#on my radar for more than a decade but inexplicably hard to come by in the UK‚ i finally acquired a copy (thank you bf) of this indie

[trillgutterbug]

Fic Writer Questions!

tagged by @palamedessextus 😊 thanks friend!

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

64! only five more to the magic number ayyyyy and then i’m legally obligated to never post another one.

2) What’s your total AO3 word count?

289,575 apparently??? which seems way way way higher than i ever would have guessed, wow. who knew!

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

31 on ao3, although that’s lumping, eg, all marvel subfandoms together. but i have a ridiculous amount of wips in all kinds of other fandoms that i haven’t/won’t post, soooo.... more than that! and i don’t want to list them all bc that’d be a long boring read!

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

it serenely disdains to destroy us, a magnus archives fic that, i somewhat vainly note, has been orbiting in the top few top kudosed fics in the tag since i posted it womp womp.

concerning flight, because we all thirsty for thor/loki+gender and i for one support us.

untitled porny snippet (yes that’s actually what it’s called), because same as above. (i see u, kudos-to-comment ratio and i aint mad but.... i see u. all you dirty birds out there shamefully yet silently jerking it. kudos to YOU.)

an experiment in posthumous subsistence, a batman/joker zombie au i wrote fucking TEN YEARS AGO ALMOST. why???? why is this fic so popular?? i’m barely a good writer now and i sure as shit wasn’t one a decade ago! the terrible title alone should disqualify it from being read, but i guess the people want what they want. and what they want is batman and joker handcuffed together, trying to escape the zombie apocalypse  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

all good things, some stucky hydra trash party-adjacent smut regarding piercings. i stand by this one 100%, it deserves every kudo(s?) tbh.

5) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

i do, depending on the comment! i don’t think comments like “loved this!” / “thanks for writing!” are written with the intent to receive a response (or at least, when i write them on other people’s fics, i certainly don’t expect one). they’re like an extra kudo(s?), and i appreciate them a lot, but they’re not really an invitation to Discuss. whereas if someone clearly has put a lot of thought into a comment, or asked a question, or made some observations that i jive with, or just seems like they want to engage, then hell yeah i jump in there. love that shit. 

6) What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

i guess arguably thine own self, which is some hydra husbands abo. laugh all you want, it’s one of my fave of all my fics lmao. probably specifically bc of the unpleasant/open ending.

7) What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

probably moderation is a memory! since it, unlike 99% of all my other stuff, isn’t just total smut, and the whole point of writing it was to wallow as deep as possible in the sauce of giddy teenage infatuation, it got the opportunity to have an actual emotional arc (more or less). furthermore i could not possibly bring myself to break johnny lawrence’s tender little heart ever, that would hurt me far more than it would hurt him.

8) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

i only realised while answering this question that apparently.... no i don’t write crossovers! which is not at all a deliberate choice, i guess a compelling enough one just hasn’t occurred to me yet! 

9) Have you ever received hate on a fic?

shockingly no! by some accidental miracle i’ve managed to fly under the radar so far, despite some of the really buckwild stuff i’ve posted. however, considering some of the stuff i’m probably ABOUT to post.... that clean track record might soon come to an end lmao.

10) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

lmao. uhhhh. almost exclusively, and i guess??? all kinds? this is clearly a question composed by someone who does not write smut.

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i know of, and i wouldn’t really care if i did. 

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

yeah i think a few....? a number of people have asked anyway and i always say yes, so probably there’s at least one floating around out there somewhere.

13) Have you ever co-written a fic before?

i have! just once, and we really made it count. it’s called a reptile dysfunction, which should tell you all you need to know. 

14) What’s your all time favorite ship?

thorki, probably. i always have and always will come back to it, no matter what. it’s got such a ferociously timeless staying power and so much potential variation, i don’t think i could ever get bored of it, regardless of what level of marvel-exhaustion i might feel at a given time, or what tropes, kinks, or stage of literary pretension i’m at. truly the oh tee pee. 

15) What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

ohhhhh all 836575927 of them, but. there’s this one thorki fic i started almost ten years ago as an experiment with a new-to-me style, which turned out over the intervening years to become my main style, and looking back on that fic, which for many years was a touchstone of writing-to-aspire to for me, it’s actually Not Very Good lol. but i still love the core concept, which is a canon divergence berserker thor au, but not only is it a somewhat inaccessible (admittedly less so since the deadpool movies came out, which was a hilarious pipe dream back when i started writing it) x-force comics crossover, but i wrote myself into a bunch of corners and have yet to dig up the energy to write myself back out of them! i go and reread it every year or so and think “hmm... maybe now...” but tbh it’s just not really good enough to bother! perhaps someday i’ll repurpose the best elements of it into something new.

16) What are your writing strengths?

man, it’s so hard to say. in much the same way that you can spend hours every day staring at yourself in a mirror, yet be utterly incapable of picking yourself out of a lineup, i spend a lot of time eyeballing my writing, but stepping back it seems like a chaotic mass of nonsense with few cohesive throughlines. i’m good at writing smut, i know that much! and in that vein, i think i am good at smut bc i am very good at committing to the bit, as it were. getting into the nitty gritty of experience and sensation (physical or emotional) and rendering largely abstract internal concepts in fairly comprehensible ways. i think my prose is quite decent on a sentence level too.

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

utterly incapable of finishing anything! or plotting anything! can’t mange a cohesive emotional arc! write myself into overly structured corners or out onto a vast plain with no structure in sight! all the macro elements of storytelling totally elude me, which is very frustrating when i have all this tasty fleshed out micro-level character stuff, but no narrative skeleton upon which to drape it.

18) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?   don’t! unless you are very sure you know what you’re doing, and the other language bits are a) very few, b) easily contextually understood, and c) actually adding something other than a weird flex that you know google translate exists.

19) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

11yo me wrote spock/kirk/janice rand and thought she invented the concept of a threesome. brand been stronk since day one 🤘. (the vulcan salute is right next to the devil horns in my emoji list, so....)

20) What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

i love the (ongoing) better with you series very much, not least because i’m still absolutely flabbergasted that i wrote something that long. i think it’s actually pretty good all things considered and it’s very dear to me on many many levels. but the fic that i just viscerally adore, that i love the style of, and that i had such a transcendent, invigorating, organic Experience writing, is temper its strength, adding honey until quite cold, which is a terror fic with the inexplicable pairing of edward little/hartnell, featuring crossdressing and gender stuff. it just burst out of me fully formed one day and i don’t think i’ve managed to top it yet! 

lowkey tagging @lingua-mortua @pitcherplant @kaasknot @froggy-babyy @deputychairman @nomercyonlytears @clockheartedcrocodile

#writing meme #whoops it's 3:30am #excellent life choices courtesy of: yours truly

[bigskydreaming]

@elfysparkles88​

#listen it's a universal problem#I love my mans Scott#everyone is always bagging on him WHY#Scott Summers#X-Men

Its because Scott Summers is inevitably compared and contrasted with those around him, and he has the great misfortune of running in the same circles as an all-star line up of like....just the absolutely most Ridiculous People to Ever Ridick.

We’re talking about a guy whose dad was abducted by aliens and from there went on to decide, welp, guess I gotta become a space pirate now, jaunty earring and all, no, shhh, shh, no, there are no alternatives, I gotta, no, I said no - SHUT IT, I SAID I GOTTA BE A SPACE PIRATE NOW ITS THE ONLY WAY. Oh btw, meet my fianceé. She’s an alien mercenary who is a little like a skunk but don’t call her that to her face or she’ll shoot you in yours. How’s that for swoonworthy, am I right, son?

We’re talking about a guy whose own son was a literal sixty year old Grumpy Old Man overburdened with world-weariness, wildly unnecessary shoulderpads and arthritic joints when Scott was barely hitting his third decade. With said son now randomly being a moody sixteen year old again, with a pet sentient sword he talks lovingly to, because apparently Nathan Summer’s take on teenage rebellion was to act out by being all LOL Fuck Time Travel Paradoxes and then rebelliously zooming around the space/time continuum while blasting a soundtrack of MCR probably, until he finally got a bead on his older self and shot himself in the face while being like “its not that I’m angry with you, I’m just disappointed” and look this is the part where your eyes are gonna wanna just glaze over so your brain can have a break, shhh, shh, don’t ask questions, just let it be, it happened, its a thing.

We’re talking about a guy whose brother rode a merry-go-round of “Am I a good guy this week or am I a bad guy because Reasons or sometimes Brainwashing or sometimes I Don’t Even Fucking Know, Look Don’t @ Me Bro, I Just Fucking Work Here, I’m Not In The Loop” for most of his twenties until dying in a fiery explosion only to inexplicably return years later as a coma patient who finally woke up one day and said “Whoa, just got back from tripping around the multiverse and boy do I have stories cuz apparently I’m the Nexus of All Realities, so hah, SUCK IT, big brother, and yes that is TOO a thing, shut up, LET ME HAVE THIS. Oh and also btw don’t spend a lot on your wedding gift for me and Lorna because I’m gonna leave her at the altar once I realize that I’m actually more in love with the random nurse lady who changed my bed pans while I was in a coma having a romantic rendezvouz with her in Paris in my brain courtesy of her psychic eight-year old kid trying to play matchmaker for her cuz like, she doesn’t date much apparently but its whatever, this is FINE, I have no objections. Ugh why are you looking at me like that Scott, no, I don’t need to “talk” with someone about everything I’ve ‘been through,’ ugh I’m HAPPY you asshole, god, why don’t you ever want me to just be HAPPY ugh you just have to control EVERYTHING with your over-bearing BS like “I am concerned your decision-making processes might be affected by all the people tampering with your decision-making processes over the years” like umm DID I ASK? No? I didn’t think so? YOU’RE NOT MY REAL DAD, SCOTT, UGH THAT DOES IT, IM RUNNING AWAY TO BE A SUPERVILLAIN AGAIN AND THIS TIME ITS TOTALLY YOUR FAULT, YOU’LL BE SORRY WHEN I CRY HAVOK AND LET LOOSE THE DOGS OF WAR THIS TIME FOR SURE, AND OMG FOR THE LAST TIME I KNOOOOOOW THAT’S NOT HOW ITS SPELLED, ITS ABOUT THE AESTHETIC SCOTT, ITS CALLED HAVING A SENSE OF STYLE, UGH, LET ME LIIIIIIIIIIIVE.”

We’re talking about a guy whose other little brother randomly showed up and started killing people one day being like “hahaha surprise, bet you all forgot about me, PS, I’m REALLY FUCKING MAD AT YOU ALL FOR FORGETTING ABOUT ME” because the world’s most powerful telepath made everyone forget about him and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day they all had once and this is fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine, this is normal. As is the way his newly discovered slash remembered slash resurrected slash recently returned from spending the last decade fucking around as a disembodied energy ghost on a rock up in Earth’s orbit little brother then decided the Earth just wasn’t big enough for the both of them, the both of them in this case meaning both him, singular, and his Angst, as a wholly separate and towering entity in its own right. So instead he fucked off to space and decided to conquer a vast alien empire and spend the next several years being their god-emperor or whatever until he got bored with that. And also he kinda sorta killed their dad for a bit but whatever, its fine, he got better, and then he also kinda sorta died for a bit himself but whatever, its fine, he got better, and there was that whole interstellar war between himself and the Inhumans but whatever that wasn’t even his FAULT, Scott, THEY STARTED IT, god, do you ever stop JUDGING ME AND MY LIFE CHOICES and PS I’m still mad at you for killing Xavier, you fucking asshole, not because you did it but because like, you KNOW I wanted to do it, I had a whole fucking villain monologue moment about it and everything, you were literally there, UGH WHY WON’T YOU LET ME HAVE NICE THINGS?!?! YOU ARE THE ENEMY OF FUN AND JOY AND HEY MAYBE YOU WERE THE REAL VILLAIN ALL ALONG, DID YOU EVER THINK OF THAT? HUH? MR. I’M THE BOSS, WAIT WHO’S THE BOSS? OH YEAH STILL ME, SCOTT, I’M THE BOSS, YOU GOTTA STOP BEING A SPACE EMPEROR GABE BECAUSE YOU CAN’T BE THE BOSS, ONLY I AM ALLOWED TO BE THE BOSS BECAUSE I’M THE BOSS AND I SAID SO AND YOU GOTTA DO WHAT I SAY OR I’LL TELL DAD.” 

And that’s not even getting into how we’re also talking about a guy who basically ended up divorcing his first wife and suing for sole custody on the grounds of “Well, your Honor, she tried to sacrifice our son on a literal demonic altar in order to summon Hell to Earth to destroy everything just to get back at me after I left her. Yes, your Honor, I understand that is in fact Asshole Behavior, but there were extenuating circumtances, you see, the woman I left her for was my first love before her who I thought was dead. And also, she was literally my wife before my wife was. No, I don’t mean I was married before Maddie, I mean Jean was kinda pretty much already Maddie before Maddie was Maddie. Its this whole clone thing. Look, I’m just saying it was a complicated situation and I know I have my part to play in it, but I still stand by my conviction that trying to sell out our entire planet and species to the legions of Hell while using the innocent blood of our ten month old as the Golden Ticket to the Chocolate Factory was still a little over the top and not really the right way to handle it either. Also, I contend that I can provide a better home environment at the moment than someone who is insisting on being addressed as The Goblin Queen because what even is that, honestly, Your Honor, and also, she also brainwashed my brother into trying to kill me on her behalf, which to be fair does happen about every other month anyway, but still, like. Dick move, you know?”

And we’re also talking about a guy whose second wife who was kinda sorta his first wife but only in that It Ain’t Bigamy If Its A Clone Thing way....like, I mean. Its kinda hard NOT to come across as the bland one in the relationship when your second wife occasionally moonlights as the AirBnb of choice for a cosmic parakeet goddess of rebirth and fiery destruction who is pretty infamous for the ragers she hosts every time she pops into town for a visit, all smiles and (literal) sunbeams (of scorching lethality) and “Lol hey hot stuff, remember me?” As if someone who ate an alien civilization’s sun the last time she hit a Mood is like....really in danger of ever being “New phone, who dis?”ed. But that is neither here nor there, much like the sentients of Alpha Centauri Bumfuckville after she went all Goodnight Sun, Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Solar System on their corner of the galactic neighborhood, because.....tbh I don’t think she ever actually said “why” there. Its one of those things where if you don’t already KNOW why a cosmic parakeet goddess of rebirth and fiery destruction has decided its nighty-night time for this particular zipcode.....like.....that’s not really something you just ASK, y’know? Its....tacky, probably. Also, low on the self-preservation instincts, probably.

Plus we’re talking about a guy whose second marriage to Yet Another Woman It Probably Should Have Registered As A Bad Idea To PIss Off Like This ended in like....so, okay, this was a bit more His Bad than even Round One was, courtesy of a “Groundbreaking. Revolutionary. Show-stopping” reinterpretation of what was up until this point te much more ambiguous and metaphorically named “Mental Affair” concept. Though it must be said, Scotty always has skewed a bit more towards the literal minded in his personal approach to things, so, y’know. That tracks. But regardless, the pattern remains consistent here, as once again, its not always easy to register on peoples’ radar as anything other than the Plus One when your newest paramour prides herself on being both the entire planning committee AND star attraction of Victoria’s Secret (assuming that said Secret is Secret Aims at World Domination) Presents: A Renaissance Faire. But in an evil and also kinky way. Except now with sixty percent less evil on account of how Emma’s reformed these days, but not a hundred percent less evil because she’s not like, REFORMED reformed, cuz that would be boring, eww, could you imagine, no, you couldn’t, because she won’t let you and she can do that, she’s that good at telepathy and that bad at boundaries. Still the same amount of kinky as before though, but like. That’s just about Strong Branding. After all, at the end of the day Emma Frost is above all else, a good businesswoman.

But yes, she is also a big fan of the Aesthetic, with that aesthetic being Her Whims On Steroids because like they say, go big or go home, and Emma Frost does not believe in going home when she can simply acquire your home instead. Hate the game, not the player. She didn’t make the rules, she just came to win. Point being, its hard to follow up an act like Jean-Who-Is-Sometimes-Phoenix-And-Sometimes-Dark-Phoenix-And-Oh-Hell-She-Cant-Even-Keep-Track-So-How-Could-Anyone-Else-Really, but say what you will about Emma’s wardrobe, she’s more concerned with clothing herself in unapologetic take no prisoners ambition, and as such, her being the follow-up to Scott’s epic romance with his childhood sweetheart turned literal cosmic embodiment of fire and passion, like.....this was never a big checkmark in the con side of a pro and con list for Emma. It was more like oh, yes, hello there, Challenge Absolutely Fucking Accepted.

Which, y’know, all the points to House Frost for showing spine and boy howdy, that’s a spine alright.....but at the same time, going head to head with someone who is classified as a galactic threat when people are deliberately low-balling her, like, for no other reason than you’re bored and your manicure appointment isn’t for another couple hours.....like that’s the kind of thing where it has to be pointed out that there were possibly alternative options worth considering somewhere in between ‘having no spine’ and ‘spiting cosmic entity who can kill you with her brain by stealing her man and saying come at me bro because like....my spine, let me show you it.”

But again, just to reiterate the premise here.....our thesis here today is that Scott Summers Gets a Bad Rap For Being Bland or Boring or Not Standing Out, But In Reality The Issue Is Just That All The People He Knows Are Truly Ridiculous People.

In other words, Scott Summers is no more the Everyman of the X-Men than any of his Truly Ridiculous Friends and Family.

Because an actual everyman would have bounced out of that madhouse way the fuck back in Chapter One: In Which Things Just Got Ridiculous.

Cut to Scott Summers, in contrast: *looks around, purses lips, weighs options* Nah. This is fine.

See also:

His daughter, who didn’t so much arrive after the traditional nine months of waiting and preparing for a bundle of bouncing baby joy but instead just like...plopped back into the past as a full grown woman hailing from a dystopian future she was hellbent on preventing by any means necessary, even if that means had Scott frantically shouting RACHEL NO as she screamed RACHEL YES and sprinted straight at someone like Selene (a villain who has survived 17,000 years of pissing people off and making enemies of actual, literal gods) while thinking “oh yeah, I got this.”

(To be fair, she probably DID have it, or would have, if Logan hadn’t chosen that moment of all moments to have his once-centennial contemplation of “Wait, what if....murder is...NOT good?” Never underestimate the daughter of a cosmic goddess.)

Or see also also:

Scott’s original classmates, including Doctor Hank “I’m not an over-archiever, I’m just stress-eating because its lunchtime and I’ve only revolutionized two whole fields of scientific study so far today,” McCoy, Warren “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful, hate me because I’m a billionaire, wait no, I’m just kidding don’t hate me at all hahaha I’m too sexy” Worthington III, and Bobby “I may look cute and unassuming and like my only priority in life is video games but sike, I too am a potentially cosmic level immortal being of nigh-unlimited power or at least I will be whenever I get around to tapping that potential like I’m currently tapping xy up down A + BBA like a boss, now shhh, don’t interrupt me while I’m kicking ass at Mario Kart I said I’ll GET TO THAT LATER, ugh, JEEZ, my priorities are FINE, Scott, like get off my back already, you’re not even my real dad” Drake.

In conclusion:

Scott Summers is valid, and there may be legions drinking his Hatorade, but make no mistake, its not that he’s Less Than, its that every single person in his social circle is just that damn Extra.

[hansolmates]

jeonghan; everything comes back to you

feat. Jeonghan x female reader

genre: anti-soulmates!au, angst + a happy ending 

word count: 6764

summary:  After a long-term relationship with Yoon Jeonghan, things get ultimately more painful when he insists that you guys are still suited to stay “best friends”. Nothing’s grand about having your ex constantly coddle you, especially when he has his own terribly perfect life and you think you’re being dropped like a fading blip on his radar.

Love is like a stroke of lightning, they say.

Something so conventionally beautiful, le coup de foudre, the way morning dew kisses scarlet hued roses, rolling across their petals like chilled honey.

That’s not love. Love is the hard water grime on an old pipe, the clogged drain disgusted by bile and years of wear and tear. It’s when that pipe is so full of everything, something so all-encompassing that it needs to burst and smack you in the face.

“I love you.” She fixated on the way his lips curled in a cotton soft smile, painless and muted with unspoken truths. The words rolled off his tongue so easily, like hot chocolate, sweet and unforgiving. “But I can’t settle right now, not when all of this has been going on.” he held out his hand, his fingers lingering over her pinky, stained with shame. What was all of this? Was it more than his simple study abroad trip and the unspoken fear of a long distance relationship?  Did he think it was to easy to believe a whole year was enough to make things better? Was a year enough to simply forget?

Is love when you stop putting up a fight, to make the other party happy? Or is it when you make the strongest effort to keep it alive, until there’s nothing left to fight for?

“But I still love you.” he insisted, throwing his arms around her in a shameless embrace. How could she say no to those open arms, ones that held her steady all these years, only to destroy her under the same touch. Her head collapsed on her shoulder as she grappled the back of his clothes with fingers that seemed to slip , the thick wool of his sweater eating up the tears that would disappear under the dense fabric.

Love wasn’t all beauty.

Her heart felt coiled. Something she probably abhorred more than Jeonghan’s love, was probably hope. Hope was what urged her to keep going, to continue a poorly re-stitched friendship she never really wanted a part in. To allow herself to simmer silently like the way kindle burned, weak and longing for more. There was no space to let the smoke escape, so she just let the flames blaze, leaving herself to choke.

“You need to go out more.”

The statement came from (now ex) Yoon Jeonghan. They were still “best friends” he insisted warmly, taking every other free weekend to come to her apartment and raid her fridge. She'd watch his presence with a strangely content forlornness, that if she had to settle with having Jeonghan as just a friend she'd take it. He was on her couch, nestled in with a pint of Dulce de Leche ice cream and a pair of loose grey joggers slung around his lithe hips. There was a perky sky blue hairclip which tacked back his oakwood bangs, stolen from her bathroom sink.

“I do go out.” she insisted defensively, her fingers scrunch between her flannel blanket. She was on the opposite couch, making sure to give a fair amount of space.

“Really? Then I retract what I just said, you don't go out with me.” he adjusted with a jut of his lips. And he did look genuinely disappointed, abhorring the way she exuded feigned disinterest. It was devilishly calculating, knowing he could never undo the hundreds of her tellings. The way she lied, pretended to be disinterested, he knew too much for comfort.

“Excuse me, I have a degree I'd like to earn and it's not gonna happen if I constantly accept your invites—”

“Oh please, you always said yes when we were together.”

When we were together. But not anymore, right? His consistent need to act as if their former relationship was still a tag-on to their current friendship stung in the most obscure ways. One, because most relationships were cut and dry, if you're not together, you're not. Jeonghan relentlessly wanted and wanted her attention, and she wanted to give more, but not in the way he desired. She was ready to bite out a “but we're not together” until he opened his damn mouth again.

“And there's a guy I’ve been talking to, I want you to meet him.”

She always insisted they were the ones for each other. People said when you find your soulmate, you could feel it. Her parents felt it, her parents’ parents felt it. The tingle of inexplicable happiness, the everlasting feeling of pure and sheer love.

With Jeonghan, she definitely felt some semblance of that.

But it wasn't like that little bubble of happiness, the neverending butterflies and the candy-coated confessions. They fought, they were stubborn, and sometimes didn't get along. But they loved fiercely, and it seemed more redeeming than any soulmate could give.

Until her world turned grey.

It was some random night in winter. Jeonghan was sleeping over and they were going to have a movie night, gorging themselves with takeout and an abundance of pillows on her couch. She felt a niggling in her chest throughout, like someone was knocking at her door and telling her to hurry the hell up and open it. But it was tolerable, the knocking was imaginary but the warmth of Jeonghan under her blankets was beautifully real.

But when she stumbled out of their bed in the early hours of the morning, when even the sun didn't want to shine down, that pain was just as unbearably, invariably real.

Tears streamed down her face like an automatic switch, and she clutched her chest with an animalistic scrunch. If only she could rip it out! If only there were no such thing as soulmates, bonds of fate. Her hands shook as she lifted her hand from her bathroom sink, praying that her pinky was still tattooed in the pearl white hue that branded her to another stranger.

But her tattoo was now grey. Grey grey grey.

Dead she whimpered, her nails digging into the marble of her counter. It didn’t take rocket science to figure out the meaning of the liminal color. My soulmate is dead.

She used to fear the day her soulmate would make themselves known, but this was far worse than what she anticipated. The knife only twisted itself further into her heart when Jeonghan stumbled into the bathroom, cheeks soft with sleep and eyes half-lidded with innocence.

“Babe?” he mumbled, stepping into the acrylide yellow lights, his brows furrowing in a stupor. “What’s wrong?”

The only thing she could whimper was a crackled “Hannie,” and a string of morbid murmurs, dead, they’re dead and it hurts so much, too weak to get up or explain. Jeonghan’s eyes suddenly blinked to life, his whole body dropping to the white tiles. He didn’t need her to explain, and pulled her in his arms, tucking her legs over his lap in a cradle. He held on tighter, pressing his lips to her damp forehead in a poor attempt to stop her from shaking like a fallen leaf. The both of them did not know what hurt more, the fact that she would never meet her soulmate, or that they’ve confirmed that Jeonghan wasn’t hers. Jeonghan continued to embrace her, warmth seeping through the cold tiles.

That night they confirmed that their relationship wasn't any less than wishful thinking.

Jeonghan’s appearance was a sinful decadence.

“You look like a professor.” she remarked bitterly as they waited outside the small club. That was a lame attempt for her choking down her desire when she met up with Jeonghan.

He always found a way to stun her in the simplest of ways. People always thought Jeonghan was one to put up a fuss when dressing up, but she knew better. He was happiest in his oversized sweaters, the breathable workout pants that he never exercised in, and a baseball cap to hold in the hair he never tried to brush. But the days that he did bother to dress up were just as happy for him, because it meant looking even better than he normally did. Tonight he was dressed in a burgundy blazer and slacks, a powerful shade only he could pull off with such contrastingly smooth features, and a plain white shirt underneath.

“And you look like a student.” he bit back teasingly, his fingers reaching over to pinch her pliable cheeks.

“I am a student!” she huffed in feigned agitation, already annoyed he was trying to mess up her makeup before their night even started.

In some ways, it seemed like their relationship never ended. It was everything but the physicality, and even then there were times like this, when Jeonghan would linger too long on her form like she was the last bit of light on earth, his toffee eyes sparkling like liquid copper with blissful ignorance to the pain of the past. Break ups were supposed to be a good thing, it was supposed to signify a new day, a better tomorrow. But it was like her heart strings were still singing for Jeonghan and and it seemed like he was always half a beat off.

“Oh, there they are.” Jeonghan looked off into the crowd of bar goers, his gaze now miles lost.

Following his actions, she squeezed the fabric of her jacket pockets upon seeing a pair walking up to them. The young man had jet black hair, and permanent bounce in his step as his eager eyes took note of Jeonghan and her waiting at the entrance. She knew him from school, definitely, because who could miss the sparkly puppy eyes and positive disposition of Choi Seungcheol? But the other young man seemed to be more in his own world, eyes only focused on Jeonghan as he slided up to his arm.

She felt a jolt in her side, realizing that this was the guy Jeonghan had been seeing. The person Jeonghan had been going on dates with when she wasn’t around, feeling the things they once felt in syncopation.

“This is Joshua Hong,” Jeonghan introduced her, a small smile on his face.

Her hand autonomously reached for Joshua’s, his warm palm betraying her initial icy apprehension she had. She understood why Jeonghan was so smitten with this guy. One look into those playful, cat-like eyes and you were a goner. But his smile was even more terrifying, like the happiest things on Earth—ice cream, warm blankets, randomly finding money in your pocket—all wrapped up into Joshua’s petite form.

“Nice to meet you!” Joshua chirped, his voice reminiscent of windchimes. “Jeonghan’s told me a lot about you!”

She raised a brow and slowly turned to Jeonghan, hoping he’d kindly inform what these things were, but he clasped her shoulders and spun her around so she was chest to chest with his other friend. “And this is his roommate, Seungcheol!” Jeonghan informed.

Seungcheol on the other hand was a breath of new air, and she couldn’t decipher if it was a good thing or a bad thing. He had glowy star-like eyes that seemed to be eager to her every whim. It didn't go unnoticed when those eyes took their sweet time to meet hers, trailing in a slow gaze from the slit in her dress to the curve of her collarbones.

“Hey,” he said easily, finally meeting her eyes to shake hands.

It was only then she realized that the two of them were alone, left in the cold without a care in the world. Jeonghan and Joshua had already walked inside the club, probably looking frustratingly good together. Seungcheol put his hand out on the small of her back, his large fingers splaying hotly against her waist and searing through the thin material of her dress. She had half a mind to push him away with a stiff smile and call a cab, but she would never hear the end of it if she went home early. At the very least Seungcheol gave her a comforting smile, one that made her feel a little too vulnerable but very much understood, and escorted her inside.

Two hours and too many drinks to count, she found herself slumped at the edge of the bar, mulling over her life choices. Jeonghan was off on the dancefloor, looking absolutely celestial against the neon lights. It was probably just the liquid talking, but things seemed to be going impossibly slow as she watched Jeonghan dance with Joshua, the pair coupled in half-lidded eyes and wet lips.

“Y’know, he talks about you a lot.”

She pushed her heel to spin her seat, up until her bare knee brushed up against Seungcheol’s rough denim. She had to admit, he was a pretty good date. Other than the fact that his eyes had a difficult time looking at her face rather than her body, he was patient and sat by her the entire evening. “You’re kidding.” she said easily, her cheek digging into her palm.

“Why would I be kidding? The first time I heard about you, I was picking him up from  the airport and he immediately asked if I ever saw you around class. And trust me, Joshua isn’t going to last either.”

“How can you say that?”

“They’ve only been dating for what, three weeks?” Seungcheol held up his fingers, pouting. “It’s a new record, but he’s been dating around and hasn’t settled since you.”

She knew that much. Jeonghan was a honeytrap in disguise, (”Like bees to the Hannie” they’d joke together). As she watched the way Seungcheol ticked his fingers in her hazy focus, her eyes fought to settle on the prominent white tattoo around his pinky. It matched majority of the other clubgoers who haven't found their soulmates yet, Jeonghan and Joshua included. Her gaze fluttered to her own pinky, the dull grey staining her finger. A wave of sickness fell over her form, and she struggled to down the rest of her drink.

“What do you think it’s like?” she gestured to the white tattoo he wore. “When it turns red?”

He looked up thoughtfully, the magenta lights reflecting against his skin and the open expanse of his button down. “Mhm, dunno. My parents are pretty gross, though. Although they consider themselves lucky.” he lifted his hand, as if it were the first time seeing his soulmate mark. “I’d definitely like to meet my soulmate, whoever they are. If it was really meant to be, it’d happen, right? No use waiting, that’s why we’re here.”

“Yeah.” she licked her lips, biting the inside of her cheek. “I wish I could’ve met mine.”

Panic suddenly flooded his features, his eyes widening. “Wait, I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”

“Seungcheol, do you mind taking me home?” He stood up straighter in surprise, sobering up despite the fact he had very little to drink. He gave her an apologetic frown, but she shook her head with a soft smile. She knew he was only trying to assure her, that she had not fallen off Jeonghan’s radar and she was certainly still relevant in his life. But she didn’t want to be a little blip in his system, readily fading and painfully out of reach.

Finishing off his drink, Seungcheol gave her a sad smile and offered his hand. “Of course.”

The days following were terribly brutal.

She had a double date with Ben and Jerry (Half-baked with some Cherry Garcia on the side) ready to catch up on a litany of cheesy rom-coms and her lonely couch. Unfortunately it seemed like her so-called best-friend had other things in mind.

Things got weird after that night at the club. She and Seungcheol left with a simple goodbye, feigning exhaustion on her part.

22:05 [Hannie] So I take it last night went well? ;)

22:33 [Hannie] Hello, are you having an ice cream party without me? It’s Sunday Sundaes, and you didn’t invite me?

23:00 [Hannie] Replyyyyyyyy to meeeeee :((

Muting her phone, she strategically placed it in the farthest couch crevice by her feet. Without the light constantly alerting her of new messages, she was able to push any potential thoughts of Jeonghan to the back of her mind and focus on having a night to herself. Why was Jeonghan so concerned about being with her so often, and have the audacity to ask that last night “went well” with Seungcheol? Maybe Jeonghan thought he needed closure knowing that he was able to successfully set up his ex-girlfriend with someone new. But she was dealing with an inescapable closure that Jeonghan ripped open fresh on the daily. She hated being so foolishly in love, and rightfully so. Her pinky finger tingled like a dull long-term injury, reminding her that love is an emotion that systematically craves to be ached.

The next morning was met with an incessant banging on her door, jolting her awake from her tangled limbs intertwined through her blanket. With a heavy sigh, the golden sunrays kissed her eyes, forcing her to get up. Wiping the drool from her chin, she wobbled to the front door, blanket still wrapped around her sleepy form.

“What?” she snapped, swinging the door open.

“Uh,” Seungcheol offered her a lopsided smile, holding a tray of coffee in one hand and a bag of pastries in the other. “Rough night?”

Her anger boiled down to confusion, and she let him inside her mind buzzing with reasons as to why he was at her front door so damn early. “What are you doing here?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound too sharp at his presence.

Placing the food on her counter, he stuffed his hands in his worn navy hoodie. “Didn’t Jeonghan text you? We’re meeting them at the amusement park today.”

“That wasn’t part of my weekend plan.” she stifled a curse of protest, reaching over to her couch to dig her phone out. True to Seungcheol’s word there was a litany of text messages alerting her of these plans, all sent out by Jeonghan. “He just doesn’t stop, does he?”

“Not with you, no.” Seungcheol chuckled, relaxing in the seat next to hers. “It’s hard for him to make friends, y’know?”

“I know but still.” she frowned, staring at the phone in her lap.

“I know, it sucks.” Seungcheol’s eyes lingered at the way her fingers clenched in her lap, the grey that stained her pinky standing out like monochrome in a rainbow. “But if it was really meant to be, things will work out.”

The whole world seemed to revolve around fate, an enigmatic presence that fought to have more autonomy than the average human. Forcing herself to get up, she feigned a smile. “I’ll be ready in ten. I wouldn’t want to leave you third-wheeling with Josh, now would I?”

Over her shoulder she heard his voice, hesitant to admit but strong enough to rip the bandage. “He’s actually dating another person. Dumped Joshua that night we met.”

Slamming the bedroom door none-too-gently, she exhaled. And the cycle continued.

“Are you okay?” Seungcheol asked, elbowing her lightly. “You barely ate in the car. Are you nervous or something?”

“I’m fine. I just can’t go on rides when there’s food in my stomach.” she admitted reluctantly, hoping he couldn’t hear the rumbles of protests in her body.

It wasn’t a lie, she really did get extra sick on rides if she ate, but she had a cup of Seungcheol’s coffee and slept in the car to preserve as much energy as she could for the day. The four of them were walking to queue in for their first ride, her and Seungcheol trailing behind Jeonghan and his new girl. Her name was Sinbi, a gorgeous lady that dripped intimidation just as much as Jeonghan did when they first met. It was surreal, seeing the pair of them walk down the runway of the amusement park like they were being filmed for a reality show. Even in Jeonghan’s plain white v-neck and light wash jeans, he still looked great. Sinbi clung to his arm like North and South polarities, unable to wean away. She couldn’t blame her.

“You guys are such slowpokes!” snapping out of her daze, she blinked at Jeonghan who was looking over his shoulder. A playful smile danced on his petal pink lips, giving her that childish look he always gave her when she didn’t do what he wanted. Her heart stuttered, momentarily distracting her empty stomach with his sudden attention. If it not for the fact his arm was currently used as a handle for Sinbi’s hands, she would have considered walking faster or give some sort of verbal indication that she was having fun.

“I’m sleepy.” she glowered, gripping the cool rail of the queue they stopped at. “And it’s so hot outside.”

“But you love roller coasters.” Jeonghan pouted, stopping at the end of the line. “It’s not my fault you didn’t read my messages.”

She felt Seungcheol elbow her in the side, wordlessly urging her to at least try to be a little more cheerful. “Yeah, sorry about that.” she forced a smile, feeling the dull ache in her heart ready to explode at the seams. “But you always seem to find a way for us to be together.”

“Like fate, sweetheart.” Jeonghan teased, turning his back to give his attention to Sinbi.

Like fate. With a scoff, she turned away and decided she had enough of Jeonghan’s baseless flirting especially when he already had a date right next to him. She maintained friendly conversation with Seungcheol majority of the day, and he was more than welcome to give her the attention. He wasn’t bad company at all, and even braved a couple of the smaller coasters with her.

The sun was getting to an almost deathly heat, blaring against the amusement park goers who were waiting in line. They were at the last line before boarding, this time a boat ride that swung back and forth. Thankfully it was something Seungcheol could handle as he mentioned with a secretive grumble that he’s afraid of morbidly large rides.

“Then how did you manage to get on all the other rides before?” she asked pointedly, poking him in the bicep.

“Of course, because I had you to hold my hand the entire time.” he teased, leaning in so his large puppy brown eyes could bore into hers. She snorted at the blatant flirting, pushing him lightly with the pads of her fingertips.

“Your hands were so clammy they were like a fountain. You were so nervous!” she added, nudging her head to map out the blush that pooled beneath his cheeks. She concluded that whoever was Seungcheol’s soulmate was certainly a lucky person, because having him look at her like that, even platonically, felt like she was on some type of Cloud 9.

That cloud evaporated as soon as Jeonghan stepped himself into their conversation, tilting his head as if he were completely ignorant to his intrusion. The line was starting to move, and the workers were directing people in pairs to their seats.

“You should sit with me.” Jeonghan pouted, nudging his slender body between the two.

“Seungcheol needs a hand to hold.” she replied tartly.

“Nuh uh.” he frowned in that terribly adorable way when he doesn’t receive immediate self-gratification, and pushed Seungcheol to Sinbi, who giggled cutely and urged him onto the platform with her. “Spend some time with me.”

She sighed, conceding when the workers had already seated Sinbi and Seungcheol on the opposite end of the boat, and for her and Jeonghan to fill in the other end. Squeezing next to a pair of children, she gripped the handlebars, and reached for their seatbelt.

Jeonghan got to it first, reaching over her bare thighs to strap them to the ride. She froze, feeling the soft scent of his hair waft in her space. He smelled of aftershave, the way someone would come out of a shower all clean and refreshed.

“Having fun?” he asked lightly, breaking away to look at her directly in the eye. She liked his new haircut, the bangs framing across his soft cheekbones.

She shrugged, gripping the bar in front of her with more force than necessary. “Yeah, I guess. Amusement parks are always fun. And Sinbi’s a beautiful girl, I hope you two work out.”

Jeonghan’s smile dropped a degree at the neutrality of her answer, and she tried not to show that she noticed his sudden pinch. “Thanks.”

The ride rumbled to life, the boat swinging them back and forth like a pendulum. The sky was a vibrant azure, the sun shining in its cloudless arena. She focused on the way the sky seemed so clear, hoping Jeonghan would try to enjoy the ride on his own and stop trying to revive dead conversation.

It was then she felt slender fingers creep over the bar handle, brushing against hers. She only had a second to comprehend before Jeonghan pried her hand off the bar, lifting their intertwined fingers in the air. Giving her a crescent grin, he said, “It’s only fun if you put your hands up!”

And he screamed the carefree scream he always did when he was having fun, bringing her along for the ride. It was definitely reminiscent of the times they went to the amusement park together, the way his face would melt into momentary youth and the way his fingers felt melted between hers. Maybe for the moment, she conceded, tightening her hold.

However Seungcheol’s face was a deathly chartreuse by the end of the ride. She ripped herself away from Jeonghan once she got off the ride, paying no mind and instead helping Sinbi get him out of the boat. “Are you okay?” she asked worriedly, taking one arm while Sinbi took the other, leading him to the nearest empty bench.

The dark haired boy nodded sluggishly, his eyes rolling. “M’okay. Just a little seasick.” his voice sounded like molasses, heavy and barely hanging on.

“I’ll stay with you then.” she nodded to Jeonghan and Sinbi. “We’ll tap out of the next couple of rides. You guys go on and have fun.”

Jeonghan looked ready to argue, but with two opposing sides against him, he seemed at the tail end of his wits. Sinbi was tugging on his arm, urging him to spend the rest of the day alone. On the other hand, his friend was sick and it was his idea in the first place to come here. “We’ll come back after a few more rides.” he finally said, biting his lip.  

Seungcheol nodded, cradling his head. “Gotcha. We’ll be here.”

Ignoring the extended look Jeonghan was giving her as the pair walked away, she plopped on the bench next to Seungcheol. “Y’know what. I regret not eating those pastries you got me this morning.” she stared woozily at the sun directing them, feeling a lot more lightheaded than she did earlier. “I’m completely drained and the sun isn’t helping at all.”

Her companion nodded lazily. “We should go get water or something.”

“Mmph.” she groaned, eyeing a food stand on one tail end of the walkway. “I’ll go to the bathroom and wash my face, maybe it’ll help me wake up. I’ll get us water after.”

“Are you sure? You can rest a bit and we can go together.”

“It’s fine.” she replied breathlessly, waving him away. “I need the fresh air.”

However her trek to the bathroom just seemed longer and longer as the length of the day seemed to toll on her. They’ve been there since morning and it was already well past noon. The last ride was a little upsetting to her stomach, even with Jeonghan holding her hand, and she understood why Seungcheol wasn’t a fan of heavy rides. Wiping the sweat off her brow, she sighed and pushed the bathroom door open. She was only to be met with even more hot air and a stuffy building as little children and mothers filed in and out of the bathroom like ants on clockwork, bumping into her and paying no mind.

Her eyes concentrated on the bright scarlet of a little girl’s t-shirt before stars sparked her vision, and her mind shut to black.

A name. Her name, bubbling and overflowing out of someone’s mouth like their life depended on it. Squinting her eyes once, twice, she saw orange light fill the vision of her eyelids before she opened her eyes fully. Her fingers immediately grasped the rough, hospital-like sheets beneath her body. Cool air consistently fanned her face due to the large ceiling fans.

“You’re awake!” Seungcheol cheered, sounding a lot better as he peered over the foot of her bed. “How’re you feeling?”

She could barely hold out a garbled “okay” before her friend shoved a bottle of water in her face. Her mouth felt like the Sahara as she eagerly twisted off the cap, downing a couple of gulps. Scanning the room, she noticed there were other cots around the little building filled with people and employees.

“We’re in the park infirmary.” Seungcheol supplied, “You fainted in the bathroom. I didn’t even realize until people started crowding the area.”

“I did?” she groaned, throwing her body back on the sandpaper sheets. “God. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t say sorry to me, I’m pretty sure Jeonghan’s sprinting over at this point. Only you could get Jeonghan to run a marathon.” he chuckled.

“Wait, you told them?”

“What else was I supposed to do? Tell them you were in the bathroom for two hours?”

Their banter was cut at an almost anticipated soft interjection. She heard her name echoed throughout the tiny infirmary, treated only in the cotton-soft way that Yoon Jeonghan always handled her name. Jeonghan was leaning against the doorway, looking absolutely breathless as his chest heaved in and out through the white fabric of his shirt, practically see-through at the neck where sweat collected. He never ran a day in his life unless his school grades depended on it, and here he was looking worried as hell and striding over to her cot.

“Are you okay?” Jeonghan asked, eyes darting between her and Seungcheol. She managed a small nod, and Jeonghan turned sharply to Seungcheol, running a hand through his damp bangs. “Coups, can you do me a favor and please take Sinbi home? She’s still at the wooden rides by the food stands. I’ll take you home.” he turned to her, already bending over to pick up her purse.

Seungcheol looked ready to argue, a quip about “being a gentlemen” and escorting your date home properly, but the no-nonsense look in Jeonghan’s eyes indicated a finality that wasn’t to be challenged. “Alright, I’ll go get Sinbi. Eat something, okay? Drink lots of water.” with a small smile, he stepped out of their space, leaving the two alone.

The ride home was so awkwardly palpable, you could have sliced through it with a butterknife. She ignored Jeonghan’s looks the entire way, nibbling absently on a protein bar he got her from a vending machine. There goes her easy Sunday. She already knew that Jeonghan had something to say, something that consisted of more than the usual “alrights” and “don’t do thats”. And when they parked in front of her apartment, she didn’t even bother telling him he didn’t have to bring her inside. He wordlessly followed her, looking half-tempted to hold her arm as they made their way to her room.

His burning gaze was starting to melt her just as, if not more so than the blaring sun she endured hours before. As soon as she shut the door behind them, she pinched the bridge of her nose, ready to face his reprimanding head on. “I’m fine. I just fainted, no broken bones or anything.” she grumbled.  

“You worried me sick.” he stated disapprovingly, crossing his arms. She fought the urge to make a snappy retort, and turned to her fruit bowl in the kitchen to pick at an overripe banana. “How could you be so careless and not eat all day?”

She shrugged, knowing her passiveness would irritate him even more, “I didn’t want to get sick on a full stomach.”

“Well, you got sick on an empty stomach.” he retorted, his attentive eyes zeroing in on her smaller figure. “I’ll go order you food, and drink the Gatorade you have under the crisper. And go lie down on the couch, it freaks me out that you’re forcing yourself to walk around when you just fainted.”

“Jeonghan,” she murmured icily, letting go of the fruit in her hand so it wouldn’t be twisted to mush under her grip. “Please. Stop worrying about me.”

“You can’t tell me not to worry about you.”

“You’re not my boyfriend anymore!” she finally snapped, smacking her hand against the marble table. Swiveling away from the taller figure she kicked off her socks, padding her way into the bedroom. Once she got to the doorframe of her room, her posture slumped, a breath she had been holding on for minutes finally seeping out of her body.

Jeonghan remained at the opposite end of her apartment, momentarily frozen at her outburst. The word “boyfriend” left a tart taste in his mind, and he hated it.

“I can’t do this anymore.” she blurted, her eyes steeled to a corner in the room.

“Do what anymore?” Jeonghan asked, his brows furrowed in confusion.

“This, everything. Go out with you and meet your boyfriends and girlfriends. Act like everything’s alright. God, I hate it when you coddle me like we’re still together! We’re just friends, you made it very clear when you broke up with me.” every single word was like an icicle to Jeonghan’s sanity, and she hoped that he finally got the hint. “I thought I could pretend I was okay with you still being around. But I’ll never be able to stand it the day you have your soulmate waiting for you on the other side, and me having to watch. I’m happy that you’re finding other people and that you can still look for your soulmate, but I’m tired of watching. I hate being so close to you, but still so far away. I’m tired of being on the sidelines.”

“Sidelines?” his words were feather light, but permeated through the entire apartment despite the distance between them. He looked absolutely betrayed, his expression marred with pain. “Is that what you think you are to me? Sidelined?”

“Yes!” she cried, throwing her arms in the air. She wished she had the strength to close the door in his face, sob and wait for him to leave. But everything was just ejecting from her mouth with no stop button, months of pent-up stress accumulating to this conversation. “God, Jeonghan, don’t you get it? I just want you to be happy, but you can’t be happy with me. I can’t be happy with you. Not when I’m—” she looked up at the ceiling, blinking away the fresh tears. “Not when I’m not yours.”

These feelings for him ached to be dropped, like baby teeth that you never really needed. But it was a love that ached to be craved, insatiable and almost intolerable. The staring contest with Jeonghan was electrifying, his mouth parted with silent words and his eyes void with any positivity he may have felt this morning.

“Fuck, I don't want to be ‘just happy’ anymore.” A sharp click left his tongue, and in seconds his long legs drove through the room before meeting her at the edge of her bedroom door. He didn’t even give her a chance to hold on before he hugged her, pulling her off the ground and into his arms.

An unexpected squeak left her lips as she felt her body being dragged over to her unmade bed, leaving her legs to dangle as Jeonghan parted them for his space. His body draped over hers in a kneeling position, giving her a somber look as he dropped his head in exhaustion. It wasn’t the kind of tired you got after a long day in the amusement park, but the collective weakness received by months of unspoken words.  

She felt his lips drag upon her shoulder, the plush skin sending shivers from the base of her neck to the hairs on her arm. This was subdued by the way Jeonghan’s fingers were absentmindedly drawing trails from her arms to the tips of her fingers, his soft skin running across hers like silk.

“I never told you why I really broke up with you,” his words mumbled against her bare flesh, but she could hear loud and clear. “I made up some bullshit excuse of feeling like we should see other people, and it worked out because I studied abroad for a year. But I took advantage of your weakness, your soulmate died that week and I’ll never fucking forgive myself for not giving you the support you needed.”

A shaky breath melted on the juncture between her shoulder and neck, Jeonghan practically supporting himself on her. She felt her nose tickle her skin, and she wondered if he was feeling just as intoxicated under her scent as she did for his. “I was so, so scared. I was scared of everything. Scared that I was disappointing you because I wasn’t fated for you, scared that I wasn’t looking hard enough for my soulmate and disappointing them by taking so long to find them. I didn’t want them to end up like you did, I didn’t want anyone to feel the way you did. And even though I thought I was doing good in the world, I was too selfish. I thought I could do both, date around and find them, and still have you. But seeing you with Seungcheol, was even worse than I thought. And the fact that he was there when I should’ve been taking care of you was just the icing on the cake. It should’ve been me.

“And I’m still going to be selfish, because I still love you. I love you so much. I miss touching you without having to think twice. I miss you calling me Hannie. Hell, my soulmate could be working with the penguins in freakin’ Antarctica for all I know. And yeah, maybe if I do ever meet my soulmate they’d probably be amazing and perfect for me. But I don’t want perfect. I don’t want to be whole and happy. I want the fights, I want our silly arguments and the way it drives me absolutely crazy when you eat all my ice cream that I hide in the top left shelf of your freezer. Because I know it’s worth it. You’re right here, right now, and it’s the greatest fate I could ever be blessed with. You can hate me for this, but I’m never letting you go ever again.”

The dam broke when she felt the wetness upon her shoulder, and the slight stutter in his grip when he clutched her wrists. It wasn’t hard, but firm as if he ever let go he’d lose her completely. His breathing was starting to mismatch from its pattern, his forehead nuzzling against the fabric of her shirt. “My body still sings for yours.” his hands traced over her thighs, the softest spots and the caresses that were forever ingrained in his mind. “I’ll make it all up to you, anything and everything you want.”

Liquid betrayal pooled in her thighs at his simple touches, and she shook her head fervently. “God,” she choked, stuttering out an almost painful laugh. “I hate you. I hate you I hate you. I love you so much I hate it. You’re such an idiot.” the words rolled off her tongue with urgency as she pulled Jeonghan’s face to hers, diving in for a kiss.

His fingers cradled her face, and he lifted her up slightly to pull her further into the middle of the mattress. The kisses were butterfly quick, pecks in every single inch of skin that were left abandoned for months on end.

“I hate you too.” Jeonghan whispered tenderly, pressing his forehead to hers.

With one hand supporting his body he lifted the other to raise his left pinky, the ring still tattooed to  a fresh edelweiss white. Tingles shot through her system like morphine as she reached for his with her own pinky, the grey tattoo just as prominent as they linked them together. An imperfect fit.

If fate was still something to be believed in, it was surely a ride well worth. 

#jeonghan #seventeen scenarios #seventeen #kwritersnet #kwriters bless up #jeonghan fic #yoon jeonghan #seventeen fic #kpop #kpop scenarios #seventeen soulmate au

[rdclsuperfoods]

There’s a famous Gandhi aphorism about how movements progress: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” That was actually written by the Workshop on Nonviolence Institute as a summary of Gandhi’s philosophy, but regardless, it’s remarkable how often it accurately describes the evolution of causes, from legal cannabis to gay marriage. I’ve been thinking about that quote since I wrote my first piece about plant-based meat (or alt meat, as I like to call it) for Outside in 2014. Back then, we were firmly in the “laugh at you” stage. Beyond Meat, the first of the Silicon Valley startups to use advanced technology to produce extremely meat-like burgers, had been ignored for its first few years, but in 2014, it released its Beast Burger, which was treated by the press and public as a slightly off-putting curiosity. What was this stuff? Would anyone actually eat it? Ewwww.

That product wasn’t very good—I compared it to Salisbury steak—and when Ethan Brown, Beyond Meat’s founder, announced his intention to end livestock production, you could almost hear the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association laughing in the background.

But I didn’t laugh. I knew it would keep getting better and beef wouldn’t. And I thought the bar was pretty low. Sure, steak is great, but ground beef makes up 60 percent of beef sales, and most of it is more Salisbury than salutary, a greasy vehicle for the yummy stuff: ketchup, mushrooms, pickles, bacon, sriracha mayo. I knew I wouldn’t object if my central puck came from a plant, as long as it chewed right and tasted right. I suspected others might feel the same.

In the following years, Beyond Meat was joined by Impossible Foods, a more sophisticated startup with even more venture capital. Its Impossible Burger was way better than Salisbury steak. All the cool cats started serving it, from David Chang in New York to Traci Des Jardins in San Francisco. My conviction grew.

Part of the appeal of the new burgers is their smaller environmental footprint. Beef is the most wasteful food on the planet. Cows are not optimized to make meat; they’re optimized to be cows. It takes 36,000 calories of feed to produce 1,000 calories of beef. In the process, it uses more than 430 gallons of water and 1,500 square feet of land, and it generates nearly ten kilograms of greenhouse-gas emissions. In comparison, an Impossible Burger uses 87 percent less water, 96 percent less land, and produces 89 percent fewer greenhouse-gas emissions. Beyond Meat’s footprint is similarly svelte.

Yes, a good argument can be made that small-farm, grass-fed beef production (in places that can grow abundant grass) has a very different ethical and environmental landscape, but unfortunately, that’s just not a significant factor. America gets 97 percent of its beef from feedlots. And feedlots are irredeemable.

By 2018, sales of both the Beyond Burger and the Impossible Burger were surging, and the companies began to ink deals with restaurant chains. Beyond Meat got Carl’s Jr. and A&W (as well as supermarket chains like Food Lion and Safeway), while Impossible got White Castle.

I tracked down a White Castle shortly after the Impossible Slider arrived in the spring of 2018. I’d never been to a White Castle, so I ordered an Impossible Slider and a regular slider. The Impossible was...fine. About what you’d expect. White Castle steams all its meat, which is hard to get past, but with plenty of cheese, it went down easy. 

The regular slider, on the other hand, was horrific. I peeled back the pasty bun and stared at the fetid shingle inside. It was appallingly thin and grimy. It made the Impossible Slider look lush and juicy. The bar for fast-food burgers is even lower than I thought. Nobody will miss these shitty little brown things when they’re gone. 

Perhaps this explains why the chains are latching on to plant-based burgers as if they were life rings. White Castle initially tested its Impossible Slider in just a few locations in New York, New Jersey, and Chicago in April 2018. It was such a hit that the company quickly expanded the program to all 380 outlets. “People are coming back for it again and again,” White Castle’s vice president, Jamie Richardson, said with a touch of astonishment.

They’re coming back at Del Taco, too, which launched a Beyond Meat taco in April. Within two months, it had sold two million, one of the most successful product launches in its history, so it decided to add Beyond Meat burritos as well.

And then there’s Burger King. The second-largest fast-food chain in the world rattled big beef’s cage by testing an Impossible Whopper in St. Louis in April. Resulting foot traffic was so strong that Burger King decided to serve the Impossible Whopper in all 7,200 restaurants, marking the moment when alt meat stopped being alt. 

That was enough to get the meat industry to snap to attention. “About a year and a half ago, this wasn’t on my radar whatsoever,” said Mark Dopp, head of regulatory affairs for the North American Meat Association, to The New York Times. “All of a sudden, this is getting closer.” 

The strategy, predictably yet pathetically, was to engage in an ontological battle over the term meat itself. Big beef successfully lobbied for a labeling law in Missouri banning any products from identifying themselves as meat unless they are “derived from harvested production livestock or poultry.” (But this is wrong; the word simply meant sustenance for the first thousand years of its existence.) Similar labeling laws have passed or are pending in a dozen more states, most of them big ranching ones.

Obviously, none of this has stemmed the rise of alt meat. But it did make me think again of Gandhi (a staunch vegetarian, FYI). They ignored, they laughed, and now they were fighting. 

This stuff, I thought, just might win.

This year is shaping up to be the inflection point when this becomes obvious to everybody else. Beyond Meat’s products are in 15,000 grocery stores in the U.S., and its sales have more than doubled each year. On May 2, it held its IPO, offering stock at $25, which turned out to be a wild underestimation of what investors thought the company was worth. It immediately leaped to $46 and closed the day at $65.75. That one-day pop of 163 percent was one of the best in decades, putting to shame such 2019 IPOs as Lyft (21 percent) and Pinterest (25 percent), to say nothing of Uber (negative 3 percent). In the following days, it kept ripping, climbing above $150, where it has stayed. The market currently estimates Beyond Meat’s worth at close to $10 billion.

Not to be outdone, that same month, Impossible Foods raised an additional $300 million dollars from private investors (for a running total of $740 million and a valuation of $2 billion) and announced it would be joining Beyond Meat in America’s grocery stores later this year. These companies are no longer little mammals scurrying around the feet of the big-beef dinosaurs. And they are gearing up for an epic head-to-head battle.

Both Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods recently released new, improved versions of their meat. For the past week, I’ve subsisted on little else. It feels great. Both have the same amount of protein as ground beef (about 20 grams per quarter-pound serving) and less fat. Being plant-based, they also provide a healthy shot of fiber. Both get their unctuousness from coconut oil. 

But the core of each formula is very different. Beyond uses pea protein, while Impossible uses soy. Beyond gets its bloody color from beet juice; Impossible uses heme—the same molecule that makes our blood red—to achieve its meaty color and flavor. This is its killer app. Beef gets its beefiness from heme. When you cook heme, it produces the distinctive savory, metallic flavor of meat. Since heme is normally found in blood, no veggie concoction has ever used it. Soy plants do make microscopic amounts of it, but not enough to ever use. Impossible Foods’ breakthrough was to genetically engineer yeast to produce soy heme in a tank, like beer. This GMO process is a deal breaker for some people, but it makes all the difference. The Impossible Burger is incredible, the Beyond Burger merely passable. 

The Beyond Burger comes as two premade four-ounce patties (packaged in a plastic tray wrapped in more plastic—strike one). They don’t quite pass as hamburgers. They’re too wet and too pink. They almost resemble finely ground salmon burgers. They cook to a satisfying toothiness on either a grill or a griddle, but there’s an inexplicable cellulose quality to the texture. (This is even more pronounced in the Beyond Sausage.) The flavor is also slightly off. There’s a hint of fake smoke and an earthiness I’m guessing comes from the beet juice. (My wife would argue that it’s more than slightly off; she has to leave the room when the Beyond Burger is cooking. But she also hates beets.) It’s not an unpleasant experience, just don’t expect the burgergasm you get from a quarter pound of USDA prime.

Impossible Foods, on the other hand, has delivered burgergasm after burgergasm. It’s shine-up-the-Nobel-Prize good. Not only does it taste like ground beef, it looks and acts like it, too. It’s truly plug and play. 

That wasn’t true for the previous version. When I first wrote about Impossible Foods three years ago, I had to beg the company to send me one patty. It was hesitant. Back then, the burger was fussy. It didn’t work well on a grill, so you had to pan-fry it just right. The company made me do a Skype tutorial first, and when the micropatty arrived in a refrigerated box, with a special bun and special sauce, it was accompanied by pages of printed instructions. The burger was good, certainly the most meat-like plant patty up to that point, but it still tasted like a lite product—a little cleaner, a little less decadent, a little bit like filler.

This time, when I asked the company to send me a burger, a five-pound block of meat—clearly what it normally ships to food-service companies—arrived on my doorstep. No instructions, no hand-holding. It looked identical to ground beef, so that’s how I treated it. And that’s how it performed. I made sliders, kebabs, nachos, chili, Bolognese sauce, even a little tartare (note: the company frowns hard on this).

If I’m being honest, I find that I slightly prefer it to real beef. It’s rich and juicy, more savory, but still somehow cleaner and less cloying. Now when I go back to regular beef, I notice a whiff of the charnel house in it, something musty and gray that I don’t like and don’t need.

In the coming years, expect a lot of other omnivores to have similar epiphanies. Impossible Foods has performed more than 26,000 blind taste tests on its burger, which is on track to surpass ground beef in those tests in the near future. What happens then? Impossible has been laser focused on creating the perfect simulacrum of ground beef. But why? The cow never had a lock on gastronomic perfection. It was just the best we could do given the limitations of the natural material. Firelight was fine until electricity came along. Then things got really interesting.

Look for something similar to happen with alt meat. For now, it’s necessary to make people comfortable with the familiar, the way Steve Jobs loaded the early iPhones with faux felt and wood grain. But once people stop expecting burgers to refer to a hunk of flesh, the brakes on deliciousness will be released.

This will be generational. All change is. Most Baby Boomers are going to stick with their beef, right up to the point where their dentures can’t take it anymore. But Gen Z will find the stuff as embarrassing as Def Leppard and dad jeans. 

As this shift accelerates, the beef industry will lose its last advantage—price. Most offerings made with Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are about a buck a burger more expensive. But it’s inherently cheaper to make a burger directly out of plants than it is to feed those plants to an animal first. Beef is currently cheaper because of scale. Big food companies can negotiate tremendously reduced prices for feed, and gigantic factories and supply chains are much more efficient to run.

But the playing field is leveling fast. Last week, Dunkin’ announced a new Beyond Sausage breakfast sandwich that will be just 14 cents more than the meat version. But more than anything Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods has accomplished, the true death knell for the cattlemen is how the mainstream food industry has embraced alt meat. Whole Foods just announced it will start selling burgers from the UK-based startup the Meatless Farm in all of its stores. Nestlé is launching its Awesome Burger this fall. Tyson Foods, America’s largest meat producer, just debuted its own plant-based nuggets, with more products to come. Tyson CEO Noel White said he expects Tyson “to be a market leader in alternative protein, which is experiencing double-digit growth and could someday be a billion-dollar business for our company.”

If that quote isn’t enough to send chills down the spine of any meat producer, try this one from Perdue Farms chairman Jim Perdue: “Our vision is to be the most trusted name in premium protein. It doesn’t say premium meat protein, just premium protein. That’s where consumers are going.”

And that’s where these companies will go. Beef is a headache. It comes with a lot of baggage to worry about: antibiotic resistance, E. coli outbreaks, animal welfare, climate change. It’s the kind of icky biological variable that corporate America would love to leave behind—and as soon as beef becomes less profitable, it will. 

Recent projections suggest that 60 percent of the meat eaten in 2040 will be alt, a figure I think may actually be too conservative. An estimated 95 percent of the people buying alt burgers are meat-eaters. This is not about making vegetarians happy. It’s not even about climate change. This is a battle for America’s flame-broiled soul. Meat is about to break free from its animal past. As traditional meat companies embrace alt meat with the fervor of the just converted, making it cheap and ubiquitious, it’s unclear if Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods can survive the feeding frenzy (though Impossible’s patents on its core IP may help), but at least they’ll be able to comfort themselves with a modern take on Gandhi’s wisdom:

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they sue you. Then they try to buy you. Then they copy you. Then they steal your shelf space. Then they put you out of business. Then you’ve won.

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

#IFTTT #Outside Magazine: Nutrition

[foxhenki-blog]

Dark Elements

FRONT MATTER

And then things began to happen… This morning, when I got to work, after driving in a vehicle that inexplicably ran nearly perfect despite all of the things that I know are wrong with it, I opened my email to find the most out-of-the-blue message I could think of.

Last year, while taking paternity leave to help with my new son, I kept myself busy by writing an academic paper on information search and retrieval. I say ‘kept myself busy’ but what I really mean was ‘mentally avoid the stress of having a newborn in the house and a new pile of bills from the hospital in the mailbox’. Long story short (you should know, none of my stories are short) I submitted the paper to the International Federated Library Association conference and it was accepted! This was my second acceptance for that conference, the first being in 2014 while I was still in library school.

This paper, however, was based on my actual work work, the research, the data, all of it came from my job. I was operating under a ‘forgiveness is easier to ask for than permission’ maxim at the time. Well, I mixed up the message and after the paper was accepted and I was asked to speak at the conference I went and asked for permission to do it. 

That permission was denied. If there is a dictionary definition of a kerfuffle, that was it. I got my fur up, my work flattened its ears, and I backed down. I sent an email off to the conference organizer that I wouldn’t be able to attend. Man, that really stung, but not as bad as when he fired back that my paper would more-than-likely not be posted because of my absence.

Things turned sour for awhile after that, until this morning.

The conference organizer and I were no longer in contact, but I thought I’d try and work around it, took a long shot, and sent the webmaster an email asking when my paper would be posted. A bit underhanded, but you see, all I’ve ever wanted, since I started purposefully putting words on paper at the age of thirteen, was to be published. The first paper was such an awesome rush, I wanted that rush again, but moreover, I sincerely wanted to contribute to the discipline of library science. I had grown to love thinking of myself as a librarian, even though my work had another fancy corporate name for me, that was my self-identity.

The email went into the void and I never heard anything about it, until this morning, inexplicably, more than a year later. In my inbox was a note from the webmaster, a [third and final notice] in brackets, that I needed to fill out the author permission form in order to have my paper published to the library. This was just so out of a clear blue sky, and my enchantments have been gaining such intensity, I can’t help but connect the two.

I filled out the form, sent an email to the unbelievably astute and forthright webmaster of the IFLA site (a year later, who follows up more than a month later in this day and age, God love librarians, I swear) and quickly received word back that my paper was published.

It’s hard to know, because I don’t have any kind of control and have been taking a fairly broad-spectrum antibiotics approach to enchantment this year, what with sigilmancy, some [ok pretty off book but nonetheless intense] Solomonic ritual, a lot of Hygromanteia and even more Saint work, it’s hard to know what is working or if one can even attempt to isolate it.

I’ve got a suspicion that the reputed most-expedient Santa Muerte has been the final kick-in-the-magic-pants that was required. I’ve been getting these visions, the first that, well, the first I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about. They are wild and completely not in character for me at all, which is a mark of their authenticity. Something or somethings are making contact, are beginning to intercede. If we are here to talk about my theories, than I think that Santa Muerte is a type of bridge through time-depth to the entities that I have been trying to establish contact with all year. Death has always existed and time means very little to her. It is just ‘another tool in the toolkit’, you dig? Her silent owl wings fly through both time and space. I’ve been reaching out to Saint Cyprian, Saint Barbara reached out to me through my dreams but, while closer than others, was still very distant. Bringing Santa Muerte down onto my altar, into my life, has had the effect of changing the waveform of the signals I was sending out. I’m now a HAM radio magical phreaker, hacking the ether and broadcasting prayers straight into the first century Europe.

Yeah, things are beginning to happen… 

IMBRICATIONS

I always think I’m going to have a hard time with this section. I am into so much stuff, and I get to thinking, what is intersecting? And then I rethink it, and then I overthink it. 

The imbrications always come through though. Like last week, let me tell you, El Pinche Maru was *not* on my radar at all. I found him the morning I wrote the post, and he fit so well (and, really, is excellent at what he does) that I had to include him in this section.

That is a similar situation to what we have this week. Let me give you some more context. Next week is National Novel Writers month and this will be the third year in a row that I participate in the NaNoWriMo challenge. This will, however, be the first year that I put out a weekly blog (really two, but the other is for a small cohort of individuals in my industry and is decidedly non-magicy) while writing 1666 words a day towards the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words of fiction in the month of November. 

So, I’ve been trying, pretty late in the game, to get ahead on some of my research for Gnome School. I’ve got the next five Lovecraft tales picked out and have critically read 2.5 of them and have done some of the required research. With NaNoWriMo coming up though, I have to shift away from the non-fiction research and start reading fiction. If I were to read information theory or radical feminist biology while trying to push through NaNoWriMo the prose would be complete garbage.

So I’m shifting gears, finishing up the last chapters of The Dark Lord and Rollin’s Santa Muerte, and diving into fiction like Starr Creek, Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country, and An Augmented Fourth by Tony McMillen (thanks again Ghostly Harmless). This will change the flavor of the posts, but it should be a nice change.

This week’s post is centered on the Lovecraft tale ‘The Picture in the House’. If I had been going in a different direction, I might not have identified some of the themes in this tale. The clearest one, the one that brings me to this week’s imbrications, is the familiar theme of the ‘Other’. Will get into it deeper below, but for now, I’d like to offer another relative newcomer to my mixtape, Youth Code.

No doubt I am totally late to this party and there is a group of beanie wearing hipsters smoking cigarettes (because that’s cool again) scoffing at the old guy who is just now digging on this group, but I don’t care, they’re freaking awesome.

Youth Code not only imbricates on the theme of ‘Other’ in this week’s Lovecraft tale by setting themselves way outside their bearded banjo playing neo-bluegrass peers, but they also imbricate on the bands from my industrial music upbringing - even touring with the infamous Skinny Puppy and covering one of their classic songs. For a duo so young to get industrial so right in 2017, well, they’ve got my attention. Check ‘em out below!

THE ABYSS STARES BACK

The title of this week’s post comes from the following quote from the beginning of Lovecraft’s early tale, ‘The Picture in the House’:

“The true epicure in the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification of existence, esteems most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness, and ignorance combine to form the perfection of the hideous.”

There is this stage in Lovecraft, very early on, where his prose has a certain ambience, a different kind of authenticity than is seen in his later work. While Lovecraft is often described as a recluse, a homebody, I can’t help but see him riding through the country and taking in the verdant Rhode Island woods on his turn-of-the-last-century bicycle, breathing fresh air, getting some sun, a normal young man.

He does see things that most do not, however, and the dark colors begin to leap from his pallets quickly:

    “little unpainted wooden houses remote from travelled ways, usually squatted upon some damp, grassy slope or leaning against some gigantic outcropping of rock… vines have crawled and the trees have swelled… they are… hidden now in lawless luxuriances of green and guardian shrouds of shadow…”

Lovecraft places this tale in November of 1896. Having written it a decade later, he might have been aware of the auspiciousness of that month, but then again he might not. November 14th, 1896 is the day the first Tesla alternating current generator came online at the Niagara Falls plant. It is the day that the entire planet changed direction and began its journey into the technotopia we now live in. If you’re reading this on your phone, that day is the reason you can do that. But I digress… We aren’t here (today) to talk about the future, today’s archetype looks in the other direction.

A closet academic, unable to afford a college education, Lovecraft often painted ‘heroes’ that were the type of scholar that he likely would have become had circumstances been different for him. I so deeply emphasize with this facet of Lovecraft. I might have mentioned my own path to scholarship was quite hard-won and the majority of my life , prior to pushing through eight years of night school, was spent performing skilled labor. We are introduced to one of these heroes in the following passage:

    “I had been traveling for some time amongst the people of the Miskatonic Valley in quest of certain genealogical data; and from the remote, devious, and problematical nature of my course, had deemed it convenient to employ a bicycle despite the lateness of the season…”

This is also the first time that Lovecraft journeyed to the wooded hills outside of Arkham and named the place,  Miskatonic Valley.

The story is short and thus, the exposition quickly gives way to action. A storm captures our Genealogist on the wooded trail with nowhere to turn except the aforementioned forbidding shacks and homes hidden in the green hell to either side of the path he is traveling on. Given no choice, he makes his way to one of the homes and let’s himself inside.

The home is dry and kept, not necessarily well kept, but kept, and its furnishing, it is remarked, all seem to come from a time before the Civil War. It is hard for us now to conceive of just how close in time-depth the Civil War was to Lovecraft. It ended in 1865, just fifty years shy of when this tale was written, give or take a day. To put it in perspective, that is like a millennial writing a story today that sets the scene as a house where all of the furniture and books are from the 1970s. Right, The Picture in the House is Lovecraft’s 70s show…

The Genealogist finds, in the drawing room, a couple of books. I always like to mention the books in these stories because, like dates, he is very specific about them. Here we see mentioned Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana and, one of the featured antagonist of the story, Regnum Congo by Fillipo Pigafetta. It is then, after investigating the contents of this home’s library, the Genealogist is introduced to the non-book antagonist, the owner of the home who discovers the Genealogist in his drawing room, we shall call him the Recluse.

The Recluse talks about the pictures in Pilgrim’s Progress - using the n-word and the abominable reference to half-beast, half-men hybrids. Let’s consider the source of this information and how the Geneologist has described him as a type of less than human creature. This is a commentary on social status, on classism, more than it is racism. Lovecraft is placing the false construct under a microscope and exposing the gaps between the particles here. 

As a juxtaposition, take the following excerpt from Matt Ruff’s ‘Lovecraft Country’. Atticus, introduced early in the book, is an African-American living in Jim Crow era America. For context, the encounter below happens in a rural Indiana gas station.

    "'Excuse me,' Atticus said. This got the attention o fthe big man. As he straghtened up and turned around, Atticus saw he had a tattoo fo what looked like a wold's head on his forearm…     ‘I need to buy a tire.’     The big man glared at him for a moment, then said flatly: 'No.'…     'I don't understand. You don't want my money? You don't have to do anything, just—'     'No' The big man crossed his arms. 'You need me to say it another fifty time? Because I will.'     And Atticus, fuming now, said: 'That's a Wolfhound tattoo, right? Twenty-seventh Infantry regiment?' He fingered the service pin on his own lapel.'I was with the 24th Infantry. We fought alongside the 27th across most of Korea.'     'I wasn't in Korea,' the big man said. 'I was at Guadalcanal, and Luzon. And there weren't any n----- there.'"

I’m not saying there is or is not a difference between the instance where Lovecraft’s character the Recluse uses the word and when Matt Ruff, a white Cornell graduate, raised Lutheran and with predominantly German ancestry, has his character use the same word. I do want to place the two side by side here, in the interest of later conversations and to frame my assertion that this tale is more about ‘Other’ than it is about race, even though it features a man of an age where he would have lived through the Civil War using racial epithets. Thoughts, like skinny jeans, go in and out of fashion, and if we are going to find magical tech inside of Lovecraft’s ouvere, we won’t be able to ignore it many that have come before us have done. The following quote from ‘The Dark Lord’ summarizes how my thoughts on this intersect:

    “Eventually, psychological and anthropological ideas go out of fashion and change with the times. New ideologies, new trends in intellectual pursuits mean that we keep looking at the same material from the point of view of where we are standing at the time… The serious pursuit of magic… requires that your point of view shift to that of the source of the knowledge. It requires that you abandon your safe place. Otherwise you are only standing at the edge of the Abyss and taking quick glances over the side. There is no information in that pose, no initiation possible in a state of suspended animation. You must enter a place where all the cool academic theories no longer obtain, where the comforting ‘it’s all in your head’ platitudes and attitudes have no meaning — because your head, your body, your sol and spirit are all fully engaged in ways they never have been before, and it is not what you expected when you bought the ticket.”

This is true when one reads out Solomonic invocations that use the power of God and the name of Christ as protection against the spirits one is trying to bind and interrogate. It is true for us as well, if we are to conjure and wrestle with the entities that Lovecraft was in contact with, we will have to abandon our pose on the edge of the Abyss.

Let’s step off the edge and fall back into our story, for a moment, and listen to the Recluse talk about the picture in Regnum Congo with which he is obsessed:

    “What d’ye think o’ this — ain’t never see the like hereabouts, eh? When I see this I telled Eb Holt, ‘Thar’s suthin’ ta stir ye up an’ make yer blood tickle!’ When I read in Scriptur about slayin’ — like them Midianites was slew — I kinder think things, but I ain’t got no picter of it. Here a body kin see all they is to it — I s’pose ’tis sinful, but ain’t we all born an’ livin’ in sin?”

The mention of ‘Midianites’ make me think of the work of my first true dear love in the horror genre, Mr. Clive Barker, and his book Cabal. Sitting here in our wingback chair in the library of the ragged and frightening recluse, let’s peer out the dirty quarter pane window into Barker’s story, to see what we can find:

“No,” Lori replied, “I don’t… want anything… from you.” She felt the urge to express her revulsion, but the scene of reunion before her — the child reaching up to touch her mother’s chin, her sobs passing — were so tender…”

    “Let me help you,” the woman said, “I know why you came here.”     “I doubt it,” Lori said.     “Don’t waste your time here,” the woman replied. “There’s nothing for you here. Midian’s a home for the Nightbreed. Only the Nightbreed… I shouldn’t be telling you this. But I owe you this much at least.”     “Rachel.”     A voice rose from the door that led down into the earth. A man’s voice.      “Come away,” it demanded, “you’ve nothing to tell.”     Lori thought. How many other were there below ground, how many more of the Nightbreed?”

How many more of the Nightbreed, how many more Midianites, how many more Others...

The Recluse, the Cannibal, is an archetype of craving, of addiction, but he is also, and really more so, and archetype of a man out-of-time in his pre Civil War home. A human obsessed with cravings he doesn’t understand, someone so remote from society that there are no consequences for him, for there is no one around to play the judge. It is only him and his desires, whatever they may be.

The story ends with another repeated trope, the striking down of the wicked in their home by a bolt of lightning:

    “A moment later came the titanic thunderbolt of thunderbolts; blasting that accursed house of unutterable secrets and bringing the oblivion which alone save my mind.”

Maybe this is me and the number 38, I can’t not see that number and it has obsessed me since I heard the Ministry song of that name on their live album ‘You God Damned Son of a Bitch’, but I see here Saint Barbara again, saved from the pagans by lightning and thunder… Another tower burning…

Like it is described in Starr Creek:

“The situation was not going well in those burning digital woodlands.”

Mapping the Recluse, or may we call him the Cannibal, to the Tarot, we find the Seven of Swords to be an excellent match. The  Etteilla deck has the keyword Esperance for the upright version of this card. This is tranlated into Hope, which might not seem a fit for this tale, there is no hope in the Cannibals house. We need to, again, step off of the edge and embody the time when the deck was created. Hope was much closer in meaning then as a ‘wishful desire’ (which in turn maps this card to Sigilmancy). The Holistic Tarot states that this card represents a fleeing from the norms of your time, an impulsive personality, the aforementioned disregard for consequences, seeking only one’s own way and desires, and generally not fitting into the crowd.

The Cannibal embodies these characteristics, and is a manifestation of Set. Again from The Dark Lord:

    “Set is the Opponent, the Adversary… It is the role of Set to set himself up in opposition to the status quo, to the consensus viewpoint, to traditional beliefs and practices. He is the Other, and as such represents alien concepts and methods… Set is the polarity required by Horus to balance the new religion and bring it into greater recognition… and to contribute to the birth of new — non-human — offspring… Set… represents all that humanity has suppressed, repressed, and oppressed since time immemorial.”

Nothing is more actively suppressed than cannibalism, the ultimate taboo, except, perhaps, for the darker corners of necromancy.

The entire internet is jabbering about that new show, Mindhunter. I haven’t seen a frame, but I can tell the premise. Levenda predicts its popularity when in the final chapter of the Dark Lord when he says:

    “We are entranced by tales of serial killers and we have romanticized them to the point that we have made of them the new Dracula: urbane, intelligent, sophisticated, like Hannibal Lecter. But the reality of serial killers is quite different, just as the original vampires were believed to be little more than animated corpses… the Dark [Lord’s] power rests in the things we have hidden from ourselves.”

The Cannibal as the Seven of Swords, holds this type of power. It is Lovecraft peering deeply into the abyss of the collective human psyche.

#Lovecraft #Nightbreed #Set