#otherwise utterly irrelevant she has other things to think about

[letmyrighthandbeforgotten]

I think in the noxus show Mel should bring up Jayce exactly once and basically say "He died doing what he loved ... making everything about Viktor." Then move on

[olderthannetfic]

Growing up in a socially progressive environment: How has this affected your feelings about success? Were you taught that forming a nuclear family played a role in that measurement? Or were you taught to value yourself strictly in terms of stuff like grades and academic achievements? Or maybe that whole talk was geared towards personal happiness, in whatever form it took for you?

Also, at school: did you have to do stuff like the pledge of allegiance? Was Columbus Day and history class transparent or did your teachers omit the fucked up parts?

--

The closest my mother ever came to advice about a nuclear family was: "Find a boyfriend after college. Roommates are awful."

(Though from what she said, this belief stemmed from being the one clueless white girl in an apartment with three black girls becoming politically conscious in 1970s Chicago. I'm pretty sure Mom was the annoying roommate in that scenario, so...)

She really didn't discuss success. I never asked, but I assume that this was a conscious choice the same as she never once mentioned my looks either positively or negatively. (I asked her about the latter, and she said it's something she'd decided on before having me.)

I've spent the last couple of years carting hundreds of pounds of books out of the house. Among them was a massive collection of child development books from the 70s through 90s. A lot of them were on topics like raising intellectuals rather than just kids who get good grades or fostering a sense of self worth and emotional self sufficiency.

My mom was an educator, and she disliked a lot of the status-obsessed ways people deform their children's senses of self. Grades = worth is not a message she'd ever have espoused, though she did send me to hard schools and expect me to do my work. She could be a school snob as much as anyone, but she didn't explicitly talk about success in those terms. I think a big part of it is that all of her friends from when she was young were intellectuals who wanted to be professors, found there were no jobs, and ended up as carpenters or in the Peace Corps or all kinds of other random things. My mother herself started a PhD in... epidemiology...? (Something sciencey anyway.) She bombed out when her much older sister died unexpectedly and ran off to Kathmandu to hang out with an old high school friend who was studying Tibetan Buddhist religious logic.

She was certainly concerned with me finding meaningful work and being self sufficient, but she just didn't talk in terms of "success".

And more than that, worth as a human is inherent. It has nothing to do with success. If you want to raise a strong person, you give a kid unconditional love, clear boundaries, and a sense of stability. You teach them that all humans are valid and worthwhile just because. They don't have to do anything to gain that. It just is.

Perhaps that's not how you meant "success", but I've seen far too many otherwise intelligent parents mutilate their children's ability to learn by treating education and knowledge as the source of value in the world and not as something pleasurable in their own right.

Perhaps happiness = success is closest to what my mother would have espoused, but really, being a valid human being is a separate axis from being happy or successful or any other particular measure of a life well lived.

--

None of my schools would have been caught dead making us say the pledge of allegiance. They were all hippie private schools. We did shit like learn to sing This Land is Your Land.

We spent a lot of time on Indigenous history—though still in a "That was long ago" kind of way that made me assume everyone was dead and gone. Genocide was mentioned often. Columbus was mentioned rarely, and not in positive terms.

I still wouldn't say it was particularly well-rounded history. I'd rather have learned more about the Mexican-American war and less about the utterly irrelevant snoozeville that is the American Revolutionary War. Frankly, as a Californian, I would reduce the Revolutionary war to "It happened" and our equally boring Civil War to the politically important parts that it was indeed fought over slavery as Southerners themselves said at the time, that all that noble lost cause shit is just a retcon by white supremacists, and anybody who repeats it in the modern day can fuck themselves.

We did have pretty good stuff on Harriet Tubman in second grade and lots on Japanese internment later. Some of the schools I went to were better than others, usually because they were less beholden to stuffing our heads with irrelevant garbage that's on major history tests. I could have done with slightly fewer traumatizing documentaries on the Holocaust though.

--

As for my personal feelings about success, towards the end of my 30s, I was looking around for what should come next. I decided to finally write a novel, and I feel a lot better about my 40s having done so. I wasn't desperate or self hating like a lot of people I see around me fearing aging, but I did feel a lack of accomplishment in a sense.

My next goal... well, my immediate next goal is to finish book 2 of my series, but in the longer term, my goal is to not just finish writing things but to become financially successful as a writer.

[infernal-fire]

Love, At First Sight

Warnings: some extreme fluff, strong language/ swearing

Pairing(s): Ransom x you

Summary: Love, at first sight, doesn’t exist. And Ransom has never been proven otherwise.

Word Count: 1600

I was inspired to write this after reading “It Was Only A Kiss” by the Queen of fluff, smut, angst and everything in between: @navybrat817  :)

(This GIF does not belong to me)

Love at first sight. 

That is the most ridiculous thing Ransom had ever heard. And he has heard some bullshit. 

The only thing he could tell from looking at someone for the first time was whether they were of any use to him or not. So when Meg was rambling on about love, that too, at first sight, Ransom scoffed at the idea. He bit into his overpriced biscuit with a roll of his eyes, pausing the conversation that he was unwilling to entertain any longer. 

“You know what Ransom, I’m not surprised you’re dismissing the idea without even hearing it,” Meg challenged.

“Oh yeah? And why’s that?” he retorted, a bit amused by her slight outburst.

“If your parents bothered with you, maybe you would understand what it’s like to be loved by someone.”

Although he didn’t show it, it struck a chord in him. It wasn’t something he dared to complain about anymore, but there was a time he would have done anything for their affection. 

“Okay then, let’s hear this horseshit you’re spewing,” he replied, not breaking the façade of smugness.

“When you meet someone, your subconscious and unconscious mind pick up patterns in their behaviour, little mannerisms and anything it can get its hands on. Your conscious mind interprets that as vibes. So you get a bad vibe from someone, it’s ‘cause your mind recognizes it from somewhere else, someone you don’t like.” 

“And what does this have to do with love at first sight?” Ransom impatiently tapped his foot. 

“I have a theory that love, at first sight, is possible if you’re in tune with your intuition. You feel good vibes from someone, you ride with it. And there’s a possibility you’ll override the rational part of your brain that tells you that you can’t love someone right after meeting them,” she concluded. “But then again, this only works if you’re capable of loving someone. Otherwise, your brain has no one to reference,” she added. 

Ransom’s jaw clenched before he took in a breath.

“Like I said. Just a bunch of horseshit,” he said, getting up to leave. 

He called it horseshit but he couldn’t stop thinking about it. It irked him that no matter how many girls he pulled, not one of them could make him feel the love had Meg described. He concluded that he was incapable of love because, of course,  that was the only plausible explanation.

It was a friend’s birthday. To say the least, he was not looking forward to it. He was in a rare mood to stay home and call it a night instead of getting his dick wet. Unfortunately, his presence was promised - he would rather not hear about this later so he did his future self a favour and got ready. 

His black pants were paired with a maroon sweater that cost a little less than his king-sized bed. A rose-gold watch adorned his wrist and he threw on his signature tan coloured coat. He didn’t want to go but he that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t miss out on the opportunity to advertise his status. 

Walking into the party, he regretted his decision to come at all. The corners were brimming with drunk people, though it had been only 1 hour since the party started. Shrill and irritating voices rung through the air. As usual, girls of no substance clung to every word of the fabricated tales boys told. Despite this, the unsavoury circumstances invited him, called his name even. After all, this was the lifestyle he lived for. 

Taking in the scene before him, he strode down the room. His presence alone demanded respect and attention, both which he got a surplus of at these events.

His stride was abruptly halted when a figure crashed into him, spilling wine down his chest. Sure, it blended in with the sweater, but he was still pissed. Someone didn’t notice him, which caused them to bump into him and that rubbed him the wrong way. 

“Won’t you look where your going, for god fucking sake this is worth more than you,” he snapped at the unsuspecting girl. 

You had a mess of your own to take care of. Wine slipped down your dress, between your cleavage and onto your stomach. You were going to apologize but you heard his comment, paused your sentence to look up at him. 

Laughter echoed in the background and people called Ransom’s name but it was long forgotten when he saw you. 

Love, at first sight.

It didn’t seem so ridiculous anymore. 

The mere sight of you was a harsh contrast to the cruel world he has dealt with his entire life. It was like the universe wrapped and presented you as the embodiment of a second chance for his life. To think that love, at first sight, was ridiculous. 

Your beauty wasn’t something he understood. It wasn’t like the beauty he sought during the lonely hours of night, when he simply required a bedwarmer to ease the ache. It was memorable, almost like a blend of warm vibrancy; a feeling resembling that of the summer’s sun, kissed his skin ever so delicately. 

He thought he was dying for a second. His hands were tingly and would not ease up no matter how much he clenched and unclenched them. His heart dove straight to his stomach, refusing to come up for air as long as he continued to look at you.

You on the other hand, you were conflicted. You were going to give him a piece of your mind for talking to you like that but one look at him and you wanted to run away. It was too intense for you. 

His piercing stare mirrored the moon, melted and poured into the mould that he called eyes. His aura radiated coldness. Yet, you just knew that his hands would be as warm as a bonfire during a snowstorm. Being around him would be like the slight sting that you felt when winter’s breeze grazed your skin. That sting, no matter how painful, is rewarding when you consider his arms that would envelope you as a blanket. 

Momentarily looking into each others eyes, both of you knew. You just knew. You were both thinking the same thing. It felt like eons had passed since the wine spill but logically, you knew it had only been seconds.

“Don’t talk to me like that” you finally blurted. No matter how enamored you were with him, you needed to knock him down a few pegs. 

“I-I… I’m” 

“You’re?” you raised an eyebrow at him.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…” he stuttered. He felt like he would never recover from this embarrassment. 

“I-uhm. It’s okay. I just…” you trailed off, realizing you weren’t even sure what to say. 

“Can we get out of here?” he piped up. 

It took you by surprise because you were thinking the same thing. You considered it too bold a thing to say but here he was. 

You held his wrist and led him out. As soon as you marched out the door, he pulled his arm up, and you assumed he was going to take it out of your grasp. He surprised you though, instead, holding your hand. 

The dress and the sweater became irrelevant; all either of you could focus on was the warm grip you both had on each other’s hands as you strolled through the overly extravagant neighbourhood. 

Part of your mind was screaming at yourself, as was his. He could kill you, you thought. Or do worse. And here you are, walking with a complete stranger through a neighbourhood you don’t even know.

“I thought you felt it too,” he confessed. “That’s why I... really, I don’t ever do this.” 

The old Ransom would have said ‘I know you felt it too.’ It hadn’t been ten minutes since you met him and you were already changing him. 

“I've never done this either. I mean frankly, you could be a murderer and here I am, holding you hand,” you joked. 

“I’m not a murderer,” he chuckled, “But I can’t help but feel a little weird about this.” You looked up at the moon-less night, convinced that it wasn’t a coincidence.

“I know… I-... I don’t even know your name,” you giggled and his heart fluttered around his chest. He couldn’t compare the feeling to butterflies - it was more like hummingbirds, refusing to settle.

“I felt something and it’s weird ‘cause I was so scared. I was scared and overwhelmed by this sort of dread. Dread that was like, what if you didn’t feel the same way?” you rambled, only slightly cautiously. You knew nothing of this man, and you were laying out how you felt in the open?

“My name is Ransom,” he stopped the stroll and faced you, picking up your other arm. 

“Y/N” you meekly responded, having difficulty meeting his eyes. You had never felt such a burn in your cheeks, yet right now, you felt like your face was on fire. 

“Hey, hey” he softly tilted you chin up. “Can we run with this? Whatever this is?” He would get on his knees and plead if he had to. Because you were right; he felt like he would die if you didn’t feel the same way. 

“Please. Let’s run with this. Whatever this is, let’s just run with it,” you agreed and nodded lightly, not breaking out of the stare.

“What is this?” he uttered under his breath and rested his forehead onto yours. 

You closed your eyes and breathed in the same air as him. His warmth and scent reminded you of sugar cookies and pine trees. 

He took in a breath and felt the aroma of vanilla and fresh roses evade his senses.

“I don’t know. But I like it,” you breathed. 

He cupped your face and pulled away to look at your face again. He planted a delicate but firm kiss to your forehead as you encased his waist with your arms, naturally gravitating towards him. He tenderly held your face as he pulled away. One look and you were a goner, but now, you’re utterly floored by the mere thought of him. 

Love, that too, at first sight.

Wasn’t horseshit after all.

Masterlist

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[cassandraclare]

Jessa/Wessa ship wars

teenagefunbouquet said:Isn't it enough Tessa&Jem got a wedding comic, two kids (and you say more), a lifetime as the only mates for each other and your most explicitly written sex scene After the Bridge? Wessa are the most popular and we get nothing, every wessa moment is shared with Jem while Jessa get to be alone, Wessa fans got no "anticipation" like jessa fans are getting now everyday you give them a book in jem's pov or a short story or a new kid. it feels like wessa is dead.

I’ll be interested in people’s thoughts on this. (I left the username as is since it’s a blank account, probably created to ask this question, so no one’s really getting hurt in this minor drama.) Most of my long and somewhat crabbish post is under the read more.

First, let me reply with the obvious, which is the Jessa rebuttal: “Isn’t it enough that Will gets to be Tessa’s first love and Jem only gets to be her second? Isn’t it enough that Will and Tessa had sex when they thought Jem was dead? Isn’t it enough that there’s a whole series about Will and Tessa’s kids but we only find out that Jem and Tessa had a kid in a short story? Isn’t enough that Jem and Tessa have spent half their relationship looking for a kid who’s related to Will, not either of them? Isn’t it enough that Will and Tessa got two biological kids they got to spend eighteen years raising and Jem and Tessa only get like two years with Kit? Jessa are the most popular, but half the stories in Ghosts of the Shadow Market happened while Will was still alive! And now Wessa fans are getting content every day and have two more books of Wessa being married and doing cute stuff to look forward to. Every day they’re getting a special edition of a book with a whole short story about their wedding. It feels like Jessa is dead.”

Not that I believe any of that either: I think both complaints are equally silly and selfish. But they are complaints rooted in the same logic, which is “My ship is the best and most popular, and every time I see something that in my mind supports the ship I hate I feel angry and diminished, and rather than perhaps examining those feelings I’d like to vent them on other fans and the creator.”

So. My feeling about this is: I am sad to see there is still some kind of a ship war here. As far as I am concerned...

the Wessa/Jessa ship war ended in 2012 when we found out Tessa loved both boys equally and would spend a lifetime with both of them. The end. Quibbling about irrelevant details like how many kids each couple has subsequently or examining closely the explicitness of their sex scenes seem bizarre and pointless. It has nothing to do with how books and stories are made, or how they work, or what functions they serve. At this point it’s like you decided your favorite football team could definitely beat another team, and you spend all your time obsessing about it even though they will never play against the other team because the other team is a hockey team.

When I see people say that “Wessa got” something or “Jessa got” something, it makes me cringe. It reduces stories that are about other things, often friendship, to being about a ship war I am not a part of. (Not every story or book in which a couple appears is a story about that ship. Sometimes they’re just grouting their shower or fighting a demon.) Wessa and Jessa are not dueling pop stars fighting over who gets to perform on the Tonight Show. In fact, they are not fighting at all, which is part of the underlying problem. People are used to love triangles where two guys are fighting over a girl and are jealous of each other. Will and Jem are not jealous of each other. They are not fighting over Tessa. To believe that it lessens Will and Tessa’s relationship that Jem is around and alive, or that it makes Jem and Tessa’s relationship better that Will is dead, is a fundamental misunderstanding of these characters and the story they are in. You are trying to shove a square peg into a round hole, and it will cause you endless misery and frustration.

For instance, claiming that “every Wessa moment is spent with Jem.” Well, that’s ridiculous. Obviously, Will and Tessa spent an enormous amount of quality time alone together in TID. (Otherwise, you would have no investment in this relationship in the first place. There’s a reason you’re attached to it.) Jem did not attend their wedding. He is around in Chain of Gold mostly in his role as a Silent Brother: tending the sick, helping James, bringing news. He is not around during the scene where Will and Tessa make love, or when they kiss and cuddle in the drawing room, grossing out their kids. (I had to fight very very hard to retain even one scene of Will and Tessa alone: in a normal YA book, you would never see a sex scene between the parents, from their point of view.)

The problem is not that there is no “Wessa content” to “anticipate.” The majority of Wessa fans are happy to enjoy stuff like the wedding story or the Wessa moments in TLH. The problem is that the person asking this question will only accept a TLH book in which Jem isn’t mentioned at all as “Wessa content,” and since that would be a fundamental and appalling betrayal of the story and characters — something I would never write and never consider — they will forever feel they are not getting what they deserve.

Asker: if you think that it’s somehow better for Jem and Tessa that Will is dead, that they “get” something that Will and Tessa don’t by having had something awful happen to them, then I do not even know how to begin to speak to you. What has always been meaningful to me about Will, Jem and Tessa is that they all loved each other equally. If that is not the case, then they are not people I am interested in writing about. If that being the case makes you not want to read about them, then you are free to stop — please do — but the story is not going to become something other than it is because you feel your ship is the “most popular.” (Which it is not in my experience, the ships are about equal, and I don’t know why it would matter if it was.)

In After the Bridge, which is not an explicit sex scene but rather a short story that contains sex (they exist!) Will is mentioned thirty-two times. Here’s an example:

“Jem swallowed, running his fingers up and down the blade. “He had only just died,” he said. She didn’t need to ask who he was. There was really only one He when it was the two of them speaking. “I was afraid. I saw what happened to the other Silent Brothers. I saw how they hardened over time, lost the people they had been. How as the people who loved them and who they loved died, they became less human. I was afraid that I would lose my ability to care. To know what this knife meant to Will and what Will meant to me.”

If you think Will isn’t present in Jem and Tessa’s relationship just because he’s dead, you’re wrong. He’s mentioned constantly. (And if someone thought that made it not Jessa content, I would have the same discussion with them: If Jem and Tessa didn’t care about Will, I wouldn't care about them.)

As long as there has been fandom, there have been ship wars. Social media has added a new dimension to that, which is what you’re doing here: the ability to run to the creator and complain, hoping they’ll side with you or give you what you want.

Here’s the problem: it’s really really toxic to have been involved in a clearly vicious ship battle for years. It will destroy utterly your ability to read or enjoy the canon you’re arguing about. I’ve been there, I’ve had friends be there. If you think it’s a point for Jem and Tessa that Will is dead, if you went into Last Hours thinking Jem wouldn’t be in it, that is a sign of a profound detachment from the actual reality of the canon books. You are not interacting with what I am writing or the characters as they are. You are interacting with the fight you are having. That is why your discourse has spun so far off from the books it no longer resembles what is actually happening in them, and demands such extreme gestures to be appeased — like leaving Jem out of Lost Book when he’s actually from the city the characters are visiting, or cutting him from Last Hours even though it would be unrealistic, cruel, and a disappointment to the vast majority of readers.

Dismissing every single moment Will and Tessa have together in TLH because Jem is alive somewhere and it’s bothering you is a recipe for you to be miserable. Clearly you didn’t enjoy the Wessa wedding, or the Will and Tessa love scenes in Chain of Gold. Clearly you consider Jem and Tessa having children not to be a reason for happiness but rather bitter rage even though it is totally irrelevant to Will and Tessa’s past relationship. The only thing that would be satisfactory would be a rewrite of Clockwork Princess in which Jem was run over by a tank and Will and Tessa didn’t care and were happy and got married and we never had to hear about Jem again. But because that would require time travel and a rewrite of Will and Tessa as vile assholes, that is not a thing you are going to get. If you are determined to always be miserable about the reality of what this story is, than the only result of that is that you will always be miserable.

There is never going to be a winner of this love triangle. It isn’t that story. No amount of anything I do is ever going to change that: no short stories I write, or content I produce, or books or sex scenes or longform poems about either couple will change the fact that both Will and Jem ended up with Tessa and she loves them equally. If you want a “somebody wins” kind of love triangle, there are other books that will provide that for you. These will never be those books.

So why did you write this long screed, Cassie, the rest of you might be wondering, and fairly. Three reasons. One is that there are other questions that are carbon copies of this one (as in, written by the same person/small group of people) cluttering up my inbox, and I want to put a stop to the idea that this kind of thing is going to be acknowledged as a valid comment or complaint. It’s not. Second, we have all been driven bananas by quarantine and I am no exception. The third is that this is the last time I am going to address this kind of ship-fight-disguised-as-question. Any further demands for me to favor one Tessa ship over another will be responded to with a link to this post. In the end I’m hoping this will be a time saver once we’re all allowed outside again.

[zumpietoo]

Then Snorty Tries to Pin OTHER Blame on Jughead

And just makes everybody look like even bigger dickheads in the process

We’ve been shown everybody has a cellphone, dumbass...however, NOW it’s Jug’s fault for not handling RSVPs? Additionally, who’s to say he didn’t and they blew him off, anyway, hardly be a new thing....

The other excuses you make here? Show them up as assholes and the implication translates that Jughead was painfully unimportant to them all---as were the pwecious friendships....

And Slizzy wasn’t tracking anybody at that point....other than her pimp to schedule her tricks. 

You’re also now victim blaming (per usual) Jughead for having faith that they were decent people, capable of caring....

Dude, first off, it’s a plot device

Secondly, it simply, again, shows how little care they had for Jughead----speaking of which, why don’t you consider that Slizzy immediately dropped everything when Douchie came a callin’, 6 years after that? And almost immediately started fucking him?

Oh and she and Jughead WERE in touch at this point----and she still didn’t GAF enough to show up...

Umm....again, yes, it was a plot device. It also worked. Your endless obsession with mundane details that are unimportant to the overarching storyline are irrelevant. And no, the writers don’t GAF what your reactions are.....you wouldn’t have a plot that so displeases you, if that were the case. 

I don’t find this particularly “hackneyed” (tho, TBF, your abysmal fics do show yourself as somebody intimately familiar with that...)...

Additionally, LBR, you’re obsessing over something utterly irrelevant to anything, NOW, because you’re pissed off that the storyline continues to proceed in a direction you don’t like---cuz don’t recall ANY of this obsession about this before today......and it follows your freakout on a goofy crew account, because you’re NOW having to accept Tabs won’t be fucking the ASL teacher and Jabi will be continuing.....(i.e. you were wrong on that, too).

Because there didn’t need to be. It merely further contributed to Jug’s trauma over betrayal/that nobody GAF or cared about him AND a pattern of behavior from Slizzy. THE END.

Again, you’re just whining because you don’t like where the show is currently headed....

Again, that’s how you saw it....all it showed was how hurt, lonely and broken he was from it. He was also able to move past that. Which is what the season was about...

There were no “switcheroos”, you were never getting what you persuaded yourselves you were.....you liked that because you like a sad, pining, doormat Jughead----the scene in the bunker was to show how toxic BH was/is and to provide a deep contrast to his budding relationship with Tabitha....

It’s why she was bathed in light all episode, it’s why she was worried about him and told him she cared about him....caring so deeply she risked her own safety and life to ensure he’d continue with his sobriety.

Again, no, they weren’t....they had planned out Jabi as a slow burn all along. Again, that you pretend otherwise just shows how fucking stupid you are

Let you have what, you entitled moron? (also, could she sound any more deranged, here?)

Yes, yes....you write fanfic, went to college and are saint---is that what you’re wanting, Snorty? Oh, no?

Actually, if you watched the actual show-----you’d legit see we DID get that....just it wasn’t what you wanted. And I say that as somebody who haattteddd the misery porn at the time and still does think it probably dragged on longer than it should’ve....AND did some seriously shitty plotting with the mystery----buuuttt...again, the entire point here was NEVER about BH reconciling, cuz that’s not gonna happen. 

Additionally, I will say it’s possible the writers hoped perhaps PP could be less of a psycho nightmare, but...nope.

Slizzy giving the manuscript was to explain Jug’s slip (and where that took him), as well as show how little regard she had for him, period....something we saw a shit ton of in that particular episode, BTW. 

Nobody GAF about the helicopter (and initially it was to explain why Vermin’s marriage to Chad fell apart) and Jug’s being stood up has been fully explained by myself, right here....because I’m not as big an idiot as you are. 

I hate defending them, but the clowns are yourselves....and, it’s becoming remarkably apparent you’ve entered the “rage” stage of grieving....

[acephysicskarkat]

I don't want to start fights, but don't you think you may be going way too far with the salt? It's one thing to not be happy with the way a show ended(and so many people think S5 was great, so you are in a huge minority already), but to insult the showrunner because *one* ship didn't become canon is going too far, mate. Catradora was there from the start, and Catra had an amazing redemption arc. Then again, I am just one person, so idk. Anyway, thanks. -Callum.

I actually respect Noelle Stevenson a lot: bringing a show like She-Ra all the way to its conclusion, producing seasons 1-4 (which are in fact really good), working hard for BLM, all while being out and proud in an industry that still has plenty of bigots around - these are legitimate achievements that are worthy of respect.

However.

1) I don’t give a shit how many people liked S5. I am allowed my own opinions on my own blog. If you don’t like my opinions the block button is right there. Telling me that a lot of fans like the season is an irrelevant data point because my opinions are not subject to majority vote.

2) Catradora was part of the disappointment that was S5, but it was far from the only thing. The strong ensemble cast, one of the best things about the show, is underused; every redemption arc is utterly weightless (Catra’s isn’t the worst but it’s still badly undercooked, of which more later), Glimmer and Bow are barely relevant despite the BFS being the show’s actual beating heart (I know Noelle says Catradora was supposed to be the heart but it’s never felt like that to me), everything related to Catra and Adora’s relationship feels forced, out-of-character and clumsy, the resolution is tied to a bullshit save-the-world button with unclear results, long-running elements like Adora’s family or the Catra/Shadow Weaver parallels are ditched in favour of coming up with dumb answers about what Greyskull means, and the writing is just kind of bad.

It has good elements - I loved the Star Siblings, I liked having Entrapta actually deal with the consequences of her actions, Melog and Wrong Hordak were good additions, and “Peril of Peekablue” was excellent, on par with something like “Mer-Mysteries” - but the season was considerably worse than all the others.

Like, I actually went into S5 going “The most likely outcome here is Catradora canon, but hey, maybe this will be the season that sells me on it” and it wasn’t. It really, really wasn’t.

3) Catradora was there from the start, but it was also badly done from the start and S5 did not meaningfully improve it. It’s actually my go-to on how not to tell an enemies-to-lovers arc because the “enemies” part is really prolonged, heavily emphasised, toxic, unpleasant, emotionally wearing and vicious and the “to” is super rushed and clumsy (of which more in the next bullet point). From "The Promise” to the end of season 4, there are no moments where Catra and Adora’s emotional connection does anything to soften the hostility; if anything, it makes Catra worse because it adds a really cruel and personal note to the whole thing.

Then S5 executes on it badly because it relies heavily on papering over inconvenient events and character development instead of trying to build organically on what has happened before. Catra telling Adora, “You never gave up on anything, not even me,” is my go-to example of this, because she did. It was the S3 climax and a huge moment for Adora’s personal arc! And then the show even reinforced it by having Adora throw a robot directly at Catra’s face with pretty unambiguous intent to kill, or at least severely wound, in "Flutterina”. But it’s not dealt with; instead, we get one questionable line of dialogue about pretending it never happened. Having Adora admit she was wrong to give up on Catra and swearing never to do so again could have been a really powerful moment, but instead of trying to do anything with the thing we saw happen onscreen, it’s just shoved under the rug. It’s bad writing and a huge waste of interesting potential. (It’s also bad planting and payoff; we get the setup in S3, the reminder in S4, and then it’s outright retconned away.)

4) Catra’s redemption arc is actually kind of bad. It’s not as bad as Hordak’s, which I only barely consider a redemption arc because it’s super truncated and he never admits to even doing anything wrong, but it’s bad.

First, it’s super fucking rushed. Literal years of seething, constantly building resentment disappear offscreen; there’s never a point where she meaningfully grapples with it or comes to realise that being “Shadow Weaver’s favourite” was also a hellish experience just in different ways. She does her one big redemptive act, gets forgiven instantly by everyone (including Adora, for whom it feels badly out of character given the aforementioned giving-up, her suspicion in “Princess Prom” before Catra had even tried to ruin her life once let alone six times, etc.), and her resentment just...vanishes in one hand-hold. It was her defining personality trait and the underlying cause for most of her time as an antagonist; it really should have been, you know, dealt with, instead of just forgotten. It does try to deal with her anger issues and problems expressing vulnerability, but that’s like saying that now that Azula has agreed not to torture small animals everything is fine; it’s far from the deepest issue here and pretending otherwise does the character and the show a disservice.

Worse than that, nothing she actually did feels like it means anything because the show just shoves it all under the rug. I’m not asking that she spend an episode personally making it up to each person she’s harmed a la Zuko, not least because after her participation in the sack of Salineas that’s more episodes than a long-running daytime soap opera, but at the very least using her actions in seasons 1-4 for something could have led to some really interesting scenes and good character moments and all that potential is instead just wasted. Angella’s death is just plum forgotten despite how important it was last season; the parallels between Catra’s actions in “White Out” and Horde Prime’s chips are never explored; the Shadow Weaver parallels the show’s been building for four seasons and explicitly stated in the graphic novel tie-in are just ditched and nothing ever comes of them; everyone who might not forgive Catra in under five minutes is mind-controlled until the season is almost over, contributing to the sidelining of the strong ensemble cast. It just feels like they didn’t know how to square Catra’s actions in seasons 2-4 with how they wanted her arc to end, so they just opted to pretend those actions never happened, and as a direct result the whole mess lacks texture and weight and doesn’t feel like a satisfying development for her story. It never feels like she’s dealing with the consequences for her actions, because her actions don’t have consequences.

Noelle once said that the driving question for Catra was “what happens when you’re the toxic friend”, and now we have the answer: nothing. Catra faces no long-term consequences for being the toxic friend. Perfuma’s one minute of being angry is the longest gap between Catra seeming sad and Catra getting forgiven. Nothing she did matters in the long run except in the sense that she’s kind of sad about them in aggregate. None of her bridges are burned so badly they can’t be fixed. And that’s a bad answer, because in real life when you’re the toxic friend people do refuse to forgive you instantly when you say sorry. Relationships do get trashed so badly they never recover. The pain you cause matters, and the traits that made you the toxic friend take work to overcome...unless you’re Catra, in which case the pain you cause suddenly stops mattering and your issues can be dealt with in under an hour offscreen.

Or at least, that’s my attitude. Like, if you liked the season, I’m not saying you’re an idiot or have bad taste. But I hated it. It could maybe have been good if it had been two seasons, actually allow Catra’s arc to breathe instead of speedrunning the whole thing, done more with the ensemble cast etc., but what we got was a rushed mess and telling me that “lots of people liked the rushed mess actually” is not relevant to that assessment.

(Just as a side note, if you really don’t want to start a fight, I’m not sure sending passive-aggressive asks to the tune of “have you considered that your opinions are Wrong actually and mine are Right” is the best way to go about it.)

[dakotacrisis]

It’s a Fluke

I got like two other one shots that I’m gonna get posted later. Tis the season and all that jazz.

Felix and Marinette get partnered for a project and neither are too thrilled about it...at first.

---

Felix and Marinette had never gotten on. Felix couldn’t get past her excessive cheer and energy and Marinette was sick of his cold shoulder and grumpy attitude. It was how it was between them and everyone knew it. Felix had joined the ranks of the exclusive group of people Marinette couldn’t stand and Marinette became another casualty of trying to befriend Felix and utterly failing.

That was until the day they got paired for a project. The partners had been paired by the teacher and were not up for debate. Whether they liked it or not they were gonna have to work together.

Things started off cordial enough. Straight to the point, no nonsense, everything was about their work. They chose what they were going to work on and figured out times they could get together to review the progress they made. It was going to be fine.

“Dupain-Cheng,” Felix approached her at her locker, “Did you finish the research for your part last night?”

“Yes.” She pulled out her notes on the subject. “You?”

“All done.” he flashed his own notes. “Meet at the library during free period to review?”

“Sounds like a plan.” And with that they parted and went to class.

Free period rolled around and they settled into the library to continue working.

Marinette sat across from her looking over her notes and making edits and constructing a good flow for the information when she felt like someone was watching her. She looked up and Felix’s sharp grey eyes were trained on her like he was studying her.

“Yes?” She asked when he didn’t say anything.

He blinked a couple times before sneering a bit. “Do you know you hum while you work? It’s quite distracting.”

“Sorry?” Marinette huffed as she went back to her work. She thought about humming again just to spite him but decided not to. She would be mature about this.

“It’s a fluke?” Felix said.

“What was that?”

“The song you were humming. It was It’s a Fluke, was it not?”

“It was.” Marinette nodded. “How did you know? I didn’t think that was your type of music.”

“You’d be surprised what all I listen to.”

“Hopefully not XY’s stuff.” Marinette grimaced.

“Goodness no, I have an eclectic palette of music and that man’s dribble meets nowhere near my tastes.” Felix scowled. “Doesn’t help that his latest song has been on every radio station on repeat for at least a week now. It is starting to drive me up a wall.”

“I know! It comes on at the bakery all the time and my parents are one repeat away from just disconnecting the sound system to the store altogether. I’ve never actively listened to it but if it started playing I would be able to sing along and I hate it.”

A brief smirk creased his otherwise blank face before dropping once again. “Yes, but enough about music. We should be getting back to work.”

“Right, of course.” Marinette shook her head and raced to find the place she left off.

The next day was more of the same with them working in relative silence. Marinette made a small comment about a song she liked that she thought Felix may be interested in. He didn’t say much but nodded consideringly which gave Marinette hope he would actually listen to it later.

When school let out Marinette frowned at the torrential downpour. Her house was right across the street but she would be soaked through by the time she got to cover. If only she hadn’t forgotten her umbrella again.

“Dupain-Cheng,” Felix met her at the entrance, “I was hoping to catch you before you left for the day.”

“What is it?”

“I won’t be able to work during free period tomorrow but I would like to finish up what we have so that we can do any final edits before our presentation Friday.” He said, “Would you mind if we worked after school? Considering your schedule is open of course.”

“Oh yeah, shouldn’t be a problem. Where were you thinking?”

“My house, six PM sharp. Does that work for you?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Then I will see you then.” He pulled out his umbrella and started descending towards the car waiting for him.

Marinette looked out towards her house and sighed. Might as well get it over with now. She stepped out into the rain trying to shield her head from the downpour as much as she could with her bookbag.

She was halfway to the street crossing when the rain let up around her. She looked up and Felix was walking next to her with his umbrella stretched over her. “What are--” she started to ask.

“I’m not so heartless as to let you trudge your way home in this rain.” He cut across her. His eyes trained forward. “Be quick though, my ride is waiting.”

“Thanks.” Marinette turned to him once she was at the bakery door. “That was kind of you.”

“Do me a favor and don’t forget your umbrella next time. It does no one any good when you’re forgetful.”

Marinette’s small smile curdled into a scowl. “Right. Sorry for inconveniencing you.” Marinette stepped into the bakery and slammed the door behind her. At least she tried. There was an automatic stopper on the door that slowed its close so it couldn’t be slammed.

Felix stood on the other side with an entertained smile as Marinette glared at the slowly closing door. Uppity little weasel!

She turned sharp on her heel and stomped upstairs. Every time she thinks he’s being nice he does a one eighty and she’s right back to annoyed.

A night of rest and a subsequent pleasant morning didn’t do much to improve her attitude towards Felix the following day. Which was bad seeing as how she had agreed to go over to his house that evening. Whatever. At least this project was almost done then she wouldn’t have to interact with him again.

She got to his house and was buzzed in. He greeted her at the door and Marinette was taken aback by the casual boy in front of her. Worn out pair of jeans and sweatshirt. Even his usually perfectly styled hair was mussed.

“Is there a reason you’re gawking at me?” Felix asked when she hadn’t said anything.

“Sorry. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so...casual before.” She was going to say laid back but even in his pajamas she didn’t think she’d be able to say that about Felix. No matter what he was always ramrod straight and professional. No amount of sweats or messy hair could cover that.

Felix gave an amused scoff before gesturing her inside. “We can work in my room. Is that alright with you?”

“Sure.” She followed him up to his room.

Now this felt more like Felix. Simple decor, tall bookshelves, everything was organized and tidy and there was a distinct pine smell as if someone just finished dusting. Felix sat down at his desk and Marinette stood off to the side shuffling through her own work.

“You can sit if it makes you more comfortable.” Felix said after a couple minutes.

Marinette looked around but didn’t see another chair that she could use. “Where?”

“Oh right…” Felix looked up and scanned the room. “You can sit on the bed so long as you take off your shoes first.”

“Okay…” Marinette pulled off her shoes before nestling at the corner of his bed. She spread out her work around her as she tried to compose it all into a cohesive whole.

This is weird. This is so weird.

“What do you want done with this bit? I’m not sure where to put it.” Marinette asked.

“What bit?” Felix collected the paper. “Oh this, huh,” He pushed some papers out of his way to make room and sat down next to her. “We could put it--no that wouldn’t work. We could always--no that doesn’t fit either.”

“Honestly, I’m not even sure if we need it. It seems really irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.” She reached across him for a paper. “We could just jump to this next part and skip that bit. What do you think?”

Felix was staring at her again but it wasn’t out of annoyance. He was studying her again.

“Felix?” Marinette inquired quietly. “What are you…”

She glanced down and noticed she was far closer to him than she had been a moment ago. “Sorry. I should have just asked you to pass the paper instead of leaning across you like that.” She tried to withdraw but at the last second he touched her shoulder.

His eyes were still trained on her face flicking across her features like he was searching for something. Then he gently pushed her away. He stood up and stiffly walked back to his desk. “That sounds like a fine plan. You can throw that last bit out.”

Marinette was still trying to figure out what happened a moment ago. Felix was making a definitive point of avoiding looking at her.

They finished their work and Marinette started packing up to leave.

“Dupain-Cheng,” Felix walked her down to the door, “I listened to that song you recommended.”

“Oh. What did you think?”

“It was good.”

She waited for him to elaborate but that seemed to be as much as he was willing to share.

“Okay. Good. Glad you liked it.” She opened the front door. It was raining again. “Crap.”

Felix gave a small sigh. “Forget your umbrella again?”

“The forecast said it was gonna be clear tonight. Would you mind if I borrowed yours? I’ll give it back first thing tomorrow.”

“If you can’t remember your own umbrella what is there to convince me you’ll remember to bring me mine?”

“Fine then. Geez. I’ll just use my bag.” Marinette took one step outside before she pulled right back in. “Felix!”

“Calm down.” He pulled his umbrella out of the rack by the door. “Let’s go.”

“You won’t let me borrow your umbrella but you will walk me home?”

“Do you want to be dry or not?”

“Are you going to make a snarky remark like you did yesterday if I do?”

“If I apologized would you come along already?”

“Don’t. My house is just down the block. I’ll be fine.”

“It’s also late. And I would feel better knowing you got back to your house safely.”

“Nothing is going to happen in the five minutes it’d take me to run to my house.”

“Marinette,” the use of her first name caught her off guard. He held the umbrella towards her. “I am sincerely asking you to let me escort you home for peace of mind.”

She stepped out next to him. “Okay. Thank you.”

They started the walk home in silence before Felix spoke up again.

“I am sorry if whatever I may have said offended you before. Sincerity seems to spark a defensive reaction in me for reasons unknown.”

“That seems rather silly, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.” he chuckled dryly, “I suppose it does.”

Marinette could see the lights of her house in the distance. For whatever reason Felix slowed down in his stride forcing Marinette to slow as well to keep under the umbrella.

“Dupain-Cheng, I was wondering something.” Felis asked, “What is your thoughts on vinyl records?”

“Vinyl? My mother really likes them but she never let me touch them when I was younger. Why?”

“There is a little vinyl shop I know that has some albums I think you would like if you were interested.”

“Are you serious?”

“I would like to see what other recommendations you have for me. My usual tracks have grown stale to listen to and could do with some newer sound.” He looked away from her. “I understand if you would rather pass. I fear I am not the best company even in the sincerest of circumstances.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. You’re grumpy and have a tone issue but you’re not outwardly malicious like other people I know. I have to say I am surprised though. I had the distinct impression you didn’t care for me very much.”

“True you are far bubblier than I would like and it is hard to take in all at once. But I would much rather be partnered with you then say Kim or Nino.”

“Such praise.” Marinette rolled her eyes. They were finally back at her house. “When were you planning on going to this shop?”

“Tomorrow after class?”

“It’s a date.” She nodded. “I mean not a date. Like a date date. But a get together as friends kinda date. You know what. Let’s call it an outing. Not a date. That sounds good to me.” She fumbled for the door handle to her house. “I’ll uh see you tomorrow?”

Felix was smiling at her in much the same way he did when he walked her home yesterday. “See you tomorrow, Dupain-Cheng.”

[solieldoux]

when brush meets canvas; a collection of thoughts and happenings ( @wclfsun​ )

[     🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ ·  ] ⠀━━   five years ago, snu campus tour

he’s  not  listening. ethan  liu  has  the  attention span  of  a  a  goldfish when  it  comes  to  irrelevant things.  there’s  the  center  of  the  campus, there’s  the  café  (there’s  great coffee  there!),  dorms are  that  way,  class  buildings one  and  two  over  there  (  “  they’re  close  together  so  you  don’t  miss  classes!” )  …  so  on  and  so  forth. he  can  keep  pace  with  the  group  well  enough on  auto-pilot.  the  ‘highlights’  of  the  greater campus  are  irrelevant to  a  student who  plans  to  spend  four  semesters  holed  up  in  a  dorm  room.

“  sorry!  i’m  so  sorry!! “

he’s  rather  responsive for  someone  on  auto-pilot.  she  crashes  into  him  out  of  nowhere. his  arms  reach  out  to  catch  her  and  stabilize them  both.  it’s  not  until  after  he’s  done  it  that  ethan  truly  realizes that  something  happened, and  he’s  got  his  arms  around  a  brunette  who’s  expression  reads  utterly  horrified by  her  own  actions.

he  lets  her  go,  waving it  off,  “it’s  fine.  you’re alright?”

yes  she’s  alright, and  she’s  very  sorry,  and  she’s  sometimes so  clumsy,  and  she  wants  to  make  it  up.  ethan  continues to  wave  her  off,  shaking his  head  because it  really  is  fine.  it  takes  some  talking  down,  but  she  ultimately  accepts it,  and  she  shifts  herself off  to  the  side  a  bit  so  she’s  not  walking  so  closely  to  the  man  she’d  just  collapsed  into.  

ethan  sighs.  the  walk  continues. now  they  know  of  each  other’s  existence; any  time  they  catch  glances he  gives  a  small  nod  and  she  alternates  between mouthing  ‘sorry!’  and  giving  him  a  gentle smile.  he  finds  it  funny. and  it  makes  the  rest  of  the  tour  considerably less  grating.

[     🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ ·  ] ⠀━━   five years ago, coffee shop

ahh.  that’s  why  she  asked  what  my  coffee  order  is  the  other  day.

leia  is  settled at  a  small  café  table  –  in  front  of  her  a  tall  glass  of  iced  coffee  and  a  slice  of  crumb  cake.  across from  her  in  front  of  the  opposite, empty  chair  is  another  cup  –  this  one  a  large  ceramic cappuccino  mug  with  two  slices of  lime  set  on  a  separate  dish  to  the  side.  it  too  is  accompanied  by  a  slice  of  cake.

“  did  you  wait  long  ??  “  he  asks

she  didn’t  wait  long  at  all,  she  just  got  there  a  little  early  and  decided to  order  for  them!  she’s  fine  with  paying  for  it,  and  ethan  certainly shouldn’t  worry.  she  hopes  she  ordered  the  right  thing, she’d  written  down  what  he  said  a  few  days  ago  about  liking  to  mix  lime  into  his  coffee.  she  thinks  it’s  very  interesting, and  she  almost ordered  it  herself. and  she’s  talking and  rambling  to  much  and  she’s  sorry.

ethan  is  to  used  to  her  by  now  to  be  phased. he  simply  sits  in  front  of  her,  lets  her  ramble  a  minute  while  he  adds  the  lime  to  his  drink  and  takes  a  fork  to  the  cake.  after  a  moment  she’s  quiet,  shyly  looking  down  at  her  own  setting. ethan  shakes  his  head.

“  you  worry  to  much.  “

she  knows.  she  can’t  help  it.  

“  i  owe  you  for  this.  “

no  he  doesn’t! it’s  completely  fine.  she  doesn’t mind.  and  ethan  doesn’t  care,  as  he’s  already  reaching across  the  table  to  pocket the  receipt. leia  sighs  a  bit.  she  just  wanted to  be  nice.  ethan  tells  her  she’s  nice  without trying,  and  it’s  one  of  the  many  reasons  he  likes  being  around  her.

[     🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ ·  ] ⠀━━   five years ago, leia’s apartment

leia  is  rambling, as  she  always is.  only  this  time  she  rambles  while  dumping  new  dishware  into  the  sink  and  unpacking boxes  of  this  and  that  and  things from  home  into  cabinets  and  into  drawers. ethan  is  listening, as  he  always is.

if  he  doesn’t want  to  enroll in  snu,  then  he  shouldn’t! he  should  definitely join  two  star  if  that’s what  feels  right. and  she’s  supportive of  his  decision. and  yes,  it’ll  be  harder to  start  school without  him  if  he  chooses not  to  go,  but  she’ll be  alright!  and  they  can  still  text  and  hang  out,  and  everything  would  be  fine.  and  she’s  seen  some  of  the  lyrics  he  wrote!  and,  oh,  they’re so  good  no  wonder  two  star  entertainment extended  him  a  contract!  

she’s  practically  bouncing up  in  down,  bubbling  up  with  all  the  excitement one  would  expect ethan  to  have  after  receiving a  personal  invitation from  the  company’s ceo.  but  he’s  just  standing there  with  his  arms  crossed, watching  her  with  one  brow  arced  and  a  smile  tugging  at  the  corners of  his  mouth.

“  when  was  the  last  time  you  took  a  breath?”

leia  pauses,  her  body  going  stiff  for  a  moment as  she  manually takes  in  a  breath,  then  lets  it  out  again  with  an  embarrassed  smile. she’s  just  so  happy  for  him.  and  she  wants  what’s  best  for  him  and  wants  what  makes  him  happy. ethan  moves  towards her  and  puts  his  arms  around  her  waist.

“  i  have  a  lot  to  be  happy  about  these  days.  “

[     🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ ·  ] ⠀━━   four years ago, leia’s apartment

over  the  past  year  or  so,  ethan  has  come  to  learn  how  every  aspect  of  leia  is  soft  –  lips,  voice,  demeanor.  more  recently,  he’s  learned  that  the  rest  of  her  body  is  no  different.  the  discovery  wasn’t  by  chance.  it  was  planned  and  executed  with  comfort  and  assuredness  in  mind.  the  location,  however,  was  a  bit  unplanned  –  the  intent  had  been  the  bedroom,  but  the  living  ended  up  serving  just  as  well.  and  that,  ironically,  turned  out  to  be  for  the  best  as  ethan  discovered  something  else  that  very  same  afternoon.

leia’s  back  is  a  wonderful  canvas.  the  better  part  of  the  next  hour  had  been  spent  in  quiet  conversation  as  he  brushed  unplanned,  but  ornate  designs  onto  her  skin.

“  it  washes  off.  “

she  knows.  she  wouldn’t  really  have  let  him  do  it  if  it  was  permanent.  or  maybe  she  would  have.  maybe  his  art  would’ve  become  a  beautiful  back  tattoo.  she  wants  a  picture  of  it  when  it’s  done,  because  she  can’t  see  for  herself  what  she’s  doing  and  it’d  be  a  shame  to  wash  all  his  hard  work  away  without  remembering  it.

why  do  i  love  you  so  much?

[     🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ ·  ] ⠀━━   two and a half years ago, leia’s apartment

he’s debuting! she’s so excited, and she always knew it would happen. there’s no way ethan would’ve gotten two invitations to the company if they didn’t want him. imagine how different things would’ve been if he’d gone to snu instead! she misses him a bit when she’s alone on campus, and she does sometimes think it would’ve been fun to go together. no wait! oh, she didn’t mean to say that. she shouldn’t have said it, and she doesn’t want him to worry about her. because she’s fine! she’s doing great on her own! she’s only got a couple more years and then she’ll be graduating, and everything will be fine.

“ i’m moving into the dorm this week. “

she’ll help him pack!

“ you can’t come to the trainee dorms, leia, i’ll get in trouble.”

oh right.

her smile is still soft and gentle. their relationship had been quiet and incredibly comfortable til now. never something either of them spoke to openly about. not out of shame, but just out of natural inclination to not speak to often about personal matters to other people. but now it’s necessity.

“ …. no one knows about you except hyunsik. i think it needs to stay that way. it’s for your safety, ultimately.”

it’s okay! she completely understands. she doesn’t want to jeopardize his career and she loves him enough that she’s okay with keeping things quiet. really, she’s fine. she’s completely okay.

ethan wraps his arms around her tightly, presses his lips to her forehead. he’s never wanted to shout that he loves her more than right now. more than this moment where he’s realized that he can’t.

“ i love you. “ he settles for a soft whisper in her ear.

she loves him too.

[     🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ ·  ] ⠀━━   six months ago, d:fi dorm

“  ethan  ?!  yah  –  ethan  !!  “

the  force  of  leaving  the  trance  sends  ethan  tumbling off  his  chair  and  onto  the  ground where  he  catches himself  on  all  fours.  

“  you  okay  ??  you  weren’t  responding …  can  you  hear  me  now??”  hyunsik asks,  kneeling  by  his  side  and  putting an  arm  him.  

ethan  shuts  his  eyes,  squeezing them  so  tight  that  he  feels  pressure in  his  forehead, “…yeah.”  he  says  finally.

the  past  hour  of  his  life  is….  nothingness,  as  far  as  ethan  can  recall.  but  the  state  of  the  dorm  room  indicates  otherwise. dropped  brushes,  a  tipped  over  cup  of  mucky  water. tubes  of  acrylic paint  are  scattered across  the  floor, some  burst  open  from  the  force  of  being  stepped on.  paint  had  splattered  onto  the  wall  and  floor, even  onto  some  of  the  furniture.  his  easel  is  turned  over  on  it’s  side,  and  the  canvas ethan  had  been  working  on  lay  on  the  floor, slightly  smudged  due  to  making contact  with  the  bedframe  before hitting  the  ground.

“  what  were  you  doing  ??”

“  i  don’t  know.  my…i’ve been  off  recently. i  don’t  know.”

suddenly  ethan  pushes himself  up  and  whirls  around to  look  at  the  painting. he  feels  a  pit  form  in  his  stomach  as  he  examines it.  it’s  messy, it’s  smeared  with  dark  reds,  browns,  and  auburns.  but  he  knows  exactly  what  he’s  looking at.  the  creature hunting  them  all  –  the  being  known  as  aries  –  holding leia  aloft.

his  hand  is  around  her  neck.  she’s  bleeding  profusely. her  body  is  limp,  but  her  eyes  are  wide  open  in  horror.  the  sight  breaks lose  tears  form  ethan’s  eyes,  and  hyunsik snatches  the  painting up  and  turns  it  around.

“  stop  it.    leia  is  fine.  ethan  –  leia  is  fine.  “

“  you  don’t  know  that.  ”

hyunsik  puts  himself between  ethan  and  the  painting, places  both  hands  on  his  forearms  and  squeezes  tightly, “  i  do.  two  star  is  protected. and  leia  is  right  downstairs.   there’s  nowhere  else  she  could  be  that’s safer.  she’s  fine.  she’ll  be  fine.  nothing’s going  to  hurt  her.”

ethan  uses  all  his  force  to  push  hyunsik  aside. the  elder  doesn’t expect  it,  and  so  he  tumbles  to  the  side  and  into  the  bedframe. ethan  snatches  the  painting  back  up  and  flips  it  over,  trying to  understand  what  part  of  his  brain  decided  to  concoct  this  monstrosity  of  an  image.

what  is  this  panic  induced nightmare  sitting  at  the  forefront of  his  mind?  why  is  his  stomach sinking  the  more  he  looks  at  it?  why  does  it  feel  so  real?  so  possible? so…inevitable?  he  feels  the  tears  begin  to  fall,  and  they  plop  onto  the  canvas,  causing bits  of  it  to  run  because  of  still  wet  paint.

hyunsik  gets  up  again  and  tries  to  pull  the  painting  from  ethan’s  vice  grip.  the  elder  ultimately wins  the  scuffle, and  the  painting is  pushed  off  to  the  side  of  the  room  face  down  and  smeared across  the  floor. ethan’s  body  racks  with  sobs  as  hyunsik pins  him  down.  loud,  anguished cries  as  realization  sets  in  of  the  future he’s  seen  for  leia.

  [     🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ ·  ] ⠀━━   last night, d:fi dorm

leia’s  asleep,  curled up  in  a  blanket  while  ethan  sits  beside  her  with  one  of  his  sketchpads.  over  the  course of  the  evening, a  series  of  elaborate  mandala like  designs  have  blossomed  onto  the  page.  it’s  not  until  the  very  early  hours  of  the  morning where  light  is  peeking  into  the  window that  ethan  realizes he’s  been  awake  since  the  moment  leia  arrived.  with  realization  comes  exhaustion.  his  vigilant  watch  over  her  was  bound  to  come  to  an  end  eventually, but  he  remains uneased.  like  he  can’t  trust  the  locked doors  and  magical wards  around  the  dorm  to  protect  them.

considering  how  monsters had  broken  through them  before,  though, were  his  concerns truly  misplaced?

he  sets  his  sketchpad  aside  and  slides down  into  the  bed,  wrapping an  arm  around her  and  leaning into  her  back.  leia  stirs  and  turns  to  face  him.  worry  is  written all  over  her  face  as,  even  through her  glossy  eyed  half-asleep  daze,  she’s  picked up  on  something troubling  him.  ethan  smiles  a  bit,  shakes his  head.

“  i’m  fine.  just  thinking. why  do  you  always  know  when  i’m  thinking?”

she’s  too  tired  to  form  a  meaningful response.  her  words  come  out  practically  inaudible and  a  little bit  slurred.  exhaustion is  evident,  and  so  ethan  just  strokes her  hair  and  her  arm  and  tells  her  to  go  back  to  sleep. it  doesn’t  take  long  before she’s  out  again  and  he  is  left  to  his  thoughts.

would  you  have  ever  spoken to  me  if  you’d  known  this  is  what  your  life  would  be?  constantly chasing  down  or  running  away  from  monsters…fighting  against the  threads  of  time  and  having  to  figure  out  what  fate  looks  like  for  you…?

he  knows  what’d she  say  if  she  were  conscious.  she’d  say  yes,  of  course. she’d  say  it’s  worth  it  and  as  long  as  they’re  together, she  knows  she  safe.  she’d  say  she  doesn’t  want  to  be  a  burden, but  she  wouldn’t want  it  any  other  way.  though  if  he  wanted to  leave  her,  she’d  say  she’d  understand. it’d  break  her  heart,  but  all  she  wants  is  for  him  to  be  happy  –

ethan  realizes  that  he’s  rambling for  her  and  lets  out  a  small  laugh.  she’s  so  much  a  part  of  him.  maybe  to  much  now.  ‘that’s  what  soulmates  are’,  he’s  sure  someone  in  the  dorm  would  say.  hyunsik  or  reese.  and  yeah,  perhaps that’s  what  they  are.  no…that is  definitely  what  they  are.  nothing  else  would  explain why  it  feels  as  though leia  has  a  cord  around his  soul  and  is  constantly pulling  at  it.  he  welcomes every  tug.

and  god  save  whoever tries  to  sever  that  cord.      

[certainempatheticturkeymuffin]

Age of Calamity Review

Hey! I wasted three hours of my life writing this in Arlo's comment section and part of it had to be cut out because of Youtube's word limit, so y'all get to suffer with me.

Here's the video that I wrote this on, give him some love, his opinion is a great juxtaposition to my own!

There are a few weird formatting errors because tumblr wants me to make new paragraphs, but there's no missing words as far as I can tell.

_

I like it, but I like the first one better, mainly for the appearance. I don't know why, but the pop ups are hard for me to see (by pop-ups I mean the challenges and weak point meters, the out of battle menu is actually pretty good, though I admit the text is a little small on the opening screen), and the lack of saturation makes it hard for me to see. Actually, that might be it, I just don't like the paler color palette in this context, since for a fast paced game I kind of need to be able to see, which I can't because I'm partially blind, and glasses have a glare that's an annoying trade off. Compare that to the original Hyrule Warriors, the weak point meters are brightly colored and change color the more you damage it, which is good for those with visual impairment who need some extra feedback to judge their next actions. The menu was also this aged tan color which provided a great contrast that wasn't the blinding white on top of dark blue, which wasn't bad at all, but the buttons and text were always big enough for those with visual impairment to see, though I will admit that the little pop ups with all the people crying out for help have a bit of the same issue as AoC. I think I just like the more vibrant colors of Hyrule Warriors in the context of a faster game, rather than the pale beauty of BotW, since my eyes can't really see what's going on if the colors aren't at least comparable to what you'd find in Minish Cap or Triforce Heroes. I can see fine in BotW during the day time, but at night, well, I just run and hope for the best, trying not to get killed by an electric keese, which is also a problem in AoC, mainly Zora's Domain; I could barely see a thing and it negatively impacted my experience.

I've got hundreds of hours in HW, and maybe five or ten in AoC. It's mainly because I just don't like how it looks. I've heard a lot of people say that it looks pretty much exactly like botw and...I have to disagree. A lot of areas are pretty perfect, but some, like the tower, are just a little off in a way I can't describe. That's a personal irrelevant nitpick though, but it negatively impacted my experience, so I thought it was worth a mention, the tower on the opening screen always annoyed the crap out of me, every time I see it I just want to exit the game because ew.

The gameplay is fine, and thank goodness for the addition of the meditation room, there's not a feature like that in the original, so I had to play the first stage over and over again to figure out new combos, I think Mipha is my favorite hero that I actually unlocked (though I've been wanting to play more just to see if I can control Revali and Teba like I can Fi (which makes her insanely good since her wide area of movement is the only thing you need to account for)), and I think Zelda is my least favorite, since she's a little clunky for my taste (Daruk is too, but his rolling makes that more bearable). I was a little disappointed with Impa, but her seal thing is kinda like Zelda's and Fi's thing in Hyrule Warriors (there are probably stronger connections, but I'm not experienced with every single hero), and I think it was just the hype that she got. She's not the type of character I like to play, since Zelda and Fi are my favorites, speedy and nimble area clearers (Sheik and Marin are cool too, I just have less experience using Marin, and Sheik is always a B pick since I find them a little harder to control with less area of impact), which meant that Mipha, a character I admittedly was never attached to, became one of my favorites in the game. Impa wasn't an area clearer for the most part, she had a few moves that could do that, but she was mainly a boss-killer to me, Mipha though? She's great, set up a few waterspouts and everything dies.

I do like that they've lessened the kind of ridiculous amount of items that were in HW, and that they didn't try to strong arm fairies in, because that system was the most annoying thing in the world and so poorly explained that I had to watch the same tutorial three times over about once a month because it was so convoluted.

I do hate the runes though, I just, couldn't seem to use them right. It might just be me, but I found trying to use them weird. It's a little hard to explain, but it's probably just a me thing. Not only that, but I found the inclusion of the rods on top of the runes annoying. The rods were entirely unnecessary if you were going to use runes. They just added another layer that was thin at best, not to mention that I found them hard to use as well. I hated the weird controls of the targeting system. I don't think there's anything wrong with a basic hack and slash, and if you're not going to have the excessive amount of items, runes were a good idea i think it might've been a me issue, but rods? It seems a bit excessive. It's probably just a "you'll get better with practice" kind of thing, which, fair, most people can't use Fi like I can, so that makes sense. I figured it was worth a mention anyway since the runes were a constant source of annoyance and I used the rods twice before never bothering again because I hated them so much.

I do like the addition of healing from food drops whenever you want though. In the original if there was a dropped heart but you were at full health, sucked to be you, going back for it when you need it would waste time. The plot is still as weird as ever though (from what I've heard from other videos and such), which is fine, since I tend to play my favorite levels over and over rather than actually do anything plot relevant (can you believe that it took me over a year to finish the story of HW because I kept getting distracted by letting Fi and Zelda mow down everything in the Adventure maps and challenges? I literally got the boomerang like six months after

getting the game. It's perfect for people with ADHD I swear) though I am extremely disappointed with the fact that they took the cheap way out, it's a kid's game and a nintendo game, what did I expect? For them to let everyone actually die? Nope...though honestly, I can't comment on the overall amazingness of the plot they went with because...er....I only did Mipha's and Daruk's stages before just losing interest, so I'm not the person you want to ask about any story criticism, because that would be pure conjecture and utterly pointless.

The customization of heroes, now that's great. It's a weird system that I needed to google a lot for, but it's absolutely brilliant and I love it. Sure, getting the specific seals I want is a little annoying, but it's a great mechanic and I love it.

I probably should've said this earlier, but I'm comparing it mainly to Hyrule Warriors rather than BotW because AoC's a Warriors game and thus plays more like Hyrule Warriors than BotW, and BotW has a different set of standards due to being an open-world game. I'm still salty about the plot though, so I guess there's your comparison.

Also, I absolutely ADORE the fact that you can track materials. Not having to google which stage gives me which material is just the best. And the fact that the side quests have little blurbs, absolutely fantastic. We didn't get that in HW, but then again, once you finished the main story, the rest was just, Have Fun and Kill Everything, which is great, and I love it, but adding in a weird ingredient fetching quest with a nugget of lore is kinda cool. I don't wish we got it in HW though, since, as aforementioned, there was no way to track which material came from which stage, so that would've made it a nightmare.

The Divine Beasts....I hated them, they were literally just time wasters, and, granted I only did Rudania and Ruta before dropping the game, I just hated them. The UI was horrendous and even Ganon's Fury was better, and I absolutely DESPISE Ganon's Fury. Once I finished them, I was just happy for them to be over and never bother with them again. I hated their controls, I hated the cramped paths, I hated how I couldn't really turn and see anything, and honestly, I commend the champions for being able to control these bulky slow and absolutely horrible machines.

On the music, I think it's good. I loved BotW's soundtrack, I loved Zelda 2's soundtrack, I loved Wind Waker's soundtrack, I loved Cadence of Hyrule's soundtrack, I loved Hyrule Warriors's soundtrack, I loved Minish Cap's soundtrack, Triforce Heroes, Spirit Tracks (you're lying if you say otherwise, this soundtrack is a bop and I will actually fight you), etc etc, and this one is no different, though I will admit it did a pretty good job of having me ignore it, though that may have been more due to my frustration at the rods and runes and Zelda and Daruk more than actually having an unimpressive soundtrack.

Personally, it didn't do much for me, I can't get over the color palette, the mechanics, the divine beasts. I had pretty average, maybe a bit high, expectations, but they weren't quite met. I played it for a few hours one day, dropped it, picked it up again a few months later, then remembered exactly why I dropped it. I think the original Hyrule Warriors is just better visually for me, even if the plot isn't great or it's a bit fanfictiony, it had depth in combat that didn't absolutely annoy me, and the annoying battles were usually optional, and the bosses had variety, which is a fault mainly of BotW and was just an inherited problem for AoC, and I'm not a completionist, I don't want to have to complete anything with Darunia or Cia, so I don't unless I have to to progress something, which means that I don't stress about the gargantuan amount of content in HW.

IN SUMMARY: I've never had problems with frame rate (though I play docked due to visual impairment), and if you're visually impaired, wear anti-glare glasses because the pale colors aren't going to help much. I haven't found an option to make text bigger. The soundtrack is good,

there isn't much boss variety (not AoC's fault, but it's still there), the meditation room is great, the runes take a bit of getting used to, as do the rods(i never got used to them), Divine Beasts tank performance in all aspects and are just disappointing, you actually know which stage drops which item, and there's no My Fairy (which is definitely a positive).

To slap on an arbitrary rating that only means something to me: 4.5/10

It's a good game if you can get passed the issues that bug ME to no end.

And there we have it. There goes....holy crap I spent three hours on

I wanted to like this, I really did, and I'm glad others enjoy it, but as it stands, I'll let y'all move on to Age of Calamity, and I'll stick to my handy dandy Hyrule Warriors ice cream with a dash of Breath of the Wild, a sprinkle of Cadence of Hyrule, and a Zelda 2 cherry on top. It's not like I have to wait long for Subnautica; hopefully that doesn't disappoint me too much, I preordered this one. Actually, I get Pokemon Snap today too, hopefully it isn't a SwSh level disappointment, AoC is magnitudes better than SwSh at a 4.5

this????? Three hours of my life. Gone.

[ganymedesclock]

Dead Cells and the weight of small lives pt.2 (NPCs, the dead and alive)

Continuing from part 1, now that I’m refreshed, rested, and ready to continue this monster post. I finished off last post talking a bit about the way Prisoner acts onto NPCs and interact-able bodies, so this chunk is picking up with that in earnest.

Here is the thing. If you punt the corpse of an executed prisoner, that’s generally a dick move, so this is another place I feel like I can understand why people might get the takeaway Prisoner is kind of a jerk. But I feel like it’s worth examining, in detail, the kind of interactions he has.

The mechanics of Dead Cells are very focused on scavenging, looting, and a limited amount of buying your way forwards- and, spoken as someone starting to dip my toesies in the higher Stem Cell counts- thus, more difficult runs- any random encounter you can get items from is a godsend.

It’s also where you get a lot of the lore of the game, in random events- some of which will show up in multiple areas, others unique- that tell you about the world.

It’s in these interactions, mainly, that I see Prisoner characterized as a fairly compassionate guy with a morbid sense of humor, and I struggle to see him as a total uncaring asshole. To gloss over a large number of interactions, here’s some common threads:

Prisoner is fairly flippant about death / used to seeing corpses. He will also sometimes kick the bodies with his bare feet to make them drop items, which, as a fairly tactile sensitive person, the thought makes my soul depart my body. Kicked bodies are seldom visibly disturbed from their position by this, though they do drop items. 

He is not opposed to looting said corpses / prying useful items out of their hands, though he may comment on riffling through someone’s stuff being a social no-no while doing so.

At the same time, he far more often uses “personlike” language rather than “objectlike” language to describe the bodies (“this guy” “her” “him” “population”) with the main exception being interacting with a bloated, waterlogged corpse.

You can virtually always examine a lot more than what has money or weapons and Prisoner will have salient thoughts about it suggesting he is proving keenly observant and not specifically looking for loot and ignoring all else.

From here, I’ll go into several incidents I think are pretty noteworthy. 

A fair warning that these are quite morbid and discuss/depict the kinds of things people do when everything is falling apart and people are dying all around them, so, not exactly gentle reading.

1. The Flower Loving Prisoner

This is a fairly common encounter you can find in the Prisoners’ Quarters and Promenade, possibly other places. It is a small cell, with several points of interest, mostly being the large number of potted flowers and the small window. Poking around will have Prisoner note that the flowers “have been a bit underwatered recently” and that the fabric of the mattress was torn up and used elsewhere.

Specifically, for a noose- the person occupying this cell hung himself, and his corpse is holding a single flower in its hands.

For the room, Prisoner remarks “looks like this guy loved flowers.” For the body itself,

“Guess he wanted to choose the time of his death. He’s holding a faded flower between his fingers. A moment of silence… NAH! I’ve got better things to do!”

The “nah” is punctuated by him kicking the body, causing it to drop a necklace- but not the flower it’s holding.

So here’s the thing. This is a flippant action. At surface pass, Prisoner is disrespecting this person who is characterized by growing flowers in a prison- and holding onto this small thing of beauty, even in death.

The thing is though, someone who doesn’t care at all wouldn’t, of their own accord, independently air the idea they should have a “moment of silence” for this person, even to veto it a second later. Nobody is here to see or care what Prisoner is doing.

Also to someone who doesn’t care at all, the entire rest of the room would be of no interest; it would be trivial that flowers were important to a dead person.

So this creates an interesting duality. On one hand: Prisoner very clearly doesn’t care much about bodies. This is a repeated pattern. The main time he’s particularly shocked by corpses is when they were someone who was alive the last time he checked (as is the case of the Tutorial Knight). He has a calculated angle and he’s interested in what he can get from them and how it can prevent him from dying, again.

On the other hand... Prisoner equally clearly cares about people. He thinks a lot about what people wanted, felt, what choices they made. He shows a lot of interpersonal intelligence and even to people who he has every reason to not listen to, his responses tend thoughtful and he socks this information away as important in a context where he is, by necessity, otherwise rigidly focused on survival. He hates the King, but will also talk thoughtfully about the way the royals of the island lived.

And of the two elements in this juxtaposition, while survivalism and gallows humor are clearly strong threads in him... it’s clear the caring part is the larger factor of the two. It persists, while his cheerful morbidity sometimes just utterly fails.

2. The Stilt Village family

In the fishing hamlet, you can find a small house featuring a hanged woman. A letter by her feet, that the Prisoner notes are probably her last words, reads:

“The Malaise won’t get us. I’ll protect you… I’ll protect you.”

The Prisoner, our usually quite chatty protagonist, has almost nothing to say here. The closest he gets is, on examining the woman’s body, notes she “opted for the fast method” and aforementioned observation that the note is her last words.

There is also a bed in the room. Two sets of small feet poke out from under the blankets. If you examine it, Prisoner only says “throats slit.” and nothing more.

There is nothing in the room to loot, no jokes made, and the overall attitude is deeply, crushingly somber. There are closed drawers, but there’s no prompt to go through them.

If Prisoner didn’t care, this would just be more of the same, what’s three more bodies, right? But it’s clear that he isn’t just idly curious about the way people live and what they thought and felt- he has a certain amount of compassion, so that faintly nauseous feeling we get as we creep through this room is probably simpatico with our protagonist.

These people are strangers. He never knew them. They’re villagers of a fishing hamlet that was a hotbed of rebellion, and disrespectful of the king; they are small lives. They are “irrelevant people”. Mechanically, you have no gameplay incentive to stand here and look around.

But it’s clear this encounter affects Prisoner a lot emotionally. He doesn’t know who these people were, never met these kids or their presumed mother- but it’s clear he didn’t want this to have happened to them. 

In particular Prisoner seems to be disquieted by young corpses any time he finds them; the closest he comes to joking is finding the executed body that he notes is “either a dwarf, or... no more than seven or eight years old. ...Let’s... say she’s a dwarf.”

Another half-joke, also in the Stilt Village, is he finds a desperate letter to the Alchemist, written by villagers pledging their bodies to his research and begging him to save them. Prisoner notes that it’s partially damaged by water and hard to read, and then frankly follows with “I don’t think I want to understand what I read.”

This is worth noting, in particular, because we find a lot of the Alchemist’s grimoires, and he mentions his “volunteers” often- the kind of things that happen to them in particular tend to be fatal. One setup in High Peak Castle notes that those exposed to the experimental cure became twisted half-plant beings, and then as a near afterthought, notes “the subject failed to survive.”

So Prisoner- who’s just trying to save his own hide at best- is pretty strongly depicted as more upset at what happened to the villagers than the Alchemist who was trying to work on a cure. This is significant, when we happen to know said Alchemist becomes the Collector, who basically spends the entire game using Prisoner to harvest resources from corpses (the titular Cells) in exchange for better equipment. The Collector also makes it quite clear from the start he knows who Prisoner is, but is not interested in disclosing this information.

(And, if you, like me, don’t think Prisoner is the same person as the King given the wild discrepancy of personality and other evidence- when he finally does “fess up” it’s in the form of lying to Prisoner’s face)

3. Moments of anger

This is actually not one moment but several. Part of what Dead Cells does with its dialogue is convey tone and intensity by changing colors. Most text comes in blue boxes- when it’s lit in red, it’s almost always for emphasis. Especially if the textbox shakes slightly and the text scrolls faster than usual, giving it a sense of slamming into place on the screen.

In several areas- the Promenade or the Ramparts- you can find a setup of “live target training” in which a human prisoner was chained to a post, and then shot at by archers. This is at first perhaps a bit morbidly funny, given the wall behind the prisoner is littered with arrows- but, overall, it’s just dark.

In particular, a single arrow has struck the shackled prisoner. When Prisoner observes this, he notes “Only one arrow hit the target.”

Then, in shaking red text, “Right in the head.”

He then turns and faces the empty stand where the guard stood, and flashes a thumbs-up that I struggle to read as not rather scathing in its condemnation. Again- to someone who doesn’t care or thinks of this as funny, that kind of emphasis doesn’t make sense.

But even some things he says calmly seem to suggest Prisoner’s pretty angry about the whole situation- sometimes, upon finding a large gallows section, it will have an order pinned to it:

By order of the King, all persons presenting behavioural disorders or noticeable deteriorations in their appearance... shall be imprisoned, and hanged by the neck until dead. ...(If the prison doctor confirms the diagnosis of infection.)

There is a distinct beat before the last line is read, and then Prisoner’s commentary ensues:

“Glad they added that. For a second there I really thought we were talking about genocide.”

He also at one point responds to a desecrated statue of the King, defaced with “We’ll skin you alive!” by calling it a “brave and courageous statement,” and seems mildly impressed that someone peed on a royal order in the Stilt Village relatively high up. Besides that, a lot of the area flavor text talks about the abuses of the guards, and in particular in High Peak Castle, it’s noted the royal guard were pulled back into the castle when the rest of the island needed them.

In a way, the way that Prisoner uses humor often trivializes his own anger, which again, ties back to what I said in part 1: everything the game says about small lives- about the “irrelevant little people” that suffered in the wake of the plague emphasizes that Prisoner’s perspective is that he is one of those little people. In the sewers, examining a strange cocoon, Prisoner seems to have a full-on crisis about what he is and why he’s here before interrupting himself with a joke.

Someone who thinks they are important and is used to demanding others’ attention and validation doesn’t treat their own genuine anger and revulsion like it’s something to shrug off.

[arcticdementor]

There are three kinds of dissidents: (a) anons, (b) pundits who still care what people think, and (c) outsiders who DGAF. All these groups are great; real greatness can be achieved in any of them; and good friends I have in each. But each has its problems.

…

The problem with (b) is that you are always policing yourself. Not only do your readers never really know what you really believe—you never really know yourself. In practice, it is much easier to police your own thoughts than your own words. When choosing between two ideas, the temptation to prefer the safer one is almost irresistible. This is a source of cognitive distortion which the anons and outsiders do not experience. (Though anons do suffer something of the opposite, a reflex to provoke.)

As a pundit, you sense this stress in every bone of your body; you can never show it to your readers. This creates a deep dishonesty in the parasocial relationship between writer and reader��like a marriage that can never escape some foolish first-date fib. The falsity, like the blue in blue cheese, flows through and flavors every particle of your content. Neither you nor your readers can ever be sure whether you are speaking the truth, lying to them, or lying to yourself—but you are constantly doing all three. You may still be very entertaining—enlightening, even. All your work is ephemeral, and once you die only your relatives will remember you. And it’s not even your fault.

…

From my perspective, both the anonymous and official dissidents exhibit a kind of unserious frivolity, but a very different kind. The frivolity of the anon is imaginative, surreal and playful at best, merely puerile at worst. The frivolity of the pundit has no upside; in every paragraph he is breaking Koestler’s rule, and he knows it; the best he can do is to shut up selectively about the things he cannot write about.

And his mens rea, too, is awful. He is selling hope. He is selling answers. Pity the man whose life has brought him to the position of selling answers in which he does not believe, or which he is forced to believe, or which he must force himself to believe. However sophisticated and erudite he may be, he is just a high-end grifter. His little magazine is a Macedonian troll-farm with a PhD. He is lucky if his eloquent essays about the common good don’t appear above a popup bar peddling penis pills—and in fact, I know more than one brilliant scholar in precisely this bathetic position. The frame defines the picture; the context sets the price of the text. Sad!

Worst still must be the reality that bad punditry is worse than useless—since useless strategies for escaping from a real problem are traps. When you lead your readers toward an attractive but ineffective solution, you lead them away from the opposite.

You got into this business to change the world for the better. You cannot avoid the realization that you are changing it for the worse—because your objective function is that of Chaim Rumkowski, the Lodz Ghetto’s “King of the Jews.”

You exist to convince your own followers that they neither can nor should do anything effective. The easiest way to do this is to convince them that ineffective strategies are effective. And this, as we’ll see, is exactly what you cannot avoid doing, dear pundit.

Moreover, from our present position of profound unreality, where the official narrative shared and studied by all normal intelligent people and all prestigious institutions can only be described as a state of venomous delirium, the opportunities to play Judas goat are almost unlimited. Cows, remember: there does not have to be only one Judas goat.

…

A particular favorite of the pundit is the error that AI philosophers call the “first-step fallacy.” It turns out that the first monkey to climb to the top of a tree was taking the first step toward landing on the moon:

First-step thinking has the idea of a successful last step built in. Limited early success, however, is not a valid basis for predicting the ultimate success of one’s project. Climbing a hill should not give one any assurance that if he keeps going he will reach the sky.

When a vendor sells you the moon and ships you a rope-ladder, you’ve been defrauded. Time for that one-star review.

…

Today we’ll chart the edges of the legitimate possible by looking at three recent pundit essays which have done a fine job of exploring those edges, and maybe even expanding them: Richard Hanania’s “Why is Everything Liberal?”, Scott Alexander’s “The New Sultan”, and Tanner Greer’s “The Problem of the New Right.”

…

After reading Hanania’s essay, a fourth pundit (who is out as a radical conservative) asked me: why does the right always lose? “Narcissistic delusions,” I replied.

Which was far from what he expected to hear, or what most readers will take from the essay. All three of these essays are good and true; but their inability to go far enough leaves them pointing their audience in precisely the wrong direction.

Most readers will emerge feeling that conservatives need more and better narcissistic delusions. Indeed, both pundit and politician are right there with just such a product. This meretricious frivolity, posing as seriousness, is too egregious to leave unmocked; yet the right reason to mock it is to challenge it to assume its final, truly-serious form.

Richard Hanania and the loser right

Hanania’s true point—backed up with a ream of unnecessary, PhD-worthy evidence—is that the libs always win because they just care more:

…

Since the rebirth of conservatism after the revolutionary monoculture of World War II, all conservative punditry has consisted of attempts to create more excitement around policies and values which effectively resist the power of the prestigious institutions—giving “normal people” as much to care about as their fanatical, aristocratic enemies.

Sensibly, this tends to involve raising “issues” which actually seem to affect their lives, but which also run counter to aristocratic power. Over decades, the substance of these issues changes and even reverses; the opposite stance becomes the useful stance; and “conservative values” have no choice but to change to reflect this. (If this seems like a liberal way to rag on conservatives—the cons learned it from the libs.)

…

“New Right” is not Greer’s term, but as a label I can barely imagine a worse self-own. It promises something ephemeral and irrelevant. So far as I can tell, this same cursed label has been used in every generation of conservatism to mean something different. When it inevitably fails and dies, people forget about it, and the next generation, stuck in the eternal present of a Korsakoff-syndrome movement, can reinvent it.

Who reads the conservative pundits of the ‘80s? Even those who remember them have to throw them under the bus. Every generation of National Review twinks, solemnly intoning what they conceive to be the immortal philosophy of our hallowed founders, is horrified by its predecessor, and horrifies its successor—a truly bathetic spectacle. And of course, each such generation would utterly horrify the actual founders.

…

Greer then goes deep into David Hackett Fischer territory to explain the obvious, yet important, fact that this “New Right” consists of upper-class intellectuals (inherently the heirs of the Puritans, since America’s upper-class tradition is the Puritan tradition) trying to lead middle-class yokels (the heirs of the Scotch-Irish crackers, and (though Greer does not mention this) Irish, Slavs, and other post-Albionic “white ethnic” trash, today even including many Hispanics. He even gives us a clever historical bon mot:

Pity the Whig who wishes to lead the Jackson masses!

Uh, yeah, dude, that would be called “Abraham Lincoln.”

But the point stands. Not just the “New Right” with its new statist ideology, but the whole postwar American Right, is a weird army with a general staff of philosophers and a fighting infantry of ignorant yokels. How can this stay together? How can the philosophers bring forth a mythology that creates passionate intensity in the yokels?

…

There is wisdom in this madness, of course—the problem is caused by aristocrats whose minds are wholly given over to narcissistic delusions. Doesn’t it take fire to fight fire? Doesn’t it take passionate intensity? Isn’t passionate intensity generated only by myths, dreams, poems and religions, not autistic formulas for tax policy? So the answer is clear: we need more and better narcissistic delusions. Ie, shams.

After all, any “founding mythology” is a narcissistic delusion. The flintlock farmers and mechanic mobs of the 1770s, and the Plymouth Puritans of the 1620s, have one thing in common: none of these people even remotely resembles the megachurch grill-and-minivan conservative of the 2020s. None of them even remotely resembles you.

They did live in the same places, and speak sort of the same language. Otherwise you probably have more in common with the average Indonesian housewife—at least she watches the same superhero movies.

To Narcissus, everything is a mirror; in everything and everyone, he sees himself. No field is riper for narcissism than history, since the dead past cannot even laugh at the present’s appropriations of a human reality it could not even start to comprehend.

And fighting fire with fire is one thing, but fighting the shark in the water is another. For the aristocrat, transcending reality is a core competence. The essence of leftism—always and everywhere an aristocratic trope, however vast its ignorant serf-armies—is James Spader in Pretty in Pink: “If I cared about money, would I treat my father’s house this way?” Mere peasants can never develop this kind of wild energy: that’s the point.

Yet Hanania remains right about the amount of energy that a rational, Kantian agenda for productive collective action motivated by collective self-interest, or even collective self-defense, can generate. The grill-American suburbicon is like Maistre’s Frenchman under the late Jacobins: he has defined deviancy down to rock-bottom. “He feels that he is well-governed, so long as he himself is not being killed.”

O, what to do? When you are solving an engineering problem and see the answer at last, it hits you like a thunderbolt. The conservatives, the normal people, the grill-Americans, must accept their own low energy. They must cease their futile reaching for passionate intensity, whether achieved through Kantian collective realism or Jaffaite founding mythology. They must fight the shark on land.

Conservatives don’t care—at least not enough. Yet they want to matter. Yet they live in a political system where mattering is a function of caring—not just voting. Therefore, there are two potential solutions: (a) make them care more; (b) make systems that let them matter more, without caring more.

Conservatives have low energy. They want high impact—at this point, they need high impact. After all, once you yourself are being killed, it’s kind of too late. Any engineer would tell you that there are two paths to high impact: more energy, or more efficiency.

Conservatives vote but don’t care. If we don’t have a viable way to make conservatives care more—meaning orders of magnitude more—effective strategies and structures must generate power by voting, not caring. They must maximize power per vote.

…

Interference means voters who are on the same team are working against each other. Impedance means voters resist delegating their complete consent to the team.

Interference is like a bunch of ants pulling the breadcrumb in different directions. To eliminate interference, point all your votes at one structurally cohesive entity which never works against itself.

Impedance is like getting married for a limited trial period, so long as your wife stays hot and keeps liking the stuff you like. As Burke pointed out in his famous speech to the electors of Bristol, the fundamental nature of electoral consent is unconditional:

To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of Constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a Representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider.

But authoritative Instructions; Mandates issued, which the Member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgement and conscience; these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental Mistake of the whole order and tenor of our Constitution.

The cause of electoral impedance in the modern world is the conventional concept of “agendas” or “platforms” or “issues.” When you vote not for a cohesive entity, but for a list of instructions you are giving to that entity, you are not voting your full power. You are voting for Burke’s opponent, who felt “his Will ought to be subservient to yours.” In effect, you are voting for yourself. Narcissism once again rears its ugly head.

When you vote an agenda, you are granting limited consent to your representative. You say: I vote for you, for a limited time, so long as you stay fit and cook tasty dinners. I am actually not voting for you! I am voting for “reforms for conservatives” (Hanania). I am voting for “a broad set of shared attitudes and policy prescriptions” (Greer). Dear, I am not marrying you. I am marrying hot sex, regular cleaning and delicious meals—till ten extra pounds, or maybe at most fifteen, do us part.

You implicitly withhold your consent for anything not on your jejune list of bullet points. Then, you wonder why your representatives have no power and are constantly mocked, disobeyed, tricked and destroyed by people who are legally their employees. This is not political sex. This is political masturbation. You voted for yourself. And instead of a baby, all you got was a wad of tissues. Nice way to “drain the swamp.”

Your vote does not work because you are not voting, delegating, or granting consent. You are like an archer with one arrow who, afraid of losing it, refuses to let go of it. Without releasing his dart, all he can do is run up to the enemy and try to stab.

So if conservatives want to maximize the impact of their votes, all they have to do is the opposite of what they’re doing. Instead of voting for the okonomi a-la-carte stupid little political menus of hundreds of unconnected candidates and their staffs, they can all vote for the omakase prix-fixe chef’s-choice of a single cohesive governing entity.

Such a power, elected, has the voters’ mandate not just to “govern,” but to rule. When no other private or public force enjoys any such consent, no other force can resist. We are certainly well beyond “rule of law” at this point! On the inaugural podium, the new President announces a state of emergency. He declares himself the Living Constitution. In six months no one will even remember “the swamp.”

Wow! What a simple, clear idea! The engineer, when he comes across so compelling and obvious a design, knows there’s a catch: he won’t get the patent. Someone else must have invented it before. People may be stupid—but they’re not that stupid.

Indeed we have just reasoned our way to reinventing the oldest, most common, and most successful form of government: monarchy. And we are setting it against the second most common form, the institutional rule of power-obsessed elites: oligarchy. And to install our monarchy, we are using the collective action of a large number of people who each perform one small act: democracy.

The alliance of monarchy and democracy (king and people) against oligarchy (church and/or nobles) is the oldest political strategy in the book. The suburban conservative, who just wants to grill, either has no idea this ancient and trivial solution exists, or regards it as the worst thing in the world—even worse, possibly, than his sixth-grader’s mandatory sex change.

And why? Ask your friendly local Judas goat, the pundit. Even the “new right” pundit—who only differs in his policies and issues. Which are, true, slightly less useless. As the top of the tree is slightly closer to the moon.

The 20th century even came up with a handy pejorative for a newborn monarchy. We call it fascism. No word on whether Cromwell, Caesar, or Charlemagne, let alone Louis XIV, Frederick II and Elizabeth I, were fascists.

But, to borrow Scott Alexander’s charming term, also not his own invention, they were certainly strongmen. TLDR: if you want to be strong, elect one strongman. If you prefer to be weak, elect a whole bunch of weakmen. Do you prefer to be weak? “If the rule you followed brought you to this place—of what use was the rule?”

The pundit reassures you that you don’t need a strongman to be strong—you’ll do fine with weakmen—so long as those weakmen have the right “shared attitudes and policy prescriptions.” By the way, here are some attitudes I’m happy to share with you. Click now to accept cookies. Did I mention that I have policy prescriptions, too? Skip ad in 5 seconds. Congratulations, you’ve been automatically subscribed! Check the box to opt out of most emails—void where prohibited by law—terms and conditions may apply…

…

An odd sort of pundit, who remains only nominally anonymous but has always very much GAF, Scott Alexander does not have Hanania’s cagey diplomatic noncommittal. As a “rationalist,” he is deeply committed to his own class status, and to oligarchy itself—which, like most, he misidentifies as “democracy.”

While the whole raison d’etre of the rationalist is the irrationality of our oligarchy, as displayed in genius moves like refusing to cancel regularly-scheduled airline flights to stop a Holocaust-tier pandemic, the rationalist’s dream is a rational oligarchy—using Bayes’ rule, which given infinite computing power will become infinitely intelligent—in Carlyle’s immortal phrase, “a government carried out by steam.”

Obviously, this is not just logical—it immunizes the rationalists from the scurrilous charge of “fascism,” or worse. And they were right about stopping the flights. So was my 9-year-old. Sadly, in a world of universal delusional delirium, rationality can get quite pleased with itself by clearing quite a low bar.

My view is that no government can be or ever has been carried out by steam—only by human beings—a species the same today as in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, if possibly a little dumber on average—and this will remain the case until some computational or genetic singularity occurs. For neither of which events will I hold my breath. This is why I find it easy to picture 21st-century America under the phronetic monarchy of an experienced and capable President-CEO, and almost hilariously impossible to picture it under a Bayesian bureaucracy of polyamorous smart-contracts.

Alexander disagrees. Here is his analysis—the same text that Hanania quotes. Let’s go through it thought by thought, and see if we can’t turn it into some delicious carnitas.

…

Let’s get back to those “elites.” Alexander conflates three quite orthogonal concepts in his use of the word “elite”: biology, institutions, and culture.

Elite biology is high IQ, which is genetic. Elite institutions are any centers of organized collective power—Harvard, the Komsomol, the Mafia, etc. Elite culture is whatever ideas flourish within elite institutions.

Destroying biology is genocide—specifically, aristocide. Destroying institutions is… paperwork. Who hasn’t worked for a company that went out of business? Same deal. And if the culture is the consequence of the institutions, different institutions (with the same human biology) will inevitably nurture different ideas.

The SS was anything but a low-IQ institution, yet it propagated a very different culture than Harvard. 21st-century Germany is anything but a low-IQ country, but the ideas of Kurt Eggers do not flourish in it. It seems that high-IQ institutions can be destroyed—and the new “elite culture” will be the culture of the institutions that replace them.

So the only target is the institutions. There is nothing “nasty” about closing an office. In the worst possible scenario, the police need to clear the building, lock the doors, and impound the servers. Such tasks are well within their core competence, and can be performed with calm professionalism. They will probably not even need their zip-ties.

…

For democracy to be effective in such a situation, it must know its own limitations. It can seize the reins—but only to hand them to some effective power. This power must have one of three forms: an existing oligarchy, a new monarchy, or a foreign power.

Also, there are three classes in an advanced society, not just two: nobles, commoners, and clients. Since clients support their patrons by definition, once nobles plus clients outnumber commoners, the commoners have permanently lost the numbers game. This is why importing client voters is a recipe for either civil war or eternal tyranny—if not both.

…

Yes. This is what happened in denazification, except with monarchy and oligarchy reversed. For example, all German media firms today are descendants of institutions created, or at least certified, by AMGOT. Nothing “organic” about it.

The essential problem with Alexander’s picture of this process is that, since like most smart people today he inhabits Cicero’s great quote about history and children, he simply cannot imagine replacing one kind of elite institution with another. Nor can he imagine high-IQ elites—human beings as smart as him—which are as loyal to a new sane monarchy as today’s elites are loyal, slavishly loyal, to our old insane oligarchy. Does he think that Elizabeth’s London had no elites? Caesar’s Rome?

If Alexander was analyzing the Soviet Union in the same way, he would conclude that elites are inherently devoted to building socialism for the workers and peasants. Since the present world he lives in is all of history for him, he cannot see the general theory which predicts this special case: elites like to get ahead. To genuinely change the world, change what it takes for elites to get ahead.

If the elites are poets and their only way to get ahead is to write interminable reams of “race opera,” as my late wife liked to put it, the floodgates of race opera will open. If the elites are poets and their only way to get ahead is to write interminable reams of Stalin hagiography, Stalin will be praised to the skies in beautiful and clever rhymes.

…

There are two big strawmen here. Let’s turn them into steelmen.

First, “the populace uses the government” is non-Burkean. The populace (not all of it, just the middle class) installs the government. Then it goes back to grilling. So long as the commoners have to be in charge of the regime, and the commoners are weak, the regime will be weak. They need to “fire and forget.” Otherwise, they just lose.

Second, Alexander has clearly never heard of the atelier movement. No, this is not the same thing as your grandma in front of the TV copying Bob Ross.

What happens is this: every (oligarchic) art school and art critic no longer exists. Not that they are killed, of course. Just that their employers are liquidated (not with a bullet in the neck, just with a letter from the bank). They exist physically, not professionally. They were already bureaucrats—they had careers, not passions. Who gets fired, but keeps doing his job just for fun? Certainly not a bureaucrat.

And every (oligarchic) artist no longer exists—not that they are killed, of course. Just that the rich socialites who used to buy their stuff got letters from the bank, too. Libs sometimes talk about a wealth tax—a one-time wealth cap, perhaps at a modest level like $20 mil, will concentrate the rich man’s mind wonderfully on actual necessities.

Elites like to get ahead. The people who got ahead in the oligarchic art scene can no longer get ahead by doing shitty, bureaucratic, 20th-century conceptual art. Because there were so many of them, and because the demand for this product has dropped by at least one order of magnitude if not two, elite ambition is replaced by elite revulsion.

The enormous supply-and-demand imbalance for both art and artists in 20th-century styles leaves these styles about as fashionable as disco in 1996. “Paintings” that used to sell for eight figures will be stacked next to the dumpster. “Artists” once celebrated in the Times will be teaching kindergarten, tying trout flies, or cooking delicious dinners.

Inevitably, some of these people have real artistic talent. (The first modern artists had real talent—Picasso was an excellent draftsman.) They can go to an atelier and learn to draw. They will—because now, acquiring real artistic skill is a way to get ahead in art. And again, elites like to get ahead.

…

There is nothing “normal” or “natural” or “organic” about oligarchy. Does Alexander think “uncured” bacon is “organic” because, instead of evil chemical nitrates, it uses healthy, natural celery powder? He sure is easy to fool. But who isn’t?

Culture and academia is already yoked to the will of government in a “heavy-handed manner”—yoked not by the positive pressure of power, but the negative attraction of power. When the formal government defers to institutions that are formally outside the government, it leaks power into them and makes them de facto state agencies.

Power leakage, like a pig lagoon spilling into an alpine lake, poisons the marketplace of ideas with delicious nutrients. Ideas that make the institutions more powerful grow wildly. Eventually these ideas evolve carnivory and learn to positively repress their competitors, which is how our free press and our independent universities have turned our regime into Czechoslovakia in 1971, and our conversation into a Hutu Power after-school special. PS: Black lives matter.

The paradox of “authoritarianism” is that a regime strong enough to implement Frederick the Great’s idea of “free speech”—“they say what they want, I do what I want”—can actually create a free and unbiased marketplace of ideas, which neither represses seditious ideas nor rewards carnivorous ideas. But it takes a lot of power to reach this level of strength—and it requires liquidating all competing powers.

I have never been able to explain this simple idea to anyone, even rationalists with 150+ IQs who can grok quantum computing before breakfast, who didn’t want to understand it. Ultimately it reduces to the painful realization that sovereignty is conserved—that the power of man over man is a human universal. (Also, we all die.)

No surprise that nerds who think of power as Chad shoving them into a locker can’t handle the truth. PS: I went to a public high school as a 12-year-old sophomore, was bullied every day for three years, and graduated college as a virgin. Whoever you are, dear reader, you are not beyond hope. You can handle the truth.

…

And yet: Alexander’s post is about Erdoğan—and his description of Erdoğan is spot on. It also is a perfect description of Orban in Hungary; it applies to Putin in Russia and Xi in China; and it is even pretty accurate for Hitler, Mussolini and friends.

What all these “strongmen” have in common is that they are provincial. Turkey is not exactly the center of the world. Even 20th-century Germany was nowhere near the center of the world, though it could at least imagine becoming that center. If Turkey just disappeared tomorrow, no one would have any reason to care except the Turks. Who needs Turkey for anything? What would collapse—the dried-apricot market?

Erdoğan’s problem is that he cannot vaporize the oligarchy, because the institutions that matter are not in Turkey. The provincial strongman has no choice but to follow the “populist” playbook that Alexander describes so well.

Orban can kick Soros’s university out of Hungary; he cannot do anything at all to Soros, let alone to the global institutions of which Soros is only a small part. He is indeed “arrayed against” these institutions, to which his Hungarian elites (who speak nearly-perfect English) will always be loyal. The contest is unequal and has only one possible winner, though it can last indefinitely long. Even Xi, whose country can quite easily imagine becoming the economic center of the world, is a provincial strongman—in fact, he sent his daughter to Harvard. Sad!

In a global century, the only way for these provincial strongmen to develop genuine local sovereignty is to go full juche. This is simply not possible for Hungary or Turkey, both of which are firmly attached to the cultural, economic, and military teat of the Global American Empire. Indeed it is barely possible for North Korea, a marsupial nation still in China’s pouch. So Alexander is right: these “strongmen” cannot win. Their regimes will all go the way of Franco’s. It’s impressive that they even survive.

Erdoğan simply has no way to attach his best citizens to his own regime. They are citizens of the world. Elites always like to get ahead. If you’re a world-class talent in anything, why would you try to get ahead in Istanbul? Suppose you want to make a name as the world’s greatest Turkish writer. Succeed in New York, then come home. Turkey is a province; provinces are provincial.

Yet I am not a Turk or a Hungarian, and neither is Scott Alexander. The greater any empire, the more essential that its fall begin at the center. The Soviet empire did not fall from the outside in; it was not brought down from Budapest or Prague; it fell from Moscow out.

And the American empire will fall from Washington out—though that may not happen in the lives of those now living. And although nature abhors a vacuum and no empire can be replaced by nothing—and oligarchy, in the modern world, can only be replaced by monarchy—the “strongman” of this monarchy will not look anything like these mere provincial dictators.

…

The result of Alexander’s perceptive calculations, which are only wrong because their only input data is the present, is simply that our present incompetent tyranny is and must be permanent. Of course, every sovereign regime defines itself as permanent. Yet when we look at the past and not just the present, we see that no empire is forever.

Some grim things are happening in America today. These grim things have a silver lining: they expose the gleaming steel jaws of the traps that the aristocracy sets for its commoners. They remind the cattle that a goat is not a cow and a baa is not a moo.

Every pundit is a Cicero. And amidst all the greatness of his rhetoric, Cicero could not imagine a world that had no use for Ciceros—a world governed by competence, not rhetoric. By the time Caesar crossed the Rubicon, nothing had failed more completely than the whole Roman idea of governance by rhetoric—an idea many centuries old, an idea whose execution had beaten all competitors to capture the whole civilized world, but an idea that was past its sell-by date. Rome herself was no longer suited to it. The republican aristocracy of Rome no longer meant Regulus and Scipio and Cincinnatus; it meant Milo and Clodius and Catiline. Its factional conflict was the choice between Hutu Power and Das Schwarze Korps. Caesar was not a disaster; Caesar was a miracle.

In the death of the American republic, every detail is different. The story is the same. The contrast in capacity between SpaceX and the Pentagon, Moderna and the CDC, Apple and Minneapolis—between our monarchical corporations, and our oligarchical institutions—is a dead ringer for the contrast between the legions and the Senate.

The sooner we stop pretending that this isn’t happening to us, the better results we can get. Wouldn’t it be nice to get to Caesar, Augustus and Marcus Aurelius, without passing through Sulla and Marius, Crassus and Spartacus? Alas, from here and now it seems unlikely. But I can’t see why every serious person wouldn’t want to try.

[thattimdrakeguy]

I am very sorry for what you are going through, think that in adittion to that unpleasant people who attack you, there are also many more who enjoy, respect and follow your content, and want the best for you. I really like your reviews and opinions, and although I do not always agree with you, I respect and validate your opinion as much as anyone's because that is to be respectful with others and have common sense.--

--You should not take into account what people who are unable to respect another human being like them say, that they cannot even separate reality from fiction, all for a simple opinion different from theirs about a FICTIONAL CHARACTER, you cannot even take them seriously. If those people need to insult, despise and make someone feel less for a reason like that, it simply speaks of how miserable they are as humans on and off the internet.--

Please don't take into account what these people say, listen to those who appreciate you and show respect. I hope you feel better and I am sorry for what is happening in your life, but you can always forward with your will and the people around you.(Hugs)

I only read these ones this morning, or afternoon more accurately cause I have a very bad sleep schedule for weeks cause I been playing video games too late into the day, but I’m slowly working on it. I’m just really bad at it.

And all I can really say to accurately give my reaction to it, was that it was something I definitely needed to read first thing in the morning. If it wasn’t for those messages yesterday, and a friend helping me out I may not have even been calmed down enough to go to bed at all. I could’ve easily not gone to sleep literally at all and had been even worse today because of it to the point of having another meltdown of a day.

Like I don’t wanna make myself sound too good, because if I did, I’d feel like I was lying, because my mind feels like a bloody nose filled up with tissue paper, if that even makes a darling lick of comprehension.

I find it so entirely weird, and patronizing, and frustrating how the fandom can be, if not worse. Like I say something unpopular, I do it a lot, probably with literally every freaking character. Even Tim, because I know that quite a few Tim fans don’t like me either.

I don’t read every comic and go “Oh this must just be how it works”, because that’s not how my brain is wired. I’m Autistic, I go in-depth, I do a lot of research, that is how I am wired when I get a hyperfixation, I want to know everything. So I say a lot of unpopular stuff because I don’t just accept things, because I don’t work that way.

But it goes like this when it comes to people just being miserable, they have to make me out to either be a bigot or bias, they either don’t even read what I say, or just don’t acknowledge what I say.

My biggest point they will leave out completely to focus on other things that are either completely irrelevant and just there to make me look bad even though it doesn’t really make sense what it has to do anything once you think about it a lick more, or just make me look straight up like a crappy person.

I got really ranty and rambly after this, and I try not to take up people’s dashboards as much. So I’ll put this here. If it’ll work, cause one time I don’t think it did, and it made me panic once cause I felt really bad. But it just would not show up.

Because trying to make a bad face out of a real life living person isn’t that bad, compared to the horrors of having to acknowledge the arcs and actions that their favorite character been through evidentially.

Sorry to say and everything, but I don’t see how on Earth Tim cheating on Ariana has anything to do with a literal whole other arc of Steph being abusive and doing really horrible things, or all those “teases” that were actually flirts that were making Tim genuinely uncomfortable to the point of sexual harassment, and told her not to do, which she didn’t actually always listen to sometimes, surprisingly to some. I also don’t see why it’s so hard to comprehend that Tim kissing Steph just because he got ahead of himself because he was euphoric he was about to die, yet it was made clear he didn’t do sexually or romantically, isn’t as bad (comparatively because it’s still insanely inappropriate and weird, but I wouldn’t call him a pervert over it) to me as Steph literally pinning Tim down during a gun fight to kiss him against his will, or taking advantage of Tim believing she was dead and giving her CPR to do it again. Like I don’t really see why saying “Just read the comics” has to do with anything, because I don’t have the art skills to just make all those panels up like that. Which by the way, I don’t give a single fuck about what bad thing Steph has done. I don’t like her because a lot of her stories are badly written, and a lot of her fans are straight up assholes. Which they conveniently ignore, because I must be villainized, because they can’t handle me acknowledging something that isn’t their idealized image. But let me also state that there are assholes in literally every fandom, I just have certain ones that decide to be assholes to me. And I don’t remember the part where I said teasing was bullying either. I can’t find that on my list of thoughts in my brain. Almost like they don’t actually know how I think or what I meant. 

And I don’t know why on Earth Tim not trusting Damian to the point of being kind of scummy has much to do with Damian doing horrid things in comics they like as well. They’re their own separate people ya know? I’m not comparing characters, because I’m not actually trying to shit on the characters you should realize. Not every negative thing is formed out of toxicity. Toxic positivity where people act like not just enjoying everything is so bad is actually a thing. And I see it quite often in fandoms, and it comes from a good place, but my goodness, just let people express themselves sometimes. It’s not going to hurt anybody as long as they’re not actually an asshole or you just have a fragile ego.

It seems pretty irrelevant to me. Implying that I hate the characters because of these actions is also pretty dumb to me as well, because that’s not the case nor how it works. They keep acting like me not acknowledging the bad thing Tim does in the same posts is some showing of my bias, but no, I just view it as fucking irrelevant, because I do bring up when Tim does something bad when ever it is relevant. It is that simple. I think the only time I’ve ever even could truly come across as trying to baby and defend Tim was me saying Tim cheating on Ari with Steph was out of character, which I still hold that opinion too, but I don’t simply make shit up, I just notice how rushed it was, and how it goes against how Tim is about morals, Steph, and his literal stance on cheating. Stuff that you would actually judge what’s in or out of character on.

I just give everything the same standard. I’ve never denied Tim wasn’t passive aggressive or conscending to anyone, or has violated privacy, or was immature. If I had it was probably me caught up in the moment, and pretty weird, because I’ve actively talked about it before.

And I’m referencing stuff in the past with these oddly specific examples, that hasn’t bugged me truly in a while, but when I find a new example of stuff, I can’t help but have it come back to mind and make me question how people got to just be shivery little jerks over things like made-up characters.

I’ve acknowledged the fact that my blog was too anti-Steph plenty of times, even as it was happening, because it was mostly through anons and not me. Some of which I defended Steph on. I just had too much anxiety not responding to them, because I’d feel a sense of guilt for ignoring someone. Which I’m over and past.

I’m not going to be held down by stuff I already corrected about myself.

It’s been so heavily implied to me before, that groups just talk mad shit about me, and made up this horrendous little reputation for me among themselves, and it is so disheartening, considering I’m just this baby faced geek that read too many comics, simply explaining stuff that had happened in actual comics without actual bias. I don’t run DC Comics. I’m just a blogger that they really really don’t like, and take it as a personal attack of some kind, at least going off of how they act.

Maybe it’s what I get for expecting people to treat fiction as fiction and not a big freaking deal when I say something or don’t say something, because they’d understand the context I’m trying to explain literal events in comics as they are, and other things that happened in other situations have no relevance to what I’m saying, because I’m not making a bashing piece like they seem to think.

I know I take fiction very seriously, because I just really want good content again. But I don’t make real life people’s lives miserable. Do ya think I talk shit about Bendis all the time? Not really. I’ve genuinely probably sang his praises more than otherwise. I think Tynion’s the closest example of when I could’ve, but that was years ago at this point. I’ve made it so much more clearer it’s about the comics than them, because simply I’ve realized how scummy it is to mock an actual person, who’s probably actually a really cool guy to know. Do I fuck that up sometimes, probably. But I’m definitely not telling him to kill himself.

If they can’t acknowledge what I actually say, and continue to just try to make me look bad. I don’t personally view myself as the bad one. That’d be utterly redundant.

It always boils down to that I just acknowledge stuff they refuse to, and they just play ignorant about, and pretend they just can’t possibly understand why anyone would say it. I didn’t pull the stuff out of my ass, I have the panels. I didn’t skip anything out. At most I just don’t find the excuses they have to be freaking relevant or over power the action at hand or sometimes the literal motivation she/he had going into it.

And it’s 100% okay, but even though this is a space on the internet, and I’m practically a loser shut in. I still live in the real world and when I’m not having a bad anxiety attack or whatever else, I try to be as reasonable as possible.

I just look at it, look at the context and past contexts, look at the motivations, judge it for what I see, and move on. And never consider it a big deal until someone else makes a big deal about it.

I don’t even view every person that does it against me to be a bad person, some of them most definitely are because they go too far with it, but some of them literally have no idea proper context anymore, or they’re just very very insecure.

It’s very difficult to outright go ‘THEY’RE ALL EVIL’, but when there’s so many that are just putrid humans that want me to take my own life, it’s a wee bit overwhelming, and understandably so, yeah?

People sometimes just don’t properly process what they’re doing, because they’re so caught up in their insecurity, or possibly even a mild ego, but there’s others that will do it because they’re so quick to anger and hatred over fucking nothing.

Welcome to reality. It’s a lot like taking a train ride through a diseased rectum sometimes. But other times it’s like taking a trolley though a nice field. It’s a mixed bag, but it’s a ride that never stops but once.

An important thing I do wanna say though, is that I have everyone who supports me in my heart. I may lose my sight of that when I’m going through an episode I’m having a heckuva lot of trouble controlling, but I’d be in a much worse spot without them. Some of them are so dang respectful, and some are just so legitimately sweet and kind that it’s a blessing to have ever had an interaction of any kind or level with them.

I don’t take any of you for granted even if sometimes I seem ignorant of it during a terrible depressive episode.

You often don’t agree with me and can make it very clear, but it’s the respect you give me nonetheless that I take as precious, because it’s some of the best stuff to receive when all else seems so bleak and lifeless. It’s not an honor everyone sadly receives, so I treasure that a lot. And when I’m feeling so down and out, it sometimes can be the one thing that keeps me even near level, and that’s such an honor that even if it’s such a small amount, because obviously it’s a Tumblr blog I’m always aware of that, it just does mean a lot to me, because it genuinely is an honor to me.

I love you guys a lot. I hope that’s always obvious even when I’m making a mess out of myself. You guys are some of my favorite people on this planet.

[solediem]

when brush meets canvas; a collection of thoughts and happenings ( @solivaganted​​ )

[     🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ ·  ] ⠀━━   five years ago, snu campus tour

he’s  not  listening. ethan  liu  has  the  attention span  of  a  a  goldfish when  it  comes  to  irrelevant things.  there’s  the  center  of  the  campus, there’s  the  café  (there’s  great coffee  there!),  dorms are  that  way,  class  buildings one  and  two  over  there  (  “  they’re  close  together  so  you  don’t  miss  classes!” )  …  so  on  and  so  forth. he  can  keep  pace  with  the  group  well  enough on  auto-pilot.  the  ‘highlights’  of  the  greater campus  are  irrelevant to  a  student who  plans  to  spend  four  semesters  holed  up  in  a  dorm  room.

“  sorry!  i’m  so  sorry!! “

he’s  rather  responsive for  someone  on  auto-pilot.  she  crashes  into  him  out  of  nowhere. his  arms  reach  out  to  catch  her  and  stabilize them  both.  it’s  not  until  after  he’s  done  it  that  ethan  truly  realizes that  something  happened, and  he’s  got  his  arms  around  a  brunette  who’s  expression  reads  utterly  horrified by  her  own  actions.

he  lets  her  go,  waving it  off,  “it’s  fine.  you’re alright?”

yes  she’s  alright, and  she’s  very  sorry,  and  she’s  sometimes so  clumsy,  and  she  wants  to  make  it  up.  ethan  continues to  wave  her  off,  shaking his  head  because it  really  is  fine.  it  takes  some  talking  down,  but  she  ultimately  accepts it,  and  she  shifts  herself off  to  the  side  a  bit  so  she’s  not  walking  so  closely  to  the  man  she’d  just  collapsed  into.  

ethan  sighs.  the  walk  continues. now  they  know  of  each  other’s  existence; any  time  they  catch  glances he  gives  a  small  nod  and  she  alternates  between mouthing  ‘sorry!’  and  giving  him  a  gentle smile.  he  finds  it  funny. and  it  makes  the  rest  of  the  tour  considerably less  grating.

[     🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ ·  ] ⠀━━   five years ago, coffee shop

ahh.  that’s  why  she  asked  what  my  coffee  order  is  the  other  day.

leia  is  settled at  a  small  café  table  –  in  front  of  her  a  tall  glass  of  iced  coffee  and  a  slice  of  crumb  cake.  across from  her  in  front  of  the  opposite, empty  chair  is  another  cup  –  this  one  a  large  ceramic cappuccino  mug  with  two  slices of  lime  set  on  a  separate  dish  to  the  side.  it  too  is  accompanied  by  a  slice  of  cake.

“  did  you  wait  long  ??  “  he  asks

she  didn’t  wait  long  at  all,  she  just  got  there  a  little  early  and  decided to  order  for  them!  she’s  fine  with  paying  for  it,  and  ethan  certainly shouldn’t  worry.  she  hopes  she  ordered  the  right  thing, she’d  written  down  what  he  said  a  few  days  ago  about  liking  to  mix  lime  into  his  coffee.  she  thinks  it’s  very  interesting, and  she  almost ordered  it  herself. and  she’s  talking and  rambling  to  much  and  she’s  sorry.

ethan  is  to  used  to  her  by  now  to  be  phased. he  simply  sits  in  front  of  her,  lets  her  ramble  a  minute  while  he  adds  the  lime  to  his  drink  and  takes  a  fork  to  the  cake.  after  a  moment  she’s  quiet,  shyly  looking  down  at  her  own  setting. ethan  shakes  his  head.

“  you  worry  to  much.  “

she  knows.  she  can’t  help  it.  

“  i  owe  you  for  this.  “

no  he  doesn’t! it’s  completely  fine.  she  doesn’t mind.  and  ethan  doesn’t  care,  as  he’s  already  reaching across  the  table  to  pocket the  receipt. leia  sighs  a  bit.  she  just  wanted to  be  nice.  ethan  tells  her  she’s  nice  without trying,  and  it’s  one  of  the  many  reasons  he  likes  being  around  her.

[     🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ ·  ] ⠀━━   five years ago, leia’s apartment

leia  is  rambling, as  she  always is.  only  this  time  she  rambles  while  dumping  new  dishware  into  the  sink  and  unpacking boxes  of  this  and  that  and  things from  home  into  cabinets  and  into  drawers. ethan  is  listening, as  he  always is.

if  he  doesn’t want  to  enroll in  snu,  then  he  shouldn’t! he  should  definitely join  two  star  if  that’s what  feels  right. and  she’s  supportive of  his  decision. and  yes,  it’ll  be  harder to  start  school without  him  if  he  chooses not  to  go,  but  she’ll be  alright!  and  they  can  still  text  and  hang  out,  and  everything  would  be  fine.  and  she’s  seen  some  of  the  lyrics  he  wrote!  and,  oh,  they’re so  good  no  wonder  two  star  entertainment extended  him  a  contract!  

she’s  practically  bouncing up  in  down,  bubbling  up  with  all  the  excitement one  would  expect ethan  to  have  after  receiving a  personal  invitation from  the  company’s ceo.  but  he’s  just  standing there  with  his  arms  crossed, watching  her  with  one  brow  arced  and  a  smile  tugging  at  the  corners of  his  mouth.

“  when  was  the  last  time  you  took  a  breath?”

leia  pauses,  her  body  going  stiff  for  a  moment as  she  manually takes  in  a  breath,  then  lets  it  out  again  with  an  embarrassed  smile. she’s  just  so  happy  for  him.  and  she  wants  what’s  best  for  him  and  wants  what  makes  him  happy. ethan  moves  towards her  and  puts  his  arms  around  her  waist.

“  i  have  a  lot  to  be  happy  about  these  days.  “

[     🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ ·  ] ⠀━━   four years ago, leia’s apartment

over  the  past  year  or  so,  ethan  has  come  to  learn  how  every  aspect  of  leia  is  soft  –  lips,  voice,  demeanor.  more  recently,  he’s  learned  that  the  rest  of  her  body  is  no  different.  the  discovery  wasn’t  by  chance.  it  was  planned  and  executed  with  comfort  and  assuredness  in  mind.  the  location,  however,  was  a  bit  unplanned  –  the  intent  had  been  the  bedroom,  but  the  living  ended  up  serving  just  as  well.  and  that,  ironically,  turned  out  to  be  for  the  best  as  ethan  discovered  something  else  that  very  same  afternoon.

leia’s  back  is  a  wonderful  canvas.  the  better  part  of  the  next  hour  had  been  spent  in  quiet  conversation  as  he  brushed  unplanned,  but  ornate  designs  onto  her  skin.

“  it  washes  off.  “

she  knows.  she  wouldn’t  really  have  let  him  do  it  if  it  was  permanent.  or  maybe  she  would  have.  maybe  his  art  would’ve  become  a  beautiful  back  tattoo.  she  wants  a  picture  of  it  when  it’s  done,  because  she  can’t  see  for  herself  what  she’s  doing  and  it’d  be  a  shame  to  wash  all  his  hard  work  away  without  remembering  it.

why  do  i  love  you  so  much?

[     🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ ·  ] ⠀━━   two and a half years ago, leia’s apartment

he’s debuting! she’s so excited, and she always knew it would happen. there’s no way ethan would’ve gotten two invitations to the company if they didn’t want him. imagine how different things would’ve been if he’d gone to snu instead! she misses him a bit when she’s alone on campus, and she does sometimes think it would’ve been fun to go together. no wait! oh, she didn’t mean to say that. she shouldn’t have said it, and she doesn’t want him to worry about her. because she’s fine! she’s doing great on her own! she’s only got a couple more years and then she’ll be graduating, and everything will be fine.

“ i’m moving into the dorm this week. “

she’ll help him pack!

“ you can’t come to the trainee dorms, leia, i’ll get in trouble.”

oh right.

her smile is still soft and gentle. their relationship had been quiet and incredibly comfortable til now. never something either of them spoke to openly about. not out of shame, but just out of natural inclination to not speak to often about personal matters to other people. but now it’s necessity.

“ …. no one knows about you except hyunsik. i think it needs to stay that way. it’s for your safety, ultimately.”

it’s okay! she completely understands. she doesn’t want to jeopardize his career and she loves him enough that she’s okay with keeping things quiet. really, she’s fine. she’s completely okay.

ethan wraps his arms around her tightly, presses his lips to her forehead. he’s never wanted to shout that he loves her more than right now. more than this moment where he’s realized that he can’t.

“ i love you. “ he settles for a soft whisper in her ear.

she loves him too.

[     🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ ·  ] ⠀━━   six months ago, d:fi dorm

“  ethan  ?!  yah  –  ethan  !!  “

the  force  of  leaving  the  trance  sends  ethan  tumbling off  his  chair  and  onto  the  ground where  he  catches himself  on  all  fours.  

“  you  okay  ??  you  weren’t  responding …  can  you  hear  me  now??”  hyunsik asks,  kneeling  by  his  side  and  putting an  arm  him.  

ethan  shuts  his  eyes,  squeezing them  so  tight  that  he  feels  pressure in  his  forehead, “…yeah.”  he  says  finally.

the  past  hour  of  his  life  is….  nothingness,  as  far  as  ethan  can  recall.  but  the  state  of  the  dorm  room  indicates  otherwise. dropped  brushes,  a  tipped  over  cup  of  mucky  water. tubes  of  acrylic paint  are  scattered across  the  floor, some  burst  open  from  the  force  of  being  stepped on.  paint  had  splattered  onto  the  wall  and  floor, even  onto  some  of  the  furniture.  his  easel  is  turned  over  on  it’s  side,  and  the  canvas ethan  had  been  working  on  lay  on  the  floor, slightly  smudged  due  to  making contact  with  the  bedframe  before hitting  the  ground.

“  what  were  you  doing  ??”

“  i  don’t  know.  my…i’ve been  off  recently. i  don’t  know.”

suddenly  ethan  pushes himself  up  and  whirls  around to  look  at  the  painting. he  feels  a  pit  form  in  his  stomach  as  he  examines it.  it’s  messy, it’s  smeared  with  dark  reds,  browns,  and  auburns.  but  he  knows  exactly  what  he’s  looking at.  the  creature hunting  them  all  –  the  being  known  as  aries  –  holding leia  aloft.

his  hand  is  around  her  neck.  she’s  bleeding  profusely. her  body  is  limp,  but  her  eyes  are  wide  open  in  horror.  the  sight  breaks lose  tears  form  ethan’s  eyes,  and  hyunsik snatches  the  painting up  and  turns  it  around.

“  stop  it.    leia  is  fine.  ethan  –  leia  is  fine.  “

“  you  don’t  know  that.  ”

hyunsik  puts  himself between  ethan  and  the  painting, places  both  hands  on  his  forearms  and  squeezes  tightly, “  i  do.  two  star  is  protected. and  leia  is  right  downstairs.   there’s  nowhere  else  she  could  be  that’s safer.  she’s  fine.  she’ll  be  fine.  nothing’s going  to  hurt  her.”

ethan  uses  all  his  force  to  push  hyunsik  aside. the  elder  doesn’t expect  it,  and  so  he  tumbles  to  the  side  and  into  the  bedframe. ethan  snatches  the  painting  back  up  and  flips  it  over,  trying to  understand  what  part  of  his  brain  decided  to  concoct  this  monstrosity  of  an  image.

what  is  this  panic  induced nightmare  sitting  at  the  forefront of  his  mind?  why  is  his  stomach sinking  the  more  he  looks  at  it?  why  does  it  feel  so  real?  so  possible? so…inevitable?  he  feels  the  tears  begin  to  fall,  and  they  plop  onto  the  canvas,  causing bits  of  it  to  run  because  of  still  wet  paint.

hyunsik  gets  up  again  and  tries  to  pull  the  painting  from  ethan’s  vice  grip.  the  elder  ultimately wins  the  scuffle, and  the  painting is  pushed  off  to  the  side  of  the  room  face  down  and  smeared across  the  floor. ethan’s  body  racks  with  sobs  as  hyunsik pins  him  down.  loud,  anguished cries  as  realization  sets  in  of  the  future he’s  seen  for  leia.

 [     🙤 · ┈┈┈┈┈┈ ·  ] ⠀━━   last night, d:fi dorm

leia’s  asleep,  curled up  in  a  blanket  while  ethan  sits  beside  her  with  one  of  his  sketchpads.  over  the  course of  the  evening, a  series  of  elaborate  mandala like  designs  have  blossomed  onto  the  page.  it’s  not  until  the  very  early  hours  of  the  morning where  light  is  peeking  into  the  window that  ethan  realizes he’s  been  awake  since  the  moment  leia  arrived.  with  realization  comes  exhaustion.  his  vigilant  watch  over  her  was  bound  to  come  to  an  end  eventually, but  he  remains uneased.  like  he  can’t  trust  the  locked doors  and  magical wards  around  the  dorm  to  protect  them.

considering  how  monsters had  broken  through them  before,  though, were  his  concerns truly  misplaced?

he  sets  his  sketchpad  aside  and  slides down  into  the  bed,  wrapping an  arm  around her  and  leaning into  her  back.  leia  stirs  and  turns  to  face  him.  worry  is  written all  over  her  face  as,  even  through her  glossy  eyed  half-asleep  daze,  she’s  picked up  on  something troubling  him.  ethan  smiles  a  bit,  shakes his  head.

“  i’m  fine.  just  thinking. why  do  you  always  know  when  i’m  thinking?”

she’s  too  tired  to  form  a  meaningful response.  her  words  come  out  practically  inaudible and  a  little bit  slurred.  exhaustion is  evident,  and  so  ethan  just  strokes her  hair  and  her  arm  and  tells  her  to  go  back  to  sleep. it  doesn’t  take  long  before she’s  out  again  and  he  is  left  to  his  thoughts.

would  you  have  ever  spoken to  me  if  you’d  known  this  is  what  your  life  would  be?  constantly chasing  down  or  running  away  from  monsters…fighting  against the  threads  of  time  and  having  to  figure  out  what  fate  looks  like  for  you…?

he  knows  what’d she  say  if  she  were  conscious.  she’d  say  yes,  of  course. she’d  say  it’s  worth  it  and  as  long  as  they’re  together, she  knows  she  safe.  she’d  say  she  doesn’t  want  to  be  a  burden, but  she  wouldn’t want  it  any  other  way.  though  if  he  wanted to  leave  her,  she’d  say  she’d  understand. it’d  break  her  heart,  but  all  she  wants  is  for  him  to  be  happy  –

ethan  realizes  that  he’s  rambling for  her  and  lets  out  a  small  laugh.  she’s  so  much  a  part  of  him.  maybe  to  much  now.  ‘that’s  what  soulmates  are’,  he’s  sure  someone  in  the  dorm  would  say.  hyunsik  or  reese.  and  yeah,  perhaps that’s  what  they  are.  no…that is  definitely  what  they  are.  nothing  else  would  explain why  it  feels  as  though leia  has  a  cord  around his  soul  and  is  constantly pulling  at  it.  he  welcomes every  tug.

and  god  save  whoever tries  to  sever  that  cord.      

[beinfriends-a]

( I think I always meant to talk about Eoforwine’s family at some length for quite a long time; for a long time the family was quite generic and not really well-developed, but I actually really do think about them a lot-- primarily his wife, whom he currently does not recall, unfortunately.  While I doubt any of them would ever pop up here (aside from in modern verse, maybe?  But I’m still working out some kinks in the details WRT the family situation) because For is separated from them by a margin of, oh... a thousand or so years, I still think it’s worth at least discussing them a bit?  I also have always considered possibilities where For could find them and bring them here to Nowhere, but that’s irrelevant for the time being.

I finally wound up listing the names of his wife and children on For’s about just a little while ago, and so I’m certain few, if anyone have noticed it.  For’s family was as follows: his wife Saoirse, his elder daughter Eoforhilde, and his younger son Rowan.  Yes, he named his daughter after himself JKBSD.  It isn’t like he didn’t connect with both his kids, but I think he especially clicks with Hilde, always has, so he picked that name because he saw himself in her.  Saoirse picked Rowan’s name, so it evens out that they both picked a name they liked.

As to how For met Saoirse in the first place, I kind of picked out a story about a warrior who briefly appears in Beowulf who happens to have the name Eofor.  Utterly coincidental, which is funny because me reading Beowulf is what inspired me to give For his backstory and his Old English name, but I didn’t remember that Eofor was a character that appears in Beowulf till I reread it sometime later.  So the story of Eofor, whom is related to Beowulf as... his cousin’s husband I think, is essentially that he helped the king (Hygelac I think?) get revenge on the Swedish king for killing the king’s brother, who was the previous king.  And because Eofor personally personal killed the Swedish king and avenged the king’s brother, the king let Eofor marry his daughter.

So I kinda liked that.  But I just figured... For went to Cloverland / Ireland, because Saoirse is Irish and not English, and at some point is employed by Saoirse’s father to do him a big favor like that.  Though I think Saoirse and For always kinda took to each other and got along, I don’t think For would have had the chance to marry her had he not gotten her dad’s good graces.  He isn’t exactly rich or has much to offer in terms of status so he’d never have a chance in those times... so he got to have a relationship with someone he really liked and whom liked him back because he got in good with the family.

Saoirse is a very smart woman.  I like the contrast between a really smart, capable woman and a man who isn’t dumb but is more acquainted with practical skills than having an actual education.  For wasn’t exactly high ranking so people like him don’t really receive an education outside of what is necessary.  But he was always pretty smart, just in a different way.  I also like the contrast between a friendly, high energy person and their more low energy, colder person, and I think For and Saoirse fit that bill too.  She’s really not a friendly person or big on people at ALL, so the fact that For kinda found his way into her heart I think says a lot about his likeability and kindness.

I think Saoirse is quite the serious woman, isn’t friendly, doesn’t really like people, but she really opens up around her family and whatever friends she may have made in spite of her coldness.  I think the trope of exasperated nagging wife and the dumb husband could easily befall these two, but I think Saoirse really loves For and is usually on board with whatever he’s doing because she trusts him, and vice versa.  I also think Saoirse is a very powerful PSI user to contrast For, who has no PSI capabilities at all.  She probably kept that under wraps because I doubt most people like PSI users in those days, but For is chill with it.  He just loves his talented wife.

I also have toyed around with the idea of her being some kind of non-human but human-looking entity but that’s an aside.  It really just relates to her being a strong PSI user, basically.

So, For and Saoirse got married pretty young.  For was 18, and Saoirse was 20.  They had Hilde soon after, whom For really connected with.  Hilde is a lot like For, or was back when For was a more high energy person-- he’s very relaxed and calm now.  Hilde honestly reminds me a lot of Claus before all the trauma; impulsive, very energetic and excitable, and not afraid of basically anything.  Dealing with an impulsive child who’s willing to charge into danger stresses For and Saoirse out to the max honestly, but For adores her.  She also listens to For more than Saoirse, so he’s usually left to the task of wrangling her.

Rowan is about two years younger than Hilde.  He takes much more after Saoirse, and is very timid.  He’s not over sensitive, just very cautious more than anything else.  Very quiet, takes more to academic pursuits than anything practical (Hilde is the opposite, naturally) so Saoirse has probably put more into educating Rowan than Hilde at this point.  Rowan also took to PSI early on just like his mother, so she was really thrilled about that, since Hilde didn’t seem to have any affinity for PSI at all.  For probably did his best to try and toughen Rowan a bit, but he also isn’t very harsh about masculinity so he likely didn’t push it all too much when he realized Rowan just kinda... is who he is.

Rowan’ll look quite a bit like For by the time he’s grown up-- except with red hair, since Saoirse is a redhead too.  Hilde’s more of a strawberry blond, but yeah.  I think you would also really see For in Hilde.  Rowan does resemble Saoirse a bit more strongly, though you still see For in him.  I think he’ll also mellow out quite a bit and no longer be timid.  It’s just one of those things he has to grow out of-- and frankly, I think he’ll wind up taking up similar work to For, being some kind of warrior or mercenary type.  Aside from the farming he’d do otherwise.  I’m not sure what Hilde’ll do.  I don’t think she’d like getting married much.

So For disappeared when Hilde was 9 and Rowan was 7.  They’re 16 and 14 now, respectively.  When For disappeared, they obviously all took it pretty hard.  The family was a pretty healthy unit, so losing someone they were all close to and relied on sucks.  Saoirse could hold her own and do what she had to to keep the family safe and happy, but it is miserable being without her best friend.  And it’s sad, because For still doesn’t really remember them.  He knows he has to have had a family and that they’re out there somewhere, but he’s not quite there yet in remembering.  I don’t know how he’ll take it when he remembers.  I’m sure he’ll grieve quite a bit, if only because he doesn’t know how to reunite with them or where they are relative to the timeline.

It’s not impossible to reunite, it’s a matter of For remembering the year and the place properly, which is much more difficult.  I think if For reunited with his family, he and Saoirse probably wouldn’t get back together?  They’d still be very close friends and good co-parents, but I think both of them recognize that they’re in different places and have moved on.  Hilde would probably take right to For again as if no time passed at all, but Rowan would probably take much more time warming up.  He was younger, after all, and didn’t have all too much time with For, but they’d get along soon enough.

Rowan would be a little less timid but still very quiet.  He might be a bit resentful and angry and withdrawn, but hey, he’s a teenager, everyone goes through that.  Hilde, I think, might have turned into a bit of a bully.  I think she means well, but she’s very aggressive and can go way over the line if you let her because she doesn’t really know better or realize the consequences of that?  So she probably bullies Rowan a bit-- and any friends she’d made, she’d do that too (I’ve pictured her meeting Claus and oh fucking boy would she bully the shit out of him despite “liking” him).  So it’d take a lot for For and Saoirse to try and fix those things and set the kids on better tracks.

Also, Saoirse probably discovered that Hilde IS a PSI user, it just took time for her to learn how to use it.  Not a great combo of an impulsive, sometimes destructive girl and PK Fire, you know?  But Saoirse probably started working hard to get Hilde to learn how to control it and teach her some of what she knows.  Saoirse was likely both horrified and thrilled at Hilde being a psychic, so she did her best.  I’m sure For would be shocked to see how everyone is a PSI user in his family, but glad for them.

In the modern verse, I’ve played around with the idea of Saoirse and For being divorced by the time For is about 28-30.  I imagined Saoirse went off back home to Ireland / Cloverland to teach as a professor or... something, and For stayed wherever he stayed-- usually America / Eagleland, after immigrating from Scotland / Foggyland.  But I don’t know how custody of the kids would work, because I do want Hilde to be with For, at least.  I think For might have custody of the kids most of the time, then Saoirse has visitation, essentially-- or vice versa?  Because splitting up custody between two different countries is hard, and they wouldn’t want to split the kids up.

That, or they’re still together, or separated. but Saoirse stays close by so they can equally parent the kids and have equal custody.  For and Saoirse will always be good friends no matter what; they just find that they don’t click romantically like they used to, and it was better this way.  It’d be a very pleasant divorce, quite unusual, I know, but good for the kids. )

[valkyrien]

I’m Frightened

My mother became enraged earlier while I was cooking at what appeared to be nothing, left the house driving in what I can only describe as an extremely unsafe manner, came back, and began to scream vulgar abuse at my father, throwing things around the kitchen and at my father generally.

Then she spat in his face.

For days now she has been talking about how she’s concerned she may be infected with coronavirus, yet she spat in my father’s face. The fact she’s been saying that as a manipulative tool, which is the case, is irrelevant; it is unacceptable to do that.

She continued to scream and shout, slam things, and throw things.

She made statements regarding the household arrangements which are categorically untrue. She accused my father of awful behaviours which are the very ones she herself has been exhibiting now for many, many years and which have only grown worse, especially in the last three years since my father realised the patterns of abuse she was perpetrating and stopped catering to her every whim and called her on some of her many lies which for years have been harming the family.

She ranted at length about how unfair it was that she is no longer being catered to.

When she was told - calmly - that these things were all things she herself was guilty of and that this was her projecting all her own unacceptable behaviour on to my father, she became even angrier, despite that being entirely the case.

She stormed into her room, continued to throw things, kicked the doors, and kept shouting. All of it was vile, all of it was her accusing my father of behaviour and actions which she has been the one guilty of now for years.

My father did not go in her room. He stayed in the hall, then went in the bathroom with my dog, who was hiding and terrified, because he hates shouting and arguments, seeing as he’s a rescue dog who’s had two homes before us, at least one of which was physically abusive to an extent we can’t be fully sure of. My father tried to console my dog.

My mother then shouted, ‘Oh yeah, go and seek comfort with your oldest (child).’

This is the kind of thing she periodically says when she’s feeling very nasty indeed. She insinuates that there is something ‘unnatural’ about mine and my father’s relationship. She has made such insinuations in so many words many times, even to my sister, because she wishes to undermine us both, and particularly to hurt me, and hopes it will drive a wedge between me and my father as well as discredit anything we may say to anyone against her.

There is obviously nothing wrong with my relationship with my father. We are close because when I was an infant he was my main caregiver, my mother not being interested in the work involved in a child, and when my sister was born my mother made it very clear she now had a new child to love and shape in her own image as I was a disappointment to her, and did her damnedest to keep my sister to herself and away from both me and my father, meaning I essentially never had two proper parents. My mother has been abusive towards me and otherwise disinterested in me all my life.

My father told her in this instance that he was in the bathroom consoling the dog, and asked her what she was on about.

My mother said she ‘Knew what we were up to,’ and that ‘It’s always the two of you’ in the nastiest, most disgusting way you can imagine that said.

My father asked her to please keep me out of this unpleasantness of hers.

My mother then backtracked and started insisting ‘I never said anything about our (oldest child)! I never mentioned (me)!’

When my father told her that was utter nonsense, she then started claiming she was referring to him, because according to her, he refers to himself in the third person.

This is not true.

My father said as much.

My father also at this point asked her whether she had taken anything or drunk anything she ought not have, since she was making no sense.

He also asked her to calm down before she did something foolish.

She turned up the screaming again, demanding a divorce.

This is also something she does periodically. She never actually registers for one - it’s simple, you do it on the government’s website, the spouse gets an email, then the spouse signs off on having seen it, and it goes from there, and the registration costs roughly £50 or so - because she knows she has it good here, where no one ever asks her to lift a finger, everything is paid for, and the only thing that isn’t being done for her anymore is five-star-hotel-style laundry service and meal delivery. She obviously still has access to the laundry room, where everything is paid for and maintained by my father and myself, and the kitchen, where groceries and meals are provided and then scorned by her or complained about but still eaten although not appreciated in any way.

Essentially, she’s angry that she’s not being fully catered to any longer by slavishly adoring subservient staff in family form, and every so often when she’s been visiting a little too often with her two friends who both drink heavily (something my mum should not do at all since she has a damaged liver and cannot handle her alcohol) and encourage her to do the same, or when she’s been once again taking medicine she should not have and has no prescription for.

One of her friends gives her strong painkillers her liver can’t really handle, and also prednisone, which does not agree with her, especially when she’s been drinking. Prolonged use of prednisone has the very common side effects of mania, psychosis, and difficulty regulating mood. My mother’s doctor does not prescribe her prednisone any longer to avoid this and some of the other nasty physical side effects of prolonged use, but my mother has been acquiring and taking it for years anyway. Thusly she has many of these side effects. She refuses however to admit the two things may be connected.

Recently she has been both visiting her drinking friends and admitting to imbibing even though is takes days to leave her system and makes her unstable, irrational, and sick. She has also been taking the ill-gotten and unregulated prednisone and strong painkillers, one of which is Tramadol, which her doctor also will no longer prescribe her as she has liver damage, which is heavily contraindicated, and also has the side effect of worsening her instability.

My father knows this as well as I do, so he asked her if she had been indulging. He knows she has - she talks about it freely because she enjoys worrying us and also gets smug about ‘putting one over’ on the ‘idiot doctor’, and two days ago she actually spoke to a secretary at the doctor’s on the phone and admitted she was taking illicitly-got prednisone, which is a mark of how unstable and irrational she is at the moment since normally she would never have told someone like that - but she would not respond, instead claiming that what’s wrong with her is that she’s married to him, and she regrets every moment.

She then began to rant about;

- how he’s mistreated her (I cannot express how much a lie this is, no one I have ever met has been as spoiled as her by their family and spouse, she has been a pampered despot in our home all my life);

- how she feels like a prisoner in her own home (this makes no sense as she is free to come and go as she pleases, and does, she has her own car - though until a few months ago actually she used the family car which my father paid for and maintains at great cost since she is reckless with vehicles - and she moved into the biggest bedroom in the house of her own volition and after another huge pointless tantrum she threw to make sure we’d let her have her way about it when my sister moved out);

- how my father is petty for no longer catering to her every whim (which makes no real sense as just about everything is still provided for her despite the fact she pays for nothing, gives no one anything except shit, and makes huge demands on our time and energy constantly for help with things she won’t directly ask for or thank us for, including things relating to her job, which we have both helped her with immensely over the years).

My father told her all this was demonstrably false, which it is.

She did not like that and kept screaming about how she was going to register for a divorce so the house could be auctioned off and ‘that would teach him’.

That wouldn’t happen since he can prove that he’s been the sole household provider for years while she’s contributed nothing and she knows this, but she went on in that vein for some time quite irrationally.

My father then asked her what the hell she thought she was playing at and whether she really thinks her behaviour is acceptable, and at this point she began to make wild threats against us both and repeatedly claim we’d ‘be sorry’.

She is currently so unstable and so close to violent outbursts at any given moment that I am genuinely frightened. All her behaviour is characterised by aggression at all times, but this is a sudden escalation over the past week we haven’t seen before in this open way.

It’s the middle of the night and all this was five hours ago but I am still feeling utterly shattered because I don’t deal well with adrenaline fall-out, and my dog is sleeping next to me but keeps waking up with a nightmare and then being groggy and terrified and growling at me because he’s half-asleep and doesn’t recognise me for a few moments which then makes him horribly sad and confused when he does recognise me because he is not a boy who normally growls for anything and this is a pattern we see in him when he’s had a regression in his recovery and is working through trauma. It used to happen all the time in the first year we owned him but recently he’s been much improved. I am appalled and angry that he’s suffering this setback because of her.

I am also terrified of what she might do.

She is too selfish to do herself harm. She would seek to harm one of us. She is utterly without guilt or empathy and feels entitled to hurt us, as evidenced by her many past actions, but this time I fear she may go past the point of no return and try to do one of us serious physical harm. Previously she’s not gone that far because she’s had a sense of consequences, but at the moment she seems to be operating under something which is eroding her self-preservation to the point of lunacy.

I also don’t know what to tell my sister. My mother threw some things around earlier this evening which leads me to think my sister must have told her at some point about how my sister and I discussed - two years ago almost now - the possibility that my mother has an undiagnosed personality disorder (likely narcissistic, as it fits on all counts) just like her entire family (almost all of whom have had psychological issues amounting to a personality or mood disorder of some kind and a few of whom have been worse).

I have always tried to protect my sister from our mother’s worst. Especially when we were very young and her violent outbursts for once included my sister, which usually happened when my sister defied her or tried to stand up for me.

Especially because at the time my mother’s main weapon she liked to use on me was that ‘Your dad knows you’re a nasty little liar so if you tell him about this, he’ll believe me, and he’ll support me getting rid of you and you’ll be alone and never see your sister again’, and so I never felt safe telling my father what she got up to.

Owing to this, it’s only in the last five years or so my father has learnt about my mother’s abuse as she’s lost the ability to be subtle about it with him after a few head injuries.

It’s also caused my sister to be most of the time a tacit or willing accomplice to my abuse, and to develop her own trauma response of just not ‘seeing’ or even remembering our mother’s behaviour.

When I told her my theory about our mother potentially having a personality disorder about two years ago, it’s because at the time our mother was recovering from the latest of three recent mild head injuries and had begun to lose the ability to be subtle about her outbursts and tendency to lie about everything - she couldn’t keep her stories straight anymore, so my dad found some things out about how she’d been stealing and keeping money from him, gambling, and was still addicted to nasal spray, as she has been for many years.

My sister had noticed our mother’s irrational and strange behaviour worsen because our  mother kept calling her (my sister lives in another city, same one our mother works in, with her boyfriend) and my sister was worried because as she told me, ‘It’s like she’s had an aneurysm, she slurs words, doesn’t make sense, and can’t remember what she’s just told me, and I think she’s lying to me about things but then she says she just can’t remember, and she’s being very rude and aggressive to retail staff and people she doesn’t like and having a lot of disturbing road rage and I think she’s sick...’

My sister was also at the time having personal difficulties and seeing a therapist, and was starting to remember disturbing events from our childhood which she wanted me to corroborate.

I did, as all of it was sadly true and I couldn’t lie, and I tried to be supportive and encouraging, and thought and hoped it was a good sign she was questioning and working towards realising our mother’s truth and coming to terms so she could work on the fact that their relationship has always been deeply unhealthy and is the source of most of my sister’s issues, but at the time it turned out my sister was not ready to make those realisations or take that step.

After her psychologist suggested to her that she consider that her problems closely mirrored those of children of parents with substance abuse issues, my sister stopped therapy and instead completely regressed backwards to a state where she now doesn’t ‘see’ our mother being cruel or rude to me or our father or anyone even if it’s right in front of her, and she responds to any criticism of our mother or any attempt by me or my father to inform her as to my mother’s mental state and behaviour with loud repetitive insistence that whatever our mother has done must be at least partially the fault of the one she did it to (usually us) and that anyway our mother is stressed and so can’t be blamed for anything.

Earlier when my mother came home screaming and violent, I could have called my sister and let her hear it.

I didn’t, because I was ready to call the police.

I have not felt the need to do that for years, usually when she was also threatening my sister.

I’ve never actually called the police on her. I probably should have a few times, looking back. I usually refrained because she convinced me they, like my father, would also see that I was just a little liar, and then they’d lock me up and take me away from my sister for good.

I am very frightened of what she might do. I am frightened because I don’t know what to tell my sister, who can’t handle the truth and thus is likely not to want to believe me and has probably already been lied to about this by my mother, but whom I feel has to know about this.

I am frightened because I do not want her to be alone with my dog, or my father, in case she does something heinous - if she’d had a knife to hand earlier she’d have tried to stab my father I have no doubt - but I do not want to be under the same roof as her anymore, and my father will not leave her here alone, both because he won’t be chased out of his own home which he pays for entirely but also because we’re actually both as always concerned for what she might do in a fit of irrationality which may cause her or others harm either by accident or on purpose.

It’s a pure miracle that she didn’t run anyone over earlier the way she was driving, and that sort of things happens all the time. She never displays remorse. She also regularly drives despite being tipsy as she won’t admit her liver damage means even a small glass of wine will linger heavily in her for up to 24 hours and she regularly drinks more when she’s with her friends. She also never displays concern or remorse about that.

For years my father and I have tried to protect her from herself, the irrational and aggressive behaviour that she can’t seem to properly control anymore at all, and to shield my sister from the worst.

But everything’s coming to a head now, and I am just frightened.

My dog keeps waking up scared and crying and I am frightened and I can’t go to sleep because part of me is afraid she’ll burn the house down with us in it or murder my father or something equally horrendous and my door doesn’t lock and I cannot handle her being anywhere near us anymore, it’s enough, and how dare she think she can get away with screaming at us earlier that she can’t stand looking at us another second or deal with being under the same roof as us when she has ruined my entire life and stolen my relationship with my sister and I have not once not been fucking frightened for one reason or another as the direct result of her deliberate actions against us all!

[illegiblewords]

Snuff

Few utilize the private quarters of the Waking Sands. Although technically property of the Scions and thus equipped with their rooms and workspaces, in reality they are rarely all in use. The Ala Mhigan girl and her lalafell friend (Yda and Papalymo, Lahabrea is aware but such details are of little consequence outside the part he plays) prefer to spend their time in Gridania while the miqo’te woman… Y’shtola, favors Limsa Lominsa.

Of all the obnoxious things to keep track of.

Thancred’s most consistent company—and so, Lahabrea’s—includes the Antecedent, the elezen, and Tataru. The other lalafell.

Oh hells with it.

The Ascian, having taken over his host’s quarters along with his body, releases a loud and enduring exhale. The lamp is nearly finished, shadows long over the walls. A woman’s discarded smallclothes remain piled on the floor near the bed. They have, evidently, been there for some time. He’s already taken it upon himself to wash the man’s filthy sheets, to pick up quills and documents that had (so mysteriously) taken residence on the floor. In their wake the desk has a disturbingly hyur-sized gap, and this is something Lahabrea wants neither to think about nor interact with. So he sits on the floor with his books and his own notes.

Until his joints begin to ache from stagnation at least, which is absurdly soon considering the youth of his vessel.

Of course.

Hands held tight behind his back (posture Thancred would never willingly adopt, something Lahabrea understands instinctively even as he chews his lower lip in another habit peculiar to himself), he begins to pace.

For the time being he has access to all the resources of his enemy, all the information needed to reach a current understanding of “Beast Tribe” political finery. Exploit them to generate a power source for the Heart. He has, admittedly, permitted himself to fall behind on such matters in recent decades. With those sundered of their number otherwise occupied, the direct task of resource management and collecting fuel falls to him. As do negotiations with the Legate. As do keeping the mannerisms of his vessel straight along with the names and minute details of each colleague.

Minfilia possesses a fondness of pancakes and perfumes, has embarrassing difficulty riding chocobos. Urianger may in fact be faking his entire persona for private amusement but this has yet to be proven.

Tataru…

Tataru is insufferable. Involved in everything and everyone at all times. She’s knocked on his door no less than thrice today, voicing concern that he has not emerged for food or drink in a mere eighteen hours. Nor has he slept in longer, but that she need not know.

Thancred is accustomed to such work. Thancred engages similar activity on a regular basis. Thancred’s eyes feel ready to fall out of their sockets for Lahabrea’s dubious pleasure after memorizing the history of Sylphic relations with men, complete with small lettering and an occasional grammatical error on the author’s part. And as if that were not enough, Thancred’s head feels about ready to split open like an egg.

Hells.

Hells.

They will never let him hear the end of this. “Can’t even manage a few beastfolk, Lahabrea? Really?” Meanwhile, Emet-Selch spends half his days sleeping when he could be contributing a moment or two to the Rejoining but no. No, staying awake too is a paltry task that Lahabrea ought be able to handle all by himself along with countless other insultingly easy responsibilities that alone would be nothing to speak of. Together though, with his vessel’s intolerable headache, he finds himself fumbling at details.

Damn them all.

Ask him about the history of the Ixali in Allag, he could recite it in a blink. Their present beliefs and customs have been, until recently, irrelevant. And their hostility toward Gridania overlaps in such ways with the dynamic held between Amal’ja and Ul’dah that he catches himself confusing details between the two more often than he likes.

Elements are clear. Eikons are clear. The rest? Superficial nonsense, but superficial nonsense he must be prepared to use at a moment’s notice.

He drops his hands. Without missing a beat, he strides out the door, into the hall, up the stairs.

“Thancred!” exclaims Tataru, evidently delighted by what she perceives as a victory. “Are you finally going to-“

“No.”

Out the door. Out of the Waking Sands.

It’s approaching dusk, apparently. The sun shines a darkening orange as the sky turns pink and purple and a deep, dark blue.

There is a dock nearby. This, Lahabrea approaches.

In a perfect world, a complete world, there would be no witnesses nearby and he could scream at the infernal sun to his hearts content. But there are witnesses enjoying what might be a beautiful evening, and so Lahabrea only presses Thancred’s palms into his aching, aching eyes and kneels on the ground.

Awful.

Truly awful.

When he began to feel so tired he can’t recall. The Source is too heavy and too bright and too dull and he despises it with every fiber of his being.

He finds himself speaking in circles, more often than not. And laughing at things which, objectively, shouldn’t be funny. When Bahamut, sealed behind enough barriers to endure several Calamities and hurled into the heavens, returned out of nowhere after some odd thousand years to wreak havoc on their behalf—it was bizarrely, surreally hilarious.

Of all things.

And his sundered assistant only stared at him like a man gone mad. From the glances he collected following their great success… the others had misgivings as well.

But he’d succeeded. They’d done it. And they’d done it with an extraterrestrial dragon exploding out of the moon.

Despite himself, Lahabrea can’t help but chuckle quietly.

***

The sky dims. Lahabrea, having allowed himself some minutes to breathe, begins to stand.

Wobbles.

Steadies.

Walks, far less briskly, back toward the disgusting room that awaits him.

A moth beats around the entrance lantern. It nearly hits him in the face, an experience he ducks to avoid. It is for this reason, really, that he is caught off-guard.

“Hold it right there!” shouts Tataru as he slips back into her office.

The door shuts behind him. There are faint spots as his eyes adjust. The tiny receptionist is marching straight toward him, brows knit, mouth tight. An expression that might have been daunting on any other only looks absurd for her.

“Wha-“ he begins, only to find a surprisingly sharp finger jabbed into his stomach.

“No more excuses!” she says, no less forcefully. “You are going to sit down and have dinner and go to bed, and I swear if you so much as begin to argue with me I’ll- I’ll drag you there myself.”

Lahabrea finds himself staring, slack-jawed. Tataru takes one of his hands and, furiously, makes a valiant effort to pull him toward her desk.

There is a small curry there, steaming. A glass of orange juice beside it.

Abruptly, it occurs to him that if he doesn’t eat something immediately he really might die on the spot.

And that would be inconvenient.

***

“Slow down, you’re going to make yourself sick!”

Or choke, Lahabrea considers belatedly with a cough. He downs the juice in one go, which takes some moments and leaves Thancred’s eyes watering even as his lungs burn.

He doubles over after that, one hand still holding a spoon that trembles slightly. Waits for his body to catch up with him.

This was a mistake. It may not be beyond Tataru to drug her friends.

He feels, inexplicably, more miserable than he did before.

Another failed trial. Another weakness. Of body and mind both. Elidibus has been warning him for years, but there is work to do and he-

He can’t close his eyes.

***

Tataru does, in fact, drag him back to his room afterward. He thinks he almost managed to escape. The sink is in another part of the building. Once the dishes were dispensed with he could sneak back to his quarters and lock her out and do what he would.

“No. Do you really think I’ve forgotten last time? You’ve done enough and you’re going to bed and I’ll hear no more arguments about it,” says the lalafell. “March.”

Lahabrea does not march. If anything, he stumbles quietly in her wake and watches the back of her head and contemplates vague, unpleasant experiences he hopes will fall into her lap.

Down the stairs. Into the hall. Through the door.

“Eugh,” says Tataru, clutching her nose with her free hand. She glances about, pauses. Reddens. “How long have those been there?”

Lahabrea doesn’t look up. Doesn’t sigh. Doesn’t shrug. Doesn’t answer in any way whatsoever.

He refuses to be ashamed of a mess that is not his own.

“In the morning,” Tataru goes on, as if he will sleep until morning, “we are straightening this mess up. It’s unacceptable--why, it's a wonder you haven't caught something already!”

“One would think,” he says, and though the voice belongs to Thancred the words are his own, “you were my mother, with how you carry on.”

Tataru squints at him. Something between a glare and a deeply exasperated smile crosses her face. She points at the mattress. “Bed. Now.”

For a moment he only stares at it.

The bed does not, in fact, stare back. But if it could, he does not doubt that it would do so.

It is this thought which ultimately persuades him to comply.

***

She does not tuck him in, Zodiark be praised. That, he does himself.

“Don’t tell me,” says Lahabrea, as the Lalafell picks up his research, stacking one book on top of another, “that you mean to watch.”

Tataru’s smile is utterly terrifying and stripped of pity. “I don’t have to,” she informs him.

She snuffs the lamp out.

“Goodnight, Thancred,” she says. And then she leaves with his work.

***

He does not, in fact, sleep until morning.

He sleeps well into the next afternoon.

And with the mercy of a dreamless night, maybe that’s for the best.