow and blue blueberry….not important—

“Hey! Hey, you!” You’re so close, just a couple yards away. You swear and hurry up your pace as he steps onto the loading ramp. “Big guy! Large...blue man?”

You trip over your own feet as he turns his head. Fuck—

No way are you gonna be able to bargain with this guy. Built like a fucking AT-AT and probably just as stubborn. After all, no one would ever be dumb enough to come between a Mandalorian and their quarry. You grimace, and suck in a breath—

Before a word even leaves your mouth he interrupts with a steady, unwavering;

“No.”

Your brows furrow. “I didn’t even say anything!”

“I know what you were going to ask,” he huffs, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “I work alone.”

Ok, then. You didn’t want to resort to begging, but you’re kinda running out of options here. You take a steadying breath and plant yourself at the bottom of the ramp. “C’mon man. Look—I’ll let you take seventy percent of the cut and I can—“

“You’ll let me?” He repeats, the staticky tone of his voice dropping into an edge more cutting than broken transparisteel. The metal platting on the ramp vibrates from the weight of his step to move closer; Stars it takes every fucking inch of willpower to hold your ground. “You’re lucky if I let you leave with your life. Get lost.”

Fuckfuckfuck—you should listen. You wanna fucking run for the hills and never look back in case he comes looking to purge your name from the kriffing galaxy. You clench your jaw and steel your nerves. Too bad—you’ve dug your heels so far into this empire of dirt and false bravado that your only way out is continuing to poke the sleeping bear until he snaps your spine or caves.

You have to crane your neck to glare into that dark strip of his vizor, seeing as he’s invited himself into your personal space. “No.”

“No?” He mocks, now toe to toe with your scuffed up boots.

Your teeth clench, a scalding flush burning through your cheeks and all the way down to your chest. He’s toying with you—finding amusement in your stubbornness and apparent lack of braincells for challenging him. “You don’t scare me.”

The man hums, a deep purr that rumbles through his entire ribcage as he raises his gloved hand. You curse yourself for flinching because surely he’s about to crush your skull like a fucking grape, but no. All he does is fix your rumbled collar then pat your cheek.

“I don’t need the extra baggage.”

“I’m not baggage,” you sneer, slapping his hand away. “I can handle myself.”

“With an empty blaster?” He points out, tipping his head to the side. “Your parlor tricks won’t do you any good on this job.”

“I’m a good shot!” You sputter, placing your hands over you hips and mustering up your best glare. “W-when I have ammo…”

“Right.”

Meeting Paz Vizsla, could have gone far better, to put it into the most simplest of words. Jagged and hard to settle into a routine around each other for the journey to Nar Shaddaa in a tiny, old, and cramped freighter ship. Most cycles you have to wedge yourself beside a cargo crate to sleep. In addition to that, how it’s able to break through the atmosphere let alone fly is beyond you—an entire mystery on its own.

At least you’re able to sit in the spare seat inside the cockpit—one of the only places available to stretch your legs. The only problem is that it’s also where Paz Vizsla likes to lurk (well, not lurk—it’s his ship and it’s where he can comfortably fit but—to each their own).

There’s a net of tension still woven between you—each interaction like tiptoeing over eggshells. Though, like all things, it becomes simpler. There’s not exactly any ongoing conversations—you don’t want to pry into a life you know nothing about—it’s not your business despite the cumulation of questions that linger in the back of your mind. You know when to take a hint—not every person is willing to indulge you about their livelihood, and surely not something as secretive and well guarded as the Mandalore.

Familiarity is what you want to call it. Comfortable with each other’s presence with small talk speckled in throughout the never-ending vastness of hyperspace. Compared to the infinite turmoil in your life, slippery footholds and uncertainty—Paz Vizsla is steady. In a way— predictable and safe in the confines of this ship.

You’d even go as far as to label him kind, a friend maybe—if you look past the grumpiness and rather poor taste in corny jokes. You know it’s stupid, no doubt stemming from the deep ache of loneliness that comes hand in hand with staking it out on your own in the galaxy; but you can’t help but wish that this could be a new normal. Not some once in a lifetime thing where you both part ways, fade into the recesses of memory and leave it at that.

If things go well—and rarely do they on a job—maybe you’d pluck up enough courage to ask him if you could stay. There’s no harm in it…right?

-=-=-=-

Well—the cynical part of you was right.

It did end up in a fiery shit show.

Turns out the stupid quarry you’d been tracking excelled in long range weaponry. A former marksman for the Empire to be exact. Guess that tidbit of information wasn’t pertinent. A need to know sorta thing, if you will.

You feel the molten bolt of plasma connect with your side before your ears pick up the sound of a weapon firing, like a crack of lighting in the empty alleyway. And before your body even connects with the duracrete, Paz is returning fire. A brilliant neon red against the hazy blur of shadowy buildings.

Kinda weird how knocking the back of your head hurts worse than the literal blaster wound burned into your side. Shock maybe. Or the heat from the plasma cauterized each veins and artery it tore through and ate away at flesh and nerves. Hm…

You’re sprawled in a wet pool of something—either your own blood or a puddle of stagnant gutter water and damn—you’re wearing your favorite shirt.

It doesn’t matter at this point…

You’re choking on your own air from the big ass hole blasted into your diaphragm, so to say things are looking grim is an understatement.

Nar Shaddaa isn’t your first choice to kick the can on, but hey—not everyone gets the luxury of dying on Naboo. And just as you’re ready to slip away into that sweet, sweet abyss, it seems your fellow armored friend has other plans.

The beskar is freezing against your cheek after he deadlifts you off the duracrete—you remember that plain as day. That and the hushed rumble of Paz’s voice insisting you save your dwindling supply of air instead of apologizing to him—or ordering you to stay alive for kriff’s sake. It’s impossible to argue with Paz—like trying to bite through durasteel, and while those beckoning tendrils of eternal slumber are mighty tempting, you cling to your life with all the strength you have left. After all, inconveniencing someone with a corpse is such a party foul to the highest degree.

The rest is muddled—like dredging up silt and clay in a murky river that just leaves you with a pounding headache between your eyes. It’s a terrible mess of pain and bouts of temporary consciousness, mistaken with fever dreams and yup—more pain. The only consistent is Paz—hovering nearby or settled beside you—through thick and thin as you heal.

There’s no solid reason your brain can conjure as to why he brought you to the Covert—it’d have been easier to just dump you at the nearest hospital and be done with it. You’re not his responsibility and you’re too afraid to ask what it means. Too many possibilities—too many answers you aren’t in the mood to face or untwist.

And so you leave it be, set aside for another time—which brings you to the present day…

You’re splayed over your little makeshift cot, feet propped up on a spare pillow as you scour through a cheesy Coruscanti gossip magazine. It’s years old—the only piece of entertainment you could find other than a weapon in the Covert. And seeing as a massive hole had been blasted through your ribcage, picking up the clever art of throwing vibroblades or shooting targets to pass the time was out of the question.

Even if you’d rather fall into a Sarlaac pit than stare at the wall for hours on end yet again—it hasn’t been all that bad. It’d taken weeks before you regained enough strength to sit up on your own, let alone walk—and walking is putting it lightly. It was more of a stiff legged shuffle better suited on a two hundred year old woman seconds from disintegrating into dust at the mere hint of a breeze.

Not to mention—your right lung was all but shredded. Ripped apart from the plasma bolt and miraculously reconstructed by a more than questionable bacta tank, hopeful thoughts and well wishes. To this very day you still sound like a broken air filter.

Eh.

Could be worse.

At least you aren’t dead.

Just another setback that adds on the growing pile of reasons why never to leave the Covert. Free food, free board and mild entertainment to top it off. Paz had stayed at your bedside for the most part while you recovered—stuck with babysitting your sorry ass until you regained a bit of mobility. The times Paz hadn’t been at your side to stave off the boredom, it was up to you to find your own fun.

Snooping is what Paz had labeled it—but you saw it more as an adventure. You met Din Djarin exploring (lost is what you actually were) in the dimly lit underbelly of Nevarro, after all. Yes, you may have scared the ever loving shit out of the poor guy and yes, he may have singed off your brows with a five foot jet of fucking fire—but hey. No one got hurt.

And you made a new friend. Sorta…Din is difficult to read, subtler in his soft spoken words and quiet demeanor. A bit like a skittish loth-cat at the start, but nowadays it’s not uncommon to find him lounging in the same space as you or hovering over your shoulder, awfully curious in whatever it is you choose to do. Like Paz, Din isn’t overly fond of sharing much information about himself but he never complains after you regale tales of your own vastly fascinating past. He seems interested enough—tilts his head a tick to the right when you speak to indicate that yes, he’s listening despite the unforgiving dark line of his visor.

There are others in the Covert too—some so elusive you have a hard time believing they exist. Shadows of what they once were before the rise of the Empire. And so, you count yourself lucky that you’d been introduced to two others—Aeris Fenn, a young man nearly as tall as a Wookie, and a woman named Ives Arrey; her armor a flashy green—damn near florescent in the light.

They’re nice enough company. Aeris is a chatterbox, his wit sharper than a blade but lacking in any forethought before he speaks. Ives is the far opposite—rolls each sentence in her mouth before she voices it, but in no way is she angelic. Maker—you’d bet your entire left asscheek she’s behind each bad decision and silly shenanigans Aeris sticks his nose into. He never learns—not after a harsh chiding or cuff around the helmet from Paz or the Armorer could dampen is childlike enthusiasm or steer him away from repeating the same mistake over and over.

Though if you read one more kriffing sentence of this garbage magazine you’re about to invite chaos himself to entertain you. Good thing too because just as you sit up to find the red armored Mandalorian—Paz rounds the corner and steps into your little broom closet that hardly passes for a room.

“Paz!” You greet, tossing the magazine over your shoulder. “Please tell me we’ll be doing something interesting or else I might start ripping my hair out. Or maybe commit a heinous crime—haven't decided yet.”

Paz grunts and shakes his head. “You’ll be doing neither. But today we’ll be sparing—hopefully that will curve your boredom.”

You scrunch up your face. “Sparring? Er, no thanks—I choose life.”

“You breathe funny since your injury,” he says, jabbing a finger between your ribs. “And all you’ve been doing lately is laying around.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” you sneer, tucking your arms over your chest. “Didn’t realize I was supposed to be running laps with half a lung.”

“It’s like stretching a muscle, you need to gain your strength back.” He retorts. “This will be good for you.”

You groan and flop back into bed. “I don’t wanna. I was pretty much dead like three cycles ago—cut me some slack, man.”

There’s a brief silence as if he’s mulling over your words, but he’s stubborn. You crane your head to look at him as he says your name with a deep sigh attached to it.

“Truthfully, I’m surprised you’ve survived this long.” He says it quietly, fragile even, like he’s still expecting you to tip over and die on the spot. You very well might.

You huff. “Wow. Thanks, Paz.”

You feel his heavy stare through the helmet. “What happened to you that night was a mistake. It wasn’t preventable but the least I can do is teach you basic selfdefense.”

You gripe out your complaints but you know you’ve been beat—and well, a bit of your agreement is based on guilt.

Damn it.

-=-=-=-

It’s weird to see Paz without his heavy duty gear—like seeing him naked or a crab without a shell. The only piece he continues to wear is his helmet and padded gloves and under clothes, but it’s still weird. Strange enough that it shocks you tongue into remaining still instead of bitching about this.

He leads you to a wing of the Covert you’ve yet to discover and ushers you through the doorway. The floor is padded, a bit smaller than you expected and already occupied by none other than Aeris Fenn.

It’s a whole other kriffing shock to the head seeing him without the plates and layers of fabric and beskar too. The armor makes him bulkier—fuller and much more intimidating. Now, with only his black underclothes on, Aeris could be the spitting image of a sentient tree. Willowy limbs that stick out like branches as he stretches on the padded mat. He lazily swings his head around as you greet him, his face still covered by the black beskar painted with streaks of red.

“So you choose sparring over knife throwing?” Aeris snorts. “And to think I thought of you as a friend.”

“You think I chose to be here?” You say, grumpy and still upset at the choice of activity. Really, a brisk walk around the Covert would’ve been fine.

Aeris shrugs. “Ah, and I see you’ve roped in my favorite vod. Tch, he uses his fists instead of his words to teach. I wish you luck—you’ll need it.”

You open your mouth to retort but Paz beats you to it.

“Leave.”

“I’ve just arrived, actually,” Aeris scoffs, folding his torso over his other leg to stretch. “Perhaps you could reschedule. After all—our guest is quite free most days.”

Welp—you’re perfectly fine with that. Problem solved.

You spin on your heel and make a break for it but Paz snatches your wrist and pulls you back to his side. “Aeris.”

“Paz,” Aeris mocks, tipping his helmet to the side.

Paz exhales, a long, tired sound and grovels out another plea in clipped Mando’a. Aeris languidly stands and brushes off imaginary dust from the front of his pants. “Sorry, what was that? I don’t understand your accent.”

“Boy—“

“No, no, it’s alright.” Aeris sighs, waving his hand in a mopey display as if he were told that his birthday party were canceled for the fifth year in a row. “I’d have trouble speaking too if my enormously thick head were cooped up in that little bucket of yours all day.”

You wince.

In the time you’ve known Paz Vizsla, he’s never been one to launch into rash decisions fueled by anger—he lets it simmer and build like an oncoming storm over the ocean. Devastating once it reaches land.

Aeris bobs his head and inspects his black leather glove, picking at a loose thread on the inseam over the thumb. He clicks his tongue. “Or'dinii—you’re going to kill her.”

Your offended scoff is ignored as Paz steps forward; jutting his chin up to even out the few inches Aeris holds over the man. “You still haven’t learned to shut your mouth, boy.”

The tension surges and crackles like a volt of electricity through the air—unresolved and ready to ignite with the sparking embers of Paz’s growing irritation. It’s not a fight Aeris Fenn will win. He’s volatile and hotheaded—but his expertise is in long range weaponry. Precise, deadly and swift—not whatever this little pissing match is heading towards.

Aeris clicks his tongue as Paz digs a fist into the black fabric of his shirt. Paz yanks him forward, the metallic clink of their helmets colliding an unpleasant scrape that pierces your eardrums. Aeris snarls out sharpened words in Mando’a as his willowy fingers shoot up to curl beneath the lip of Paz’s helmet.

In the blink of an eye, Paz lifts Aeris up by his collar and launches him across the room like he weighs nothing more than a couple of down pillows. His helmet meets the wall with a resounding clank, chipping some of the red paint outlining the visor. Ouch.

Like a kicked dog, Aeris clambers to his feet, still dazed and swaying and for a fearful second you think he’ll retaliate. But with whatever braincells he happens to possess today—he instead spits out a venomous curse that even yourself would hesitate to repeat. He leaves without another word, bristling with rage.

Your flash Paz a questioning stare. “The hell was that about?”

Paz waves it away with an irritated grunt. “His heart is in the right place but he is young. Aeris doesn’t understand his place in the Covert yet and I doubt he will for years to come.”

You frown. “Poor guy…”

Paz mutters something under his breath. “Enough distractions. We’ve wasted enough time already.”

“Y’know…I think that’s enough excitement for today. I think I’ll be going now—“ Your last ditch attempt at weaseling out of this is quickly thwarted the moment you turn your back.

You wheeze as the heel of Paz’s palm shoves into your shoulder blade, the force of it sending you stumbling to the ground. “Paz—“

“Go on. Hit me,” he orders. You squeak, narrowly avoiding the well aimed kick that skims the top of your scalp.

You scramble to your feet, skirting out of range of the oncoming right hook. “So you attack me instead?”

“How do you expect to catch quarries who are bigger than you?” He presses. You hiss as the points of his knuckles dig into the meat of your shoulder.

You dance out of reach and rub your arm, a dull throb flaring up in the muscle. “I dunno—electrocute them?”

“Not if they take you by surprise.”

You screech as his knuckles skim your cheek. Adrenaline pierces you veins and you wildly throw a flaky punch that wouldn’t even impress a toddler. He catches your fist with ease, his entire hand dwarfing your clenched fingers. “You can do better than that.”

You snarl and struggle to rip your hand back. “I’m a scrapper. I don’t fight.”

“No,” he retorts. You fall onto your ass as he abruptly lets go of your hand. “You’re a bounty hunter.”

You roll your eyes. “Hardly—why can’t I just stay here?”

Although there’s nothing to see with that swatch of black covering his eyes, you can certainly feel the look he’s giving you. A deep sigh hisses through the vocoder. “You can stay here—“

A triumphant smile splits across your face—

“—but not without contributing where it’s due.”

You puff up your cheeks and let out a dismayed stream of air. “Booo—lame.”

He sighs again and helps you off the floor. “Even if you leave the Guild, what I’m teaching you is helpful.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you say. “I’ll give you a call after I use your invaluable skills to beat up some thug.”

Paz ignores your comment and turns on his heel. “Let’s go through it again. This time use your front two knuckles instead of your whole fist.”

As your eyes land over the stretch of tight fighting fabric over his back an idea pops into your head. It’s a petty move but getting a punch in is fruitless—like trying to beat up a brick wall. You don’t fancy a broken hand and your knuckles are already bruised and swollen to the point where it’s hard to bend them.

And so, without any forethought and with a running head start, you launch yourself onto him, your arms coiling around his neck. It does the job—takes him by surprise and makes him tip to the right.

Aha! Yes!

Your reign of victory is short lived, however—

He latches onto your forearms strung around his neck and yanks. And much in the same way he threw Aeris like a sack of potatoes—you’re no different. For a short stretch of time that feels kriffing endless; you soar through the air, your directional whereabouts violently ripped out beneath you and equally nauseating in the same breath.

Why you ever agreed to this—you don’t know.

Your shoulder blade connects with the mat first, leaving behind a dull sting as you roll and tumble with uncontrollable momentum. Oh, yeah—you’ll feel that in the morning.

Groaning, you thank the Maker that your body eventually settles into a miserable little pile of limbs and pain. But, it seems whatever higher power that lingers in the edges of the galaxy hasn’t decided to put you out of your misery just yet.

A bulky shadow blocks out the dim lighting overhead, and for a brief anxiety ridden moment you’re afraid it’s Paz. You roll onto your back with a pathetic groan, a beg for mercy on the tip of your tongue—but as your eyes flutter open they’re met with an entirely different man.

Din Djarin looms over you, his head cocked to the side as you blink in dumbfounded bewilderment. Ah, hell—

You swallow, a furious heat bitting at your cheeks. “Uh…fine weather we’re having…”

“We’re inside,” he states with a brief glance up to the ceiling.

You purse your lips. “Huh.”

With a pensive hum he offers his hand, you sigh and roll over, accepting his gloved hand. He hoists you up easily and adjusts your rumpled collar. “You ok?”

“Pfft, yeah,” you groan, rubbing your throbbing shoulder. “Never better.”

The low grumble of your name is a cross between disbelief and irritation. Din jerks his head, his attention zeroing in on Paz. “Are you trying to kill her?”

“She isn’t made of glass.”

“She is still recovering—“

Normally you’d intervene, but their bickering is tiring and it gives you the excuse to lie down. By the time one of them caves you’ve counted exactly one hundred and twelve weird ceiling stains. They should get that checked out.

“Very well,” Paz snarls, cutting through your wandering thoughts. “You teach her.”

Din scoffs, his shoulders drawn tight as he stomps over to your splayed out self. “Get up.”

“Geez, fine,” you grumble, not in the mood to test his patience further. “Since you asked so nicely.”

Later he’ll no doubt apologize but right now? He has to prove a point. Din cuts right to it, moves in close to place your clenched fists in the right stance and nudges at your feet until they’re a bit wider than hip distance.

“You have to get in close with a bigger opponent,” he says, stepping into your space until your fists are close enough to touch his chest. “We don’t have much range here—easier to break our guard too.”

“Right. And how would you suggest I do that?”

“You’re always beating me at cards.” Din says, tipping his head to the side. “You have a clever mind. Use it.”

“But I always cheat.” You point out, dropping your guard to swat at a stray hair.

He catches your wrists and returns them to where they ought to be. “Quick enough to get away with it.”

You make a noise of uncertainty but do as you're told. Din takes a couple steps back and with a rough order you begin.

He’s faster than Paz—bats at your guard in quick bursts and steps away when you attempt to hit back. It’s a dance almost—somehow elegant in its brutality of bruises and flashes of pain as you move around one another. Compared to Din, Paz is almost clumsy but unpredictable. Din—despite the rapidness of his attacks and evasiveness, becomes predictable.

He steps to to left—you follow. He rocks onto his toes to jab his fist forward and that’s where you find a break. Punching Din’s helmet won’t do you any good but catching the juncture of his shoulder with your elbow is completely feasible. Too bad that you’re not the only one with a clever mind.

Din uses the momentum of your attack to catapult you to the ground—his own body rolling with you in order to capture you in a headlock of sorts. This sucks. After this you’ll never be setting foot in this Maker forsaken room again.

Din tightens his elbow that’s looped around your throat as you squirm and flail, trapped against his chest. He grunts as your elbow digs into his ribs but holds steady and snakes his free arm across your front, pinning your limbs to your body in an unbreakable vice. All mobility is cut off as his knee pushes between your thighs, locking your leg out into an uncomfortable and frankly quite awkward angle.

Inhaling a shaky breath, you arch as the crown of his helmet skims along the curve of your throat; the bite of beskar frigid and startling against your flushed skin. You can see his visor out of the corner of your eye; glittering and dark like the polished obsidian on Black Spire and endless like the greedy maw of a black hole.

Your breath hitches as he shifts and curls his head closer to your ear. His voice rumbles low and deep through his chest and vibrates against the delicate cartilage. “Yield.”

However much your pride wrestles with the sensible part of your brain, it’s all for naught as you jerk your head in defeat.

In retrospect you should’ve said something—used your voice or made some kinda sound because suddenly Din’s forearm digs alarmingly hard into your windpipe. He read the stuttered jerk of your head as another pitiful act of defiance but no. Nope.

Here you are—asphyxiating.

Not exactly what you had in mind, being strangled by a Mandalorian and all—but a chokehold where you could very well die was not it.

Fuzzy darkness begins to shade the corners of your vision, lightheadedness and a curious warmth that prickles down your spine settling low in your belly. A raspy gasp manages to slip through your blocked off airway, and stars why does this feel good?

“Din—”

Paz’s sharp bark is distant above the ringing in your ears and it all stops.

You gulp in air that burns your throat like refined fire whiskey—hunched over the mat as a large palm rubs soothing circles over your upper back. You cough and roll over, sounding like a dying animal run over by a speeder then hit with a spiked club to polish it off.

You’re quickly herded into Paz’s arms and pulled into his lap. Still wheezing and attempting to recover lost oxygen, whatever Din is trying to say translates into an indiscernible hum against the ringing in your ears.

“I’m fine,” you mutter, though neither of them care to listen. Like bristling wolves, snapping at each other’s heels.

“Apologize to her,” there’s not so much as a centimeter of room to argue. “Now.”

It’s nice of Paz you suppose—defending your honor and what not, but you’re not a vengeful person. It was an honest mistake and you want to explain that so Din quits looking like a kicked puppy, yet the sudden touch over your ankle stops you. All the times Din has initiated contact it’d been a friendly pat to your shoulder or ruffling you hair, and while touching your ankle isn’t exactly scandalous it’s certainly an odd place to put your hand on.

Your fingers clutch Paz’s shirt as you eye the man lingering at the bottom of your feet, his gloved thumb unconsciously rubbing patterns into the exposed skin between your boot and your pant leg. “Cyare—I’m sorry.”

You blink and lick your lips. Interesting. “I-I don’t know what that word means.”

His hand inches higher, resting on the swell of your calf. “Sweetheart…darling…loved one—“

There’s a shift—a dark undercurrent that none of you should be dipping your toes into. There’s a million and one things to say or do to sever this at the root, but are you going to? Nah.

Din’s thumb now rests over your knee, goosebumps following in his wake. “Should I keep going?”

It too hot—stuffy with both of their heavy stares locked on your flushed face. You squirm and glance up at Paz who only offers an impassive stare. Great.

“I can make it up to you,” Din continues, his hand stationary—a warm weight even through the fabric of your pants. “If you let me.”

Your mouth feels drier than the desert on Jakku. This…nothing good could come out of what Din is hinting at. This is uncharted territory—launching yourself into the great unknown without any idea of what’ll fester and grow if you agree.

It’s not like it hasn’t crossed your mind—it’s just…it’s never been both of them at the same time. These men are short-tempered, an open flame to jet fuel with deeply seated ire woven into the very fabric of their beings. You’ve barely scratched the surface on the inner workings of their mutual hostility, but you’re bright enough to question if this will make it worse. Tinder and brittle twigs feeding and enabling the hungry flames of rivalry to spiral and consume with chaotic brilliance of a dying star—

But, oh—

Isn’t it worth taking the risk?

You suck in a grounding breath and slowly extend your leg that Din touches, gingerly skimming the toe of your shoe along the inseam of his inner thigh. “H-how would you…make it up to me?”

Din preens at your answer and shuffles closer, lifting your legs so that they rest in his lap. Devotion drips off his words like a fine liquor as he toys with the laces on your boots. “Anything—say it and it’s yours.”

Sparks of molten heat race down your spine and metastasize in your lower belly, spreading through each vein and artery like a some sort of invasive ivy. You spare a look up at Paz as he shifts.

“Go ahead, girl,” Paz assures. “Answer him.”

It’s an unspoken, buzzing sort of thing like the static air before a storm, crackling and surging with pent up energy. You all know the implications of what’s to come—but it’s your words, quiet and steady that irons that nail into your coffin.

“Take me like you mean it.”

The next few moments pass in a dizzying blur, a mess of anticipation as your shoes are yanked off, your pants following soon after and tossed into some unknown corner of the room. Paz helps you out of your shirt, a shiver wracking through your body from the chill, leaving you bare save for your underthings. Yet the warmth that seeps through his shirt and his hands that linger over your ribcage do a lovely job at making up for the cold.

Din shuffles closer and brings his fingers up to cup the side of your face, lowering his head to rest the crown of his helmet on your forehead. “Wanna touch you.”

Your breath hitches as Paz’s hands sweep up your torso, cupping and kneading your breasts. “Y-you already are touching me, Din."

Paz snorts as the rough leather of his gloves scrape over your skin and unhook your bindings. You hardly hear Din over your own whine as Paz rolls your hardened nipples between a forefinger and thumb.

“I want to feel you—without the gloves,” Din clarifies, fighting to keep your attention on him. “Will you let me?”

Maker that shouldn’t even be a question. You moan out your approval, delighted that both of them decide to slip off the padded fabric. Din touches your bare thigh the same moment Paz returns his hands to your tits and it’s exhilarating. The rasp of their bare palms against your flesh is addicting—something so foreign and warm compared to their usual armor and thick layered clothing.

You arch into Paz’s hand as it curls around the base of your throat, a tentative pressure but still heavy. “You’d let us do anything, wouldn’t you? Needy little thing.”

“Yes,” you croak, already debauched and falling apart at the seams. “Anything.”

You’re all too happy to fade away in the embrace of the larger man but the other participant is far from letting that slide. Din grabs your hand, guiding it towards the front of his trousers, the drawstrings already loose and easy to pull aside. He groans and twitches as your fingertips flirt along his navel, then curl over the waistband, tugging his pants the rest of the way down to pool around his knees.

You reach for the already impressive outline of his cock pressing against his boxers, but Paz cupping your cunt through your underwear just before you touch Din is distracting. You gasp and arch as Paz digs the heel of his palm against your clit, electrifying ecstasy zipping down your spine with each touch.

There’s a twinge of guilt after Din huffs and drags your limp wrist back to his cock, this time encouraging you to palm him by guiding your actions with his own hand until you lazily oblige. Din’s quiet grunts, gravely against the vocoder do nothing but throw more jet fuel to the fire inside your belly. The growing urge to actually touch him gnaws and corrodes the forefront of your brain. With a firm yank his boxers are quick to join his trousers and Maker—

Fuck—

Will he even fit?

Din is thick, rosy brown and flushed at the tip and beginning to curl towards his bellybutton. A bead of liquid shines at the tip, dribbling down the underside as he wraps his fist around the base of his length. He gives himself a languid stroke before he, once again, reminds your hand of what it’s supposed to be doing. Din is searing in your palm, molten and stiffening to hardened steel in your grip.

“You look so fuckin’ pretty like this,” Din hisses as his head rolls back onto his shoulders. “S-so pretty holding my cock.”

Your desperation tears at your insides, insatiable and Maker— you wanna taste him. You want to hear every little stuttered moan and feel each twitch of his hips as he claims your mouth as his own.

But before you’re able to ask Din if he’d be willing to fuck your throat, Paz grips your knee and slings your leg over his thigh, murmuring praise as he peels off your underwear. Paz’s hand snakes down to your pussy and runs two thick fingers through your already slick cunt, then delicately parts your folds.

It’s like a fucking bomb going off as his thumb grazes over your swollen clit. His forearm locks tight around your waist, keeping you in place as you arch and tremble. Paz is feather light and teasing, as he strokes over the little bundle of nerves in a painstakingly slow rhythm.

“Paz—“

He nudges your cheek with his helmet and chuckles. “You’re so sensitive, vaar’ika. Such lovely noises too.”

Paz trades in his light touches for using his two fingers instead. They form a relaxed ‘v’ shape, trapping your clit in between the digits as he massages in a steady up and down motion. You cry out, every nerve shocked and flooded with saccharine pleasure, shoving you so treacherously close to that precarious edge of release.

You have no fucking chance as a different set of fingers, leaner in length but just as bulky, carefully prod at your entrance. Din’s pointer finger slides into your cunt, quickly adding a second as your core clenches and stretches for him. The dual sensations over your clit and Din’s fingers steadily pumping and curling inside you send you hurling into that dazzling white-hot pleasure.

Throwing your head back, you cry out—a jumbled mess of their names or just nonsense— pleasure crackling out from your core and all the way down your legs. Your cunt tightens like a vice around Din’s digits, your legs twitching as your high dips into prickly overstimulation. You whine, and swat at Paz’s hand, Din pulling out his own fingers a moment later and wiping your wetness on the inside of your thigh.

Your head rests in the crook of Paz’s shoulder as your breath fans across the side of his helmet, fogging up the metal where the blue paint is chipped and scraped away. The shirt he wears smells a bit like sweat but the underlying scent of him is comforting—worn leather and something crisp, like fresh laundry. You don’t mean for the words to slip out—

You know better than that, but everything feels muddled and silly and, and, and—

“I wish I could kiss you.”

It’s like dousing ice cold water on a pile of smoldering coals. A silence, petrifying and like the inhale before jumping off a cliff and into a rocky sea, ensues. Stupid, stupid, stupid—

Paz shatters the fragile suspense with a rich laugh that burns away all the icy worry making itself a home in your ribcage. He moves his arm up, his fingers gripping your jaw to fix your gaze onto the other Mandalorian. “You want his mouth on you too?”

You whimper and nod, but it isn’t enough.

“Use your voice vaar’ika,” Paz hums, pressing the crown of his helmet against your cheek. “Tell us want you want.”

“I-fuck—” Paz’s fingertips sneak up your torso, rough callous catching deliciously on your skin. “I wan’t your mouth on me. B-both of you.”

Paz chuckles and releases his hold on your chin. “You’ll have to be blindfolded, sweet girl.”

Din scoffs, a harsh crackle through the vocoder. “Like she’d want to see your face anyway.”

“Please,” you mewl, turning your head to curl into Paz’s neck. It’s not ideal, but it’s a sacrifice you’re willing to make. “I don’t care. I need—“

“Patience, little one,” Paz purrs, rubbing up and down your bare sides in a soothing manner. All it does is stoke the flames. “You’ll get what you want.”

Paz shifts, reaching for your abandoned shirt and stars—

You can feel his cock, firmer then tempered durasteel and poking into your lower back. Oh, hell—these men are going to ruin you.

You’re nudged forward, your vision going dark once your shirt is securely tied around your head. The knot traps a few hairs that pull sharp against your scalp but the measly pain is worth it. Oh so worth it.

“Is it too tight?” You hear Din ask, concern lacing his gravely vocals.

You wave your hand in dismissal. “S’fine.”

“Cant see anything either, right?”

You squirm, your patience spreading thin. “Din, please.”

“Fine.” There’s no bite to his tone and under different circumstances you’d have more composure. Acknowledge that they’re putting their religion, their whole being into your hands—a fragile trust that could so easily be shattered.

Your ears pick up their subtle movements, their helmets landing onto the thin mat with soft thunks. With bated breath you wait for them to jump into action, seize every spare moment to taste your skin and breathe the same air. But—

“You need a haircut, vod.”

“And you need to shave.” Retorts Din with bitter indignation.

“It’s hardly even stubble.” He chortles. You giggle and twist away as he scrapes his prickly cheek up and down your neck. “Besides—she likes it.”

There’s another lull, and with the blindfold everything is amplified—the quick and quiet breathing of Din on your right and the slide of fabric against skin as Paz shifts. Your attention is captured by Din’s bare palm, warm and calloused like weathered leather left out in the afternoon sun. He caresses the outside of your thigh in smooth, longing strokes, enraptured by the softness of your skin. You whimper and let your leg fall open, exposing more of your thigh for his curious exploration.

The sudden touch on your cheek is jarring. You know Paz is there—it’s not an easy thing to forget the solid chest you’re leaning against but it’s hard to focus. Difficult to settle on one thought before it slips away like grains of sand between a clenched fist. Paz’s touch is heavier than Din’s, ambitious and greedy but…mindful. Even as his fingers spread along your jaw and drag you into a deep, mouthwatering kiss. It’s…stars—

There’s nothing that can describe this. No word that could ever hold a candle up to the way his lips, plush and soft, move against yours. His nose brushes against your cheek as he tilts his head and deepens the kiss, his warm tongue sliding against the seam of your bottom lip.

You whine and bury your hand into his hair as Paz groans, a low rumble in his throat. You wonder what color it is, but carding your fingers through the curls atop his head suffices for now.

Your curiosity is abruptly ended as Din’s hand snakes around your forearm. You’re forcibly yanked away, only to be met with another pair of lips. Din murmurs an apology at the sting of his teeth bumping into your upper lip, but the pain is hardly the first thing on your mind.

Din’s kiss is devouring—

Scalding and bright—the galaxy, a thousand suns, all there ever will be and all that ever was. The way his lips move against yours is a devastatingly sharp contrast to the steady, syrupy sweet kiss Paz offers. Desperate and eager to surround you in his own arms—steal away any lingering thought and replace it with him. Din Djarin—

You gasp as Din’s teeth nibble and pull on your bottom lip, only a moment before he surges closer, wrapping his hand around your jaw to hold it open as he licks deep into your mouth. Breaking for air, Din tangles his fingers into your hair at the base of your neck and yanks, baring the column of your throat. His travels down, the tender kisses morphing into teasing nips and lingering sucks that’ll turn into tender bruises in the morning.

Din hovers over your breasts, his heated breath and cooling saliva the catalyst to the goosebumps that rush over your skin. He lightly tugs on your nipple using his teeth, then plants a sweet kiss over your sternum.

“Can I taste you?” Din murmurs, his lips ghosting over your flesh. “Maker—wanna put my mouth on you.”

“Din—“ A different set of lips latching onto the juncture of your neck and hijacks your train of thought. Wipes your mind clean until Paz is the sole thing you can consciously focus on.

Paz laves his tongue over the shell of your ear and urges you to lean back against him once more. Your nose scrapes against his stubble as you tuck your head into the crook of his neck, his hips lazily rolling his hardened cock into your backside.

“Or…” Paz rumbles, capturing your hand and interlacing your fingers with his. You marvel at the sheer size of his palm—astounded still when he leads his and your hands to palm his cock. “I could give you this. Fuck your pretty little cunt until you’re screaming for me.”

It’s a punch to the gut. Why the fuck do you have to choose? You squirm as Din points his tongue over your nipple then sucks it into his mouth.

Working through the fog in your head, the answer is clearer than fucking crystal. Because who in their right mind would turn down a Mandalorian’s request to eat you out? Not you, that’s for sure. “Din—want your mouth.”

Din huffs in triumph and slips between your legs that part to accommodate his broad shoulders, leaving no patch of bare skin untouched and worshiped. You shiver as his tongue circles around your bellybutton then retreats. Din settles his head beside your knee and mouths a kiss there.

You whine his name and buck your hips, heart beating wildly in your ears. The teasing is unbearable and, stars—if he doesn’t start now—

He nibbles on the inside of your thigh, laving his warm tongue over each mark he leaves behind, buffering the sting of his teeth. Din snake his hands under your ass, hooking your knees over his shoulders as he heaves your cunt closer to his mouth. Din’s thumbs part your soaking pussy, his breath hot fanning over your cunt. His tongue his scalding—like liquid velvet as he dips the tip of his tongue from the base of your slit all the way up to your clit.

Din sucks on the little bundle of nerves, rolling his tongue until you’re crying out, molten pleasure zipping through you. He grunts as your fingers tangle into his hair—fuck. Fuck, you need more.

Arching into his mouth, all thoughts are obliterated; nothing but the warmth of his tongue, and his lips, devouring you as if he were a man seconds from death and you’re his saving grace. That frenzied desperation lingers on the edges of his movements like he’s afraid you’ll fade into smoke—but you’re not going anywhere. Not even a million credits could convince you to push Din’s head away.

He sinks two fingers into your clenching hole and curls his fingers, stroking and curling his fingertips to make you sing. Zeros in on that little spot that causes the involuntary twitches of your leg and wrenches embarrassing, high pitched mewls that fill the room. You’re careening towards your high, the sensitivity of your last orgasm amping up the influx of pleasure.

“Shit—Din. Close—I’m so close,” you gasp, pulling his hair tight enough that you know it must hurt. He makes no sign that it does, just groans and buries his tongue into your dripping hole, licking alongside his fingers that shovel more of your wetness into his mouth.

Your release unfurls through your body like sticky molasses—smoldering embers that seep into each limb until they’re heavier than lead. Fuck—it’s so hard to think and at this rate your brain is as good as gone.

You pay only a fraction of attention to Din as he kisses his way back up your body and lands a final one over your lips. His thumb grazes over your chin, his gravelly words of praise cutting through some of that foggy haze, how good you were, how fucking delicious you tasted when you came on his tongue. You taste your own arousal on his mouth as he noses your cheek and captures your lips in another kiss.

“Are you done?” Paz asks dryly, much too barbed to be thrown your way. You groan when Paz jostles your limp body as he hoists you back into his lap.

“Just starting, actually,” Din quips. “Why don’t you hand her back over? I’ve got some more things I wanna try.”

Paz scoffs and secures a heavy arm around your middle. “Greed will get you nowhere.”

“Neither will your arrogance.”

“Shut up—both of you,” you interrupt. Your voice is raw and choppy but it does the job. “Just fuck me already.”

For now their little spat is sidelined—it’s not worth ripping off that bandage of a temporary truce. There’s a chaste moment of quiet, like they’re considering tearing into each other’s throats instead, but with a touch to Paz’s thigh the standoff fizzles out.

“We need to work on your manners,” Paz suggests, curling his large, calloused hand around your neck in a loose hold. “I believe it’s please fuck me.”

Maybe if you weren’t practically a pile of brainless goo, you’d argue. See how far you can push—though this time you fold. “Please fuck me. P-please—I need it.”

Seemingly satisfied with your answer; Paz wedges a hand between your bodies to grip his cock and run the tip through your folds, soaked from you own wetness and Din’s saliva. The head of his member nudges at your entrance, and wether it’s his size or the fact you can’t see anything—you panic.

Your hand shoots out, nails harpooning into the meat of his forearm. “W-wait—you’re too b-big.”

Paz freezes and moves you up his lap and presses a kiss over you hairline. “We can stop. Just say—“

“N-no, I’m fine,” you assure, planting an apologetic peck on his stubbled jaw. Stopping is the last thing you want to do—it was just…overwhelming. A sensory overload testing the very fringes of your being. “Go slow?”

You feel his head bob in compliance as he moves you back to where you’re hovering over his cock. You relax this time, not as many alarm bells clanging through your head as your cunt flutters around the fat tip and then that glorious, first thick inch. Paz’s thumb bumps over your throbbing clit, coaxing your pussy to take him further.

“Yeah, that’s it vaar’ika,” he grunts, his breath fanning over your neck in quick pants. “Taking my cock so fucking well. So nice and pretty.”

Your pussy flutters, fresh waves of arousal hot and burning.You nearly keel over when Paz starts shallowly rocking his hips, easing your body the rest of the way down his length until the back of your thighs touch his. Maker—how the hell is he all the way inside? You can feel him in your fucking guts—

“See?” Paz purrs. He sucks a bruise into the meat of your shoulder and pushes his palm against your lower stomach, making the fit even tighter. “Fits fucking perfect.”

The noise your cunt makes pulling out and the debauched moan that filters through his vocal chords is obscene. If anyone where to walk by, well—it’s certainly not training that’s going on, for the better lack of words.

Paz holds true to his word—keeps his pace limited to deep, languid thrusts that brush up against something that makes your whole body shake—like strumming a golden chord molded to a musician’s fingers. Fuck—he’s doing all the work too. Lifting you by the swell of your hips and pulling you down onto his cock with a rough buck of his hips.

Abruptly, he slows to a gentle rocking—quick to lock you in place as you thrash and roll your hips. “Paz—n-no. Keep going. You n-need to—“

Paz silences your please with a wet, open mouthed kiss. “Our friend looks lonely. Why don’t you use that pretty mouth and suck his cock?”

Din.

You hear the man curse in Mando’a, probably some stab at Paz—

But with a pat to your outer thigh, you don’t need any more prompting—you’d give up your left hand to get a chance to suck him off. With the help of Paz, you’re eased onto your hands and knees, shocks of white-hot pleasure zipping through your core at the change of angle. Like this Paz is seated deeper inside, stabbing into each spot that makes you sing.

Fuck—your arms are shaking—only able to hold yourself up for half a click and then you’re sinking face first into the floor, ass in the air as he fucks into you. Paz clicks his tongue and wraps his arm around your front, pulling you back up from your slumped position.

“I told you to suck his cock, girl. Not take a nap.” Paz accentuates his words with heavy, well measured thrusts—the kind of force you know will leave your whole lower half throbbing and sore in the aftermath.

You whine as Paz grabs a hold of your jaw, digging into the tender joints until your mouth falls open. “Good. Keep it like that.”

Paz’s hand falls away, replaced by a softer touch. The pads of Din’s fingers hook under your chin, guiding and tempting you nearer to what rests between his legs, hot and heavy and large.

You feel the tip of his cock, flushed and pulsing, rest on your bottom lip. You lap up the beads of sticky precum with kitten licks that morph into suckling the entire head. Din grunts out your name and tangles his hand into your hair as you tongue at the ridged frenulum. He never forces you to swallow down more of him—lets you cradle the first few inches in the wet warmth of your mouth and languidly roll the pad of your tongue around him.

You want to take him deeper, let Din fuck your throat raw, but your jaw already aches. Your lips are pulled tight around his shaft, drool dribbling down your chin and landing on the mat below. You’re not sure if you could take more of him without the danger of your teeth catching or dislocating your jaw. So you manage like this—hollowing out your cheeks and and using the momentum of Paz’s thrusts to pleasure Din.

It’s frustrating—it must be each time you let his cock slip out of your mouth to breathe or the fact Din isn’t able to fucking fit his cock into your mouth. Annoying that you aren’t able to think properly to help him out a bit ore when that said brain is being fucked straight outta you, put through the wringer and then body slammed onto duracrete.

Din cups your cheek, strokes over your skin with his thumb and maneuvers himself out of your mouth. You whine and lean into his palm, his touch addictive like smoldering coals in the dead of winter.

“You want me there instead of him?” Din purrs, using the tips of his index and middle fingers to tilt your chin and drag you into an open mouthed kiss. “Fuck you like you deserve.”

The profane imagery of Din between your legs instead makes you clench tight. It only takes a couple seconds and a few more feverish kisses before you’re nodding to his request. Paz mutters a swear, hesitates, and reluctantly pulls out, leaving your cunt empty and aching with need.

Din, however, is speedy—quick to hoard you to himself and yank your legs over his hips so that you’re draped on his lap. He jumps straight to the point, no fancy maneuver or drawn out teasing—just grabs the base of his cock, slides the flushed tip between your folds and sinks into your cunt. Even after your pussy had been stretched and molded around Paz’s length, you struggle to take Din’s entire cock into your aching center. It’s easier than Paz but, Maker—not by much.

You whine, harpooning your fingernails into his shoulder once he bottoms out. Din snarls a curse and latches his teeth onto the juncture between your neck and shoulder, prickly pain shooting directly to your belly. “Fucking tight. H-how—fuck.”

There’s no time to adjust before Din sets a pace, harsh and desperate—his hands digging into the flesh of your ass for better leverage. Each roll of his hips borders erratic, taking his pleasure without thought—intent on reaching his own end before it could be yanked out from under him. Din’s staggered exhales below your ear are interlaced with subdued moans that start low in his ribcage then dip into a higher, airy pitch. A delicate sound you’ll guard closer to your chest than any secret you possess for the rest of your life—precious and yours.

Din turns his head to steal a kiss. “You feel fuck—fucking good. Wanna feel you cum around me. S-squeezed so fucking hard around my fingers—“

You choke out a groan and feel your arousal begin to drip down your thighs—hear the thrusts of his cock into your cunt become shamefully wetter. Heat sizzles down each vertebrae in your spine, burning up each and every cell with the brilliance of a wildfire. Stars, this is gonna destroy you.

Din’s hand sneaks between your bodies and rubs tight, little circles over you swollen clit. There’s no build up to your orgasm—just a blinding surge of blistering warmth that knocks you off your feet and steals away all the air left in your lungs. Your nails dig into Din’s back as you shake and grapple for a foothold in your own consciousness—the steady warmth of his body a much needed anchor for the madness that threatens to drown you.

“Good girl,” Din praises, pace faltering from just how tight your pussy squeezes and flutters around his cock. “S-such a fucking good girl for me.”

Regaining some semblance of control, you realize he’s still fucking going—still rock solid and throbbing, fucking you through the aftershocks of your release. Your arousal turns sharp, like rough cotton over a fresh sunburn as it dips into overstimulation. It’s not unpleasant but Din has to slow his hips to a delicate roll for you to recover.

In the time it takes to inhale, a different calloused hand kneads into your lower back then smoothes up your spine. A second later you feel the scrape of Paz’s stubble prick along your exposed shoulder as his tongue drags along your sweat dampened skin—all the way up the curve of your neck and ending at the shell of your ear.

You’re not sure if it’s intentional, but as Paz crowds closer the tip of his cock pokes at your other hole. With a surprised mewl, you tense and shy away—but he follows, molds his chest against your back to sandwhich you in. The hand gripping your bicep jumps to your neck and pulls your head against his shoulder.

Two of Paz’s fingers dip down the curve of your ass and brush along the puckered skin—far less jarring this time. “Do you want to be fucked here too?”

Maker—

You’re gonna fucking explode.

Stuffed to the brim already, it’s hard to imagine Paz cramming himself in along with Din. A little red light blares in some corner of your mind but it’s quickly soothed as Paz plants soft kisses over your cheek and jaw. You trust him—there’s no reason to think he’ll hurt you or push you to the point of pain.

You catch his mouth with a kiss and rock your hips back. “Y-yeah, ok. I trust you.”

You feel his smile curl against your cheek. “Don’t worry vaar’ika—I’ll take care of you.”

Paz strokes your bottom lip with his thumb and kisses the crown of your hairline as you sink into him. With his ring and middle finger, he pushes past the seam of your lips. “Suck.”

You obey, sealing your lips around his two digits and coating them in your saliva. Paz pulls them out with a pop and moves them between your legs, and with the added wetness dripping from your cunt, the first finger is easy enough. The second and third have you gasping as he scissors them and stretches your tight hole wider. You claw your nails into Din’s shirt—and he’s no better—Din’s own hands are clamping around your hips, struggling to keep still and biting back moans each time your cunt constricts.

Your hips begins to meet the thrusts of Paz’s fingers as your body familiarizes the feel of him there. It’s a deep thrill that rushes up through your spinal cord—much different from anything you’ve felt before.

“You like this, don’t you?” Paz goads, chuckling when you whine as he extracts his fingers. “I think you’re ready to take my cock, yeah?”

You shudder and nod, your voice no more than a squeak as it pilfers out. Paz strokes the top of your head and tips you forward into Din’s eager arms as Paz slicks up his length in a mix of precum and your dripping arousal. He touches the swell of you ass in warning, lines himself up with your hole and wedges the tip of his cock inside of you.

Involuntary tears dampen your makeshift blindfold as Paz buries himself deeper, his rumbling tone urging you to relax—relax even though your mind is drowning in an ocean of arousal and swirling emotions you have no hope to pin down and analyze. It’s for the best—thankful as Paz bottoms out that it wrenches you back to a feasible reality you’re able to manage.

“Shit—I-I’m gonna die—“ You sob, writhing at just how full you are. But there’s nowhere to fucking go—

“Easy,” Din breathes, and you wonder if he’s said it to keep his own head on his shoulders. “Easy.”

Din’s gravelly rasp cuts through the fog in your head, and stars—you sound like you’re fucking dying. Your wheezy breaths and lightheadedness would certainly suggest that—but no…no, you’re fine. Better than fine.

A rush so acute and devastating launches up your spine as Din’s patience cracks. He experimentally rolls his hips and that’s the end of it. You’re swallowed up in that riptide you fought so hard to avoid—fuck. You won’t be the same after this. How can you?

You can feel them both, separated by a thin wall as they sprint towards their own highs. You’re never once left empty—Din reaches the end of you as Paz pulls out and while there’s not exactly any finesse involves it’s the best fucking thing you’ve felt in your entire life. There’s no bickering—no teasing and you’re struck with an idea that makes you clench tight around both of them. You wouldn’t mind if this was the way they decided to settle scores or finally see eye to eye.

This time you can’t discern your high—just a constant overflow of ecstasy and dazzling arousal like an imploding supernova. You cry their names—sob and shake in their hold with such fervor that Paz traps you tighter between them to keep you still.

“Fuck—you get so fucking tight,” Paz growls, blunt nails digging into your hips. “And so fucking wet.”

His fingers touch the inside of your thigh and stars—he’s right. “I get to fuck your cunt next time—see how much you’ll drip for me.”

Even if the blindfold were off—there’d be nothing to see but a white wash of nothing. Blinded by pleasure and bursting at the seems.

Jealous, Din steals your breath away with a kiss, licking and nipping at your swollen lips until you whine his name. His jagged pants fan across your chin—chapped lips and patchy facial hair tickling across your bottom lip as you breath the same air.

Din whispers your name like a prayer, his fingers clutching tight around your thighs as his pace starts to flounder to choppy jerks. “Shit. I-I’m close—“

Your fingers twist into his hair. “Yeah—ok baby. Let go.”

Din’s teeth sink into the base of your throat and cums. His seed coats your insides—hot and copious and fucking shit—if there’s a next time you want him to cum in your mouth.

You don’t get time to relish Din’s stuttered gasps of your name, laced with praise and a show of a tender and bleeding heart before Paz is gathering up your hair in a tight fist and jerking your head up. “You—you want me to cum too? Say it.”

Without a breath of hesitation you beg for it, cry and arch into him. It does the trick—

Paz is loud—shouts a thunderous roar and buries his cock deep into your hole. Din is still recovering from the aftershocks of his release when Paz pulls out after what seems like ages pumping you full. His cock no longer there to plug you up, his cum begins to dribble out and mix with the mess between your legs. Your legs shake and you wobble--crying out as Din slips out, your body dreadfully empty and aching.

You're lowered to the mat by Din and if you weren't still trying to formulate words, you'd thank them. Lips dart over your cheeks and hairline, and for once nothing needs to be said. It’s nice...the radiating warmth from their bodies and the simmering flush through you body is something you could get used to. But you’re no stranger to the shifting tides of the future.

You shrug it off.

Your eyes are heavy and with one of them stroking your hair and the other your thigh, you drift to sleep. Later—later all unspoken things and disastrous words can be dealt with tomorrow. You must be dreaming when it’s said--careless and bold, but the words nestle into your heart and sprouts with fear.

“You love her, don't you?”

translation:

vaar’ika--pipsqueak

or’dinni--dumbass idiot

vod--brother/comrade

tag list:

@bobafctts @djxrxn @teaofpeach @corrupt-fvcker @nelba @datmando @ben-is-a-hoe @dreams-like-clockwork @aerynwrites @auty-ren @huliabitch @anxiety-riddled-mando @phoenixhalliwell @trippedmetaldetector

#happy SINday :)#pls accept some mando schlong #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #paz vizla x reader #paz vizsla x reader #paz vizla #paz vizsla #din djarin #the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #star wars #sw #fanfic #my writing #reader insert

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nicnacsnonsense · 4 years

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Okay so this is going to be part Good Omens meta, part head canon, all ramble, but I promise I have a point. Well, technically it’s a question, but I am going somewhere with this; there’s just going to be a lot of pit stops and detours along the way.

We’re starting with Crowley. I know Aziraphale’s the soft one, but Crowley’s pretty soft for a demon. He’s not a total cuddly marshmallow like I see him portrayed as sometimes – he does seem to genuinely enjoy the “annoying people” parts of his job. Though even then he doesn’t seem to enjoy the annoyance for its own sake as much as the fact that it represents he has been successful; what he really seems to enjoy is the cleverness and artistry of it – the way he describes knocking out the telephone systems in the book is like a beautiful symphony of irritation. (Actually it’s weird to me that Hastur and Ligur’s method of chipping away at one soul at a time for years is called craftmanship while Crowley’s method is presented as a matter of efficiency. Like H&L are over here making artisanal meals with only the finest ingredients while Crowley is slinging out fast food burgers. Because to me Crowley’s method seems the one that takes more consideration and skill and is, taken for what it is, a thing of beauty, whereas H&L thing just seems like blunt-force trauma. I’m sorry you sat on this guy’s shoulder whispering in his ear for ten years in order to win his soul over? Unless he’s literally Job or Jesus Christ, I’m not impressed.) Crowley isn’t a total marshmallow, but he is soft. He’s not cruel or sadistic and he doesn’t like seeing people get genuinely hurt or killed. Now when other demons are sadistic, he doesn’t like it, but he seems to largely accept it as the way things are. When Heaven does terrible things, he seems kind of disgusted but not terribly surprised. But when it’s the humans or God doing terrible things, that’s what hits him hard. For slightly different reasons in each case, but ultimately it boils down to “I thought you were better than this,” and he cannot emotionally handle it when they prove they aren’t.

Moving on to Aziraphale (I promise we’ll come back to our soft demon boi in a minute). There’s a lot of different takes out there about how book Aziraphale differs from show Aziraphale, but the most compelling one I’ve ever seen argues that it’s not so much that Aziraphale is inherently different as it is Heaven is different in the two versions, which in turn impacts how Aziraphale behaves. In the book Heaven shows up on three occasions: when Aziraphale calls Heaven and speaks with the Metatron, when Aziraphale accidentally gets himself beamed up to Heaven (which could be considered a continuation of the same event), and at the airbase to try to restart the Apocalypse. In all of these cases either Aziraphale reached out to Heaven first or his presence was incidental to Heaven showing up. The general implication is that no one is checking in on him really; he has his own personal loyalty and sense of duty to Heaven urging him to do what they expect of him, but unless he’s really blatant about it, no one’s going to know if he breaks the rules here and there. Book Aziraphale’s life is basically one long “who you are in the dark” test, with the plot twist at the end where he flicks on the lights switch and flips everyone off while he does the thing he wasn’t supposed to because it turns out that was the right thing to do all along.

By contrast in the show Heaven is showing up all the time. Aziraphale is dragged up there multiple times for reports, archangels are constantly popping down to Earth to talk with him, and they actually proactively uncover Aziraphale’s involvement with Crowley. Granted, we can assume this is a higher than normal rate of involvement because of the fast-approaching Apocalypse, but the point remains that show Aziraphale is dealing with a lot more oversight. If he breaks the rules, there is a good chance he will be caught, and even if he just does something perfectly allowed but considered to be unbefitting an angel, he will be met with scorn and disapproval. That’s why show Aziraphale is more anxious, less likely to break any rules, and more cautious if he does so.

An extension of this difference in how Heaven behaves that I haven’t seen mentioned before, is it impacts how Aziraphale perceives Hell to be. Aziraphale doesn’t have any real firsthand experience of Hell, so he has to make inferences as far as what they’re like to work for. His main two sources of information are going to be what Heaven tells him – likely to be sparse and often inaccurate – and what Crowley tells him – honestly also likely to be sparse and often inaccurate. Obviously, Crowley knows what working for Hell is like, and there are probably some areas that he’s willing to be fairly open and straight-forward about. But when it comes to things like punishments for failure or disobedience, Crowley’s going to spend most of the time evading and downplaying with occasional bits of shocking honesty to make a point and blatant overexaggerations for dramatic effect. With limited information to go on, Aziraphale is forced to use what Heaven’s like and extrapolate from there. And since the book and show versions have two such different starting points, even if book Aziraphale concludes Hell is more overbearing than book Heaven and show Aziraphale concludes Hell is less thorough on following up than show Heaven, they are still going to come to very different conclusions as to how present and aware of what Crowley is up to Hell is. Which is relevant because not only is show Aziraphale dealing with a Heaven that is more like to catch misbehavior, he also perceives Hell as being more aware and therefore Crowley more likely to be caught and punished than book Aziraphale does.

Circling back to Crowley and his emotional upset at the cruelties of the world. The reason we had to talk about Aziraphale is because how he behaves has an impact on how Crowley copes. Now with the book we don’t have our “a love 6000 years in the making” backstory, and Crowley and Aziraphale are just generally less prominent than they are in the show, which means we have less to go on. The only real reference we get is Crowley’s reaction to the Spanish Inquisition. He gets a commendation for it without having done anything, goes to take a look, and then gets drunk for a week. This would imply that drinking is how he handles these sorts of things, but I don’t think we’re getting the full story here. I say think because this is the most head canon-y part of all this; I don’t have any real evidence other than if you assume this is true then it does explain some things I’ll get to in a minute. The book tells us that after looking in on the Inquisition Crowley “had come back and got drunk for a week.” But back to where? The implication is back to the cantinas in the nicer parts of Spain where he had been before going for his look, but I think he went back to Aziraphale (who may very well have already been in the cantinas with him anyway). Because honestly, an actual literal demon with actual literal snake eyes getting shitfaced drunk in the middle of the Spanish Inquisition, knowing full well he’ll melt into a puddle of goo and die if anyone even sprinkles any holy water on him, is pretty fucking stupid. But if that demon had an actual literal angel watching over him… Aziraphale is by nature a guardian/protector, and in the book he isn’t constantly concerned about their relationship being discovered. I think over time Crowley has learned that if he needs to fall apart or be vulnerable for a while, he can go to Aziraphale and rely on Aziraphale watching over him and supporting him until he’s ready to pull himself back together again.

Show Aziraphale does not have the same freedom as his book counterpart, and so cannot always reliably be there for Crowley in the same way. Which is not a dig on Aziraphale at all; he’s in a different situation where he has to be focused on keeping them safe from their superiors, so he simply does not have the additional emotional capacity sometimes, and that’s not his fault. Despite that, Crowley does still get the emotional support he needs from Aziraphale, it just has to function in a different way.

Our episode 3 cold open lets us watch this develop quite well. Our first two scenes (aside from the one with God asking about the sword, obviously) are Noah’s Ark and the crucifixion, where we see Crowley approach Aziraphale to essentially needle him about what’s going on. At this point Aziraphale isn’t so much support as someone he can redirect his anger toward – I assume this is how Book Omens started too, and we’ll get to the divergence in a second. Crowley is willing to drop the anger with Aziraphale much faster in the crucifixion scene, suggesting they have grown closer over the intervening 3000 years, and Crowley no longer finds as much emotional catharsis in being angry at Aziraphale, but he continues to approach Aziraphale that way out of habit.

Then we get to Rome, where Crowley has, according to the script book, come to town to tempt Caligula only to be shocked and upset when he learns how very much Caligula doesn’t need tempting. Crowley goes to a bar where Aziraphale happens to be – whether he knew Aziraphale was there or not before he arrived is irrelevant, but I am assuming he was aware of Aziraphale’s presence by the time he walked in the door. And here is where book and show diverge. Because Crowley has approached Aziraphale about things he’s been upset about in the past, but it’s one thing to needle an angel about things Heaven is responsible for; it’s quite another to walk up to your crush and just start complaining about some jerk who’s put you in a bad mood. Book Crowley, who has been dealing with a slightly more relaxed Aziraphale, says fuck it, goes and sits down across from him and says, “You would not believe the day I’ve had.” And from there we develop into the dynamic mentioned previously for Book Omens.

As mentioned, show Aziraphale is more anxious about their relationship, resulting in show Crowley falling on the other side of this choice and not approaching Aziraphale. This leaves it to Aziraphale to approach Crowley this time. Now as much as we may tease, Aziraphale’s not actually an idiot. He can tell Crowley is upset about something, and he’s picked up on the pattern where when Crowley is upset, he likes to be able rant a bit about Heaven. Obviously Aziraphale can sometimes find those conversations uncomfortable, but he’s feeling good today, so he’s happy to engage in some banter, especially if it’ll cheer his friend up. But Crowley’s the one who usually starts the conversation, so Aziraphale wracks his brain for something he can say about the nature of good and evil and ineffability and comes up with “Still a demon, then?” Shockingly, this doesn’t work. Still he keeps the conversation going and tries again with “Oh well, let me tempt you to... Oh, no, that's, that's your job, isn't it?” This still doesn’t work the way he’s expecting it to, but they do have a very nice meal and a good conversation that’s not really about Heaven and Hell at all, after which Crowley seems to be in much better spirits. Which leads him to the conclusion that it’s not the specifics that are important, just the fact of having the conversation and giving something Crowley to distract himself with.

Skipping ahead to the Globe, two quick things to point out. This is the first time we see Crowley do his little circle of Aziraphale, proving that by this point they established the dynamic where Crowley protects Aziraphale. The second is this is also the first time Aziraphale really intentionally uses his puppy dog eyes on Crowley, meaning their acts of service dynamic is established as well. Knowing these have been established helps inform the decisions Aziraphale makes in the Bastille scene.

Bastille scene. We can assume everything about this incident is something Aziraphale has staged, from actually getting arrested to his claims that he can’t rescue himself because he was reprimanded for too many frivolous miracles. I will say I don’t think that last one is a complete fabrication; I think either that it is something that has happened, but a good while ago such that he’s not worried about it anymore, or it did just happen, but Aziraphale actually had been using an unusually large amount of miracles recently – possibly as part of getting his bookshop set up – and has since dialed it back enough that he can use one or two at the Bastille, be it to free himself or just to change his clothing, without getting in trouble. However, while I do think it was staged, I don’t think the primary propose was to indulge in Aziraphale’s damsel in distress fantasies; that was just an unexpected bonus. Aziraphale’s main objective was helping Crowley.

Aziraphale knew about the French Revolution, knew Crowley was in the area, and knew Crowley was liable to find the whole situation upsetting. His response was to put on his prettiest outfit, and get himself locked up. He’s broadcasting to Crowley, don’t worry about the humans, just focus on me, don’t think about what they’re doing, just look at the silly angel all chained over here in need of rescue. Of course this isn’t completely divorced from the current situation, but in a way that’s actually better, because it takes that situation and lowers the stakes – Aziraphale isn’t going to die, worse case scenario he’ll just get discorporated – and puts Crowley back in control of the situation – he can’t stop the Revolution, even if he’s capable he’d be risking too much trouble with Hell if he tried, but he can save Aziraphale and fly under Hell’s radar while doing it. Basically, we’ve taken the “Crowley needs a distraction” conclusion Aziraphale came to back in Rome and refined it in the intervening 1750 years.

Even Aziraphale’s suspicions that Crowley is behind the whole revolution can be seen as an extension of the indirect comfort he’s offering. He knows that Crowley is going to have to tell Hell that he is behind all this stuff that’s upsetting him, so when Aziraphale accuses him of the very same, it gives Crowley an opportunity and a safe place to assert that, no, he is not responsible. And not just to say it, but to say it and have someone believe him, that it isn’t his fault and he would never do anything really terrible like this.

This gives us the final form of how Show Omens dynamic works. Instead of offering Crowley a safe haven, Aziraphale emotionally supports Crowley by offering him opportunities to be the savior.

What’s especially interesting about this is if we take these two different dynamics, where in Book Omens Aziraphale serves as Crowley’s safe haven and in Show Omens Crowley is Aziraphale’s savior, that actually explains four of the big differences between the book and show: Crowley’s reaction to being called nice, Crowley crossing the M25 with optimism vs imagination, the whole run away with me subplot, and Crowley’s post bookshop fire reaction.

A demon being called nice is a pretty risky thing for the demon in question. As Crowley points out during his and Aziraphale’s conversation in Eden, a demon can get in a lot of trouble for doing the right thing, and I can’t imagine being accused of being nice would work out much better for him. But book Crowley is used to being vulnerable like that around Aziraphale. He still snaps at Aziraphale when he says it, because Crowley is stressed out and right now is not the time for that, but it is ultimately an established part of their relationship dynamic so it really only annoys him. By contrast, in the show a lot of Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship is built around avoiding saying those things for their own safety. Given that, it’s no wonder his negative reaction would be more extreme.

There’s a whole long meta out there about how both Crowley’s are optimists, but in different ways (and if someone knows where to find it, please let me know so I can link it). Book Crowley is a more passive sort of optimism; he just generally believes that eventually things will work out for him. This is consistent with the way he handles it when he’s upset about things; he just goes to hang out with Aziraphale, lets himself be upset for a while, eventually it passes, and he’s good to go again. Whereas show Crowley has a more active sort of optimism, believing things can and will work out fine, as long as he steps up to make it happen. Again, this ties into how he deals with being upset; he goes out and does something about it. Granted, he’s not usually fixing the actual problem itself, but he’s being active related to what’s upsetting him, e.g. he can’t stop WWII, but he can go save Aziraphale from some Nazi spies. So when book Crowley drives through the M25 he has his optimism that things are going to work out as sort of a default mental state in his head, and it turns out The Secret really does work for demons so he gets through. Meanwhile show Crowley is actively applying himself to believing the car is fine, and that’s what pulls him through.

This passive/active difference also explains the addition of the “we could go off together” subplot in the show. Despite being more passive, book Crowley is not complacent; when they realize Warlock is not the antichrist, he and Aziraphale make efforts to find the real one. But when their initial search runs dry and they both agree the best thing to do is to have each of their “networks of human agents” look for the boy, Crowley is willing to step back and wait. Either one of their agents will find the kid or something else will turn up; somehow it’ll all work out. Show Crowley can’t do that. He can be optimistic that things will somehow work out, but not if he’s not doing something to fix it. Except there’s nothing else he can do to solve this problem, and when he can’t solve a problem his default is to instead save Aziraphale. The world is going to go up in flames, so Alpha Centauri it is then.

And now the one everyone loves to talk about: the bookshop fire. “Aha!” you said twenty minutes ago and then patiently waited for my rambling to get back to this point. “Aha! There is a flaw in your logic; after the bookshop fire it is book Crowley that copes by getting up and saving things, whereas show Crowley gets drunk and has an emotional breakdown.” But what you didn’t realize, gentle reader, is I already solved that problem weeks ago (this meta took a lot longer to write up than I was expecting). In fact, it’s not a problem at all, but further proof of these dynamics. Because after the bookshop fire, Aziraphale is gone. Aziraphale is gone, which means Crowley’s normal coping strategies don’t work. Book Crowley can’t have a breakdown about Aziraphale being gone precisely because Aziraphale is gone; he’s lost his safe space. So instead he just has to keep pushing forward and he’ll figure out how to deal with the rest of it later. Meanwhile show Crowley can’t save Aziraphale if Aziraphale is dead, and lacking that distraction, he has a breakdown.

Now that I’ve gone on for an obscenely long time about the different dynamics of book Crowley the protected vs. show Crowley the protector, I’m going to say that the specifics of how they are different aren’t ultimately that important. At least not in comparison to the way in which they’re the same. Despite how very different Heavens (and in theory a very different Hells could have a similar sort of impact) changed the details of their relationship dynamics, in both the book and the show, Crowley leans on Aziraphale for emotional support to deal with trauma. (As a side note, I don’t want to imply that this is a one-way relationship. Aziraphale also receives emotional support from Crowley; I’m just not touching on that now because I have to draw the line somewhere.) And that emotional support is a key factor in what makes Crowley different from other demons.

Obviously, we can see how being stuck in Hell would have made Crowley a worse person – though I use the word worse lightly here, as I think it’s very likely that rather than getting meaner for being stuck in Hell, Crowley would develop a learned helplessness. But even if Crowley was on Earth, being on Earth without that emotional support would have eventually had a huge negative impact on him and his attitudes and behavior. Because seeing humans being cruel to each other hurts him, and with no way to process that hurt, it would keep building up until eventually he would have to retreat into apathy to protect himself. But where the apathy of a Hell-residing Crowley would be underpinned by a sense of hopelessness because cruelty from demons is just what he expects, the apathy of an Earth-residing Crowley would have underneath it a lot of anger and betrayal. He did expect better of them, and they let him down time and time again until he stopped seeing the good in them. This betrayal-fueled apathy is the recipe for getting a Crowley that presents as a stereotypical demon, selfish and cruel.

And now finally we reach the point. All of this, all 3767 words of it (well, most of it) was all just context building up to this question: what the fuck did Heaven and Hell do to Crowley and Aziraphale in the 1992 script version?

#good omens #crowley #aziraphale #show omens #book omens #ineffable husbands #meta

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absynthe--minded · 4 years

Note

opinions on the recent russingon meta? tbh i love russingon, i love black fingon headcanons, but i do agree that it's a little weird when fingon gets totally sidelined in fics as just Maedhros' Emotional Growth or the Black Nanny. i mean, russingon really lends itself to hurt/comfort, which is fine, but i think ppl sometimes neglect fingon's arc. thoughts as a russingon writer? (no accusations, love your work, but wanted your perspective on other ppls russingon works)

(Wow this got long, lol.

Full disclosure - I haven’t read the recent Russingon meta, or offered any substantial response to it. Quite a lot of people I know have, but I’ve not had the time and my brain hasn’t been cooperating with me to read large chunks of text over the last couple of days. I have opinions on your ask as I’m seeing it now, and that’s what I’ll be responding to. I’m also not black, though I’m not white either - my ethnic group is one that has troubling stereotypes associated with it of caring for white people/acting as sage dispensers of advice/etc, but I can’t speak to the breadth and depth of the black experience when it comes to being a ‘black nanny’ in fiction, and I’m not going to try to.)

So, Fingon being a cardboard cutout/emotional support animal for Maedhros and Fingon being perceived as black by large portions of the fandom are two things that arose completely independently of one another. Fingon being Maedhros’s support animal is a trope as old as Russingon itself, and possibly is as old as the published Silm itself. I’ve read Russingon fics that were almost as old as I am, Russingon fics published last week, Russingon fics that vilified the Nolofinwëans, and Russingon fics from the turn of the 21st century when the Fëanorians were seen as uncomplicated villains. Fingon being a cardboard cutout is ubiquitous through all of them. It doesn’t matter how old the fic is, it’s basically guaranteed.

The reason for this is that Maedhros is far and away the most popular character in the Silmarillion, and his pain and angst and mental strife and trauma are front and center in many writers’ lists of priorities. If it’s not Fingon propping him up, it’s Maglor, or another brother, or an OC - this is a very common genre of Silm fic and it’s not limited to Russingon.

But.

This is my least favorite Russingon trope and it’s the entire reason I’m writing Blessed Hands and why all my Russingon fics are at least majority-Fingon POV. I can’t fucking stand it, and it completely kills my interest in a story. I’m super picky with my Russingon fics because of this trope, and because of its ubiquity, and I’ve talked about it on my blog many times before. For me to love a Russingon fic, it has to be about how they anchor and support one another, and how their mutual and equal investment in their relationship is the foundation of their lives. This trope’s not nearly as common as it used to be, thank Eru, but it’s still around, and I cannot talk enough about how I Hate It, lol. It’s also old enough and omnipresent enough that the majority of fics feature it, and - interestingly - the majority of fics also feature white Fingon.

Alongside this, Black Fingon arose out of a non-Russingon intracommunity discussion among the artists of the Silm fandom, in about 2013. I saw this play out in real time on my dash, and so while I can’t source posts reliably, I can promise this is as accurate as I can make it.

The paradigm shift came as a result of content creators realizing that several of their number weren’t white, and quite a few people in the fandom weren’t white, and yet 100% of art and fics featured white elves with zero real diversity (and a number of very troubling, somewhat stereotypical older illustrations of Men as the only significant examples of people of color in Middle-Earth). There was concern as to why this was being accepted as the norm when there was ample opportunity for representing both one’s own ethnicity and other people of color (and a lot of concern about unexamined racism in white artists who found themselves unable, for various reasons, to picture heroic elves as anything but fair-skinned) and the general consensus was that we had more consistent information from HoME draft to HoME draft about hair color than skin tone, so why were we all picturing our heroes as white?

Fingon in particular was headcanoned as black due to a discovery by a fan (whose URL escapes me, sadly) who I’m certain was black themself. There’s a passage in The Peoples of Middle-Earth describing Fingon as wearing his hair in plaits braided through with gold, and this fan made the comparison to hairstyles worn by IRL black people. The idea was that he was the most uncomplicatedly brave, heroic, and noble person in the Silm, and look, he could be a man of color! There was also a sort of gentleman’s agreement to refrain from making explicit connections beyond that to real human ethnic groups/cultures/races. The logic behind this was that if the generic Eurofantasy aesthetic was kept, white artists would be encouraged to draw diverse elves without concern for cultural appropriation, as well as steering racists away from caricature and the ability to twist a well-meaning effort into a stereotypical attack.

When these ideas first emerged, there was a lot of resistance. Arguments were made that those of us who advocated for diverse elves and specifically black Fingon were discreetly accusing other artists of being racist, or were acting purposefully holier-than-thou, or just wanted to start drama. There were some people who claimed we’d attack anyone who didn’t agree with us that elves were brown. This was an exhausting mess to deal with and it was a major part of my disillusionment with discussing racism in the Tolkien fandom - the majority of voices were reasonable people but the minority was loud and obnoxious. I bring this up to say that diverse elves were genuinely progressive and forward-looking in 2013, even when it was more or less explicitly stated that they had no real ties to existing human races and they had no change to their characters.

Black Fingon, agreed upon outside the Russingon fandom, and Fingon the cardboard cutout, the most reliably present version of Fingon in Russingon fic, sort of ran into one another. No real change was ever made to Finno’s character upon making him black - this would have been seen at the time as unnecessary because his character was just fine as-is, and the whole point was that he could be exactly as he’d been before and be black or brown, that men of color had the exact same range of emotion and depth of character that he did when he was perceived as white.

The problem is that there hasn’t been much examination of the idea that Fingon being a black man who exists to prop up a white man is uh. Really racist and kind of fraught.

All I have to say really is that this wasn’t a conscious decision by anyone to be racist - the opposite, actually. As I mentioned above I can’t speak for black people, or for other BIPOC, but my opinion is that it’s an unfortunate and unconscious choice that has nothing to do with Fingon’s race and everything to do with the fact that his character has been seriously neglected for decades now. It opens the door to a lot of really frustrating tropes and plotlines that smack fans of color in the face with how bigoted they are, and it’s something that I’m glad is being discussed, if only because I’ve been trying to push for a reevaluation of Fingon’s personality and general role for a long time now (though of course I’m also glad that this is actually getting acknowledged as a harmful thing real people now are at risk of doing).

My solution? Same as ever - “write Fingon like a real person with interests and desires and goals of his own, and treat his family like they matter, and flesh out the world he lives in. Listen to people of color if you’re white, educate yourself regardless, and learn to avoid harmful tropes.” If that becomes the fandom norm? I’ll be a happy Absynthe.

#replies #anon replies #RUSSINGON #absynthe's meta

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anexplanationofunfortunateevents · 4 years

Text

if the GOP could win for real, they would do a lot less cheating

Something you have to understand about recent American history is that the Republican party lost its shit in the 1960s. There are always plenty of reasons for decades-long historical trends, but arguably the core one is that Lyndon Johnson’s administration made a bunch of human rights advances known collectively as the Great Society, the cornerstone of which was a sincere and substantive effort to address the unfinished business of Reconstruction with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

Racist white people who didn’t want to share democracy with everyone else became reliable Republican voters, but they’re nowhere near enough to win an election on their own. Republicans realized that their ideology is a miserable death cult that can’t win a fair fight. They could have gotten better ideas, but instead, they started sabotaging democracy.

I am not here to overwhelm you with a list of all the American right wing’s assaults on democracy. But there is a relatively narrow subset which forms a pattern that has become increasingly urgent: times Republicans have abused, usurped, or radically and unilaterally bastardized the power of American government in order to limit voters’ ability to hold them accountable in free and fair elections.

Because it only includes events backed up by reliable and freely available sources, it necessarily only includes the times times they were ham-fisted or sloppy enough to get caught. It has over two dozen entries and is almost certainly incomplete.

1968: Richard Nixon sabotages peace talks to end the Vietnam War because anger over the war is a winning campaign issue for him. Johnson catches him and calls him out, but doesn’t tell the public. Nixon wins and takes office.

1972: Nixon’s re-election campaign, the Committee to Re-Elect the President (or CREEP, because these people are fucking Bond villains) goes on a crime spree which includes multiple break-ins at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel.

1992: President George H.W. Bush asks British Prime Minister John Major’s government to dig through official archives for anything compromising on his rival Governor Bill Clinton from Clinton’s time at Oxford University.

1992: A political appointee at the Bush State Department has Governor Clinton’s passport files searched for potentially embarrassing information.

1992: Bush’s Attorney General William Barr pressures federal prosecutors in Arkansas to make some public movement on a white collar crime case tangentially associated with Governor Clinton.

2000: The Florida state board of elections does a racist voter purge, targeting largely Democratic communities of color.

2000: A mob, mostly Republican congressional aides, force election officials in Palm Beach County to shut down its recount.

2000: Five Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents shut down the Florida recount in an unsigned opinion so specious and nakedly partisan that it irreparably damages the legitimacy of not only the Bush presidency but the Supreme Court itself.

2004: Republican election administrators in Florida attempt another racist voter purge, only abandoning it when they get caught.

2006: The Bush administration leans on federal prosecutors to influence the midterm elections with bogus investigations into Democratic politicians and prosecutions of non-existent “voter fraud” cases. After Republicans lose the midterms, several attorneys who resisted the pressure are fired.

2010: Five Supreme Court justices appointed by Republicans, in an existential fiat, reclassify money as speech, opening the floodgates to swamp every level of politics with dark money.

2013: The same five Republican Supreme Court justices gut the Voting Rights Act, specifically and explicitly because it has been relatively effective in preventing racist voter suppression.

2010s: Republicans in various state legislatures pass a bunch of laws to suppress the ability of voters to hold them accountable.

2016: Associates of Trump consigliere Rudy Giuliani loudly and unprofessionally conduct numerous bullshit investigations into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. They successfully pressure FBI director James Comey – himself a veteran of the corrupt and politicized Bush Justice Department – into several improper and decisive actions against Clinton.

2016: Donald Trump conspires with Russian intelligence and business interests to sabotage his opponent in a presidential election.

2016: Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell blackmails the Obama administration out of explaining the Russian government’s sabotage of the presidential election, leaving state boards of elections and the general public vulnerable to the assault.

2017-18: The Republican administration sits on evidence that Russian military hackers have penetrated state voting equipment.

2018: Republican Georgia secretary of state Brian Kemp insists on overseeing the election in which he is running for governor. He squeaks out a “win” after purging thousands of voters, arbitrarily closing or refusing to equip polling places, and baselessly accusing his Democratic opponent of trying to hack the election.

2018: A Republican congressional campaign in North Carolina hires operatives to defraud local senior citizens who were attempting to cast absentee ballots.

2018: Republicans lose the governorships in Wisconsin and Michigan, but keep control of the state legislatures due to gross gerrymandering. Before the new governors can be sworn in, they cram through laws stripping power from the incoming Democratic governors.

2019: Trump administration officials try to warp the data which will be collected in the 2020 census in a way that will enable future gerrymandering by undercounting largely Democratic constituencies. When they get caught and stopped, they try to justify themselves by lying to the federal courts.

2019: Donald Trump privately tries to extort the president of Ukraine into announcing bullshit investigations into prominent Democrats during the 2020 election.

2019: Donald Trump publicly pressures the government of China into opening bullshit investigations into prominent Democrats during the 2020 election.

2019: All but one House Republican opposes impeaching Trump for his extortion of Ukraine – until that one guy is pushed out of the party. Therefore, no House Republicans vote to impeach Trump.

2020: With one exception, every Republican in the Senate validates Trump’s attempts to rig the 2020 election by voting to acquit him.

2020: Republicans dig in their heels and refuse to take easy and obvious steps to keep voters safe from COVID-19 at the polls.

This is just the list of things that I could remember off the top of my head and could find receipts for with relative ease. It doesn’t include things that are plausible but unproven, like the allegations that Reagan’s 1980 campaign staff tried to repeat Nixon’s first stunt by working to prolong the Iran hostage crisis because it was a winning campaign issue for him. It doesn’t include dirty, bigoted campaigns that you might call awful but lawful, like the racist “Willie Horton” ad campaign in 1988 or the repulsive homophobic ballot initiatives that were engineered to bolster George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign. It doesn’t include the wide array of brutalizations of a constitutional small-d democratic system which aren’t specifically and concretely about elections – everything from eroding the credibility of scientists, experts, and reporters to packing the courts with proto-fascist hacks to lying the American people into war in Iraq.

It really doesn’t matter whether or not I think Republicans win elections legitimately. It’s extremely important that Republicans do not believe they can win elections legitimately.

Now think for a second about their cherished “voter fraud” trope. All this time, Republicans have been screeching that SOMEONE was out there trying to steal elections FROM THEM. It is absolutely correct to focus on and be upset about the racist history and intent of this particular conspiracy theory. I would simply argue that white supremacism is not the only unforgivable aspect of this nonsense trope. The other is the way those claims make it impossible to deal with actual threats against legitimate elections.

This is similar to what psychologists call projection, or the tactic domestic violence experts refer to as DARVO. It is not unrelated to “swiftboating” or the phenomenon students of genocide refer to as the “accusation in a mirror.” It is the axiom small children cite when they say “he who smelt it, dealt it.”

I don’t know the ONE WEIRD TRICK to make it not work. I just know that it – maddeningly – does work, not least on the Very Serious Experts whose ONE FUCKING JOB it is to know better.

So I’m sorry to disappoint if you were expecting a “many bad people on all sides” disclaimer about who does political dirty tricks, but “both sides” is not operative, no matter how desperate the hot-take-industrial-complex is to make fetch happen. It hasn’t been operative for twenty-five years, and it’s really not operative for the next six months. You can bury yourself deep in literature about asymmetric polarization, but you don’t have to do all that to understand what’s important here. Democrats support democracy and want to stop the plague, Republicans support the plague and want to stop democracy, and you should be extremely skeptical of anyone who claims not to know the difference.

#voting rights #donald trump #george w bush #george hw bush #democracy #authortiarianism

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mi-ma-mo · 4 years

Text

Eye-shiteru

Character(s): Date Kaname, Aiba, Amanoma Futa (Pewter) and Kuranushi Shizue (Boss).

Ratings: T for Teen and up audiences

Summary: Date meets Aiba for the first time. It’s weird.

Author’s Note: The events described in this fic may differ from their actual meeting in-game. I just LOVE Aiba and AI in general, so I wanted to explore this part of the game a bit more. There are spoilers if you squint.

Read it here or on AO3. Enjoy!

“The official title is "AI-Ball". You may call her Aiba.”

Date stared at the round device in the palm of Pewter’s hand. He didn’t have the best view on it from where he was standing but it sure looked to be an eyeball.

“The artificial intelligence contained within this sphere is nothing short of miraculous,” Pewter continued. The scientist was always excited to talk, but today he seemed to be in even higher spirits as he presented his proudest creation yet. “An autonomous artificial intelligence, birthed from collective nanotechnology. Its ability to "think" is controlled by a program we call the Wadjet System.”

Date was listening. Of course he was! But as Pewter rambled on about the device in his hand, Date couldn’t help but have some concerns about it going from Pewter’s hand straight into his eye socket. Would that be sanitary?

“Special Agent Date, from today forward, this is your partner. She will be your personal computer and your personal companion.”

Nodding, Date carefully picked up the device between his thumb and forefinger. He studied it for a moment. The “iris” was yellow, different from his green right eye. That… was kind of hot, right? He thought he remembered reading somewhere that women find heterochromia extremely attractive. His sources for these kinds of things were reliable of course. The trivia pages of porno magazines hadn’t let him down before, except maybe that one time–

Date immediately lost his train of thought and almost dropped the eye when it suddenly moved up to look at him. The “pupil” adjusted in size to focus on him and it was then that Date actual felt the weight of the device he was holding in his hand. If he had wanted to be more attractive to women any prosthetic eye in a different colour than his biological one would have sufficed, but now he was signing up for so much more.

He had butterflies in his stomach, but they were from nerves or excitement he couldn’t tell. Maybe it was both? He spared a glance at Pewter who was smiling at him as if to be saying ‘Go on’.

“Not to be rude, but is this–” “Sanitary? Yes, of course. You see–”

Date zoned out for the long and winded explanation that followed. Something about some kind of gel being bacterial- and virus-resistant, pH-neutral, and giving the device freedom of movement as well. Date was unsure about what Pewter meant with that last part, but he decided against asking any follow-up questions about it. He was more focused on the eye itself and how it seemed to study him as much as he was studying it.

“Well, upsy-daisy,” Date said as he finally lifted the device and attempted to pop it into his eye socket.

The eye went in surprisingly easy despite him not having any experience with prosthetic eyes. Once the eye seemed to be settled in place a few things happened in quick succession.

A small shock wave was sent through his nervous system without warning. It wasn’t painful, but it did make his hair stand on end. Then, immediately after, something alien to him happened.

The AI-Ball adjusted its “pupil” and for the very first time Date experienced depth perception. He had taught himself to live around his inability to correctly estimate distance, but this… He had no idea just how much he had been missing out on.

Looking at Pewter now Date was reminded of pop-up picture books. There was no other way for him to describe just how much of a difference his newfound depth perception made. Of course, his overall vision had improved too. He felt a slight headache coming up just from the information overload.

And then, suddenly, a clear female voice spoke in his mind.

[ Hello. My name is Aiba. What is your name? ]

Admittedly, it took Date an embarrassingly long time to form a simple reply. “My name is Kaname Date. Nice to meet you, Aiba.”

[ It’s nice to meet you too, Date. There is much I have to discuss with you, but for now, I will have Pewter do the talking for me. ]

Aiba had barely finished her sentence before Pewter began yet another spiel, this time about how Date wouldn’t have to speak out loud to be heard by Aiba. These were all things Date had heard before, Pewter had given him a rundown with every new feature he developed, but this time he did do his best to listen. Being able to speak with each other without actually needing to exchange words was perhaps the most convenient perk of his new eye.

Pewter also gave Date a rundown on how to take care of Aiba. For some reason, it came as a surprise to him that she would have to be charged just like any other electronic device. Everything else Pewter had told him about her sounded so high-tech that he had assumed Aiba could recharge just by getting a few hours of sunlight or something. He sure hoped he would never get in a situation in which Aiba’s battery would die at the most crucial moment.

Then came the paperwork. There was so much of it. Pewter sat him down and made him read and agree to all of it. The ink pad for his Hanko seal was going to be dried up by the time he had stamped every page that asked for his signature. It was a boring yet necessary task that left him with enough time to think and ask some questions.

[ I’m sorry for exposing you to all this boring paperwork right of the bet. My life is more exciting than this usually, ] Date thought to Aiba. [ Can you hear all my thoughts or just the ones I want you to hear? ]

[ Unknown. You do not appear to be thinking much, if at all. ] The clear female voice he had heard before replied.

“Excuse me?!” Date said out loud, startling Pewter who was sitting right beside him and had been reading along.

[ You are excused. ]

“Is something the matter?” Pewter asked. “If you would like me to explain something that is written here I can.”

Date shook his head and continued reading. Who did Aiba think she was?

[ I’m me. ]

Well… that at least answered his question from earlier.

“Say Pewter, it seems Aiba can hear my thoughts regardless if they are targeted to her or not. Would you say that is a feature or a bug?”

No sooner had Date asked that question or Pewter and Aiba shouted ‘It’s not a bug!’ in unison, something which was no small feat as they currently couldn’t hear each other. Despite the ringing in his ears (and brain?), Date let out a hearty laugh.

“I’m only kidding. It is of no concern to me if that is one of Aiba’s…” Date paused for dramatic effect, “features. I trust you and this technology, so I don’t consider this an invasion of my privacy. That’s what all this paperwork is about, right?”

Date gestured at all the papers that still needed his seal of approval. He was aware you needed to be a certain kind of person to be able to agree to essentially having a person (be it an artificial one) share your brain space with you. If he were to believe Pewter and all the legal stuff in these papers than his thoughts and memories would be stored safely in the cloud connected to the Wadjet System.

While this would freak almost anyone out, Date found a sort of comfort in it. Having his eyesight back was nice and of course having an AI partner would come in handy for his job, but the knowledge that he could have his memories stored away safety had unknowingly played the biggest part in him agreeing to do this. If he were to lose his memory again, then at the very least not all of him would be lost this time.

“Well, yes. It would be a lie if I didn’t say most of these papers concern your privacy, but there’s a bit more nuance to it than just that. I don’t think you can put a price tag on life-changing technology like this. That being said, this is a rather large business expense for just one individual. That’s why I was gone to speak with the higher-ups that often, to explain to them that this would be for everyone’s benefit.”

Pewter sounded tired as he said that. He looked tired as he said that. Date had asked him many times before if he should come with for these dreaded discussions, but every time Pewter had waved him off and said something along the lines of him lacking the knowledge on the technologies in question to turn the conversation around.

It felt only right then to place a hand on Pewter’s shoulder. Surely Pewter could feel Date’s manly gratitude from that manly shoulder touch alone. Pewter’s tired expression softened into a slight smile.

[ I suggest expressing your gratitude in words as well. We live in a society in which men being open and expressing their feelings is looked down upon. This needs to change. ]

Date nodded as he considered Aiba’s point. Pewter was still smiling at him, but his eyebrows started to furrow as the awkward silence between them dragged on.

“Pewter…” Date finally began, struggling to find the right words. “There’s something on my mind I’ve been meaning to say. All this time I have been thinking…”

Date tilted his head with a sly smile. He let go of Pewter’s shoulder and pointed at his new eye in one smooth motion. “This is totally hot, right?”

Never before had Pewter looked more puzzled, which said a lot considering he was one of the leading detectives and scientist of ABIS. The abnormal was their normal.

“You mean Aiba? She should be matching the temperature of your body. It’s no good if she’s too hot, please take her out immediately.”

[ It is as Pewter says. I am matching your temperature to the dot. What seems to be the problem? ]

Date waved his hand before crossing his arms; what a tough crowd. “No, not that. The heterochromia! Women find it extremely attractive. I would say my charm has increased by 25– no, 50%!”

[ Affirmative. Heterochromia is an eye condition that is quite rare in the human species but is desired by many. ]

[ What? Really?! Maybe with this Reika from the cabaret club and I can– ]

“I can’t speak for all women or any woman for that matter, but I do see the appeal,” Petwer admitted, rolling his desk chair back to its usual spot behind his PC as he spoke. “Regardless, if you can make jokes like that then you must be feeling fine. After you’ve worked through that paperwork we’ll do a few scans and tests to make sure everything is as it should be. If you will excuse me, I have some work to do.”

Date watched as Pewter rapidly entered a seemingly random string of characters to unlock his PC. How the scientist got his insanely long password right first try each time was without a doubt the biggest secret between ABIS’ walls. Date returned to his paperwork for a few moments before interrupting Pewter’s work just once.

“Hey Pewter, thank you. Really.”

After all the paperwork from Date’s side had been dealt with and the scans and tests Pewter had put Date and Aiba through had turned up no complications, they had been told to take the rest of the day off. Boss had been very clear that they had to acclimate to each other, and although Date wasn’t one to ever go a day without working overtime, he thought it wouldn’t be bad to go home early today.

The walk from headquarters to the spot he had parked his car had felt strangely alien to Date. All his surroundings had a new layer of depth to them, both literally and figuratively. He had been staring at the blossom tree he had parked his car under for quite some time when the clear female voice he was gradually getting used to spoke up in his mind.

[ It’s beautiful. ]

“…I agree, but I must say,” Date spoke as he moved his gaze from the tree to his car. “I could do without all the flower petals on my windshield.”

He began sweeping away the flower petals with his gloved hand, but not all of them felt like cooperating. The ones with a little moister on them stuck to the glass as if hanging on for dear life and got ripped in half as he passed over them. He used a gentler touch to remove those.

Pinching one of the last of the petals between his dumb and forefinger, Date was reminded of how he had held Aiba in much the same way earlier today. Her inner parts were probably just as delicate as this blossom, but he hadn’t considered that while handling her.

[ Not to fret, I am not as delicate as you think. I’ve been put through many pressure tests to guarantee your safety. ]

“What about your safety? What if I dropped you and stepped on you by accident?”

[ I would probably not suffer any damages in a scenario as such, but even if I would your safety and that of other humans would take priority over mine. You must be familiar with the Three Laws of Robotics, yes? ]

“Remind me?”

[ One: a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Two: a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. Three: a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. I am an artificial intelligence and not a robot, but these rules also apply to me. ]

“Hmm…” Date hummed, quickly disposing of the last petals that would get in the way while driving. “If possible I will try to avoid putting you in situations in which you have to prioritize my safety above your own. This line of work comes with its fair amount of dangers, though, so no promises.”

[ …The thought is appreciated. ]

The car ride home itself was pretty uneventful safe from the fact that Date had a far easier time keeping the correct distance from cars before him. He rhythmically tapped the fingers of his right hand on the steering wheel while remaining concentrated on the road.

If Aiba had any questions for him, then she wasn’t speaking up to ask them. That was fine, Date was tired after today away. It would take him some time to get used to all the new stimuli Aiba was giving him. He wondered if he should take her out later, much like how people with glasses would take these off after work in the evening hours.

Coming home rather early, Date was able to find a nice parking spot near his studio. It was just something small, but he didn’t take it for granted. Usually, when he was coming home late there would be almost no parking spots left in his block, meaning he would almost always go for an unintended evening walk.

[ That’s where I live. You’ll see it’s not much, just a place to sleep and eat, but I do like it, ] Date thought to Aiba as he looked up at the building.

[ Home address saved to my database. Tomorrow morning I can calibrate the fastest route to Tokyo MPD. ]

[ You can do that? Neat. ]

After unlocking the front door Date opened his mailbox to find a bunch of unopened mail. He might have forgotten to take his mail out for a few days. One envelop fell out of the mailbox, but he was able to catch it in mid-air with surprising precision. Odd, he didn’t remember being able to do that before.

Date gathered the mail and quickly looked through it as he made his way up the stairs. To his relieve it was mostly junk mail. It all went straight into the trash after he had unlocked the door to his studio, but he did hold onto one thing.

He was smiling from ear to ear as he studied the flyer for a special event at Sunfish Pocket. The (mer)maids would be doing a special show involving dance and song, probably to attract more new costumers. The pink-haired maid was prominently on the flyer, striking a quirky pose. She seemed to be the most popular maid at Sunfish Pocket, but Date hadn’t caught her name yet.

“Maybe if I have the time,” Date mumbled to himself as he pinned the flyer in an empty corner on his pinboard. The colourful flyer with its bold text stuck out like a sore thumb next to pictures of crime scenes and snippets of statements from victims, but he had to put it somewhere where he could see it so he wouldn’t forget to go.

[ I can arrange a date and time for you to pay a visit to this Sunfish Pocket if you please. You gave me access to your work agenda. ]

“Thanks, but no thanks. That won’t be necessary. I will just visit them if it’s around my lunchtime and I happen to nearby for a job.”

[ As you wish. ]

Date had been so consumed by the flyer that he had forgotten to show Aiba around. Not that there was much to show, this was but a small studio after all.

“The bathroom is over there,” he said as he looked at the only other door in the room. “I do all of my other business here. Sleep, eat, solve crimes, you name it.”

He nonchalantly pushed the porno magazines on the floor under his bed with his foot as he walked passed. The silence that followed felt heavy with judgement.

[ You live by yourself here then? ] Aiba finally broke the silence.

“I do. We’ll be living here together from here on forward, I suppose.”

[ In that case, I will ask you to do something about the state of this room. I have no sense of smell, but the place looks like it would stink. ]

“Hey, I will have you know I cleaned up,” Date tried to defend himself. There indeed was a musty smell in the air, but Aiba didn’t have to know that. Date gestured at the full trash bags stashed in one of the corners of the room. “I just haven't been able to take the trash out yet, that’s all.”

[ I suggest you take them out first thing in the morning. I will not be cooperating with you otherwise. ]

“You…” Aiba was right of course, but Date was a proud man. He wasn’t about to let an eyeball tell him what to do, especially not one with attitude. He would throw the trash bags out tomorrow, though. Not because Aiba had told him, but because he had been planning on throwing them out anyway! No other reason.

[ Ugh, men. ] Was the last thing Date heard Aiba say before something unexpected happened.

She fell(?) out of his eye socket. Just as she was about to hit the coffee table she got encased in some kind of transparent gel and stuck a landing. She had taken the shape of a hamster or some other kind of rodent, but where the face would be was just one big eye.

“Wouldn’t you say my charm has increased by 25– no, 50% now that I am no longer in your eye socket?” Aiba asked, putting one of her little paws on her hip and the other one her head as if to be striking a sexy pose.

Date frowned as he moved to sit on the floor next to the coffee table. He squinted his one eye as he looked at Aiba up close.

“I’m going to ask Pewter to do something about that personality of yours. There shouldn’t be this much sass in just one eyeball.”

“I am simply matching yours, so if you don’t like it then do some self-reflection.”

“Excuse you.”

“I am excused.”

It was hard to tell seeing as Aiba had few to no facial features, but she seemed to be in a good mood from the way her tiny gel body was hopping around on the table as she looked around.

“Can you tell me about those?” Aiba asked after a few moments of hopping around and observing her surroundings.

Date followed her gaze to find the porno magazines he had unskilfully pushed under his bed. “…I would prefer not to.”

“You collect them as a hobby?” Aiba pressed on as she sat down, allowing her adorable little feet to stick up. “What else do you like? Our teamwork will improve if we get to know each other better.”

Date thought about the latter question for a moment (he refused to think on the first) before he carefully scooped Aiba up in his hands. He walked up to the windows of his studio and opened the blinds. They were a few stores off the ground and this apartment complex was one of the higher buildings in the area, so they had a bit of a view from here.

“You can’t see it from here, but there is a shrine I like to visit in that direction,” Date replied as he pointed in the direction the shrine would be. “I don’t believe in that stuff, but it’s a nice quiet place in the middle of the city. I go there often when I’m stuck on a case and I need to think.”

“I see.”

“How about you? What do you like?”

“Insects!” Aiba proclaimed happily, almost as if she had been waiting to be asked that question.

“Insects? What do you like about them?”

“I simply think they are cute.”

“Cute?” That was one of the last words Date would use to describe insects. “You’re weird.”

“I don’t want to hear that from a man in his thirties living by himself with a huge porno magazine collection.”

“That’s perfectly normal as far as I’m concerned!”

Aiba and Date quickly acclimated to each other in the months that followed. They made a pretty good team, their constant bickering aside. About a year later Mizuki Okiura, the daughter of Date’s friend Renju Okiura, came to live with them. She was a troublemaker for sure. Date didn’t think he was well suited to being Mizuki’s guardian, but he did try to make a home for her. Aiba always pushed Date to be the best parental figure he could be.

Around that same time, Boss had given him a call and asked him to come to her office. When he arrived she was already sitting legs crossed on top of her desk. She gestured for him to sit down in his usual spot, which he did.

“As I said on the phone, I would like to discuss how your partnership with Aiba is going,” Boss said, indeed iterating what she had told them before on the line. “Could Aiba come out? I would like to discuss this with both of you.”

Aiba popped out of Date’s eye socket and he handed her over to Boss so she could sit comfortably next to her on the desk. Date waved at himself in Aiba’s vision and she rolled her one eye. Boss giggled at that before continuing.

“You two seem to be getting along just fine. Date, could you start by telling me how your partnership has been treating you?”

“Yes, of course. It has been… how do I say this?” Date saw himself fidgeting in Aiba’s vision as he tried to come up with the right words. Summarizing how this past year had treated in was hard to do in just a few sentences. “It’s been eye-opening? Pun intended.”

“Absolutely hated that, but go on.”

“Well… In short, I would say it has been good? We have our differences, but it’s never something we can’t work out together. There are plenty of cases I don’t think I would have been able to crack without her and she also makes sure Mizuki and I are eating well by forcing me to go out and go grocery shopping.”

“But more importantly than that, she… I don’t know how to explain this very well. I don’t know, I guess you could say… The world has more colour now? Everything was so bleak before. I had nothing after I lost all of my memories. Even after you, Boss, had taken me under your wing I was just going through the motions. Now I look forward to every new day.”

Boss switched her legs’ positions as she pounder on what Date had said. After deliberating her own words for a few moments she replied.

“So you would say you’re happy now?” she asked, the corner of her mouth turning up in a small smile.

“…Yes, I would say I’m happy now.”

Boss sent a knowing glance at Aiba, one that Date missed completely because he quickly wiped a tear from the corner of his eye when the opportunity to not be seen doing so presented itself.

“How about you, Aiba?” Boss continued. “Has this absolute disaster of a man been treating your well?”

“I’m sitting right here,” Date bit back, but the words didn’t come out as harshly as he had hoped.

Aiba laughed, her tiny gel body shaking slightly. “I don’t have much to add. I’m happy too, Date.”

“Great!” Boss interrupted their whole moment. She scooped up Aiba and threw her at Date. He managed to catch her, but only barely. “That’s another to do crossed off my list. Get out there and solve some crimes you two.”

“Yes, Boss!” Date and Aiba replied in unison.

Aiba was back in Date’s eye socket before they were out of Boss’ office. After about a year of practice putting her back in was as simple as putting in a contact lens.

[ She’s crazy, ] Date thought to Aiba. [ I’m not sure how I ever managed to befriend someone like that. ]

[ You and Boss are more alike than you might think. ]

[ Are you calling me crazy? ]

[ Affirmative. But I’m glad. My purpose is to serve you. I’m happy to hear I’m serving you well. ]

Date reached for Aiba and carefully petted her with one finger. [ This is unlike you. Want me to have Pewter check up on you? ]

[ It takes one to know one. I saw you crying back there. ]

[ Shush. There was something in my eye, that was all. ]

[ Uh-huh. ]

A gust of wind gave them a dramatic exit as they stepped out of the Tokyo MPD building. Date didn’t know which life-changing events would be waiting for him, but he was sure of one thing. Aiba would always be there to have his back.

#ai the somnium files #aitsf #kaname date #aiba #mogi writes

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david-watts · 4 years

Note

pls do us a favour and drop the evidence of how brian was autistic

strap yourselves in folks because the original report I had for this is several hundred words long. also none of this is from a psychological perspective and I’m in no position to give an official diagnosis HOWEVER I am an autistic person myself and you do tend to notice these things if you look closely

ok firstly I believe that brian’s interest in transport was his first special interest. firstly I’m gonna quote my m*m on the matter ‘nobody [neurotypical] is interested in transport!’ which is in reference to me excitedly telling her about my idea for the article (it was for school and I did indeed submit this for a mark. the teacher found it very interesting though). then again she’s not a reliable source and that quote was probably in comparison to my dad and I both being fascinated by railways (thanks dad). ok so back to the fact brian was so fascinated, in laura jackson’s biography on him it discusses how he would love going to see steam locomotives as a young child, which true, lots of young children are fascinated with them, however he kept that fascination into adulthood because wasn’t there that snippet that he collected things to do with transport? also he used to construct mock crashes using real fire idk if that’s anything to do with it though

brian would also listen to blues records over and over again to figure out how to play them which is very dedicated of him, but also he named two of his kids after julian adderly. that’s dedication. he went as far to get metal piping from a scrapyard in order to play slide guitar, and when the stones were supporting bo diddley brian dropped all of bo’s material from the stones’ set out of sheer respect. admittedly I haven’t got as much info on his interest in the blues because I focused too much on his interest in transport because overlapping interests will drag you places, but I can see his interest in it??? someone else with more knowledge might be able to piece it together better than I can

also on the music thing and teaching himself slide guitar, something that I did learn from another autistic person (it was someone on youtube I think it was aaron ansuini?) and the topic of autistic people finding it easy to figure out how things work came up and the example he used was instruments. now according to laura jackson’s biography (yes I reference this a lot it’s the only solely-brian-focused stones bio I have) brian learnt piano very well, and taught himself saxophone after learning clarinet alongside mastering all reed instruments by EAR, but also taught himself slide from records, and we all know how many damn instruments brian played

this is a weird one and I did learn this from when I was getting my orthotics fitted at the end of last year so it’s not in the original document thankfully BUT. autistic people tend to walk on their toes, which leaves differences in our feet because it’s simply a different gait, your feet will wear differently. one of the things brought up in that appointment was the fact that the toes will curl for grip and the like. front of the foot will flatten - if you make a fist and look at your knuckles it will make a curve, now imagine if that was flattened and apply it to your feet. now of course naturally I remembered seeing a picture of brian without shoes a few days earlier and I can’t believe I’m saying this but I willingly stared at his feet to try and figure out if he also happened to have those... trademarks. I couldn’t really make out much but using that Iconic™ photo of him shoving his feet into the camera, I did notice his toes do curl, especially the two outermost toes. I can’t quite make out whether the front of his feet were flattened or not but it does seem like they might’ve been from the other picture I stared at for way too long, but looking at the more iconic photo I can’t tell either way due to there appearing to be a curve however there should be more shadows if that were the case. ok weird bit over I hate that I stared at his feet for so long

because I talked about feet here’s a section on animals. there’s the story I think you told me about the time brian tried stealing kittens when he thought they were being mistreated, the time brian befriended a goat when another member of the stones (unknown which one it was but anyone else picturing keef?) decided to lift its back legs up and pretend it was a lawnmower due to the fact that someone said that a goat would keep the lawn down and I think brian took that literally (we’ll come back to that). and how could we forget the time the white goat was led out and brian literally said ‘me’ (harry told me that one and I have NO way of verifying it but holy shit). now this is something I have noticed and that’s autistic people do tend to get along better with animals. this is either hyperempathy, or lack of empathy because I’m on the ‘I have zero empathy’ end of the scales and I had more animal friends as a kid than human ones. I’m not an expert but at least in my case it was not needing social skills in order to communicate?

so we all know brian was like. a square peg in a round hole right. the fact that he used to be a golden child who’d help serve out the morning tea buns (probably just so he could get the leftover crumbs at the bottom of the tray but we’ve all been there) to like. one of the most rebellious figures in swinging london. that entire narrative is something very neurodivergent, especially with autistic people who tend to get frustrated with the world because they’re very obviously different (pat andrews did say that when she met him in 1960 he was considered a loner). a lot of other ‘square pegs in round holes’ such as nikola tesla, einstein and so on have been thought to be on the spectrum. brian also used to refuse to put on his uniform and as I’m typing this I’m literally wondering if that’s a sensory thing because school uniforms are uncomfortable to the ordinary person, they can be utter hell if you’ve got sensory issues. speaking of brian’s school career he also didn’t see the point in certain things such as ‘games’ as he said in an interview, and that’s something a few autistic people do find, that they can’t find the point in certain activities they don’t find interesting or enjoyable.

also have I mentioned that I think brian might’ve stimmed by putting his fingers in his mouth? there’s several pictures of him, and I mean several, where he’s got his fingers or his thumb in his mouth or near his mouth in a situation where stimming would happen, aka basically anywhere because stimming is just something we do, y’know???

ok so I hope this was interesting??? I have been sitting on this information for over a year. hopefully my teacher doesn’t find this but if she does, hi. ignore my blog please.

anyway I’ve compiled this from laura jackson’s biography, several personal anecdotes, information i have seen on various sites both about brian and on autism, various autistic youtubers, and other documentaries and thingies about autism because I have watched a few out of curiosity! hope this was interesting

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irene-sadler · 3 years

Text

Sir Reynard and the Red Knight

aka ‘The Tournament’

so it turns out medieval tax law is insanely complicated and even a small amount of side reading on it takes forever. if someone else is for some weird reason interested in knights' fees and some of the problems they caused my source material is this chapter in a very lectury 1895 book which goes into detail about English feudal government income in general. this is probably not the most recent scholarship on the subject and i would not try to use it as a source in a paper but I did not feel like battling with JSTOR's shitty search engine just to research a short color plot in my goofy thronebreaker fanfic. anyway welcome to part 2 of our non-adventure, enjoy (or don't, i am not a beggar.)

---

A week later, Meve had nearly forgotten about the looming duel. She alighted from her horse in the castle courtyard and was instantly handed a report: in Dravograd there was a disagreement between the human and dwarf smithing guilds, which might soon lead to violence. The Queen turned out her favorite knight to solve the distant problem and settled into days of debate over an ongoing issue at home. The trouble, she learned, was that some of her barons had too many knights, overfilling the quota on which the crown drew an annual tax, and paid more than they preferred or could afford. Meanwhile, others had too few, with the result that the realm burdened them less. The latter outnumbered the former by a mathematically considerable amount, so that the crown’s entitlement had fallen short of the expected amount for the year; a new law was required, and had been drafted. However, the batch of them were incapable of finalizing the text of the proposed rule, especially where it concerned the amounts to be payable, and had come to a hopeless standstill in her absence. In the resulting confusion of numbers and obstruction, she only had reason to recall the tournament and its aftermath because a servant brought an unexpected letter to her office.

She eyed the scrawled writing on the front, was informed that it had been delivered to the kitchen by a sullen-looking speechless brigand, shrugged, and left it, unopened, for Reynard. He found it some days later, when he returned from his mission.

“Gascon doesn’t ever write,” he remarked, frowning suspiciously at the Duke’s name on the envelope, and cut it open it cautiously. He tipped it out over Meve’s desk, but it contained nothing dangerous, only a short note on dirty old paper, written in what appeared to be charcoal.

“I presumed it was about your duel,” Meve explained, “Is it?”

“Not - not as such,” he replied, after reading it over a second time; a baffled frown was on his face. “Says he’s departed on a quest, of all things, not to worry about him, will return when he’s finished, or else when Sir Holt gets around to fighting, whichever happens first.”

Meve took the note out of his hand and stared at the offending word in disbelief.

“A quest? Has he lost his mind? This isn’t a bard’s tale; he has a fief to manage, and -”

“It’s getting on to winter, luckily,” Reynard interrupted in his most reasonable tone, “So, there’s not much managing for him to do, just now.”

“Unless there’s a fire, or a war, or bandits,” Meve snapped, gripping the flimsy paper hard.

“Well, you’ve made two of those possibilities rather unlikely, at the moment,” the Count said; he took the letter away and added as Meve instantly crossed her arms, “I agree; this is a ridiculous notion. However, he does appear to have had the foresight to choose a sensible time of year to have it, which is more responsible than usual. For him, I mean.”

“He might’ve said something, instead of simply vanishing,” she complained, feeling that she was losing ground in the argument by remaining silent.

“-and,” Reynard continued, as if she hadn’t, “He can’t have gone very far, else he’d have no way of knowing when this duel is to take place. If, indeed, it ever will.”

Meve brightened slightly and said, “In that case, you should find it simple enough to hunt him down again.”

“I’ll do it if you wish, of course, but will you hear my advice, first?”

“I usually do, I suppose.”

“I think you should just leave it be, for the time being; he’ll return in due time and patience will answer far better than action, to speed the process.”

“Were he anyone else, I’d have him arrested,” Meve said, the glare staying put on her face but her shoulders relaxing slightly in defeat.

“I know that, but in truth, I believe we’ll have our stray dog back soon enough,” Reynard said gently, “All we have to do is wait.”

Patience, instead of action, was not how Meve preferred to operate, but she did her best to do as Reynard suggested, aided considerably by the ongoing distraction of the tax problem. Intelligence crossed her desk, in relation to the knights’ fees and otherwise; no report contained information on the missing Duke, but one included a rumor that briefly distracted even her from her main priority: an informant ended his confidential message on the exact details of her northern vassals’ taxable estates on a strange note.

“Says here an unknown knight’s rumored to be in th’ area of Hawkesburn,” she said to Reynard, after a glance around to ensure they were alone in the room. “Apparently he wears black armor and jousted with all comers who crossed his path, for two days, defeated three knights, and then, on losing to a fourth, vanished again and hasn’t been seen since.”

“How tiresome,” Reynard replied; she laughed at his stuffily disapproving tone and, as it was difficult to collect fees on the armored head of an unverified rumor, forgot about it. She was, after all, quite busy, cooking up a scheme to end the fee stalemate before it brought the court to a complete halt or, worse, came to blows. She set her accountants and clerks to work and soon delivered a new proposal to the court, a plan that settled the matter in a way that heavily profited the crown at the barons’ considerable expense; the document was of course rejected out of hand. She then threatened a royal command, and was pleased to find that all but the most belligerent of her vassals suddenly favored the original, far more equitable proposal that had been drawn up in the first place.

Meanwhile, the end of autumn passed by; the last of the dull brown leaves on the trees blew away in a windstorm and the branches stood bare against the sky. Reliable reports of a werewolf near the northern border were followed, as Reynard was preparing a force to investigate, by further news that the beast had been dealt with by a black knight. The last holdout against the final version of the new tax law suddenly became perfectly amenable to the proposal, after a personal visit from Count Odo, armed with a sword and a bluntly phrased reminder of the baron’s failure to support the Queen during the war. A somewhat embarrassed young knight of Meve’s court turned up, with a believable, unembellished tale in which a stranger in black armor jousted against him on a bridge and knocked him off into the icy creek below. That same day, the new tax law was finally signed by unanimous consent of the court. The weather settled into its usual, predictable early winter pattern - two days of rain, two of sun, one of icy grayness, followed again by rain.

Then, during the afternoon on one of the rainy days, a traveler arrived in court - a familiar man, dressed in mismatched chainmail and leather armor, and bearing a message from Sir Holt of the Fen. Meve happened to be in the armory, considering a new crossbow that could fire two bolts on a single load; he was shown in, followed immediately by Reynard. The sergeant broke off his explanation of the crossbow’s double trigger system, raised an alarmed eyebrow at the Count’s dark expression, and promptly invited himself out; the messenger seemed to feel similarly about the situation and wasted no time making his speech:

“My master asks for your assistance, Your Grace; he was - “ the messenger paused, frowning uncertainly, produced a paper with writing on both sides, and read from it, squinting nearsightedly, “ - he was, I quote, assailed at night at an isolated crossroads, by a knight errant well armed in black armor who spake not; there they did fight a mighty battle for hours -”

“Skip to th’ end, sir,” the Queen said, casually picking a sword from a rack; the messenger glanced at it, quickly flipped the paper over, and summarized the rest:

“ - anyway, he was struck down by the stranger, following which the black knight disappeared into the darkness, as if by an enchantment, and - well, in short, he requests that you send an appropriate force to apprehend the villain. Also, he wishes to inform my lord the Count that he is prepared to do battle with the same, at the Count’s convenience.”

“About damn time,” the Count growled under his breath.

“To clarify,” the Queen said, a slightly malicious gleam in her eye, “Sir Holt, after challenging the best out of all my knights to a personal combat, wants me to send him along to fight off a brigand that he is unable to defeat, himself.”

“That’s about the size of it, my lady,” the messenger said, absently folding his paper into a square and looking carefully blank. She eyed him thoughtfully, wondering what role, exactly, he filled in Sir Holt’s retinue; the question was irrelevant, and so she set it aside for later consideration.

“I see. Well, Count Odo, what say you?”

“I am at your command, as always, Your Grace,” he said stiffly.

“Very well; we’ll depart for Sir Holt’s lands tomorrow morning,” she decided, idly studying the sword she held. “I believe I’d like to meet this mysterious knight for myself; my court sorceress will solve any enchantments, and there will be nowhere for him to hide.”

The messenger bowed his way out; Meve waited a good half minute for him to be well out of earshot and then stepped across to a large map tacked to the armory wall. She considered the north of the country and noted, casually, “Gascon’s estates and Sir Holt’s aren’t so far apart; they’re neighbors, in fact.”

“Oh?”

“Well,” she said, turning back with the sword pointed toward Reynard, “I know of only one anonymous knight errant in black armor in my kingdom, and I certainly have not been riding about the country in the middle of the night, fighting with passing strangers and killing occasional monsters. At least, not recently.”

“No, I daresay I would have noticed, if you were,” Reynard allowed with a fond smile. “So, then, who do you suspect?”

“I don’t know, yet,” Meve said, looking down the length of the blade at him. “It just seems odd that the place where I fought incognito is so near to where a similarly attired knight is now causing trouble. I take issue, sir, with some stranger stealing my disguise and ruining the reputation I forged in it.”

“Or,” he suggested, eyes narrowing, “Perhaps what’s happened is that Sir Holt, not making any connection between the black knight of the tournament and the similar knight at Hawkesburn, heard the same story we did about the latter and invented this tale of his defeat, to draw me out to the countryside and thereby avoid fighting me on home ground.”

“Ah,” she said, lowering the sword. “Yes, I suppose that’s a plausible theory. I can send someone else out, if you’d prefer.”

Her heart lurched suddenly as a slight, dangerous smile crossed his face. She set the sword down absently, said, “No, I didn’t think you would,” and abandoned consideration of far-away knights, black or red, in favor of the much more interesting example she had immediately to hand.

The next morning dawned clear and the weather remained dry; Reynard’s picked company needed little encouragement to take full advantage. The General was in an uncommon hurry, it was plain to see, and so they traveled until late each night with only short breaks. During their third, bitterly cold, evening, a scout came down the column toward his commander and reported, “Seen an armed horseman not far up the way.”

“A highwayman,” the Count suggested; the Queen, overhearing them, said, “Or the black knight.”

The scout shook his head.

“Not likely a knight, my lady, nor no bandit neither, sir, I figure, but I’ll wager he waits for passerby, whatever.”

“It’s just th’ one man,” the Count said, shrugging; nevertheless the column continued somewhat more slowly, with eyes kept to the dark trees around and arrows on their bowstrings. They reached the turn in the road that the scout indicated and paused; the stranger was still there, sitting his horse in the moonlight under a dark hood, apparently waiting. The Queen and Count both leaned forward to squint suspiciously at the oddly familiar figure, and several of the warband as well; the Count then pulled an exasperated frown and sat up suddenly in his saddle.

“Oh, for the love of -”

“Stand down,” Meve ordered, cutting Reynard off, “We know this fellow.”

The stranger laughed, pulled his hood down, and bowed grandly toward his audience. Meve kicked her horse into motion as Reynard said, irritably, “Nice of you to rejoin society, Brossard.”

“Couldn’t miss your duel, could I?” the Duke replied, brightly; the knight had no time to reply as Meve approached, turned her horse, grabbed the Duke’s stirrup, and yanked upwards, tipping him off the opposite side of his alarmed mount. He hit the road with a grunt and immediately sprang upright, surprised and angry, caught sight of the grim expression on the Queen’s face, and mastered himself with an attempt at a nonchalant shrug. She said nothing and rode away; the column followed, leaving Reynard behind.

“Well,” the Duke said, after the last of the warband passed on, “I suppose my unhorsing was long overdue.”

The Count shook his head disapprovingly, recaptured Gascon’s mare, and waited for the other man to clamber, wincing, back into the saddle.

“Nice to see you, too,” Gascon added, settling himself and picking dead leaves off his jacket. “Ouch.”

“Hmm,” Reynard replied doubtfully, releasing the horse.

“Yes, quite, and no more need be said on the subject. Anyway, I rode out t’ invite you and your company to stay at my place. My other place, I mean; the lodge, not the fort, which is inconveniently located for our, um, purposes. It’s about an hour’s ride from here,” he added, in response to the knight’s unspoken question. “I stationed a man partway, to direct you; I myself ought t’ ride on ahead and ensure all’s prepared. Under the circumstances, if you’d kindly relay th’ invitation to your lady love for me, I’d be much obliged.”

“Yes,” Reynard agreed, “That’s probably th’ only good idea you’ve had all month.”

“Well, you know what they say about clocks,” Gascon said, cheerfully enough. “Or is it th’ one about blind squirrels? Anyway, I’ll see you later.”

He galloped off; Reynard sighed and hurried to catch up with the column.

Half an hour later, at a fork in the road, they found Ethan waiting; the squire awkwardly led the warband through the dark woods, attempting to look anywhere except at its silent leader. They arrived just before midnight at a building which resembled a typical hunting lodge in the same way that Rivia Castle resembled the Brossard fort. Meve displayed no particular interest in the vast exterior, built out of the crumbling remains of an elven fortress, or the several hundred hunting trophies mixed with long since out of fashion furnishings that filled the drafty rooms within it. As they entered, Reynard said quietly to her, “Reminds me of my grandfather, this place,” which dragged a slight smile through her tense displeasure; nevertheless she stayed stubbornly silent until they were out of sight and hearing of anyone else but the uncharacteristically courteous Gascon.

“This house is like that menagerie Foltest keeps in Vizima,” she finally remarked, studying a white bearskin rug with the snarling head still attached, “Except that th’ animals are mostly still alive there, of course.”

“I haven’t had the time to redecorate,” Gascon ventured with the air of a man testing the waters. “In truth, this is only the second time I’ve ever been here, myself. My mother never wanted t’ come here when I was young; said it was creepy.”

“She wasn’t entirely wrong,” Meve said, glancing around at the strange shadows the animal heads threw on the walls in the firelight. Reynard shrugged unconcernedly and put an arm around her. A slightly awkward silence fell.

“Would you like to see a camelopard’s head?” Gascon asked, breaking it; Meve looked interested, instead of icily distant, and he pointed the rare trophy out, just over the fireplace in company with a few other preserved monsters. They sat and regarded it for a moment.

“That,” Reynard stated flatly, “Is a horse’s head with spots painted on it.”

“It was quite a fine horse, however,” Meve said with an amused smile, her bad mood forgotten.

“And they’re well-painted spots,” Gascon replied, grinning.

By morning, the incident on the road the night before had been forgotten, by unspoken mutual consent. Meve and Reynard passed an hour of the morning in an argument over their next move; Gascon, meanwhile, conveniently vanished to negotiate with the enemy camp. Eventually the disagreement was resolved by some cunning diplomacy on Meve’s part; she and Isbel then departed to investigate the mystery of the black knight, leaving Reynard behind to await his second’s return.

Rain had set in; they rode through cold drizzle, accompanied by a miserable escort. Isbel considered the dripping soldiers and the sparse, leafless scrub trees that dominated the roadside and finally said, “If the black knight, so-called, can vanish, perhaps by enchantment, as you suggested when you dragged me along on this excursion, it isn’t by light of day, and certainly not into these woods.”

“I know that,” Meve said.

“Then what, may I ask, is the point of this?”

“Why, the fresh air and exercise,” she replied. Silence returned after, for a time, and then the sorceress, in a tone of deep disgust, said, “You’re hoping to find this person before Sir Reynard does, aren’t you?”

“Well - all right; we’ve something of a wager going, on that ring I won in the tourney, and the next of us to win a fight will also win the prize. He, of course, is expecting this duel any day now, so the sooner I find the black knight, the better, as there’s not much chance he’ll lose it.”

The sorceress sighed, cast a despairing look skyward, and noted, “The black knight perhaps does not exist, or may not be found in these parts.”

“Yes, that’s Reynard’s theory,” Meve said, casually, “But I disagree.”

They returned that evening empty-handed and damp, to find Reynard in a state of abject boredom. His gloom was only slightly lessened by Meve’s return and her lack of success; noticing the depressed atmosphere, she attempted to engage him in a chat about the weather, and then, when the conversation failed, talked aimlessly at him about the latest advancements in crossbow design. Gascon returned as night was falling, long after she’d stopped trying to shift his mood and had resigned herself to examining the hunting trophies in the melancholy silence.

“We’ve chosen the field,” he said, “I just went to have a look, as it’s not all that far away. It looks decent; not too many holes in it, and I don’t think it’ll be flooded from all this rain.”

“When?” Reynard asked, testily.

“Tomorrow evening,” said Gascon, “And I should warn you that th’ opposition’s clearly intending to use the sunset to his advantage, should the weather clear, but then, perhaps it won’t.”

Meve glanced out the nearest window; the rain had turned spotty after dark, and she could see stars through patches in the clouds at the western horizon. She frowned and left the men to an involved discussion of the field’s layout; neither of them appeared to notice her departure. She found Isbel studying the camelopard head with a dubious frown. The sorceress kept up the expression as she explained the latest development and only said, wearily, “These men,” in response.

“I thought,” Meve said, idly, “That, perhaps, you’re right about the black knight.”

“Oh?”

“Yes; he certainly shouldn’t vanish very well, by day, at least; we really ought to be hunting for him at night, instead.”

“In this weather?”

“Well, it’s inconvenient, to be sure, and would make fighting him much more difficult, and I suppose that any advantage is worth th’ effort,” Meve said significantly, eying the older woman. Isbel considered the statement a moment.

“Is Sir Reynard in any significant danger?” she asked, pointedly.

“Doubtful,” Meve replied, waving the idea off as it if was impossible; hadn’t even crossed her mind; “This isn’t that serious of a matter. He may be injured, I suppose, but not killed - not on purpose, at least, and he’s been a knight too long for an accident to be likely.”

“Well then, perhaps I might leave early,” Isbel suggested, looking unconvinced.

“The fight’s tomorrow evening,” Meve noted, apparently ignoring the request, “Do you think that the weather will hold, or clear?”

“I don’t know,” Isbel answered, reluctantly. “It’s hard to tell, so far in advance, at this time of year; I suppose it may not.”

“As you say,” Meve said, flashed her victorious smile, and added, “Travel safely; we’ll see you at home.”

#thronebreaker #witcher #action #romance #sports

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shenlongshao · 4 years

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Jam Kuradoberi: Extra Analysis

A few years ago, I made a character analysis of Jam Kuradoberi that cleared up common misconceptions about her personality. But there are some things I forgot to mention after re-reading my old post. There's still some misinformation spread about Jam, which I want to clarify so this will be a long post. First is analyzing Jam's Instant Kill called "Gasenkotsu".

Jam says "Ten! Jo! Ten! Ge! Yui! Ga! Doku! Son!"

Now I'll show the given translation to this you've likely seen on Tumblr and other places.

Tenjou Tenge Yuigadokuson (Written in Japanese is 天上天下唯我独尊 )

“In Heaven and Earth I am all that is Holy!” / “Unrivaled Self-Conceit”

Gasenkotsu= Narcissism

If you focus only on 唯我独尊(Yuigadokuson), translators(both people and computerized) will automatically give you "conceited, narcissism, ego" etc. because they dissect each word within "Yuigadokuson". Narcissism, etc. are part of the list of meanings, but these aren't the only ones; it's important to know the context. The best way to get the correct meaning is understanding this is from Buddhism, which is known to be practiced in India, China, and Japan(and probably some other countries too). Buddha said the phrase "Tenjou Tenge Yuigadokuson" after gaining enlightenment. Since this is a real cultural saying with a specific meaning, it needs to be translated as a whole rather than in pieces. The real translation of "Tenjo Tenge Yuigadokuson" is "In Heaven and on Earth, I alone am worth of honor." Since the phrase does involve speaking about oneself and one of the meanings of honor is high respect or great esteem, it's commonly mistaken for narcissism. But the real meaning of "Yuigadokuson" is "self-esteem" and "resolve" across Japan, China, etc. This is me explaining from what I know and studied of Chinese culture by reading books like "Speaking of Chinese" by Raymond Chang and Margaret Scrogin Chang. I've spoken with and observe some Asian people when I was in school or when order out to eat, etc. way back in 1994 before the era of the internet. I still take the time to make sure I learn and understand about Chinese culture, its language(mainly focused on Mandarin), etc. Now I'm going to show reliable sources and evidence.

1. SOTOZEN.NET (https://global.sotozen-net.or.jp/eng/library/glossary/individual.html?key=shakamuni): This explains the history of Buddha's life and its founder along with the meaning of "Tenjo Tenge Yuigadokuson". This is an Asian themed site that's translated in many languages.

2. True Buddhism (https://true-buddhism.com/teachings/yuigadokuson/): This is a Japanese only site that goes into great detail about "Tenjo Tenge Yuigadokuson" and answers questions to common misconceptions about it. It will go into explanation about Buddha and his enlightenment, which you can just go the 1st website I linked to to understand the references. One of the things it mentions is how the saying doesn't mean "I'm the greatest in the world" or about being conceited, but about self resolve. If you don't understand Japanese and just want a quick translation, you could use Google Translate to get the general interpretation of the sites, but it(Google Translate) is very weird at times, XD. I think using a good Japanese to English dictionary would help better if you're unable to contact a good translator.

3. Naoto Matsumoto's Video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=NQRDZF7Hy_g&feature=emb_logo): Naoto Matsumoto is a Japanese man who teaches the meanings behind both Taoism and Buddhism. You can skip to 1:19 of the video to listen to the specific part of him addressing the saying "Tenjo Tenge Yuigadokuson". He says, "The most humble way is being like the baby Buddha who said, 'Above Heaven, below Heaven, I alone am the most respectable being.' Tenjo--Tenge--Yuigadokuson. I hope you would understand this; this is not haughty at all. He is saying everything is one." This is the most important because it's from a knowledgeable native who naturally understands about his culture, which is the best way to truly understand something from another country. A good translator who isn't native to the country he/she studied about can be equally trusted if he/she has a great understanding of the culture. You'll be surprised how many translators know about something, but not have the full understanding cause of the false generalizations they have towards other countries.

This last one I'll link to isn't technically a information resource, but it's showing how the saying "Tenjo Tenge Yuigadokuson" is used.

4. 雅 MIYAVI's Facebook Page(https://www.facebook.com/comyvzcrew/posts/2472543299438327/): Miyavi is a Japanese singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He has the tattoo of the saying on his body to strengthen his resolve to do what he loves, which is to keep playing music.

Jam is also using this saying to strengthen her resolve on the path she's chosen and enlightenment about herself. Also note from Jam's Instant Kill(how it was before Revelator) she's also being silly and embraces the part of her being a silly idiot, XD. Now to examine how her IK is in Revelator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkr-g2Z1uM4

You notice how it begins with seeing her restaurant destroyed. There's a comical shocked expression, but notice how she's using her tears for fierce determination while giving the final kick to her opponent. What she says after is random like "I passed the first interview!" or "Done and done!". All of this is about resolve, so below is the accurate translation.

Tenjo Tenge Yuigadokuson (Written in Japanese is 天上天下唯我独尊 )

"In Heaven and Earth, I alone am worthy of honor" or "Above Heaven, below Heaven, I alone am the most respectable being" / "Self Enlightenment & Resolve"

Gasenkotsu= Self-esteem

Next is addressing what I've read detractors often say about Jam. “Jam is a gold digger!” This relates to the "greedy" part, which I already covered isn't true about Jam in the character analysis post (https://shenlongshao.tumblr.com/post/151953570662/character-analysis-of-jam-kuradoberi). Let's look at the definition of "Gold Digger" according to Webster since people misusing the word. Gold Digger: 2. a person whose romantic pursuit of, relationship with, or marriage to a wealthy person is primarily or solely motivated by a desire for money. Next is comparing the top traits gold diggers have and see if Jam displays any of this behavior. TOP TRAITS OF A GOLD DIGGER ------------------------------- #1: A gold digger hates having to put hardwork or effort into what she wants. She doesn't have or even try to have her own goals or dreams because she wants to the wealthy man or one who has good income to do everything and enjoy the benefits. The only "work" she'll put in is trying to get a guy who has money and spending it lavishly. #2. When first meeting a guy on a date or in general, a gold digger won't hesitate to ask him financial related questions like "What's your job?" "How much money you make in a week/month/year?" etc. If the guy doesn't have a high or good paying job or high social status, she won't care or interested in truly getting to know him as a person. She wants extravagant dates, things, and status to boost her ego. 3#. A gold digger is never a giver, only a taker. The concept of helping out financially like paying a bill or anything about doing her part unless she gets something out of it is foreign to her. She'll either make up excuses like, "Oh, I used all my money last week" or manipulate the guy in some way(like using her looks, sex, etc.)so she doesn't have to do anything. #4. A gold digger is usually very high maintenance, spoiled, and entitled in some way cause that's the treatment she's used to having. She has the "go big or go home" mentality and doesn't appreciate the simple and small things. EVIDENCE JAM ISN'T A GOLD-DIGGER ----------------------------------- Volume 2 of Guilty Gear X Drama CD shows a hint of Jam's earlier life before her video game debut. The chapter is called "Boiler-Maker", where she used to work in a tiny restaurant as a waitress with little to no pay. Here is the link to read that section. http://gearlegacy.tripod.com/rtt/id22.html She eventually gets tired of her working situation and quits, wanting to start her own restaurant; leading into the events of Guilty Gear X(Plus). Here is the translated prologue of Jam's Story Mode. Prologue Grilling, frying, boiling, deep-frying, washing, cutting, putting in oil. A cook who mastered the 100 martial arts of China. That is Jam. In order to found her new restaurant she set out on a journey. A journey to... the devil's forest. In there were said to be ingredients unknown to man. Source: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps2/536497-guilty-gear-x-plus/faqs/31309 The Prologue for Jam's story(and others) is explained through the perspective of the P.W.A.B.(Post-War Administration Bureau). She's one of the characters that have 3 different story paths depending on what you do, so I'll give a general summary. Jam finally starts her own restaurant, but an arsonist(Robo-Ky) sets her restaurant on fire. She fights him despite the heavy smoke, but Robo-Ky escapes and begins to chase after him. This leads her to initially mistake Ky Kiske to be the arsonist, but the story can branch out differently from here. Either way, it'll end with Jam needing to start over again with her restaurant. This has been an ongoing purpose for each game since so I'll show only one more official profile of hers. Jam Kuradoberi's profile from GGXRD Revelator 2: Jam Kuradoberi's Personality: Iron chef of Chinese food and master of Chinese martial arts. She is a bright and cheerful girl that has the ability to fight using her Ki force. Her dream is to open her own restaurant and have lots of people enjoy her cooking. She almost attained her dream, but was smashed down every time by unforeseen troubles. But her passion can't be stamped out, so she keeps trying. Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20180219014839/http://guiltygear.us/ggxrdr/characters/ (Note: You'll have to select Jam from the character list.) The Japanese version of the site phrases it a little differently, but it's basically the same meaning and description. From the beginning, Jam has her own goals and dreams; she's continuously worked hard for it by herself. This is the complete opposite trait a gold digger would have. Of course she would appreciate not having to financially struggle so much if with a wealthy man, but Jam is very driven and passionate about her dream. She would simply continue doing what she loves and contribute in the relationship. Her less-than-fortune upbringing and the fact of her having to work for everything in her life by herself means she has a greater appreciation for the smaller and simple things in life. Not even on her list of Likes on her profile states "money", it's only "Cooking, researching, youth, and handsome men". This should be enough proof by itself, but I see detractors labeling Jam's romantic interest in Ky to "she wants him cause he's a handsome rich guy, so she's a gold digger!" I'm laughing at this cause it's so easily refutable. I'm going to show the dialogue, quotes, etc. Jam has with Ky. They first briefly met in Guilty Gear Plus when Ky was on a journey to see Dizzy. (Below is from Ky's Story Path, but Jam's story path of their first meeting is generally the same with minor differences in dialogue.) GGX Plus Ky's Story --------------------- Ky: Excuse me, the forest ahead of here, how can I... Jam: (Aiya! What a nice looking man!) The Demon's Forest is very dangerous. You should stay away. Ky: Thank you for your concern, but it's my duty... Jam: Then I must test if you're ready for the forest! Draw! Ky: W-w-wait a second! Jam: If you lose it's washing dishes for you! Ky: Huh? Wait! Source: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps2/536497-guilty-gear-x-plus/faqs/31309 How is Jam wanting Ky do dishes if he loses being a gold digger? LOL! There’s no part of her asking him what's his job and how much money he makes. Let's look at Jam's win-quote against Ky that's been the same throughout most Guilty Gear games until Revelator(I'll get to that later). Jam's Win-quote vs Ky: “Uu... Mada shibirete ugokenai aru. Doko ka ni kata wo kashitekureru yasashii otoko wa inai aru ka?” (chira) Translation: “Ooh... I'm still shaking and can't move. Isn't there a kind man around who'll lend me his shoulder?” (glint) There's no mention about Ky's wallet in this. Pre-Battle Jam vs Ky: Uchi no mise, otoko ten'in tarinai. Anata boui yaru yoroshi. Translation: My store doesn't have enough male workers. You can work there. Once again Jam wants Ky to work for her at her restaurant, which definitely doesn't pay much in comparison to Ky's salary as an IPF(International Police Force). This isn't how a gold digger operates. Further proof is Jam's 3rd ending from Story Path 3 in Guilty Gear X2. I've referenced her dialogue with Ky in my character analysis to prove she is kind and friendly person and not a jerk. It also shows Jam is once again not a gold digger because she didn't pry about Ky's finances nor ever made it her main focus of why she pursues him. Lastly is Jam's win-quote against Ky in Revelator. Jam's win-quote against Ky: There is no finish line for cooking world. Only beginning. Same as when you find nice woman. You learn about her then find nicer woman. So...nicer woman right here, you know? By this point, Ky is a king of Illyria, another position with not only way more financial stability than Jam, but very high social status. Yet, Jam doesn’t refer to either at all. Next one! “Jam flirts with Bridget cause she told him to come back in 5 years! And says he's cute boy!” I can't believe how many people misunderstood Jam's win-quote against Bridget, which is this. Jam's Win-quote to Bridget: Ha! Kono nioi! Anata otoko no ko ne! 5 nen tattara mata kuru yoroshi! Translation: Ha! This smell! You're a boy! Come again in five years, okay? Bridget is a cute boy in a adorable way and could potentially be a pretty boy if he's ever allowed to escape the gender-bender look and feminine mannerisms. But Jam is simply complimenting him when she says him being cute. The purpose of Jam's win-quote against Bridget is to suppose to let you and other players know 2 things. The first is letting you know Bridget's a boy cause otherwise we would've assumed he's a girl. The second is to hint of his age, which is likely 13 years old cause plus 5 would be 18 years. His body hasn't fully matured yet and 18 is the age mostly likely a person's body is reasonably developed. The fact she said 5 years should be enough to let people know Jam doesn't want a little boy. The context is actually her saying she isn't interested in him romantically. Jam doesn't flirt with Bridget at all, she sees him as a friend. Time for the next detractor statement~. “Not only is Jam after Ky, she's after his son as well!” This sounds like something from soap operas, XDD. I'll address this part cause there's some basis to it. Jam's smiles when Sin tackles her during his Instant Kill and says things like "You hug me harder!" and "Hey, you come work at my restaurant!" There's her win-quote against him where she says has good basics and just needs to cook to be perfect man. And how she's willing to teach him cause she's a chef. Another part is Sin's win-quote against her is him mentioning of doing his best to hold back against her in a fight, but then becomes very nervous and saying like "get away from me!" which hints she got too close to him. But these actually are meant to be strictly humorous rather interpreted as her seriously wanting Sin. Proof is this...

Sin's no where in that picture and the story states "man"(singular) and not "men"(plural) she's sets her sights on. Since I've already listed the quotes Jam says to Ky; compare those to what she says to Sin and other guys.

Another statement I read from detractors. “Jam forced Ky to go on a picnic with her!” Hahaha! XD Let's look at the part of Jam's 3rd ending from Story Path 3 with Jam and Ky to find this "evidence". Jam: It's such a nice day. How about we go eat somewhere? Ky: B-but, I should work... Jam: Ehhhh? Ky: I'm sorry for troubling you... let us go. Jam: Okay! Come on, cheer up! So Jam asking Ky about going on a picnic together and her saying "Ehhhhh?" in a disappointed and childlike manner when he first says he should work is forcing him? XD Ky is a mentally functional and capable adult in his late 20s who's been in many leadership roles. In fact, Ky wasn’t obligated to stay and talk to her after saving her, yet he did of his own free will. Next is another one from detractors. “Ky would be Jam's personal punching bag.” ROFL! I won't spend too much time on this cause this is clearly out of no where to claim Jam would actually abuse or use Ky as a scapegoat in any way. It's perfectly okay to not like her cause everyone has characters they like and dislike, but making things up about her that aren't true makes people who do that very illogical and have poor comprehension skills. Now for the last one I think is the most interesting. “Why Jam does wear such a short skirt where you can see her panties?! This is so hentai!” There's actually a cultural reason why Jam and other Chinese girl characters like Chun-Li, Lei-Fang, etc. who show lots of legs nearly or up to their hip bone. Believe it or not, it's not strictly about sex appeal. The short answer is Chinese girls wearing a mini-skirt or dresses that show lots of leg, even to the point of possible pantyshots is the same level as a shirtless guy. This means it isn't considered sexual in China by itself if worn on a casually, but formal and holy places would obviously be inappropriate to wear it. It's even socially okay for a 50 year old woman to wear a mini skirt. But there an important part you'll also notice, Jam and other Chinese girls normally never wear low-cut tops showing their boobs. This is also a cultural thing cause in China, women are deemed good and respectable if not showing off cleavage even though their skirts are short. Showing cleavage, especially alot and if the girl isn't a model or etc. as part of a job, then it'll be the opposite; she'll be viewed as "very naughty" a.k.a want sex. This is why in Revelator Jam says to Elphelt, "You hide boobs more! You make me nervous!" and talk about some of the other girls' clothes. When thinking about in general, it's not really too different from what you may see in other places.

I hope you enjoyed reading!^_^ My next lengthy GG related post will be when Frosty Faustings arrives to analyze Faust's new design, gameplay, etc.!

#guilty gear #kuradoberi jam #jam kuradoberi #cloudberry jam #character analysis #exposing them lies

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patricianandclerk · 5 years

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The Calm Ends

Self-indulgence city!

“Ah, Vimes,” said Vetinari quietly, and Vimes lingered in the door of the other man’s office, crossing his arms slowly over his chest. He didn’t really bother to cross the threshold, lingering with his shoulder leaning against the doorframe, as he usually did, when he came to see the other man. “I thought perhaps you might approach young de Worde, what with the success of his paper, in recent years.”

“De Worde writes down the information he picks up and puts it in the paper,” Vimes said evenly. “I want the stuff he doesn’t write down.”

Vetinari’s head nodded slightly, and Vimes was aware of the tension between them as he glanced around the room, as Vetinari’s sparsely furnished, humble office, where he spent the vast majority of his time. He mostly did one errand or other, around Luca: he was known for his ability to fix problems and, more impressively, fix things that were not yet problems, but which he divined might become problems soon. Vimes was… discomfited, in fact, by precisely how much power Vetinari had over the average group of people, even when times were hard and rough and full of pain, let alone during the Calm—

But the Calm was over, now.

Sin had been sighted out on the coast of Besaid, and soon, soon, things would be harder. Things were always harder, when the Calm came to an end, and the Luca Watch got busier, the watchmen busy in their places, keeping people from dissolving as tensions rose, as refugees made their way through the city, as it all went to shit.

Vetinari always knew where the tensions were.

It made him nervous, yes, and he wasn’t sure whose side Vetinari was on, at times, but he knew things, and that made him invaluable. It was easy to distrust the man, when his father had been Al Bhed, so the stories on the street went. There were a lot of stories about Vetinari, most of them, Vimes was certain, untrue. Vetinari had likely started most of them himself.

“There’s nothing untoward, just yet,” Vetinari murmured, and Vimes watched as he reached up, his fingers rubbing against the side of his temple. “Six months. A long Calm, Vimes. People don’t yet wish to return to the harder ways.”

“Any good summoners on the roster?” Vimes asked, and a shadow passed over Vetinari’s face, his eyes darkening.

“One or two,” he said.

“Sybil said your aunt was a summoner,” Vimes said, after a moment’s pause.

“She was injured on her pilgrimage. Alas, she was never able to complete it.” Vetinari delicately shrugged his shoulders, glancing down to the graceful lines of his own palm.

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

Another silence, tense and heavy, passed between them, and Vimes lingered in his place, watching Vetinari for a few moments. They had come to know one another well, in the past ten years, since Vimes had taken up the position as the Captain of the Luca Watch. As well as he felt he could know Vetinari, anyway – he and Sybil had moved in similar circles, when they’d been younger, and they were still on friendly terms, but Vetinari and Vimes, it was… different. Not friendly, exactly, but not with enmity, either. And yet, with that said, this was unusual. Vetinari was usually esoteric and weird, but with a sort of smug superiority, a sense of knowledge he wasn’t handing over.

Now, he seemed distracted.

“You alright?” Vimes asked, finally.

“My aunt always forbade me to associate with summoners,” he said. “It was one of the only rules she ever really set me. She feared that I, public-minded as I am, might take it upon myself to become a guardian.” He said it in a sort of conversational way, as if he and Vimes often exchanged niceties about their respective childhoods, and Vimes felt himself frown, his brow furrowing.

“Yeah?” he asked. “Even with your leg?” Vetinari was dangerous. He knew that – the man wielded short blades like a purely lethal force, moved fast on his feet, could rip anyone or anything to pieces, but he had a cane, most days. He needed the cane. The idea of him travelling, with the cane, from one end of Spira to the other…

Vetinari smiled, in a wan, absent sort of way. “Yes,” he said. “Even then.”

Vimes felt on uneven ground, and he leaned forward to go on, but Vetinari said, “Don’t let me detain you, Vimes. I’m sure you have paperwork to avoid back at the watch house.”

Vimes hesitated only for a few moments, trying to think of something to say, to argue, and then he gave up, and went.

Carrot told him the next day that Vetinari had closed up his office, and given his contacts to de Worde, at the paper.

The young man was out on the beach again. He often was at sunset, Vetinari had found, and he’d taken notice of this behaviour in the past weeks, staying at a lodging house in Luca, reading extensively at the library in the city. He’d grown up in Luca, so Vetinari’s source told him, but when his parents had each died, he’d chosen to be educated at the Djose Temple, when he was thirteen or so, instead of staying with his sister and her husband.

He was old enough, now, to become a summoner proper, or to at least make his first attempt at the Cloister of Trials.

Rufus Drumknott, his name was.

The priests said he was a strange young man, quiet, intent, focused. He unsettled them.

“What exactly was it, Mr Vetinari,” Drumknott said quietly, his gaze fixated on the sea, “that made you decide I was worth following yourself, rather than sending one of your people to do it?”

“I heard you broke a man’s fingers when he went to backhand his little girl, out on the Highroad,” Vetinari said quietly. He watched the back of Drumknott’s head, watched his neatly parted hair that seemed quite red in the summer’s brightness, his high, black collar, tight to his neck. His staff was laid over his thighs, resting on them, and was set there, perfectly central. Drumknott, he was reliably informed, was somewhat obsessed with symmetry.

“Is that all?” Drumknott asked. “I thought perhaps it was some subtle detail of my character. I hear that you set much store by such things.”

“Do you hear much about me, Mr Drumknott?”

“Not much, no. Even less that I would trust as true.”

“But you’ve been asking about me?”

“Wouldn’t you ask after a man who followed you?”

“I would indeed. What surprises me is that I’ve not heard tell of your asking.”

Drumknott, still kneeling on the sands, turned his head, and he looked at Vetinari, his expression utterly neutral, blank. It revealed nothing whatsoever. “I can be quite convincing, Mr Vetinari, when I choose to be.” He was a little man. Red-cheeked, compact, with the face of a secretary and the silent step of a librarian: he was not, at a glance, an intimidating figure. And yet…

“So I’ve heard,” Vetinari said. “Have you a guardian, yet?”

“No.”

“Then I would offer myself.”

He expected Drumknott to mention his leg, or perhaps his age; he expected the young man to at least glance down at the cane Vetinari leaned on. He did neither, instead turning back to face the sea, and Vetinari watched the delicate shift of his hands as he formed them into the gesture of Yevon, and bowed toward the sea.

Vetinari did not believe in the teachings of Yu Yevon. This did not, in itself, preclude his service as a guardian, but it was frowned upon, certainly, to take up a non-Yevonite as a summoner. And yet… Drumknott was not unpopular, per se. Merely that people were unsettled by him.

Vetinari was fascinated.

“Thank you,” Drumknott said softly to the horizon. “I accept your offer.”

Vetinari watched the oranges, yellows, and reds of the sky bleed into darkness, and in the direction of black, watched Drumknott pray. Then he said, “We ought make for Djose come morning.”

“Yes,” Drumknott said. “Yes.”

“You don’t want to ask,” Vetinari said, “why I wish to be your guardian?”

“Do you want to ask,” Drumknott replied, his tone slightly amused, “why I wish to be a summoner?”

Vetinari felt himself smile.

“No,” he said softly.

“Then no,” Drumknott replied, and rose on delicate feet.

That night, Vetinari lay on the small couch beside Drumknott’s bed in the lodging house, and he watched the young man sleep, his features slack, his breathing even and slow. Like this, he seemed even younger than his years, and Vetinari mused on the hypocrisy of it all, of protecting such a young man, only to let him be sacrificed, when the journey came to its end.

“You ought sleep,” Drumknott mumbled, shifting sleepily in his place. “I can feel you staring.”

“I shall stare more softly,” Vetinari replied.

The anxious uncertainty, the anticipation of oncoming grief and horror and pain that clawed in Vetinari’s chest, was soothed by the soft curve of Drumknott’s drowsy smile.

#as defined by dictionary #discworld #fanfic #havelock vetinari #rufus drumknott

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cjs-got-a-selfship · 5 years

Text

Jasper/Page- pt 7/9

pt- 6

The two Kindred woke up almost simultaneously as the sun vanished over the horizon and the night took its hold over Los Angeles once again. Though they couldn’t see the sky to verify this fact being dozens and dozens of feet under Griffith Park, the internal clocks of Kindred were rivaled by no other. Jasper lazily lifted his head up from the table, resting his chin on his arm as Page likewise stirred from her spot on the sofa. Blinking the sleep away, the Gangrel sat up, memories of the night before and the task they had set out to complete coming back in waves. As Jasper sighed, a slight wave of embarrassment washed over Page.

“I-I am so sorry, I swear I didn’t mean to crash here a second time!” she stuttered as she picked her jacket up off the floor.

Jasper held out a hand with a dismissive wave, “No, no, it’s fine, really. I… greatly appreciate your assistance. And as… interesting as your reading was… I do think the distraction helped reorient our progress.” He rubbed his eyes and began going back through the pages upon pages of notes in front of him, trying to organize the thoughts and recall pieces of information.

“Wait, really?” she shifted, unsure.

“Yes. Sometimes the best way to proceed is to stop entirely and come back with a refreshed perspective. That is why I asked for your help in the first place,” though he didn’t look up, his tone was matter-of-fact, which set her oddly at ease.

“O-oh… good! I’m happy to have been of assistance, then!” a moment of silence later, she began replacing her coat which she quickly realized had been housing three drowsy rats the entire time. “Uhm… I should maybe… go… unless there’s anything else you need help with?”

“Actually,” he finally looked back up at her, “I think… I would like your opinion on what prompted all of this… if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Y-yeah, sure! Where is… what do we…?” she couldn’t help it, but once again she found herself in a weird daze when talking to Jasper that she couldn’t explain.

“That’s the part you may not like… it’s… back inside the labyrinth.”

“Oh…”

“But, the good news is, I have mapped… some of it out and my notes have been consistently very reliable. I believe I found… something connected to ley lines in there… I’m just not sure how or what it’s used for.”

“And whatever you found is inside the bit you mapped, I’m assuming?”

“Yes. So, care to come take a look and tell me what you think?”

“Sure! Uh- yeah, lead the way!”

“Excellent.” Jasper rose from his seat on the floor and beckoned Page with a finger as he quickly perused the shelves. She adjusted her coat, making sure all her tag-alongs were comfortable and crossed the room toward him and the other exit. The Nosferatu plucked a withered and worn tome and flashlight from the shelf. It looked to be at least half a century old and as Jasper flipped through the pages, Page caught glimpses of entries written in scrawled, messy writing. Whether the handwriting was truly that terrible or it was in another language altogether, she couldn’t tell.

“I will warn you, there are some things in there that are… far less than pleasant that we may run into… so be prepared,” he added surprisingly nonchalantly.

“Makes sense I guess…”

“Onward, then.”

Jasper led the way down the hall to the door out into the labyrinth. As the two passed through, Page felt the atmosphere become heavier once again like the first time she had dropped down into the depths of the place. It was oppressive, not to mention horrific smelling. She felt bad for the rats trying to sleep in her pockets as she felt them tense up with the scene change, and hoped if they kept inside the semi insulation of her coat it would be enough to shield them from the worst. Continuing in further, they abandoned the last normal-looking hallway and entered into the twisting and perception warping corridors of the labyrinth. Jasper settled onto a page that had loose schematics of the closest passages as well as notes on the specific points of interest he had found, the flashlight in his hand the only light. Page made no effort to closely study the book--it was his business not hers--but from the small glances she took in that direction, she concluded that he must have a lot of time on his hands to have mapped as much as he did.

For quite some time the two navigated the chaotic halls. Though Page had absolutely no idea where they were or where they were going, Jasper seemed to have the exact route down to a T with the help of his book. As they delved deeper and the air became more stale and the atmosphere more unseasy, Page couldn’t help but inch closer and closer to Jasper’s side. A full head taller than her and clearly much more confident in this space, he seemed like a beacon of safety in the unfamiliar and unfriendly place. If he noticed her keeping a shorter and shorter distance between them, he made no move to correct it as he continued leading them in.

Suddenly, Jasper stopped dead in his tracks and held a hand out to stop Page. Already feeling jumpier than usual, she flinched and hissed, “Jesus! What’s wrong?”

He hissed a whisper back, “Ssh! Listen.”

She steadied herself and focused her senses, realizing what it was he was referencing. Somewhere further into the tunnels, they could hear the scraping of claws on stone and huffed breathing. The source was near impossible to pinpoint, but it was undeniably close. The Kindred stole quick glances at each other. Jasper quickly looked back down at his book, and rerouted their path. Moving as silently as possible, the sounds fell farther and farther away behind them, but they were not confident to speak again until minutes after the noise disappeared completely. Finally, Page dared break the silence, still speaking in a whisper.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you think it was?”

“I couldn’t begin to guess. I only have a little bit of this place mapped out, there’s a lot of things I don’t know about.”

“That didn’t sound like a… a Kindred or a person.”

“And it probably wasn’t, but I’d rather not find out personally.”

She nodded in agreement as they continued, keeping that much closer by Jasper’s side. The slightest noise kept her head on a swivel, scanning the tunnels for any signs of life with eyes wide. She didn’t want to admit she was afraid, but this wasn’t the most welcoming of places to be, escorted or not.

Eventually, the light of the flashlight illuminated a larger chamber at the mouth of the hall. Pressing in, they saw a smooth grey stone slab, on top of which lay a body as stiff and as cold as the stone itself. It looked to be the body of a Nosferatu in dirty old jeans and a sweater, covered in boils and other ailments. His eyes stared at the ceiling, unblinking and unseeing. Floating above him, suspended in air, lay what was likely the real attraction of the place. A complicated, intertwining network of faintly glowing red lines like cords. Page looked up at Jasper, brows knit in confusion. Sensing her gaze he looked back down at her.

“Wh- what… who is he?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I found him here when I came to this place.”

“And… what is that?” she pointed to the mass above.

“Now that… that is what we came here for… I believe these are the ley lines we’ve been looking into… I just don’t know how or why they’re here or what to do about it.”

They moved forward into the chamber to get a better look. The sight of the Nosferatu was unnerving, but based on Jasper’s unphased attitude Page tried to ignore it and focus on the network. She didn’t know much of anything about the occult or blood magic or any of the mystic arts. It wasn’t the specialty of her clan, and was never particularly on her radar in life. Everything she knew about ley lines was solely based on what the two of them had read and discussed together. She didn’t know what she had been expecting but it wasn’t this.

“After a few minutes of silence and curiously gazing, Jasper turned to Page again. “Well…? Your thoughts…?”

She glanced between him and the supposed ley lines. “Well… it’s certainly… a thing I suppose? I… I don’t know, Jasper. I’m really not an expert on this stuff. I’d never heard of anything like it before until you mentioned it. I only know as much as you do. Hell, probably less if I’m honest…”

“I know… I suppose I was just hoping for… a fresh perspective on things…”

“N-no… no I get that… it’s just… this is all really weird. And we’re kind of all about weird, y’know?” in inching closer to the mass, she laid her hand on the cold stone slab, brushing against the frozen Nosferatu on accident. She quickly retracted her hand and shuddered.

“Don’t… worry about him. I’m pretty sure he’s just in Torpor.”

She looked at him incredulously, “I don’t think that makes it better!”

He hissed a laugh, “No it doesn’t, does it?”

Page diverted her attention back to the tangled red cords, shaking her head. I likely stupid idea crossed her mind.

“Have you ever touched them? Or anything?”

“N-no… no… no I briefly considered it, but I decided it’d be better to know more about them before doing something like that. Just in case it turned out to be a dumb idea and something bad happened.”

She considered this for a second, “Uh huh… so if something bad happened I could trust you to get us both out of here, right?”

“Wait- what?”

Before he could finish his thought, Page reached out her hand and touched one of the nearest strands. Before her eyes closed, light erupted in the room, a sickly purple hue. Her vision swam, but after a moment, in her mind’s eye she could see… Griffith Observatory?

On her shoulder she felt a hand grasp tightly onto her coat and hear Jasper’s voice in her ear, “Page! Page wha-”

“-Sssh! Ssshh it’s okay!” she said through half a laugh, “It’s fine! Since you won’t do the stupid thing, let me do it.”

His grip loosened, but she could still feel his hand on her shoulder as he let out a short breathy laugh.

She moved her hand along the strands, as she did so her vision shifted. The Hollywood sign, Santa Monica Pier, the Natural History Museum, the walk of fame, and dozens of other locations from around the area. Some images were stronger than others, but all of them familiar. She had no idea what to do with this information.

Page drew her hand back, and the visions of distant locations fell away. Slowly blinking, the cords, the Nosferatu, the chamber, and Jasper all came back into view. Jasper was looking at her intently with fascination.

“Well? What was it?” he broke the silence, hand still resting on her shoulder.

“Uhm… well…” she tried her best to form coherent thoughts, “I saw… the observatory… and a bunch of other places around town… Some of them were more clear… others it was like I was looking through… a foggy window or something? I don’t know what it means or what any of them really have to do with each other but...”

“No that’s… that’s really interesting… and kind of supports my theory a bit…” he looked at her, and if she wasn’t mistaken there may have been an inkling of concern in his eyes, “Are you… are you alright?”

She was taken aback by the question, “Y-yeah. Yeah I’m fine. It didn’t hurt or anything like that, it was just… weird. Not everyday you see something like this, y’know?”

He breathed another laugh, a hesitant toothy grin crossing his face, “Right. I can imagine. To be fair I hadn’t seen anything like this either until I got here… but I’ve been here a while so I guess there are some things I’ve gotten used to at this point… even if I don’t understand them…”

“So… what now?”

“Hmmm…” Jasper looked back up at the tangle of red, “We can go back I suppose. You may be willing to do the stupid thing, but I really don’t think it’d be a good idea to try anything else at this point… even if we did know what else to do.”

Page glanced down at the Nosferatu again, another shudder moving down her spine, “No, that’s fine, let’s go.”

Jasper finally removed his hand from her shoulder to take out his book. He stalled for a moment in the door as they headed back out, and looked her in the eyes.

“I really do appreciate your help, Page. With the research and… physically checking everything out. Just… wanted to let you know that…”

For just a moment, the oppressive feeling of the labyrinth gave way to something warmer, even welcoming. The corners of Pages mouth crept up into a smile, “Yeah… no problem, Jasper.”

He cleared his throat and gave a curt nod, “Right,” before turning back out into the external corridors, and the two Kindred continued back out in the direction of Jasper’s haven.

pt- 8

#hoo this one turned out long #BUT GOOD!!#my fic #jasper #f/o #s/i page #la by night #vampire the masquerade

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rhymeswithlion · 5 years

Text

Writing Exercise #2 - DO NOT LOOK AT THE MOON

[WP] It's 3AM. An official phone alert wakes you up. It says, "DO NOT LOOK AT THE MOON." You have hundreds of notifications. Hundreds of random numbers are sending "It's a beautiful night tonight. Look outside."

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The phone alarm blared at full volume, jarring Michael out of a deep sleep. He opens his telephone to a large alert window that reads, "DO NOT LOOK AT THE MOON." He sees his own puzzled expression reflected on it. The phone buzzed maddeningly as it is flooded by text messages by numbers he's never seen before. He begins to think of how so many people could have gotten his number. He turned on the light and got out of bed.

Michael was, by all means, an introvert. He tended to leave his abode as infrequently as he could afford. Work and basic needs like groceries and hygiene were of the few things to drag him from his habitat. He had friends whom he saw semi-regularly (at least, to him it seemed that way. His friends would have consider their meetings closer to seasonal). Michael could count them on two hands. Could he have shared his phone number online? Was it from all the free trials of subscriptions that he used? Had someone hacked him?

The phone vibrated for minutes. He felt ambushed by continued stream of notifications once it fell the to the ground from his desk. He broke from thought and reached for it, still buzzing. He hadn't even read the messages; He was too concerned with figuring out what this could possibly be.

Michael pressed a button and the device comes to life. He still saw the alert about the moon. He couldn’t dismiss it, either. Odd. The phone continued showing notifications. Michael couldn’t shake the bad feeling that rushed over him. He searched for news online. The internet, his main source of information about the world outside of his bedroom, yielded no helpful results. It was supposedly a normal morning. Another round of notification alerts appeared before the phone settled down for a few minutes, somehow leaving him Michael more unsettled.

"258 New Messages" was next on his home screen. 258 spam messages or advertisements sent to him in the middle of the night was the best case scenario in his mind. He opened his messages and nearly dropped the phone in shock. He lost his breathe. His face paled, to a shade some might consider undiscovered. Unread messages from different unlabeled contacts took up most of his screen. Everyone read the same: "It's a beautiful night tonight. Look outside."

Michael staggered from the shock and sat down to collect himself. He didn't understand. Worriedly, he checked the concealment of his own windows. He returned to his desk, leaving his phone aside, and searched about the moon with his computer. He saw pages of images and new stories about the moon, but nothing about not looking at it. The only helpful information he found was a blog post discussing lunar phases, myth, and legends. The blogger, whose other posts included conspiracy theories that ranged from "believable" to "this reads like bad fanfiction", cited the full moon tonight as their inspiration for the article. Michael, mentally grasping for straws, continued to read in hopes of finding some rational explanation about the moon that night. Of course, seeking reasonable explanations on a website discussing the high likelihood of reptiles running the world may not have been the most reliable source.

One part in particular caught Michael's eyes: "There are unexplainable increases in emergency room visits, accidents, crime rates, and spiritual practices around the time of the full moon. The latin word "Luna" is the root for the word "Lunatic", driven by a belief that abnormal behavior was most common during the full moon. Could this be when the world is most open to supernatural phenomena? Studies have shown no statistic background but there is a lot of data on the topic. Maybe this one will be special." He looked down from his computer screen back to his phone as it buzzed with new life. More unknown numbers. More messages. The panic hit him like he had just learned he was burning. He physically recoiled and jumped from his chair.

Michael began trying to rationalize the situation, "Maybe it's a big prank. There's nothing online about it! I should text my friends about it! No, that's dumb. Who would respond at 3 AM? They're all asleep, I'm sure. I should talk to the neighbors. I'll get dressed and talk to the neighbors."

Michael's apartment building is one of those that seems bigger on the inside. From the outside it looked like a modest, single story, three bedroom home. Surprisingly, there are 12 studio apartments. It was mostly surrounded by taller buildings but he could always see the sky from his window if he stood close. He always felt that some natural light would be better than none.

He was familiar enough with his proximate neighbors, if only because they expectedly saw each other when departing or returning. He didn’t even know their names. Well, he didn’t remember them. He had heard them on several occasions but managed to get by all the same. Michael dressed with clothes he wore that day, since they were the closest to him and he believed nobody would care about that kind of stuff at 3 AM. Just before opening the door, he remembered a window in the hall to the right.

"It doesn't have a shade or curtain, but I don't want to risk looking at the moon by accident. It doesn't hurt to be too careful, right?"

He exited his bedroom with a flattened cardboard box he'd used to move in several months earlier. It was large enough to cover a portion of the wall and the hall window and reached to his right to place it. The difficult part of his plan was placing it while looking away. He backpedaled towards the window with his head turned until he felt the makeshift barrier contact the wall. He leaned it on the wall and went back to retrieve a suitcase large enough to hold it in place. Michael turned back towards his across-the-hall neighbor and knocks on the door. As he knocked, he realized the door had been left open. He knocked again and took a step inside.

"Hello? Is anyone home?"

No response.

"It's me, Michael...I’m sorry to bother you at this hour. Are you getting any of these weird phone alerts?"

The silence worsened his anxiety and paranoia. He stepped forward to look around, careful of his angle towards any open spaces and potential windows. The room was empty. There were no signs of disturbance, yet no one was there. The open window was the only detail to catch his eye. Thankfully, he was safe from direct view of the moon. He left the apartment and returned to the hallway. Michael looked left to see his barricade and felt some reassurance under the pressure. He stepped towards his next door neighbor's door. Once again, he knocked and the door crept open. Michael cautiously moved inside and briefly surveyed the area. Aside from the contents of the room, the details were the same: no signs of disturbance, no tenant, and an open window. He closed the door and decided to check the rest of the apartments. Every room on his floor was empty. Every tenant was missing. Every door was unlocked. Everyone’s windows were open. Michael took great care to avoided any views outside neighbors' windows and made sure to close every door behind him.

He couldn’t suppress himself anymore. Michael yelled at the top of his lungs, hoping to dispel some of the fear consuming him. He checked his phone again. New alerts were all the same: A warnings about the moon and ceaseless texts about the beautiful night. He walked back down the hallway to his bedroom and loudly slammed the door behind him. He tried to lock the door but can't seem to stop his hands from shaking. After struggling for some time, Michael sat back down at his desk. He decided to call everyone he knows. He knew there was something terribly wrong and needed to hear a familiar voice. Michael opened his contacts list and hurriedly called each person.

"This number is not accepting calls at this time. Please try again later", a pre-recorded message repeats several times before he hung up the phone. He tried again with the next name on his list to no avail. Another attempt, another failure. Michael worked through his entire social circle of friends, family, and co-workers before collapsing to the floor, physically and mentally exhausted. He spoke loudly to himself, perhaps in an attempt to give himself some kind of company,

“What the hell is going on? Where is everyone? This must be real. Is this real life? Am I really awake? Am I alive or dead?”

A moment passed before something clicked, or perhaps snapped, in his mind. There were so many unknown variables. What was going on? Could someone else have managed to avoid the night sky, by accident or intentionally? Were there any other people experiencing the same dread? What was the government doing? Was there still a government? Was anyone in contact with anyone? Will anything change when the sun comes out?

Michael resolved himself, in only for the moment. He decided to return to his studio to check television, radio, and the internet to see any notice about this grave and present emergency. He planned to take a sleeping pill and set several alarms to wake him up for daytime, so that he could go outside and find someone else, anyone else.

His phone buzzed while his computer notified him of new emails. He tripped on the pile of unfinished books that had accumulated near his bed. His hand moved swiftly to move the mouse and see what his inbox had to offer. At this point, he felt anything would be a comfort. He had been proven wrong. 100 new emails from new senders that all read, “It’s a beautiful night tonight. Look outside.”

He firmly shut the door behind him and locked it, as though there was any sign of activity in his entire building. He roused his computer from its sleep and refreshed his news feed on Google, Facebook, and other media outlets. Nothing was different. Nothing had changed since he had looked. This was the digital age, he thought. If something this big was going on, someone would have posted something. There was no evidence of any new developments in the world. The only solace he found was on the television and radio, which he felt was a bit ironic but almost certainly wasn't.

A message displayed on his television screen through the local emergency broadcast system and the radio played a text-to-speech of the same notice: “DO NOT LOOK AT THE MOON.” He turned off his television, computer, and radio. He found his sleeping pills, dropping some to the floor because of a steady tremble through his hands and body. He took one, drank some water, and closed his eyes. He fell asleep, but he couldn't tellhow long it took. He just knew it felt like a lifetime.

Michael's alarms went off in metered intervals. 9:00 AM, 9:05 AM, 9:10 AM, and so forth. He swung his legs to the side of his bed and stood up too quickly, falling back down as the blood had rushed to his head. Sleep had helped to clear his head. He thought it was probably a dream. Things would go back as they used to be because he was just having a bad dream. Seeking brief comfort, he opened his computer and turned on his TV and radio. The contents were the same as before he had forced himself to bed. It was like the world had stopped. No news - no celebrity gossip, sports analysis, political stirrings, weather, Reddit, Facebook.

Michael briefly felt confident in thinking that maybe nothing at all happened in the world today. He could barely grasp his immediate surrounding circumstances, let alone an world events. He turned to his curtained window before he was overcome with a sense that something was terribly, terribly wrong. He rushed to his light switch and turned off his ceiling lamp to confirm his suspicions. He was right. There was no natural light. Where was the sun? He turned his light back on just so he could feel some kind of radiant warmth on his skin.

The only certainty in Michael's mind was that he was still alive. He must still be alive. He pinched himself to see, because he learned from someone that feeling a pinch meant you were not dreaming. He began searching for food, then decided that tending to basic needs would help him to better process the situation. His eyes shot to the small pantry in his kitchen and he approached. Grief and hunger worsened the realization that he had nothing edible in his whole apartment. Could he borrow some food from neighbors? Would they even care? Would they ever even notice? Would they ever be back? Guilt and determination collided in his mind before he walked into each of his neighbors’ apartments.

After some time scavenging the building, he assembled the haul on his countertop: a collection of three half-eaten bags of tortilla chips, eight ounces of two-day old guacamole, five cans of soup, four packages of instant ramen, two eggs, and a frozen pizza. Conservatively, he felt this would last him just under a week. Michael took a shower to wash the dirt, sweat, and stress from him. He planned to eat two meals a day and continue until the sun came up. Once the sun came up, he would try to find help.

His daily to-do list on the refrigerator nagged him. He always needed structure. It helped organize his thoughts and kept him focused. He designed a daily routine for himself until the situation changed. He used one hand to write and one to shovel guacamole and chips into his mouth. The schedule read, “Wake up. Check for sun. Eat. Check internet, TV, etc. Read. Shower. Eat. Go to bed.” He felt more in control in this moment, proudly shoveling the last bit of guacamole into his mouth. He grabbed the closest book-in-progress to him, of which there were many, and read for as long as he could. He plugged his phone in once he began dozing off, checked his alarms, took a couple of sleeping pills, and fell into the covers of his bed.

Michael woke up the next day with a stronger sense of purpose and control of his situation. He looked to his list. He knew the first step of his day. He approached his window and saw`the same as yesterday. He sighed and walked to retrieve the frozen pizza but a lack of appetite changed his mind. Nothing new on the internet. No new messages. He picked up a different book nearby him and began reading until his sight blurred. He marked the page, dropped the book, and walked to his shower. Michael solemnly walked to his bed and took more pills than usual. He stared at his window before drifting off.

His alarms rang. He woke up. He saw a familiar lack of light outside. He turned on his oven for a moment and inserted the frozen pizza. No changes online. Michael removed the pizza and ate it like an oversized taco. He tried to read but kept losing his place on the same few pages. He left the book on the ground to take a shower. He ate what was left of his pizza and a bowl of instant ramen. He took some pills. He thought to himself, because he felt talking out loud made no difference to him at this point,

“Am I dead? Is this Hell? Is anyone else out there?”

This cycle repeated for five or six more days. Michael couldn't really tell because the food lasted longer than expected, as stressful situations often ruin appetites and his concept of time wavered as he increased his dose of sleeping medication. On what he felt was the sixth day, something new happened.

He woke up and saw the sun was still not yet out. He accepted this a new reality, as though the sun had never existed. He said softly to himself,

“It's always been night time. It's always dark. The moon is always there. I would assume so, but I haven't even looked outside in maybe a week. Is there anything left? I wish I could talk to someone I know. Hell, anyone.”

The phone buzzed to life for the first time in days. It woke again, then slept. And once more. Michael furiously tapped the locked screen to see three messages from names he recognized. He was eager to see if they were alright, or holed up, or if they had any idea what was happening. In the moment he saw his three unread replies, he felt his heart drop into his stomach like a ten ton weight and it knocked him to the ground.

Michael, stunned, saw more messages arrive from his friends, family, and more. Old classmates, ex-girlfriends, coworkers. Within moments, he saw a new message from every contact in his phone. His heart raced. His breath was unsteady. He couldn't think straight. The room spun and felt increasingly small as Michael felt the world he knew had left him behind. He dropped his phone as though his muscles went limp, and promptly fell in a similar fashion. Michael became overwhelmed with questions, the same he'd been asking himself all this time. Was he awake? Was he asleep? Was this real? Is this Hell? Why did he have to be alone? He didn’t want to be alone anymore.

He felt a mental snap similar to the first day of this event and it instantly drew him to three conclusions, among all other possibilities he’d considered. He was either dreaming, stuck in some sort of time loop, or everyone else had looked at the moon and he was the only human left on the planet. Michael believed at this point that nothing he had tried would work and that he needed to take a radically different approach. That was the only way he would know, he thought.

As his decision solidified in his mind, he sat down at his desk and woke up his computer to open a blank text document. He felt, at least, that if he wrote what he could remember from however long this had been happening, that he’d be able to leave something behind if someone found it. He couldn’t stand being alone anymore. He didn’t care about food, water, or hygiene. He just didn’t want to be alone.

He began writing as much as he could from the very beginning up until the last day, or night as it was. He couldn’t tell time anymore, and he knew the sun would not come up, so he didn’t keep track of how long he sat there. Eventually, he got to where he last was. He felt he had done his best. He saved the document, unlocked his computer, and set the display to stay on indefinitely. He felt nothing else left to try. He had to know. He had to see if the night was indeed beautiful.

I’m going to look now.

Signed,

Michael

#art #practice #creative #writing #writing prompt #fiction #short story

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