#no you don’t get to demand that people stop blogging about something in its entirety just because you don’t like it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

asterekmess · 4 years

Note

1-11 Scott/Posey Stans always try to deflect criticism of the way Scott McCall is written in Teen Wolf by claiming that ANY attempt by a fan, a viewer, or a critic of holding Scott to a level of behavior that one would expect of a character who is a main and the self-proclaimed hero of the show is “racism”. Except that their accusations don’t make any sense whatsoever, because Scott’s canonical shitty actions and behavior don’t stem from his race (or canonical lack of thereof.)

Okay hun, this is a doozy, so I’m putting it under a Read More.

2-11 Scott McCall is mean. He’s mean to Stiles, he’s mean to Allison, he’s mean to Derek, he’s mean to Peter, he’s mean to Cora, he’s mean to Lydia, he’s mean to Jackson, he’s mean to Erica, he’s mean to Isaac, he’s mean to Malia, he’s mean to Malia, he’s mean to Kira, he’s mean to Liam, he’s mean to Chris, and he’s even mean to Theo (“You are barely even human!”) Scott McCall is deliberately rude to the Hales, Boyd, Ethan, Danny, Hayden, Jiang, Tierney, and Melissa.

3-11 Scott McCall deliberately USES, INSULTS, HUMILIATES and DEHUMANIZES people in ways that demonstrate that he is fully aware of what he’s doing. Scott McCall deliberately disregards other people’s needs in order to fulfill his own. Tyler Posey being half Mexican doesn’t change the fact that his fictional character Scott McCall is a whiny coward and an abusive piece of trash,

4-11 and that his so called ‘defense squad’ enjoys the power fantasy that Scott can be cruel, can lie, can assault, can lash out, can violate other people’s boundaries, bodily autonomy and consent, can commit premeditated murder, can break the law without impunity, can dehumanize, can gaslight and victim blame his friends to his heart’s content and no one should ever hold it against him

5-11 In both the production and in some Scott supremacist fanfics, there’s often the premise that people are evil and in the wrong if they call Scott out on his bullshit or hold his toxic behavior against him. Take Season 1. As much as the Scott McCall defense squad brigade love framing Stiles and Derek getting shit done and prioritizing people’s life over Scott’s jealous fits and temper tantrums as the height of depravity

6-11 Scott/Posey Stans consciously and steadfastly ignore all the cruel things that Scott says and does throughout the seasons, such as “How much Adderall have you had today?” OR “What are you trying to do?! I just made first line! I got a date with a girl who I can't believe wants to go out with me and everything in my life is perfect! Why are you trying to ruin it?!” OR “The hunters had a reason to slaughter your entire family and pack”

7-11 (As an aside, it’s amazing to me how Fanon rewrites Scott as this brilliant thinker and strategist and mastermind who is so much smarter and better than everyone else in every way even though Canon Scott spends the entirety of Teen Wolf doing absolutely nothing except get his ass handed to him by everyone, whining about wanting to be popular/get his dick wet/play lacrosse, screaming at his friends and girlfriends, being utterly useless when left to his own devices,

8-11 and planning to bite Stiles against his will because he doesn’t know what to do. But I digress.) Or take Season 5. In the rain argument in Lies of Omission (5x09), Scott McCall’s hypocritical, dehumanizing speech to Stiles is one of the meanest, cruelest, most disgusting manipulations I have ever seen a television character deliver to another television character they supposedly cared about. It’s victim blaming and gaslighting at its vilest.

9-11 And, of course, the Scott McCall defense squad focuses exclusively on the idea that Stiles didn’t behave “the right way” in that scene (AKA taking Scott’s bullshit without clapping back like Scott wanted and demanded), and cannot entertain for one moment the idea that Scott provoked that response by dehumanizing Stiles and by accusing Stiles of being a violent, dangerous, inhuman monster and serial killer based on Theo’s words alone.

10-11 After all, it’s part of their power fantasy. Scott being “abandoned” and “mistreated” by his “ungrateful” friends serves another type of fantasy: the poor oppressed martyr. It doesn’t matter why Scott is abandoned or who is leaving Scott, it’s all about Scott McCall’s right to own people and demand his friends’ love, friendship, loyalty, sympathy, forgiveness, obedience and devotion without having to account for his own abusive behavior.

11-11 And that’s Scott Stans’ point: Only Scott McCall Is Important and Damn Derek/Stiles/Liam/Other Teen Wolf character for having a life and motivations that don’t revolve around Scott! To them (and to Canon Scott), the pack exists not to serve all its members, but to serve and validate Scott McWhinyCall. Because, after all, that’s what antis want for themselves – validation in the face of shortcomings and bad behavior.

Wow, that was a lot of anger. Do you feel any better after venting that? I really hope so, it honestly looks p cathartic. Okay, I apologize in advance if I don’t come across as quite so passionate, I’m kinda bleh today and I already used up all my righteous fury in an earlier post, so I’ll do my best.

I honestly understand the worry about people disliking Scott as having racist motivations. As I said in another post, there aren’t a lot of Latino (wait, I read somewhere to use latine? Should I use that instead? I’ll use that, someone correct me if I’m wrong. The thing also said latinx was not great bc of pronunciation issues? I’m not educated enough on this. Halp, please.) Latine protagonist characters in popular television, especially for teen dramas like Teen Wolf. Intentional or not, written into the show or not, Scott is half-latine. His mother is a latine woman. We don’t see them speak spanish or take part in any specific cultural traditions, but that doesn’t make him white. Yes, his character was written for a white guy, but Tyler Posey is the one who got the part and we can’t strip him of his heritage just because the show originally meant for Scott to be white. My husband is almost always mistaken for white, even though he’s also half-latine, but that doesn’t make him any less latine. There’s little enough representation as it is, and if we start being picky about whether characters were ‘intended’ or ‘written’ as POC, everything will just fall to shit. Plus, as a white person, I have literally no rights to decide that Scott’s white. I’m cool with that. Would prefer to just stay in my lane, if I’m honest. With Scott established as being a POC, it’s totally reasonable for other POC and fans of Scott to be worried that those of us who don’t like him have that opinion because of either passive or active racism. There are a lot of occasions where Protags of Color were either liked less, or actively disliked for just being ‘not white.’ It also doesn’t help that Scott is one of very few “good” Characters of Color in TW (whether we agree or not, he is presented as a ‘good guy’). We have Boyd, who dies in 3A and doesn’t get much character developement in the meantime, and Kira, who sticks around for a while, then has to leave because of ‘losing control’ which is apparently a very common stereotype for POC, especially within Fantasy or Supernatural settings. Other than them, the other POC are either bad guys or just morally dubious. I’m not sure where Deaton falls on the scale either. I understand it being frustrating to some people for us to take one of the few “good’ characters and see him/describe him as a villain. It’s important for white people, and honestly, anyone not latine (because even POC can be racist against people who aren’t their race) to be self-aware and analyze the various reasons why we dislike Scott and make sure that we aren’t accidentally being passively racist. Just because we’re sure we aren’t, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t double check. And if we find we are, then it’s up to us to correct that mindset and educate ourselves. There is no shame in learning that you have not great habits or mindsets and working to fix them. That’s how growth works. It’s equally important that when we’re writing fic, we watch how we portray him and the other POC in the show. I’m not saying we can’t write Scott bashing fic. Fuck knows that I’ve written plenty of Bad Friend Scott McCall fic, and I don’t intend to stop. But we still need to be self-critical and make sure that we’re not writing Scott (or the others, please assume from here on out I’m saying Scott and the others) into racist stereotypes. We shouldn’t reduce him to just a “Yes” man, or make him constantly submissive, or constantly vicious and angry and mean for no reason. It’s one thing to write him as doing something bad or cruel and making it realistic for the story. It’s quite another to have him just randomly pop in to say “fuck you” and hit someone (I’m not referencing something specific here, I’m just saying dumb stuff). Honestly, I don’t know enough about this and I’m not really entitled to go into too much more detail. Instead, I’d recommend that even if you don’t think you’re hating Scott for racist reasons, still read This Post about racism in fandom/fanfic. When I read it, it was both reassuring and intimidating. I have anxiety, so I’m usually worried about doing things for ‘the wrong reason’ even when that’s not actually my reason for doing the thing. Reading this gave me a clearer view of my own thoughts, and it honestly made me feel a little more comfortable with my own mentality because it gave me a structure to think about and consider when I’m worried that I’m doing something racist. It’s worth the read. I’d also like to reiterate the suggestion on that post, to check out the blog Writing with Color, which is a great resource for writing Characters of Color. It doesn’t have as many resources for fanfiction writing and the grey area involved in writing characters that your reader already knows, but their ask box is closed at the moment, so maybe when it opens again someone’ll send in an ask about it (If I actually remember to, I’ll do it myself, but that’s unlikely, so if one of you feels so inspired, please do so and help a fic writer out!)

Now. I cannot speak for every single fan of TW who is anti-Scott in some way. Obviously not. But, I can speak for myself and for the experiences I’ve had within the fandom. My issues with Scott are many and complex and a lot of it is intrinsically connected to issues with the writing of the show in general and with the creators and the calls they made. In all the conversations that I’ve had with other fans, I’ve never seen anyone list Scott’s race as a problem. I’ve never seen anyone talk about how they wished he were more submissive or more obedient. Maybe that he would listen to actual adults once in a while, but not that he be unreasonably obedient of white characters. I’m not all-knowing on the subject of racist stereotypes, but nearly every complaint I’ve seen was based on details from the show and specific moments and dialogue, not just a general disgust with his existence. Furthermore, for all the anger I see directed at those of us that prefer Stiles, Derek, or even Peter, I’ve also never talked to anyone who liked those characters who wasn’t willing to admit that there were plenty of points in canon where they fucked up or did something wrong. Again, I don’t know everyone in fandom, so maybe there are people who won’t admit those things, but they aren’t in the majority.

I personally hate the way I see Scott treat people in the show. I hate the really vicious things he says and does and the chronic lack of self-awareness or growth. Even worse, the way the show excuses his behavior, be it intentional or not, has soured a lot of other parts of the show. The clearly impulsive moments that could easily be excused by him being a really stressed out teenager make me a lot more frustrated than they would, had I not known that he would never get better. That he would never stop saying things like that. I can’t even make myself enjoy the genuinely sweet moments with him and Allison or him and his mom, etc. I might hate that he left Stiles’ messages unanswered and skipped an entire day of school during a crisis to hang out with Allison, but I would’ve liked to enjoy their banter, the soft moments between them that are actually really nice. I can’t though, because so many other things about his character have ruined that for me.

It isn’t okay to attack people for disliking a character and throw around such charged words like “racist” and “abuse-apologist” or anything else. First off, this is fiction, and we all need to keep that in mind. These are not real people we’re talking about. Secondly, calling someone racist because they disagree with you (unless they are actively saying/doing something actually racist) isn’t okay and it isn’t an adult way to deal with things. Someone not liking a character doesn’t automatically make them racist. Someone happening to prefer a white character over a Character of Color doesn’t automatically make them racist. Sure, they might have passively racist motivations that even they don’t realize. But it is not up to strangers to come yell and call names without proof. There are plenty of reasons that have nothing to do with race (Not saying “i don’t see race.” I’m saying “Not About Race”) that I like Stiles over Scott, ranging from the fact that he’s physically more my type, to sharing a neurological condition with him, to just preferring Dylan O’Brien as an actor because he makes me fucking cry every time he cries on screen. What’s important is that we self analyze and check ourselves and our opinions to make sure that we aren’t falling into the racist habit of disliking Characters of Color for no real reason. But that isn’t something that other people can do for us, and it’s not their place to tell us what we think. Calling a stranger racist for saying they hate Scott’s behavior in the show doesn’t do anything for racial equality. It just makes people stop listening to the word ‘racist.’

There are times I seriously get frustrated with TW to the point of considering not watching anymore. Of closing my blog and stopping reading fanfic entirely because every single time I read a fic where Scott’s a ‘good guy’ or a ‘good alpha’ or where Derek is glad to be a beta again because he likes following Alpha Scott, I get squicked so badly I have to click out and just sit there for a second to settle. I can’t disentangle the things he does/says in the show from the fic.And I’ve written Good Friend Scott McCall fics. I have multiple wips where he’s either a decent person or he grows from being a dick to being a decent person. With my own work, I know that there’s an awareness to his behavior in the show and an active intent to rewrite/fix his behavior so that he is a nice person. With other people’s works, I don’t have a guarantee (unless it’s mentioned in tags or author’s notes, and I don’t expect people to have to explain themselves that way), and it personally makes me uncomfortable to read something when I don’t know if the writer actually sees Scott that way. It’s a personal preference, and one that I stick to pretty strictly.

Scott brings me no joy, and with him as the main character, I’ve come perilously close to cutting myself off from the most welcoming, loving fandom I’ve ever been a part of (except the Merlin fandom, but I don’t blame anyone who can’t compete with them. They’re fucking magical.). But I’m still here. I still love, if not the reality of the show, then all the potential I see in it when I watch. I love watching Derek and Stiles interact with each other and with the other side characters. I love seeing the glimpses of Boyd that we get, the tiny scenes of Erica, the snarky moments with Isaac. I even like Kira, though I haven’t seen a whole lot of the show where she’s in it/genuinely can’t remember it (I can’t even remember how far I’ve seen total, but I don’t think it was past S4, and I haven’t seen past S2 in months and months) and she spends most of her scenes with Scott, which just....kind of ruins the scenes for me.

That’s the glory of fandom though, of media in general. I don’t have to like Scott. I can love Derek and Stiles instead and I can choose not to read fics where Scott is a major player or an Alpha at all. I can read fics where Kira’s part of the pack without Scott ever getting involved, and see her interact with everyone else. Or fics where Boyd never dies and watch him bake or read or play lacrosse with the pack. I can curate my own experience, whether that means blocking tags or users or filtering fics, or just straight up skipping certain scenes/episodes of the show itself. I cope with my frustrations by coming on this blog and ranting about it. Yeah, this is a public space, but it’s also a space people choose to view. If they don’t like my opinions, they can block me or unfollow me or all of the above. They don’t have to read it, just like I don’t have to read any of their pro-scott stuff. I also read fic that does explore how Scott’s behavior is problematic and cruel sometimes. Fic that either erases him or turns him into the villain, I find fun and interesting and the relationship between him and Stiles cracking into pieces is something I find extremely cathartic, so I read it pretty much every chance I get (though, i’m so picky about fics I read, you’ve no idea). I also write fic. I write the most mushy, self-indulgent sterek fic and Stiles-centric fic and and Scott bashing fic that I can possibly write. It’s a joy and a therapy all its own. Fuck, I’m rewriting the entirety of canon for fuck’s sake and I’ve made so many changes that at this point I honestly have issues remembering what happens in the show, bc I rewrote the damn thing.

At the same time, Scott fans are gonna write their power fantasies. They’re gonna write anti-Stiles stuff and anti-Derek stuff, and whatever else tickles their fancy. They’re gonna make their own rant posts and gifsets. And to be quite honest, I don’t give a single flying fuck. I already have those tags filtered out on Ao3. I don’t follow any pro-scott tumblrs. That shit doesn’t show up for me most of the time, unless it’s not tagged properly, and even then I just click out, take a second, and move on.

No one is required to like or dislike specific characters, and it’s unfair of anyone to tell us otherwise. Fandom is built on choice. The choice to disagree with canon, or to re-envision it altogether, or to love it entirely. No one can take that away from you. So long as you aren’t hurting anybody, just keep doing you, friend. I’m here for you to vent to when it gets to be too much.

#personal #go for it #anti-scott mccall #meta ramblings #Anonymous #rant #much love #I didn't mean to sound so preachy #oops

60 notes · View notes

mytwistedhome · 4 years

Text

Pomefiore and Ignihyde when they find out you have Anorexia

Trigger warning to anyone who suffers with an eating disorder!!

I decided to write these headcanons because I've been having a really tough two weeks, and thinking of the twst boys makes me happy...

I hope this can maybe bring comfort to someone else, or at least provide some bit of entertainment. My intention is not to cause harm or trigger anyone. That is the last thing I want.

Other dorms will be coming as well! I already started working on all of them, but I just haven’t finished them. They will most likely be posted the next time I have a bad day //

One more quick thing: I will be posting requests this week! I’ve already broken several promises that I made in regards to the time I’d post, and I feel horribly guilty. I’m sorry for the wait. I know I shouldn’t tell you to expect something on a certain day and then delay it for weeks. I should be honest about my efficiency, and I am sorry.

I'm also sorry for not responding to message (this applies to all my blogs...) I see them, but then forget about them, and then cower away because I feel like I'm already too late. I hope this little apology is enough to suffice... I'll apologize properly to every person when I find the courage. I know I shouldn't be doing this to people who've been kind to me just because I feel unwell. Please know that I am very sorry, and I'm trying to be more responsible and less careless to those around me.

💜

Vil Shoenheit

So that's why your skin is so dry and you have bags under your eyes

He scolds you at first. He believes that you’re starving to get a good figure, and he tries to inform you that doing so is unhealthy and that being malnourished actually makes a person quite ugly.

As if you haven’t already heard all this before

You try to tell him that you’re not doing this to look good. At least, not anymore. Sure, it started out as a way to lose weight, but it soon became an obsession much more meaningful than beauty or weight-loss.

He doesn’t understand. Why would you deliberately hurt yourself like that? Especially when you’re aware of all these negative outcomes?

Nevertheless, he is still very worried about you

He wouldn't normally concern himself with such a personal problem, but he would feel so guilty if he just stood back and watched you whither away

So, he does, indeed, go out of his way to try and help you

He finds a psychology book about eating disorders in the library, and he reads it in its entirety

He is... quite disturbed. He never imagined that you could be suffering so badly.

He's smart enough to realize that he, himself, can't do anything to make you better

He encourages you to seek professional help, and he even searches for phone numbers you can call and therapists/counselors close by of whom you can see

You are really touched by his efforts to find help, and you promise him that you will see one of the counselors he recommended

But... several weeks go by, and you haven't done anything

Vil grows furious. Don’t you want help!?

He takes your lack of seeking help rather personally... He went out of his way to provide with the things he felt that you really needed. Don’t you appreciate that? Don’t you care about yourself? What more do you want him to do?

You try to tell him that you don’t want him to do anything, that you’ll find help when you’re ready--

Vil isn’t buying that

What does “ready” mean, anyways? When you’re already in the grave?

He’s a bit harsh on you... He points out the patches of dry skin along your neck and chest, the way the hairs of your arms always stand on end from goosebumps, the metallic taste in your mouth...

Are you happy with those things? Do you really want to live this way?

You try and try to explain to him that it’s hard to get help and go back to eating normally

It spirals into an argument...

Vil is done with this. He did what he could and got you the resources you need to begin recovery. Once you decide to get help, he will be there for you. He will be there whenever you reach out for support, comfort, or care. But, until then, don’t talk to him about it. Don’t complain about your misery until you have sought proper help. It’s your fault at this point, isn’t it?

Rook Hunt

He had noticed that you were very quickly losing a lot of weight

He was concerned, but he never imagined that the problem could be something so serious

You're actually surprised with just how much he's concerned. You thought that if there was anyone to romanticize such a disease, it would be him

But he seems to know more than you thought about such disorders

He begs you to get professional help, and he is quite a bit more pushy and earnest than Vil is...

You try to explain to him that no doctor or therapist could ever help unless you were READY and WANTED to be helped

Well, he doesn't understand why you don't want help

He's pushing and pushing you... begging you to seek a professional

You get so frustrated that you turn and leave. He just doesn't understand!

And now Rook is even more distressed. How will he ever get through to you? How can he ever help you?

Now, every time he sees you, he looks at you with such sorrow

He sadly remarks upon how your beauty is fading... and how he fears that your life may be fading as well

Your heart aches to hear such sincere worry... Your chest feels tighter than it normally does as you crumble with guilt

You promise yourself you'll get better... Just so you won't have to see Rook with a horribly sad expression whenever he passes you

You start eating more in front of him to ease his worry, which does work a little bit

You add about 400 more calories to your usual intake--enough so that your "recovery" becomes visible through the way you bounce with energy

But you stay up late at night, running laps and doing situps to burn off some of that intake

And you keep losing weight

In fact, it's worse now because your body is aching from the unfamiliar intake and exercise...

Well, at least you look better

At least you have Rook fooled

Or so you think. It'll only be a matter of weeks before he catches onto your schemes and grows so distressed once again

He tries to sit you down and have a talk with you... He just really wants you to get help

Epel Felmier

Poor Epel finds out after he witnesses you collapsing in the middle of the hallway when no one else is around

He panics and rushes to your side, trying to see what is wrong and how he can help you

You blacked out for several seconds, which is why you collapsed, but even though you have your vision back, everything is still very cloudy and you are too weak to stand up

This makes Epel panic even more

You try to calm him down, despite your weakness

"it's okay, Epel...! Just get me something to eat. Please, I need something to eat. Hurry!"

He is a bit confused, but he does what you say, and he rushes off to find you some food

While he is gone, you try to stand, but to no avail. Your stomach aches with hunger and you are cold all over. Your body just feels so miserable

He rushes back to you with an apple and places his hands on your shoulders in concern as you quickly eat it down

That apple... It's the best thing you've ever tasted, but it's gone too quickly, and your mouth waters for more as the last bites slide down your throat

Although it was small, it still gives your body such a blissful burst of energy. All your senses are ignited now that you have finally eaten something after such a long fast, and your head is hurting far less

You stand up and smile at Epel, thanking him graciously before turning to leave

Uuuhhhhh.... What was that?

You suddenly collapse on the ground and then are all better after eating a simple apple?

No way is Epel going to let you go just like that. He holds you back, demanding an explanation, for it surely seems you know quite a bit about this bizarre thing that just happened

You try to tell him it's nothing, just a strange thing that happened this one time

Well, then, how did you know how to fix it by eating something?

You quickly lie and tell him you get dizzy sometimes and fall due to low blood sugar

Well, now your story is inconsistent

He presses you for the truth, growing rather angry

His harsh tone begins to scare you, and you tell him... You tell him that, sometimes, you go days without eating, and it of course causes you to grow so weary that you faint

You watch as all the frustration quickly rushes away from Epel's face, leaving his eyes wide and mouth hanging open in shock

"That... That's really unhealthy..."

Oh, great. Not this speech again

But, it actually isn't a lecture about how this is such a "dangerous diet"

Instead, Epel pours out all his concern with a sad look upon his face

He knows that he can't do much, but he assures you that you can come to him if ever things become too tough to handle

You're touched by his offer, and you thank him for his understanding

But, now, everytime he's around, he watches you with care to see if you're doing alright and to make sure you don't fall over again

You hadn't expected him to worry this much...

If Epel ever thinks that things are getting out of hand, he will likely go behind your back to someone who can help for your sake

💙

Idia Shroud

He really wishes that he hadn't found out because now he can't stop worrying

This is the kind of thing that would just be easier to ignore and shut away from his mind

But how could he possibly ignore something as serious as this?

He keeps telling himself that this isn't supposed to be his issue

But... It is his issue, isn't it? If you ended up dying and he knew all along about your suffering yet did nothing to help, than that would mean that he aided in your death, right?

He's really starting to panic. He doesn't what you dead. Not at all

But... What is he supposed to do???

He calms himself down and tries to think

Perhaps if he built you a mechanical body that didn't need food this whole thing would seize to be a problem...

No, bad idea

Well, that will be his last resort if nothing else works...

He messages you and tries to plead with you to please just eat and take care of yourself...

You message back, explaining to him that it really isn't that simple

He decides to ask why you're doing this, and he tries to show through his words how much he really cares

You feel comfortable enough in telling him some of the reasons why you think you started, and why it's now so hard to stop and all you want is to continue with it...

Idia is happy that you were able to open up to him this much, but what is he really supposed to do with this information? He's no therapist...

Well, being vulnerable with you emotions and talking about the problem is at least one step in the right direction, isn't it?

Idia continues to try to be a source of comfort for you, while also encouraging you to seek proper help

Ortho Shroud

Oh, no... He can’t help you with this, can he?

Why can’t he help you? Why won’t you get better?

Surely nii-san programmed him with something that could help you...

Right...?

RIGHT!?

Why aren’t you better?

Why are you doing this to yourself!?

Ortho is a mess... so distressed. He can’t understand--he doesn’t have the capacity to understand such a disorder, and he is so frustrated that nothing he does is helping!

And he does everything

He exhausts himself trying to “fix your mind”

His eyes are wide, yellow irises shaking with misery

Knowing that you are willingly hurting yourself actually traumatizes him...

He can't wrap his head around such an awful mental illness. To him, it looks as though you're really trying to harm, hurt, and even kill yourself by your own accord

Something must be wrong with your brain, but he just doesn't know what!

The poor child is so upset. He's panicked and worried sick

And now you feel even worse

Sorry for ending on such a horrible note... I was originally going to have all the dorms, so Diasomnia would’ve come and saved the day, but I just didn’t finish them.

58 notes · View notes

black-streak · 4 years

Text

Waiting for the Worms - The Trial

Part 18

I've just been staring at this completed chapter for thirty minutes. I've been working up to this moment for so long and to see it finally written is just. Insane. (No this is not the last chapter. There is much more to come)

By the way!!!! This chapter was not suppose to end this way! Y'all influenced this shit! Goading me into it, I swear.

CLOSED List of Beggarts I regularly feed (I'm running out of names to call you): @northernbluetongue @thethirdwheelfriend @shizukiryuu @theatreandcomicfreak @michellemagic @karategirl119 @moonlightstar64 @my-name-is-michell @mystery-5-5 @zalladane @queen-of-the-trash-planet-tm @miraculousdisapointment @dorkus-minimus @jardimazul @allthebooksandcrannies @g-arya @worlds-tiniest-spook-pastry @persephonescat @mycupisbroken @luciferge @18-fandoms-unite-08 @dawnwave16 @alwaysreblogneverpost @kris-pines04 @emjrabbitwolf @mysteriouslyswimmingfan-blo-blog @weird-pale-blonde-person @you-will-never-know-how-i-think @kokotaru @naclychilli @slytherinhquinn @clumsy-owl-4178 @ladybug-182 @darkthunder1589 @evil-elf16 @dast218 @lysslovsanime @emilytopaz @naoryllis @iloontjeboontje @thepeacetea @danielslilangel @finallyaniguana @i-like-fairytail-and-stuff @vixen-uchiha @yuulxd @bleeding-heart-romantic @magic-inthe-stars @st0rmy-w1th1n

~---~

He'll be after Jason seeing as the new Robin described him and he definitely knows about Joker's death.

They watched as the shadow took off across the rooftops, occasionally tossing out a grapple or swan diving off a ledge. Four blocks off, another figure, much brighter and attention grabbing, took a similar route, small body taking to the sky seemingly not taking notice of the eyes on him. Or perhaps used to it.

You'll watch the bird, keep him distracted. Nothing extreme enough to catch the other's attention. Just hold off any interference.

A dozen mice ran along the sides of gutters and along the alleyways below, awaiting their signal. They kept the brighter figure in their sights, drawing his attention with slight rustles and squeaks from unexpected places. Just loud and weird enough to avoid interest in any other movement in the area, drawing out a natural curiosity and investigative need in their target.

You'll play as backup. As soon as we instigate our target, I expect you to help keep the Replacement within ear range but incapable of assisting.

A fox dashed across the streets, keeping a close eye on the game between the bright figure and the mice scattered about. Any time the bird snuck up on where one hid, she hid the mouse in illusions, sometimes a real rat, other times a startled, hissing cat.

Tail swishing in a twitchy dance behind her, she awaited the main event from her perch.

You two will take to the sidelines, backup if it should come to blows. Otherwise, keep everyone updated on the others' positions and monitor the situation.

A cat slinking around corners kept an eye on all of the players, including the two unseen by the rest, coordinating positions and ensuring no one moved off course, uncomfortable in knowing a double agent held eyes in the sky and taking precautions to avoid cameras as she whispered soft directions into a comm, made by their miraculouses and impossible to hack due to the ancient magic encasing it.

By her side, a dragon crossed with a horse hovered in a tense side to side sway, awaiting her command. The other kept on tiptoe, knowing the call to assist could come at any point and from any direction. In the end, their disappearance back into the night at the end of all of this relied on her. Waiting too long differentiated between success and potential capture.

We'll take on the Bat. After all, I think it's high time he met my soulmate.

With baited breath, they watched as a shrouded man dropped in front of the Bat, making the figure twist at the last second to avoid a headlong collision. Batman turned back on the spot, dropping into a crouch and launching towards the man. The man dropped onto his back, kicking upward into a stomach and using the momentum to launch Batman across the roof while rolling back to a stand. He stayed facing away, though they saw his head tilt, listening to the almost silence behind him. As a flash of silver flung towards his back, he easily spun off to the side, dodging a barrage of batarangs as Batman methodically tossed them while placing himself closer and closer to the other before moving in to initiate hand to hand combat. The man seemed to take this in stride, shifting into the new pattern.

Across the rooftops, Robin took note of the fight and moved to aid. He made it three blocks before a fox dropped in front of him, growling. Taken aback, but knowing not to allow the distraction, he attempted to grapple upwards, only to find the grapple gone, in the teeth of a mouse like figure, taking off away from him, other mice figures crawling about his feet, holding him in place as the fox watched on, teeth bared in a silent warning. Keeping an eye on the strange creatures about him, he looked back to Batman, startling at the realization that he recognized his attacker. Jason. Suddenly he remembered the strange abilities of the lady from the night before and realized the creatures holding him captive where meant to keep him from interfering. As he made to move anyways, a voice in his ear on a private channel spoke up, asking him to stay still. Agent A.

"What's going on, A?"

"You'll see."

The figures continued on until the Bat begin to advance harder, looking to restrain his opponent, calling out to him, having deducted whom the figure is by this point.

"Jason stop!" Right as a fist went too fast to block, aimed straight to the man's nose, a cord wrapped around his fist, yanking in back. As Batman began to turn towards the source, a punch came to his face, bringing him back front and center. A possible second cord wrapped around his other wrist and the backs of his knees were kicked out from under him.

The others watched as a Ladybug held a yoyo taut, strings in a Y formation, the focal point centered between the Bat's shoulder blades to evenly distribute the tension. The Ladybug looped the yoyo over a pipe and pulled up until his arm bent back and upwards without tipping his torso down. If he tried anything, the bug could simply yank him airborne. The Bat choose to focus onto the man in front of him for the moment.

"Jason-"

"I'm not Jason."

We should switch. I have more experience with the Pit Madness than you. If I'm in your body, I can hold the entirety of it while you get a reprieve to focus on the mission. To have a clear mind while confronting him.

"What?" He demanded.

A sharp, feminine voice spoke up behind him, loud enough for the others to hear.

"I am."

Batman froze in his spot on his knees as the figure that looked like Jason sat down in front of him.

"Hello Bruce. It's good to meet you officially. Though I suppose I've known you much longer than you've known me." The lower, masculine voice was offset by its' soft lilting tone.

Despite his brain whirling with the information, he shoved it aside, firmly refusing to put it together himself.

"You're lying."

"She's not," the voice from behind moved closer, the yoyo secured on their hip to prevent his movement but free up the hands and gripped his shoulders in a crushing grip, "You see, Bruce, I hadn't been with you long enough to trust you with the secret of my having a soulmate. And you never knew me well enough to tell when we switched. Some detective you are, hmm?"

"So what, that makes this okay?" He growled.

"Patience," the figure in front of him smirked softly.

"Getting caught by the Joker at that moment, that was my own dumbass fault. You not arriving on time isn't your fault. I could live with that, but that isn't the end. I want you to look into the eyes in front of you, feel how small the presence behind you is. How tiny and young, despite being seventeen. I want you to look her in the eyes and know that she was only fourteen when she was launched into my body where she was beaten to a pulp by the Joker. Blown up. The connection broke. Then because it wasn't her body, she sat in my corpse for months before the resurrection. Had to crawl her way out of a grave and to a hospital."

The team tensed in the distance, having not heard the full story before now. Robin's eyes blew wide behind the mask, the tension in his body going slack in horror.

"Do you see that swirl of green in my blue eyes? How they look almost teal? That's from when the League threw her into the Lazarus Pits. She's combating insanity as we speak. And yet even with the healing effect it had, you can see the scars all over. There's an autopsy mark as well."

The shoulders in Jason's hands shook with his words and he looked up at Mari who seemed calm, letting the man stare at her and take in her reality.

"And none of that is truly your fault. But you know what is?" Marinette spoke up now, "That a fifteen and fourteen year old were ever put into that kind of danger to begin with. What's the likelihood of either of us ever falling onto Joker's radar without your placing us in the costume? Without making us Robin? Do you think Jason would've become a target had you not decided it was perfectly acceptable to allow children to fight criminals?"

"Jason was troubled, he needed someplace to put that anger. Something to let out-"

"Many children are troubled or angry. Do you know what other parents don't do? Allow that teen angst to turn into taking on the adult underworld. But sure, we'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Explain then why you couldn't care enough for Jason, for any potential child's life enough to create a permanent solution to our murderer? How many people, how many innocent kids is the Joker's life worth to you?"

"You obviously care more for the clown than us," Jason added.

"That's not true!"

"Then why? Why was my grave barely marked?"

"Two sentences in the Tuesday local obituaries."

"Swept under the rug to be forgotten."

"While you hunt us down for killing the clown. We deserve to be hunted down for avenging our own death."

"Meanwhile you do no such thing to the one who killed your supposed precious Robin. Did we mean so little to you? I wonder if the newest Robin means anymore than we did."

"So you're angry you were replaced?" Batman barked out, overwhelmed by their constant barrage of accusations.

Mari reached forward, forcing the man to look into the teal of those eyes swirling in front of him, watching him flinch away at knowing who she was, "You misunderstand us purposefully. It's not that we were replaced. It's that you know a child died for your cause and you still insist on placing another in harm's way. You take broken children desperate for guidance, for connection, for anything and abuse that position over them. You as their guardian are meant to keep them from harm's way. To protect them from the horrors of the world until they're old enough to face it in their own way. Not throw them in a costume, train them into weapons and then let them fight the most dangerous criminals the city could offer. Yes, we made some stupid choices of our own, but you set us up to even have those choices presented to us. Does it even occur to you that had we not shown up to save the little bird, another child would have died under your care? Does that mean nothing to you?"

The Bat growled, trying to break free of his binds. The two hid grins, knowing him unaware of the young eyes listening desperately for his answer.

"You certainly haven't thanked us for keeping him alive. Does it mean less to you that he is alive then it does that Joker is dead."

"You know the rules! We don't kill!"

He fell for it. He might as well have told the new Robin his life was forfeit to his cause. The mice scurried off Robin's feet from where he stayed, a rooftop over as the fox curved around his calves in an almost apologetic movement.

"Jason swore to abide by your rules. I never did. I was fourteen when I died due to your negligence. I was innocent. I was a happy little girl with dreams of becoming a fashion designer. Now I can't even keep the voices in my head from screaming in my ears at all hours of the day. But the only thing you truly care about in the end is yourself. I fear for any child that gets dragged into your mess. And I will do whatever it takes to protect them from the inevitability of your cruelty."

With that, she stood from her spot and took off into the shadows, a cat, dragon and mice following out of sight. The fox looked at the boy who stood broken on the rooftop and nudged him, dropping the illusion of an animal and holding her hand out in offerance. He looked back at the thrashing Bat.

Jason, taking hold of the yoyo once more and tightening his grip, leant closer, "I don't blame the Joker for our death. I blame you."

With that, he used the yoyo to fling Batman in the opposite direction, taking off in an off kilter path towards the others. Looking back at the patient fox figure, hand still waiting for his choice, he hesitated.

"The choice is yours, Timothy. I'll support you no matter what," A's voice spoke softly through the comms.

Exhaling slowly, he took her hand.

She lead him to their rendezvous point where he saw the mice form into one person, the two from the roof and two other unknown figures. As he looked at them, each gave a soft nod in turn before the one opened up a blue portal before them, the fox letting go of his hand to follow the others through. Eventually only him and the ladybug themed one remained. Jason.

"Come on, replacement. You can stay with us however long you like."

With the smallest smile of gratitude and the encouraging words of Alfred in mind, he followed the other through, the portal closing behind them.

#maribat #jasonette #ml x dc #WFTW #part 18 #kidnapping children the humane way

346 notes · View notes

vomitboi · 3 years

Text

So, About Mercury...

WARNING: This post will contain spoilers from the entirety of Volume 8 of RWBY. If you have not yet watched the volume in its entirety, I suggest you do so before continuing in this post.

Thank goodness Emerald managed to break free from Salem’s forces! People have been wanting a redemption arc for her, myself included, and I’m glad that she opened her eyes in regards to her unhealthy relationship with Cinder, which now allows her to see just the level of destruction Cinder has caused upon those around her. As she was an abuse survivor, I’m glad things turned out well for her for the time being. That being said, however, there is still one more person we need to worry about, someone I haven’t heard people talk about much lately:

Mercury Black.

Originally, I was going to include this in the intro analysis post I was going to make for Volume 8, but after watching it frame by frame, I’ve noticed some things that I felt were significant enough for me to write a blog about it separately. I’ll be sure to link this blog in the intro analysis once I eventually do it.

In typical anime fashion, the main villains make their appearance in the opening alongside the mastermind behind it all. After Cinder burns up and the song provides the line, “Some evil will never ever die,” notice how each member of Salem’s group comes in.

Hazel is holding his fist with an uncertain expression, as if he is questioning whether or not what he is doing the right thing. This foreshadows his eventual turn by betraying Salem and ultimately sacrificing himself to buy the heroes some time before Salem could regenerate. Then Tyrian follows him with a devilish smirk, which I feel says more than enough about his character. Now, notice Mercury appearing after Tyrian with a confident and evil grin, then followed by Salem’s entrance. This raises a really important question:

Why is Mercury closest to Salem in this scene?

If I have learned anything about CRWBY from the show, it’s that they love to drop hints in their intros about what is to come. You’ll see what I mean once the intro analysis drops. That being said, let me explain what I believe the meaning behind this little scene is.

Typically, the closer you stand next to a ruler when it comes to positioning, the more power and authority you have. After reprimanding Emerald for trying to defend Cinder for going off to fight the Winter Maiden and destroy Amity Arena on her own, Mercury states something very interesting to Cinder when she demands the both of them to leave:

“Yeah, about that. Salem’s got other plans for me. I’m not gonna be taking orders from you anymore.” ~“Midnight” (Volume 8 Episode 6)

I’m inclined to believe that Mercury gained a promotion from Salem and will likely be playing a more integral part in her plans from this point onwards, especially since he headed out to Vacuo with Tyrian in Episode 7 known as “War.” His role could be even more significant than his peers, including Tyrian, who will be his partner for the mission. They will most likely try to secure the Relic of Destruction secured in Shade Academy, and wouldn’t you know it, Ren, Nora, Oscar, and the others are evacuating the Atlesians into Vacuo. We’re definitely going to be seeing more of him as an important villain in Volume 9.

Does this mean that Mercury will get the short end of the stick and not get the redemption arc that so many of his fans are hoping for?

Possibly, but not necessarily. Mercury is indeed evil, but he isn’t irredeemable. As an assassin, he has killed people before (remember Tukson?) and even jokes about it afterwards. He also has some sadistic tendencies as he enjoys other people’s pain, much like Cinder Fall, who he has been working with until now. However, unlike his former superior, he still shows compassion for those he cares about, even if he attempts to conceal his emotions. The very fact that he goes out of his way to assure Emerald that Cinder doesn’t really care about her reveals that he wants Emerald to break free from her abusive relationship with her. He was an abuse survivor as well, having to deal with his own father (whom he eventually killed in a flashback during “Beginning of the End” Volume 3 Episode 7) along with Cinder constantly mistreating Emerald on-screen and likely Mercury off-screen. In fact, he doesn’t even want to carry out the mission since Emerald discovered Salem’s true goal and informed him in “War.” The main reason why he’s in this is for survival and power, but after realizing the promises Salem made for him were a lie, he remains by her side to save his own skin.

“Salem's promised us everything. We win this thing for her, we'll be top dogs in her new world. What more do you want?” ~Answering his motive on joining Cinder and Salem “Lost” (Volume 6, Episode 9)

“Look, even if what he said was true, we can’t stop Salem. You told me yourself, Hazel tried. He failed and he got in line. Big guy’s not going to pick fights he can’t win, and neither should we.” ~Earlier on the same episode “War” (Volume 8, Episode 7)

I personally believe he’s gonna have his redemption arc at Volume 9. However, that’s not going to happen without a fight. Salem can’t be stopped so he sees no point in fighting against her, and he’s too deep in his situation for him to simply opt out of the mission. If he doesn’t do what’s expected of him, he’s likely going to die. Of course, the heroes at Vacuo will try to get him out of it. I think that we’ll have a 1-on-1 confrontation between Emerald and Mercury, and he’ll have to fight her now that she’s a traitor. However, I don’t think that he is currently equipped to handle Emerald on his own, let alone the others and especially Winter with her new Maiden powers. I believe that he’ll need a power boost to make things interesting...perhaps he might somehow regain his Semblance or create a new one from the dire situation he is in, or perhaps a part of him will be transformed in a manner similar to Cinder’s Grimm arm, a part that he constantly relies on survival but was taken from him at some point...like his legs.

YES, I ADAMANTLY BELIEVE THAT MERCURY WILL HAVE GRIMM LEGS.

Anyways, that’s my take on things. I think Mercury will have his redemption at some point in the next volume. Whether or not he survives afterwards, however, I’m not entirely sure, especially if he does end up obtaining Grimm legs. I’m really looking forward to seeing what this guy can bring to the table. I believe that CRWBY can make an amazing story out of his character arc and how he can break away from the fear of what might happen if he were to get himself out of Salem’s grasp. It can be a great lesson that people can break free from abusive situations and that they can get better over time.

//Credit to Catsintei for the image.

ONE LAST DISCLAIMER: Abuse is a very serious subject that RWBY addresses multiple times through multiple characters. If you have been in an abusive relationship, at some point you might feel like this is just the way things will be. You might feel like there’s no way out of it. You may even feel like you deserve it. None of this is true whatsoever. If you find yourself in this situation, reach out to someone you know you can trust. If you don’t feel like you can trust someone, find a counselor or an authoritative figure to help you out. You can change things for the better. You are worthy of so much more than this, and you should be living life to the fullest without having anyone hold you back.

#rwby #rwby volume 8 #rwby v8 #rwby analysis #mercury black #emerald sustrai #crtq #rwby character analysis #rwby predictions

6 notes · View notes

popatochisssp · 5 years

Text

Hope for the Holidays

Sans is stuck in the past, even a whole year after reaching the surface with no more RESETs.

Maybe he could use a pep talk...or a Pap talk.

AO3 Link

I wrote this for the Undertale Secret Santa 2018! Pure Sans & Papyrus brotherly fluff. :3

It never got any easier.

Sans would’ve thought after about the millionth time it happened, he’d have gotten used to it, jolting awake in a cold sweat, his magic flaring as his soul was crushed by the overwhelming weight of panicked despair—fight-or-flight instincts sharpened by the horrible knowledge that it was all completely, utterly, terribly…

Useless.

He scrubbed a hand over his face, taking deep breaths and trying to quell his own rattling.

This had to stop.

It was over now…wasn’t it?

……His insistent nightmares disagreed.

Sans sighed, checking the clock next to the window—shades open, always open to the sky above the surface and its proof of an intact timeline—and he slumped in disappointment.

4:27 AM.

Too early for Grillby’s, too late to try going back to sleep, even for him.

There was only one thing to do.

Nothing calmed the nerves like a good, old-fashioned midnight snack, whether it was midnight or not…or whether any actual nerves were involved.

Sans was used to taking a quick shortcut down to kitchen for leftovers. It was a route he knew all the way down to his bones.

…heh.

Silently digging through the fridge and cutlery drawer was old-hat, ignoring the lights and the microwave for stealth reasons easy and familiar.

The taste of the cold spaghetti he shoveled into his mouth with shaking hands, though…

That was different.

It was edible, for one thing, with barely any glitter in it. It actually tasted…pretty good, a triumph of all the hours Papyrus had spent up here watching cooking shows and stalking recipe blogs.

Hours that haven’t all been RESET back to nothing by a world-bending power a kid should’ve never had.

Sans was grateful for it.

He was happy for the way things had turned out, really, he was.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about what it took to get it, either.

All the failed attempts, the do-overs, the ‘what would happen if I…’s

(The times Sans had to watch his world fall apart because of a child swinging a little plastic knife.)

Frisk promised.

They swore it was over, all of it, never to happen again.

No more RESETs. This is the best ending.

So…why couldn’t Sans just…believe that?

After a year up top, free of the Underground, it seemed like the truth. Life was finally moving forward, linearly, after stars only knew how long it had looped and weaved and stopped dead before starting over somewhere else.

Everyone else was diving right into surface life, vacations, new jobs, new hobbies, new lives—and it felt like Sans was the only one who couldn’t trust it.

He’d spent so long wanting this exact thing but now that he had it, it didn’t even seem real.

Why bother with anything? It was all just going to…

Sans buried his face in his hands and shuddered.

He hated this. All of it.

He wanted it to be over. He wanted to trust it was over.

But he just felt…hopeless.

He didn’t even notice at first when the kitchen light flicked on.

“SANS?”

That, he noticed.

Sans straightened, scrambling to put an easy grin on his skull for his brother, who was frowning at him in the doorway.

“hey, Pap.” Good, that sounded casual. “what’re you doin’ up?”

Papyrus just scoffed. “YOU KNOW I DON’T SLEEP MUCH. I’M NOT A LAZYBONES LIKE YOU.” He narrowed his eye-sockets, suspiciously demanding, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING UP? THE SUN HASN’T EVEN RISEN YET!”

Oh, stars, the sun.

Sans was gonna miss that the most when everything got RESET again.

The thought was unexpectedly painful and Sans rushed to cover it.

“ah, y’know, thought maybe the sun had the light idea, gettin’ an early start to the day.”

Expectedly, Papyrus’ frown deepened at the barrage of jokes.

Unexpectedly…he didn’t take the bait.

“YOU LOOK TERRIBLE,” he said instead. “ARE YOU ALRIGHT?”

Sans laughed a little, hoping the nervous edge to it was only so noticeable to him.

He should’ve known a half-assed lie wouldn’t work on his bro—he was just too cool to fall for that.

A whole-assed lie, on the other hand…

Sans sighed, a little dramatically.

“alright,” he said, “alright, ya’ caught me. guess i am a little upset this mornin’…”

Papyrus finally came all the way into the room, browbones knit in concern. “CAN I HELP?”

“don’t worry about it, you already are.”

That just earned Sans a confused look.

Sans grinned, as infuriatingly wide as he could, waggling his forkful of pasta at his brother. “how can i be upsetti when i got your spaghetti?”

Papyrus scowled.

…But instead of throwing his arms up and stomping off in exasperation like he was supposed to, he pulled out a chair and sat down at the table.

“YOU’RE OBVIOUSLY TRYING TO GET RID OF ME,” Papyrus deduced, “SO YOU MUST REALLY BE OUT OF SORTS AND TRYING TO HIDE IT FOR SOME STUPID REASON.”

Sans’ eye-sockets went wide. “what? no, i—”

“AND NOW YOU THINK DOUBLING DOWN IS GOING TO WORK LIKE I HAVEN’T KNOWN YOU LITERALLY MY ENTIRE LIFE AND CAN’T SEE YOU SWEATING.”

Ah, jeez, was he? “look, Pap, seriously, it’s—”

“‘NOT THAT BAD’?” Papyrus guessed, folding his arms over his chest. “IS THAT WHAT YOU WERE GOING TO SAY TO ME, EVEN THOUGH YOU’RE OUT OF BED BEFORE NOON AND I COULD HEAR YOU RATTLING EARLIER ALL THE WAY FROM MY ROOM?”

“……”

damn.

“i just—”

Papyrus cut him off again. “THIS ISN’T THE FIRST TIME YOU HAD A BAD NIGHT, SANS. WE’RE GOING TO HAVE A CONVERSATION AND JOKES AREN’T GOING TO GET YOU OUT OF IT.”

Sans doesn’t even get his mouth all the way open before yet another warning.

“MEMES AREN’T GOING TO GET YOU OUT OF IT, EITHER.”

………damn.

Papyrus was just way too good.

Sans never stood a chance.

He wilted a little in his chair, rubbing awkwardly at the back of his neck.

Pap obviously wasn’t about to be dissuaded now, but…where to even begin with the bullshit plaguing him now? For years at least, if his data on the RESETs had been even marginally accurate.

It was… It was a lot, but…

Well, hell.

Sans had to start somewhere.

“alright. okay. rhetorical question, then.”

“FINE,” Papyrus agreed. “A COMPLETELY RHETORICALLY, DEFINITELY NOT ABOUT YOU AT ALL SORT OF QUESTION.”

“…really not makin’ this easier, bro.”

Papyrus had the grace to look a teensy bit chastened. “YES, OF COURSE. PURELY RHETORICAL.”

Sans took a breath, a long moment to weigh his words.

“have ya’ ever just felt…stuck?” he wondered slowly. “like…like nothin’ matters an’ there’s no point doin’…anything ‘cause it’s just…nothin’s gonna change anyway, no matter what ya’ do?”

“YES. OFTEN.”

Sans’ head shot up in surprise. “wh… for…for real?”

Papyrus just looked at him, like he’d be rolling his eyes if he had any. “STARS, SANS, OF COURSE I HAVE. WE WERE TRAPPED UNDERGROUND FOR THE ENTIRETY OF OUR LIVES WITH MINIMAL HOPE OF ESCAPE, BARRING THE EXTREMELY RANDOM CHANCE THAT THE LAST HUMAN MIGHT FALL SOMETIME BEFORE WE DUSTED OF OLD AGE.”

“……oh. right.”

Funny how easily he’d just…forgotten about that.

…Maybe not easily.

“WE ALL FELT STUCK, SANS,” Papyrus continued, not unempathetically. “PROBABLY BECAUSE WE WERE. IT WAS SO…LIMITING DOWN THERE! I HAD SO MANY THINGS I WANTED TO DO THAT I THOUGHT WERE IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE LONGEST TIME… UNTIL THEY WEREN’T ANYMORE! I CAN LIVE ALL OF MY DREAMS, NOW!”

Sans followed the logic—they were free now, and if Papyrus could live his dreams, he could too!

Except…

Sans remembered some of those dreams Pap had mentioned: getting to drive down an open road for miles with no end in sight, fresh breezes, real sunlight…

Sure, he had all of those things now…but for how long?

“what if…what if you couldn’t, though?” Sans asked, fiddling with his fork. “what if one day, it was all just…gone? we were back underground, trapped all over again, an’…an’ nothin’ we did would make any difference?”

“THAT SOUNDS LIKE IT WOULD BE A HUGE BUMMER.”

The glib delivery startled a laugh out of Sans. For all that he was the comedian of the two of them, he’d never seen a better Straight Man than his brother.

Papyrus knew it, too, if the smug look he wore was any indication.

“WELL, IT’S OBVIOUS TO ME,” he proclaimed, “THAT YOU, DEAR BROTHER, ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF SOME VERY EXISTENTIAL PROFUNDITY.”

Sans couldn’t deny that. “yeah, pretty much.”

“IN THAT CASE! I WOULD LIKE TO OFFER YOU SOME ADVICE!”

“…heheheh…yeah?”

“YES!” Papyrus exclaimed. “I KNOW A THING OR TWO ABOUT KEEPING MY SPIRITS UP, EVEN WHEN PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING ELSE IS TERRIBLE. THERE’S A TRICK TO IT, SO YOU WON’T EVEN HAVE TO WORK VERY HARD—I KNOW HOW MUCH YOU HATE THAT. WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR IT?”

Couldn’t hurt…right?

“okay. lay it on me. what’s the trick?”

“MY AMAZING, FOOLPROOF, NEVER-FAIL TRICK TO STAYING POSITIVE……” Sans struggled to hold back a snicker at Papyrus’ suitably dramatic pause. “…IS REMEMBERING THAT NO MATTER WHAT, MY REALLY COOL BROTHER IS GOING TO BE THERE WITH ME! SO EVEN WHEN LIFE ISN’T PERFECT, IT’S STILL PRETTY DARN GOOD!”

Sans’ grin dropped.

“………”

It wasn’t often that he was rendered completely speechless.

But of course, if anyone could do it, it would be Papyrus.

And he wasn’t even done yet.

“YOU’RE ENOUGH, SANS,” he said, brooking no argument. “EVEN IF EVERYTHING SUCKS AND YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING TO FIX IT, YOU STILL MATTER. TO A LOT OF PEOPLE…BUT ESPECIALLY TO ME! SO IF YOU EVER NEED A PEP TALK…OR…OR JUST A REGULAR TALK…I’M HERE.”

……he was.

Papyrus was always there.

Even when the entire timeline uprooted and went back to the start, Papyrus was the very first thing Sans woke up to, kicking down his door for sleeping late instead of being at his sentry-post.

Even through the bad runs, Papyrus was there to hold things together when monsters were being dusted or spared all over the place and Sans drove himself crazy trying to guess a reason for which.

(And even…even when he wasn’t there, on the really bad runs…he kind of was still there, giving Sans something to focus on long enough to reach the Judgment Hall.)

Sans was dumbfounded for a few long moments.

How could he ever have forgotten that there was at least one constant, no matter how many RESETs there were?

Papyrus was always a real star, bright and shining.

Maybe Sans couldn’t believe yet that the RESETs were over, or that this peace on the surface world was something that could actually last.

But maybe…

Maybe he could believe in something else.

Sans shortcutted himself to the other side of the table and tugged Papyrus into a hug. His eye-sockets started to feel suspiciously wet, but he ignored it.

“bro…you’re the coolest.”

“NYEH-HEH-HEH, I KNOW!” Papyrus squeezed him back, standing and pulling him right up off the kitchen tile with the force of his hugging. “YOU RAISED ME THAT WAY! SO BY THE TRANSITIVE PROPERTY OF COOLNESS, YOU’RE PRETTY COOL, TOO!”

“not as cool as you.”

Papyrus scoffed. “OBVIOUSLY, BUT THAT’S AN IMPOSSIBLE STANDARD! OUR INTENSE, COMBINED RADICALNESS IS BLINDING NONETHELESS!”

Sans started to chuckle. “hey, maybe i oughta start sellin’ sunglasses. y’know, for the poor, unsuspecting saps we pass on the street.”

Papyrus pulled back, squinting at him. “YOU’RE NOT GOING TO START THAT UNLICENSED VENDORING STUFF UP AGAIN, ARE YOU?” he asked. “THAT’S ILLEGAL, YOU KNOW!”

“nah, i won’t, you’re right,” Sans relented. “that’d be pretty…shady of me, wouldn’t it?”

“…………”

Sans was unceremoniously dropped to the floor.

“I TAKE IT BACK,” Papyrus said, a surly look on his skull. “YOU’RE NOT COOL AT ALL—YOU’RE ACTUALLY THE WORST AND I’M DISOWNING YOU.”

Sans laughed, louder and more genuine than he had in…

Stars, how long had it been?

He didn’t think he could say for sure, but it felt good.

The kitchen was getting a little brighter, more light coming in from the window as the sun started to come up outside.

It gave Sans an impulsive thought, and for once, he actually felt like chasing it.

“hey, if i’m disowned, can i still hang out on your porch to watch the sunrise?”

Papyrus, already turning on his heel and feigning aloofness, replied, “TAKE A SCARF, IT’S CHILLY—AND NOT A WORD ABOUT THE COLD ‘GOING RIGHT THROUGH YOU,’ SANS, THAT’S NOT EVEN A JOKE, IT’S A FACTUAL STATEMENT! HAVE SOME PRIDE, PUT SOME EFFORT INTO YOUR WITTICISMS FOR ONCE!”

Sans headed to the coat-rack by the front door, tugging down a skull-print scarf—human fashion, go figure—and putting it on.

“pride?” he echoed in disbelief. “effort? jeez, Pap, who do you think you’re havin’ a conversation wit here?”

Sans didn’t have to wonder if Papyrus heard him all the way from the kitchen, because he heard exactly the sound he’d been hoping for in response: distant and begrudging laughter.

“…NYEH-HEH-HEH, DAMN IT, THAT ONE WAS ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD. GO, ALREADY, OR YOU’RE GOING TO MISS THE PINK CLOUDS! THOSE ARE THE BEST PART!”

It wasn’t until Sans was actually outside, watching the winter sky light up like a watercolor painting, that he realized he had to disagree with Papyrus.

The pink clouds were pretty cool…but when his brother came out to bring him a fresh mug of coffee, dressed in his own signature scarf, Sans couldn’t help but think that the scarlet-orange streaks were way cooler.

Seeing that color up there in the sky…Sans was really starting to feel like he could do anything he wanted up here.

Like it might actually stick.

Watching the sun come up with his brother by his side, Sans was filled with hope.

#undertale #fanfiction #sans #papyrus #myfic

40 notes · View notes

backtothestart02 · 6 years

Text

Fallen Star - 11/?

A/N: I’m pretty pleased with how this chap turned out. It was almost much angstier, so y’all can credit @westallen94 with inspiring me to make it a little more bittersweet than pure pain. lol.

*This chap goes out to @itzvickilou. Girl is so patient in between updates of this fic. And she did wait so long for this one. I hope this installment is one you end up loving, dear!

*Many thanks to @valeriemperez for beta’ing. :)

Chapter 11 -

The door firmly shut behind her, Linda did her very best to put Barry Allen out of her mind. If she started acting weird, Iris would know something was up. She didn’t know how much wine her friend had consumed, but even after several drinks, Iris had a tendency to sense when something was being hidden from her.

Unfortunately for Linda, when she looked over at Iris, she saw her friend had not barely taken a sip out of her wine glass, and the bottle beside it was still very full.

So much for hoping that she was on her second glass, she mused, then scolded herself. Iris hadn’t wanted to get drunk tonight. She should be thrilled that despite her last-minute push for alcohol, Iris still maintained her sobriety.

“Pizza’s here!” Linda announced, promptly dropping the pizza box on the table in front of Iris.

Miraculously, the wine only swished a little in the glass and bottle.

Resigned, Iris switched her gaze from the blank wall in front of her to the pizza box Linda was opening.

“I’m not really hungry…” she began, her growling stomach promptly interrupting her.

Her face heating up, she met Linda’s gaze sheepishly, earning her a snort in return.

“Oh, yeah, I can tell.”

Still flustered, Iris accepted the inevitable and propped herself up so that she was sitting with her back against the arm of the couch.

“All right, well, what did you get?” she asked.

“Your favorite!” Linda cheered.

That intrigued her. “Oh, yeah?” She turned the now open pizza box toward her, then frowned.

“What?” she demanded. “It’s got all your favorites: red peppers, green peppers, onions, hot peppers, jalapeno peppers, mushrooms, and olives. I even made sure they added in that extra spicy sauce not included on the menu.”

“So, your favorite,” Iris concluded.

“What? No-” But it dawned on her then just how she knew about that sauce. A brief fling with a guy that worked there roughly five years prior. “Oh.”

Iris shook her head. “Don’t worry. It’s fine. I’ll just pick stuff off.” She reached for a slice.

“But the sauce!” Linda warned, but it was too late – for both of them.

Iris thought she could handle her spice pretty well, but this was hotter than anything she’d ever tasted. She downed her whole wine glass in a single gulp and took the ice-cold glass of water Linda handed to her before she had time to down the wine bottle in its entirety.

“Wow.”

Linda laughed nervously. “Yeah…”

“Never again.” Iris pointed a finger accusingly at her best friend.

“Understood.”

Linda grabbed a slice for herself and plopped down on the couch beside Iris, eating the pizza as if it wasn’t setting her entire mouth ablaze and making her eyes water. She turned to see Iris staring at her, shock and disbelief on her face.

“Wha-?” she asked around a mouth full of food.

“I just…” Iris shook her head. “Nothing. You do you, girl,” she said, and poured her wine glass up halfway again.

“So, what are you gonna eat?” Linda asked after she’d downed her first slice and was reaching for another.

“That is an excellent question,” Iris said.

Linda winced. “I could order another pizza.”

She laughed. “How about I just make the brownies now, get high, and forget all about needing actual food in my system to get through the night?”

Linda’s eyes widened, panic setting off all her nerve endings.

“Right.” She swallowed. “Pot brownies.”

Iris had stood up and was about to head towards the kitchen, when she turned to look over her shoulder and saw the panicked look on her best friend’s face.

“I’m kidding.”

Linda blinked and looked up at her. “You are?”

She laughed and sat back down. “Yeah. That’s crime evidence. My dad’s a cop, but there’s only so many lines he’ll cross for his baby girl.” She took another sip of her wine.

Linda’s lips parted; her jaw dropped after what Iris said next.

“It’s just a good thing Barry figured out what was up and came over to demand the drugs. Would’ve been awfully embarrassing for me to have to return to the precinct with it, tail between my legs as I snuck it back to where it came from.”

The smack came on suddenly and had Iris rubbing at her arm and nearly spilling her wine.

“What the hell, West?” Linda demanded, but she was starting to laugh. “You could’ve let me in on your clever secret.”

She shrugged and sank back into the couch, cradling the wine glass in her hand.

“It wouldn’t have sold the same with Barry. And I needed him to actually show up.”

Linda’s brows furrowed.

“Why?”

Iris sunk into herself a little.

“So, I could see him,” she murmured to herself.

Linda’s heart broke.

“Oh, honey.” She took the wine glass from Iris’ hand, set it on the table, and pulled her best friend close, pressing a kiss to the top of her head before sinking back into the couch. “You miss him that bad, huh?”

She knew she did. It was a foolish question. But she still asked it because for how crushed she’d appeared in the short period since their break-up, she was the rawest now, the most honest with her feelings.

“It’s like I can’t breathe, Lin. I feel like I’m suffocating every day, knowing I’m not going to be able to see him or talk to him…”

“I’m sure that’ll pass eventually, in time,” she offered. “It’s not like you won’t be a part of each other’s lives forever. You’re family. You’ll be friends again. It’s just…too soon.”

“I don’t know…I don’t know if I can go back to being just friends, Lin. And what about his threat to prevent me from going through with investigating any story that has even a hint of danger to it? If he follows through on that…I think I might just go crazy.”

“So, what are you saying? You’re not going to do that kind of story anymore?”

Iris scoffed. “No, of course not. I love those more than all the rest. They always have the biggest impact. They change lives.” She sighed.

Linda swallowed. “So, then…?”

“Maybe I just won’t be aggressive in searching for one.”

Her brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

Iris pulled back to look into her friend’s eyes.

“I mean…I think I was refusing the simpler stories simply because everyone was getting on my case to not do the more dangerous ones. Maybe the best way to transition is to not do that.”

“I hate to say it…but that may give your ex the impression that you’ve given up. That’s kind of letting him win.”

“It’s not a game, Linda.”

“No, I know it’s not. And I don’t like seeing you in danger, even if I understand why you do run straight into it something, but-”

“It’s okay, Linda. I get it. I’m not going to avoid the stories. I’ll just…take them as they come. And if I get bored of the mundane, which I most certainly will, those criminals will have something coming to them they wish they hadn’t.”

“And that is?”

She smiled mischievously. “Iris West.”

…

A week and a half later, Iris sat at her desk at CCPN and congratulated herself on her progress. She hadn’t gone out for drinks with Linda for at least three days. She slept at her own apartment in her own bed. She was getting work done instead of stalling endlessly, unable to get Barry and their break-up out of her mind.

While she hadn’t been handed a story that would give her a high simply by imagining the potential of it, the stories she was researching, interviewing, writing for were still quality stories. No interrupted robbery, stalled kidnapping, or attempted prison break should go untold, especially when it was the Flash who was stopping these terrible crimes.

And who didn’t love hearing about the Flash’s latest save? Central City citizens loved the Flash. They loved learning about his latest exploits and how great he was. The Flash was good press. Who didn’t want good press? Especially in a newspaper, driving to keep people buying the tangible paper instead of just browsing online.

That was what she’d been hired for initially anyway. Her blog about the Flash.

Her mind came to an abrupt stop when those thoughts registered. She leaned back in her chair and scoffed, disgusted with herself.

“The you from two years ago would have been so disappointed.” She frowned, her nose scrunching up.

She was more than a Flash fangirl. She wanted to write about stories that mattered. They didn’t have to be life or death, but anyone could write about the Flash’s everyday saves. Especially now that she didn’t really have an in with him anymore. She wasn’t at STAR Labs. She wasn’t interacting with anyone there except her dad and brother. And really, they mostly avoided the topic when she saw them. She preferred it that way. So, why the hell was she writing recaps on the Flash’s saves when all she was seeing was what any other citizen on the street could see?

She was supposed to be an Insider. Interviewing people who had been eye witnesses didn’t make her an insider. It made her an interviewer who could transfer words to paper. Which of course was a desirable trait in the industry, but nothing to make her a stand out. Nothing that would save lives. The Flash saved lives every day. Why shouldn’t she?

She pushed herself up out of her chair and walked out of her office down the hall to her editor’s.

“I need to speak with you,” she announced on entry.

Scott lifted his eyes up from the paperwork littering his desk and considered her with a look.

“Miss West, how can I help you?”

“I need you to know that I’m not gonna be your Flash girl anymore.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You’re not?”

“No.”

“You really seem to have a knack for it, though. And you’ve been choosing those stories over literally anything else out there for the past week.”

“I know.”

“And wasn’t that what you were initially hired for?”

She ground her teeth.

“Initially. And I didn’t know it until I got here and found out I wasn’t allowed to write anything else.”

“All right. I’ll bite.” He relaxed in his seat. “What do you want to write, Iris?”

“Something…exciting. Something that matters. Something that will make me work a little. I want to live on the edge.”

He smirked in a way she knew she could have found attractive once upon a time. But there was no hint of a flutter in her chest this time around. Just a hopefulness that he would give her what he asked.

“I think I may have something along those lines.” He turned around in his seat and reached for a file hidden among the clutter there. He flipped through the contents before closing it and handing it to her.

“What’s this?” she asked, taking it immediately, greedy for a story that would make her forget all about the Flash.

“All the information I have on a new arms dealer in town with access to sophisticated weaponry like what Plunder used.”

Her eyes flashed. “Plunder.”

“Your most popular piece in the past week. Surely you can’t have forgotten already.”

No. Of course she hadn’t. Jared Morillo, a.k.a. Plunder, had a penchant for expensive jewelry. With the advanced tech on his guns, it took Flash interrupting him mid-theft three times before he was finally caught. That wasn’t emphasized so much though as was the fact that despite how dangerous he was, he was caught, just like all the others Flash had put to a stop.

“Iris?”

She blinked, looking back at Scott.

“Sorry,” she blurted. “I was just remembering.”

“Right.” He eyed her with some concern, but she ignored it. “Well, this guy looks like he might be similar or possibly worse. He could be a copycat, or he could be in line with Plunder and just picking up where he left off.”

She nodded. “Okay.” She paused for a beat then asked the question she knew she had to. “And…the police?”

He folded his hands in his lap. “I don’t know if they know anything. If they do, it’s not their top priority. I know your dad’s a detective, so if you think it’d be better in his han-”

“I’ll take it.” No way was she letting him finish that sentence. “I won’t let you down.”

He smiled a little. “I look forward to your article, Miss West.”

She smiled a little herself, then backed out of the office and retreated to her own. Setting the file on her desk, she closed out the tabs on her computer and opened a new one.

She could feel the blood pumping through her veins again, the adrenaline from taking on an exciting story that few people were even aware of. And it would change lives. She would make a difference.

…

CCPN was in near darkness when Iris left later that night. She’d gotten a lot of research done, but she knew she’d had to do a lot more, as well as interviewing several possibly connected parties before she could move in on the situation. For now, though, she was content.

And hungry. And exhausted.

She half-debated calling up Linda for some food, but her girl had looked more exhausted than she felt now when she left three hours ago. She decided not to bug her. It was a five-block walk to her apartment from here. She knew there was a good chance there was something to eat in her fridge, and with her apartment being as small as it was, her bed wasn’t far away either.

She cut down the same alleyway as always, not paying mind to how quiet it was, even though it was late. She was almost to the end of it when she thought she saw something move in her peripheral vision. She didn’t stop moving, but she turned her head slightly to see if there was anyone behind her or if she’d imagined it. She didn’t see anyone, but she did pull her purse higher up her shoulder.

Please don’t let me be mugged. Please don’t let me be mugged.

She rehearsed the kickboxing moves she hadn’t used in years in her mind, just in case she needed to pull them out at 11:30 at night in a dark alley that she just now was considering maybe wasn’t the best shortcut she could be taking.

She felt a tugging on her purse and spun around just in time to see a gun pointed in her face. Breathing heavily, she held her hands up in the air. Some fancy punches might work in hand-to-hand combat, but they wouldn’t do so well with a speeding bullet. Not when she was alone like this.

“Give me your purse,” the masked man demanded. “Hand it over or I’ll shoot.”

She wanted to retaliate, to talk back, and maybe she’d be able to, but not tonight. Fear was enveloping her in full force, demanding she succumb to it.

“But it matches her coat so nicely,” came the vibrating voice in the distance.

Iris felt the load lift off her shoulders and relief course through her.

The man turned around to see who’d addressed him, and when he did, Iris snatched the gun out of his hand and stuck it in her own purse.

“What the-”

But the Flash had him in CCPD custody before he could question what had become of his gun.

Iris was breathing heavily once she reached her apartment. She loved the thrill of running into a situation, knowing what great things it would do for her readers and those in danger once she came out the other side. But when it was out of her control, even if it was just a simple mugging, it was terrifying.

She’d have it out of her system by morning, she was sure. But as she sat the gun down on the kitchen table and stared at, she experienced again her hairs standing on end, her heart racing as she stared at the barrel intending to end her life.

The knock at the door startled her. She almost didn’t answer it, but then-

“Iris?”

Another sigh of relief.

“Iris, it’s me.”

Taking a deep breath, she picked up the gun, went to the door and opened it. She was greeted by a worried Barry Allen, who looked like he hadn’t slept in a week.

“Come to collect the evidence agai-”

“Are you okay?”

Her tongue suddenly thick and heavy in her mouth, it took her a while to find words.

“Y-yeah,” she rasped. “I’m…I’m okay, Barry.”

He swallowed and nodded, then looked down at the weapon in her hand.

“I…I should probably…”

“Yeah, of course.”

She handed it over to him, and their fingers touched, not moving for the longest time. She could barely breathe.

Barry snapped out of it first, tucking the gun into his pocket before hesitantly looking up at her.

“You handled herself really well out there, Iris.”

Her heart raced. That was the kind of glowing compliment that usually led to sex. Especially because she knew it was genuine.

“I couldn’t have done it without the Flash,” she said softly, kicking herself when she remembered that their estrangement was based on her not needing him to save her.

“You’re really okay?” he asked. That should’ve annoyed her, but the tenderness in his voice was so…

“I’m fine, Barry. I promise.”

He swallowed and nodded. She could see the wheels in his mind working, wanting to say or do something because of how long it had been. Maybe he’d been missing her as much as she’d missed him. Maybe he was using this as an excuse to see her. Hell, maybe he’d coerced the guy into trying to rob her so he could save the day. At the moment, even the latter possibility didn’t bother her.

“Well, then, I guess I should-” He started to back away.

“Are you okay, Barry?” she asked, biting her bottom lip as she leaned against the doorframe.

He stilled and met her eyes. His mouth opened and closed several times, saying everything and nothing, the same as her. She wanted to yell and cry and scream and hug him and kiss him and pull him into her apartment and make love to him just to feel his skin against hers again, hear his racing heartbeat against her ear when she laid her head on his chest.

But of course, none of that happened. It couldn’t.

“Goodnight, Barry,” she said softly, so he wouldn’t have to answer.

He smiled slightly, appreciatively. “Goodnight, Iris.”

And then he was gone. She saw the flash of red as he ran past her window and sighed as she leaned back against her door.

“The man I love is a superhero,” she whispered to herself.

Then her eyes closed, and tears soaked her eyelashes.

So close, but not close enough.

*Also posted on AO3.

#westallen #fanfiction #backtothestart02 fanfiction #fallen star #chapter 11

44 notes · View notes

everythingisoverrated · 6 years

Photo

Post seven coming up! I am so behind on my idea of a schedule that I am not even going to attempt to excuse myself or apologize. Let’s just hope I can keep things up! I also added a few other writers to my list of people I want to give a shout-out to, but I am giving priority to the lovely people who are already in the know for this project.

Today’s post features the lovely, fierce, “angry brown girl” (her words, not mine) Taal from @samingtonwilson . She is an incredible writer, and as if the adjectives above weren’t enough to inspire me, she will fight any racist ass here and tear racism down with her words.

Taal has two masterlists on her blog, a Marvel one and a Trek one. Again, I am not a Trekkie, so I don’t read the trek fics, mainly because I don’t get as invested in the characters as I feel one should to thoroughly enjoy fanfiction. I’ve worked my way into her Marvel masterlist, and I am just left in awe of her.

I think the first thing I’ve read from @samingtonwilson was the series The Killers, which is ongoing. There are many reasons to love fanfiction, but my main one is that the writers are able to create universes that the people behind the characters would have never thought of. In this series, Bucky is an assassin, which is nothing new to Marvel fans. But the way she writes, it’s an entirely new story. Also, Taal is making me question my sanity as I keep having a thing for her criminal characters. There’s such depth to them I can’t help falling in love.

“I know, I just thought that excellent piece of fiction you fed me needed some more literary devices,” you replied while picking up the tool once again and getting to work on undoing one of the plates. You smiled slyly as you looked up at him through your eyelashes. “Some personification, maybe a simile. ‘The knife swirled itself about, like a carousel with a mind of its own, inspiring chaos rather than the laughter of children.’”

He couldn’t help the grin stretching his lips. “Thank God you ain’t a writer, doll. That was pitiful.”

Deserve is incredibly well written. I try to refrain from saying people are talented because to me it feels a bit like you’re taking their merit away. I’m sure all the writers I admire are hard workers, not just talented. But damn, this one... Deserve tickled every writer nerve I have in my body, and I was awestruck with admiration for Taal’s writing style. You can feel Bucky’s pain in every word, it’s not hard to understand where he’s coming from, his doubts and insecurities. I loved how the reader handled him in such a difficult time. I’m insecure as hell, and that carefulness in approaching him made my heart melt. I lack words to describe just how much this piece moved me. I was on the verge of tears for a few minutes, and I loved how it ended.

I read The Relationship Tutor all in one go, it’s so good. I just could not stop myself. And again, it is so real. Real enough that it makes you wanna punch everyone involved for being so blind and silly. It was so well crafted, and the characters so deep I actually started slowing my reading down so I could be with Bucky, reader and the rest a while longer. I would also like to point out Taal’s creativity when it comes to writing titles. I mean, look at the title chapters in this series and tell me she’s not a genius. I dare you. I double dare you.

He pointed a finger at your shoulder. “Change.” “Like who I am as a person?” He lifted his cup to his lips again to hide a smile and muffle a chuckle. “Well, yeah, but I meant change your clothes. Somethin’ nice from your shit in the trunk.”

In Repairs, Taal says in the notes that she is her own worst critic and I believe her because I can’t find fault in her fics at all. Especially not in Repairs, which is so sweet and adorable. Her descriptions might just be my favourite thing about her. They are so well crafted, so poetic, it makes my heart double in size and break at the same time, the way only fantastic writing can do.

“Memory’s still a little foggy, doll,” he began, pouting a little. He widened his grey-blue eyes for good measure. “Semantics, anything relating to trigonometry, and the entirety of age sixteen tend to evade me.”

It’s no secret to anyone that I read fanfiction mainly to feel good. I love the stories, all of them, but when there’s fluff, my achy heart doubles in size. While Taal writes annoyingly good angst (I’m looking at you, Faking It), her writing always makes me giggle and keeps a smile on my face.

“I asked if you were on board.” “I’m not so much ‘on board’ as I am ‘not sure what you’re even referring to,’” you replied, offering him an exaggerated smile that had started off as a confused frown.

“He turned to face you, tracing your features with his tired eyes. He saw the beauty in you— he saw it easily. He saw beauty, and purity, and light— a light he thought might be too bright for hundred year old eyes that had shut too many times to keep splattering blood out.”

I would also like to point out I didn’t even know I loved Sam Wilson that much until I read Territory and got all giddy.

I got a little carried away when reading and selecting great quotes, so you guys will excuse the amount of them. I can’t help it. As a fellow writer, I love her, and as a fan, even more so. Her stories will always have a place in my heart, and my writer self can’t help but reread her fics to get inspiration and hope one day I’ll be able to write with such finesse.

Taal, thank you so much for sharing your fantastic writing with us. It is always a pleasure to read anything you write, and I know I’ll never be disappointed when I see you’ve posted something. I know hardship comes in this world for people of colour, but I have to see I have nothing but admiration for how you handle it. You are an inspiration, as a writer and as a person. You’ll always have a fan and avid reader in me. I’m glued to your masterlist and blog to see what you come up with next.

Love, Liv.

Ps: this entire post was written while fighting my four-month-old kitty, who was demanding attention. If that doesn’t tell Taal I love her, nothing else ever will.

The Relationship Tutor (series - complete) http://samingtonwilson.tumblr.com/post/170327806111/relationship-tutor-masterlist

Deserve http://samingtonwilson.tumblr.com/post/176132530886/deserve

Repairs http://samingtonwilson.tumblr.com/post/174148004836/repairs

Dusk Till Dawn http://samingtonwilson.tumblr.com/post/168469706806/dusk-till-dawn-bucky-barnes

The Killers (series - ongoing) http://samingtonwilson.tumblr.com/post/174822609136/the-killers-masterlist

Faking It (multipart - ongoing) http://samingtonwilson.tumblr.com/post/169746242156/faking-it-part-1-bucky-barnes

Effective http://samingtonwilson.tumblr.com/post/172742730341/effective

#writers #writersappreciationmonth #writers appreciation project #everythingisoverrated #samingtonwilson

19 notes · View notes

aruviwrote · 3 years

Text

[MIRROR] Titillation and perversion: the cis lens of Super Deluxe

Posting a mirror of this: original at http://theworldofapu.com/super-deluxe-critical-analysis/

Super Deluxe (2019), directed by Thiagarajan Kumararaja, has been a polarizing film in my queer circle. To those convinced of its brilliance, it is nothing short of a cinematic revolution. However, to the rest of us, it is difficult even to describe how depraved the moral center of the movie is, surrounded as it is by an aura of big names lauding it as years ahead of its time. This becomes an especially difficult matter when the narrative of the film is praised for being trans-inclusive. Many see it as Tamil cinema’s big favour to transgender folks, which makes it that much harder to argue that the film is transphobic to its core.

Structured as a set of four seemingly disconnected storylines, which eventually converge in unexpected ways, Super Deluxe is a potpourri of things that sound like Really Cool Movie Ideas—shower thought after shower thought thrown at you, plot devices that may well have come from that one college friend obsessed with Quentin Tarantino. The cult success of Aaranya Kaandam (Kumararaja’s previous and first film) led to a breathless build-up around Super Deluxe, and that resulted in a movie so convinced of its own hype, that it never stopped to consider the fact that these Cool Movie Ideas may not fit coherently. The movie is always smugly convinced of its own brilliance, all the way from the titillating title sequence to the ending that featured a bizarre exposition (aliens give you cash! morality is relative!), revealing the film’s sheer contempt for the viewer’s intelligence. Leaving aside the gratuitous violence and the rampant transphobia, Super Deluxe is a drab movie at best.

To begin with, Super Deluxe is not kind to its cis women. It opens with Samantha playing an archetype of a modern woman that has plagued Kollywood since time immemorial. Her character, Vaembu, speaks about sex in a way that is reminiscent of a schoolboy’s fantasy, calling herself an ‘item’ by way of introduction. We see a neat correlation being drawn, between the sexual openness of the character and the trouble she is in. Later on in the movie, a weak attempt is made to subvert this portrayal, along the predictable lines of the How Many Partners Have You Had conversation. By that point, the plot seems to have lost any semblance of life. The less said about Leela, the better—Ramya Krishnan makes a brave attempt to authentically portray one of the most ham-fisted stereotypes of Sex Worker with a Heart of Gold I have seen yet from Mysskin (one of four writers credited on this movie).

However, the violence that registers most is the one that comes disguised as empowerment. The character of Shilpa, a trans woman, is played by actor and cis man Vijay Sethupathi. Shilpa’s story is the detailed recounting of every single way in which trans women can be humiliated. My favourite critical review of the filmmaking on display here comes from the blog The Seventh Art, where Srikanth Srinivasan notes that the camera and the soundtrack share the point of view of the aggressor time and again. We rarely see Shilpa’s plot from her own perspective; it is always the perspective of a condescending observer or a crying wife. One such instance of this voyeuristic framing and subsequent othering is the scene where Shilpa is shown draping a saree. She dresses herself in front of a mirror while her wife stands and watches, sobbing. The soundtrack is giggling out Maasi Maasam Aalana Ponnu, a song from the 1991 film Dharmadurai, mockingly dissonant from the context. The camera zooms into Shilpa smoothening her wig, and she has the slightest moment of genuine euphoria that she looks good for her walk. The camera, of course, makes fun of this vulnerability all along—titillating noises from the sex song still running, it switches over to the sobbing wife who says, “I don’t know what’s harder, having lived so long without a husband or having to live with a husband like this.” This is the point of view the camera wants you, the viewer, to have. It wants you to watch while ‘something like this’ gets humiliated. This is supposed to be the progressive portrayal of a trans woman in this movie, obsessed with her appearance, indifferent to her wife’s pain; a balding sex trafficker who dresses up while her wife watches.

Srikanth goes on to observe: “In the scene at the police station, the only point of view the audience is allowed to recognize is the sleazy cop’s. The cop, of course, is a caricature and the audience is made to feel morally superior to him, while not having anything to do with Shilpa beyond dispensing sympathy for her subhuman status. By making Shilpa the passive object of contempt, the film forestalls even the possibility of the audience’s identification with Shilpa that the casting of Vijay Sethupathi might have offered. There’s a special violence in the fact that the transference of identity that the film demands from its trans viewers for its other characters is not matched with a demand from its cis viewers towards Shilpa.”

It deserves to be said that it is profoundly unethical and transphobic to cast cisgender men to play trans women. Jen Richards put it across wonderfully in the Netflix documentary Disclosure (2020):

“Having cis men play trans women, in my mind, is a direct link to the violence against trans women. And in my mind, part of the reason that men end up killing trans women out of fear that other men will think that they’re gay for having been with trans women, is that the friends, the men whose judgement they fear of, only know trans women from media. And the people who are playing trans women are the men that they know. This doesn’t happen when a trans woman plays a trans woman.”

All the subplots share one thing in common: the setup is fantastically contrived with no aspersions to realism or believability, with the exception of sexual violence, which is gratuitous, uncomfortably real, and never-ending. Don’t get me wrong—I think there can be artistic value in making a viewer squirm in their seat, discomfited by sexual violence, especially if you’ve been a victim of it. However, to do so with no narrative significance and to follow it up by saying “Everything is Meaningless” is the kind of depravity that I could not stomach, in a movie that everyone seems to love. Ostensibly, there seems to be an uplifting and empowering message that is arrived at, but not through any meaningful transformation, or moral discourse, or even the triumph of good over evil. This is the thematic methodology of the movie: it first completely reinforces harmful stereotypes for the entirety of the plot, in excruciating detail, and then says, “I was just joking, a flyaway TV knocks out the sexual predator, isn’t life funny?”

The most egregious of these, to me, is the resolution of Shilpa’s narrative, when she comes back and speaks to her wife and son. “I didn’t think of you or your pain. I didn’t know that I would have a son who loved me and ask me why I left him,” she says.

Raasukutty and Jothi berate and gaslight this sobbing survivor of sexual assault, accusing her of being stone-hearted and plotting to leave her family. And then Raasukutty says reproachfully that although everyone else mocked her, he and his mother accepted Shilpa the way she was. “Did I or mother say a single word to you?” he asks. This is not true; Shilpa was thoroughly humiliated when she returned home, including by Jothi, who responds to her transition by alternating between shock, unveiled disgust, and mourning at lost masculinity. But coming from the mouth of precocious child Raasukutty, it is merely a reflection of cis-fragility that doesn’t even register they drove Shilpa away.

Shilpa sobs a little more. Raasukutty says, “I don’t care, be a man, be a woman, be whatever you want. Never leave us again.” The scene fades into black.

My blood boils.

How could this be the resolution? The movie features a trans woman being mocked in ways that feel like the camera is laughing at her, a trans woman being sexually assaulted, a trans woman who is told that expecting society to accept her is too much to ask, a trans woman who gets driven out of every place she wants to exist in, only for her to be told, “I don’t care who you are.”

“I don’t care who you are” is not acceptance. I might have forgiven it all if Raasukutty had instead said “Why did you leave me, mother?” But what we get instead is a return to square one: Shilpa being berated for not being a father, a father she never wanted to be.

Shilpa is never offered simple acknowledgement of her womanhood, or her personhood even. She is always treated as a thing, never a woman. She is seen as an aberration, something grotesque, and the progressive message seems to be that these grotesque things must be accepted for whatever they are. I keep going back to that scene of Shilpa draping a saree, and the awful cognitive dissonance of it. In the end Shilpa says, “As a woman, I understand what you’re going through.” The irony sends shivers down my spine. If the filmmaker had actually believed that, he would have made a very different movie.

There is a profound cis male perversion in the way Shilpa’s story is told. It takes a cis man to devise a plot where a trans woman takes her young child to a public bathroom and zips him up, in a pose that looks like she is fellating her own son. It takes a cis man to write a plot where a trans woman is a child trafficker who upon losing her child in the market, screams that she’s a sinner who transferred her sin to her son when she touched him. It takes a cis man to gaze so long and unblinkingly at the debasement of trans life, and intercut to jokes about porn. This isn’t progressive thought.

One of the most enduring and harmful transphobic stereotypes in existence is the idea that transgender (and other) alms-seekers are running begging and child trafficking rings. This is a popular idea with very little evidence: Sabina Yasmin Rahman calls it the mafia of middle-class convenience. Having noted that police have run multiple investigations in Delhi which failed to establish the existence of a begging mafia, she concludes that this idea of a begging mafia is perpetrated by popular culture and widely-held beliefs, but in reality is hugely exaggerated. Most beggars just live in debilitating poverty. This harmful myth is reinforced in this movie. And really, the more I recall this movie, the more shocked I am that anybody thinks this is progressive. This is what cis people think trans folks do.

In his article on trans characters in Indian cinema, film critic Baradwaj Rangan (who happens to be cis male) had said, “Had Super Deluxe not been a “mainstream” movie, had it played only in festivals to sympathetic and (dare I say) “evolved” audiences, there might have not been the fear that Shilpa is showing the transgender community in a bad light.” For what it’s worth, I’d like to make it clear that sex trafficking is not a realistic character flaw, and rape is not a humanizing portrayal. I leave it to the reader to ponder how utterly offensive this idea is, that a mainstream portrayal of transgender people should shy away from such esoteric things like human dignity.

Even within the Indian trans community, there are divergences in what is considered problematic within the movie. Some of the criticism leveled at it, such as that of transgender activist Grace Banu’s (in an interview to Vikatan; article in Tamil), has been regressive and homophobic, calling into question the logic of Shilpa transitioning as an adult or being attracted to her wife.

Transgender people of all gender identities have the right to choose when to undergo surgical changes, if at all they want to undergo them, and have the express right to fall in love with or have children with or live with people of any gender. One of the common effects of Hormone Replacement Therapy is infertility—there are plenty of folks within the trans community who live their lives precisely in the way that Grace dismisses as illogical. For a trans woman who wants to father children, the two options are to freeze her sperm before starting HRT (expensive and inaccessible) or have a child before starting HRT (which is what Shilpa has done). Grace’s unnecessary and bigoted detour into Shilpa’s bedroom provides no teeth to her critique, which is otherwise spot-on in terms of the movie bringing back the many indignities that the trans community has finally moved past.

Super Deluxe will have to bear the cross for perpetuating the violent lie that women like Shilpa are men like Vijay Sethupathi in makeup and a dress.

0 notes

edwad · 7 years

Note

do you think there's any point to reading Capital if you don't understand economics and everyone time you try to learn anything about economics your brain blanks? like how economics heavy is it basically?

it’s a critique of classical economics down to its most basic categories so it’s a very involved book and you have to be able to keep up but it’s not exactly “economics” in the normal sense. plus it certainly has some pretty direct political implications, which are often overlooked by people who want to cut the whole of capital from their diet and reduce it down to a couple of caricatured theories and decontextualized quotes. it’s also full of poetry and philosophizing in a really interesting way, which makes the more difficult sections a bit easier to wade through. marx is a genuinely funny guy though, and it’s a really humorous and ironic book. if you’re interested in reading it but don’t think you’ll have as much patience for some of the more explicitly economic bits, i’ve got something of a reading list that you could refer to for approaching volume 1 and make the journey a bit easier.

1. the worldly philosophers - robert heilbroner

7th edition is preferable, but you’d only really need to read up through the chapter on marx. this gives you an overview of the history of economic thought without being boring or difficult. it’s actually a really good introduction to the study of economics in general, but reading up through marx will give you an idea of who the important figures are and what marx was working with. has a good narrative and is worth reading in its entirety if you can, especially the part on marginalism which reveals its ideological foundations.

2. the formation of the economic thought of karl marx - ernest mandel

an intellectual biography of marx’s economic thought. talks about marx’s critical dialogue with the economists introduced by heilbroner but also familiarizes the reader with some of marx’s changing positions leading up through the grundrisse and stopping right before capital. also brings up some contemporary debates (and takes sides on them, which is less great imo) but mandel contradicts himself a few times on these issues which has the unintended effect of leaving these things a bit more open to the readers interpretation rather that being as definitive as i imagine he would’ve liked. overall a very solid book though.

3. marx’s das kapital - francis wheen

a sort of biography of capital, which covers much of what is dealt with in the other books but deals more exclusively with the critique of political economy itself and some of the contemporary debates. makes for a good introduction, but it also takes sides. in many ways, it agrees with mandel on a bunch of issues so you come away with a fairly coherent version of marx but it’s not necessarily the only reading (i disagree on a number of issues, and if you read it i’d be happy to talk to you about how my position differs, but at the very least it gets you grappling with the ideas).

4. value, price, and profit - marx

this one’s pretty optional (or could be read after the next book on the list) but it’s often recommended as an introduction to volume 1 since it states many of the arguments laid out in capital with much more clarity. that’s because VPP was actually written as a speech to a bunch of worker-activists against a sort of rival owenite theoretician. marx covers a lot of ground, and it was written in 1865, right as he was finishing the manuscripts that would become the 3 volumes of capital, so it’s the ideas in their mature form as they’re being polished for publication. this makes it a much better piece than some of his earlier economic works where he takes positions that he would later come to criticize. it’s a bit drier than capital, although not wholly, so don’t get dissuaded if you find it boring or rough.

5. moneybags must be so lucky - robert wolff

excellent book and very short. it’s a literary analysis of capital, dissecting marx’s tone and how he uses irony as part of his theoretical presentation, crucial to portraying the contradictory nature of capitalism rather than being just how he dresses everything up. it’s an excellent preparatory read and it makes sense as a mediator between VPP and volume 1 because in the text it compares both of them a bit as far as the difference in marx’s style (although, as i said, you could skip VPP or read it afterward). it’s very tangential and humorous, running off into digressions about greek philosophy and religion (not unlike volume 1), the final chapter being a presentation of marx’s unraveling of the value-form as an inversion of an old jewish joke.

i know this is a lot and you might not even refer to it, but if you have the time and patience it might be worthwhile because i think capital is really important and its political implications can’t be overstated. if you’re less interested in some of these they’re certainly skippable. you could probably just do the first and last and still come away with more than enough to contextualize marx’s work and understand what he’s saying. but if you can, i strongly recommend at least flipping through some of these, especially since to my knowledge they’re all pretty easy to find online or pretty cheap if you’re looking to buy.

nonetheless, this might be sorta overwhelming, and in some ways that’s because it has to be – you’re thinking about reading an extremely ambitious text that’s very long but also very dense. it covers a lot of ground and demands a lot from you, but marx didn’t exactly write capital for economists (as he says in the preface to the first edition, “I assume … a reader who is willing to learn something new,” and in the preface to the french edition he addresses “the French public, always impatient to come to a conclusion, eager to know the connection between general principles and the immediate questions that have aroused their passions,“ not simply the economists). he might assume some familiarity from time to time, but usually the exact names he refers to are less important than their ideas, which he’s generally much more explicit about.

i also have my @edwadacademy blog if you need it, which is currently undergoing a sort of transformation as i’m looking to revamp (and potentially restart) the podcast to be much more ambitious and cover much more ground in shorter amounts of time without losing any of the clarity or simplifying things too much. and as always, if you have any questions you can just message me directly and i’ll try to respond as quickly as i can.

probably more than you wanted out of a response but maybe it at least answered your question or helped someone else out that was in a similar spot.

#communism

97 notes · View notes

liveslived · 5 years

Text

lavi . 011 . meta .

The part where Bookman and Lavi get captured. Sheryl says bookman was close to the pervious Noah family. And as well had connections to the 14th. I was thinking, doesn't that go again the bookman rule of not being involved with people. I mean like Sheryl did say he as close, but doesn't that mean he was in a relationship with them. I mean as in not romantically. But as in “Friends”, if your close with someone and had connections with them doesn’t that mean your friends? So I was thinking if Bookman became close with them and Lavi, now finding this out. Wouldn’t it hurt him! Because he wants to be close with Allen and the rest but he keeps stopping himself BECAUSE of the bookman rule. I wanted to have your opinion on this, to see if that’s fair or just what your thoughts on this is. Thank you~ I love your blog!

---

There are, some things I would like to specify before I start my deduction; 1) I never watched the anime, mostly because I prefer written work rather than animated adaptions 9/10 times, so my thoughts will be linked to the manga panel 2) This is mere speculation and personal belief on my end, as I’m far from an expert nor anywhere as dedicated as the majority of the veterans in the fandom are.

To start off, yes, we are encountered with the confession, or rather, inquiry that Bookman seemed to have “friendly relations” where he was stationed. Though, the term “friendly” does have to various hues to it, see, there are various levels of being friendly, and naturally we tend to think; “oh! This means a friendship!” but it doesn’t have to be friendliness of such a high level. Bookman is a leech, Bookmen are set out in the world to record hidden history, siding with the sides they are told to and therefore act accordingly; naturally would fall into certain traits in order to gain the information you need, and knowing Bookman as an individual we all know that he, most certainly, carries secrets we will never get our hands on. Rather than seeing his relations to the Noah as friendships I would personally think that they are talking about a more profound and professional relation built upon trust, respect and comradeship; a Bookman does what a bookman has to do, basically.

Of course, there is the comment about how Bookman seemed to be “particularly close with the 14th”, which can have multiple meanings to it; did the 14th hold back knowledge from the rest of the Noah, was he aware of schemes that only Bookman was let in on? Did he, perhaps, become close with the 14th because he knew that something was going to happen to him? Details, details and even more questions to the details pop up as Bookman is, and will always be, a mysterious character.

Personally, I think Bookman chooses to get “close” to people he knows will hold some sort of significance to the world’s history. Throughout books, religions and scripts from all over the world we can see that there is a typical pattern going on; good and evil, light and dark, savior and destroyer, antichrist and Christ; people of significance to the moral of the world, shaping of humanity as well as the general destiny of the world. Possibly (or, we do know that the Bookman clan withholds a lot of information) changes the Bookmen have recorded, witnessed and participated in since the break of dawn. They see patterns, they compare history and subtly stand on the sideline while the world does its thing; progress.

If, and I say if due to my relation to the Bookman rule, Bookman and the 14th were friends I think Bookman had sneaky intentions behind it; he most likely wanted to find out something about someone, or something (as in the upcoming events, schemes and plans of the Noah). As stated by the wikia, and I quote; “They will, however, form temporary alliances with one or both sides of a conflict in order to gain a more detailed record of war and in return may provide information and/or their skills as warriors.” Once again, it’s all about progress and information. Finding keys and the doors they belong to. It’s hard to say which side they started out on as well, seeing how they are neutral spectators to the world; good or bad doesn’t matter to them as long as they get the desired information they need, no matter what.

There is also the strange fallout 35 years ago; why did he suddenly break his ties with the Noah? Was it because of the death of an apprentice, did it have something to do with the 14th? Did he grow tired of the gloomy, eccentric family? Or was it just because the air in the war changed? I’m not going to put too much thought into that because I haven’t read the manga in ages, lol.

So, does this break with the Bookman rule? Eh. Not really. Not as long as Bookman never interfered with the events revolving the Noah, the 14th and the Earl, to be honest. Once again, we tend to put too much emphasize on the friendship parts and whatnot, and friendships are often put in a very “simple” argument. What even is a friendship? When do you call someone a friend? When does your relation start affecting your life choices? …as a Pedagogy student I can clearly say that people will always have some sort of effect on your choices, no matter the relation, but that’s not quite the point. Once again I refer to the wikia, quote;

“Bookmen must not interfere with the events of history, and act only as observers.”

As I mentioned; they are only going to record history. Nothing else matters. They are machines with a pen, basically, and the shitty thing that could happen would be if they started taking sides during an event; good vs evil, that sort of stuff. But also, friendships (as you have based your ask off). Being biased would, most likely, have an effect on the events of history, if you let them; I think Bookman tend to emphasize the friendship part to Lavi because he is still so young. His mind is burdened but it isn’t fully developed yet. Here I quote Sandra Aamodt from transcript “Brain Maturity Extends Well Beyond Teen Years” where she says the following; “…brain scans show clearly that the brain is not fully finished developing until about age 25.”

Bookman most likely uses a language Lavi will understand better, seeing how he tends to be sort of emotional from time to time, in such as he warms up to people and make them trust him. Lavi is still a boy, sort of, but he’s a boy who has gone through a lot.

Now, would it hurt Lavi to hear that his master m I g h t have had some close connections in his younger years? Personally, I don’t think so, because Lavi know what being a bookman means and what the profession demands of you. Bookman most likely had his reasons for trying to get close to the 14th, something Lavi (as a fellow Bookman to be) would and could relate to. Lavi knows what sort of job he has gotten himself into. If anything, he would most likely be more insecure about the past of his master; being with the Noah would indicate that they had affiliations with the “bad” side, meaning that there could be some unsolved business between them, etc.

Bring back the merciless Deak, Deak wouldn’t have given a fuck. I liked Deak. But yeah, to sum up this long babble, here are some keynotes of what I was trying to say:

I don’t believe Bookman was a friend to anyone. He was most likely “professionally” close to the parts he engaged with in order to gain information.

The bookman rule says to not interfere with events, becoming biased towards people/sides, therefore one can work their way around it as long as they stay professional (a very important keyword in the entirety of Bookmen).

Friends, close and friendship have so many nuances to them so it’s hard to interpret their level and meaning in written, spoken and adapted sense (we also have the scary pit of things getting lost in translation as well).

Lavi might want to be close with people, but he has been an apprentice long enough to know that he Can’t Have Friends Due To Being A Bookman and if he ended up getting whiny about it he shouldn’t be a Bookman (that’s my inner Bookman channeling my opinion).

Being a Bookman is not just a job, it’s a life. Sacrifices must be made.

#LAVI / HEADCANON #i'm just moving headcanons from my old lavi blog #so sorry about it being a bit Chopped

1 note · View note

pauldeckerus · 6 years

Text

Guest Blog: Karen Hutton – Photographer, Purveyor of Awesomeness

Love and awe.

Two of my favorite concepts in all of art and Life itself.

Oh, also pithy. I freakin’ love that word. It means: “a language or style that is concise and forcefully expressive.” Yeah, pithy is cool. And fun to say!

Scott Kelby… thank you for providing a place for all three of my favorite things to thrive in uncountable ways. And I don’t just mean for me – I mean for everyone who loves photography and learning. You are indeed a force of nature for Good.

BTW… I still get such positive comments about this episode of “The Chat” (a show I self-produced a few years ago, just for fun), from all the way back in 2014, I wanted to re-share it here. It was a revelation…

youtube

Which brings us in perfect full-circle manner back to Love and Awe; two of the most powerful creative forces in the universe.

Photography is Love Made Visible. That’s a statement, isn’t it? I could also say that “Art” is love made visible. Or creativity, period – if it results in something that is actually visible.

In my opinion, if you want to take a beautiful, defining image that speaks from your soul, you have to fall in love with it. Madly, truly, deeply in love.

A picture is a poem without words. -Horace

People sometimes think I’m a little “woo-woo” about all this. They (mistakenly) think I don’t focus on the technical aspects of photography.

Mais non!

At a certain point in my life, I got busy and focused so MUCH on the technical aspects of my photography that it simply doesn’t lead the show anymore. Sufficiently internalized, technique becomes like muscle memory in photography, just as it does in sports. It’s just there, like a car with a full tank of gas, engine humming, waiting to see where to next. Which, in turn, frees you to focus upon the feeling, vision or the message of your art. I call it: Technique in Service of Vision.

Of course, if a new technique were to present itself that I really wanted to master, then I’d get busy! I’d practice it, repeat it, over and over, till it was embedded into my nervous system, so that I could speak fluently in its language without thinking about it. Only then could I spontaneously create with it.

Mastering technique so you can go do cool stuff with it was basic to every sport and artistic discipline I’ve done to a high level, whether it was acting, singing, figure skating, equestrian sports, downhill skiing, voiceovers. I’m a great believer in “technique will set you free” in most disciplines. But only if it’s set into its proper place; which is “in service of” performing said discipline in a signature fashion – and not as an end unto itself.

Here’s how I see it…

The camera and lens(es) you have ought to inspire you with new ideas, not demand that you conform to its way of thinking. For instance: if you hate menu-diving, don’t choose a camera that forces you to do that, no matter how popular it is.

Settings are made to be broken! Learn which settings allow you bend light YOUR way. For instance: love to smooth the water, but prefer a bit of thready texture in it? Learn how many seconds of exposure creates that effect, under which light conditions and with which filters so you can have just the way you want it every time, quickly and without fuss. Task yourself to go out and spend a day around bodies of water (oceans, lakes, rivers, puddles, streams, fountains, etc.) and practice this until you figure it out. Then do drills under as many varying circumstances as you can find until it’s second nature. I had a ski coach once who said “You can call yourself a good skier when you can ski down any part of this mountain anytime, under any conditions. You don’t have to do it fast, you just have to be able to do it – anytime, anywhere.” I approach photography in the same way, because only then will technique sit in the background, ready to be of service and not tug at your attention like a needy kid. Only then will your mind be free to create.

Frame the elements and relationships – no more, no less – that contain the feeling you want to get across in its entirety. I’m talking composition, of course. Keep asking yourself “What is it about this frame do I love so much?” “Why?” “Where’s the story?” and move around, close in, pull back, push yourself to get so specific until you’ve honed in precisely on what it is that’s filling you with a sense of awe. Only then press the shutter!

Learn your craft, do your homework and pretty soon, you’ll be free to fall in love and feel awestruck about your subject – and create a visual poem about it.

That’s when your images will finally become the story that only you can tell – and that the world is waiting breathlessly to hear.

It’s the ultimate blend of technical, feeling and experiential – all wrapped up into one split-second moment of time where you press the shutter and capture a moment that moves your soul.

I lead a series of retreats and adventures I call “The Artist’s Voice”, that go way into this process. And it IS a process! I’ve been doing it my whole life over several different disciplines and I’m still learning. It’ll never stop. As I change as a person, so do the stories and feelings I want to share.

The Power of Awe As photographers, we all know the feeling Awe. Incredible sunrises, sunsets – and dramatic weather… the perfect moment captured on the streets… a newborn baby… any of these can be absolutely spiritual and awe-inspiring.

Studies have now been done to quantify the utterly transformative power that Awe has on us. We are hard-wired for it and are at our absolute best when we’re infused with wonder and awe – large or small – on a daily basis. Art becomes a transcendent medium when it moves people in that direction.

Some researchers have described awe as “that sense of wonder we feel in the presence of something vast that transcends our understanding of the world.” In those moments, we lose that tired, boring sense of self-importance. Instead, we tend feel more at peace, kinder, more creative and big-thinking (vs. small-minded).

The cool thing is that you don’t have to seek out ever-larger events like some adrenaline junkie to experience wonder and awe; you can find it in everyday, simple ways. It takes focus, desire, willingness to see it. And practice, practice, practice to capture it.

Learning to look through the lens of wonder and awe is both a technique and a discipline. It’s one that opens you up to so much more. It’s how the voice of your soul can finally be heard. It’s how you unleash the creative flow into your mind’s eye – your camera, and the lens through which you see life itself. It’s how you flip technique around to where it serves you – not the other way around.

I think most photographers forget this.

And it keeps them in bondage to the “Am I doing it right?” monster, which – as many of us know too well – leads to self-doubt, second guessing ourselves and feeling generally not creative and frankly, feeling kinda crappy about ourselves.

It’s time to STOP THE MADNESS!!

Love and awe.

Two of my favorite concepts.

Because they will set you – and the creative force that is your birthright – free.

What’s Your Story? Why does any of this matter, in the grand scheme of things? Because every day, we create our reality selection through the choices we make. How we choose to see things, what we choose to focus upon, the stories we tell ourselves and others about our life experience. Our desires, creations and the way we choose to feel ALL become part of our “book of life.”

At this point in my own life, I’m much more interested in building a world full of people, feelings and experiences that I love. Ones that make me happy, fill me with awe and think better thoughts. And that I can talk about with pithiness. Did I mention how much I love that word?

Grin.

You know that old saying “Thoughts become things”? I’ve learned for sure that it’s true, every word.

Every day we are giving the opportunity to look through the lens of more beauty, love, joy and happiness into our life. And to notice what some might call “the mundane” in delightful and unusual ways. Talk about seeing photographically!

A Primer for Practice Now then.

Wondering how to put all of this into practice? I thought you’d never ask. I’d suggest experimenting with something like this:

Slow down. Slow your breath, your mind, even your steps. Heck, try putting your camera down for a minute!

Feel. “Feel what?” I hear you ask. Oh – just feel. Feel your breath, the air, the light, your heartbeat. Just feel – both emotionally and physically. What do you feel in your legs? Your gut? Your throat? These are not things photographers normally think about, but they are the beginnings of putting yourself into the present moment. Which is where life (and art) actually happen.

Ask yourself “Why?” A lot. “Why does this scene move me?” “What could I tell (show) someone about it – specifically – that would let them feel it too?” “What do I love so much about this?” Keep asking yourself these questions – and sense your responses – until you’re moved to pick up your camera. Hint: Don’t pick up that camera until you can’t NOT do it.

Frame the shot by feel. Leave out any element that doesn’t contribute to the story. Then, like a geiger counter, sense when you get an “Aha!” response in your body. It might be a gasp, your heart might leap, you might get butterflies – some physical response will tip you off.

Only then press the shutter. Y’know. When Awe calls.

Other Stuff I lead photography retreats and other photo adventures all about finding your artistic voice in photography and the power of awe. Lake Tahoe is coming up in October, 2018, and I would love for you to join me!

If all this intrigues you, check out my KelbyOne courses (a brand new one is coming out Sept. 2018!).

I love sharing my current obsessions with friends and subscribers. This week it’s this mini washing machine, which rocks the clean in tiny homes and apartments. I’ve been using one, as we’ve been going through a home renovation. It’s awesome! Now I’m trying to figure out how to bring it with me when I hit the road for some extended trips with my truck ‘n travel trailer next year. ;)

Karen Hutton is a Professional Fujifilm X Photographer, International Landscape and Travel Photographer, Voice. Through stunning imagery, humor, thought-provoking ideas and a genuinely positive outlook, she inspires people to discover their artistic voice in photography — while making it all feel like an unforgettable and eye-opening adventure.

She has been featured internationally by Fujifilm, presented at Photographer Talks at Google, created online courses for KelbyOne, has been translated into multiple languages and speaks all over the country about photography and inspiration.

Her adoring fans + customers have called her “Pure JOY, LIGHT & absolute FUN!”, “An inspirational gem” and “Incredibly artistic. Captivatingly genius. World class!”

Guilty pleasures? When she’s not traveling the world, you can find her watching epic movie trailers, crunching popcorn at the latest Marvel Comics blockbuster and sipping Bulletproof coffee, wondering if anyone realizes she’s basically drinking butter.

Discover the soul-vibrancy of your photographic artistic voice at KarenHutton.com and The Artists Voice Adventures, and keep up with her on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

The post Guest Blog: Karen Hutton – Photographer, Purveyor of Awesomeness appeared first on Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider.

from Photography News https://scottkelby.com/guest-blog-karen-hutton-photographer-purveyor-of-awesomeness/

0 notes

deepdarkriver-blog · 6 years

Text

TOUR TALES # 9 - THE STAGE BAR

New Post has been published on https://deepdarkriver.com/2018/02/26/tour-tales-9-the-stage-bar/

TOUR TALES # 9 - THE STAGE BAR

TOUR TALES # 9: THE STAGE BAR

When you have been to a music venue, then you have basically been to all of them. After all, there isn’t much more expected from a music venue than to have a stage (most of the time), a bar (almost all the time), a PA (most of the time…) as well as 4 walls and a roof (this is the less important component, depending on what climate the country you’re going to see the show in… not that metal heads care). That’s not really a long list of things to have. 1 of those things isn’t really a required component, but any less than 3 and you basically just have a glorified jam space filled with drunk people. Which is… basically just a regular jam space.

In the end, nobody seems to really care what state the venue is in. Sure, you might have shit reviews on Google Maps and/or Yelp, but most venues aren’t exactly catering to the type of folk looking for $45 artisan cheeses served on a live edge oak slab. Loud music and cheap beer is usually where its at with a lot of rock and metal venues. You don’t have a very huge list of demands from people who barely remember anything after 9 pm anyways. Well, besides more cold PBR… Besides, think of all the legendary stories that could start at your venue…

Those artisan cheeses at CGBG’s tasted kind of… off…

In this particular Tour Tales installment, we find ourselves in Brescia, Italy. For my friends who tour internationally or have played in Brescia before, you will know exactly what venue I am going to tell you about.

My phone read 10 AM as the bus pulled up alongside the front of the venue. Funny enough, there were already fans milling around the entrance. One of them was wearing my bands VERY limited print shirt that I had actually mailed to him personally, which helped ease the apocalyptic hangover I had from partying the night before in Slovenia. When we walked through the doors into the ground level venue, we all stopped and our jaws dropped. This place must have been 600 feet deep and 400 feet wide. Absolutely massive. Yet the ceiling wasn’t any higher than the ceiling in your average bowling alley. On top of it all, there were at least 200 couches filling the entirety of the venue, all arranged in various ways in what I am guessing to be attempts at filling the massive space and its obvious EQ problems.

Before long, we had our Italian red wine and some delicious pasta dishes. Italy has always been the best food stop on any tour.

My belly full, it was now time to sound check the headlining bands. I got to skip out on all of that because I had a phone in radio interview with a big magazine publication in Japan. Now, I am a dumb ass, I’ll admit. I was relying on WiFi hubs all across Europe to get the internet on my phone and this particular interview was going to be over Skype. If you owned a massive venue like this, would you put your awesomely powerful WiFi router in a back office or would you purchase the shittiest one you could find without any intention of ever replacing it and place it directly besides the stage’s monitoring console? The latter, obviously.

The only way I could get the WiFi to work atop the 30-ish number of band and crew members vying for IP addresses was to stand directly beside it. So I got to give the nice lady on Skype an earache by screaming at the top of my lungs while contending with a metal band sound checking and picking apart her broken English (which was WAY better than my Japanese will ever be). The interview concluded unsuccessfully with a promise to connect after the tour had finished. Did I mention the stage was absolutely titanic? I didn’t? Well, it was! We could have fit an entire orchestra comfortably on this stage. With our wireless packs and each band having 5 members tops, we decided something special had to be done for the nights show.

Scanning the room, it was obvious what we had to do…

The headlining band had brought with them on this tour two large risers meant for their keyboard player and their drummer. Most of the stages we had played up until this point had just enough space to get them side by side with room to spare to maneuver about or stash gear beside. Tonight was a different story though, so we moved them about 10 feet apart and began chucking these couch segments up between them. Somebody also found a table and the liquor shot dispenser that was usually clamped to one of the drum racks. We built ourselves a goddamn bar between the risers in the middle of the stage.

We put the lighting rig in front of it and all the banners up behind us. Our masterpiece was complete.

This is us. I barely remember most of this night.

The entire night after our set, the lot of us sat there merrily drinking away and directly facing the crowd amid the band as they performed. It is one of the greatest memories I will hardly remember.

Moral of the story: when life gives you lots of couches and a massive stage, you use those couches to build a rad bar on stage and sit there the entire night drinking from the booze rider.

Thank you for reading Tour Tales! Next Monday I will be back with another installment Tour Tales. To help spread the love, share this blog with your musician or traveler friends!

#mc_embed_signupbackground:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; width:250px; /* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */

LIKE me on Facebook HERE FOLLOW me on Twitter HERE SUBSCRIBE to me on Youtube HERE

0 notes

angelwithoutleave-moving-blog · 7 years

Text

Falling Like Flying | Castiel & Dean

Pulling my thread with maryswaywardson over here from the archived blog~ My next response will be reblogged directly from your blog to the new one!

Dean was internally in a complete panic as he sat silently next to his unconscious baby brother. The only noise in the dingy hospital room was the beeping of the monitors they had hooked up every which way on the younger Winchester. Dean nervously bounced his leg as he flipped his cell phone around in his fingers. Call him a pessimist, but at this rate he may as well have let Sammy close the gates of hell.

The longer he stared at his little brother, lying there unconscious– the more angry he got at the world around him. He would kill Abadon if it was the last damn thing he did. In God’s hands now… that fucking prick told Dean. The man was a god damn doctor and he was telling Dean (of all people) that his brother’s life was in God’s hands now. “Let me tell you something buddy, God ain’t here. And he sure as hell don’t give a damn enough, to leave his Bahama vacation to come do jack shit about this.” He mumbled out loud as he thought about how friggin’ ridiculous it was to hold an absent Father responsible for your patient’s outcome, when you have a friggin’ doctorate.

Dean straightened his posture as he abruptly had an epiphany. God may not be around but he did have an angel on hand who could do something about this. He considered praying for half a second before he thought that was stupid. He had given Cas a cell phone, why not use it? He fidgeted with his own phone, finding his angel pal in his recent contacts. He had wondered where he was, anyway. Cas normally was always up Dean’s ass in situations like this and typically here at the drop of a pin. This time–he still hadn’t heard so much as a wing beat from the guy and he was admittedly beginning to worry. He inhaled a nervous breath and clicked the call button. “Come on, Cas. Pick up the damn phone.” He grumbled as he quickly grew impatient at the ringing.

It was a miracle, really, that Castiel hadn’t wound up in a hospital himself. With his Grace forcefully extracted by Metatron, he didn’t even truly expect to survive the fall from Heaven. He was trapped within a mortal – truly mortal – vessel now, and he wondered if dropping him from some height he could feasibly live through was another of Metatron’s cruel jokes. As though taking his very soul didn’t amuse him enough.

He watched them fall. All his brothers and sisters, falling from the sky like so many shooting stars, each one of them suddenly booted from a home they’d held for tens of thousands of years and forced to find some anchor into this unforgiving corporeal world. And it was all his fault. He had to wonder if human beings felt emotions far less intensely than he’d originally thought – because he felt very numb.

He didn’t know when he had found himself sitting on a park bench – he somehow often found himself in such a place when he felt lost – but he was tired and hungry in ways he never had been before when his cell phone buzzed in his pocket. It startled him; with Angel Radio gone, everything was so quiet that he felt entirely cut off from sentience. He should know better. That the world didn’t stop for his problems. It never had, even when his problems were literally the problems of all reality.

Realizing he had forgotten about Sam’s nearly suicidal attempt to close the gates of Hell made his stomach turn very unpleasantly.

Swiping to answer without checking the name, he held the earpiece up. “Hello, Dean,” he said, and he heard that his own voice was raspier than usual. It occurred to him that he hadn’t had anything to drink either, and a whole new set of vessel maintenance issues seemed like all he had to look forward to. He cleared his throat, which only really irritated the problem. “How is Sam?” he asked, his voice sounding a little stronger regardless.

Dean was relieved to hear the angel’s voice. There was a tiny twinge of hope left for Sam and Cas was it. Though it struck him for concern when Cas sounded so roughover the phone, he thought, more than he usually did. But he didn’t think much of it. “Cas!” He managed to squeeze in, before the angel prompted him with a question he didn’t have the best answer for. “Not good, man. I could really use your help.” His voice was low and pleading. He was running out of options and Cas was just about his last one. “How soon can you get here?”

Castiel frowned, though he should have expected the plea. He wasn’t so selfish as to hope that Dean would ask after him, not with Sam in such a condition. But his gut twisted with the knowledge that he couldn’t help them, no matter how badly he wanted to. And he also didn’t know the answer to Dean’s question.

“I don’t know,” he answered. It was a start, at least. His eyes swept around the small park – carefully manicured grass, a walking path with regularly passing citizens, a small lake with a collection of ducks – but no indication whatsoever of where he was exactly. He could at least guess, by the season, that it was the Northern hemisphere. “I’m not sure where I’ve landed.”

Castiel’s mouth tightened as he wracked his brain for some way to help them faster than this conversation would arrive at any course of action. Even if he got there, he had no Grace to heal Sam with. But there were no other Angels who would help them, and praying would be a huge mistake. “Dean, we need to find a way to help Sam without an Angel. Call Garth, or check the journal – whatever you can find, just don’t pray.”

Dean stood impatiently from the chair he’d been living out of for the last metric-fuck-ton of hours. Reaching over his Sam’s unconscious face, laced with the innocent little brother Dean was used to taking care of, he pushed back the waves of hair falling over his cheek. He turned sharply to the window, looking up at the sky through the blinds, processing the nonsensical information Cas was spewing into his ear.

“ Cas, what the shit is going on?” His voice turned in harsh worry. If Cas wasn’t here by now, something was very wrong. He hated that he felt a twinge of aggravation that the angel seemed out of commission. But his concern for his best friend outweighed the momentary inconvenience. “What the hell do you mean, ‘don’t pray’? Cas , are you okay??”

Castiel’s frown deepened at the question. Another one he didn’t know the answer to, aside from no. He hurt, in a lot of ways and places he couldn’t ever remember hurting before. He had tried to walk, had managed to get to this bench from the treeline several yards away after he found himself in the small wood, but the pain in his back and his leg and his arms only seemed to get worse. He was covered in bruises that he could see, and probably more that he couldn’t. He didn’t dare disrobe to confirm that suspicion. And all that was nevermind the hunger, the thirst. Those he knew in concept, but had never felt them quite so acutely.

“I’m fine,” he told Dean. After a moment, he sighed, trying to find a way to tell his best friend of his great failure. He hadn’t really let himself process it all yet, not in its entirety. Perhaps the weight of it would overwhelm his newly human form. “Metatron tricked me,” he finally said. “I should’ve listened to you. Heaven is…” What was the word? Closed? Forbidden, sealed, gone? “The Angels have fallen.” There was a crack in his voice.

Dean inhaled deeply, counting to five before he spoke. A useless tactic to calm himself down. He was still beyond pissed before he opened his mouth. Not at Cas, but at the entirety of the situation. At himself for not being there for his friend. Even if there was nothing he could’ve done. “Son of a bitch.” He mumbled harshly through gritted teeth, tightening his fingers around his phone to resist the urge to punch the wall.

“Fine my happy ass, Cas. You sure as hell don’t sound fine! So,what? Disney World is closed due to new ownership and you–you lost your angel mojo??Where are you??” He demanded, if he had to leave Sam for a moment to go get his feathery ass, he would. No way in hell would he leave him stranded, not again. He should’ve been there. He should’ve checked on him sooner. He looked over his shoulder, analyzing the vital signs beeping on the monitor, looking over his brother with heavy concern. “I’ll come get you, just tell me where you are.” He repeated, much softer this time, as he exhaled a stressed breath. Rubbing his neck with a sigh, like that would even help the amount of anxiety coursing through his veins.

Castiel tried not to flinch at the sharp curse, but no one was around to see when he did anyway. He knew that Dean would be angry with him – he had every right to be, everyone should be angry with him, he had failed every friend and sibling he had – but the confirmation of it still made the new mortal’s throat swell and his eyes burn. He didn’t know why, and that only heightened his frustration.

“He cut out my Grace,” he said miserably, and if he focused through the pain that seemed to envelop him entirely, he could feel the cut on his throat. It was still sharply aching, probably festering with neglect. He glanced around when Dean asked about his location, but there was nothing identifiable in the park. He would have to stand, to make his way to a landmark. “I’m… sitting by a lake.”

When Dean offered to come get him, though, the former Angel’s eyes widened. “No, Dean, you have to stay with Sam!” Panic was spiking in his chest because he sincerely didn’t want his friend to leave his brother’s side, not when the situation was so dire – but underneath that, he also felt something warm. Something like relief, that maybe Dean would forgive him… Something like hope.

Dean was never one to act rationally. He often did things without thinking through the consequence, spoke his mind without hesitation. Though as well as it had paid off in the past, it didn’t always quite work out as planned. He felt completely stuck in one of those moments, as he listened to his friend’s voice crumbling on the other end of the phone. “Wha- a lake?” His brow furrowed with frustration, his frown twisting even more so with agitation, as Cas started making demands he was in no position to give.

“First off, thanks Mom. Sam is a big boy, and not exactly being hunted by Heaven’s douche bag of the universe. What I friggin’ need, is for you to stop acting like you’re not part of the family- and to stop flying solo.” His attempt at calming himself down was failing miserably. His concern channeling through anger, as it usually did. He felt for his keys in his pocket. Squeezing Sam’s arm as his eyes shown a ‘good bye’ and a mental ‘stay safe’, even if his brother wasn’t aware of it. He slipped the key ring over his finger as he meandered down the hospital hallway., curling his fingers around them tightly. “I’m going to need more specific coordinates than ‘by a lake’, Captain.” Who the hell did he think he was? No way, he’d leave him stranded after all the times the angel had saved his dumbass.

While Castiel acknowledged that Dean’s stubbornness was often an asset, it was also often a frustration. Especially when it seemed to override reason. The former angel couldn’t help but sigh with exasperation at his friend’s insistent tone.

“Dean,” he exhaled, trying to make his voice sound stern despite his own exhaustion. “Sam is in a much more dire predicament than I am. He needs to be protected.” A light flickered on over the jogging path, but he still couldn’t see any passersby that he might ask for their location. When Dean called him “family,” though, it earned all his attention, and that unfamiliar swelling of his throat returned. “I’m not flying anywhere,” he choked, his voice wet with restrained sobs.

His breath was shaky when he inhaled deeply, but it came out more even. He felt calmer. Nodding at the prompt for more specific details about his location, he set his jaw as he prepared to stand. He had known it would hurt, but the sharp pain in his hip still drew a strange sound from his throat. His head spun, and his breath came in short puffs, but he tried to start walking down the path, towards a road he could see.

He had only made it a few yards, to the next bench, when he fell onto it for some relief. “It hurts – haa – to walk,” he panted into the phone. Swallowing gulps of air, he tried to reposition himself in some way that wouldn’t hurt with little success. Finally, footsteps.

A jogger’s pace slowed as they neared, then sped up until a man’s face came into focus. “Hey, man, are you okay?” the stranger asked.

“Please,” Castiel rasped. “Where are we?”

The man’s gave him a strange look. “Uh, we’re at Cedar Park.”

“Where?”

Something seemed to alight on the man’s face. “Oh, is that the paramedics on the phone? We’re at Cedar Park, in Huntsville.”

“St-tate…”

Then the stranger was looking at him like he was worse off than he appeared. “We’re in Indiana, man. Stay on the phone, they should be able to track you.”

Castiel’s eyelids were fluttering, but he nodded to the jogger. That made his head spin again. “Did you hear that, Dean?”

The hunter sighed when his sarcasm was, oh so familiarly, taken literally. “Cas- you know what I meant. Sam isn’t going anywhere.” He reminded his angel friend. “He’s out cold. Those trials did a number on him. He won’t even notice I’m gone. 48 hours, tops.” As much as he hated to leave his baby brother. Getting and keeping them both safe was the elder Winchester’s priority.

He slipped into the driver’s seat of the Impala, parked snugly on the side of the road. Waiting for their next adventure. Dean had only wished it was under better circumstances. “Yea, I got it.” Pulling his phone away from his ear briefly, to text himself a note of Cas’ location. Wary to get off the phone with the state he sounded like he was in. He’d never heard him sound so weak in the entire time they’d known each other. It made his stomach turn uneasily.

He twisted the key in the ignition. Turning the radio down before it blared over the speakers. Cas’ was low enough as it was, he needed to listen for anymore signs of distress. “Stay on the phone with me as long as you can, ok?” His own voice pleading, his heart beating with an erratic amount of anxiety. His first stop, coffee. New York to Indiana was going to be a long ass drive. “And try and get somewhere safe.”

As much as he wanted Dean to stay with Sam, there was some selfish part of him that was relieved that his friend was coming. Dean’s voice on the other end of the phone was the only source of hope Castiel had that everything was going to be okay. He hurt in ways he’d never felt before, in a place he’d never been, with no idea where to go or what to do, but Dean was coming, and everything would be okay.

The former angel didn’t realize that he’d lost consciousness.

—–

Everything was white when Castiel opened his eyes again. Sunlight was bright in large windows, illuminating the hospital room as he became aware that the bed he lay on was much softer than the bench he remembered. His brow was furrowed as he slowly took in his surroundings. Why was he in a hospital? He needed to talk to Dean.

The cell phone Castiel recognized was sitting on a cart nearby, but not in arm’s reach. He started to get up, but winced and inhaled sharply at pain in his hip and abdomen.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” came a voice from the door, and a nurse dropped her clipboard on a table and hurried over to him. “Easy there, fella, you’re not getting up quite that easy for a while,” she told him as she guided him back onto the bed with firm hands.

Castiel frowned at her. “What’s wrong with me?”

She looked a little surprised by the question. “Well, we were hoping you could tell us what happened. A jogger called 9-1-1, but he didn’t know who you were or how in the world you could’ve gotten so beaten up.”

Castiel knew better than to answer that question. “Why can’t I walk?”

With a raised eyebrow, the nurse chose to ignore that he dodged the question. “You’ve got a stress fracture on you pelvic bone, right near your hip, and two of your ribs are broken. Not to mention the stitches.”

“Stitches?”

“We had to rush you to the O.R. as soon as you came in. One of your broken ribs punctured your liver, and you were bleeding internally. We had to patch you up inside before we could patch you up outside.”

Castiel’s eyes slowly fell to his lap. “Thank you.”

He felt a hand on his shoulder. “You should make a full recovery. But I need to know your name and insurance information, and it would really help if you could tell us what happened so that we know what else to look for.”

Castiel didn’t look up. “My name is Castiel.” He hesitated on the surname before he added, “Winchester.”

When he didn’t answer her other question, she squeezed his shoulder. “Just think about the rest, okay?” Then she dropped her hand. “Is there anyone we can call in the meantime?”

Castiel looked back up at his phone. “I need to call Dean.” The nurse followed his gaze and reached over to get his phone for him. “Thank you.”

“My name is Kelly, and just page me if you need anything, okay? I’ll get some forms for you to fill out, and see what I can do about getting some food in here.” It didn’t occur to Castiel until she was walking away that hunger probably explained the painful gnawing in his stomach.

He was surprised that the cell phone still had charge – though just 17%. The number of missed calls from Dean made a lump swell in his throat, and he pressed the button to return the last one. The ringer against his ear made his heart race with anticipation.

If there was any right time to let the panic fully sink in, it would be about the time Castiel’s voice faded on the other line. Dean had continued to keep calling religiously, the entire twelve hour drive. (Which probably should’ve taken about fourteen, if Dean hadn’t been speeding the entire trip.) He didn’t have time to waste obeying the law. Not that he typically did, as it was.

He’d sat in stiff silence nearly the whole drive and he hadn’t even noticed. Cas’ voicemail the only thing consistently breaking the quiet rumble of the Imapala’s engine. Dean, I don’t understand why it wants me to say my na-BEEP. “Cas, it’s me. Again. Please tell me you’re alright. I’ll be there soon.” He checked to ensure the volume was turned up completely before he clicked his phone to it’s lock screen. Setting it on the seat next to him, he sighed of distress.

There was another bout of heavy anxiety that set in as he finally arrived in the town, pulling over at a coffee shop just long enough to grab an espresso and track his angel’s cell phone. Hospital. Well, that WAS somewhere safe…and would explain the lack of picking up. Only, the newfound location made the hunter’s stomach twist even tighter.

—

It wasn’t the best parking job he’d ever done, but getting to Castiel was his top priority at the given moment. He just about ran inside, his shoulder brushing the automatic door as he pushed through the small opening, too impatient to wait for it to open all the way. Slamming his hands unnecessarily hard on the receptionists desk, the only thing rambling out of his mouth was the angel’s name. “Cas? Castiel? You have a patient here-”

He was cut off by the nurse behind the counter, eyes wide at the sudden intrusion. The guy half looked like he should be submitted himself, at least for a check up. “Yes, sir. Give me one moment.”

Dean rolled his eyes, his hands falling to his side as he stepped back from the counter. “I need to know if he’s here. Now.” Admittedly she probably didn’t deserve his irritated tone. But he’d been driving for half a day, on the bridge of a panic attack. Patience was his last virtue.

“Winchester? Castiel Winchester. Yes, you must be-” her eyes glanced over the patient’s emergency contact before meeting Dean’s harsh gaze. “His husband? Dean?” She assumed, by how frazzled the man was and what was written in the file. “I’ll need your ID to administer a visitor pass.”

Dean went from restless to confused in less than three seconds flat, not having much time to react. He could feel the blood rushing to his cheeks, but if he wanted to ensure he got to his friend…Husband? What in the-“Uh, wha-n-” he stopped himself, mid sentence, fearing if he said no that they wouldn’t let him back. He shook his head, burying all the feelings he didn’t have time to deal with as deep as he could, before reaching into his coat for his wallet. “Yea, I’m Dean.” He muttered, looking around nervously like someone was going to catch him mid-lie. Or worse, flustering over Castiel making up a lie of that manner.

He acquired his pass and directions, tugging the lapels of his jacket, to straighten out his looks after applying the sticker to the chest pockets. A nervous smile and a thanks parted him from the receptionist and he continued down the hall to the ICU. His heart beat erratically the closer he got to the room. Concern for his friend overweighing the mishap at the front desk (for now). He knocked lightly, opening the door without an invitation.

“Cas..” he breathed with relief, a frown tugging down at his lips to see him like this. The angel who’d always shown so bright, fought by the hunter’s side- reduced to a tacky hospital gown that washed out the the true blue of his eyes and tubes of IV keeping him sedated. There was still a glint of hope (happiness) that touched the human’s eyes when he was finally reconnected with his best friend.

He joined his side, reaching for his hand to squeeze lightly. Silently letting him know he was here for him. He pulled his hand back, folding his arms over his chest as he stood back to look over the entire damage done to the angel. “Husband, huh? Castiel Winchester.” His eyes rolled to the side, a hint of a smile pulling at the corner of his lip. He tried not to laugh at the most inappropriate time. Though, Dean never really had great timing as far as that was concerned.

Castiel was crestfallen when the call went to voicemail. And a little confused; it was uncharacteristic for Dean not to answer his calls, especially when his friend needed to know where he was. “Dean. I’m in the hospital. Call me back.” His brow was furrowed with concern and focus when he lowered the phone from his ear to redial the number.

He hadn’t noticed another nurse enter his room. She was smaller, with different colored scrubs, and she rolled in a cart of food. That was what Castiel noticed first. Hunger was a new sensation to him, one he hadn’t recognized before now, but it was easy to identify once there was food presented to him.

“You’re Castiel, aren’t you?” she asked as she pushed the cart up next to his bed. He could see a sandwich waiting for him, along with some small styrofoam containers and a carton of milk.

“Yes. Thank you,” he said when the second call went to voicemail, and he ended it without leaving one. The woman offered a small smile, but… if Castiel was more familiar with the ways that humans normally communicated, he would think that there was something wrong with the way she looked at him. It made him uncomfortable, and he focused on the food instead. The nurse hadn’t left the cart quite close enough, so he reached for it, but he inhaled sharply at the pain in his whole left side.

“Um, could you–” he started to ask, looking around for the nurse, but he stopped when he saw her looking closely at a syringe in her hand. “What are you doing?” he asked as she gingerly took a plastic tube near his arm in her fingers. He followed the lines of plastic with his eyes until he realized that the one she was pressing the needle into led directly to the vein in his arm. “What is that?” he demanded, alarm raising his voice.

She didn’t answer for a moment, only turned that same unnerving smile back to him. Menacing. That’s how it felt., he realized. Like a predator observing her prey. “This vessel is quite well-studied in the pharmacy, despite her lower station on the staff,” the nurse finally said.

Realization hit Castiel too late for him to do anything more than widen his eyes. He tried to will his arm to move, to pull the clear tube away from his arm, to move at all. But his body didn’t respond. His eyes darted between the nurse and the IV, his heart raced wildly, his breathing was shorter and faster, but he couldn’t move.

The Angel withdrew a long silver dagger from a pocket in her scrubs, and Castiel swallowed. “This one is called succinylcholine. It’s a paralytic.” Her smile was growing wider as her fingers traced the angel blade. Castiel tried to call out, to reason with her, to speak at all, but only strangled noises emerged from his throat. “It means you’ll be awake, conscious, fully aware of what’s about to happen and the pain you’re about to feel, but unable to move to stop me.”

When her grip finally tightened on the hilt of the dagger, her smile dropped, replaced by a cold fury that didn’t seem natural on a human face. “Castiel. You… You are the reason I’m stuck here!” She drove the blade deep into Castiel’s chest, and his scream was reduced to a pathetic whimper. “You are the reason I can’t go home!” she screeched as she withdrew the knife and drove it in again with each accusation. “You are the reason none of us can go home!”

“What are you doing?!” came a scream from the doorway, and Castiel couldn’t turn his head to see Kelly. “SECURITY!” He felt the blade dive into him once more before it was ripped out again and there was a scuffle, a cacophany of noise, somewhere beyond Castiel’s ability to comprehend it. His vision was blurring, tunneling, and he was cold.

——

There were lights in his face, and he winced. Blurring forms around him in mint-green masks. Beeping, loud and steady. The people exchanged numbers around him and put something on his nose. He was moving fast down a hall, on a flat table. He didn’t know if it was all happening at once, or if he was only remembering snippets here and there.

But the first thing that really seemed real after he lost consciousness was the sound of Dean saying his name. Not “Castiel,” like all the people in the hospital called him. Dean called him “Cas,” and the former Angel opened his eyes, as much as he could.

“Dean,” he breathed, and he was relieved that he could speak, even though his voice was weak and strained. He wanted to move, to sit up and see his friend, to hug him because he was so glad to see a familiar face. But his muscles felt like they were made of lead, and he couldn’t lift them. “You found me.”

Even in his sedated and terrible shape, Castiel’s heart still leapt when he felt strong, calloused fingers in his hand. He managed to squeeze a little, and he concentrated all the strength he had in not relaxing that grip. He didn’t want Dean to let go. He desperately needed him to stay real.

The newly minted mortal lifted his eyes back up to his friend’s at the question, his brow gathering a little at the word. “Hus…?” When Dean said the name, though, Castiel frowned and turned his eyes away awkwardly. “Sorry. Didn’t know… what to tell them.”

“Excuse me?” came a small voice from the doorway, and Castiel was glad to recognize Kelly’s voice again before he could turn his head toward her. “Oh, hey there, Mr. Survivor!” she said with a fond smile as she withdrew a miniature flashlight from her pocket. “It’s good to see you waking up.” She shone the light in his eyes and held Castiel’s chin so he couldn’t turn away. He blinked hard when his eyes watered, and she turned it off. “Sorry about that, but I’m glad to see you’re responsive.”

Kelly straightened and faced Dean, her smile fading to something more like a troubled expression. “You’re Dean, right? Are you Castiel’s husband? We really need some identification and insurance information before we talk to you about what’s going on, and he seems to have lost his wallet.”

Dean smiled fondly at his friend, his trance broke, when a high pitched voice entered the room. He stepped back out of her way, letting her do her thing. Watching closely out of curiousity. He’d never seen Cas in such a weakened state and felt strange…ominous even. Like something wasn’t right in the world. That much was damn sure. There was a hell of a mess to clean up out there but all he could focus on was each beep of the heart monitor ensuring Cas’ vital signs were steady.

The lost look in the eyes he’d fell so fond of, was worse than looking at a kicked puppy. The hunter’s hand falling to his friends shoulder, squeezing lightly as a reminder that he was right here with him. The nurse’s words finally registering a century later, his head perked up and his lips pursed in confusion. He ignored that WORD, as it was said again. Skipping to the more interesting part of her words. “Wait- survivor? What exactly happened? I was just on the phone with him no less than twelve hours ago?” Reluctantly conforming to her second request. He pulled out his wallet, fumbling for his actual ID, he’d shoved back in a hurry when he’d arrived.

He handed her his liscence and some sort of crappy health insurance card Bobby had fabricated well enough that it was linked to something. For instances exactly like this, where one of them was put out of commission. Only, Dean never expected to be the one standing by the bedside out of the pair of them. “I can have my-er-our,” he didn’t want to blow their cover. As ridiculous as it was. “-uncle, fax over a copy of his ID…after you tell me what’s going on.” He knew he probably didn’t have to interrogate her like she was the enemy. But right now he needed someone to target his concern and she was the only one in the room.

Kelly peered at each card as they were passed to her, but she didn’t look entirely satisfied. She was unfazed by Dean’s aggressive tone and seemed uninterested in his attempt at an ultimatum. But as her eyes reached her patient again, guilt flooded them. Clipping the cards to the chart in her hand, she then lowered it and looked at Castiel even as she answered his “husband’s” questions.

“Castiel was originally transported to our emergency room after he was found unconscious by a passing jogger at Cedar Park. He has not disclosed the cause of his injuries” – she shot them both a hard look – “but we treated him for a fractured pelvic bone, two broken ribs, a punctured liver, and a concussion. Emergency surgery was required to stop the internal bleeding and mend his liver, and we were successful. He awoke in the recovery wing on a long road back to perfect health.”

The nurse paused and licked her lips, averting her eyes for a moment before she continued. “While in the recovery wing, food was brought to Castiel by one of our interns. Doctor Stevens.”

Kelly’s demeanor finally cracked, guilt and something like a desperate confusion broke her cool exterior, and it was high and thick in her voice. “I don’t know what came over her.” She looked like she wanted to step closer, to reach for her patient as though proximity would emphasize her sincerity, but her feet remained planted. “None of the things she’s saying make any sense, but please believe me, Castiel, if I had had any idea, I–”

“You saved my life,” Castiel interrupted her. Despite his weakened state, his voice was firm and sure. Kelly stopped and smiled. She still looked heavy and troubled, but it was obvious that the simple statement had given her some relief. With a glance at Dean, she continued.

“Doctor Stevens administered an unauthorized tranquilizer, one that paralyzed your husband temporarily while keeping him conscious. It is still unclear how she got a weapon into the building, but she proceeded to stab Mr. Winchester multiple times in the chest and abdomen with a dagger of some kind. I heard some of the commotion and, after seeing what was happening, called security to help me get her away from him. Castiel was immediately rushed back into surgery, where we repaired lacerations to his organs and other damaged tissue and stopped the bleeding. The procedure went well, but we do intend to transfer him back to the recovery wing and keep him under observation until we can run some more tests.”

Kelly turned back to her patient and patted his leg. “I’m gonna contact your insurance company and check in with the doctor, see if it’s safe for you to have something solid to eat. When you’re ready, the police would like to talk to you about Doctor Stevens’ charges.”

Castiel frowned. “I don’t want to press charges.”

The nurse’s hand paused, and she stared at the man recovering from a nearly fatal attack, attached to an IV drip and several monitors. Then she looked at Dean.

“Apparently, he still has the concussion.”

#v: saving grace #p: falling like flying #maryswaywardson

0 notes

roanewg-blog · 7 years

Text

On the Death of a Friendship

I’ve been meaning to do a couple of things for awhile. The first thing was to start a blog. This is my first post. The second is to document the slow and painful death of one of my longer running friendships over the past few months. That being said, this first post..it’s a doozy. I apologize for the length, but this is a story that’s been weighing on my mind for awhile now, and I need to tell it in its entirety.

I’ll be changing the names and a few minor details for privacy reasons, but everything you’re about to read is completely true. It’s only from my point of view, so I’m sure my former best friend sees it completely differently (such is life), but this is my experience.

My fiancé, Adam, and I have been together for almost 6 years. Before we met, I lived 1,200 miles away, where I was born and raised. My whole family is originally from where I live now, and I had always dreamed of moving here. 7 years ago, I finally did it. I was in a long distance relationship with my then-boyfriend, Justin, who was mentally and emotionally abusive towards me (but that’s another story). For the first year that I lived here, I barely had any friends, and I didn’t get out much. I was trying, but Justin kept me in a constant negative mental state, and so I didn’t feel the urge to get out and meet many new people.

One day, Kelly, one of my two friends (yes, I really only had two friends) invited me out to a game night at her friend Lindsay’s parents’ house. I was reluctant, but didn’t have any reason to say no, and so I agreed. Kelly picked me up, since I didn’t have a car at the time, and we were on our way. That was the night and place where I met Adam and Lindsay (his best friend). We all had an absolute blast that night, so much so that when Kelly said it was time for her to leave because she had work early the next morning, I didn’t want to go. Adam offered to give me a ride home, and although I had only just met him, I got a good vibe from him. I only lived 10 minutes away from Lindsay’s parents, so we weren’t driving very far.

I immediately had feelings for Adam, and Lindsay seemed like someone I could see quickly becoming one of my closest friends. For the next week, the three of us hung out nearly nonstop. I had never found people who I had become close with so quickly in my life. A week later, I acknowledged that my heart hadn’t fully been in my relationship, which I had been feeling for awhile before I met Adam and Lindsay, but I hadn’t been able to find a reason to leave. Adam was my reason to leave. I broke up with Justin, and Adam and I began dating shortly afterward.

What followed were years of adventures with the three of us, and an intense romantic relationship between Adam and I. I had never felt so strongly about a man before, and I had never had anyone who treated me so well the way that Adam does. I began picturing a future with him. When Adam and Lindsay had first met, Adam had been interested in her, but she didn’t feel the same. Lindsay was extremely happy for the two of us, and for the fact that Adam had found someone he clicked with so well.

A few years after Adam and I started dating, Lindsay met Ryan. He was everything she had been looking for after years of dating shitty guys, and Adam and I reciprocated the happiness that Lindsay had felt for us. The four of us spent the next few years having an amazing friendship, and when Lindsay and Ryan moved a state away, we were sad, but we all still made time every few months to see each other.

Two years ago, a couple of things happened. Firstly, Lindsay and Ryan moved back! Adam and I were absolutely thrilled, as this meant we would be seeing much more of them. However, they moved a 45 minute drive away. We didn’t get to see as much of them as we would have hoped, but we were happy that they were closer nonetheless.

Secondly, Adam and I got engaged! Lindsay and Ryan were there when he proposed, and it was a perfect moment. A few months after our engagement, we started planning our wedding. Adam knew that he wanted Lindsay to be his “Best Woman,” and he asked Ryan to be one of his groomsmen, but I didn’t have any ideas for a Maid of Honor. I had more friends at this point, but I wasn’t close enough with any of them to feel like I wanted to ask them to be my Maid of Honor...except for Lindsay. Lindsay, Adam and I sat down and discussed this, and asked ourselves, “why can’t Lindsay be BOTH?” And so she was.

And then, out of nowhere, something started to happen.

Lindsay seemed on board and excited about everything, but it seemed more and more like being a part of our big day wasn’t high on her priority list. It felt like she was pulling away, ever so slightly. First, I told her that my bachelorette party would be the weekend before the wedding. She seemed uneasy at this news, stating that it fell on the same weekend as an event that she and Ryan go to every year. I told her how important to me it was, and she seemed to drop the issue...but a month later, I found out through a Facebook post she made that she had purchased tickets and booked a hotel for said event...AFTER we had talked about it.

Then, I told her when my bridal shower would be happening, and she managed to book a trip out of the country for that same weekend (also after the fact). I wasn’t happy about it, but I let it go. I knew she had her own things going on, and I had other people who were willing to celebrate with me. It wasn’t worth arguing over.

A couple of months later was when everything started to come crashing down.

One day, out of the blue, Lindsay called Adam and I in tears. She told us that she was breaking up with Ryan, and that he had been abusing her much in the same way that Justin had abused me. She said that when they lived out of state, they had broken up for awhile, but he had convinced her to get back together. Now, they had been back together for about a year, but she knew it wasn’t a healthy relationship, and she asked us if we could come to their apartment THAT DAY so that she could move all of her belongings out and into her parents’ house before Ryan came home from work. She said that she wanted to do it this way because if she tried to talk to Ryan, he would convince her to stay, and she didn’t want to stay anymore.

This came as an absolute shock to Adam and I, as Lindsay had never mentioned any sort of abuse before. Lindsay seemed genuine, and we got the impression that she had been keeping it from us because she was afraid of what Ryan might do if we found out. We helped her move into her parents’ house, and amidst many hugs and tears, she told us all of the gory details. She told us how Ryan would constantly put her down, making her feel like she was worthless. How he would make promises, and then when the time came, he would gaslight her and act as though he had never promised her anything, and that their conversation had never happened.

The worst of all was when Lindsay told me she’d been pregnant. To my knowledge, she never told Adam this because she was afraid that Adam would retaliate against Ryan, but she told me one day when we were hanging out alone. She said that when they were living out of state, they had decided they wanted to have a baby, and had been successful in conceiving. Lindsay’s parents knew, and she wanted to tell us as well. She waited until a weekend when the four of us were hanging out. She was only three months pregnant at the time, so she wasn’t showing. At the last minute, Ryan told her not to tell us. Lindsay fought with him about it, but eventually gave in to Ryan’s demands.

A few weeks later, Lindsay said, she and Ryan had been fighting so much that she went with her mom to get an abortion. This was when Lindsay and Ryan took a “break”.

Adam and I were absolutely appalled at everything Lindsay had been keeping from us. We were upset that she hadn’t told us anything, but we instantly forgave her, and continued to help her piece her life back together. Understandably, Ryan was no longer going to be a groomsman at our wedding.

All of this happened about a month and a half before a big convention that the four of us had been attending for the past few years. We had already bought tickets and booked a hotel room. Lindsay told us that she no longer wanted to go, and although she was sorry, we would have to find other roommates for the hotel. Adam and I couldn’t afford it on our own, so despite our apprehension, we found two new roommates online who would help us split the cost.

The following month was absolutely fantastic. We saw Lindsay a lot more often, and she seemed much happier. She still wasn’t planning on coming to my bridal shower or bachelorette party, but I was just happy that she was doing so much better. She hadn’t spoken to Ryan at all, and we could see the difference it made.

Then, the weekend of the convention came. Adam and I made the hours-long drive the night before the first day, and got settled in. Although we were sad that Lindsay wouldn’t be there, we were excited for the convention. To our great relief, our roommates wound up being awesome. Everything was set for one of our favorite weekends of the year.

The morning of the first day of the convention, Adam received a text from Lindsay--”I’m here with Ryan! Do you guys wanna hang out?”

Adam and I stopped dead in our tracks. Not only was Lindsay at the convention, meaning we went through all the trouble and risk of finding two strangers as roommates for nothing, but she was here with Ryan. Ryan who had abused her. Ryan who was the reason why we dropped everything to help her escape. Adam was practically shaking with rage.

We thought for a minute on how to respond, and eventually decided on, “we want to see you, but we don’t want to see Ryan...ever.” Lindsay never responded. I texted her later that day, asking if the two of them were back together...still no response.

Adam and I knew we had a full weekend ahead of us, and we didn’t want it to be ruined by what Lindsay had said, so we pushed those thoughts out of our mind and focused on the excitement of the convention. Still, we never heard from or saw Lindsay.

We didn’t hear from Lindsay for a couple of weeks after the convention. She was still posting on Facebook, so we knew she was okay (relatively speaking), but we felt like the ball was in her court at that point. That, and we were understandably upset and hurt. Still, Lindsay never texted us.

Adam and I finally sat down and talked, and realized that we needed to talk to Lindsay. We called her, and her perspective of the entire situation seemed skewed beyond belief. We told her that we didn’t think it was a good idea for her to get back together with Ryan considering everything she had told us, but she disagreed. We told her we didn’t approve, but that we still wanted to be her friend. We said that we still wanted to see her, but we asked that when we hang out that Ryan not be around (mostly because Adam had a strong urge to punch him).

Lindsay went into hysterics, telling us that it wasn’t fair that we were giving her an “ultimatum”. We tried to explain that it wasn’t an ultimatum--we still wanted to be her friend regardless of who she was dating--but that we didn’t want to be around Ryan, and we didn’t want him at our wedding. Lindsay hung up.

A couple of months later (roughly 4 months before the wedding), we still hadn’t heard from Lindsay. We didn’t know what to say--there wasn’t anything more to say. Nothing was changing the way that any of us felt about the situation, and so we didn’t talk.

Adam and I finally sat down and discussed the matter at hand--did we really want Lindsay to still be in the wedding party? We talked for hours, over several days. Lindsay had been Adam’s best friend for nearly a decade. He loved her like a sister, but nothing like this had ever happened before. Lindsay was my best friend, too, but at this point, she didn’t feel like a friend anymore. I told Adam that I didn’t want to be any of the reason for why their friendship might end, so I left the decision up to him. He suggested that Lindsay no longer be in the wedding party, but that we would still invite her and her family (but not Ryan, of course) to the wedding as guests. I agreed, and Adam called her on speakerphone.

The phone call was short; maybe only a minute and a half long. Adam very politely and directly told Lindsay what we had decided. Lindsay barely uttered more than three words, but acknowledged everything that Adam was saying. Adam ended the call, and we breathed a sigh of mixed emotions. It was an extremely sad moment for us, but also one of relief that everything, for better or for worse, was settled.

Today, it’s two months until the wedding. We still haven’t heard from Lindsay, but the three of us are still friends on Facebook...for what that’s worth. She’s still with Ryan.

A couple of weeks ago, I sent out our wedding invitations, and I’ve been getting a few RSVPs in the mail every day.

Today, while sorting through the mail, I received four more RSVP cards. The first three were family, but in a cruel and sadly poetic sort of way, the fourth was from Lindsay. My heart jumped into my throat when I saw the name written on the card--Lindsay’s last name. The invitation had been for Lindsay, her parents, and Lindsay’s brother. I looked to see which box had been filled in--”4 of 4 decline with regret”.

I can’t say that I didn’t expect Lindsay to decline our invitation, but reading that RSVP made my heart feel so heavy. After nearly 6 years of friendship, this simple piece of paper and ink felt like the final nail in the coffin. Lindsay made her choice--the final decision. We are no longer friends, and that reality has finally sunken in.

It’s weird, the way some friendships die. Some are instant, and it makes sense why they ended...but the death of our friendship with Lindsay wasn’t so simple. It was slow, and painful, and confusing in the most frustrating way, but it’s gone now. She’s gone. And in two months, Adam and I will say our vows, but despite the fact that we’ll have the best day of our lives, I can’t help but think that we’ll feel like there’s something missing.

0 notes