#because that it somewhat more relevant to work and far less embarrassing to explain to people

[sword-wielding-sapphic]

Well. I'm doing it

💥🙌👏

[whenisitenoughtrees]

to be honest, capable (of holding you) (part 2/3)

He walks forward, crouching over the snake, and when it doesn’t stir at all, he works up his courage and pokes it, just a little. Its scales are warm and smooth under his fingertip, and he resists the urge to stroke them. He doubts he could get away with that.

“Janus?” he asks, trying to keep the somewhat hysterical laughter from his voice. “That you?”

Thomas didn’t know that Janus could turn into an actual snake, but he’s glad to hang out with him regardless. More than glad; ecstatic, even, because he’s been trying to figure out how to befriend him for ages, and this seems like a good first step. What he can’t figure out is why human-Janus is being so weird about it.

(Alternatively: Janus doesn’t trust easily. He wishes he could stop trusting Thomas— it would be so much less terrifying.)

Chapter Warnings: blood and injury, Remus being mildly unsettling

Chapter Word Count: 5,074

Pairing: platonic Thomceit

(part 1) (part 3)

(masterpost w/ ao3 links)

They don’t talk about it.

Thomas would very much like to talk about it. But whenever he goes to bring it up, Janus glares at him in a way that promises a world of trouble if he so much as breathes a word, and Thomas really does not want to set back any of the progress he’s already made with him, so he shuts up about it. He’s not entirely sure why Janus is so opposed to addressing it; it can’t be that he doesn’t want the others to know, after all, because all the others are literally parts of Thomas and as such are privy to the knowledge of everything that Thomas experiences.

As best as Thomas can tell, it’s some sort of embarrassment that holds Janus back, some sort of shame, and Thomas doesn’t get it. Surely he knows that Thomas doesn’t mind at all, that Thomas enjoys the time they spend together, even if their conversations are far more one-sided than he would like. Janus seems to be under the impression that coming to him at all is in some way unseemly, while Thomas just wants him to be comfortable enough to approach him as a human.

But as more time passes, that seems less and less likely. Thomas spends far more time with snake-Janus than with human-Janus, and Janus begins to come with him even when the sun shines bright and his spot by the window is available. Thomas becomes quite familiar with carrying a weight looped around his neck, and wishes he could puzzle out why Janus is acting this way.

The worst part is that with every passing day, he feels like he understands Janus less, not more. Because the way he acts during meetings and discussions, when he pops in to offer opinions and advice masked as sarcasm and cutting quips, is entirely different to the way he acts as a snake, when he and Thomas are alone together, when he leans into all the contact Thomas has to offer, seeking warmth, and, Thomas suspects, company. It’s almost as if he’s dealing with two entirely different people, each one unwilling or unable to discuss the other, and frankly, Thomas has no idea what to do about it.

Because he’s worried that if he pushes too hard, demands one answer too many, Janus will stop approaching him at all, in any form. And that is the last thing he wants.

So, he leaves it be, and resigns himself to the idea that human-Janus may just remain incomprehensible to him, and that snake-Janus is the closest he will get to making a friend out of him. And if that turns out to be the case, then gosh darn it, he will be the best friend to snake-Janus that he possibly can be.

This has the side effect of leading him to a snake-centric fact-finding mission, which Logan appreciates, at least, because “even if the information may not be applicable to most aspects of your life, at least you’re learning something, Thomas.” Which he supposes is fair. He learns a great many things about snakes over the course of a few days, most of it interesting, if not particularly relevant. He doesn’t know how much of this actually applies to Janus, since he’s not a real snake.

Though he does find out that snakes don’t have eyelids. That would explain the whole no-blinking thing.

Other than his impromptu investigations, they fall into an equilibrium fairly easily. Janus will seek him out at all hours of the day and wrap himself around his arm or neck, sometimes staying awake and aware and sometimes drifting off into sleep. And when he’s fed up with the company, he leaves, disappearing with neither warning nor fanfare. Thomas settles into this new routine with little effort, and decides that if this is all he’s going to get from Janus, he’ll take it.

He gets used to it, so much so that he stops looking every time he feels Janus curl around him. This turns out to be a mistake.

He’s procrastinating, as per usual. His deadline is a full week away, and even Virgil has been unable to provide the urgency that Thomas needs to push through and finish his latest project. He knows that this will only end badly, that he’s going to end up staying up until the early hours of the morning in a few days if he doesn’t get started now, but he simply doesn’t feel like it. So, he’s scrolling through Amazon instead, clicking through pages of items that he neither needs nor particularly wants.

He’s been looking at a lot of frogs, lately. Cute, decorative frogs, the kinds that sit on mantles and don’t do much of anything. And plushies, too, and those are actually tempting. He’s pretty sure that it’s Patton’s influence.

“What do you think?” he asks, holding up his arm so that Janus can see the screen. Janus hisses quietly, and he laughs. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.” He doesn’t have the money to spend on a bunch of decorative frogs, even if he had a strong inclination toward doing so, but it’s fun to look. He’s seriously considering a stuffed animal, but he’s pretty sure that Logan intends to talk him down from that, so there’s no real need to be concerned about it. Even if he ends up buying one after all, he thinks it would be worth it.

He glances down at Janus, trying to figure out if he’s enjoying this at all, or if he’s just irritated. And that’s when he finally notices the blood.

He freezes up, his muscles tensing, and blinks hard, hoping that it’s a trick of the light, or that spending so many hours doing practically nothing has fried his brain at last. But no; Janus’ scales are dotted with rusty red, and Thomas traces the blood back to a long gash trailing down his side, sluggishly oozing, slowly dripping onto his arm. He stares for a long moment, his mind stalling, and he wonders if the scent of iron flooding his nose is real or imaginary. Or rather, real by a certain standard, since everything to do with his sides is technically imaginary, but oh god, why is he bleeding so much? He thought that his sides could wave off injuries, that nothing could truly affect them unless they wanted it to? Or is that just Logan? And then there’s the question of what did this to him in the first place, and how exactly he’s supposed to treat someone who’s a figment of his imagination, and whether or not any of the real medical supplies he has would work at all—

Focus, Thomas.

It’s like a whisper in his ear, gentle and firm. Logan’s voice. The world snaps into sharp clarity, mind and adrenaline working in tandem.

“Oh my god,” he says, and Janus’ head swivels to face him. The movement is slow, almost lethargic, as if he’s operating on a time delay. “You’re hurt. Okay. Well, not okay. But you’ll be okay.”

He has a first aid kit in the bathroom. He has no idea whether that will help or not, but he won’t know until he tries, as his logic helpfully points out. So the first order of business is to get to the bathroom. He stands, setting his laptop to the side, trying to jostle Janus as little as possible. Now that he’s paying attention, more and more details filter in; Janus’ grip on his arm is looser than usual, his eyes dull and glazed. His hat, usually so perfectly placed, is just slightly askew.

He makes it to the bathroom in short order, yanking the kit out from under the sink and nearly spilling its contents across the floor. He’ll need both hands for this, and he looks to Janus with no small amount of trepidation, wondering how well he’ll take being moved. He doesn’t want to cause him more pain than necessary, and he doesn’t know how aware he currently is, doesn’t know if he’ll lash out if he feels threatened. He gives him an experimental nudge, prodding at him with one finger, and Janus hisses, shifting his coils to hold on tighter.

“C’mon,” Thomas says. “You gotta let me help you, buddy.”

There is is again: buddy. He still doesn’t think it fits quite right, but it seems to slip out anyway, and now is hardly the time to worry about it, not when Janus still shows no sign of budging.

“Please, Janus,” he says, dangerously close to begging. “I promise, I’m not gonna let anything else happen to you, but you need to let me see where you’re hurt.”

Janus’ tongue flickers out, tasting the air, and his eyes seem to focus just a bit. One minute passes, and then another, and Thomas is about to try to remove him by force when finally, he lets go, slithering onto the counter, his motions hesitant and pained, softly hissing all the while. Blood begins to drip onto the sink, the sickening red smearing across the countertop.

“Thank you,” Thomas says, not bothering to hide his relief. “Okay, um, I’ve got bandages. And painkillers, if you want them… can snakes take painkillers?” He sets things out as he names them, slowing as he hits a snag. Not only does he not know if snakes can take painkillers, but he also doesn’t know if there are any other substances in here that would do more harm than good, or if there are any special steps he should take due to his scales, or the fact that he’s cold-blooded. In fact, he has absolutely no idea how to treat a snake, and the idea that he might end up making things worse is enough to send his anxiety ratcheting up a few notches.

Is he overthinking this? He might be overthinking this. But what if he’s not?

Try to remain calm. If you don’t know enough to work within this situation, change the situation.

Logan again, though he’s not sure how that’s supposed to help. He would change the situation if he could— heck, that’s what he’s trying to do— but if it were so simple as wishing this whole scenario away, he would have done it by now. He’s not sure how to—

Oh, wait. Change the situation, or change Janus’ situation?

He has absolutely no idea how to treat a snake. But Janus doesn’t have to be a snake.

He crouches down so that he’s on eye level with Janus, who is limp and unmoving on the sink counter, tracking his motions with clouded eyes. It’s not just the large gash, he realizes; that’s the worst of it, but there are several shallower cuts, all still open and bleeding, and he swallows hard.

“Okay, so, I don’t want to make things any worse,” he says, keeping his voice low. “Do you think you could turn back into a human for me? Just so that I know what I’m doing?”

Not that he knows much about treating humans either, but at least he’d know where to start. Perhaps if Janus’ injuries were less severe, he could work with them in this state, but that prominent gash looks deep and angry, probably about six inches long, wide and painful, rending scales apart and leaking dark blood and god, he is so afraid of making this worse—

Janus stares at him, and doesn’t react.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas says, because he is. He doesn’t know why Janus only initiates contact with him as a snake, doesn’t know why the very idea of deviating from that seems to disquiet him. Asking him to be human now, like this, almost seems wrong, like they’ll be breaking what understanding they do have between them, breaking the peace they’ve found with each other lately. But then, the peace is already broken, he thinks, has been broken since Janus showed up bleeding. “I know you probably don’t want to. But I want to make this better, and I don’t think I can if you’re uh, shaped like this. I… I guess I’m asking you to trust me.”

It’s a tall order, and he is well aware of that. Janus is Deceit, after all, and Deceit is practically the antithesis of trust. He’ll probably have to work with Janus as a snake after all, and he’s just resolving himself to do the best he can when Janus shifts in place, raising his head.

Thomas isn’t sure how to process what happens next. One part of his brain tells him that the change happens slowly, that Janus’ form stretches and morphs in impossible ways, scales fading away and features rearranging before his eyes. The other part of his brain insists that the shift is instantaneous, that it happens as quickly as blinking, that in one moment, there is a snake curled on the counter and in the next, there is a man, with no gradual transition between the two. But however it happens, Janus now sits in front of him, arms and legs all present, hunched in on himself and wheezing. One hand flies to his side, clutching at his shirt.

Thomas blinks. For a second, his mind fights with itself, trying to decide on what, exactly, he just watched. Then, he decides that it doesn’t matter, that he’ll have a crisis about it later, and that there are more important things to concentrate on.

He reaches out, placing a steadying hand on Janus’ shoulder. “Easy, easy,” he says, raising his voice to be audible over Janus’ gasps. “Are you okay?”

It takes a minute for Janus to get his breathing under control, and when he does, he looks up at Thomas, his expression pinched. “Just fine,” he rasps. “Absolutely perfect, can’t you tell?” His voice is strained, tension showing in the lines around his eyes and in the thin set of his mouth. “Really, Thomas, the fuss is hardly necessary. I—” He cuts off with a slight gasp, eyes squeezing shut, and Thomas feels his heart clench.

“Hm, yeah, no, I think I’ve got the right to fuss a little bit,” he says, hoping his voice stays level. He looks him up and down, searching for the injury, and finds nothing; his shirt appears immaculate, his whole outfit as perfectly assembled as usual, not a rip or tear in sight. If it weren’t for the pain on his face, the tremors wracking his frame, Thomas wouldn’t suspect that he was injured at all, and he frowns. “Can you, uh—” He gestures— “take off your shirt, maybe? So I can see where you’re hurt?”

Janus sighs heavily, as though the request has greatly burdened him. He waves one hand in the air, and his shirt and capelet vanish, revealing his bare torso. Under any other circumstance, Thomas might be fascinated by the scales that trail all along his chest and left arm, but right now, his attention centers on the gash bloodying his side, and the thinner scratches that cover him. They all look bigger than they were before, more serious, and he hopes that he didn’t make the wrong decision in requesting him to shift. If it had been a bad idea, he would have refused, right?

“God, Janus,” he says. “What happened?”

Janus sighs again, rolling his eyes. “A mishap in the Imagination,” he says. “Unfortunately, both Roman and Remus designed the place so that its effects stick around even after leaving.”

… Alright. That’s probably something to talk about later; he doesn’t particularly like the reminder that he has no idea how most of the mindscape works. “But I thought you could heal yourselves?” he can’t help but ask. He vividly remembers the day he met Remus, the way that none of his attacks seemed to affect Logan for more than a few seconds.

“We all can, to some degree,” Janus agrees. “It’s more difficult for some of us than it is for others.” He hesitates, and the next words come out slow and almost defensive. “I am capable of it, if I succeed in persuading myself that the problem doesn’t exist in the first place, but in order to do so, I need to sufficiently distance myself from any negative sensations that accompany the harm. I am… currently finding that difficult.” He glares. “I’ll mange perfectly well, given time. There is no need for any of this.” He waves an arm to punctuate the declaration, and it might have been somewhat convincing if it weren’t for the fact that he immediately curls in on himself, face paling, like he’s pulled something the wrong way.

“Yeah, okay,” he says. “Well, how about you let me help you anyway, just for my peace of mind?”

Janus stares at him for a long moment, face unreadable. Finally, he glances away. “Do what you wish,” he says. “If you want to waste time on this, be my guest.”

He hums noncommittally, already inspecting the wound. “I don’t think that taking care of you is a waste of time,” he says, fishing through the first aid kit. He comes up with a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol, looking up just in time to see what can only be an expression of shock fade from Janus’ face, and god, what must he be doing wrong if that is Janus’ reaction to being told that he cares about him? He can’t unpack that right now, or else he might cry, so he holds out the Tylenol instead. “Painkillers?”

Janus nods slightly, and takes two dry. From there, Thomas works in silence, cleaning the wounds as best he can and bandaging them. It takes longer than he expects, and he debates whether or not the long gash will need stitches. He decides not to make the attempt, trusting that what Janus says is true and that he will be able to heal before too long. So he wraps bandages around his torso, and Janus, for his part, remains perfectly still, staring straight ahead, an occasional soft hiss the only thing that betrays his discomfort.

“Okay,” he says quietly, inspecting his handiwork. “I think that’s the best I can do.”

Janus shoots him an unreadable look. “In that case,” he says, “I believe I’ll be going now.”

He hops down from the counter before Thomas can stop him, and his face crumples like a wet sheet of paper. Thomas catches him as his knees give out, hooking his hands under his arms. He is surprisingly light, his skin cool to the touch.

“How about we don’t do that, actually,” he says. “I’ll tell you what, let’s go to my room, and I can work and you can get some rest?”

Janus hisses, trying to jerk away. It’s not difficult to prevent him from doing so; he has all the strength of a floppy pool noodle. “Oh yes, because I’m in dire need of a babysitter,” he spits out, and perhaps Thomas should feel intimidated, but looking at him, at the way all the color has drained from his face, at the way his eyes have glazed over even as they dart around the bathroom, all Thomas can muster up is a deep worry.

“I’m not trying to babysit you,” he says. “Believe me, I know that you of all people don’t need babysitting. But if you try to sink out now, I’m just gonna be stressed out, so if you’d stick around for a little bit, I would really appreciate it.”

Janus stills. The silence stretches on.

“Fine,” Janus says. “Sure. Whatever.”

Thomas restrains himself from letting out a sigh of relief, instead adjusting his grip on Janus until he is only supporting part of his weight. From the look on his face, Janus wants very much to grumble about the indignity of the situation, but miraculously, he remains quiet all the way to Thomas’ room, though he begins to drag his feet when he sees what Thomas intends.

“If you want me to rest,” he says, “I am perfectly capable of doing so in my own room. There’s hardly a need for me to take up space in your bed.”

“Okay,” Thomas says, lowering him to sit on the bedsheets and doing his level best to ignore his glare, “but then I won’t know that you’re alright. Also, I don’t see what the big deal is? It’s not like we haven’t done this before. You were just, uh, snakier.”

He knows immediately that it is the wrong thing to say. Janus’ face sets into an impassive wall, and he looks away, refusing to make eye contact. Thomas can’t tell what he’s feeling, whether it’s anger or embarrassment or frustration or some stubborn combination of the three. But he settles himself against the headboard without further argument, seemingly determined not to carry on any further conversation, so Thomas resigns himself to the silent treatment and sets up with his laptop on the other side of the bed, several inches placed between them.

The atmosphere is awkward, heavy. They both know that Thomas wants to talk, and they both know that Janus will not reply, or if he does, it will be with sharp sarcasm or otherwise cutting words, an answer that will not answer anything at all. So Thomas doesn’t say anything, merely glances over every now and again to be sure that Janus is still there, is still fine, is still breathing. Every time, he is greeted with the same sight: Janus staring off into the empty space in front of him, face blank, a faint tightness around his eyes the only indication that he is still in pain. There is a wall between them, invisible yet insurmountable, and Thomas has no idea how to breach it.

Why does their relationship feel so off-kilter now? Why are things so natural between them when Janus is a snake, small and speechless and cuddly, and not when he is a human?

“I don’t mean to force you to stay,” he murmurs. “If you’re really that uncomfortable, it’s alright if you leave.”

He’s watching him out of the corner of his eye, and as such, he sees the wince, slight though it may be.

“It’s… not that,” Janus admits. “I am grateful for your concern, truly. I just… so love being in unfamiliar territory.” His voice is a quiet drawl, but laced with exhaustion, his words just shy of slurred together.

He takes a second to parse through the words, and then smiles. “Well, that makes two of us,” he says. “I’d be alright with muddling through together. And look, I know that most of the time, when we hang out, you’re a snake. And that’s fine! One hundred percent fine, if that’s what you’re most comfortable with! But uh, I really wouldn’t mind spending more time with you as, like, a person, too, if that makes sense. Not that you’re not a person when you’re a snake! Wait—” He furrows his brow, trying to untangle his words, and looks over, certain that Janus will at least be amused by his rambling.

He’s not. Because Janus is asleep, his chin resting against his chest and his hat about to fall into his lap. Thomas feels an inexorable sense of fondness sweep over him, and with a gentle movement, he reaches over to pluck the hat from Janus’ head, revealing brown hair that falls in springy waves. He places the hat on the nightstand, casting one last look at Janus before returning his attention to his laptop.

There is plenty of work to do, and he is content to do it here, sitting in bed with Janus napping by his side. So he does, his fingers clacking against the keys long into the night, and Janus sleeps on.

-----------

He doesn’t remember falling asleep. But he must, because he wakes, and slowly processes the fact that all is not as he left it. For one, the light is off, the room dark, and his laptop is resting on the nightstand, next to the shadow of Janus’ hat. For another, there is a heavy weight on top of his chest, pinning one of his arms against his side, and in the seconds before his eyes adjust sufficiently to the darkness, he fears the worst, fears that someone has broken into his apartment and… crawled into bed with him, and the irrationality of that idea is enough to dampen his panic. He squints, trying to will his vision into focus, and begins to make out what features he can see of the face pressed against his chest, features that very closely resemble his own, and that is when he remembers: Janus on his arm, Janus injured and bleeding, Janus on his bed, Janus asleep. Janus… still here.

Janus, snuggled up against him, his head resting on his chest, his body curled into his side, latched onto him with both… no, there’s more than two arms. At least four, maybe more; it’s difficult to determine without the light on, because all that Thomas can tell is that he is being very thoroughly hugged, and that it feels very nice.

This fact is distracting enough that it’s a full three minutes or so before he realizes that there is another figure perched on the edge of his bed. Panic roars up in him once again, his heart pounding and the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end, but then he notices the details, notices the poof of the figure’s sleeves, the wildness of their hair silhouetted against the light that creeps around the edges of the doorframe, the unholy red gleam of their eyes. And he… well, he doesn’t relax, not exactly. But most of his fear sidesteps directly into annoyance.

“Remus,” he hisses, as quietly as he can manage. “What are you doing?”

Remus cocks his head, his eyes shining brighter. He’s crouched almost like a grotesque parody of a cat, ready to pounce. But the Duke himself is still and silent, and it’s very odd. Almost worrying. And when he finally speaks, it’s not at all what Thomas was expecting.

“DeeDee got hurt,” he says, voice a subdued whisper, and Thomas is taken aback, both by the seriousness of his tone and the evident consideration toward not waking Janus up.

“I— yeah,” Thomas replies, uncertain as to where this is going. “I, uh, patched him up as best I could. He said he’d heal soon.” A thought occurs to him, and if Janus weren’t keeping him flat on his back, he’d be sitting bolt upright, finger pointed in accusation. “Wait, he said he was hurt in the Imagination. Did you have something to do with that?”

“I can’t keep an eye on every part of La La Land at once, Thomas.” He shrugs. “It’s not my fault if Snake from Snake Farm wandered into something he shouldn’t have.” He giggles, high-pitched and a little manic, but Thomas wonders at his tone of voice. It’s as irreverent as always, but underneath that— can it be concern? He really didn’t think Remus did concern. “Snakes should know better than to let their guard down. Your mind is dark and full of terrors.” He smiles, several rows of pointed white teeth gleaming an unnatural white in the shadows.

“I don’t even watch—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head, and then freezes as Janus makes a small sound. Seconds pass, and he waits with bated breath, but Janus doesn’t seem to wake. “Okay, then,” he continues, more quietly. “Is there a reason why you’re here?”

Remus blinks, and once again, Thomas is reminded of a cat. A terrible, eldritch horror of a cat, but a cat nonetheless. “DeeDee doesn’t like to be around people when he’s hurt,” he says, rocking back and forth in place. “He doesn’t like people knowing when he’s weak.” He sighs through his nose, his breath whistling more than is natural. “He holes up in his room and doesn’t come out for anything, usually. Not even when I bang on the door and put rats in his air vents.”

Thomas stares, trying to process that. “But he’s here with me,” he says dumbly. “He decided to stay here. He’s…” He trails off. He doesn’t need to describe what Janus is doing; surely, Remus can see it for himself, can see them engaging in what can only be labeled as cuddling. And it’s not as if this is the first time; it’s just the first time Janus has been human-shaped.

“Yes, he is,” Remus agrees, voice sharp, and he is definitely trying to convey something here, something that Thomas is missing. “Tommy-boy, Tommy-boy, Tommy-boy, you’re just not getting it, are you? Well, that’s fine. Just remember that the snakes on the plane die too, if the plane crashes.”

“Is the plane crashing?” Thomas asks, voice hoarse, hesitant, and once again, Remus smiles, wide and dangerous.

“Not now, maybe,” he says. “But it still could. It always can. That’s the fun thing about airplanes. I could help with that, if you wanted.”

“No thanks,” Thomas is quick to reply.

Remus shrugs. “Suit yourself,” he says, and then pauses. “Janus doesn’t let just anyone this close, you know. So don’t fuck it up.”

It’s such an uncharacteristic statement that by the time Thomas has recovered enough to reply, Remus is gone, melting into the bedsheets in a grotesque puddle of goo, and then, even that disappears. Thomas is left in a dark, quiet room, and he has never felt more awake.

But Janus is still here, still asleep, is holding onto him for dear life and hiding his face against his chest. And it’s something precious, something intimate, something that Thomas feels privileged to see at all, and Remus’ voice rings loud in his head: Janus doesn’t let just anyone this close. Why, then, has he allowed him this? Why has he let Thomas see him at his most vulnerable, no matter how reluctant he was at the start? Why did he choose to stay, rather than leaving once Thomas nodded off?

Each question only leads to more questions, and it’s clear that he won’t receive any answers tonight. So he settles back in as best he can, though it is a long time before he manages to fall asleep again.

In the morning, Janus is gone. He wishes he could be more surprised.

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[arcticdementor]

I recently had Robin Hanson on the CSPI podcast to talk about futarchy. It’s one thing to spread knowledge on a particular issue, it’s another to invent a new technology to create more knowledge in the world, and help apply it where needed. That’s what I see Robin doing. He convinced me that although it may take a very long time, one day humanity will give less of a role to systems like peer review and unaccountable bureaucracy in determining how we understand the world, and more of a role to prediction markets. The logic is just too compelling. But sooner is better than later, and if you want to be involved, please reach out.

…

The first step towards this glorious future is convincing people that a world where more decisions are made based on prediction markets is desirable and achievable. In that spirit, below is a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for clarity. To read more about futarchy, see here.

…

Robin: Right. This conditional market mechanism hasn't actually been tested out in the world outside of the laboratory tests in that we haven't been able to get people interested enough to try it. We've had a lot of tests of speculative markets that aren't conditional in the sense that we've had markets on deadlines, whether you make a deadline in sales and things like that.

We've probably had 100 different trials like that over the last few decades. Typically what happens is that if there's enough support for the market in order to induce an affectivity then again the price is about as accurate or more accurate than the status quo and most users are satisfied. The costs are modest. That's been the history for many decades.

However a key problem is usually the market gets killed in the sense that an organization says to stop and doesn't continue it. The main reason is that it's relatively disruptive. These markets are politically disruptive. The way they are disruptive is analogous to, imagine you put a very knowledgeable autist in the C suite, that is somebody in the C suite that knows a lot about the company and they go to the meetings. They just blurt out when they know things that it's relevant to the conversation but they have no political savvy.

They have no sense of, what does anybody want to hear, or who will be bothered by anything they say. That sort of an autist would not last long in the C-suite. They would be shunted aside and become an advisor to someone perhaps, trusted advisor to their side but they wouldn't be allowed to speak in the boardroom. But that's what a prediction market is. It has no idea who wants to hear what it has to say.

It will often say things that people do not want to hear, and that embarrass them, and that contradict what they've said. Then all the worse of course it will be proven right.

Richard: Yeah. But what's stopping the autist, or I guess what's stopping them is nobody has just done this yet? But theoretically you could imagine the autist setting up the rules for the corporation, right?

Robin: You might if they were in charge at the beginning sure.

…

Robin: Now we move to the question of like, what fraction of companies out there are actually maximizing profits?

Richard: Yeah.

Robin: It’s a very basic question in economics and in our world. We economists tend to assume as a simple initial working model that organizations that are for profit actually do maximize profits. That's the thing they usually do. If you give them a choice of A or B, and B is higher profit they'll choose B.

Here if you apply that model you say, “Well, this looks like it would give them key information to make key decisions like, ‘Will we make the deadline,’ and it will be valuable. The cost is relatively low so of course they would do it.” That's what you would say if you were applying that theory. Then here we have a case where it looks like, well it hasn't happened yet.

You might think, “Okay, innovation is slow. It takes a while,” but we’ve been waiting several decades. Honestly if I look across a wide range of other areas of corporate behavior I can't fully support this profit maximizing theory. I think I can find a lot of other places where what they do does not maximize profits.

I could give you a long list of examples. We could go through some of those but then the question is, “Well, how do I come to terms with it? What theory do I have affirms in the absence of profit maximizing to explain the behavior?”

…

Robin: I mean I think in fact the correct response is to say the free market version is probably the best. You just have no idea how much worse things can be. People often look at the status quo of a business world say that is relatively free market. They look at this up close and they go, “This looks terrible how could you possibly be defending this?”

The argument has to be, “Well, it would just be so much worse without this.” And in fact often if you look to large stable organizations like universities and government agencies, or churches that have been around for a long time it is in fact worse. I think that's roughly right. Another story might be we've hobbled some of the competition between firms that might solve some of these problems.

I honestly think one of the biggest wins we could do is to just allow stronger hostile takeovers. The laws at the moment make it harder to do hostile takeovers. They require a substantial tax on them in essence. If you see a badly run company and you have an idea how it could be run better the problem is how are you going to profit on that? But if you could just buy up the company, change its management and then sell it again after it was better that would be a big, powerful engine for making it better.

There have been times when that mechanism has been allowed to do more and it has made huge changes. That's what inspired people to lock it down and prevent those changes because they were scared it was coming for them.

…

Richard: I've seen stuff like who will win the tip off in basketball, and who's going to win the coin toss in a football game? Who's going to win first quarter?

Robin: I once looked onto doing this for war college war games. As you may know many war colleges have war games where they put teams on different sides and give them various equipment in a simulated war. They have them go to war. You could imagine, well letting everybody else who’s watching the war game give advice about particular strategies in the war game. That seemed plausible to me but then when I talked to people at war colleges I found that most of these war games are kind of fake.

Richard: Yeah.

Robin: They have a predetermined outcome that’s some lesson they want to tell, and so they aren't really letting it be open to winning one side or the other.

Richard: No, that's funny because you'll see headlines every now and then that'll say, “Oh, my God. The US loses to China in a war game,” and yeah I always thought that that’s…

Robin: I’m sure there probably are real war games somewhere. They just aren't at the war colleges. That's where I was thinking I could convince somebody to try this sort of thing.

…

Richard: What is the advantage of the blockchain? What is the difference between a blockchain say market versus just something like PredictIt?

Robin: Well, that's an excellent question. Initially the story was that blockchain was out of control, that it couldn't be regulated so you could set up a system on a blockchain. If the regulators didn't like it they didn't have anybody to go to stop it. The blockchain just kept going regardless of who didn't like it.

That was a big selling point. People said, “Well, look at all this financial innovation we can do because we are free from existing regulations on the blockchain.” That's what they said, and then a lot of companies formed on this basis.

But these companies didn't take personal strategies to match that rhetoric. You would think if your plan was to put a product on the blockchain and that you were going to say nanny nanny to the regulators because, “You can’t get me,” you wouldn’t have a big public presence with the headquarters, and your picture in the magazines, and show up in person at conferences right? Because…

Richard: Yeah. Sure.

Robin: ...well, that makes you more obviously a target right? That's what they did though, and then they sort of back pedaled and said later, “Oh, we're following all the regulations.” But you know people don’t really believe that. It's been this big question, to what extent will governments crack down on these blockchain things that at least from the government regulators point of view are not following their rules?

Richard: Yeah. Do you have in mind the Coinbase news that had come out the last few days, or was it today or yesterday that-

Robin: This is just a continuing issue. I don't have any particular recent event in mind but there are lots of stories about regulators thinking of doing a lot more regulating and cracking down more. This is a big question about blockchain is how far will they crack down, and what will be the consequences? Of course people say, “Well, in principle Bitcoin can keep chugging along even if they do crack down,” and no doubt that's true to some degree.

But the question of how much activity there'll be is still somewhat open. You could have it chugging along with a far lower activity because a lot of people have been discouraged.

…

Robin: Let me at this point admit what I would say is the biggest problem with futarchy and with some of these other decision markets, which is that they make hypocrisy harder, which is actually a problem. You might think, “Well, hypocrisy is a bad thing. Making it harder is good right?” Well, let’s walk through that.

At the moment, say ordinary people can claim to love trees and they just care a lot about trees. Trees real estate wonderful and they certainly wouldn’t want to have fewer trees. But then they elect politicians who have to make choices about trees versus other things. Those politicians can probably read the public and say, “Well, they say they like trees but they don’t really like trees that much, so I’m not actually going to go save some trees by interfering with something else.”

Then if the public ever finds out that somehow not everything was being done to save trees, the public can complain and say, “That damn politician! They’re corrupt! They were bought out and I sure hate them. Let’s throw them out of office,”right? Because the politician is allowing the public to be hypocritical, to pretend they care more about trees than they do.

…

Robin: The pandemic was not a big enough crisis that we fired people who did badly on it. Neither was Afghanistan. We’re in a world where we have these big things we do wrong but they somehow just aren’t bad enough to really scare us into trying different things. The question is where will we ever see some nation or big organization that’s scared enough about losing to be willing to roll the dice and try some big changes?

Richard: When you look at the American Military established under World War II I mean the military establishment was a new thing. You were building basically something from scratch. Now you have all these vested interests. You know it’s funny. The places, the countries with the most US Military… the most military personnel in the world are actually Italy, Germany, Japan, and South Korea right?

Robin: Those are risky, dangerous spots. You’d want troops there wouldn’t you?

Richard: Yeah. Well, maybe but if you notice they have something in common. Those are the Axis powers and the Korean War right?

Robin: Right.

Richard: Basically they’re the exact same place they were in 1945 to 1950 and so-

Robin: Hysteresis right? Enormous path dependence?

Richard: Yeah, exactly. Enormous dependence. Yeah, Italy. Is that obvious? The most dangerous place in the world. Maybe, maybe not.

Robin: No, and it’s not remotely obviously the most dangerous place in the world.

Richard: Yeah. Do you look around the world, and right now do you see variation in the extent to which countries are willing to not only take risks but take risks specifically along the path that you suggest?

[thatsamericano]

LOL, one thing I’m thinking of doing is adding in another version of Romerica, because it’s my story and I can be self-indulgent if I want. (So far we have regular Romerica, platonic m/f Romerica, and a Romerica parallel with two Italians. I’m thinking of adding the f/f version.) I had Chiara in this fic as a student at Sapienza University of Rome studying art history, and Amelia is a student at the American University of Rome studying film. Chiara met her this year when she was just walking around Rome and Amelia was working on a first-year film project (and she was like ooh, pretty Italian girl, better get her on camera instead of focusing on whatever shot I was trying to get before, lol). They became friends, and right now they’re not together, but they’re at the mutual crushes stage. Part of what Chiara is doing when she’s not at the house is hanging out with her friend, because Amelia is in Rome over the holidays and her family might not be with her (maybe her family isn’t FACE, so the relationship isn’t good with her parents and it’s just her sister Madeleine).

Then on December 26, it’s Santo Stefano, which is traditionally a day to visit friends in Italy. Chiara wants to go visit her friend/crush after two full days of being around her family. Nyo Veneziano (who I’ll mention once or twice as this girl who’s maybe around Alfred’s age and looks a lot like Feliciano, possibly Chiara’s sister since she’s often with the mom/dad) teases her when she mentions going out to visit her friend Amelia. She’s like “Are you sure you’re not going to visit your girlfriend?” and she starts blushing and getting flustered like “God damn it, Alice, I told you she was pretty one time! Fucking let it go already!” Realistically, this dialogue would all be in Italian, but Alfred has been studying with Duolingo basically ever since he met Savino so he knows enough Italian to get the gist. (It’s longer conversations, especially if people are talking quickly and over each other, that he has a harder time with. This one is a short exchange with basic vocabulary, plus cursing that he would know from Savino.) Alfred giggles when he sees this, because it reminds him of how Savino still gets around him sometimes, and especially how he was acting very early on when he was trying to deny his feelings. She kind of glances at him, huffs, and leaves to go visit her friend.

The reason why Chiara gets so annoyed with her mom pestering her about Alfred (and her dad laughing at her mom’s comments) is that there is just nothing romantic there. Alfred is obviously in love with her cousin, and even on the first meeting before she knew that she could tell his blushing was out of embarrassment that she had told him his accent was terrible when he’d been trying so hard to impress everyone, not because he had a thing for her. Chiara is too practical to let herself develop a crush on a boy who’s obviously in love with her cousin, two years younger than her, and will only be in Rome for a little more than a week. She has a huge crush on her friend Amelia that she hasn’t told anyone about (but her sister Alice just knows, the way Feliciano could tell Savino liked Alfred without him saying anything about it). Chiara dated boys in high school, and she hasn’t told her parents she’s also into girls yet because she may be only starting to figure this out herself and because she isn’t dating a girl so it’s not super relevant information for them to have yet. No one in this family would care about Chiara being bi, and she knows this. (There’s obviously Antonio, who is bi. Nonno Vargas is bi and was just devoted to one woman for the majority of his life. I’m planning to casually drop that info when he talks to Alfred and mentions that he used to give “boys and girls” hickeys and do more than that with them when he was Alfred’s age if the hickey Christmas Eve incident comes up, but then he explains that he became completely focused on Sofia once he met her. By sheer numbers, there should be at least a couple more gay/bi people in this family.) But Chiara’s parents are operating not only under the assumption she’s straight (wrong), but also that she’s at least somewhat into Alfred because she seems to enjoy teasing him occasionally and making him blush (double wrong, because she might have been interested in Alfred in another life where the circumstances were very different, but not this one). So she gets really annoyed about it sometimes.

Also, Chiara got super blushy the first time she opened her email and saw Savino’s art project because it looks a lot like her and Amelia. Savino was making it a female version of him and Alfred, so of course the brunette girl basically looked like her but with Savino’s slightly lighter hair color (the main physical difference Alfred notices in this fic besides the obvious fact that Chiara is a girl). The blonde girl does look a lot like Amelia too, but with some differences because Amelia looks like America’s canon nyo (so no glasses and no cowlick, which Savino would have added for his boyfriend). She didn’t tell anyone this, but maybe Amelia was around and was like “Ooh, what’s making you blush so much, Chiara?” and Chiara slammed her laptop closed so fast you’d think she was looking at something a lot less innocent than a high school art project that shows two girls kissing.

[crazyfreckledginger]

Mozart x Reader - “Dating Amadeus Mozart Would Include...”

Requested by anon: “Hey, can I ask for an imagine of what daiting Mozart would be like?” + “Hewo. Can I request an imagine of what dating Mozart would be like?”

A/N: Sorry this took so long!! T-T speaking of long, this headcanon turned out to be ridiculously long, apologies!!

Warning: smut at the end.

You were a vampire who was old friends with Le Comte.

Having broken contact for a long while, it was quite a surprise when you popped into the mansion one day to visit him.

Quite the pleasant surprise for him. 

He even

You met all the other residents then and some were much nicer than others.

One in particular was a little too friendly.

*cough cough* Arthur.

But it did shock you how rude some of them could be.

Truth be told, it did strike you how incredibly rude Theo was specifically because of how stunning and arrogantly attractive he was. 

Mozart was the second on your ‘rude list’, he was so cold with sculpture-like beauty and it was captivating.

His demeanor was the only thing that made you look away from him because how can one be so beautiful and so RUDE!!

You met Leoardo as well and you understood how he was such a close friend to Le Comte.

You weren’t as close to the pureblood, being somewhat of a lone wolf and the fact that you weren’t a pureblood yourself. 

And since you didn’t like all the trouble and danger that came with that higher vampire status so you both agreed to steer away from each other and he’d come to visit when the coast was clear.

Leonardo was one of the decent ones so far and you knew he was a good guy only because he was a good acquaintance with Le Comte.

The latter saw this and proposed that you should accompany Sebastian when he goes into town to buy groceries.

It didn’t seem like much but it would be a good first step to getting more comfortable in the place. 

You had the unfortunate luck of sharing the carriage ride with Mozart. 

It was comforting having Sebastian there since he made the atmosphere less awkward.

Curiously, Mozart seemed on edge being in the carriage, you didn’t know what that was about but you didn’t bring it up, knowing he’ll throw a witty or salty comment your way.

Mozart begrudgingly came out when you were in town and muttered something under his breath, walking away.

Seeing your confused expression, Sebastian explained that the pianist needed a little walk in town to buy more paper since he ran out of sheets. 

How can one of the most famous pianists up to date have such a foul attitude?

You gave him the benefit of the doubt though.

Only because he kept quiet for the ride.

Helping Sebastian made you feel great, you felt like you can give a bit back for the trouble Comte went through for organising a room -- even just letting you stay.

But also because this was a new town and it made you feel a little more at ease, you had a feeling you’ll be staying here for a while.

The sun was starting to set by the time the three of you had come back together and started heading home in the carriage. 

The next few days were surprisingly quiet, even Theo wasn’t as mean.

Apparently, any impression from the first to the last isn’t relevant to him at all.

It was one night where Arthur asked for some Rouge at an ungodly hour of the night after feeling peckish, you didn’t want to bother Sebastian with how much more work he had decided to take on.

So you did it for him. 

And you could get a secret treat as you were there hehe. 

Unfortunately for you, Mozart was down there as well, getting a little energy boost while he was writing.

And even more unfortunate for you, the door locked on it’s own, and not wanting to be on Comte’s bad side, and, since the door was one of the primary things that kept the smell of blood in.

Having heard that there are a few residents that have an unstable control over their thirst, you decided that you wouldn’t break the door down for their sake.

There was no need for a commotion.

You would have been more peeved off but you knew what they were going through, you were there before.

So you were both stuck in the basement, among blood.

Maybe Arthur would have noticed you didn’t return with his drink and come find you? 

Well, he didn’t and he just fell asleep. 

Most probably dreaming of women.

However, this nearly sleepless night of yours actually made you and Mozart closer.

Turns out the rude pianist you met was actually nice under that cold and reserved nature of his.

You were tolerating each other now and slowly learning about each other. 

Sebastian found the both of you in the morning, your cheek against his shoulder, his head leaning against the wall as you slept on the floor.

Needless to say you were both embarrassed when Sebastian woke the both of you up.

He raised an eyebrow at you, remembering how you came up to him a few days ago, desperately wanting to know why some of the residents were so handsome but so BLUNT!

After that, Mozart surprised everyone when he asked for your help, wanting to have your advice on a new piece he had been working on because something didn’t sound right.

A month or so passed and you were getting on with everyone in the mansion.

Even Theo!

Well, it was come and go.

Everyone knew at that point that Mozart had grown quite fond of you. 

You were still confused and steered clear of Arthur because you were sure you were

Comte had requested the residents to attend a ball one of his old friends was hosting  just for good fortune.

It was chaos when everyone was getting ready and then having to sort out the carriages.

But finally, you all arrived.

You hadn’t been to one of these fancy parties in a long while. 

Being a little intimidated, you subtly gravitated towards Mozart since you felt a little more comfortable around him.

He didn’t protest when you clung onto his arm.

And he couldn’t care less if anyone had any ideas about the both of you, at least no one would try to get close -- or so he thought.

That evening, it was the first time you saw Mozart playing a complete piece, let alone three or four for the audience.

It was indescribably captivating, and noticing yourself be so entranced with his performance -- like everyone else, your ears started to burn as your cheeks flushed. 

You realised you liked him more than an acquaintance, friend, any word that described a platonic relationship.

When he finished, everyone applauded him and you needed to turn back to your drink, wanting to down these emotions you didn't want to have. 

It didn't work, it only made Mozars chest inexplicably tighten as he turned around to see your back. 

He shook it off as he removed himself from the piano. 

Almost instantly, he was swarmed with people. 

You expected as much and downed your drink. 

Just as you place your drink down, leaned back in your chair and started breathing easily, someone slid Jean's now-empty seats beside you.

Lazily, you looked over and perceived a man you couldn’t recognise.

“Do I know you?” you inquired, bitterness invisible under your tone.

He had a look in his eyes that showed that he knew exactly what he was doing.

“Not yet,” he smirked. You raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

“Not ever,” you retorted, standing up.

But he grasped your wrist.

“Don’t be impolite now love, let’s finish our conversation.” his smooth, calming voice was a shocking contrast with his very tight grip against your skin.

“This conversation is finished,” A familiar voice interrupted the conversation, slapping his arm away with strong force.

Said man’s arm slid around your waist and pulled you into their chest. 

From the corner of your eye, you recognised the silver hair and relief washed over you. 

“Go away.” Mozart glared at the man.

Whilst trying to maintain his dignity -- or the little he had left -- the man slowly stood up, glancing at the both of you and walking away.

“Thank you,” you murmured. 

“Are you avoiding me?” he whispered. 

“No,” you turned around with flushed cheeks.

Watching the look in your eyes that was holding an emotion that made his heart lurch, though he didn’t understand why it made him feel that way.

He held your hand, dragging you into another empty room.

“What’s wrong?” you inquired when he closed the door. 

His hands clasped around your upper arms and his eyes scanned you like he was checking for injuries.

When in fact he was trying to understand the look you were giving him.

“Why did you look at me like that?” he stared at you suspiciously.

Your cheeks burned yet again.

“No reason.” you decided to hug him, it still made you flustered but you didn’t want him to see your face.

Mozart slowly returned it, a little shy himself. 

After a bit, one of his hands released it’s hold from around your shoulder and his fingers grasped your chin. 

Your eyes widened, knowing what he was about to do.

His breathing caught in his throat once he gazed over your face.

You were gorgeous. 

Wow, he was really in love with you.

No matter how much he tried to deny it and suppress it.

When it’s real, you can’t walk away.

Your eyes glanced down to his lips and you leaned in, kissing him softly. 

His grip tightened around you, and he deepened the kiss, cupping your cheek to keep you close.

You spent the next few minutes in each other’s embrace when the kiss ended. 

“We should go back, everyone must be wondering where we are.” you murmured.

He hummed in response, squeezing your hand and following you outside.

And that’s how it all began.

Needless to say that at this point, no one was really surprised at this point that you were dating, Mozart was obviously smitten with you from the beginning.

He became more protective of you than before for obvious reasons.

Mozart isn’t the most comfortable with PDA, if you want to hold his hand in public, however, he won’t complain.

The vampire loves it when you cuddle up on his chest, bury your face in his neck or chest. 

You like placing his head in your lap and playing with his hair.

Also wearing his shirts with nothing under it. 

A lot of talking before you go to sleep, about everything and everything.

Always going on trips into town with him when he needs anything because of how he gets in carriages. 

You do tease him to this day about it just to see him a little grumpy but he loves you too much to get mad at you.

Always bringing him coffee when he’s working hard on a piece and sometimes massaging his shoulders when he’s been so tense hovering over his piano.

Sometimes dragging him into bed when he’s worked so much and you want to cuddle.

When you go get rouge, you always pop by his room and give him a portion, you always make sure he eats enough and it means you can spend your lunch break with him.

Neither of you really get jealous of anyone, of course there are some exceptions. 

Mozart does get annoyed when Arthur flirts with you, it gets under his skin.

You’ve also become really good friends with Jean, and whenever you have an argument, you go to him for advice after cooling down since he’s known your boyfriend for longer.

He does spoil you alot.

And communication has become easier in your relationship but there are always rough patches right?

Mozart isn’t the best at comforting you when something happens, but he does a good job at changing the subject and your state of mind.

He can really take your mind off of things. 

Again, communication is still not the easiest for him so expressing what’s on his mind or emotions can be a little on the difficult side.

Teaching you how to play the piano. 

Tiny back hugs when you’re in the mood to prepare food for him.

He picks up your favourite meals as well and will try his hand at making them for you. 

Mozart is a really soft soul and he’s always so considerate and observant, he knows when something has happened but not always the best at guessing what that might be.

SMUT

He always wants to make sure you’re happy, so he’s down for anything you want.

Mostly sweet sex that can be a little bit on the rougher side in terms of pace.

Mozart is okay with experimenting so you’re always trying something new.

He has relatively high sex drive but he’s so good at hiding it that it looks like it’s not that high. 

Hickies on you, he can be pretty kinky when he wants.

Going down on you is a regular thing if you’re into that. 

Pulling his hair and digging your nails in his back. 

Slow, sensual, fast, rough, whichever you want, he loves all of them.

Whatever time of the day you guys want.

He doesn’t like quickies though, it’s too rushed and not satisfying. 

You guys can go for a while.

Whenever you guys are finished for the time being, he likes kissing you roughly for a few moments, savouring the last sliver of lust that was left over before cuddling and taking care of each other until you fell asleep in each other’s arms.

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[lisatelramor]

Ohaka Mairi

 First of the fic to celebrate 10 years of fandom, this on a Tiger & Bunny fic for @vulcansdarkest <3 I know you didn’t say WHAT for T&B, but hope you like this ^_^;; Also, who else is excited about the news of a 2nd T&B season???

***

Getting a call at seven in the morning on his day off was not a pleasant start to Barnaby’s day. The fact that it was from Kotetsu both made it better and worse. Better because Barnaby did enjoy hearing from him, but worse because if Tiger was up at seven on his day off, it usually meant something was up. “Yes?” Barnaby said, not bothering to hide that he’s a bit annoyed to be woken up on the one day he allows himself to sleep in.

“Bunny!” Kotetsu said, too cheerful by far. “Are you free today?”

Was that a trick question? Kotetsu knew it was Barnaby’s day off. He also knew that usually Barnaby spent half of the day doing a bit of housework and light reading, and the other half either socializing or getting out of the apartment in some way, shape or form. “I don’t have any time sensitive plans,” he said finally. “Why?”

“Great! Can you come over? I meant to ask you earlier this week, but you know, with work and—”

Barnaby tuned him out as Kotetsu went rambling on with excuses. Which meant Kotetsu was nervous about something and had been putting off asking, probably. Barnaby scrubbed at his eyes. “Fine,” he said, cutting off a babble about the importance of… picking the right breakfast food? He had no idea how that was relevant to anything. “When do you want me to be there?”

“Does ten work?” Kotetsu asked.

If Barnaby got up now instead of sleeping more, he could have a leisurely breakfast, clean his dishes, do a bit of exercise and read a chapter of his current novel before going to see Kotetsu. Or he could sleep another hour and be rushed through that list. “I’ll see you at ten,” he said and hung up. If he didn’t hang up Kotetsu could babble on for another half an hour. And Barnaby would let him because it was both somewhat irritating and something he found cute. He had a hard time refusing Kotetsu anything these days.

He realized a moment later that Kotetsu never explained what he wanted Barnaby to come over for, but that was Kotetsu. Barnaby stretched. Well, he was awake now, so leisurely morning it was.

o*O*o

Barnaby had a key to Kotetsu’s apartment, not that he used it often. More often than not, Kotetsu was waiting for him at the door by the time he came over, or they spent time in Barnaby’s apartment instead. No one was waiting for him this time so Barnaby let himself in.

There was music playing, the oldies that Kotetsu liked, and Barnaby could hear Kotetsu talking in a low, distracted sounding voice before he even reached the living room.

“Hello,” he called. “You said ten, and it’s ten, old man.”

Kotetsu’s voice paused and Barnaby had a split second to brace himself as he rounded the corner before a teenage girl latched onto him.

“Barnaby!” Kotetsu’s daughter cried happily. “You’re here!”

“Kaede.” Barnaby awkwardly hugged her back, looking past her to a very sheepish looking Kotetsu. “I didn’t know you were here today.”

“I spent the night,” Kaede said. “Dad and I always try to spend today together when we can.”

Barnaby tried to remember if there was anything special about today’s date and drew a blank. It wasn’t Kotetsu’s birthday and it wasn’t Kaede’s birthday either. It wasn’t a holiday. He couldn’t remember if Kotetsu had done anything around this date last year either. “Oh?” he said finally, pinning Kotetsu with a look that demanded an explanation.

“It’s Tomoe’s birthday,” Kotetsu said, fiddling with his wedding ring, and oh. Barnaby felt a stab of empathy alongside confusion. “Kaede and I usually visit her grave.”

“We bring flowers and a picnic with foods she liked,” Kaede said with a bittersweet smile, “and tell her how our lives are going.”

“That sounds like a great way to remember her,” Barnaby said, knowing how much they both still cared even so many years later, “but why am I here?”

Kotetsu avoided Barnaby’s eyes. “Well. You see.”

“Because you’re family,” Kaede said over her father, throwing him an annoyed look. “It’s about time you meet her. Someone was supposed to talk to you about it ages ago.”

Kotetsu laughed weakly. Barnaby was frozen by Kaede’s explanation. Family. “I know it probably seems like a weird request,” Kotetsu said, “but Kaede’s right. You’re part of the family. I almost asked you along last year but…”

“He chickened out, Kaede said, looking unimpressed by her father’s embarrassment.

“Right,” Kotetsu said. “You’ll come though, right? I’ve told Tomoe all about you so it only feels right to bring you.”

He looked so hopeful and vulnerable that Barnaby knew he’d never be able to say no even if the idea of visiting a stranger’s grave made him feel a bit uncomfortable and like he’d be invading their tradition. When Kaede turned that same hopeful look in his direction, any protest he could have formed crumbled like wet chalk. “I’ll come,” he said.

Kaede immediately brightened with a little cheer and Kotetsu smiled so soft and grateful that Barnaby felt almost guilty because he definitely didn’t deserve that sort of expression directed at him. At the same time he hoarded every moment Kotetsu looked at him like he was important. It was the last thing he should be feeling considering they would be visiting Kotetsu’s wife’s grave. The wife he still very much loved.

“Thank you, Bunny,” Kotetsu said.

Barnaby cleared his throat and couldn’t meet his eyes. “Is there anything I can do to help or…?”

“We made all the food this morning!” Kaede said holding up a bento-style box. “Dad has the tools and incense, and we just need to get flowers!”

“Tools?” Barnaby asked.

Kotetsu picked up a bucket, scoop, and a small broom and rake set. “To clean the grave,” he said. Barnaby, who had never had a need to clean his parents’ graves, blinked. “You’ll see,” Kotetsu said.

“You can carry lunch,” Kaede said, pushing the box into Barnaby’s hands. “I’m going to choose the flowers.”

Barnaby resigned himself to following whatever orders she gave him; he didn’t really know what to expect with any of this.

Kotetsu elbowed him gently. “It’s nothing intimidating,” he said reassuringly. “It’s mostly just a picnic.”

“In a graveyard.”

“Yeah, but where else is best to talk to people you love who moved on?”

Barnaby thought that if he was going to talk to the deceased then it honestly wouldn’t matter where he was doing it from, but if it was what helped Kotetsu, then it was as good a place as any.

“C’mon,” Kaede said heading for the door. “It’s a train ride to get there and I want to get the best flowers before someone else does!”

“You heard her, Bunny, let’s go!”

Barnaby shook his head fondly and followed after them.

o*O*o

Barnaby had been to Kotetsu’s hometown once, and he’d spent the whole trip feeling mildly overwhelmed as Kotetsu’s family welcomed him with open arms. It wasn’t really a surprise that Kotetsu’s wife’s grave was in that same town instead of the city.

“Graves are a family thing,” Kotetsu explained after his brother had dropped them off at the cemetery in his old work truck. He picked his way through rows of headstones that looked less like the graves Barnaby was used to and more like compact stone shrines with pebbled walkways between the rows instead of grassy hills and planted flower bushes. “Every family has one, and your ancestors are buried there, and probably your descendants will be too, though this cemetery isn’t too old, so… Not quite the spanning family shrine some of the real old ones are.”

“How far back is yours?” Barnaby asked, hoping that wasn’t too morbid of a question to ask.

“Eh, only to my great-grandfather. And not all my relatives got buried here. There was a fight in my Gramps’ generation and half the family moved north and never talked to anyone around here again, and if people marry out, then they’re considered part of that family and…” He waved a hand. “It’s complicated. My dad’s buried here though, and a few other relatives.”

“I see.”

“Hurry up!” Kaede called already far ahead in the rows of graves. “You’re so slow.”

“It’s not a race!” Kotetsu called back. “She’s only carrying the flowers,” he muttered, readjusting the bucket of water and garden tools in his hands.

“Want me to take the tools?” Barnaby offered. He only had the food in hand after all.

“I’m fine, I can do this much,” Kotetsu grumbled.

“Suit yourself.”

Kaede came to a stop up ahead, impatiently shifting as they walked closer. The grave was no different from the ones around it that Barnaby could tell, carefully inscribed with Japanese script and a walkway up to it with stone containers for flowers and incense at the base of the grave. It was better cared for than some of the ones they’d passed, but there were still a few scattered leaves and some grass poking up between the stones.

“Not too bad,” Kotetsu said, looking the grave over. “Kaede, why don’t you and Bunny take care of the weeds while I wash the grave?”

“Got it!” Kaede set down her flowers and grabbed Barnaby’s hand. He barely set down the food before she was dragging him over to the garden tools and claiming the tiny rake for herself. “You can sweep up,” she said hold the hand broom out. Barnaby took it and she ran over to start picking grass out between stones.

Kotetsu saw him looking lost and pulled him over. “If she has you sweeping, maybe dust things off before I wash?”

“Right.” That at least was simple enough and he swept away the leaves and dust on the main part of the grave before moving on to the places Kaede finished pulling weeds from to sweep that dirt and bits of dried grass away. Behind him, Kotetsu poured water over the grave and emptied the incense and flower containers of anything that remained in them.

The cleaning didn’t take long, but it was surprisingly companionable, Kotetsu humming something softly and Kaede directing her attention to the task with all the ferocity a twelve year old could manage. Barnaby helped get the last of the grass and they stood back to look at a very clean grave.

Kaede pulled out the flowers—tiger lilies and sunflowers, because Tomoe had liked them, Kotetsu had explained—and arranged them in one of the containers. Kotetsu set incense in the other, lighting it. A sweet, spice-scented smoke rose into the air.

“This is…” Kotetsu pursed his lips. “Usually we take a moment to say something privately, and then go on with things out loud.”

“I won’t interrupt,” Barnaby said feeling out of place.

“Well that’s no good,” Kaede said, “you should say something too.” She tugged Barnaby forward until they were all kneeling in front of the grave.

Barnaby didn’t know what to do, but Kaede bowed her head and made a face like she was trying to telepathically project her thoughts beyond the grave. Kotetsu didn’t quite bow his head or close his eyes, but he went very still, focused inward. They both had private thoughts to say, Kaede to the mother she probably barely remembered and Kotetsu to the woman he had loved.

He watched the smoke rise in lazy coils and wondered what he could say to this woman that meant so much to people he cared about. This woman whose presence lingered even so many years later in Kotetsu and Kaede’s lives.

Would she have approved of Barnaby if she was still alive? Of his closeness to Kotetsu or…? But would he and Kotetsu have gotten as close as they were if she had been alive? It’s a strange feeling, acknowledging how loss had shaped them both. Those holes never quite filled in and left a network of scars that seem to never end. But for all that they were lost, they had been loved. Tomoe was loved still, and no matter the occasional thought wishing Kotetsu wouldn’t hurt over her anymore, he’d never begrudge Kotetsu for caring. He just hoped that if there was a spirit out there watching, she didn’t mind too much that Barnaby had fit in to the broken places in her loved ones’ lives.

Kotetsu shifted, the serious look in his eyes fading to a nostalgic smile. He patted Barnaby’s knee. “This is Barnaby,” he said out loud. “Bunny. I should have brought him here sooner. He’s my partner and I care about him a lot, so expect to see him again in the future.” Kotetsu wanted him to come back and do this again? “He’s looked after me a lot the last few years, and I’d like to think I look after him some too.”

“You do,” Barnaby said, because it was true. They watched each other’s backs. Kotetsu helped give him purpose. Made him a better person. And he helped keep Kotetsu grounded and focused. He liked to think he made Kotetsu smile.

As if on cue, Kotetsu gave him one of the bright, soft smiles that made Barnaby want to fall into his orbit and never leave.

“He’s a pretty cool hero too,” Kaede piped up. “Cooler than Dad.”

“Ouch,” Kotetsu said with an overdramatic hand to his heart. He said something else, so quiet Barnaby only caught something about a promise, before he said louder, “I’m still doing my best, and Bunny helps make that possible. I hope you can welcome him into the family.”

“Of course she does,” Kaede said. “She cares about us being happy and Barnaby is part of that.”

Kotetsu laughed, lifting his hand from Barnaby’s knee to muss Kaede’s hair affectionately. Kaede squawked. “And look at Kaede, she’s almost a teenager! She was so little just a little while ago!”

“Dad, stop being embarrassing!” Kaede complained.

“I don’t think that’s possible,” Barnaby teased.

“Betrayal,” Kotetsu said, leaning back like he took a blow. “And to think that I thought you both loved me.”

“Stop being a goof and let’s eat,” Kaede said.

“Right, right,” Kotetsu said with a sigh. He stood up and offered Barnaby a hand.

o*O*o

Kotetsu had actually cooked something that wasn’t fried rice (though there was a small portion of fried rice in the bento). Kaede, noticing him looking in surprise at the variety of foods, said, “Don’t worry, I helped. Nothing’s going to poison you.”

“I can cook just fine,” Kotetsu said, passing plates around. A single small plate went on the grave. Barnaby observed this and guessed that there’d be some kind of food offering and that the shared meal was literal in some sense.

“And yet all I ever see you make is fried rice,” Barnaby said.

“Oi. I made you fried chicken that one time.”

“Mm, yes. One time.” Barnaby smiled as Kotetsu pouted.

“You can barely cook.”

Barnaby shrugged. “You liked the pasta I made you just fine.”

Kotetsu opened his mouth, closed it, and pouted more. Kaede openly laughed at him.

“You see what I deal with?” Kotetsu said toward the gravestone, and oh that was a bit odd, but at the same time… nice. Like there actually was a conversation going on. “Bunny likes to tease me.”

“You make it so easy to do so.”

“You know what? You’re eating some of the seaweed salad,” Kotetsu said to Barnaby even though he knew Barnaby didn’t like it.

Barnaby wrinkled his nose but took it with good grace. “So all the food you included were your wife’s favorites?”

“Yeah,” Kotetsu said. He plucked items from the bento with a pair of chopsticks with ease, putting a little bit of each on all of the plates. Enough that everyone had one of everything, including the grave offering. “Neither of us was huge on cooking, but we both had a few things we made and we’d make them over and over.” He grinned at the memory. “I thought for sure we would get sick of some of them, but you know what? Crappy store bought pasta sauce on cheap noodles is still a comfort food. It’s funny though. When Tomoe got pregnant with Kaede she decided she was going to figure out how to cook for real.” Kotetsu placed a piece of chicken on Kaede’s plate. “She tried a new recipe every week. Almost burnt down the kitchen once. I’d come home and she’d drag me to the kitchen to either try whatever she came up with or help cut things up while she kept things from burning.”

“And you still didn’t figure out how to cook much,” Kaede said.

“Hey, I got better back then too! You don’t remember but on my days off I’d make you pancakes with silly shapes for breakfast and cook dinners so Tomoe had a break.” Kotetsu looked down at his plate, lost in the past. “All the recipes she liked she wrote down and kept in the cupboard… So these are the same recipes,” he finished, focusing on Barnaby.

“It’s kind of cool that I can sort of taste what Mom’s cooking would be like,” Kaede said. “Though I don’t know if either of us made it right.”

“No, it’s pretty close.” Kotetsu took a bite of some seasoned vegetables. “Pretty close.”

Barnaby ate slowly as Kotetsu and Kaede shared a few stories back and forth—things Kotetsu did with Tomoe or that Kotetsu’s mother had told Kaede about over the years.

“We went to high school together you see,” Kotetsu said to Barnaby, and Barnaby vaguely remembered it being mentioned before years ago, though Kotetsu rarely spoke about Tomoe much at all. “And I already knew Antonio, though we didn’t get along. Did I tell you about the kidnapping thing?” he asked Kaede.

“I’ve heard that story a million times,” Kaede said.

Kotetsu looks at Barnaby.

“…I feel like Antonio told it to me once, but we were drunk at the time.”

Kotetsu grinned. “So. Mind you everyone involved were idiot teenagers…”

Barnaby remembered more details as Kotetsu went into a story about gangs and kidnappings and how he ended up friends with Antonio and dating Tomoe and how she’d given him the courage to go into heroism.

“I knew I wanted to see more of the world than my hometown,” Kotetsu said, “but until then I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. There are some things I regret but… I’ll never regret becoming a hero.”

“I for one am glad you did,” Barnaby said.

Kotetsu sent him a wide grin, and then conversation moved toward more talking about where their lives had changed since the last time they visited the grave, Kotetsu roping him in to talk about some of the more interesting arrests they’d pulled off and the charity work Barnaby continued to do.

As time went on, Barnaby found himself talking unprompted, bringing up daily life with Kotetsu and other heroes and the silly little things that meant so much because they were mundane. Like mornings on days Kotetsu stayed over, sharing coffee as they watched the news, or everyone hanging around the exercise equipment to train and tease and gossip to their hearts’ content. For so long life hadn’t been enjoyable. Barnaby hadn’t had close friends. But now he had mornings without nightmares the night before. He had friends who joked and teased and were there when he needed them. He felt fulfilled where before he felt driven by something close to desperation.

Now Barnaby had moments like this. Belonging because someone cared enough to make space to let him stay.

The food ran out and the stories tapered off. Kotetsu wrapped up the plate that the offerings were on—“It’s not sanitary or good for the wildlife to leave it, Bunny”—and Kaede lit one more stick of incense as she prayed again.

There was nothing for Barnaby to do, but he didn’t feel awkward anymore. In fact…

He knelt next to Kaede, this time trying to think of something to actually say to the woman Kotetsu had loved, still loved and probably always would. That love didn’t mean he didn’t have room in his heart for others.

Thank you, he thought. I don’t know where I’d be if he hadn’t been a hero. If Kotetsu never became Wild Tiger… If he’d retired after his wife’s death… If he’d walked away instead of agreeing to be Barnaby’s partner… Barnaby probably wouldn’t be here right now, or at the very least he wouldn’t be nearly so happy. I’ll try to keep supporting him. To be happy with him as a partner.

He took a breath and let it out slowly. I love him and I hope that’s okay.

Barnaby still hadn’t said it to Kotetsu yet, but he would, someday. He’d like to be partners in all senses of the word. He was pretty sure that they were halfway there already even if nothing had been said. Sometimes Kotetsu looked at Barnaby with the same soft expression he used when he talked about Tomoe and it gave Barnaby hope.

Barnaby would never be a replacement, and he would never want to be.

After a day like today though, he could picture that future, of being adopted into Kotetsu’s family truly. He wanted that.

I’ll be back, he promised the ghost of a woman he would never meet.

When Barnaby looked up, Kotetsu was smiling, holding out a hand.

Barnaby took it and didn’t let go.

o*O*o

“Next year,” Kotetsu said after they dropped Kaede off with his mother, “would you like to help cook with Kaede and me?” Kotetsu’s hands flailed a bit, garden tools rattling in their plastic bag. “If you want to come back again, that is! You don’t have to if it was too weird. I know you probably have different traditions for remembrance and—”

“Yes,” Barnaby said.

“Yes?” Kotetsu echoed, shocked. “Really?”

“It was… surprisingly fun considering we spent several hours in a graveyard.” He wet his lips. “And it means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”

Kotetsu gave him that soft look again. “Yeah. It really does.”

“Then I’ll be there.” Barnaby smiled back.

“There’s a festival in August, Obon, that’s a bit like a carnival and a bit where you go clean your ancestor’s grave and remember them. A little like Dia de los Muertos from what Antonio’s told me of his family. It would be all my family, but would you be willing…?”

“Of course.”

“Good because you’re family.” Kotetsu snorted. “I mean I’m pretty sure my mom adopted you back there.”

Barnaby laughed.

Kotetsu pulled him into a hug—a proper hug not just his usual arm over the shoulder. “Thanks. Really.” And Barnaby could swear he felt Kotetsu’s lips graze his cheek as he pulled back, but he wasn’t sure.

The light blush on Kotetsu’s cheeks said he hadn’t imagined it though.

Soon, Barnaby thought, letting their shoulders and hands brush together as they waited for the train home. Soon he would put the feelings in his chest to words. And by the point he did, he knew Kotetsu would meet him halfway like he did time and again in their partnership.

[zyzzyva1936-blog-blog]

“Lemma the Librarian - Possession With Intent”

Published: March 17, 2018

http://www.mcstories.com/LemmaTheLibrarian/index.html

Another paywalled one skipped, “the Di-Lemma Dilemma”, in which the party returns to Iason and Iola’s hometown and discovers that strange things are afoot*! It’s pretty good, although it suffers from a kinda fuzzy villain and a complete lack of embarrassing childhood stories. Like Lemma, I demand to hear about 6-year-old Iason defending the village from frogs and trees and a particularly scary-looking rock! ;)

Our actual story today is Possession With Intent, and it has one of the absolute highpoints of the series: specifically, Lemma and Peri’s conversation about the invention of the pyramid, which is one of the most Terry Pratchett things I’ve read that wasn’t actually Pratchett: and not in a crude copy sort of way, but legitimately hitting the same vein of lightly absurdist humour**. If you’ve read Terry Pratchett, you know that’s high praise; if you haven’t, stop wasting your time reading “porn reviews” on “the internet” and read the best damn humourist since Wodehouse died. Do it! Now! Right, sorry, the actual story. This one suffers even worse than “Di-Lemma” from the fuzziness of its villain - it was never clear to me at all if Peri was accidentally responsible, deliberately doing this, or just a victim like everyone else. But the conflict is pretty great despite all that - Lemma, Iason, and Iola all fighting being possessed by restless dead*** in different ways: Iason with his usual heavy-duty Will Save, Iola the same but failing more and also with an edge of trauma from the whole Brinksmoor business, Lemma, inevitably, by folding completely (although she’s getting better at justifying it to herself****). The character relations - both the “real” party and the ghosts - are complicated but explicated very clearly, and it makes things a lot more interesting than the usual “Lemma & co vs cartoon villain.” The resolution is also great - the story helps you forget that Lemma is a pretty damn powerful sorceress, and when she gets a moment of clarity to remember that she wraps the whole thing up right away. With less fire than might have been expected! Less fire immediately, at any rate. She casts at least one spell before opening up with the fireballs, what more do you want from her?

There’s a couple of bits tied into the main arc: as I said, we get Lemma being a sub but also becoming better at justifying it against her dawning realization that she should recover the books and Do Good in general - and, push come to shove, she decides to go for helping free the people at the Project rather than sink into self-gratifying submission. We’re reminded of Iola’s trauma, and she also notices that Lemma has the hots for Iason something bad (Lemma’s response is, as always, blanket denial of everything). 

And, Lemma uses the ghosts to pass along a message to someone she doesn’t identify to the reader in preparation the ominous spectre of the last two books. From here on out, no more episodic adventures, it’s all tying plots off and blowing things up... 

*Turns out to be sexy mind control. I know, I was shocked and surprised too. **The name of Lemma’s book this time is a more direct Pratchett shoutout. Ironically, this story doesn’t remind of of Pyramids at all, since Pratchett makes fun of ancient Egypt from an extremely different direction in that one.

***We’re in ancient Egypt. Everything is about death.

****Slight snark aside, the bit where Lemma and the courtesan are aligning are definitely pretty excellent. It’s the first time that I recall that Lemma really explains what she gets out of being a sub besides “plot-relevant magical orgasms” and it is just exactly correct. How @midorikonton wrote that and din’t realize she was a sub is beyond me. ;P (Well, ok, as she says, it’s because it was welded to other sex-and-gender stuff she didn’t have an epiphany about until later. It’s still a great description.)

When The Fuck Are We? 🤷

“The Di-Lemma Dilemma” is set in Iason and Iola’s hometown of Iardanos, and if you try to argue that this is the actual Greek village of Iardanos, and not Iolcus, the mythological Jason’s hometown, I will fight you to the death.

So: Iolcus. On the coast of Magnesia, about halfway up the eastern side of Peninsular Greece. Conveniently enough, most of Greek mythology is set in a vaguely-defined Mycenaean mishmash, so calling this 1200 BCE is as good as any other date*. When Jason was a child, his father the king was overthrown by his uncle Pelias (although in a feud/coup kinda thing rather than a Hamlet dealie), and Jason was bundled off to hiding. When he reached manhood, he returned to Iolcus to reclaim his throne, which Pelias agreed to... as long as Jason proved his worth by journeying to Colchis, on the far eastern shore of the Black Sea, and returning with the Golden Fleece**. Jason was surprisingly agreeable to this challenge, and assembled a dream team of mythological Greek heroes, including Hercules, Orpheus, and Theseus, and a ship called the Argo, and set off.

Jason and the Argonauts had many adventures getting there and back, including a fight with the most beautiful stop-motion animation skeletons you ever did see, but in Colchis successfully got their hands on the Golden Fleece. In this Jason was helped - ok, basically handheld through it - by Medea, sorceress, interesting female character, and (thanks to Aphrodite) Jason’s mind-controlled love slave***.

Medea is hard-core, man: she kills her own brother to cover their escape from Colchis, and when they get back to Iolcus murders the hell out of Pelias too. Jason, having gotten all he wanted, promptly spurns Medea for some other woman, and so Medea kills her as well, and leaves Greece for good. (She has other adventures afterwards, usually resolved by magical killin’, because ancient fanfiction writers knew this character was solid gold.) Jason, for being an ungrateful little shit, gets a particularly great death: he has a nap under the shade of the beached Argo, and a piece falls off and crushes him.

Iason doesn’t line up all that well with Jason beyond the general outlines of “mythological hero” - he’s way less of a self-centred jerk, to start - but Lemma’s not the worst imaginable match for Medea. They’re both foreigner sorceresses, with a somewhat itchier trigger finger than is probably good for them, and have episodic adventures all over the world. If I were her family, I’d think carefully before eating her Thanksgiving potluck, is all I’m saying.

I’ve totally blasted through all my history space here; we’ll, uh, we’ll get to Egypt Khemeth next time around. :/ ;)

*Not that timelining Greek mythology is a task for the timid, even compared to timelining Lemma. Look at who the bride in the Apple of Discord story is, then try to work out how old Achilles is during the Trojan War. Yeah.

**This is traditionally depicted as what it sounds like, a sheepskin made of solid gold. But there’s a probable origin for it that’s kinda interesting: the Caucasus mountains have gold deposits, which, since everyone likes gold, have been exploited since prehistory. One way to get gold out of rivers, much more efficient than the steryotypical prospector swirling pan business, is to weir the stream with sheepskin: the grease in the wool traps particulate matter, and after a few days or weeks you collect them, toss ‘em all in your smelter, and burn off everything but the gold. Hence, golden fleece.

***I’d usually describe it a little differently than that - since “Aphrodite made ____ fall in love” is usually just the Greek poetic way of saying “____ fell in love” - but in the context of this review series it’s obviously going to be sexy mind control all the way. ;) The guy who does the litbrick comic had a similar joke, though I can’t find the exact link now:

SAPPHO: Oh Great Aphrodite! I’m in love with Erinna, but she doesn’t love me back!

APHRODITE: Don’t worry, I’ll make her love you, whether she wants to or not.

SAPPHO: Wait, what?

APHRODITE snaps her fingers. ERINNA (glassy-eyed): Oh Sappho. I love you. So much. Please have sex. With me. Now. SAPPHO: Augh! This is awful!  APHRODITE: Spurn my gifts, do you? No matter, I can fix that too.

APHRODITE snaps her fingers.

SAPPHO (glassy-eyed): Oh Erinna. I love you. So much. Please have sex. With me. Now.

APHRODITE looks smug. ATHENA sticks her head in from the edge of the panel.

ATHENA: What the fuck is wrong with you?!

~

Next time: the party goes east and I go into the deep past. 

[salmagundimagazine]

DOWNTON ABBEY: ANGLOPHILIA IS EMBARRASSING by Katherine Fusco

from Salmagundi, Summer 2017 [The TV Issue]

A little past the show’s midway point, I began having the same conversation with all my friends about Downton Abbey.

“Are you still watching it?”

“Ugh. No, we got stuck in the rape plot.”

Finishing the show’s final seasons required a committed fortitude.

Sitting next to my husband on the couch, I reached for some popcorn.

“Are we still in the rape plot?”

“Mmm, I think it’s a murder plot now,” he corrected me.

The good maid Anna’s rape and its half-lives ended the show’s appeal for many.

It’s not that we’re so opposed to watching brutality on a weeknight. I’ve eaten many a taco salad while watching the women of Game of Thrones bent over the furniture; I’ve seen men shivved while coaxing the baby to nurse; and once, we watched a body dissolved in a bathtub while drinking boxed wine.

We watchers of quality television, we can stomach a rape.

And yet, Anna’s rape and the show’s many returns to the event throughout the later seasons elicit something ugly: “Why can’t they drop that?” “I’m so sick of the rape plot.”

The most justifiable version of our aversion to the rape is that we see the creators of Downton, along with the producers of the other, more violent television we consume, treating rape as a mere plot device.

And yet, I suspect it’s something else. My hunch is that Anna’s rape by a rakish footman felt like a betrayal to American viewers who had grown accustomed to the show’s other pleasures. Sometimes despite ourselves.

Ten or twenty years ago, I would not have watched Downton Abbey. I would have distanced myself from those who did.

On a recent visit to a grad school friend, I caught a flicker of that old feeling. She’d gotten herself on a mailing list that must have been taken from PBS or NPR donors, or the multitude of New Yorker subscribers, with issues perilously towered between toilet and sink. Maybe the targets were literature teachers like us.

The catalog sold Far Side “School for the Gifted” sweatshirts alongside mugs with the phrase “She who must be obeyed” lettering their shiny bellies. The kind of tchotchkes you might buy for your AB/Fab-watching mother for Christmas when you are a teenager and you don’t care to know anything very specific about your parents’ wants and desires. Have a Starry Nights umbrella; have a magnet of The David in a Hawaiian shirt.

My friend and I, too old, responsible, and inclined to acid reflux to drink and smoke as we did in school, lie on her living room floor, eating takeout, sipping beer, and playing a game wherein we have to pick one item from each of the catalogue’s embarrassing pages that we would be willing to own. Not surprisingly, amidst products both smugly literate and earnestly aspirational, a large Downton Abbey spread features a large cornucopia of goods we agree are the worst: lace-edged nightgowns, plated mirrors and hairbrushes, imitation jewelry, and DVD box sets detailing life in manor houses. “These are so horrible,” we whisper, “they aren’t even funny.”

The consumer of these Downton baubles, the glittering imitation brooches—she is everything I tried not to be as a young woman. When you are a girl and a bookworm, choices can feel limited.

Indeed, I still feel the limited possibilities for female identification whenever I watch a television show on which more than one woman appears. On the one hand, shows that pass the Bechdel test by presenting women with interests — as opposed to the singular “hot girl” amongst the boys — seem admirable, but I still feel the pressure of the typological when presented with a range of women: Are you a Carrie or a Samantha, a Marnie or a Shoshanna, a Lady Mary or, God forbid, a Lady Edith?

As a bookish girl, seeking others like me—readers of a serious sort—I was dismayed by the stereotype that came into focus: She loved kittens, wore dowdy pastels, ran to the mousy, would never be cool, never seem sexy or edgy. She was the girl who thought it would be fun to go to high tea. In my mind, there was one source and one icon to blame for the image of the female reader that so haunted me: England, and Jane Austen’s England in particular.

I became a student of American literature; like my country, I was too young and without enough of a sense of history to have paid much attention to either the cool or the ugly roughness that both had deep roots in England, or the pervasive and embarrassing middle-classness that was part of being an American. Instead, England remained to me the dreamland of girls who would never date.

My problem with England was a part of the sexually-anxious narcissism that accompanied my teens and twenties, so desperate was I to roll with the boys, to drink with the boys, and, once a literature major, to read with the boys: whether Palahniuk’s Fight Club, which was inspiring theme nights at the alternative frat—all whisky, Marlboro reds, and sloppy, scrambling boxing—, the strange macho sexuality of Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, or David Foster Wallace’s threatening challenge to all my would-be novelist friends. I remember people whispering intensely about Burroughs. Recently, novelist Claire Vaye Watkins has written about pandering to male writers through the tough, heartless, and heartbreaking prose of her short story collection. I see this period of my reading similarly, going shot-for-shot with the boys. But I wanted to be cool. American, edgy and cool.

This American cool continues, I think, in our recent prestige television, which offers bad boys you want to root for, the likes of Tony Soprano, Don Draper, and Walter White.

I still sometimes visit with American bad boys; I write about and teach the cruel works of Nathanael West, Fitzgerald’s more cynical friend. But as I’ve aged, I find that I have less patience for them. They can be a fling, but not my constant companions. Especially when the little things of my life seem hard and the big things of the world seem even harder, I want to return again to the coziness that was my youthful idea of England. And maybe this is true of the millions of other Americans who turned off HBO and tuned in to public television; after trying so hard to be crass and edgy, perhaps we do want to be that kind of girl after all.

What is it that we Americans want from the English? We want them to be vaguely like us, but better: we see them as politer and fancier, but we also like to think we’re more democratic, not so snotty. We also want not to have to know too much about the differences. Tea and knights, yes. Elaborate details about entailment, no, as the differences between the PBS and BBC explanations of the family’s wealth indicate.

We Americans see England as fundamentally belonging to the past, and thus soft and rosy. When my husband’s friend from London visited us in Nashville, the debutants were no match for him, so taken were they by his accent. The cost for him came in the form of bewildering conversations about jousting and whether “y’all have gyms there” and the terrible imitations into which the women slipped when the bourbon was flowing.

My sister’s English accent is also bad, somewhere between Foghorn Leghorn and Eliza Doolittle. It is also identical to the accent she tried when I moved to Nashville. I remember an early phone call home during which she filled me in on the day’s business. She’d been out shopping: “I went to Target; wait, do you have Target there?” Her view of the South is not unlike the debutant’s view of England, a place distant spatially and perhaps temporally as well. My current students in Mountain West feel similarly; they explain to me that they could never go to the South because they are Mexican. Meanwhile, my Anglo students refer to the rapidly gentrifying Hispanic neighborhood in town as “sketchy,” “the ghetto.”

My sister’s bad accent isn’t unique. We all have them. In a theater class at my arts magnet high school we memorized a little poem to practice the two relevant English accents: high-class and Cockney.  A room of fifteen-year-olds, we chanted together, “If to hoot and to toot a Hottentot tot were taught by a Hottentot tutor, should the tutor get hot if the Hottentot tot should hoot and toot at the tutor?”

Not high-class, working-class, or English, we middle-class white American children—progeny of good liberal parents committed to public school education, if not neighborhood schools—happily swallowed our “Hs” and gulped out the bit of nonsense, so far from our knowing as to be scrubbed clean of racism’s taint. With our sense of Englishness as accent, and feelings of Africa and Europe as far in time and space, the little rhyme seemed to have nothing to do with our sense of racism as a real and pressing American problem.  

The vagueness of Anglophilia is, I think, at least part of why the series’ second half felt like such a betrayal. Belonging too much to the world of problems Americans consider “the real,” the rape of Anna left a bitter taste that lingered, curdling our feelings about the series.

With the exception of that troublesome rape, Downton has offered the coziness that is the American idea of Englishness, the one I once rejected but now seek. As a new mother, I gaze longingly at the teas in the library during which the nanny parades by babies in sailor suits and then sweeps them neatly away, leaving their parents to drink and chat. My Anglophilia, you see, is not just about class as well as cozyness—the upper-class comfort and self-assuredness towards which we in the American middle class doggedly strain.

My embarrassment at retaining an idiot Anglophilia is somewhat assuaged by the knowledge that my American ancestors have been similarly foolish and aspirational in their views. In her book Anglophilia: Deference, Devotion, and Antebellum America, scholar Eliza Tamarkin reminds us that even way back when, in what my students would call the olden days, “Anglophilia [was] about paying respects to the symbolic value of England.” Among the more bizarre aspects of antebellum Anglophilia was the abolitionist argument that the English had done away with slavery because it didn’t fit with their overwhelming politeness. Owning people simply wasn’t seemly.

Politeness and impropriety are similarly behavioral big tents in Downton, covering all manner of progressive and regressive attitudes. Rapes, murders, blackmailing, and defections aside, on Downton, breaking with good manners is the clearest marker that a character is a baddie.

In the fifth season alone impoliteness covers, among other social failings, class snobbery (the aristocratic Merton boys), a genocidal rising power (Herr Hitler and his brown shirts, who will be revealed as the killers of Edith’s Michael, described in the show as beer hall unruliness), strident socialism (Miss Bunting), being a grouchy sad sack (Princess Kuragin), abuse of servants (Lord Sinderby), and anti-Semitism (Lady Flintshire, the Mertons again—naughty boys, those). Interestingly, the Dowager’s old flame Prince Kuragin also appears guilty of anti-Semitism and proximity to the genocidal murder of the pogroms when he bursts out at cousin Rose’s Jewish love interest, “you’re no Russian;” however, the show doesn’t present the outburst as something to hold against the man, perhaps because the transgression occurs in a soup kitchen, rather than a drawing room or library.

To be a hero, then, is to make others feel comfortable, to ease their embarrassment and smooth the way. A phrase I’ve learned to love from the show, “shall we go through?,” often comes from the wonderful Cora, the American matriarch committed to living lightly and lovingly, for whom guiding family and guests politely from potentially awkward conversation to pleasantly formal dining and drinking appears a life’s work.

“Shall we go through?” The show goes through with amazing rapidity, throwing forward plot twist after plot twist, the bulk of which are resolved neatly by banishing a rude interloper from the great house, or easing over unpleasantness, as when Cousin Rose pretends that her father-in-law’s mistress is an old friend, thus explaining away the uninvited guest. When the housekeeper Mrs. Hughes confesses to Mr. Carson that she has no money to retire with him because she’s been paying for her mentally disabled sister’s institutionalization, she worries, “Oh no, now I’ve embarrassed you.”

Coming from a nation with only loosely codified manners—which we occasionally boast of and are only occasionally shamed by—I find myself fascinated by a world in which all errors, all crises, all sins might be so beautifully papered over. Or, to put it otherwise, I long for a world in which I’ve been taught to behave beautifully and this beautiful behavior means that I am good.

This, too, as our own new rich fill TV screens: whether real housewives, basketball WAGs, or Kardashians, the idea of England as cozy past when people were polite stands as contrast. As does Kate Middleton, whose big shiny teeth and big shiny hair and tiny formal hats and tiny, tidy pregnancies make her a simulacrum of a princess.  So too, The Great British Baking Show, which introduced Americans to a world of reality television in which no one declares “I’m not here to make friends” and the pastries are inscrutable. “Pudding,” “biscuit,” and “pie” take on strange new meanings.

The Anglophile’s imaginary England is a kind of mirror world. Like a grandfather—a relative in whom we see resemblance, but who clearly hails from another time. We feel affectionate toward him and maybe a little superior. Watching Downton, it’s lovely to see a plot in which the patriarch gets drunk, and rather than starting a brawl or bedding a scullery maid, he begins an awkward toast—a potential embarrassment that quick-witted chauffeur-turned-son-in-law Tom covers over by leading the household in rounds of “for he’s a jolly good fellow.” And the “good” characters’ foibles are so soft that it’s easy to feel a little wiser than those Granthams while also envying their outdated lifestyle.

A different program might show the wealthier classes’ predation upon the poor, but the violence within Downton Abbey remains reassuringly within class. And though we all hate the rape plot, what a relief that the storyline remains snugly downstairs. It allows the show’s commitment to the idea of noblesse oblige to remain an inviting temptation, leading to imaginings of how lovely we might behave if only we had a bit of nobility to be obliging with. Like Lady Sybil taking the red-haired maid under her wing. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a maid? Of course, one must not imagine being the maid.

With so much expansive politeness and correctness forming our idea of the English—“Keep Calm and Carry On!”—it’s surprising to hear missives from the real Britain, the one that exists in the now with us. The interviews during the Brexit vote give a nasty shock, as even good old England takes its place in a Europe increasingly Islamophobic and nativist. Grandfather has done worse than slip up and use the out of date “colored”—he’s said something truly awful and not cozy at all.  

This is not how we like to think of our grandfathers. It’s not why we Americans turn our faces to gaze across the Atlantic. Instead, we wish to see the slightly fusty but well-meaning and well-mannered behavior of the Dowager Countess and Lord Grantham. Though they miss the old days (the first season features the Dowager cringing away from electric light), they are adaptable. Lord Grantham admits the nature of warfare has changed and nods to the feelings of his cook Mrs. Patmore, making a special monument off the beaten track for her nephew who was executed for defecting during the war.

I recently watched a bit of Manor House, a reality show in which modern people are cast as members of a grand Edwardian home. Some become the Lords and Ladies of the house; the tall and good-looking young man becomes First Footman, and the unlucky become scullery maids. The effects of a rigid upstairs-downstairs class system set in with breathtaking speed. After the initial meeting between the family and the staff, one of the maids confesses to the camera that though she knows her master and mistress are just normal twenty-first century people like herself, she hates them. In contrast, the mistress relates how lovely it is to be cared for; “it’s almost like I’ve slipped into childhood again,” she coos.

Such animosity between staff and family receives little screen time on Downton. Generally, class resentment is nothing but a misunderstanding, as when kitchen maid Daisy, who has been educated just to the point of dissatisfaction, misinterprets the characteristically vague kindness of Lady Grantham and tries to force a position for her tenant farmer father-in-law on the estate.  

Instead, class hostility appears in the mouths of malefactors such as ladies’ maid O’Brien, a villain marked by truly terrible hair, or the blackmailing hotel maid who threatens Lady Mary and Lord Grantham with the prediction that her kind are coming up in the world. These instances of class outrage both come from maids and are directed at the eldest daughter Lady Mary for her sexual peccadillos, whether the ill-fated night with the exotic Mr. Pamook of the weak heart or her trial marriage hotel weekend with Tony Gillingham. Meantime, the matter of hygiene in manor houses’ downstairs extend to moral uprightness, to which the series nods, occasionally emphasizing the separate men’s and women’s quarters, but not to the near-prurient degree with which the sexual activity of maids would have been scrutinized, with the housekeeper examining their sanitary belts for evidence that the staff was staying chaste and not getting in the family way.

What comfort, then, in Downton’s somewhat relaxed morality. “We’re all becoming so modern!,” is a constant refrain. Lord Grantham, bless his ulcerous Lordship—what won’t he accept under the name of being a good host?  He oversees one daughter’s marriage to a chauffeur, one daughter’s love child entering the household, and one daughter’s blackmail for her sexual intrepidness---not to mention his gay footman and multiply–murder-accused valet Mr. Bates.  Downton is what Americans want from their betters, it’s what we see in the photographs of celebrities shopping at Trader Joes, playing on the beach with their children—Stars! They’re Just Like Us!! They are better looking, go on better vacations, and rich, but they use detergent!!! With Downton, we peek in on the nobility and see they make mistakes! Like us!

And I must admit, the more tired I am; the more panicked I feel as I forget to put sunscreen on the baby or to provide the daycare enough steamed finger foods diced into ¼ inch pieces; the more I long for time to work rather than time to spend with my husband and child; or the more I wish to spend time at home and quit my job, filled as it is with student emails and meetings; the more, stupidly and against what I know, I hunger for Downton.

The light touch of the series which makes it all come out right in the end—the deaths, the war, the murders, and yes, even the rape—it’s a warm blanket that feels wholesome even when that niggling voice reminds me of its near offensive flimsiness. It’s best not to think too seriously about the show. One is bound to have an unpleasant realization, like learning that eating bran muffins is just having unfrosted cupcakes for breakfast.  

I recently heard the women of Another Round explain that only white people enjoy the “what past decade would you have rather lived in?” hypothetical. I get what they’re saying—and this is also Downton’s frivolous genius. Polite, like the Abbey’s denizens, the show doesn’t remind us of the footmen’s and maids’ more unpleasant tasks—the emptying of chamber pots, the pulling threads of hair from brushes to build elaborate false pieces—or that a hallboy gets his name because he has no room, and in fact sleeps in the hall. We don’t miss this granular detail because it’s not Daisy or Mrs. Patmore, or even good Anna, with whom the show means us to feel a likeness. We who play the game of transporting ourselves backwards through time don’t make that journey to light the morning fires for the big house or to do other people’s dishes. No, as we traverse the decades, running them backward, it’s the three lovely sisters we imagine as our kin and precursors.

Now I am mistress of my own house. (Lord Grantham, I too have a sweet old dog and I am sorry about Isis.) And I am, though I am loathe to write the phrase, its debunking as much a cliché now as its invocation, “having it all.” And my response to middle class life, motherhood, work, homeownership, marriage, is a low level panic I feel running up my spine, a fit on the verge of spilling out that is my constant companion, babyish and humiliating: But who is going to take care of meee?

And so, like many others of the American middle class, I fantasize about Downton. Together, America and I are over being cool and uncomfortable. We want to be cozy and rich. We want to turn on our TVs, gaze upon all that polished brass, and not think too hard about who is doing the polishing.

[mailorderfictionalcharacter]

Malcolm Reed, Geordi LaForge, Kes, and Janice Rand

Seven years and two plagues later; I respond. My apologies. Life. Y’know.

1. Sexuality Headcanons:

Malcolm - oh how I wish the powers that be didn't cowardly back off on the original plan, wherein Malcolm was openly gay. Oh well, let's Headcanon him in anyways. 

Geordi - bisexual, demisexual(just a vibe, not a very serious headcanon)

Kes - let's say bisexual. For reasons.

Janice - This is probably because I've only seen Janice in a few TOS episodes (I'm only doing a proper start to finish watch of the series now) and thus haven't reached the inevitable het romance, but as far as I'm concerned Janice Rand is a lesbian. If at any point she shows romantic interest in a man it's obviously an elaborate inside joke with Uhura. Janice Rand, very lesbian.

2. OTPS

Malcolm - I don't have one. I don't think Malcolm is the sort of person to want a relationship with a crew member and none of the men on the ship seem like a good romantic match for him. (If Malcolm got a love interest, they should probably be a civilian, more emotionally expressive). If I had to choose an otp Malcolm/Travis might work.

Geordi - I'm not super serious about it but Da Forge is a good ship.

Kes - I don't have any preexisting ideas about Kes' relationships other than "c'mon Neelix be the better person we know you can be," but, to make something up; Kes and B'Elana could be interesting because they're both very passionate and principled people but externally they present themselves very differently: Kes is caring, subtle, and calm whereas B'Elana is expressive, and a bit judgemental. Also Kes's morality is more about caring while B'Elana has a warrior's moral code, resisting injustice.  (There's a running theme in these asks because only interesting character foils can get me interested in romantic plots).

Janice - I enjoy the idea of Uhura/Janice Rand. Both are talented and Janice seems more level on and off duty whereas Uhura is a capable woman but an incorrigible flirt.

3. Brotps:

Malcolm - I would enjoy seeing a Malcolm/Hoshi friendship, mostly because Malcolm is very militaristic whereas Hoshi is more of the Civilian Science Nerd Who Got Swept Up In All this Rubbish. On the whole Enterprise forgot to do what tng/ds9 did well and allow their side characters to actually *gasp* interact, so pretty much any platonic relationship is up for grabs. Malcolm is an interesting character to work in contrasts; his disciplined nature compared to Phlox, or his close to the belt nature compared to Travis' comfort with his roots.

Geordi - Also Data and Geordi; they're so affectionate and supportive. I also really enjoy the dynamic between Picard and Geordi in the tng relaunch novels, considering Geordi is one of the remaining original crew members.

Kes - canonically, Kes and the Doctor all the way. So good. Remember when she extended his flu? Good scene. For an au take, I would enjoy a purely platonic Kes and Neelix friendship. They did have some nice dynamics canonically and I'd like to see a relationship without the squicky romantic possessiveness.

Janice - Rand and Spock. No good justification it's just that Spock goes well with everyone.

4. Notps:

Malcolm - Malcolm/Hoshi, Malcolm/T'pol, Malcolm/Archer. Not really established ships but in my mind each of these pairings are  a Bad Idea.

Geordi - I don't remember any established canon or fan popular relationships that made me cringe, so here's one: Geordi/Q. Awful idea.

Kes - Kes and possessive!Neelix. So many cringe moments

Janice - Rand and every damn person who falls in love with her and then tries to force her into sexual acts against her will why is this a plot multiple times for goodness' sakes. (Also not big at all on the idea of Kirk/Rand).

5. First Headcanon that Pops to Mind:

Malcolm - So based off the pineapple thing, let's say Malcolm has a ridiculous amount of personal experiences he never talks about. Like he had a steady boyfriend back on earth and never brings it up because it's not relevant. If prompted he has all these prank stories but you basically have to drag the information out of him.

Geordi - Geordi is also friends with Felix, who sent the Chief Engineer on Starfleet's flagship a sample program because he knows just how good he is.

Kes - Since Kes starts canonically developing her telekenetic abilities, let's imagine Kes as an absolute telekenetic prankster.

Also, after she leaves Voyager I like to imagine that some of what she got up to would be protecting the vulnerable, considering her past. (I don't think this directly contradicts canon but I actually try to forget that episode).

Janice - Janice Rand is so professional that no one expects her to have wild musical tastes. Like death metal, weird atonal music, lots of instrumentals, music from non-human planets etc*

*My lack of musical knowledge is showing, isn't it.

6. One Way I Relate:

Malcolm - I would also refuse to marry and copulate with my coworkers if we were stranded on a planet in an alternate timeline. My mom is also largely unaware of my food preferences.

Geordi - often interacts with people with an understated sort of humour. I would also subtly lecture ableist aliens and befriend the local android.

Kes - This example is more about admiration than relating, but I really enjoy Kes's compassionate curiosity and the sense of wonder that comes with her character.

Janice - In the episode Charlie X we see her being mature to someone who is A) probably quite traumatized and B) currently sexually harassing her. I relate to that sense of "oh, this situation is kind of worse for me and I'm still going to handle it fairly and levelly because of moral principles and rational empathy." Also even though she's backed into a corner she still tries to pass emotional labour off to Kirk and that's A+. ("Ask the Captain, he'll explain.") I'm sure lots of women (although not all women and not just women) could relate to that.

7. Something that Gives me Second Hand Embarrassment:

Malcolm - I have a distant memory of an episode where Archer, Trip, and Malcolm were all trapped in a pod, thought they were going to die, and Malcolm got about 10% sentimental? That always makes me unjustifiably embarrassed, but I don't even remember if that episode was real, so.

Geordi - nothing? I think Geordi may be the perfect human being?

Kes - the episode where she came back and tried to hurt all her old friends was pretty embarrassing. Also her relationship with Neelix.

Janice - From what I've actually seen of TOS, nothing beyond those damn impractical uniforms. If we have to see people in dresses at least show me Spock in a dress, c'mon.

8. Cinnamon Roll or Problematic Fave?:

Malcolm - I want to call him the problematic fave because he was somewhat militaristic, but nah, cinnamon roll. Let me see only the best in people like some sort of naive federation citizen. (Also Archer made way more questionable decisions and I don't remember enough about Enterprise to say that Reed ever did anything less than an exemplary job).

Geordi - Clear cinnamon roll

Kes - Clear cinnamon roll. No controversy there.

Janice - Definitely a cinnamon roll. Too good for this world.

[crosbysierra95]

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