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primasveraas-writing · 3 years

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“Kent v The Shitty Knee Itself”- Ted Lasso

A sort-of-sequel to "Kent v Linebacker," but this can still be read on its own. Part 2 of 3 of my fics about Roy Kent's shitty knee.

Part 1 // Accompanying AU

WORDS: 1649

XXX

Roy Kent is old as shit.

His daughter is a fucking toddler. His son is in preschool.

And he has fucking arthritis.

“What the fuck do you mean I’ve got fucking arthritis?” Roy Kent explodes at the doctor, who waits patiently for his outburst to finish. “I’m in my fucking forties! I’ve got two fucking babies at home! What the fuck am I supposed to do when my fucking daughter needs to piss and we’re all sprinting into the bathroom? I can’t fucking potty train on a shit leg.”

His wife rubs his shoulders comfortingly; the news is less surprising to Keeley, who gave a damn when the doctors mentioned arthritis could develop, and who is also extremely endeared by her husband’s priorities, which apparently lie very firmly with teaching their daughter to pee in the toilet.

Roy shouldn’t be shocked either; he’s had a limp for a long time now, and progressively worsening pain. He’s been elevating his leg whenever possible, to the point where Ted pulls chairs up for him or sits down first so Roy doesn’t feel awkward (on good days, Roy scowls at Ted and stays standing, but these occurrences are increasingly few and far between). It’s been a long time coming, and as much as the great Roy Kent hates to admit weakness, his shit knee is getting shittier.

Keeley had forced him to go to the doctor when Roy scooped up both their children, one in each arm, and proceeded to fall on the floor in a heap of small limbs and curses. He again made the case that he was fine, but there’s a limit on how much Tylenol one person can take in a day, and Roy’s exceeded that limit for weeks.

He walks like he’s on a hill, wobbling as he drags his right leg behind him. Keeley remarks on how uneven his gait is, and Lily, his precious fucking baby, demonstrates just how wonky Roy is by limping around too. It makes him laugh, but then his gaze meets Keeley’s, and he realizes there’s not much he can do aside from accept his fate and ask Dr. Patel why his knee is failing him (again, the fucking thing).

Arthritis. Fucking hell.

“The majority of your symptoms can be mitigated by limiting any strain on your leg. This includes walking, lifting, twisting, standing, stairs-”

“-breathing, blinking, fucking doing any shit worthwhile-”

“We can also prescribe medication, but given the amount of pain you reported, I think the best option to look at is a walking assistant.”

“What, like a cane?” Roy snorts. He feels Keeley still behind him, then he looks up at Dr. Patel, who’s gazing back at him, entirely serious.

“A fucking cane.”

“It’ll alleviate the weight on your leg. Ideally, you won’t need it every day, but it’ll make a difference when discomfort gets too high.”

“Fuck no.” Keeley squeezes his shoulder. “Fine. Fucking hell.”

It’s an adjustment. Roy walks back to their car, cane-less for the time being, limping, and imagines a cane in his hand. Imagines being able to straighten up, and not going to bed in fucking agony after a long day.

He also imagines showing up to the football club with a cane in his hand and Jaime fucking Tartt the fucking muppet smirking at him with his stupid fucking face, and he wants to turn around and tell Dr. Patel he’ll never use a fucking cane in his fucking life. Then he imagines having a stick to beat Jaime with when he’s being a prick, and Roy grins to himself at the thought.

That’s what he tells Keeley on the way home: he’s on the fence. That there’s a stigma he doesn’t want, that he remembers this the pitiful looks he received after his first injury and after surgery. It’s fucking bullshit, that he’d be looked at differently just because of a fucking rod in his hand, or because his stupid knee is fucked.

“Since when does Roy Kent care about what other people think of him? I mean really,” Keeley tells him, patting his thigh. “Everyone decent won’t bat an eye, and anyone who does is a prat.” She shrugs. “It’s a flawless system, really. Good way to sort people out.”

Roy grunts in agreement and drums his fingers on the door. He sighs, leaning his head back.

“What if I can’t keep up with Lily and Ollie? What the fuck am I supposed to do with little kids?”

“We’ll adapt,” Keeley promises, offering her hand. Roy takes it and presses it to his lips. “They already know they can’t run from you, or bowl into you at full speed-” Roy snorts at this. “-so now we tell ‘em that they gotta be patient.”

“They’re gonna be the most patient kids on the planet,” Roy muses, but his chest feels lighter. His wife is fucking amazing.

“They’re fucking perfect, they are. And besides- they don’t love you cause you can lift them or up throw them around or run around after them.” She squeezes his hand. “They love you ‘cause you’re you, Roy. You’re their dad.”

Roy nods silently. She’s right, as always. His heart is warm, much lighter against his ribs. “Thanks, babe,” he tells her, and Keeley beams at him.

They adapt. Roy remains in awe of the resilience of children- Lily and Oliver don’t give a damn that he uses a cane, except they quickly have to delineate that it’s not a toy, so Oliver doesn’t hit anyone with it, and so that Lily doesn’t hit Oliver with it. Because of this, Roy has to be careful not to threaten anyone at Richmond with his cane while his children are around. One day, his kids will learn to do as their dad says, not as he does, but for now, his babies swear and scowl, and pick up on every bad habit Roy shows them. It’s fucking adorable.

The first month is the hardest. Roy and Keeley decide to grant him some grace- he doesn’t have to do shit like garden or mow the lawn, or anything too strenuous. It’s uneven, in the beginning, and Roy goes to bed every night feeling like a shit husband for everything that’s unloaded on Keeley. They fight about it, eventually, and Roy apologizes to Keeley with tears in his eyes. They find a balance, which involves a chair in every room in their house and somebody hired to do the lawn. Their roles have shifted, but it’s a pattern he’s familiar with by now. He’s gone through so many major changes with Keeley: switching careers and marriage and injury and parenthood twice over. And using a cane isn’t any harder than having a newborn and a toddler, so they manage. After all, they’re unstoppable together.

Nobody on the team makes a comment on the cane, except Ted leaves sticky notes on it whenever Roy isn’t paying attention, and Roy wouldn’t mind so much if they weren’t positive fucking affirmations, the corny twat. Then the rest of the team follows suit, and they sign it and put stickers on it and all sorts of supportive shit, and Roy tells only one person this, but he kind of fucking likes it (against his better judgment, of course).

Commentators and the press are not nearly as kind. There’s any number of articles written about him and how old it makes the football world seem. Roy wants to fucking kill all of them, but Keeley reminds him that all the pricks have shown their true colors, and one day he finds a picture of a particularly insensitive reporter that has been utterly defiled and left out in the locker room. Roy tucks this away in a drawer in his office, and he’s almost nicer at practice that day.

Beard and Ted match his slower pace as they walk out to every match, which isn’t subtle even from the offset, but they don’t say anything about it and neither does Roy. He also realizes that he’s never the only one sitting in a group of his friends, even if it’s just him and Ted, or Keeley, or Rebecca, or Nate.

Yoga gets much harder, then he and the yoga moms spend a night researching yoga for people with shit legs, and yoga gets easier again. If they want to do a challenge night, Roy shifts into the role of yoga instructor, which he’s fucking great at, thank you, and so what if he gets to drink more wine because of it.

And his fucking knee feels better. His medication works, but the cane helps the most. Ted and Keeley had told him ever since his initial injury to be kind to himself, to rest when needed, and to not be a stupid stubborn prick about his health. This mindset turns out to have a few merits, and maybe it’s even a good habit he can teach his kids.

It says a lot about him, this cane that accompanies a man in his forties. He needs it because he was a professional footballer who injured himself preventing a goal in one last game. Who needed surgery cause his energetic maniac of a son ran into him. Whose wife told him to use it with pride, because he’s Roy fucking Kent and his family and friends love him so screw everyone else. Whose coach used it as a tool to force positivity onto Roy, whose team and kids decorated it with messages of love and smiley faces and the two worst signatures he’s ever seen (though he credits Oliver and Lily for trying). It’s a symbol of persistence, of the pain he’s endured, of those who rallied behind him.

Roy Kent. Married to Keeley Jones. Father of Oliver and Lily. Coach at Richmond AFC.

And he happens to use a cane.

#roy kent #ted lasso #ted lasso fanfic #keeley jones #roy kent x keeley jones #keeley x roy #roy x keeley fanfiction #roy x keeley fanfic #roy x keeley #ted lasso fanfiction #ted lasso imagine #roy kent fanfic

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quazartranslates · 3 years

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Welcome to the Nightmare Game II - CH31

**This is an edited machine translation. For more information, please [click here]**

[<<< Previous Chapter | Table of Contents | Next Chapter >>>]

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Chapter 31: Star Death Reality Show (XIV)

He did it!

He actually did it!

After running out of this corridor and reaching a safe corner, Qi Leren's flying heart finally fell back to his chest. He collapsed on the ground from how much he had been drained of all his strength, left only with the strength to pant.

Qi Leren had loaded the save file three times in a row just now, that is, he had done it for the first time since the Witchcraft Sacrifice task. He clearly remembered that the last time he had loaded it like this, he couldn’t stand at all afterwards. Today, however, he had loaded the file three times in a row in this extremely challenging high intensity, but he had still been able to burst out of that corridor of death with explosive force… This was not only a breakthrough in physical fitness.

Qi Leren looked at his hand with a hint of thoughtfulness.

Was it because Maria had given him the blessing of the holy light? Since then, although Chen Baiqi let him know every day that his limit was far higher than he imagined, his training days were limited and he couldn't have advanced by leaps and bounds to this extent, even entering the state of "breaking the shell" as described by Chen Baiqi.

In the last few seconds after the file had been loaded when he had run out of the corridor, he definitely broke through the limits of the human body. This was true for speed, agility, willpower, and judgment. Even now that he was out of danger, this breakthrough after exceeding the limit still benefited him greatly.

Qi Leren looked deep into the corridor, and under the faint light he could clearly see the details that he should not have been able to see—peeling walls, broken corners, scattered folders... He hadn't had such good night vision before.

The weakness of his body brought a strong sense of insecurity. Without the peeping eye of the camera, Qi Leren took out a strength potion and drank it steadily, waiting quietly for his body to adjust. His physique was much better now than before. Even if he was trained hellishly one day, he could always continue to exercise without the soreness of exhausted muscles the next day, which made Chen Baiqi very pleased. She had praised him for being much better than she had been, having the ghost-like appearance of a dead dog every day—Qi Leren felt that she was also pretty harsh towards herself.

After his physical strength was restored, Qi Leren stood up and continued to move forward, taking every step carefully.

The scope of this underground facility was huge, so it wasn’t clear whether it was an air defense facility or an underground research institute. However, from what he could see, it was not a particularly high-tech type of place, but rather it had the Soviet architectural style of the Cold War period. The most incredible thing was that this underground facility had electricity! When Qi Leren walked in front of a closed door and pressed the switch, the iron door would still open. It seems that after entering it, there is no detection system like the laser corridor.

What the hell was this place? Qi Leren, filled with doubts, carefully continued to move forward. This underground space was so large that there were even elevators leading levels deeper underground. Because he couldn't read the alien words, Qi Leren could only guess a little from the symbols. There were danger warning signs everywhere. He feared that this wasn’t an air defense facility, but more likely an underground military base built to prevent nuclear war.

However, when this door was opened, the pictures that appeared in front of him made Qi Leren forget his many speculations and affirmed his original expectation.

This was an underground research institute!

This room was as big as two basketball courts and thick pipes ran along all of the walls, ceilings, and floors, so it was impossible to tell where the light source came from. And in the middle of the room, countless column-shaped growth chambers were like rows of pillars, spreading before his eyes to the end of the room. Each growth chamber was connected with a pipe. In the time when they were used, this pipe provided them with oxygen and nutrient solutions. However, after the underground fortress was abandoned, the nutrient solutions became turbid liquid, and the things in the growth chambers had already died.

It was a scene that could only be seen in science fiction movies. Qi Leren was thinking about this as he approached a growth chamber. There was a mass of something in the dirty liquid. Considering that it had been abandoned for many years, there was no doubt that the creature inside was dead, but it had not rotted away.

What was in the growth chamber? Qi Leren took out his flashlight and wanted to take a look at the contents, but just at the moment when he took out the flashlight from his item bar, he heard a click.

Maybe he wouldn't have realized what it was before, but now, even if he heard it in his dreams, he would jump out of bed and fight back—it was the sound of a handgun’s safety being taken off!

Qi Leren flashed behind the growth chamber without thinking and squatted down. He took out the gun that Chen Baiqi gave him and held it in his hand. However, after a short thought, he decided not to launch an attack rashly, but asked aloud: "He Yi?"

"...Qi Leren?" He Yi's voice, which was horribly hoarse, came from behind another growth chamber.

Sure enough, it was He Yi!

Qi Leren put his hand holding the gun behind his back and slowly came out from behind the growth chamber, but did not dare to stray too far from his bunker: "What happened to you and Mark? Afterwards, I sneaked into Annie's house and found the attic in her house. I also found the pipe embedded in the wall leading to the basement. Is that how you came down here?"

He Yi, who was hiding behind the growth chamber, was silent for a while before he came out slowly.

He doesn't seem to be in a good state; his lips are chapped, and there were red burst vessels in his eyes. Instead of relaxing his vigilance, he continued to point his gun at Qi Leren and snapped: "Take your right hand out."

Qi Leren slowly stretched out his right hand from behind his back, but what was in his hand—the gun—had been quietly replaced by his knife. He wasn’t sure whether the invisible camera beside He Yi had been shut off, so he couldn't take out the gun that would be difficult to explain the source of, and he didn't need to use it—dealing with a weak opponent who didn’t know how to hold a gun properly, he didn't need his own gun at all.

With a ting, Qi Leren threw the knife to the ground. He raised his hand and showed a sincere expression: "What happened? You don’t look very good..."

"Don't talk, come over to me and follow my instructions." He Yi gave him a cold look, and his eyes were full of doubt.

"Okay, I'll do it. Don't be nervous. I mean no harm." Qi Leren walked slowly to stand before He Yi and took the initiative to show him the back of his head.

He felt the tension at this time; what had made him so shocked and frightened? After seeing this underground research institute, Qi Leren could vaguely guess: He Yi already knew about the octopus, and he knew that the octopus had parasitized this group of contestants. But at this moment, he couldn't be sure whether Qi Leren, who had suddenly appeared before his eyes, had been parasitized.

But he obviously didn't intend to kill him, otherwise he could have already done so. Did he have some means to detect whether he was infected or not?

He Yi's gun pointed at Qi Leren's head and he continued hoarsely: "Walk forward, go through this door, take the left corridor..."

The two people walked in tandem through the corridors in this maze-like underground research institute. He Yi, who had come here a few days earlier, was more familiar with the route than Qi Leren. He guided Qi Leren all the way to the third floor underground, and then stopped in front of a thick iron door.

"Press the switch to open the door."

Qi Leren did it, the door opened, and the room inside came into view. This was a room like a medical bay with some items that looked like medical instruments.

Qi Leren, who suddenly realized what sort of equipment it was, glanced at He Yi. He stood in front of a monitor and commanded Qi Leren to stand at the wall opposite him.

He Yi, this guy, wanted to confirm whether he had been parasitized, as Qi Leren has suspected.

A blue curtain of light swept over Qi Leren, and He Yi kept staring at the monitor, finally relieved.

But even after seeing this, the calm and even slightly superior temperament of old still did not return to him. He still looked very anxious, even though he tried to restrain himself: "Thank God, you’re not parasitized. Sorry, I shouldn't have pointed a gun at you before. I can explain the ins and outs to you. We’re in danger right now!

"It hatched, it actually... hatched! That monster that almost destroyed all intelligent life in the whole universe is now hidden among us. It’s already bred and is still breeding! According to their habits, it should be that the 'Genocide Day' where they break out and eliminate us all will be the fifth day!"

Today, it was already the fourth day.

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[<<< Previous Chapter | Table of Contents | Next Chapter >>>]

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omoi-no-hoka · 4 years

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I read your post on how you got started in the translation industry and I was wondering if it is possible to get an entry/basic level translation gigs in Japan with N3-level proficiency or if even those want at least N2 proficiency. Also since you've been living and working in Japan for a long time, what advice would you give those wanting to work in Japan in regards to avoiding black companies?

Finding Translation Work in Japan

Hi there! Thank you for your ask.

To be honest, “translation” is so very broad that I can’t give you a simple “yes” or “no” as an answer. My answer is “Maybe” with the following caveats. For the sake of this post, I’m going to assume that your native language is English, or that you have native-level proficiency, and you plan to do English↔Japanese translation in a Japanese workplace.

Field of Translation

This is perhaps the biggest factor. I understand that in order to translate legal or medical things, there is a particular certification that you must obtain. This requires N1/native level proficiency in both languages. I have thought of attempting to obtain the medical one, but I’m not ready for it. I would need to study a LOT of terminology in both English and Japanese.

As for other fields, I think it really depends on the company and how much they are willing to teach you on the job. Also, depending on the field, many field-specific terminology may be katakana words derived from English, meaning that while they will be new Japanese words for you, they will not be entirely new words.

But if I were to work in, say, the banking industry doing translation, I would certainly have a hard time learning all the words, especially if I didn’t already have some sort of background in banking in English.

For example, I specifically work as a translator for a company that provides services to other very big companies that you have heard of. Technically, I work for an anti-malware software company and the technical support aspect of it. When a product is updated, I will translate internal manuals and things like that. I also translate the Big Wig conversations, which are done in English since the client and our company’s HQs are in America, so that our local guys know what’s going on. I also create/translate/edit/take minutes for presentations given to Big Wigs. I also handle all IT issues in our project, because our IT ticketing system is 100% in English. ANYTHING English-related is funneled to me.

Contractually-speaking, I do not work for any other clients. But since I’m the only translator in our company in Hokkaido capable of interpretation as well, I am often asked to assist under the table. (Translation and interpretation are two entirely different beasts, btw.)

While I don’t have a background in IT or computers or anything like that, since most of the terminology is in katakana and I’m not absolutely clueless about computers, my learning curve wasn’t too sharp. I struggled more with bullshit corporate acronyms and the formalities of Business Japanese (sonkeigo and kenjougo).

A person holding an N2 is considered capable of Business Japanese. Even if you have extensive knowledge in the field of translation, you will have a VERY difficult time adjusting to the Japanese-language workplace if you are not good with Business Japanese. From that standpoint, I cannot recommend someone at N3 to enter a Japanese company to do translation. It will be grueling. I was N1 when I joined the company, and I still had difficulty composing emails and other workplace-related words I hadn’t come across.

Start with Freelance Translation/Proofreading

There was a year or so where I had N1 but was still teaching English. I found freelance English-Japanese translation jobs online. Lots of them were one-shot things, like “translate this brochure about our little tiny town” or “I am a researcher who has written a paper on Persian-French relations during the 16th century, and I need someone to proofread my English.” Lol that one was pretty specific and paid very handsomely. By doing well on a job, I established a relationship with that client and I would get more work either from them or someone they knew. Prices are fixed before translation.

The average price for translation is 3-7 yen per character (if the original text is in Japanese) or per word (if the original text is in English). The price increases depending on the complexity of the material. The brochure about the little town was 4 yen per character, but the research paper was 9 yen word (despite the fact I was only proofreading instead of translating because it was incredibly complex).

Proofreading goes alongside translation. I didn’t really do much of that, but you can see a price range of 1-5 yen per character/word. If you are N3, proofreading is great way to get your feet wet!

NOTE: Do not take on proofreading or translation jobs for a language that is not your native language. No matter how good you think your Japanese is, it will not be good enough to proofread. Even if you have an N1, you will miss things. Even I, as a translator with almost 3 years experience in my field, always have a Japanese coworker proofread everything I translate into Japanese, and 9 times out of 10 they fix at least one thing.

How to Avoid Black Companies

In Japan, some companies are labeled ブラック企業 “black kigyou,” which means that they violate labor laws in some heinous fashion. Denying pay, benefits, or leave, forcing employees to do grueling amounts of overtime that can lead to 過労死 karoushi (death by overwork), etc. These companies will rob you of your sanity at best and your life at worst, and are to be avoided at all costs.

When I was searching for a position teaching English, I googled reviews of each big Eikaiwa school, like AEON or whatever else there is. Many previous teachers air their grievances on places like glassdoor.com. It was easy to learn which schools I should avoid.

Also, I applied online to many different big Eikaiwas. Three of them (sorry, I can’t remember which) immediately emailed me back and said I was hired, without an interview or anything. That should be a HUGE red flag to you right there. Why are they so desperate to hire that they’ll take you without even giving you an interview? And even if they do later say, “Your hiring is dependent upon an interview,” that means that their initial contact email was fraudulent.

Research the company as best you can. See if you can find someone who has worked for them. Beware of smaller, private companies. They tend to fly under the radar and are prone to be even shittier. Then again, there was a woman who died of death by over work a few years ago and she worked for the biggest advertising firm in Japan.

Here’s an article from Business Insider about karoushi and black companies.

A 2016 report examining karoshi cases and their cause of death found that more than 20% of people in a survey of 10,000 Japanese workers said they worked at least 80 hours of overtime a month.

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry defines the threshold for karoushi as greater than 80 hours of overtime a month. Since this article was posted in 2018, a new law regarding overtime has been implemented by the Japanese government. Now there is a legal cap on overtime of 100 hours per month (and 720/year) for busier months, with the general upper limit set at 45 hours per month (360 hours/year).

Even if a company isn’t black, be prepared for overtime. My company makes sure that every employee adheres to the 45 hours per month limit...as best they can. If you follow this blog you know that I have done 60 and 70 hours of overtime in certain months, because I am our only translator and when shit hits the fan I’m the only one who can handle it.

However, my company is very good about making sure that I receive all of my overtime pay. Every single minute of overtime I do is properly reimbursed. Sometimes this means that if I work 60 hours one month, I will only report 45 that month, and then report 15 extra hours the next month. Or I will take a couple days off but claim that I worked (with my bosses’ approval, of course).

I can’t speak for other companies for sure, but I fear that when this law was introduced in 2019, many companies did not change their business models and instead forbid employees from reporting overtime that exceeded legal limits, meaning they would be going without compensation.

So be aware that if you are going to work in a Japanese company, you are likely to have overtime. Some people don’t, and congratulations to them! But it is an extremely real possibility. Make sure that you can handle it physically and mentally, and that you are being properly compensated. After my first month of Big Overtime, my boss told me, “I’m surprised that you managed to do all that. I thought that Americans had a poor work ethic compared to Japanese people, but now I see that’s not true.”

kinda racist, but thx

If you have an interview and it goes well and you receive a contract, ask to take the contract and have time to think about it. Then, have a Japanese person you trust read the contract and make sure there is nothing shady hidden in there. Contracts and legalese are difficult enough in my own native language--I don’t trust myself to catch something in Japanese.

If your friend thinks that the contract is fair as well, and if you feel like the company has a good atmosphere, take the job. That is what I did, and I am glad I did.

Translation and Interpretation

A lot of people don’t know the difference between “translation” and “interpretation” and use them interchangeably, but they are actually entirely different tasks that require different skills.

Translation: the conversion of written text from one language to another.

Interpretation: the conversion of spoken word from one language to another.

You will most likely be hired as a translator, because translation is much cheaper than interpretation. However, if your company is like mine, you will have interpretation work to do as well. You may be asked to take part in meetings and facilitate communication between the English-speaking and Japanese-speaking people, or act as a guide to a client from American headquarters, for example.

With translation, you usually have the blessing of time. You can look up a word you don’t know, you can think about the grammar, you can think about tone.

But with interpretation, you need to be:

Listening to Speaker A’s English and mentally summarizing their words

Starting to say Speaker A’s words in Japanese while holding on to the bits that will come later because English and Japanese word order is so different

Continuing to listen to added speech from Speaker A as you concurrently are relaying their previous speech in to Japanese and retaining the parts that you can’t say yet because of word order.

Then do it all for again for Speaker B’s reply, and repeat.

Basically, your mind has to be doing three things at once. Does your head hurt? Mine does. If I have to do simultaneous interpretation like that for more than a couple hours I literally develop a headache.

I will NEVER recommend an N3 person attempt interpretation in a business setting. Nor N2 for that matter. It is hard and you do not have the benefit of time to think and double-check things.

Also, many people don’t understand exactly how difficult it is to do interpretation. I have to sometimes just say “Sorry, pause” to the speaker because my head can’t retain any more, especially if figures and data and dates are referred to. Thankfully my coworkers have come to understand my method and are just happy that I can facilitate communication for them.

If you have any other questions regarding job hunting, please let me know and I’d be more than happy to offer what advice I have! 💖

#Anonymous #work in japan #life in Japan #expat in japan #japanese translation #japanese interpretation #job hunting #job hunting in japan #japan #ask me anything #asks are open

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rotten-zucchinis · 3 years

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Part 1: The meaning of “can” (or “I often do things I can't do”)

This is part of a series exploring the language of “I choose to...” and “I am prioritising...” (and avoidance of “I should...”) as it is regularly used in a particular Relationship Anarchy/Anarchism community... and some the ableism in how I’ve seen that play out (particularly insofar as it impacts folks with limitations related to chronic illness and neurodivergence).

Introduction (contextualising this conversation) [text]

Part 1: The meaning of “can” (or “I often do things I can’t do”)

Part 2: “I choose to prioritise…” [text]

Part 3: Alternative meaning of “should” [text]

Part 4: Navigating the costs… [text]

Part 5: Choosing between a rock and a hard place [text]

When someone says they are able to do something, they don't just mean that they expect they will literally be able to accomplish the thing despite any toll doing so may take. They usually mean they can accomplish the thing without substantively harming themselves— that they can accomplish the thing in a reasonably sustainable way. And when people are operating within more or less typical human limitations, that usually aligns with their experiences— there may often be things that are painful or difficult for people to do, but accomplishing them doesn't involve incurring any significant degree of self-damage (or in some more extreme circumstances, only very temporary damage). That doesn't mean that people within fairly typical ranges of abilities don't exceed their capacities, especially under urgent or extenuating circumstances, but just that this happens largely specifically under urgent or extenuating circumstances instead of regularly as a matter of course, on an ongoing basis, indefinitely.

Navigating life while chronically ill very often means doing just that— living every day around the line of maximum capacity, regularly exceeding it and incurring harm to do things other people take for granted (while trying to avoid overdoing things too much, so that things don't get so far that they crash completely). I've been reminded about how disability justice writers such as Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha have framed this experience as living in an ongoing apocalypse, in a world that doesn't want disabled folks to live (particularly those more severely impacted by ableism than me)... They remind us that conventional standards of “crisis” are just part of the everyday struggle to survive— and among us, for some people far more than others. (My literal survival, for example, is not in imminent and ongoing jeopardy, but the literal survival of some people in my world is.)

It is rare that chronically ill folks manage to live in ways that are sustainable, that don't regularly involve exceeding our capacities. That doesn't mean we aren't making choices or don't have agency within our limited abilities. But it does mean that a lot more goes into our decisions than our desires and disembodied priorities— we routinely weigh consequences we take for granted that most people don't ever have to think about. I might “choose” to do something but I often won't have the option of “choosing” to do it without incurring forms of harm as natural consequences for me that are not natural consequences for most people.

“Can” means a lot of different things. And because we live in an inaccessible world in so many ways, the calculation usually lands on the side of doing more than we can do even if it's stuff we literally manage to accomplish. Can I literally accomplish the tasks of shovelling the snow or lifting my friend's walker in and out of a car repeatedly to go to a medical appointment or the grocery store? Almost certainly. But when I do either of those things, I risk injuring myself later on when I keep accidentally smashing my arms, legs or head into things because my sense of where my body in space has disappeared as a result of exceeding my capacity. Or I might not be able to speak for the rest of the day or the next. Or worse. (Or on a rare occasion, it might be fine— consequences are probabilistic). And if I were to try to shovel the snow one day and lift the walker the next? Spectacularly worse. When I suffer consequences like that from having done things, it doesn't really makes sense to call them things that I can do. But that doesn't fit with what “can” usually means.

I choose to do things all the time that I can't do. I do things all the time that I can't do. And I don't think I've ever met anyone who doesn't live that way (or who hasn't lived that way by necessity in the past) who actually understands what that means.

And sometimes, past a certain point, it stops being a choice in any meaningful sense: sometimes I will sleep through my alarm and be literally unable to make a meeting or event; I will become non-verbal and be unable to speak in certain contexts; I will lose my ability to make sense out of written words sometimes; at times, my legs will crumble and be unable to hold me and without something to support myself from my arms, I will fall over. It's not that something switches from me having total control to none, but the further I exceed my capacity— the more I do that I can't do— I have progressively less and less control/choice until pragmatically, there is no control, no choice. It's asymptotic to zero, even if it never reaches there (i.e., even at my worst, it will never be impossible for things to get worse). So saying that I'm choosing things under those circumstances is functionally meaningless. And it also doesn't mean much more if I'm choosing to not do something because I know the natural, unavoidable consequences of me doing the thing will be to reach a state where my choices (about certain types of things) will become functionally meaningless (at least for a while).

When chronically ill folks talk about what we “can” do, we are often speaking entirely different languages from people who don't live with those particular kinds of limitations (not that there's only one way of being chronically ill, and not that all chronic illness is directly comparable or equivalent). And simply invoking “I choose to __” or “I choose to prioritise___” instead of “I have to___” not only carries different meanings depending on ability-related frames of reference, but also easily conceals those differences.

#the meaning of 'can'#ableism #spoonie #chronically ill #disability #RA #relationship anarchy #relationship anarchism

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petermorwood · 4 years

Text

Pull the Lever, Kronk!

“Wrong leverrrrr....”

Modern aircraft have all sorts of wrong levers.

Usually they’re marked with black-and-yellow Do Not Touch Without Good Reason stripes.

However if you’re given a ride in a fighter jet that you really, really don’t want, and your strapping-in is sloppy and your instructions barely heard because of terror, and when your heart-rate is already high as you get into the plane, and hits near tachycardia as take-off goes beyond the G-force limit ordered by the medic who checked you out...

...and then the also-exceeded negative-G bunt at the top of the take-off climb turns you weightless and those loose straps won’t hold you down...

Do Not Touch gets forgotten.

The incident happened last year, the report was released last week, and it’s a chapter of accidents, the most disturbing part being that the pilot should have been ejected too because that’s what the system was set for.

Both canopies blew and so did the back seat, but not his, so he got to bring the suddenly open-cockpit aircraft back down while sitting on a live rocket with an obviously-dodgy firing mechanism, doubtless wondering what the thump of landing might make it do...

Someone must have been in line for one of Those interviews, the sort with a distinct lack of tea or biscuits. I wonder if there’s an Armée de l’Air equivalent of “Your hat, my office, now!”

See that black-and-yellow thing in the middle? It’s the loud handle for a Martin-Baker Mk 16F bang-seat just like this...

...and despite many useful features it doesn’t have an “are you sure?” option for second thoughts. When it’s pulled, things happen very fast and won’t stop happening until they’re done. If someone yells “Eject-eject-eject!” and means it, there’s a good chance the last two are just echoes...

Oh well. At least by now M-B should have given the reluctant jet-jockey a nice tie, lapel pin and pocket patch, which will make everything better.

Maybe not so much for the ground crew, who failed to notice something wrong with an over-sixties civilian passenger so scared his pulse was already in the high 130s while he was sitting down. “Sir, are you really sure you want to take this flight?” would have saved the day, because it would have given him the excuse of professional opinion to use against his friends.

Another problem among many was that this joyride had been arranged in such a hurry that it wasn’t a “joyride” flight at all, but a regular duty mission with no concessions to ease, comfort or reduced stress. Maybe that was why the ground crew missed his unease and didn’t correctly secure his G-suit, straps and helmet, because they thought he was okay and already knew what to do.

Including not pulling this.

As for his pre-flight briefing, that would certainly have included telling him what the black-and-yellow thing was and why he shouldn’t pull it until told - though the circumstances of when he’d be told, and how fast he’d need to do so, would have done nothing to calm his fears.

Circumstances like these...

youtube

Of course there’s peer pressure (we went to all this trouble) pride (I’m not old / unfit / scared out of my wits) and telling a lie (I’m really looking forward to it) because the truth is like an apology and a sign of weakness...

Afterwards I’m also sure the pilot, and every other twin-seat Rafale jock, probably spent a while wondering if that non-double-ejection glitch was a one-off, or if it could have killed him by glitching on an occasion when it needed to work properly and at once.

He made a good landing, though; in fact an excellent landing.

Good = you can walk away from it. Excellent = they can use the plane again...

#aviation #Dassault Rafale #accidental ejection #in-flight entertainment

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route22ny · 4 years

Photo

New York Unmasked

by Harry Siegel

Imagining our city, for worse and for better, after the coronavirus pandemic

The city that never sleeps is taking a nap now, and it’s going to be a very different place when it finally wakes up.

Not long after the World Trade Center was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, and again after Lehman Brothers collapsed on Sept. 15, 2008, there was a lot of talk about how New York wouldn’t be the same. Both times, reports of our collective demise proved to be greatly exaggerated as the city quickly recovered, economically speaking, and resumed the upward path — ever more prosperous, populated and pricey — it’s remained on for at least the last quarter-century.

This time is different.

Any remaining vision of the city somehow picking up more or less where things had been left off went away with the decision to start shutting down the trains for four hours each night. That’s a huge though supposedly temporary shift for a system that’s run 24 hours a day for over a century with only the briefest of interruptions — until now the only one in the country that doesn’t turn off, as I’ve been shocked to re-learn every time I make the mistake of visiting another city. As with many of the decisions New York and the nation have made in this plague year, it will be much more difficult to turn things back on than it was to turn them off.

Already, the devastation is staggering. In less than eight weeks, the 13,168 (as of Friday night) confirmed coronavirus deaths here have exceeded the total number of murder victims, 12,509, over the past two decades — and that’s counting the 2,977 victims of 9/11.

New York managed to keep the death count down to 13,168 at the cost of putting the city and its economy in the equivalent of a medically induced coma, and with no assurances at all that a second wave of infections won’t be coming despite that.

While putting New York under helped keep the first wave from completely overwhelming the medical system here, as happened in Italy, “the point where we can really start at reopening…obviously is a few months away at minimum,” Mayor de Blasio said Friday.

Even at that point, whenever we finally get there, it’s hard to see everyone just getting back on the train for a crushed morning commute to the office, or servers returning to packed restaurants and bars and theaters and nightspots. Forget about tourists flying in to burn dollars; it’s an open question how many of the generally better-off New Yorkers who’ve left in the course of this will return here, or how many families will borrow or pay now so students can have the city as their campus — or if there will be a campus at all this fall.

This is all surreal. While some people talk about how the virus ravaging New York compares to 9/11, Donald Trump — who claims he lost hundreds of friends on 9/11, though he’s never named a single one of them — dispatches fighter planes to fly low over the city as a tribute to first responders.

While we still don’t know why New York was hit so hard by the virus, it’s clear that density — in places from the Meatpacking District here to the meatpacking plants in the Midwest — plays a big role in spreading it. And this is a place built on density, by far the densest big city in America as well as the biggest.

So this witchy hour we’re in is looking less like a PAUSE than a painful and fundamental shift in how the city functions and what it means to be a New Yorker.

To get through it, many people need to keep looking ahead and, I hope, looking at what New Yorkers can do in their own lives and demand from their politicians to see the city finally emerge as a fairer and more resilient one . I was born in New York City just ahead of the blackout babies, in November of 1977 — the month that Ed Koch was elected mayor and started to set the city on the path it’s mostly remained on until the virus — and I’ve remained here pretty much since. My dad grew up here, and his dad , and me and my brother are both raising our daughters here now, walking distance from each other and Rosie and Zadie.

I’m committed to the city for a lot of reasons, in addition to my family here: I own a house (or at least the bank lets me live in it), and one that’s bizarrely worth much more than I bought it for, at least if I was to sell it. My kids have a couple hundred square feet of their own outside as we shelter in place. And I know a bit and write a lot about New York, which really isn’t a skill set that travels.

But the truth is that the city of the past two decades has felt less and less like home, and more and more like the parts of Manhattan I try to avoid. I’ve spent too much of my adult life railing against the hipsters, gentrifiers, trustafarians and yuppies who didn’t have the good taste to spend their money here and then leave but instead “discovered” neighborhoods and remade them in their images, often to be priced out in time by new “discoverers.” I saved a bit of spleen for the people who rail against those people, rather than do something more productive with their time.

New York has become a city of increasingly sterile retail, one where internet listings have made real estate a more transparent and internationally accessible marketplace for foreign capital to reshape neighborhoods that preserve less and less of their old characters — for better and for worse.

It’s a corporate town, full of semi-interesting hustlers and characters along with its steady share of the depraved, the doomed, the damned and the dull. I’ve seen enough and read enough to know that none of that is new. But it’s metastasized over decades of financialized and increasingly monopolized and VC-fueled growth to swallow other values and ways of life. It’s hard to swim against a tide of money, and it takes a certain mania to even try.

Some of this is selfish, for sure. I preferred the waterfront of my youth, when the piers were barren and all but off-limits but for the bold and the desperate. No one with means would walk there, let alone live there, since it still had the taint of not so long ago shipping and industry and the rougher trades that lived by the waterfront, when the High Line was just a long-abandoned elevated track west of the projects that you could break into and walk on.

That all became part of the steel-and-glass luxury city that Mike Bloomberg described, one here for companies that can afford the best and priciest, and the people who draw incomes from those companies, directly or by providing services for their FIRE (that’s finance, insurance and real estate) workers who live in The City while firefighters commute in from Westchester and Long Island, or by constructing the buildings these people live in, or from the bloated government that services the “other” people who need help to stay here at all. A city that’s priced hospital beds out of big swathes of Manhattan and Brooklyn to clear space for luxury housing.

For years, I’ve been anticipating a reset as office space declines in importance with the rise of remote work, and that in turn brings down commercial and residential prices; hoping for a different, sturdier and livelier New York that exists for and better reflects the people who live here rather than serving as a clearinghouse for the world’s money. Over my adult life I’ve read endless warnings — including in this paper — about the return of the “bad old days” that are long gone for most New Yorkers, if they were here for those days at all. Now, we’re about to get a real taste of what a sharp downturn, along with a hostile federal government, feels like: “Drop Dead.” Now they’re looming as trading floors are vacant along with everything else that isn’t actually essential, and much of what’s abruptly left won’t soon return or the money that they brought in and splashed around.

This will be painful, but New York has always found ways to make new uses of what’s here. The same way that small and sturdy Brooklyn rowhouses built for the burgeoning middle class woke up one day as $2 million “townhouses,” and Single Residence Occupancies that single men depended on to maintain lives here, such as those were, become mansions with enough money and time, office spaces can become creative spaces like warehouses became artist’s lofts. Finally, housing prices, and everything else, should relate to the incomes of the bulk of the people working here. Right now, they relate to the vagaries of the global markets.

I’ll repeat that: The size of our economy, and real estate prices, should relate to the value of the goods and services people here actually produce. That will hurt a lot of New Yorkers who’ve invested in the city, including me, as property values and rents flatten or even go down, but some of that pain is needed. A city that’s too expensive for gas stations or grocery stores — looking at you, Manhattan — is too expensive for most people.

I hope we’re becoming a city that gives a proper Bronx cheer to Airbnb and Seamless and Uber and WeWork and all the venture capital-funded wannabe monopoly “tech” companies looking to “disrupt” fundamental aspects of our life by losing money for long enough to drive their competitors out of business altogether. That resists the convenience of Amazon and its ilk to support our local grocery and book and hardware stores, so that those are still there when we really need them.

A city that knows better than to cut off its nose to spite its face, now that we know better than to touch our faces. If New York has to sleep now to survive, it’s the perfect time to dream.

[email protected]

***

This essay appeared in the New York Daily News, May 3, 2020.

Photo via ShutterStock

#NYC #Covid19 #pandemic recovery #a city's identity #Harry Siegel

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nerdycatastrophe · 3 years

Text

Idk did some pixel art and I’m now gonna attach my danganronpa fancharacter biographies because I can :DD (sprite edits, character details and designs are subject to change btw and this very post will be re-blogged everytime I edit something.)

W/ SCARF AND BEANIE

Name and Talent:

Ikani Rinyu, Ultimate Digital/Multimedia Artist

Birth Date and Age:

February 13, 16 years old

Race and Ethnicity:

Polynesian Japanese // Filipino Japanese

Accent:

Japanese, just...japanese.

Blood Type:

A+

Weight and Height:

128 lbs, 5'2 ft

Mental or Physical disorders:

Recovering Pyromaniac (I’m still researching about Inattentive ADHD and if this oc has accurate symptoms) and Peptic Ulcer

Sex, Pronouns and Gender identity:

Biologically Female, Prefer She/Her/Herself & They/Them/Themself or any pronouns & Demi-girl

Sexual and Romantic orientation:

Asexual Biromantic

Religion / Belief:

Agnostic

Other Hobbies:

Cooking, Baking, Making things out of matchsticks and wood and Drawing traditionally.

Likes:

Making digital artworks, playing with match sticks and flowers.

Loves:

The idea of setting things on fire or being around fire (for emotional reasons and urges) and warmth.

Dislikes:

Theft-related activity, acidic food and seafood.

Despises:

The idea of water and feeling cold.

Personality type and traits: ISFP

(INTROVERTED;SENSING;FEELER;PERCEIVING)

Personality description:

Ikani is mostly self-aware of reality’s hardships yet tend to keep up an ‘’whatever goes, is what happen and I cannot potentially do anything to change that.’’ carefree, reckless, will only believe when she has seen attitude that pretends to be a healthy optimistic nihilist way of dealing with life but when unmasked turns out to be a faulty uncertain self-hate of pessimism that pretends to be optimistic or a realist way of thinking and solving problems. This can badly affects her creative ability to do any problem solving, thinking outside the box or standing up for herself and the people she loves alone unless she has encountered that situation before or has help from someone with far more experience. She does not rebel that much to authority or dictatorship as she believes rules are rules or the law is the law and whatever unintended consequences that follow or reports of abuse of power are normal and natural but she’s open-minded and adaptable enough to consider changing rules and regulations peacefully if she’s convinced or confident enough. Either way, Whatever happens is whatever happens in the present and she won’t make any effort to neither change or preserve any rules or laws that much. She, most of the time, follows whatever happens in the present world with no consideration for the consequences that would follow because she doesn’t like to think philosophically or overthink.

Habits:

Stimming, flapping hands around, running around in circles when stressed, excited, happy, confused or afraid if she can’t bottle up her emotions, Running away from problems as much as possible (literally and figuratively) and bottling up her feelings. Also tends to get distracted and daydreams a lot yet when it’s her turn to talk about herself she goes a little overboard which can put off people and assume she is selfish. (when it’s just a habit she does)

Character morality alignment:

Lawful Neutral <-> Neutral Good

Name Etymology and Shenanigans 1:

Ikani Rinyu once translated from Japanese to English respectively means ‘’How’’ and ‘’Renew’’ forming the phrase, ‘’How renew.’’

Name Etymology and Shenanigans 2:

Mess with the letters on Ikani and you’ll get ‘’Ikanai’’ which means ‘’Don’t go’’ referring to her brother, ‘’Ika’’ which means ‘’not exceeding’’, ‘’Kanai’’ which means ‘’Flower’’, ‘’Kani’’ which means ‘’crab’’, ‘’Ikan’’ which means ‘’Fish’’, ‘’Ani’’ which is another term for ‘’brother’’ and ‘’Ni’’ which means ‘’to go’’

Name Etymology and Shenanigans 3:

Mess with the letters on Rinyu and you’ll get ‘’Rin’’ which means ‘’Cold’’ in Japanese and ‘’Dignified’’ or ‘’Severe’’ in Italian, ‘’Inu’’ which means ‘’Dog’’, and ‘’Rinu’’ which can mean ‘’Freelance of flowers’’ and ‘’Beautiful’’ or ‘’Pretty’’ in Indian.

Zodiac and Planet:

She is an Aquarius and is assigned the planet Uranus based on her zodiac.

Backstory:

Ikani Rinyu was born as a second child to a worker class family (Rinyu family) who mostly had time for her. Many years went by and her parents had to focus on things they deemed far more important in order to sustain a family with regular income. Her family’s income condition worsened when the day before Ikani 7th birthday, She, her brother and her parents were robbed of a lot of yen at gun-point by a gang after they went to the store and bought a digital tablet for her as a gift (because they felt as if they were neglecting Ikani because of work). After the incident happened, Ikani's mother divorced with her husband because it turned out that Ikani's father had connections with the gang that robbed them and never told her about it. Another reason for her parents divorce is that both of her father and mother had an underlying conflict in which both were never really interested in each other and only agreed to marry back when they were friends so that they can decrease their tax and avoid debt and they both felt guilty about divorcing each other because both felt that they were selfish with their underlying mutual motivations for marriage, they were still saving up money and investing and couldn’t afford to divorce early, and that divorcing will affect their children greatly if they will be honest about it to them at an early age (suprise suprise, bottling up your feelings worsens everything, yourself and everyone around you). This robbery incident went mainstream after the time Ikani’s mother divorced Ikani’s father and her remaining family was secretly interviewed by a group of ''journalists'' and this is how (insert academy name) found and scouted Ikani just so they can replace and -cover up an ultimate's death.- So her mom and the group of journalists made a contract in exchange for financial gain and basically free education for Ikani and her brother and also medical + financial insurance. Ikani started setting things on fire (mostly flowers, sticks and wood) on ‘’accident’’ just to gain attention from her busy mom, brother and everyone else she was close to and was forming a relationship with, in which her ‘’habits’’ slowly spiralled and developed into impulsive Pyromania because she felt that she was never loved enough + with her parents divorce taking a toll on her (her brother tried to help but also didn't know what to do and was busy with their own school). Around this time, she also felt like eating would decrease her family's money greatly so she tried skipped eating snacks at school but not basic meals yet she still developed peptic ulcer. On her 11th birthday, Ikani’s brother finally took a stand and consulted a ‘’reliable’’ therapist/psychiatrist and a dietician (who helped with the insert academy's goals) despite it being expensive and discouraged by her mom. Her therapist/psychiatrist then noted to her parents that Ikani should focus more on expressing her emotions in more artistic and creative ways in order to cope with her bottled up emotions, trauma and urges and using the digital tablet she got at age 7 when everything was still relatively alright should be a good head start. Her dietician also helped her with resolving her peptic ulcer and convinced her that she shouldn't feel bad about eating extra snacks and set out a diet for her to follow. Soon, The academy’s contract money given to her parents was enough to sustain her creative urges as Ikani eventually learned to create moving and still digital artworks including complex 3d and photography by simply using her tablet that had limited features over the years despite her age as she contributed to many famous and iconic company logos, designs, presentations, artworks, animations, movies, edits and videos that are found in the media. Over the years, Ikani secretly wished that the contract would stop as that diverted corporate's financial wants for themselves because of her hidden relations with the academy journalists and she wishes she was never born and regretted that time she was too ''needy'' at age 7 (she shouldn't blame herself though) but never took her own ground against it to her mom as she felt like she was selfish for wanting to do something her mom didn't desire so she ended up ONLY EVER venting her emotions through her work/hobby and sometimes forgot how to express her emotions.

Reasons for acting the way she does during the killing game:

The reason why she doesn’t vent her emotions and only bottles it up during the killing game is because just like in the original Danganronpa series, Monokuma would confiscate your belongings that allowed access to communicating with the outside world (and it just turned out her only venting item was a digital tablet that would probably screw up Monokuma) Also, it’s because the idea of ‘’Survival of the Fittest.’’, ‘’Being weak will kill you.’’ and ‘’No time for crying because it is not yet over’’ is in her head all the time + fear of being impulsive again and accidentally resurfacing her Pyromania and basically rendering her brother’s efforts to help her with her problems useless so yeah she’s guilty of wanting to feel emotions so she eventually becomes numb to the things happening around her. All of these are her ways of justifying being emotionless, being unintentionally ignorant and coping with loss and grief in a dangerous game that could kill you any moment.

Student percentile, Predictability and chances:

>Gets killed normally: 30%

>Punished and killed for breaking rules OR due to unfair trial misconduct shenanigans because plot: 4.6%

>ATTEMPTED to murder someone: 20%

>Blackened AND escapes: 10.5%

>Blackened BUT executed: 25.5 %

>Killed someone BUT died during or before their murder trial: 9%

>Betrays everyone as the MASTERMIND: 1.5 %

>Betrays everyone as the MOLE // TRAITOR: 5.7 %

>Survives the killing game as an forever evil MOLE // TRAITOR // MASTERMIND in the killing game: 0.8 %

> Survives the killing game as a redeemed MOLE // TRAITOR // MASTERMIND in the killing game: 0.3 %

>Survives the killing game as a normal person in the killing game: 35%

W/ VISION CORRECTING VISORS

2. W/ VISION CORRECTING READING GLASSES

3. N/A EYEWEAR

Name and Talent:

Cyl Bol // Cyden Boliver ^ Ultimate Arcade Attendant

Birth Date and Age:

July 9 ^ 15 years old

Race and Ethnicity:

Dutch Japanese

Accent:

Russian mixed with Dutch and Japanese

Blood Type:

B-

Weight and Height:

100 lbs ^ 5'5 ft

Mental or Physical disorders:

Developing schizophrenia symptoms (I’m still researching on this so I’m not sure) and PAPD (Passive-Aggressive Disorder) and has genetic Albinism + Astigmatism.

Sex, Pronouns and Gender identity:

Biologically male, Any pronouns but They/Them/Themself and He/Him/Himself are preferred, Gender-fluid

Sexual and Romantic orientation:

Toric // Quadrisan or Viramoric

Religion / Belief:

Reformed // Progressive Judiasm (yeah, this the correct term-)

Other Hobbies:

Debate, Internet surfing, Meditation, Reading philosophical/theology books, Practicing first-aid methods and crushing herbs.

Likes:

Salt, Bread, Dieting (fasting), Figs, Bread, Wheat and Grains, Krupnik with meat

Loves:

Philosophy, Theology, Basic human rights, Debating, Eating Chopped Liver

Dislikes:

The taste of pork (im sorry for adding this if it feels a little bit racist but I genuinely hate pork and I wanted to add it to a character that fits it the most without being too ignorant and stereotypical while still making the character that dislikes pork have an actual personality and backstory other than just RELIGION stuff. keep in mind this character hates pork not because it’s ‘’unholy’’, it’s because it tastes horrible for them), Immature // Karen customers, His own talent, Seeds, Human contact, Getting sick and parties/social celebrations.

Despises:

Strict people, Strict rules, Strict regulations, Dense and stubborn optimists, Peer pressure, Being taunted for being weak // frail, The sun’s warmth and sunlight, Going outside, Backstabbers and being manipulated.

Personality type and traits: INTP

(INTROVERTED;INTUITIVE;THINKING;PERCEIVING)

Personality description:

Really really intentionally and maybe unintentionally paranoid, superstitious, ‘’weird’’ passive-aggressive and lonely since it's his way of avoiding unnecessary conversations that could drain out his energy for him to save up on topics he deems far more important (philosophy + theology) and people that could potentially hurt him again unless they specifically ask him or want something from him for a short // limited amount of time and say it extremely extremely politely to the point where he feels pity or someone out-smarts his passive-aggressiveness causing Cyl to do your favor immediately out of embarrassment, anger, frustration or getting flustered. Most of the time, Cyl has a rather nihilistic and pessimistic (but sometimes, realistic and optimistic at times) views and mindsets of life and would rather die rather than following strict regulations // rules. Although he is a passive type of Nihilist and knows there isn’t that much value in life despite searching it (even with religion), He still is sort of a coward and ends up helping other people out of pity, jealousy, admiration or respect and will still be willing to fight for people’s rights things society deems unworthy despite the odds and his diminishing motivation on doing so. Cyl prefers to be individualistic, thoughtful, overthink for hours, alone and free when it comes to him making decisions or going onto places. Although he’s an INTP, He allows his emotions to run wild at times (even if in the process, hurting other people whether he realizes it or not) which allows him to make thoughtfully calculated decisions without having the burden of emotions and mood. Because of his defiance against the norms, He can usually think outside the box and think of solutions quick enough to solve an underlying problem on time in an creative yet messy analytical manner. Also yeah he struggles following rules.

Habits:

Praying a bit too much than usual, Rapidly cleaning visor goggles // reading glasses even when not needed, Limping hands and fingers to relax hand tendons, muscles and bones and tugging at Hanukkah snow cap when embarrassed / flustered.

Character moral alignment:

Chaotic Neutral

Name Etymology and Shenanigans 1:

Cyl is an abbreviation of ‘’Cylinder’’ which indicates the lens power your doctor is prescribing to correct your astigmatism (and this oc has astigmatism)

Name Etymology and Shenanigans 2:

Bol can be an abbreivation for Broek Op Langedijk (a dutch town), Beacon of light, Bread of Life, Bolivia’s (sounds like Boliver) ISO Country code, Beginning Of Life and Balls Of Light (paranormal phenominon associated with crop circles) Name Etymology and Shenanigans 3:

Cyden is of English origin and means "To stand strong and be brave together as one" and Cayden is of American origin and means ‘’Fighter’’

Name Etymology and Shenanigans 4:

Bolivar is the name of the South American soldier that had a country (Bolivia) dedicated to him. Oliver is a boy name that means ‘’Descendant Of The Ancestor’’ in English, In latin it means Olive (symbol of peace); peaceful. Olive is a girl’s name meaning ‘’Olive tree’’ and is another symbol of peace.

Zodiac and Planet:

He is a Cancer and is assigned the ‘planet’ moon based on their zodiac.

Backstory:

N/A (ITS ALMOST 2 AM LOL MAYBE TOMORROW)

Student percentile, Predictability and chances:

N/A (ITS ALMOST 2 AM LOL MAYBE TOMORROW)

#Ikani Rinyu #Cyl Bol #Cyden Boliver #Ultimate Multi-Media Artist #Ultimate Arcade Attendant #Danganronpa : Even in Digital Equality #Danganronpa Pixel Art sprite #Danganronpa #Danganronpa Fancharacters #Danganronpa OCs

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firstumcschenectady · 3 years

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“Humans: Needing Love and Comfort”

(a sermon dialogue with Rev. Lynn Gardner of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Schenectady and Rev. Sara Baron of the First United Methodist Church of Schenectady)

Part 1: Our awareness of our need for mothering (which is our need to be loved, and comforted)

Lynn: It started when I was on my yoga mat. It was early one morning last spring. I hadn’t been sleeping well, and I was up as the sun was rising, moving through familiar yoga asanas, gently stretching, moving, breathing. I was in child’s pose… curled over bent knees, forehead resting on the mat, when the crying began. Everything that my body had been holding in was let loose in a torrent of tears, growing into deep sobs. Worry, grief, fear, sadness, loneliness and anger, pouring out. My heart ached thinking of all those who were suffering alone or separated from anyone who was familiar.

On the day we were born and received the gift of our first breath we depended on our mothers, our parents, or other caring adults in order to survive. As we grew, those needs changed, but our need to be loved and cared for is still part of us. That morning on my yoga mat, I rocked, and cried, feeling the vulnerability of being human… that we need one another. This may be our vulnerability AND our strength.

Sara: The past year has been one of developing my identity as a mother. My child was born 51 weeks ago today. It has been a very long time since I’ve needed mothering as much as I have since I became a mother. It turns out that the capacity to give my child what he needs is dependent on having enough of my own needs met and, quite often, I can’t fulfill both sets of needs on my own, and am dependent on others to hold me up so I can hold him up.

I was raised upper middle class, and I’m white, and I have internalized the message that self-sufficiency is “good.” Which means I’m REALLY BAD at asking for help, and that hasn’t made me need it less. The pandemic has complicated EVERYTHING. When I needed help the most it felt least safe to receive it. When I hit the end of my capacity and could go no further, when tears filled my eyes and I simply could not do what I needed to do, when without love and comfort and support I could no longer offer love and comfort and support… I have spent this year learning that I need to be mothered well in order to mother well. For me, at least, this applies both to parenting AND to pastoring. To offer love and comfort to my congregation ALSO requires that I have something to give, and that means I have to reach out when I need love and comfort too.

Part 2: Stories of times we have received loving, comforting care when we needed it

Support can come in a wider range of formats than I ever knew. There was, for me, one day when everything I needed to do most profoundly exceeded my capacity to do it. Before that day was easier, after that day was easier, but on that day I could simply go no further. I remember texting 3 friends. It was August, and nothing felt safe, especially not in person. One friend got in the car to come help. Another stayed on the phone with me until she arrived and let me cry while being heard. The third texted back and forth all day assuring me that I was allowed to make things easier on myself, and it didn’t mean I was failing as a mother to do so.

Those three friends comforted me that day, they let their love for me become support when I needed it. I think it is fair to say that they mothered me, and BECAUSE they took care of me, I was able to take care of my child.

In some ways this story seems too small, and in other ways it seems … archetypal. Looking back at my life there are innumerable times when my pain or burden was too much to bear. In every one of them, I reached out for support. Sometimes I reached out directly to the Divine, which for me means I disappeared into nature and silence for the hours I needed before I could form words again. Other times I have reached out to family or friends (or my own pastor), and let them hold me up. It is in being held - in any medium- that I can regain my own self-regulation and find my way again.

Lynn: Isn’t it amazing when someone shows up in simple yet deeply caring ways? 21 years ago I went to stay at my parent’s home when my Mom was nearing the end of her life. She had been diagnosed with cancer just five weeks earlier. She was at home with hospice care, laying in a bed where she could look out and see her garden, and my father and sisters and I were caring for her and for one another. A long time friend called and asked if she could come by. She arrived with three hot-fudge brownie sundaes, one for me, one for her, and one for my Dad. Let’s go for a walk, she suggested. We walked and ate. She listened, and we cried and laughed together, and also held space for the comfort of shared silence. That was the most delicious sundae I have ever eaten.

Each of these moments in our lives have served to remind us that we are not self-sufficient, we do not walk or work alone. It is because of our connections that we are.. It is because we have been nurtured that we are functional and able to offer nurture.

Part 3: Growing us into capacity to give mothering

Sara: Our sweet baby is teething. It is miserable for everyone involved. We are very thankful in our house for pain medication. But sometimes it isn’t enough. Sometimes he hurts, and nothing we can do makes the hurt go away, and it is awful. In those moments, all we can do is be with him and assure him he isn’t alone. It doesn’t feel like enough in the moment, but I also wouldn’t dream of letting him suffer alone.

There are many sources of pain in life, physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional. In some cases we are able to do things that change them, like feeding people who are hungry. In many cases we cannot change reality, or the pain people experience, when they are grieving. In those cases all we can do is be with one another, and assure each other we aren’t alone. It doesn’t feel like enough, but the difference between being alone and being supported is significant. Our congregations can be communities of practice… where we continue to learn about giving and receiving care.

This has been one of the worst parts of the pandemic, that the means of support and comfort we are used to offering grieving people have been taken away. I invite those who are safely ready and able to loosen their COVID restrictions to think about how to offer love and support now that wasn’t possible before.

Learning the limits of what comfort I can give has never felt enjoyable, but it seems like the capacity to be a mother grows along with my awareness of my own limitations.

Part 4: The Divine as Nurturer, and Faith as Subversive when it comes to nurture.

The Gospel lesson we read today in the United Methodist church instructs us to “abide in love,” and expounds eloquently on the subject. I believe that this is what faith is all about. In Christian and United Methodist lingo we talk about “sanctification” which is the process of letting go of whatever is not love and being filled up with love so that you can respond to every person in every moment with pure love. In our models, continued faith development is all aimed at sanctification. (John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement believed that people could reach perfection in love during their life times. ;) I share that as an interesting historical fact.)

In real life though, things are complicated. In many circumstances it is not clear what the most loving response actually is. What looks from one angle like loving nurture looks from another angle like enabling. These days I find myself reminding myself several times a day about the process of emerging from cocoons. That is, when transformed creatures emerge from cocoons it is a slow and seemingly painful process. Over the years many well meaning humans have tried to ease creatures ways out of the cocoon, only to learn that the moths and butterflies are permanently damaged by having the process eased. There is a fine line to walk in care for others, and I find I am never clear which side of it I’m on.

Lynn: Receiving care can also be complicated. Sometimes we just need someone to help us, or for someone to comfort us, but we don’t ask, and feel resentful. Or we don’t know who to ask… or we tell ourselves we don’t deserve it, or that someone else needs it more. And sometimes, it is so hard to just allow ourselves to be cared for… to really receive the love that is being offered.

Prior to seminary, I worked in child care for 20 years. Over those years, and while raising our daughter, I have held and rocked many a tired cranky little one. Whether you have done so yourself or not, I invite to imagine holding an overly-tired toddler, who is crying and pushing away, resisting their need for sleep with every ounce of energy they have. They are so tired… and so upset… not wanting to give up, to let go, and to sink into the arms that are holding them.

Unitarian Universalism affirms that each of us is worthy of love…. That we are each more than our worst mistake. That we are each worthy of care and comfort. We are all held by a larger Love that will not let us go… even when we struggle… even when we push away… I can imagine the Holy whispering, “shhh…. Shhhh….. I’m right here.”

Sara: I’m also deeply aware that while the Divine, faith, and Biblical teaching all call us to love, in our society the expectations around that love vary according to the bodies we occupy. Lynn and I have been reflecting on the human need to receive mothering - the human need to receive love and comfort - and suggesting that faith communities may be sources of giving good care so those in them can then give good care to the world. Yet, I keep thinking about the realities of “emotional labor” and the ways that female embodied people, and people of color, along with others thought in society to occupy subordinate positions are subliminally taught to offer care and nurture to those who are male embodied, white, and empowered. Kate Manne in “Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny” talks about the ways emotional labor is thought to be the work of some and the privilege to receive of others, and how this is encouraged with “carrots” and enforced with “sticks.”

This awareness brings some of the deeper challenges of celebrating love and comfort into view. Humans need love and comfort. Humans can give love and comfort. But often the giving becomes the role of some and the receiving the roles of others. I believe that one of the subversive narratives of faith is inverting those roles, and making the giving of love, comfort, and nurture the role of all people - especially the ones in power.

So, dear ones, may we receive the wonderful mothering of the Divine and of the people of faith, and may we soak in love and comfort so that we are able to share it with abundance.

Amen

#Thinking Church #Progressive Christianity #unitarian universalism #Dialogue Sermon #Humans need love and comfort #Mothers Day is complicated #Rev Sara E Baron #Rev Lynn Gardner #Schenectady #A Very Schenectady Worship #UMC #still sorry about the umc world #subverting and loving mothers day #Love and Comfort

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thoughtsofamidnightson · 4 years

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title: Epiphany

series: Thoughts of a Midnight Son

part: 1 / 1

setting: Eclipse, before the proposal

word count: 3114

rating: T

author’s note: This is my first piece ever written from Edward’s point of view, and my first time writing Twilight fanfiction in seven (?!) years. My aim was to make it as canon as possible. If you read it, I would love to hear your honest opinion — if anything can be improved, I would like to know. A special thanks to @obstinateswan on Instagram for being an extraordrinary beta reader.

On so many occasions during the past ninety years, I had wished to sleep. To kill the inharmonious symphonies constantly buzzing in my head, to be enclosed in complete and utter silence, to not hear the happy and life-affirming thoughts of love in my family. It was tiring. Tiring to be reminded every living second that while the six others had a purpose for living, a raison d’être, I drifted through life (if you could even call it that) with no aim or progress. After the first time, earning a medical degree wasn’t exactly an accomplishment, much less a reason to live. I didn’t share my father’s admirable self-control, which meant I couldn’t even put my exceeding knowledge of medical theory to use and devote my inexhaustible time to save lives. And as I was frozen in a 17-year-old body, I neither could engage in any other purposeful field of work. Just infinite books and tunes, for all eternity. When you spend so much time just existing, there comes a time when you wish you could succumb to the sweet release sleeping would be and simply not exist. A couple of hours once a decade would have sufficed.

But now, lying here next to the sleeping form of the purest and most beautiful creature to ever have existed, I was grateful for my lacking ability to repose; every second I was awake meant another second of watching Bella sleep. Of studying her peaceful face, listening to her slow heartbeat and her deep, even breaths, and, if I were lucky, and I often were, getting a delightful glimpse of her otherwise inaccessible mind, of her unedited and honest thoughts. There were few things for which I would trade that opportunity.

Almost on cue, she murmured my name, her mouth barely moving, her eyelids fluttering slightly, and as if the words were obliged to follow like they were my surname, she whispered, ‘I love you.’ My chest instantly filled with warmth (albeit an illusion), and like every other time I had heard her say my name in her sleep, it felt as if my heart skipped a beat.

But it didn’t. Or rather, it skipped every beat. It always would. From that night in nineteen-eighteen till eternity, it would stay the same: hard as stone and cold as ice—reminding me that although the ability to witness Bella sleep had made me feel somewhat of a fondness for my otherwise condemned nature a moment prior, there was still nothing I wanted more in this world than to not be what I was. To be warm and soft, to be mortal. Human. To feel my heart pump to the rhythm of Bella’s. To fall asleep with her in my arms. To dream about her. To kiss her without holding back. To feel the comfortable exhaustion, in my head and in my body, from staying up all night together. But more than anything else, I wanted—every frozen cell of my undead body wanted—to give her a normal human life, a human relationship. A love that did not force her to make a choice between constantly facing the risk of dying, or immortality. I wanted to attend college with her, to stay up and write assignments, get tipsy together at private parties, to take her out on dinner dates, to watch her face and body change as time went by, to give her children— as many or as few as she wanted—to grow old with her, to look at our grey hair and think of all the years I’d been blessed with her love, of how much we’d lived and loved in just one lifetime. One lifetime with her would never be enough—forever wouldn’t be enough— but was limited time the price I was willing to pay if it meant we could have a human relationship? I wanted her to experience all aspects of human love, and I, selfishly, wanted to experience them with her. Aspects I had, although having heard humans value them for nearly a century, so wrongly judged as trivial and superfluous. They were not, however, and I saw that now that I loved someone myself; what I wouldn’t give to have those seemingly mundane human moments with Bella.

Yet maybe eternity was exactly what I wouldn't give in return for being human together. How could you fit the infinite sea into a fixed container, force boundless love into measured time? As much as I longed and craved for these other terms of existence, I also couldn’t ignore the simple fact that if immortality had not been forced upon me all those years ago, I never would have had the chance to meet Bella. Frankly, I plausibly would have died before she was even conceived. Regardless of how many times I thought about it, it always afflicted me; the universe had granted me a reason to live. A reason to be truly content at the core of my being—that is, loving Bella and having her miraculously and for some unfathomable reason love me in return. But I was only alive to experience it because the same universe had taken my mortality and made me a blood-lusting monster—whose very existence threatened the life of this only reason to live. It never ceased to seem like a sick joke to me. A ludicrous paradox. But perhaps the perfect world simply could not exist. Perhaps it was only fair. To me, not to her. From the moment I had first touched her life, the universe had been unfair to her. Had it been fair, it would have let her escape, made her flee while she had the chance, let her move on when I had left. But it didn’t. She didn’t. And so she was here, lying in the cold embrace of a man (if that was what I was) who would never grow old with her, never make her a mother—never give her the human love she deserved more than any other soul in this world.

She stirred a little, nuzzling closer to me and laying her hand on my chest. I pulled the blanket tighter around her and glanced at her bare arm, checking for any indication that she was cold, but her skin was smooth as ever, almost glowing in the streak of pale moonlight that shone through her thin curtains. Lightly, she clenched the fabric of my t-shirt in her fist and let out a pleased sound. My body stiffened instinctively. Letting go of my shirt, her hand drifted lower, down my torso, while her lips muttered syllables, which, despite being incoherent, told me she appreciated whatever she was dreaming of. I carefully grabbed her hand before it could slide further down my abdomen and tucked her arm back in under the blanket. She quietly groaned in objection and I kissed the top of her head, breathed in her intoxicating scent, and let out a sigh. Oh, to be human.

I felt her settle against my side, grazing my ribcage with her nose before finally falling into a deeper sleep. Or so I thought. ‘Change me,’ she suddenly pleaded into my shirt, still clearly asleep, and my lips twitched up into a humorless smile; how preposterously ironic it was that while I lied here, so desperately wishing that the heart in my chest was beating, she dreamt of hers freezing forever. The thought sickened me, although less now than before; I had come to realize that it was the inevitable future. Not because our relationship couldn’t continue if she stayed human (it could), nor because we were bound by the laws of our self-proclaimed overlords in Italy. No, Bella’s future as a vampire could not be prevented because she was extraordinarily and incomparably stubborn, and she wanted to be turned. It went against everything I wanted for her; it was everything I did not want for her. It was the future I had feared the most next after her premature death. But she had made her decision, and I would have to live with it.

I tried to picture her. Alice’s visions had gotten incredibly (and frustratingly) clear, crystalline, lately, so imagining Bella with golden eyes and marble skin wasn’t exactly difficult. What was difficult was imagining Bella like this without feeling prodigious disgust. Not that I didn’t find the sight itself appealing; she was impossibly beautiful—immortality wouldn’t change that. No, it was the mere idea of her giving up her life only to be with me which made me sick to my stomach. Although it had been a while since it had last appeared in my mind, the image of Hades condemning Persephone to a life in his kingdom of the dead suddenly burned my retina.

I clenched my eyes shut, trying to shove away my glum thoughts. I might have been Hades, but Bella wasn’t Persephone. I knew that now. Unlike the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, she had had a choice; it was her own decision to give up her human life altogether. She wanted to be with the monster. I would never intentionally, never willingly force her to renounce mortality in favor of my underworld—on the contrary, I had done everything in my power to prevent her katabasis. Did that mean I neither was Hades after all?

On one hand, I felt self-infatuated for still being with her. I had tried, tried to free her from the destiny she now had decided upon, and I had failed. I had been too weak. My selfish desires had won over her right to have a normal human life, and I had come back. I had stayed with her, because I couldn’t live without her. It might have been her own decision that she would give up her mortality, but it was a decision she never would have made—she never would have had to make—if I had stayed out of her life.

On the other hand, and this voice of reason was quite often defeated by the former, she couldn’t live without me either. When I left her, I had caused her immense pain. I knew that, not only because the pictures from Charlie’s mind of her hollow-eyed and ashen face still haunted me. But because I knew she loved me, and if she had felt just a fraction of the agony and torture I had felt when we were separated, she still would have suffered enough for a lifetime. I knew the thought of aging, the thought of our time together running out, pained her greatly, and I could and would not put her through any pain again.

Except I would. Once my venom reached her blood, she would burn in hell, and she wouldn’t know when it would stop. All she would know was pain, the excruciating feeling of being burned alive. I winced at the thought, my fingers clenching into fists.

But the pain would stop, I reminded myself. She would wake up, feeling different—so different—but she would feel good, new. At least that is what I told myself. If I could believe she would enjoy life beyond the pain, that having forever together would be enough for her not to eventually regret her choice, the thought of turning her was slightly less intolerable.

She turned in her sleep, and I gazed down to check on her. The sight was breath-taking. Her soft lips were slightly parted, her long, dark eyelashes brushed her smooth cheeks, and the blanket had ridden a couple of inches down, revealing her bare shoulders and collarbone. I suddenly felt an overwhelming, though not foreign urge to kiss her on the neck, to let my lips linger on her hot skin while brushing my fingers down her arm. Would her chest flush? Would she sigh in pleasure?

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the wall with a quiet groan, my face raised towards the ceiling, my arms crossed. When thoughts like these invaded my mind—and they frequently did—I repressed them. I felt ashamed and impure for letting her be the object of my carnal desires, for having any carnal desires at all. Repressing them helped me stay in control, but it didn’t make them go away. I wanted her. I could not deny that. So why did I deny myself thinking of her?

I knew she thought of me. Her dream earlier testified to that, as well as the fact that she often tried to initiate more when we kissed, and the look of disappointment, shame, and yearning on her face when I had to break it off. Sometimes I think she misread my reluctance towards intimacy as I not having the same desires as she. If only she knew—what she did to me, how much I cursed my nature every time I had to pull away, how much I wanted to deepen our kiss, how much I craved to touch her, to worship her like a Goddess. How every fiber of my being ached for the feeling of her naked body against mine, of being one with her. If only she knew how much self-control it took me not to be with her the way I had so blisteringly longed for since the day I fell in love with her.

But I refused to give in to the lust—both mine and hers. At least until after our wedding. The rational part of me loathed the idea of consummating our marriage while she was still human, but I sensed she wished to have this one experience before she was turned, and it was irritatingly hard to deny her anything she wanted. Especially when it was something I, somewhere in the dark and primal corners of my mind, wanted myself. And so, if she verbalized her desire to be intimate before her body froze forever, I would agree to make love on our honeymoon. Like human newlyweds, except this was a tad more dangerous; it could end fatally. And yet, I would make her this promise if need be, and not only because my forbidden and selfish desires had gotten the better of me; if she experienced the unequaled and ‘earth-shattering’ ecstasy, which I, through ninety years of being a telepath, had learned sex was, maybe—maybe—she would want to stay human. Just a couple of more years. Just long enough for her to finish college. By now, it was my only hope.

Thinking about this (slight) possibility made me wonder how high a percentage her longing for a more physical relationship took up of the reason she wanted to be changed. Was it twenty percent? Fifty percent? Eighty? Was the only reason she wanted to be like me that she didn’t think she would ever be… sated if she stayed human? For a moment, I imagined an alternate universe in which I had been the human and she the vampire. What would I have done? What would I have wanted her to do? Would I have wanted the same as she did? I merged the picture of her, golden-eyed, pale, and visually perfect, with a much blurrier portrait of a 17-year-old, green-eyed, and humanly flawed Edward Masen, Jr. Which thoughts would have occupied him if he had fallen in love with immortal Bella Swan in the year 2005? I, undoubtedly, would not have loved her less, meaning that I would have been as little willing and capable of living without her as I was now. In consequence, I would never in a million years have allowed her to just let me age, outgrow her eternal youth, and decay until my death. I would never want to die if being with her forever was a possibility. What was the point of an Elysium if she would never be there?

The only Eden, the only eternal peace, would be joining her in immortality.

And we would be equal. I would free her from the perpetual fear of hurting me, her throat wouldn’t scorch in my presence, and she wouldn’t have to cling on to her last bit of self-control whenever our lips touched. We could be physically intimate as much, as freely, and as intensely as we wanted to. And we would have forever to love each other.

In equal delight and horror, I found that the thought of Bella and I being immortal together suddenly… appealed to me. Putting myself in her place and she in mine made it easier to see the advantages of her transformation. When I had gotten over the physical pain I would cause her and the fact that I had cost her a normal human life, there would be things I wouldn’t mind, would enjoy even in our new existence together. An odd, fluttering sensation filled my chest and stomach. The dust in the air suddenly seemed to glisten like specks of white gold. From somewhere in the dark, a sigh of relief could be heard.

I looked down at the angel in my arms, now sound asleep. Carefully, as not to wake her (though my experience was that not even deafening thunder could awake her in this state), I slid down in the bed and lied fully down next to her. With a feather-light touch, I brushed my thumb across her cheek, cupped her face, and as an overwhelming stream of unconditional and inexpressible love flowed through me, I kissed her on her forehead.

‘I get it now,’ I whispered to her sleeping face, so quietly that I doubted she would have heard if she had been awake. ‘I dream of being with you forever, too.’

Unlike at her prom all those months ago and any other moment prior to this, I could now return these words without flinching in pain or dread. It felt indescribably magnificent.

‘But until the time comes, I will soak up and savor every moment your heart is beating,’ I told her, placing another kiss on her forehead. She responded with an appreciative sound and nestled impossibly closer to me. I couldn’t help the stupid grin I suddenly felt appearing on my face; no one would ever make anyone as happy as she made me.

I had never been ungrateful for the life Carlisle had given me (my existential hate had always been directed towards myself), but now I suddenly felt unprecedented and completely over-shadowing gratitude for the immortal life I had been granted. After all, it had led me to Bella, and she was all I ever wanted—and because she had made the choice she had, all I would ever have. Forever.

#the twilight saga #twilight fanfiction #edward cullen #thoughts of a midnight son #writing #edward cullen's pov #edward's pov #bella swan #midnight sun #twilight #eclipse

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northwind4 · 4 years

Text

Dearest WingDings（11）

*It's a story about HandPlates! Gaster and Wing! Gaster

*I’ll appreciate it very much if you point out the mistakes I made in the translation, all kinds of help are welcomed!

*previous & next

*Handplates by @zarla-s

Wing!Gaster by me

————————————————

Chapter11

“WAR AGAINST THE PLATES”

174

The coffee was ready, Wing walked over and filled two mugs.

“When is the last time we slept?”He went to the workbench and handed one of the mugs to his companion.

Gaster glanced at the clock.

“6 days ago, I think.”

175

Gaster finally recovered completely a week ago, and a new plan was launched.

The previous project was canceled, and they arranged a comprehensive medical examination for the little skeletons. They also prepared the daily activities that children of this age should have, including courses and entertainment.

Although forgiving and overcoming the shadows of the past still had a long way to go, at least this was a new beginning.

The top-ranked items on the to-do list, right after “Accept Papyrus’ hug invitations anytime and anywhere”, was an iconic operation:

“i don’t care how long your mercy will last,”said Sans, “remove this weird thing first if you really want to show some kindness.”

W: Oh dear I can’t help wondering if you peeked at the outline.

GPS :? ? ?

W: Uh, sorry, I mean future.

W: And this is exactly what we are going to do next.

176

Plan 1

W: Since you drilled holes with an electric drill and then fixed it with screws

W: Sounds like it’s not that difficult to remove them.

G: ...

G: In order to prevent them from moving the plates themselves

He looked away.

G: I added some other magic to it

Plan 1 failed.

177

W: I made the 3D model of the children’s hands

W: Then we can make solid models with artificial calcium compounds and magic, which can act like the real bones to the greatest extent for practical operation.

W: We need about 20?

W: What’s that expression...

W: 30?

W: 40? 50? 60?

G: ...

G: Ten times more...please

178

WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE TO THEM YOU BAD SKELETON

179

W: (Turn on the computer to play the music Spear of Justice)

W: NGAHHH——!

G: What’s wrong with you

W: Howling to increase determination —__—

W: After all, this will be a huge project

180

Plan 5 failed.

W: It’s ok

W: It’s normal for this complicated operation to fail even 20 times.

181

Plan 26 failed.

W: emmmm

W: Sure enough, 20 is not enough.

W: Come on, there are more than 500 opportunities waiting for us!

182

Plan 159 failed.

W: Do you have more coffee?

G: I thought you would never be sleepy

W: Yeah I did not feel tired after becoming like this...I used to thought I didn’t need to eat or sleep anymore

W: Now it seems that I still have the limitation.

183

Plan 234 failed.

W: Honestly

W: If this thing is nailed to my hand

W: I’d rather break my whole hand than letting it stay on me

G: ...

W: Don’t tell me you think this can be tried to the kids

184

G: Maybe we can try to destroy the plates

W: Yes, but they are much stronger than the bones...

W: But we will never know without trying

185

Plan 287 failed.

Two scientists who had not slept for 3 days sank in the chair.

W: What on-under the earth did you use to make this thing?

W: Feels like it’s full of determination

G: It’s true that I was determined at the time

W: ...

Wing threw a part of himself at Gaster.

W: (*weakly)I’m gonna kill you...

186

Plan 299 failed.

W: Fine. You made me mad, little plate.

W: Do you think it will work if the beam of Gaster Blaster is focused on one point? Will it be strong enough to break the plate?

G: Yeah, together with the bones.

W: ...come on, I will control it

W: Ready?

W: HERE COMES THE 60000 ATTACK! !

187

The little skeletons playing in another room were attracted by the loud noise.

A large hole was smashed on the laboratory’s wall, and two Dr.Gasters were buried under the bricks and limestones. Inside the lab, the plate on the workbench was totally intact.

Wing climbed out of the piles of wall bricks. He lifted Gaster who had fallen on his body, shaking off the dust.

W: Are you okay?

G: Hmm...fine...

W: What material did you use to make that...?

W: It seems to be even stronger than the BARRIER.

Plan 300 failed.

188

Plan 324 failed.

W: It’s time to cook for the children again

W: Come on, you go to cook and take a break

G: No, you go to cook

W: You go

G: You go

W: You

Sans came over.

W: Hello kid, what’s up?

S: my brother just went to the kitchen

S: he wants to make you some—

G&W: Let’s go to cook.

189

Papyrus was waiting in the bedroom.

P: WOWIE! YOU SUCCEEDED IN CONVINCING THEM TO HAVE A REST!

P: HOW DID YOU DO THAT?

S: because i’m the brother of great papyrus

P: NYEH(≧∇≦)————!

The taller skeleton hugged his brother and kissed him.

190

Plan 401 failed.

W: One experiment failed 401 times

W: Do you know what this means

G: What

W: It means we are going to start the 402th time!

W: Yeah...!

He cheered weakly.

191

Plan 489 failed.

They made two cups of instant noodles.

W: (*eating) I always think instant noodles are better than compressed biscuits.

G: (*eating) I’m more used to chocolate.

Papyrus walked up to them.

W :?

P: (⁎⁍̴̛ᴗ⁍̴̛⁎)HUG

Gaster opened his arms and allowed the little skeleton to embrace him. From the stiffness of the action, the scientist still needed more practice.

P: WHAT ARE YOU EATING?

W: Instant noodles, a kind of convenience food.

P: MAY I—

G: No. You need a balanced diet.

The boy was a little bit lost, Gaster petted his head, and he was immediately happy again. He kissed his creator on the cheek before leaving to sleep.

W: Wow

W: (*applauding)

192

The coffee was ready, Wing walked over and filled two mugs.

“When is the last time we slept?”He went to the workbench and handed one of the mugs to his companion.

Gaster glanced at the clock.

“6 days ago, I think.”

Plan 502 failed.

193

Wing looked through the results of recent experiments.

W: We are very close...

W: Already able to eliminate all magic

W: Just stuck at the final physical removal step

W: Why did each bone break after removing the plate?

W: There must be something missing.

194

G: ...

G: I got an accident before

G: I wanted to use energy to...fix Sans’ right eye

G: ...

G: But the power suddenly went wrong and the explosion broke half of his skull.

His hands started shaking slightly, and Wing held them.

W: I am listening.

G: I put him in the tube for emergency treatment. At that time, his HP was full and all results of the physical examination were completely normal.

G: But he just refused to wake up, and the cracks in the skull cannot be healed.

G: Later I took Papyrus to heal him. It was amazing. He soon woke up and everything went well.

G: I think maybe it was not just because of magic...

195

G: Monsters are made of magic, and magic comes from our soul

G: And the soul can...generate determination?

G: Like you said, if the strength of the plates came from my determination

G: ...

He looked up at Wing’s eyes.

G: What were you thinking when you rushed into the burning core?

196

W: ...

W: Sure enough, the doer is the best one to undo what he has done.

197

W: Besides myself, I have seen many monsters using determination in various parallel worlds.

W: If there is anything in common, it is probably the condition for launching this kind of power

W: It needs a...strong reason? Like what you are fighting for.

W: But not for harm, it’s a kind of, ugh not very well described...let’s get it simple—

W: It’s to protect who you love.

198

W: You love them, you want to protect them, for which you are willing to give everything as the price.

W: Even getting burned or melted......even if everyone will forget you.

W: I guess when you decided to start THAT project, you must had something that you treasured very much. That desire exceeded your fear and every other emotions.

G: ...

W: No need to be afraid.

W: You can do it, for these people, for your children

W: For yourself.

199

Plan 513.

You can do it, WingDingsGaster.

Think about your reasons for insisting.

The reason I insisted, Gaster thought, the reason I insisted.

The rEasoN i gOt evErYThing wrOnG He thought of the war in the past, in the fire and screaming he couldn’t find his families anymore.

He remembered the desperate look on the king after losing his wife and children. There were also two children shaking together, and Wing’s burning purple eyes when he found everything.

He saw Asgore standing in front of him, holding a jar containing a human soul in his hand.

He saw his hands covered with blood and ashes.

Gaster stepped back in fear, the bone model on the operating platform shattered into dust again.

Wing gave him a hand, and he held his arm to adjust the breathing.

“It’s okay,”Wing said,“Try again, there’s no need to make yourself suffer that much.”

“It maybe hard, but love and protection should be happy things in nature.” The scientist in black made the equipment ready again.

“Try thinking about what made your strong determination.” Gaster closed his eyes.

What is that?

Perhaps it is the basic magic that his parents taught him, the first book he had got, the beautiful rain which he held an umbrella to wait for.

It is Asgore and Toriel holding his hands on the war field, and the dinner they invited him to. And the successfully running core, the anime that Alphys shared with him. Perhaps it is Wing telling him to smile more. It is Papyrus’ hug, is the smiling faces that the baby skeletons had shown when they saw him.

Gaster seemed to hear the sound of tears falling. He opened his eyes and saw mild green light, some power he had lost was calling for reviving, although it was still very little, it kept growing.

There was a warm feeling in his chest, like the resonance of the soul.

200

Strange today, Papyrus thought, the lab was too quiet.

The little skeletons walked to the door of the laboratory, where they found the reason why no one had made a sound.

Gaster lay on the bench, and Wing turned into a black blanket covering him. The two scientists was in the deep sleep, like they just ended a long war.

Two groups of intact artificial hand bones were placed on the operating table.

Test record:

Plan 513 succeeded.

To rule out chance factor and make sure, additional experiments (20/20):

All succeeded.

#handplates #wing!gaster #gaster #wingdingses #dearest wingdings

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danceswithcybermen · 4 years

Text

The Night Manager

Written for the X-Files Spooky Fanfic Exchange! It’s been on AO3 for a couple of weeks; click here to read it there. I’m just getting round to putting it here.

My spooky word was "satanic," and my recipient was @alienqueequeg. She requested, “Horror and/or smut if you're comfortable going there! I also like UST/RST, angst, casefile, AU. I'm open to anything and everything except baby/kidfic :)”

I’ve literally had this idea in my head since the 90s, and since you asked for horror, I figured this was an opportunity to finally do something with it.

I hated the episode “3” because it was a weak story, and it gave us only a cursory overview of Mulder’s mental collapse after Scully’s abduction. I wanted to write another, hopefully better vampire story, so here we go. This effort is an AU that replaces “3.” While it is a stand-alone story right now, I may turn it into a series.

Someone is exsanguinating victims in Los Angeles. Mulder, reeling from Scully’s disappearance, reluctantly investigates, and meets a mysterious woman he knows he recognizes -- but from where?

Rated T / PG-13.

This is NOT A MULDER/OTHER STORY!

Tagging @xfilesfanficexchange

Saint Petersburg, Russia, 1910

“But WHY? Why must we do this every day? It’s boring!” The little girl rose to a standing position and pouted. She was hyperactive and petulant, with no patience for daily meditation exercises.

The mystic shook his head. He had never before dealt with such awesome potential in such a young child. Usually, powers to this extent didn’t manifest until early adulthood. The girl was only nine, and he knew that her strengths exceeded even his own. “It’s for your own protection, Nastya. You don’t want to get hurt, do you?” What he didn’t mention was that others needed the protection more than the girl did. “You must learn--”

“To control my mind. Yes, I know. You say this every day.” She pointed at a nearby window. “Can’t we stop and go outside, just for a few minutes? It’s so nice.”

The mystic was firm. “One more set of the breathing exercises first. Center yourself, and then we’ll go for a walk.”

The girl rolled her eyes, but she sat back down on the floor pillow and acquiesced. The old mystic continued to watch her. It was clear that she had been given all of this power for a grand purpose, but he couldn’t fathom exactly what it was. He’d seen visions of what he assumed was her future, but he couldn’t make sense of any of the images. He knew he had seen a faraway place. Enormous steel and concrete structures rose from the ground in cities teeming with people wearing strange clothing and horseless carriages moving on the roads at great speeds.

In each vision had appeared a particular man. At first, he’d thought him her future husband or lover, but their relationship was -- something different. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. There was something about that man, and also a woman with red hair. They were important somehow.

He kept all of this from the child. How could he possibly explain it when he didn’t understand it all himself? He also knew that his time with the girl would be limited, and he didn’t know how limited it would be, whether he’d have another 10 years or only 10 months to tutor her. With a long way to go and an abbreviated time to get there, it was better to concentrate on the mind exercises. The visions could wait.

Yekaterinburg, Russia, July 17, 1918

She was running through a thick forest, with no destination other than away from her captors, away from the death squad that had just murdered her entire family. She didn’t even know she was capable of running. Under normal circumstances, the bunions on her feet gave her too much pain to even try, but the bayonet wound that had penetrated her bejeweled corset was proving a much more serious problem. She felt her lifeblood flowing out of her, seeping through her many layers of clothing.

I shouldn’t even be alive right now, she thought. Her mind was fogging, and she struggled to center it, the way she had been taught as a child.

She tripped over a branch and plunged forward hard, unable to suppress a scream as she hit the forest floor. She tried to center herself again and concentrate on getting back up, but she had reached the end of her endurance. She had lost too much blood.

It isn’t supposed to happen this way, she thought as she felt reality slipping away from her. My visions--

As she struggled to remain conscious, she heard a WHOOSH, then felt someone picking her up and turning her over. She forced her eyes open and saw a face she recognized. It was one of the night guards, one who was always kind. She had suspected him of being enamoured of her.

“Sebastian,” she whispered.

He smiled, and his eyes glowed. “It’s all right, my love,” he cooed, drawing her up into what she thought might be a kiss.

In the moments before she lost consciousness, she felt a prick in her neck.

Alexandria, Virginia, 1994

Fox Mulder woke up screaming and flailing, nearly knocking his coffee table over as he jumped to his feet, his arms positioned to ward off an attack from unseen aggressors. When he got his bearings, he sat back down again, picked up his pot pipe, and took a long hit.

The weed Langley had supplied was smooth, and if he smoked enough of it, he would drift off into a short but usually dreamless sleep, a brief respite from the hell his life had become. Usually. Not this time. Instead, he’d dreamed of a white room and his beautiful, loyal, funny, and kind partner strapped down to a cold steel table, evil-looking medical instruments doing ungodly things to her as he watched, frozen in place, unable to even speak.

She’d been gone for 45 days now. It had been forty-five days of sleeping little, eating even less, and overall letting the rest of his life go to hell as he chased every lead he got, no matter how shaky, all over the country.

He’d even driven up to Delaware because someone on an obscure Usenet group had sworn that a group of “devil worshippers” was holding her hostage in their “cult house.” He’d found the “cult house,” which turned out to be nothing more than a long-abandoned structure on a rural road. He’d found lots of evidence of teenagers using the house to drink and smoke weed, but there was no satanic cult, and there was no Scully.

Mulder exhaled. Drinking and smoking weed had seemed like a fine idea to get past this latest letdown, and that’s all he had been doing since returning the previous evening. He knew he could get drug-tested at any time, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care about much of anything anymore. He ate little, slept even less, wore the same clothes for days, and showered and shaved when he remembered or when Skinner yelled at him to do it.

He was in the middle of packing his next bowl when he heard pounding at the door and Skinner yelling his name. He put the pipe down, not even bothering to conceal the pot or the paraphernalia, and wandered to the door.

Mulder had barely gotten the door open when Skinner growled, “Where have you been? It’s after one o’clock, and you haven’t been answering your phone.” He looked Mulder up and down, sniffed, then spotted the bag of weed and the pipe on the coffee table. “Jesus, Mulder. What the hell are you thinking? What if you get called for a random drug test?” Skinner pushed his way in.

Mulder shut the door and shrugged. “Then I guess it would be the end of my storied career.” He sat down on the couch, considered taking a hit right in front of Skinner just for spite, then decided against it and put his head in his hands. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered without her.

Was that love? He didn’t know, but he was certain he didn’t want to live in a world that didn’t include Dana Scully. You could call it love, soulmates, or the Easter Bunny; the end result was the same. If she didn’t come back safe, he didn’t want to go on.

Skinner sighed. The apartment reeked of weed and beer. There were empty bottles all over the place, and Mulder clearly hadn’t showered or changed his clothes in days. Under normal circumstances, an agent in Mulder’s condition would be ordered to undergo a mandatory psychiatric evaluation, possibly paired with drug counseling. But these weren’t normal circumstances. The man was clearly out of his head with grief, having lost his other half. Skinner wanted to believe that Dana Scully was still alive, but he also knew that with every day that passed, the odds of her being found safe diminished. Officially, this was still a missing persons case. Unofficially, everyone knew it was a recovery operation, but he didn’t dare tell Mulder that.

“Clean yourself up now, Agent Mulder. You have a case.” He thrust a file towards the younger man. “A string of homicides in Los Angeles, could be the work of a cult. The victims are being exsanguinated.”

Mulder took the file and half heartedly leafed through it. “That doesn’t sound like an X-File.”

“The victims are the X-File. The coroner says the bodies are decomposing at rapid rates, and if the bodies are exposed to the sun, the skin starts burning as if it were in a frying pan.”

Mulder laughed bitterly. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me with this.”

“Is there a problem, Agent Mulder?”

Mulder threw the file atop the coffee table, and several empty beer bottles fell to the floor. “What do you expect me to do with those bodies? Autopsies aren’t what I do. They’re what my partner does. My MISSING partner. The partner that I know everybody in that goddamn bureau thinks is dead!” Mulder jumped to his feet and stalked over to the window. Part of him wanted to jump out of it, bust right through the glass. At least then, he’d feel something. He’d reached the point where he could no longer feel grief. He just felt nothing.

Skinner approached him from behind, the file in his hand. He threw it down on Mulder’s desk. “LOOK AT ME, Agent Mulder!” Mulder reluctantly turned his head to face Skinner. “I’ve been covering your ass for the past 45 days, but I don’t know how much longer I can keep it up. People are noticing your behavior, Agent Mulder, people who aren’t as patient as me, people who make sure you’re called in for a random drug test if you show up at the Bureau smelling like weed! You will be gone, and the X-Files will be gone with you.

“For god’s sake, look at yourself! You’re drinking like a fish, you’re not sleeping, you’re not eating, you’re not even bathing or changing your fucking clothes. I know you want to find Agent Scully. Goddamnit, I want to find her, too, but when you do find her, shouldn’t there be something for her to come back to?” He didn’t specify whether the “something” was Mulder himself, the X-Files, or both, a purposeful omission. How Mulder chose to interpret it didn’t matter. He needed to clean himself up and get back to work, give himself a purpose, give himself something to occupy his mind.

Mulder nodded and took the file from Skinner. He was right. Scully wouldn’t want to see him like this; she hated it when he got like this. She also wouldn’t want to hear that the X-Files had been closed because of his behavior.

“So,” Mulder began, “We’re looking at a reverse-vampire case?”

The Marlex Motel, Canoga Park, California

The case was pretty much as Skinner had described: A string of victims, of both genders and of various ages, body types, and ethnicities, all exsanguinated, most having suffered severe burns due to post-mortem sunlight exposure. Mulder noticed that. The killer always moved the victims into the sunlight. Even the victims who were killed indoors had been dragged over to a sunny window.

It was definitely an X-File, but without Scully’s expertise, Mulder didn’t understand what he was supposed to contribute. She was the only one who could do autopsies on X-Files cases properly. She knew what to look for.

It was after dark by the time Mulder approached a nearby motel that fell within the Bureau’s lodging allowance. He had thought of just not getting a room. There was nothing for him to do here, but he had to make a show of it, look like he was trying. One of the victims who hadn’t completely burned up by the time she was found, a young woman, had a stamp on her hand from the Blue Moon, a nightclub in this area. He’d go check it out.

At least they had alcohol there. Mulder fumed that he couldn’t bring his marijuana. Fucking airport security. Nothing helped him sleep better.

The front desk area was empty, and he rang the bell. “Just a minute!” a woman’s voice called from the back area. He heard what sounded like the same woman finishing up a conversation with a man, and then the woman emerged from the back. He noticed her eyes grow wide for just a moment, but then the woman quickly regained her composure. “May I help you?” she asked, and he thought he detected the slightest lilt in her voice.

He studied her for a moment. She looked so familiar, yet he couldn’t place her. She was small, about Scully’s height, with long brown hair and an exotically beautiful face. She was young, a teenager perhaps, and Mulder wondered if she was the owner’s daughter. But she wore a name tag that read “Anna - Night Manager,” and her demeanor was of a woman much older.

“Do I know you?” he finally asked. “I saw you look at me funny.”

The woman smiled. “No. For a moment, I thought you were somebody else, but I was mistaken. How can I help you?”

“One room, just for me. Three nights.” Mulder continued to look at her as she readied the paperwork and his key. Dammit, he’d seen that face before, but he couldn’t remember where. He realized he was staring and forced himself to look away. Maybe this is the owners’ daughter; maybe she’s older than she looks. Maybe he recognized her face from a file; maybe she’s an abductee and--

Mulder blanched, and the woman gave him a concerned look. “Are you all right, sir?”

He nodded. “Uh, yeah, just a sour stomach.”

“Well, I hope you get over that.” She handed him a key. “Room 6, straight that way. It’s next to the ice machine.

After Mulder left, the man from the back came to stand behind the woman. “You were very troubled by that man, Anastasia. I could tell. Why?”

“Sebastian, that’s him.”

“Who?”

Anastasia spun around to face her companion. “The man from my visions, from Grigori’s visions! I would know that man anywhere, Sebastian. That’s him.”

“So what does this mean?”

“I don’t know.” She turned back toward her desk. “I really don’t know, but that man is -- something terrible has happened to him. He’s overwhelmed with grief.”

Sebastian shook his head. “No, no, no, no. We don’t have time for humans’ problems. We have to find the people who are killing our kind before the humans do. You know that. The Council specifically requested that we take this on.”

“That I take this on, Sebastian. Me, not you. It’s my talents they want, but I’m going nowhere with this.” She pointed in the direction Mulder had gone. “That man has something to do with this case.”

Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “The killer?”

“No, not the killer. I’d have known. But something.”

**************************************************************

The Blue Moon had been a complete bust. Nobody who Mulder tried to question knew anything, or if they did, they weren’t telling. He could have gone at a few of them harder. He would have, had Scully been there to examine the bodies and investigate what he’d convinced himself was the most important facet of the case.

Now he wanted to get drunk, but he wasn’t going to do it in a nightclub where he’d just been waving his badge around. Luckily, there was a dive bar a block away; he’d passed it on the way to the club.

Mulder didn’t stagger out of the bar until the bartender cut him off. The nightclub he’d ostensibly come to investigate was only a few blocks from the motel, so he had walked. It was a sketchy neighborhood, and nearly empty this time of the night, but the temporary buoy he’d gotten from Skinner’s stern talking-down-to had worn off. Mulder was back to not caring about anything anymore. What was the worst that could happen to him?

He didn’t notice the mugger until the guy had his gun pressed into Mulder’s kidney. “You know what this is. Wallet and watch, man. Wallet and watch.”

Mulder sighed. “You don’t want to do this, kid. I’m a federal agent.”

“I don’t care if you’re the fucking President!” The mugger jammed the gun against Mulder’s back harder. “Wallet. And. Watch.”

Mulder thought he could turn around and take the guy, so he tried -- his second miscalculation that evening. His reflexes slowed down by the alcohol, Mulder wasn’t able to execute the move correctly or pull his weapon on time, and the mugger pulled the trigger. Mulder felt the bullet tear into his abdomen, and after he hit the ground, the mugger came to stand over him and aimed his gun at Mulder’s head.

Mulder closed his eyes. Scully, if there’s another side, I will find you there.

Instead of another shot, he heard a whooshing sound, and then the mugger screaming. Mulder opened his eyes and tried to position himself to see, but it was dark, and he found he couldn’t move. But he heard a woman’s voice; the night manager’s voice.

“None of this ever happened, and you never saw me. Now go.” Mulder heard someone beating a hasty retreat, and then, he saw the face of the night manager -- including a pair of fangs.

She looked around, concerned. “We don’t have much time,” she said, “so I don’t have time to explain this, but you need to drink.” She used one of her fangs to slice open her wrist and held the gaping, bleeding wound over Mulder’s mouth.

Fear breaking through his alcohol-induced haze, Mulder whimpered. The woman sighed and looked directly into his eyes. “You must drink. You must.” He still didn’t want to, but he couldn’t stop himself from opening his mouth and drinking the blood straight from the open wound. He thought he would be repulsed, but the taste was earthy and primal. It also relaxed him similarly to marijuana. Even before the night manager removed her arm, Mulder was falling asleep.

********************************************************

He woke up in his motel room, to the sounds of the night manager arguing with the man he’d heard at the front desk.

“Have you gone INSANE?” the man was yelling. “What if someone had seen you?”

“Nobody did.”

“But somebody could have, and then, you compounded your offense. Saving him was bad enough, but then, you had to make him a fucking Familiar. The Council will--”

“You know what? Fuck the Council and their bullshit fucking rules. They won’t sanction me, because they need me on this. They need my talents.”

Mulder didn’t completely grasp what these people were talking about, but he decided he liked the woman right then and there. He knew what it was like to go up against “councils.”

“Shit, he’s awake.”

The man threw up his hands, and the woman came across the room to be at Mulder’s side. He sat up -- and it all came back to him. How could he possibly have sat up? He looked down at his clothes; they were covered in blood, but there was no wound. There was no pain. In fact, physically, Mulder felt better than he had in his life.

“I do know you, Agent Mulder,” the woman said, “But we’ve never met before. I think you have some sort of file on me?” She could feel him searching his tortured mind for the information. “My name is Anastasia Romanov.”

Oh my fucking god, that was it. The Anastasia Romanov file. That’s where he’d seen the face, but Anastasia Romanov was only 17 when she was allegedly murdered, and this woman looked … more like a teenager than a woman.

“You haven’t aged,” Mulder sputtered.

Anastasia laughed. “Oh, I’ve aged, but my body hasn’t. It’s one of the perks.” She shot a strange look at the man, who pulled the curtain aside to look out the window.

“It’s nearly daylight. You need to wrap this little, um, reunion up.”

“That’s just Sebastian. Don’t mind him. Anyway, we seem to be running into situations where there’s just no time for me to explain things, don’t we, Agent Mulder?”

Mulder suddenly felt a chill go down his spine. If he was alive, and not wounded anymore, what did that mean, especially since Anastasia had hypnotized him to drink her blood. “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO ME?” Mulder jumped out of bed and looked in a mirror. He saw his reflection, but then he also saw Anastasia in the background, so…

“That’s a myth,” she said. “But no, I didn’t turn you. You were bleeding out from the gunshot wound, and vampire blood has healing properties. Trust me, you’re 100% human, but since you had to drink a lot of my blood, you’re also what we call a Familiar.”

Mulder’s head was spinning. He wasn’t entirely sure what Anastasia meant, but this was all too much.

“Listen, I’d love to continue this conversation,” she told him, “but unless you want Sebastian and I hiding in this room all day, we need to go right now. I can come back after dark. Can I trust you not to get yourself shot again until then?”

She gave Mulder a sly smile, and he had to appreciate her wit. He nodded, and the two vampires were gone.

What the hell was a Familiar?

********************************************************

Another victim turned up the next morning, what looked to be an older man, no identification, the body burned beyond recognition.

Mulder reexamined the files on the victims who had been identified. With a slightly clearer head -- amazing that an encounter with vampires had cleared his head -- he noticed that all of the victims had led solitary lives, with no known relatives and few if any acquaintances. All of them either worked at home or worked night jobs.

Someone was hunting vampires. Vampires, Scully!

When his mind turned to Scully, he felt himself getting lost again. Thankfully, it was near nightfall.

That night, in the back office of the Marlex Motel, Fox Mulder was given a crash course on vampires, Familiars, and the mysterious Council his new vampire acquaintances kept going on about.

Since he had drank so much of Anastasia’s blood, he was now bonded with her, not as closely as Sebastian, who was her maker, but they now had a psychic connection of sorts. Anastasia told him that while he wasn’t indestructible, he would heal from injuries and illnesses more quickly than before. He also found out that as a Familiar, he was impervious to vampire hypnotism -- but he wasn’t impervious to Anastasia’s numerous psychic powers.

“It started when I was a little girl,” she explained to him. “First, I knew how people were feeling. I could tell if they were sad or mad or gleeful. Then, I started being able to see inside their minds, not just words but images. And if I concentrated, I could do things. I could move things, just by thinking about it hard enough.”

“And that’s when Grigori Rasputin started training you,” Mulder said.

“For my own protection. He said he’d never seen such power in a child so young. It scared him, the things I could do, and I couldn’t control any of it.” He saw a flicker of sadness in her eyes. “He taught me as much as he could before he was killed. He knew he wouldn’t have enough time to train me properly. He had visions, prophecies of the future. I started having them, too, and he taught me how to interpret them. We both saw you, with the red-haired woman, Scully, who was taken from you. I can see her in your mind.”

Mulder felt a pain in his gut at the mention of Scully’s name. He was surprised when Anastasia reached out to pick up the small crucifix hanging around his neck. She smiled at him. “That’s a myth, too, but if this were silver, I couldn’t touch it. That part is true. You’ve seen that the sunlight part is true.” She put the crucifix back in its place. “When I was turned, I retained all of my powers. All vampires have some psychic ability; that’s how we can glamor humans, but I’m uniquely gifted.” He saw something flash across her face that indicated she didn’t see her powers as gifts; quite the opposite. “The Council needs me to find this exsanguination killer before the humans do. He’s putting us at risk of exposure, and if they capture him, the risk is worse.”

“Believe me, Anastasia, nobody would believe him,” Mulder assured her. “Shit, nobody believes anything I say.”

“They won’t take the chance, and despite my misgivings with the Council, I don’t think they’re wrong on this one. Most humans don’t know about the healing properties of vampire blood. I think this killer knows, and that’s why he’s killing us. He drains all of his victims. I’ve seen some of the people in your mind, your own Council. What do you think they might do if they knew vampire blood could save people from gunshot wounds?” The desk bell rang, and Anastasia went to answer it.

Other than her looking too young to be a motel manager, she blended in well, Mulder thought. There was nothing unusual about her, nothing that would make people question her. That Sebastian guy, who apparently worked at the Blue Moon, looked rather ordinary, too.

“How is this killer finding his victims?” Mulder asked Anastasia when she returned. “If all of your kind live covertly, how is he identifying you?”

“We think he might be finding them at some of the vampire bars in the Valley,” Sebastian said as he entered the room. “At least three of the victims were customers at the Blue Moon.”

Mulder thought back to his unsuccessful interviews at the club; that’s why they’d gone nowhere. This community was very good at keeping its secrets. An idea occurred to him. “Did you ever think that the killer might be a Familiar?”

He could tell that the vampires had not. “Well, there aren’t that many of them,” Sebastian explained. “The Council frowns on us making Familiars these days. It’s too risky. They want us to stay away from humans, not get personally involved with them.”

Anastasia looked as though a lightbulb had gone on above her head. “But it happens, Sebastian. You know it does. This would all make sense!” She started pacing back and forth, reminding Mulder a bit of himself when he latched onto a theory. “An angry Familiar, someone who didn’t want to be made one, or someone who fell out with the vampire who made them. But why not just kill us? Why steal our blood?”

Mulder thought for a moment. “Maybe it’s not for the killer. Maybe he’s selling it, or he’s giving it to someone else. You said I had to drink a lot of your blood to heal, Anastasia. That means the amount needed corresponds to the severity of the injury.”

She nodded. “Or the illness. If the illness is really bad, like cancer that’s spread everywhere, the effect is temporary at best. I don’t know why. Even we don’t understand how our blood heals.” She stopped pacing. “My god. I think I might know how to find the killer.”

*********************************************************

The trio returned to the Blue Moon, and Anastasia made a beeline for a table occupied by a young dark-haired woman smoking a cigarette, someone who hadn’t been there the previous night. The woman apprised Mulder as he approached with Sebastian. “My, my, Nastya, you do attract handsome men. I haven’t seen this one before.”

“Cut the bullshit, Kristen,” Anastasia said as she pulled up a chair. “Whatever happened to Richard? I think he may be the one doing this.”

Kristen laughed as she stamped out her cigarette. “Richie? You must be kidding. He’s a sweet old man.”

“He wasn’t sweet when he was young, and you turned him into your Familiar,” Anastasia reminded her. “He wasn’t sweet when you broke things off with him.”

“Yes I did -- 30 years ago. I assure you, he moved on. Got married, had kids, and everything,” Kristen told her. “He came to see me a few months ago. He wanted me to turn him and his wife, full-on turn, so that they could live together forever. I didn’t want to take on that kind of responsibility. Some of us would rather steer clear of the Council’s watchful eyes.”

“A few months ago?” Mulder interrupted. “How many months is a few?”

Kristen raised an eyebrow, then gestured to Anastasia. “Well, you certainly have a live one here. Where’d you find this one, and what do you intend to do with him?” She gave Mulder a seductive smile, which he returned with a stony stare. She sighed. “Well, you’re certainly no fun. If you must know, two and a half months ago, but I don’t see what this has to do with anything. I told him no, he got mad, but then he left. I haven’t heard from him since.”

Mulder and the other vampires looked at each other. The murders had started two months prior. “Do you know where we could find him?” Mulder asked.

********************************************************

“What I don’t understand is how he’s getting the drop on you,” Mulder said as he drove the trio to Richie’s home in nearby Van Nuys.

“Vampire hunters have existed throughout history,” Anastasia explained. “You know that, and you know we’re not indestructible.”

“Because the bodies decompose so fast after death, he must be incapacitating his victims, then draining them while they’re still alive,” Mulder mused.

“Silver,” Anastasia offered. “It weakens us.”

They finally pulled up to Richie’s house, a small home on a quiet street. “Can you tell if he’s in there, Anastasia?” Mulder asked.

She looked at the house and concentrated. “No, I’m only feeling one person, a woman. She’s in a lot of pain, very ill -- dying. It’s cancer. It’s everywhere.”

Great, he’s probably out hunting, Mulder thought, but they couldn’t do anything about it now. The best chance of catching this guy was to wait for him to come back. They waited in an uncomfortable silence. Sebastian had been dead-set against Mulder coming. Their instructions had been to find and dispatch this killer before the humans could get hold of him, but he suspected that Mulder wouldn’t go for that. Anastasia had insisted he come because of her visions. Sebastian had told the petite vampire what he thought of her visions, which had been entirely the wrong thing to say. Mulder couldn’t help but smile through the pain at the sight of her dressing this much taller man down the way Scully often did to him.

“You’re thinking of her,” Anastasia said, interrupting his train of thought.

He fingered the crucifix around his neck. “Always.”

“Please don’t give up on finding her, Mulder.” Anastasia stopped short of saying he’d find her again. The truth was, she didn’t know. She could control her mind-reading and object-moving powers very well, but the visions either came to her or they didn’t.

Soon after, a car pulled into the driveway, and an older man got out, carrying a satchel. It was him, Richard Keenan. He entered the house. “Stay here,” Mulder told the vampires. “He might be able to hurt you.”

Sebastian fumed as Mulder headed for the house. When the agent was out of sight, the vampire made to exit the car. “We can’t let him go in there alone, Nastya. You know that. This is our kind’s problem. We need to take care of this.”

Anastasia nodded and reluctantly got out of the car. Her lover and maker was right. Richard Keenan couldn’t be taken by the human authorities alive.

******************************************************

Mulder crept to a window with a light on and peered inside. It was a bedroom, in which an older woman slept on a hospital bed. Richard came in holding a large glass of red liquid and woke the woman. “Here you go, darling. More of that Chinese elixir that works so well.”

The old woman shook her head, and Richard looked crestfallen. “No, Richie. It’s not working anymore.”

“NO! It will work, Marion!” Richard sounded desperate, and Mulder saw a bit of himself in the older man. “It always has!”

Marion gave him a sorrowful but firm look. “No, Richard. It worked for a while, but not anymore. I can’t eat anymore. I don’t even want to drink water anymore. It’s time for me to go.”

“Maybe you just need to drink more. I can get you more! It’s not that expensive.”

“Yeah, what’s a few vampire lives in the grand scheme of things?”

Shit, Mulder thought as he watched Sebastian enter the room. I knew they wouldn’t stay put. He ran around to the front of the house, and as he suspected, the vampires had simply twisted the doorknob off. Superhuman strength wasn’t a myth.

By the time he got back to the bedroom, Richard was warding off Sebastian and Anastasia with a large silver necklace, the two vampires were arguing again, and Marion was in tears. Mulder approached Richard with his weapon drawn. “Richard Keenan, you’re under arrest. It’s over. Give yourself up.”

Richard waved the jewelry at him, but Mulder kept advancing. “So you’re not one of them?”

“Would someone please tell me what’s going on?” It was Marion. She sounded very weak. Anastasia studied her for a moment, then looked gravely at Richard.

“She’s dying, Richard -- and I mean, right now. No amount will make her better now.”

Ignoring Mulder’s gun, but still clutching his silver, Richard rushed to his wife’s side. “It’s going to be okay, darling. I’ll get you more medicine. I’ll get you better medicine.”

“Please, Richie,” Marion’s voice was little more than a whisper. “Could you hold me, just for a minute?”

Richard climbed halfway into bed with his wife and hugged her. She put her head on his chest. “Always love you,” she whispered. And then she was gone.

Richard clutched his wife’s dead body and screamed. Sebastian tried to make a move toward him, but Anastasia held him back. She could see into this man’s mind. She knew what was going to happen next.

That’s why she wasn’t surprised when, so quickly that Mulder didn’t have time to react, he pulled a handgun out of the nightstand, placed it under his chin, and pulled the trigger.

*****************************************************

Marlex Motel, the following evening

After Richard Keenan blew his brains out, Mulder sent his two vampire companions away and dealt with the aftermath. The official story he told the police was that Keenan had believed that having his dying wife drink blood would cure her cancer. Mulder had tracked him to his home and forcibly entered when he heard the shot.

He booked an overnight flight back to D.C. so that he could see the night manager again. She was alone. “Where’s Sebastian?” Mulder asked.

“At work. He’ll be around later. She looked at his luggage. “Checking out?”

Mulder nodded and handed her the key. She clutched his hand and gave him a very serious look.

“You cannot give up on finding her, Mulder. She still lives. That I can promise you.”

He felt drawn into Anastasia’s eyes, not the way he was drawn into Scully’s, but still drawn. She was a beautiful woman, but the feeling he got was more like what he would have for a sibling, perhaps if he’d had a twin. It was difficult for him to wrap his head around, but at least it was a feeling. He was finally feeling something again. “Thanks for everything. I think I needed this case.” He turned to go. The devastation was still there, but he’d gotten the boost he needed to carry on just a little while longer.

“I’ll see you again, Fox Mulder,” Anastasia promised him as he exited the motel.

She didn’t tell him about the vision she’d had after she’d left the Keenan house, the one where she’d seen Mulder, Scully, and an infant in a future that wasn’t so distant.

She didn’t tell him that the infant could move things with his mind.

Author’s note: Yes, I know that it's widely accepted that Anastasia Romanov's remains were found and identified through DNA, but that hadn't yet happened when I first conceived of Vampire Anastasia -- and in my little AU, she survived.

#xfiles #the x files #fanfic #txf fanfic #TXF #msr #msr fanfic #mulder #mulder and scully #fox mulder #agent mulder #fanfiction #fixitfic #fix it au

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