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chrisbbaegopayo · 5 years

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Hold Your Breath (Stray Kids: Stalker AU) ➻ Prologue

Genre: Thriller, Angst, Gore, Mystery, Suspense Characters: Stray Kids, OCs Word Count: 2.4k Warning: This story will contain elements of gore, on- and off-screen abuse, torture, mental illness, and stalking. It will feature themes that are not suitable for all ages, readers discretion is advised. Each chapter will have its own specific warning.

The story takes place in the main character's third year of university. The prologue will detail information before the story takes place.

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The day had gone completely how she expected—a roster of classes, school work, and downtime. Her mundane life, for lack of a better word, was ordinarily plain. When classes end, she would find herself in a deep pit of homework. When the weekends rolled by, and when all her school work had been done and filed, she would marathon her favourite movies on Netflix. Oftentimes, she would be in the company of her best friend, Jisung, and the two would tackle her long and seemingly endless list of need-to-watch television shows and films.

Her life was as ordinary as it could get, and she wouldn't have it any other way. The school year had started off without a hitch, and with her organized lifestyle, graduation didn't seem too far away nor impossible. Her first year at the university came as fast as passed, followed by her second year, which flew past her just as fast. She maintained her average all throughout her academic career and was an overall great student. She enjoyed her classes almost as much as her teachers appreciated her as a student.

However, what she didn’t account for was the introduction of random gifts that had found themselves in her locker that she rented, and although a kind gesture, the sender seemed quite persistent. She had never used any of the presents she was given and opened a couple before she left them inside her locker altogether. The first one arrived a year prior, during exams, at first, she thought it was her friends, but upon opening the presents, she quickly scratched that out considering how unrelated it was to her school life.

She also asked some classmates if they had seen the person who placed the presents in her locker, but no one had seen anything of the sort. After that, friends often teased her for it, all in good fun, of course. Supposed that she did laugh along with them, part of her felt a little unsettled by the entire ordeal. However, she chalked that up to mere paranoia and brushed it off.

Days had passed since she received her first present and for a long time, it had been radio silence. And then the week after that, she received another present. It seemed innocent enough, just lying there inside her locker, waiting for her to open it. She thought about it for a moment but decided against it. It would wait until she finished classes.

The present had been innocent enough like she had thought, and like the previous present that she had received, she made sure she never used it, preferring to keep it at the back of her locker. The present never harboured any malicious intent end it was just like any other present that people would receive, but the unsettling undertone of the presents bothered her nonetheless.

The presents just kept on coming every single week and she kept on having to open them and storing them in the back of her locker every week as it came. She never noticed a pattern in the present, until one day, one of the presents was accompanied by a letter.

It was the most unsettling letter she had ever received.

The content of the letter read as follows:

“You blew my mind ever since I laid my eyes on you. Some things need not be said, but I think it’s plainly obvious that I am very taken by you, your appearance, and your soul. But, as every gift I endowed you with goes unnoticed, untouched, and uncared for, it stands to reason that you don’t feel the same…

...but no matter, I’ll make you mine. But in the meantime, I’ll continue to shower you with gifts all the same, hopefully, you’ll come to love them as much as I love you.”

Every word seemed heavy in her mind, her heart pace quickened as she realized what she had been reading. It wasn’t just some regular letter from a secret admirer, this was written wÇith intent. She wasn’t sure whether the person who wrote this letter would act upon his words, but one thing was for sure, it wasn’t normal.

This guy wasn’t normal.

But at the same time, she didn’t need to invoke this guy’s ire just because of a hunch. Perhaps someone was pulling a prank on her, and decided to go with some really creepy prose. She wasn’t going to sit idly and let whatever happen just happen—that was how people die during creepy horror movies—she would be on alert, and at the same time, keep others from being involved in this. Plus, if her friends saw this, they would either report this or maybe tease her because, look, such bad prose. Who wrote this anyway? Someone obviously spent a little too long watching creepy stalker movies or something—although that would account to teasing the guy who wrote it, not really her—but regardless.

Hence.

She would put this at the back of her locker, like the rest of her gifts from him. She hoped that someone just randomly chose her as the victim of a bad prank and nothing more—trying to elicit a response from her. If it was, it was an elaborate one and hopefully, after this creepy letter, she would go about her normal life.

Little did she know that while she was a victim, this would be no prank, and the presents would just keep coming, as the letter suggested. Despite that, though, her life had been rather blissful, and the presents would only be limited to her school life. Everything else was still her sanctuary, and only she would know of the entire ordeal. She would still go about her every day seemingly unaffected by this new addition in her life because she didn’t know for certain whether it would develop into a problem she couldn’t handle.

Regardless, she never told anyone, not even her best friend. It’s her problem—no one else’s.

And true to the letter, the presents kept on coming, and coming, and coming. It bothered her and wore her down seeing her locked filled with presents every week. They weren’t cheap presents either, they looked like they might have cost the person a pretty dime or two—money that could have been spent on other things, not on her, knowing that she would never use them properly.

She decided to write her own little letter as a way to tackle the buildup of things she didn’t use. In which she told the sender to stop leaving her presents as it was a little too much—obviously, calling it a little seemed like an understatement as it was quite clear that the abundance of wrapped boxes because a major portion of what hogged up her space, leaving her with little room to maneuver through her own things previously-stored in there.

Hopefully, the person would get the message and let up the excessive gift-giving, and maybe even put an end to this entire silly ordeal—of course, only she would call it silly—she crossed her fingers and hoped for the best, as it really was the only thing she could do at this point.

She tore a page from her notebook and wrote, “whoever has been sending me gifts, please stop. While I appreciate the sentiment, it’s a little too much.”

She stared at the note she just wrote, and for a long time, wasn’t sure whether it would come off as strange or even rude. In the end, she contributed her anxiety to overthinking. She would leave the little note in her locker for next time the gift-bearer left something in her locker. She folded the note in half, and then in half again, and on the front-facing surface, she wrote, “to my anonymous gift-bearer.”

She felt a little silly about having to do this. It’s like she was asking for more interaction from the anonymous gift-bearer. However, what was done was done, and she wouldn’t twist herself into a mess thinking about it further. It was a step in the right direction, she hoped.

With that thought, she closed the door on her locker and then left. Hopefully, tomorrow would be a better day and she wouldn’t have to deal with a reply. Or more presents. Both would be great, together.

Her dubbed “anonymous gift-bearer” never got her note.

Her friends discovered her note the day after during one of their routine debriefing sessions in the mornings. The curiosity was almost immediate as she tried to stop her friends from taking it, but was unable to do so. There was a moment of silence and suspense after her friends glanced through the note, and she wanted to hide. The last thing she wanted to do was to make her problem everyone else’s problem.

Her friends looked up from the note, the concern deeply evident on their faces, and it wasn’t one of those superficial expressions—their deep disturbance embedded within the looks of concerns, to varying degrees spread across each other her friends’ faces. It was official, if she didn’t defuse the situation immediately, they would start some form of intervention. And she did not need an intervention at this point in time. She was never really that good with lying under pressure—she was worried that she would say the wrong things at the wrong time. If she knew what her friends were capable of, they’d hire bodyguards or something.

Okay, not that extreme. They would probably bug the door, put a hidden camera in there. But then again, none of them were ever tech-savvy enough to deal with this kind of thing.

That wasn’t the point here, obviously.

The bottom line was that she didn’t need her friends to become needlessly worried about something that might just turn out to be some stupid prank that some kid did for fun. Regardless, she’d rather deal with this situation herself than to involve her friends. And should this be some malicious intent—if that letter from the gift-bearer was any indication—it would put her friends in harm’s way.

There was no way she could do that.

“It’s nothing,” she began confidently, as she hoped that her voice would be strong enough to put any concern away.

“Don’t worry.”

That did little to dissuade their concern, and the wary stares only turned grimmer. This was not what she wanted.

“Really, really, I have it under control. I’m pretty sure it’s a bad prank.” She tried again, although this time, the confidence seemed to waver.

That response seemed to be the one to put her friends at ease, although the worrying stares did not part their ways with her friends’ faces. It was still there, although they seemed a little more satisfied with her answer this time. However, her relief was short-lived as the friend who stood in front of her spoke up, still clearly on edge.

“Look, I respect your need to do this by yourself,” her friend said, “and I get that you’re trying to only contain the mess, because honestly if I know one thing about you, it’s that you hate to cause trouble for other people. But this is a hell of a problem is you have to physically write a note to this creepy stalker of yours. Or secret admirer, if we’re using kid-friendly terms, and trust me, this doesn’t even feel like it would be…”

There were a few chuckles.

“What I’m trying to say here is: if this guy or whatever he or she is, has to be lulled to his or her senses through your writing a letter, or in this case, a note, then this is far beyond what you should be handling yourself. But if you want to do it this way, then fine, but don’t forget that we’re also here if you need us to deal with some really douchey guy who has a really bad taste,” she said. That got a few nods in agreement.

“I guess we could see how this turns out—we’ll play it by ear, this one,” she finished.

Another friend spoke up, curiosity fueled this one, “just curious, what else did this person send you?”

She froze up and tried to calm her nerves. She could not show her friends that threatening letter. That would send them over the edge. No, no, no, no, no.

“Nothing. Just presents,” she quickly replied. She was hopeful it did okay to satiate that curiosity. “Really. Just not school-related gifts, I mean, honestly.”

If her friends were put-off by her answer, they didn’t voice it. But it was darn evident on their faces. And she was thankful they didn’t pursue that path of questioning.

“Come on, let’s head home? Ice cream on the way home?” She asked, trying to lighten up the mood. Her friends agreed.

She sighed—one hurdle crossed, time for round two.

At the same time, she did little to really analyze the situation. Her kind nature only put more strain on herself as a result, and her eagerness to keep her own problems to herself only solidified her future interactions with her so-called gift-bearer. Though if she had told her friends, the situation might have gone very differently.

She might have just guaranteed that her path crossed with her secret admirer.

The seconds were ticking past like a bomb on a timer, and every second that passed by was like a second forward towards her very own undoing. She knew what it seemed like in the movies, she knew how it went, but yet, what would she have done differently to discourage her admirer?

Her words had already left a mark. The note was never delivered, and the gift-bearer never got the message. The note disappeared after a while, and while she assumed that the gift-bearer had taken it. Her assumptions were well-grounded, but she never got a reply, nor did the gifts seem any less frequent for the next few days. A bitter feeling welled up inside of her, and she thought it would be best to just ignore it altogether.

She didn’t even open the packages for the next few presents. She pretended not to see them and pretended that they don’t exist. It wasn’t like the school would be able to set up some hidden cameras that would catch the perpetrator red-handed. The school wasn’t rich by any means, and any attempts at reporting anything would end up being waved away—she knew this, and she figured that the gift-bearer knew that as well.

However, things seemed to have let up after a few months as the presents became less frequent. The semester came to an unsatisfying end, and she couldn’t help but sigh in relief—if anything, she would be glad to know that the gift-sessions would come to an end, she hoped.

But it didn't, she would come to learn. It was the beginning of her descent to hell.

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Sorry for the long hiatus, I sorta just disappeared. However, this is the beginning of this fic—the one I wrote a premise to a long time ago (read: a year ago). Please stay tuned every week for updates!

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vaguely-concerned · 5 years

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TEMERAIRE LET’S READ: BLOOD OF TYRANTS, THE WILLIAM LAURENCE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT NG+ SPEEDRUN

- oh NO LAURENCE D:D:D:

I do love that one of his first realizations is that he’s definitely not dutch tho lol this dumbass remembered that he was english before he remembered his own name

- caught between OH NO TEMERAIRE (and it’s only page 9 it’s going to be one of those books huh) and laughing my ass off at the thought of him swooping into notoriously isolationist japan and yelling ‘HAVE YOU GUYS SEEN MY DAD???’

- “Yes,” [Laurence] said, unyielding, as he could not be otherwise. ahahahahaha way to summarize the entirety of old school!laurence with one fucking sentence

(I am very much enjoying this uh. ‘setback’ of his character actually? novik really did just roll him back to factory settings and went ‘now... from the top again, let’s see if you’ve been paying attention these last seven books’ haha. no one told me there’d be a test!!!!!!!!!!)

- Kaneko really has the patience and graciousness of a saint, @ laurence please... please try to be marginally less sketchy hm? (I guess his sheer obliviousness to how direly he comes across here must be why kaneko hasn’t dismissed him out of hand)

- y’know... at least laurence is in no position to have to worry about all this shit temeraire and the others are pulling. when people start talking about black-scaled celestials shaking the country to its very foundations he’ll be blissfully, innocently unaware. that’s something, I suppose... well who am I kidding we’ll 100% get a couple of paragraphs of him convincing himself this is all his fault somehow anyway

- . . . and His Majesty’s Government does not behave in such an underhanded a manner as to attack another nation with no warning or quarrel. aha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha oh what a strange beautiful fantasy land you’ve been residing in for most of your life william laurence, hang on tight for the opium wars

- hahaha oh my god this is like a platonic version of that text post

temeraire: have you guys seen my dad??!?!

them: what does he look like?

temeraire, crying: beautiful and human and has gold buttons

- I take it all back old school laurence is such a tremendous idiot. just PRETEND you’re willing to cooperate at least you huge fuckign dummy, all you’d have to do was say something vague about how the ship can’t get too close to shore; it won’t actually help them and they’ll know it but you won’t make yourself look so unspeakably willfully suspicious

- :( making me read things where temeraire is just hurting should be ILLEGAL actually

- NO LAURENCE STOP TRYING TO KICK LITERALLY EVERY POLITICAL HORNET’S NEST WITHIN REACH BAD BOY he is... a disaster but I love him and fear for him as a son so here I am anyway

- hahahahaha yeah wow laurence it sure would suck if you ever had to commit treason huh death probably would be preferable indeed

b o i

- i like that it took him like a week to even give a single thought to edith lol at least he remains aggressively himself

- I think temeraire basically just invented dragon baby photos and I can’t even think for how darling it is

also every dragon physician is delightful; they fear neither god, man nor huge ass patients who could swallow them in a bite

aw man I love gong su

- ahahahahahahah kiyo is the actual best I can’t breathe

KANPAI INDEED, MY LADY, MY LIEGE, I DON’T CARE WHAT ELSE HAPPENS I WOULD FOLLOW YOU TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

Laurence was forced to at least moisten his lips in a show of accompaniment, and hope that he had indeed buried Caesar and not praised him, or for that matter raised him from the dead one act too soon; he was not perfectly sure. He did not think he had been this appallingly drunk since he had been a boy of twelve, trying to make good on every toast at his captain’s table. I. am. dying

thank you thank you thank you for the mental image of laurence drunkenly trying to stumble through the ‘friends, romans, countrymen’ speech as well as the entire rest of the play in a one-man performance

- oh no... I would die for junichiro, baby boy who loves his teacher SO MUCH ;____________; aaaaand there are laurence’s adoption instincts, I see, right on time <3 I like how they have had one actual conversation now and laurence is like ‘ah well nothing for it then guess you’ll have to stay on my ship and I’ll have to be your dad now, brash 16 year old child’

junichiro is being Full Teenager about laurence not knowing ~*obvious*~ things and it’s a delight

- y’know this period of japanese history is always portrayed in the west as paranoia and it could probably only be done because the country was a strict military dictatorship at the time... but having read oh, any history book ever, deciding that nope nah don’t think so no europeans ever is the greatest ‘fair enough’ in human history. (...I guess this series is sort of AU fix it fic of the period in the first place haha)

- seeing temeraire this level of straight out angry is very interesting and also very unsettling

- ooooof whenever laurence almost-remembers temeraire... stab me in the heart why don’t you

- man churki really is the mom friend of these dragons she’s the only one who has a lick of sense

- *laurence, upon clobbering several men with an oar* “Ma’am, I beg your pardon,” Laurence said to the old woman, who was still sitting ramrod-straight in the ferry over the side from him and regarding him with a flat expression of utter disapproval and not the least evidence of fear; he put out a boot over the side and shoved the ferry off with a heave

god this book is just a continual parade of glorious mental images, just this old woman glaring at him like ‘RUDE’ and “Ma’am, I beg your pardon” fdslfhsdlkjh

- I have a lot of sympathy for hammond. imagine having to navigate the extremely delicate diplomatic situation between europe and japan, with the real prospect of a war breaking out over it, while temeraire is looking over your shoulder... real dragon in the glassware shop vibe going on here, i’m sorry about your life hammond

- AUGH laurence just sort-of-remembered emily he just half-remembered he basically has a daughter someone hold me (...junichiro is so so sweet ;___;)

- bwahahaha yeah I’m sure the only reason this impressionable young kid who’s slowly becoming very impressed by you has for sneaking glances at your bare chest is manly appreciation of your battle scars laurence, well done (I mean a supremely understandable innocent teen crush to develop but stay safely out of that, kid; I trust tharkay to survive the sheer field of mayhem around this man only because he’s got like 20 years, extreme competency and a world of cynicism on you)

- aw junichiro :(:(:(

- ...laurence you need to stop making your dragon boi think you’re dead because this is hurting me. my heart lies in sad little pieces on the ground right now. you are stepping on them with tapdancing shoes.

- “I am under an obligation to Junichiro,” [Laurence] said, quietly, “who you must know has aided me for love of you. If I surrender myself and am made prisoner in this way, will your honor be satisfied?”

fdsfhsdkfsdja *ELMO SURROUNDED BY FLAMES GIF* this is all awful they’re all such good people why must this happen why this

(what a way to remind me why I love this stupid wonderful man so much tho uuuuuugh)

- “He is a prince of China, and my captain.” “The devil I am,” said Laurence. This might be the funniest heartbreak I have ever experienced

- good job making me cry whenever I read the words ‘principia mathematica’ naomi novik that was real nice of you

- maximus is such a solid bro. not the brightest, but by god a good 80% of that boy’s gigantic body mass is pure heart

- I love the sheer trollishness of just dropping all these hints about whatever’s going on in the US and then moving on like nothing has happened lol at least it’s deeply implied that hamilton squandered his chances at the presidency by pulling his dumb hoe act in this universe too... constants and variables friends constants and variables

- bOY for a moment there I really did wonder if junichiro was going to die, thank god for a quick google to stop my heart from leaping up my throat and out into thin air to shatter yet again on the flagstones beneath

- in unrelated news I recently found out a bit more about the whole historical Situation in Australia at the beginning of Tongues of Serpents (incidentally, by reading Mark Forsyth’s ‘A Short History of Drunkenness’, which is very funny and quite interesting although I can personally testify that the chapter about vikings at least is completely riddled with misunderstandings or straight out factual errors about the mythology, the role of women in society and uh the entirety of how poetry worked so maybe take him with a pinch of salt lol), and now, in retrospect, I have to say Novik does a poor job conveying the sheer hilarity and madness going on at that time. Like. I was quite bored in those first few chapters, whenever Tharkay didn’t have page time. how could you make this incredible spectacular shitshow boring. it should have been easy comedy gold and not just like. misery. oh well great times, let’s return to the book at hand

- I remain utterly devoted to Lady Kiyo. livin’ life, drinking sake, giving no fucks, absentmindedly scoping out the western style ships and starting an entire modern navy for her country, getting some Theater up in here.... truly I would follow her into the jaws of hell itself, safely in the knowledge that she’d find some way to have a good time down there

- kaneko tearing up at laurence promising he’ll take care of junichiro 😭 this is so cruel to me, personally, specifically against my person, I am undone

- I like how the incan dragons are told like ‘don’t pick just one special person; you can love all your humans equally’ while the poor japanese ones are told ‘actually don’t love any of your humans very much at least not more than Honour’ lol they must have so many neurotic dragons running about b/c that when that attachment happens it seems extremely central to their psychology (and considering lady arikawa it’s not like they’re exempt from it, they’re just supposed to repress it to conform)

- laurence desperately trying to work out whether emily’s his daughter without actually asking anyone... delicious

the descriptions of roland’s letters: even more delicious

- temeraire sees the sad remnants of laurence’s robes and ‘hello darkness my old frieeeeend’ starts playing in his head... too bad laurence isn’t really in a position to experience the relief

- He is very much a one-note character, but O’Dea’s resolute dedicated fatalism is extremely funny

- hahaha poor temeraire... when you try to introduce bae to the family and they insist on being TOTALLY EMBARRASSING god

- The guilt of having caused pain to one deserving only consideration at his hand mingled with unanswered disquiet. I’m bawling laurence’s dad instincts are so pure and good even tho everything’s a bit messed up right now. like this whole paragraph is so powerful b/c you can see laurence’s natural loving impulse at war with his dad’s cold authoritarian parenting style and because his lived experience is removed he doesn’t know what is right.............. oh b o y

- oh okay I see my earlier comment about the opium wars proves unexpectedly prophetic

- it cannot be overstated how much I love junichiro or how happy I am that laurence is being so soft and patient with him. this kid has Been Through some shit

- emily roland shoulder to shoulder with laurence killing fools and he never doubts her for a moment... *chef kiss emoji*

- the problem with these books is that there are just so many good characters and so many of them don’t get any real page time in any given one -- I’m sitting here plaintively like ‘I realize this is not the most pressing issue right now but how is demane and sipho doing. are they okay. does sipho have enough books’

- ouch memory loss isn’t stopping laurence from flashing back to victory of eagles :(

there’s something so disconcerting about knowing why laurence reacts to things the way he does when he doesn’t; novik is using that very efficiently, this is a very satisfying use of amnesia just from a writer’s POV haha

- I like how none of these suckers really have the tools (or in some cases even inclination) to understand how messed up junichiro’s political situation is in all this

they just expect him to come home to britain with them and meanwhile he’s just found out that The greatest threat to his nation (from his POV I mean china/japan relations irl seem uh complicated) has more dragons in one field than he’s ever seen in his life. it’s a rough and lonely deal being this kid in this book

- oh ouch yes hey there laurence there might have been... a little bit of treason. true. extremely justified treason tho. I mean. oh dear

we don’t have tharkay and his unique mix of deep cynicism, incisive sarcasm and surprising depth of concise moral clarity here to assist with the aftermath so this could get u g l y

- listen what did I SAY about making me read about temeraire being miserable :(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

- SIPHO!! hey baby boy pls have some thought for your brother’s cardiac health tho

- aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw the fact that laurence is getting out of this crisis so much quicker this time because of his bone-deep instinctual knowledge of how much he loves temeraire, which doesn’t need specific memories to be true and felt. god. jesus. stars above

- laurence: approaches little

little: gay panic

- [Laurence] groped after the truth of himself like a prisoner in Plato’s cave, watching shadows. *clenches fist with great emotion* fuck naomi novik why must you be such an excellent goddamn writer im in pain

- oh hay arkady

poor poor temeraire feeling like a failure in every way is so awful but also kind of funny. ‘oh shit arkady’s egg oh fuck oh crap’

- I LOVE that hammond is so clearly and repeatedly shown to be a very astute political thinker and working shit out before everyone else! he may be a dumbass and a bit of a weasel but by god he’s great at what he does!

- laurence wouldn’t have changed anything if he could u guise. I . that. hm. oh

- thARKAY

.........arkady I am only a human and a small one at that but I will find some way to climb up there and wring your neck

(how cute is it that apparently jane roland realized she needed someone to find laurence and was like ‘well I need someone who can take care of themselves and knows the area and speaks dragon and Understands the chaotic ways of william laurence and also has looked uncharacteristically like a kicked puppy at the very mention of his name ever since being forced to leave him behind in australia.... hey tharkay you want a job’ fhkjshdfkalhsd)

- I’m very glad I googled ahead and spoiled myself a bit on this, because if I just read this part fresh I would have expired on the spot

- MISSION GET MY BOY BACK SAFE FOR GOD’S SAKE is a go

- general chu is pretty cool for an old dude you feel me

- . . . and Laurence knew him; knew him and knew himself.

ahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahaha

hahahahahahahhahahahaha

hahahahhha

haha

what... what pure undiluted soulmate nonsense is this. what. how. WHY would you do this

- I think I said something offhandedly in my victory of eagles reactions about how tharkay makes laurence remember who he is. I. thought I was exaggerating slightly for dramatic effect at the time. um wow

- I am having the sort of feelings about I need to write fiction about because my ability to express it any other way is failing me. That’s just about the highest praise I could give, really, Novik sure knows how to plant interesting seeds in her stories lol

- for the record this is not how I wanted him to end up in laurence’s bed

(im not thinking too much about how he got hurt b/c if I do I’ll start crying and that’ll just be embarrassing for everyone)

- “I hope you will forgive my mentioning it, Will,” Tharkay said, eventually, rousing Laurence from his reverie. “ -- I recognize there is a certain pot-calling quality to my doing so under the circumstances, but have you noticed that the top of your head appears likely to come off?”

a) my love for him is just. so pure. so complete. so deep b) consistent first name basis; the one sure way to make me swoon c) the implication that he’s just been quietly watching laurence while he was lost in thought... im so soft

- oh god laurence very gently helping out demane and roland because he remembers now....... i cry and my tears are blood welcome back buddy

- “I am of the opinion,” Tharkay said, “that you ought not assign to free will something more likely the consequence of a sharp blow to the skull.”

he truly is the gift that keeps giving. an endless cornucopia of sarcasm and delight. we do not deserve him.

- [The man he was eight years ago] would not have valued his own feelings, on such a matter, higher than the law and the discipline of the service. *AIRHORN AIRHORN AIRHORN* there we have it folks that’s literally his character arc spelled out, he would have done SO MUCH BAD SHIT because he thought his own feelings didn’t matter and yet he chose another direction, stupendous, brilliant, revolutionary

also him trying to get his support across to both of them in as roundabout and discreet way as possible... laurence you beautiful disaster

- im just so happ. so happy. so happy temeraire has his dumb dad back

- oh so the russians think the BRITISH, of all people, are too soft on their dragons... ruh-roh

- sdfskadlfj yes good tharkay the ROBES (also the implied depth of fond schadenfreude-tinged amusement contained in that ‘those particularly magnificent robes’.... *prayer hands emoji*)

laurence is like ET TU BABE?????

I think this is very delicate gong su speak for ‘please do not be a dumb bitch your majesty’

hahaha chu knows what’s up -- I am growing desperately fond of him, please don’t have him suffer any cop-one-day-from-retirement style accident

- “If I may cut your Gordian knot,” Tharkay said, with a glint in his eye. fdsklfhsdkflhdsakjfhdskjh remember back in black powder war when he was all closed off and phlegmatic and purposefully distant... and here he is... with a glint in his eye and a crazy ass plan that requires other people and that he actually shares before pulling it off and calling laurence by first name in public......... we’ve come so far

- Also this means he’s close enough to Laurence’s height and build that he can wear his clothes without it looking weird, which is nice to know because Laurence is sometimes more preoccupied with describing what men are wearing than, y’know, what they look like lol. (probably not quite as broad in the shoulders, tho, since it’s pointed out every time laurence is described that he has shoulders like a linebacker)

- temeraire: eXCUSE me god didn’t do this the emperor of china did???!?! rude???

- pffffffffff tharkay and chu being jaded world-weary bros for a second there... this is what I read these books for folks

- NOOOOOOOOOOO chu this is the one thing I asked you NOT to do D: temeraire being sad and scared about it is slowly murdering me, thank god laurence is back online for him

- dunno this napoleon dude sounds pretty great and all but this also sounds suspiciously... like trying to invade russia in the winter time. immovable force and unstoppable object or something. I mean I don’t read history so I don’t know. might be a great idea. who’s to say.

- I see that tharkay and laurence have reached the ‘communicating complex information solely through eyebrow movements’ stage of their relationship. *drinks this excellent excellent OTP juice with both hands*

- god I love how cool temeraire!napoleon is, in a strangely believable way. he’s just so weirdly charismatic and novik is SO GOOD at setting up a situation so you understand just how brilliant a move he’s made whenever he seems to be backed into a corner and turns it all around. I kind of want him to win at this point (though tbf all of europe fucking sucked at this time so like he doesn’t have to doll it up TOO much to look better by comparison haha)

- boooyyyy Laurence is P I S S E D (also him being like ??? :D that the general basically agreed with him lol)

ALSO also the fact that laurence does not realize that he’s like the fucking horror story all the major authorities around the globe tell each other at night... fjksdfhsdkjlhf

ah russia. truly consistently one of the most shit places to be a peasant or apparently a dragon through so much of history.

- junichiro Y__________Y no wonder laurence is so protective of him, he’s finally met someone as stubbornly stupidly ~*honorable*~ as himself. godspeed bb boy I wish you only the best even though I know your story line is never properly brought up again

- I ship... roland and demane... so much. like with my heart. she’s so young and earnest and curious and misses him so much and casually scandalizes alice about it fsjdakfjhds

- well I mean. dragons eating people is clearly not g r e a t but also... karma. y’know?

- this is a lot of words to use to convey the sentiment ‘oh they are all so fuuuuuuuuuuuuucked’ naomi novik

(feels a little like she wrote herself into a corner here tho -- she’s set up such an impossible situation, in RUSSIA in the WINTERTIME, that I’d need a hell of a lot of convincing to believe they get out of it)

- aaaah okay I really enjoyed this one too, especially the first half! I feel like this series is often at its most inspired when it sticks to a tighter character focus (for example I still vividly recall the part in the first book where Laurence stays in his father’s house and it’s Bad. relatedly........ F U C K lord allendale), and this brought that in spades. I love this series so much, it’s shamefully underappreciated in the speculative fiction world.

also it brought *me* to my knees with a simple “Tenzing,” [Laurence] said, which... holy shit. fuck. damn. that’s my personal recommendation of this book, tbh, even beyond my wish for this series to be more appreciated within the genre: Tharkay was there and it was very gay and non-obnoxious soulmate vibes???? I never even thought it could be done but here we are

This is probably going to be my last reaction thingy for the foreseeable future, since my local library doesn’t have book 9 and honestly... having read a few summaries of what happens in it I’m not that keen on reading it? That’s not the ending to this story I want, so I’ll just live over here in denialville, I-realize-the-author-made-the-choice-to-not-make-further-use-of-Lien-AKA-THE-coolest-antagonist-in-this-series-and-indeed-did-not-wrap-up-numerous-character-arcs-or-plot-lines-but-I-don’t-like-this-choice-so-I’ll-ignore-it

(actually I do sort of appreciate the idea of not having one grand final duel or something, because that’s not how it usually works in real life, but that she’d just shrug and not mercilessly hunt for the revenge she’s so clearly motivated by when everything she loves is falling apart around her again... that’s too much of a letdown to bear, really)

let me just... live in willful ignorance and pretend anything could happen from this point onward haha.

- let me give a final shout out to my boy gong su, who’s been hanging around since book 2 (!) and yet we do not know One Single personal detail about him for certain except that he sure knows how to handle knives. that’s some good spy shit right there, he knows what he’s about

#temeraire #blood of tyrants #willzing #william laurence x tenzing tharkay #aaaaaaaaand last one for a while! I had a lot of fun with this one even though I lost focus for weeks at a time at some points haha #that's not the book's fault that's very much a me problem

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schrijverr · 5 years

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Professor Elric?

After The Promised Day Edward is sent on a miliary mission to Hogwarts where he will teach Alchemy to his students. He is told not to interfere with their business, but he has a hard time not getting involved with this weird Voldy prick.

On AO3.

Ships: none

Warnings: none

Chapter 6 out of 10.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Umbitch was really getting on Edwards nerves. She had been on his trail like a bloodhound ever since he’d shown up. She wanted to know what the limitations of Alchemy where, what he knew about Amestris, if he knew You-know-who and how he taught. She had been aching to get inside his classroom, but so far he had managed to keep her out. It seemed like his luck had ran out, he knew he shouldn’t have told those fifth years he was a muggle, ever since that she had been unrelenting and now the day had come.

“Good morning class, as you can see we have a guest. Why she insists on coming I don’t know, but she is here to disrupt so expect this lesson to be a bit different that usual.” He began.

He nodded at Umbridge before turning back to his students and saying: “We have been studying Alchemic arrays for some time now. This will be the last theoretical lesson before we move on to doing Alchemy in the classroom. When I call on you, you will come forward and draw the array I tell you on this table. I will show it to the class and we’ll collectively decide if it is correct, if it is I will use it to transmute some of the materials I have here.”

“Hermione, could you please draw an array to transmute the rust of this iron dagger?” he asked.

The girl drew the perfect circle, which he knew she would. She was very smart, liked to study and just generally knew her stuff. Once the class had also determined it was the correct transmutation-circle he preformed transmutation. He didn’t do it often, so there were still a few gasps when the rusted iron dagger came out in perfect shape.

“Okay, next. Neville, could you draw an array to change this heap of chalk into some crayons for the board?” he said.

While the boy was drawing he looked at Umbridge, she was writing on her notepad while mouthing words to herself. It seemed harmless, but he had heard the stories, once she was comfortable in your classroom she would attack you with questions. He didn’t have more time to think about it, because Neville was done drawing.

He showed the array to the class and asked: “Draco, what do you think of Neville's array?”

Draco studied the array, he was like Hermione in academics although he was more of a prick about knowing things, though it was a close call. He had pulled a few stunts in his time in Edwards classroom, but he had also soon realized that without his friends here it was pretty useless to pit everyone against him, so he had quickly learned to shut up and he has been even pleasant after. After he’d studied it for a moment he said: “I can’t find a fault.”

“And you would be correct with that. This array is perfect, well done Neville and Draco.” he said, he was proud of Neville, the boy seemed to struggle a bit and he had made a mistake in the array last lesson, which is why he had asked the boy about it now.

Before he could transmute Umbridge cleared her throat, he shot her an unimpressed look, which she completely ignored. She asked: “Aren’t you going to give point to their houses for their job well done?”

He pretended to think about it then he said: “Are you asking me to take part in a house culture you created to pit students against each other and base their initial judgments upon which causes discrimination on yet another factor within this school and prevents friendships, because honestly I don’t feel the need to. They get praise when they do well and they learn, that is the reward in my classroom. I read the contract, nowhere does it state that I am required to give or take housepoints. Now, can I go on with my lesson or are you planning on interrupting even longer?”

Umbridge stayed quiet and Edward took that as a sign that she wouldn’t interrupt for now and went on. He did the transmutation and put the crayons by the board, he had been running low. Then he said: “Hannah, could you draw a basic array.”

They went through two more arrays before Umbridge felt the need to interrupt again. He had needed something from the table in the corner and he had walked over there to grab it. She said: “I’m curious, Mister Elric. Why don’t you use accio?”

“You are not curious, you just want to point out that I am a muggle.” he said with a sigh, “I honestly don’t see the need for you to dance around these things, just ask ‘hey, heard you were a muggle, is that true?’ so much easier and faster.”

She was taken aback by this, but quickly recovered sadly enough. She said: “I don’t see the need for your rudeness, Mister Elric. As a teacher of a magical subject it is quite concerning that you aren’t a wizard yourself. Are you even fit to teach?”

“There are a few things I want to address about that statement. Firstly, I don’t like you, so that will be Colonel Elric to you, secondly, Alchemy is science not magic, I will not be swayed on that point and thirdly, I am capable of doing what I teach, which is more than I can say for you, so I don’t understand the cause for your concern.” Edward told her.

“Colonel Elric, I will not be addressed like that.” she spat.

Edward shrugged: “My classroom, my rules. You don’t want to be addressed like you address me then there is the door. Have a good day.”

“You cannot kick me out, I am the High Inquisitor.” she said offended.

“I know, if it’s any help I call my commanding officer General Bastard, so it’s nothing personal. Or you could think it is, I never really got along with him.” this of course was a lie, he and Roy had become pretty good friends and it was now some kind of friendly nickname, but she didn’t need to know that.

She opened and closed her mouth a few times before she could gather her bearings, then she said: “I will not be kicked out, Colonel, but I do have a few more questions. How did you become a Colonel at, what was your age again?”

Edward rolled his eyes, ugh, this again, he was getting tired and he just wanted to get her out of his clssroom.

“Seventeen.” he replied, “And the whole story is a bit long, so I’ll give you the bullet points. I had to provide for me and my brother, so I became a State Alchemist at twelve. The State can be pretty dumb, they were convinced no child could pass their test and therefore an age restriction wasn’t necessary. I passed, being a State-Alchemist gives you a rank as Major. Are you following me so far? Good. I went on missions and discovered a conspiracy then last year we held a coup and overthrew the corrupt government. The then General Grunman came into power, he was the boss of my boss in the east. Everyone who helped with the coup got a big promotion. So, I am indeed a Colonel at seventeen.”

Everybody was quiet, they had expected a lot, but not this. Umbridge looked quite pale, which honestly, was to be expected, she herself was a government official and she was standing in front of a boy who had helped to overthrow his government at sixteen.

When she had recovered enough she immediately went in for emotional trauma: “Why did you have to provide for you brother at twelve.”

A dark look passed over his face, but he decided what the hell I’m in this hellhole now, might as well make her uncomfortable with my Tragic PastTM. So he said: “Well, it’s not really twelve, bit earlier really. Our dad is out of the picture, my mom died when I was five, but Grandma Pinako took us in. She’s the grandmother of our friend Winry, but her kids are dead too and she has a shop to run, so she didn’t really have the time or money for three kids. After that we lived with our teacher for a while, but she once she was done teaching us we had to leave. You might have had the luxury of a support system, but don’t assume everyone had.”

It was again quiet in the class. Edward wasn’t a private person per say, you could conclude that after the amount of times he had told people, strangers and friends alike, about his human transmutation back home, but he wasn’t someone who shared a lot without reason or prompting, especially not with his classes. He had learned and these people didn’t know him at all, he was a blank slate. He rather fill it with how awesome he was instead of how sad of a life he had lived.

“Well, was that all? Because you just wasted fifteen minutes of my class. In those fifteen minutes my students could have become a little smarter, broadened your tiny magic minds a bit more, but you just prevented that. Congratulations, you fail as a teacher.” he said.

Umbridge didn’t stay quiet, she protested: “‘Magic minds’ ,as you like to call them, aren’t small. You are generalizing.”

He raised one eyebrow and mustered his best unimpressed look as he said: “I find that hard to believe and I could argue that based on how you think I am incapable because of my age and non-magic background or I could generalize even more and ask you, if you look at the entire wizarding world, can you tell me how much it would collapse if magic were to suddenly disappear?”

Then he turned back to the board and wrote down CDR under each other before turning back to the class and asking: “Now, who can tell me what these letters stand for and why they are important?”

They were dismissed and an unhappy Umbridge walked out of the classroom. Hermione was the last one left and she made her way over to Mister Elrics desk. She bit her lip and said: “I know you don’t like to talk after you’ve dismissed us, but aren’t you worried about losing your job?”

He stopped rummaging in his back to give her a smile. “I’m sorry if I worried you there, but Umbridge is an annoying shit who loves power a bit too much. I know her type, but I also know her limitations. She can try to sack me, but I’ve been send over here to make a bridge between our countries, the Ministry doesn’t want to see me go and besides that, I don’t need this job, it might surprise you, but being a Colonel in a military state pays pretty good. I am planning to donate the money I earn here to some kind of charity and to give it some to friends who need it more than me.”

“Oh, now I feel kind of stupid.” Hermione said with a blush.

“Never feel stupid, you probably hear this a lot, but you are very smart. Alchemy is very hard and so far you are picking it up faster than I hoped. You’re going to see me around, but I do want to give you a bit of wisdom. Don’t doubt yourself and never dumb yourself down, you are picking up Alchemy, do not forget it. You are a wizard and from what I see and hear there is a war coming up, use what you learn, because wizards don’t know what to do when they’re faced with muggle solutions.” Mister Elric looked at her intently.

She nodded that she had understood and said: “When you’re giving wisdom like that it’s hard to remember that you’re just seventeen. My friend has two brothers who are your age, but have half the maturity.”

He laughed and thought, thanks it’s the trauma, but he said: “Yeah, I get that pretty often. Hey, you wouldn’t know a good wizard charity, would you?”

“Well, I am the founder of S.P.E.W., it’s for the freedom of house-elves, you should read about them, it’s horrible how wizards treat them.” Hermione said, “but if you think it’s dumb you could donate to St. Mungo’s, it’s the hospital, they could always use some money.”

“S.P.E.W., I’ll keep it in mind, thanks.” and he smiled at her again, then he said: “It’s getting late you’re going to have to run of you want to be in time for you next lesson.”

She paled a bit and cursed as she bid her goodbye and ran out of the classroom. She had so much to tell Ron and Harry at their next DA meeting.

#RR writing #edward elric #bamf edward elric #alchemy teacher edward elric #Professor Elric #colonel Elric #hermoine granger #draco malfoy #neville longbottom #dolores umbridge #dumbledore's army #Harry Potter #fullmetal alchimist brotherhood and harry potter crossover #harry potter au #fma brotherhood #FMA AU #Professor Elric?#Professor Elric? Chapter 6 #SPEW

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videogamesincolor · 6 years

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Detroit: Become Human (2018) -Exploitative Sci-Fi for Gamers

The Following article contains major spoilers for Detroit: Become Human

Folk can’t quite believe DBH’s player base loves Markus by an 80% plus margin. It’s like Grey’s Anatomy doesn’t exist or something.

On some level, Quantic Dream’s video games following Beyond: Two Souls are going to be a mechanical refinement of their gameplay, and not much else. If the Ellen Page driven game demonstrated anything, it was that the studio’s creative head has an innate inability to learn from his mistakes and he’s got a fetish for particular narrative cues, and all of them revolve around violence, racism and shock value.

Detroit: Become Human shares a lot in common with Max Landis and David Ayer’s 2017 direct-to-Netflix film Bright. Both are allegorical tales that utilize the iconism, present and historical, of the Black community and their key movements as a backdrop for the oppressed fantasy caricatures of their tale. With Bright, Orcs were the Allegorical Black community of the here and now.

With Become Human, Androids are representative of the Black community at various points in our people’s history. All of it is supported by the locale of Detroit, Michigan, a state with connections to the Underground Railroad (the game hits you with this trivia bit right off), Martin Luther King Jr., and anti-black violence that embroiled much of the United States when my parents were children.

Bright attempted (and failed) to re imagine some weird not-so-post-racial world where Tolkien-inspired aesthetics and archetypes were our history and influenced our present, with little changed about our factual history. Mankind is united in mutual hate of Orcs, and the motto “Black Lives Matter” continues to be a punchline to those unaffected by police brutality in a world where fairies are the equivalent of pests.

Become Human is yet another in the long line of over bright and sterile science fiction games that want to be Blade Runner, but doesn’t have the wherewithal to pull it off. And this is mostly because it’s too busy trying to shout “message!” For lack of a better word, Become Human gags itself with its own allusions despite some particularly interesting mechanics and sequences that exist within the ham-fisted racism narrative.

What is Become Human about?

The primary narrative of Detroit: Become Human is driven by the story of “Markus” (Jesse Williams), a specialized android, that, like most, runs the risk of triggering a dormant "virus” that simulates sentience in androids. He was gifted to old artist by the android creator (a man named Kamski). The beginning of his narrative sees him care for Carl (Lance Hendrickson), the old man in question.

He gets kicked around by anti-robot protesters, and has to ride the back of the bus with other androids. After telegraphed prompts that tell you his mistreatment at the hands of Carl’s son, Leo, is not far, the virus triggers itself, Markus begins to act of his own accord. The end result, where he may or may or not kill Leo, or simply gets blamed for the death of Carl when he dies of a heart attack, leads to his being shot by the police.

After he’s practically destroyed, he reactivates and he pulls himself out of the mud Shawshank Redemption-style and finds an abandoned ship full of busted androids that were looking for a leader. Markus, not interested in hiding the shadows, more or less appoints himself in that position because he’s the only one with some kind of proactive goal: To end enslavement of androids everywhere.

The secondary narrative focuses on a service android named “Kara” (Valorie Curry), who was busted up by her owner - a man named Todd Williams (IIRC) - during an abusive fit against his daughter, Alice. After she’s repaired, Kara returns to his home and resumes caring for him and Alice and accidentally discovers that Alice is not a human child, but an android (apparently Todd’s wife left him for an accountant and took her daughter with her). She ignores it, and, under duress, gains sentence when she believes Todd is going to kill Alice while high on Red Ice (a hyped up version of Crack).

She runs away with Alice in the hopes of reaching the Underground Android Railroad to escape to Canada where there are no robot laws, and encounters a fairly large (Black) Android named Luther, who decides he’ll do anything to protect them from harm.

The third narrative is that of “Connor” (Bryan Dechart), an android type, designed specifically for police investigations. Connor is sent to work with a grouchy old detective named Hank Anderson (Clancy Brown), who hates androids (because reasons) and doesn’t want to be bothered Connor’s overly stiff behavior and awkward attempts to get to know him.

Connor and Hank effectively run behind the likes of Markus and Kara, their narratives intersecting every now and again (until the end of the game), trying to figure out why Androids keep going homicidal and killing human beings.

While Markus’ plot drives the surface narrative, not unlike Bioshock Infinite, behind the scenes, the plot of Become Human involves a faceless corporation named CyberLife. From how I understood it, CyberLife, with the sole living monopoly on android creation, is looking to create an artificial conflict between humans and androids by using a virus that simulates sentience in machines that causes them to rebel against their owners.

When enough chaos is created, CyberLife would keep up the facade of an issue and supplant their man-made rebellion against humans using android (Connor) with no real “free will” of its own. It’s about as sci-fi as you can get and probably should’ve been the focus of the narrative from the jump.

Characters in Become Human;

I can’t wait to see white-face Android cosplay at this year’s conventions :D

Out the three playable characters that the player can control, the androids Kara and Connor have narratives that are focused more on the “personal” than the Frankenstein politics of the game that Markus represents. Performance wise, of the three characters, Valorie Curry and Jesse Williams give an ideal “robotic” performance that feels natural to their characters respective roles.

Of the characters within Markus’ narrative, Josh and Simon are probably easiest to become endeared to. They have opposing opinions on how to handle their rebellion, but they’re not rivals. They have the strongest rapport with Markus, but the game barely gives either any screentime so they’re effectively minor characters that get wasted for some arbitrary “Josh and Simon will remember that” nonsense.

She’s like that guy from Two Souls who wouldn’t take “no” for an answer

Carl is an obnoxious “nice old man” type that’s supposed to represent the best of humanity, but given the context of the world, he’s willfully ignorant to the climate that game itself ignores, and his interactions with Markus are uncomfortable to watch. The narrative pushes the android North (Minka Kelly) at the forefront of the Markus’ narrative (at the expense of his relationships with Josh and Simon), and she is the least interesting character out of the bunch that gets face time with Markus. She simply exists to say “Hey, Markus, choose violence” and instantly be promoted to lover. Simon and Joshua are right there, my mans.

Markus himself is a frustrating character for me, because (aside from my scruples with his actor) he is so representative of a white writer’s ideal Black character. It’s hard to even root for the character beyond the general principal. His arc stokes a kind of anger in me like nothing else. And the other part of me simply cannot wrap her head around Jesse Williams (a former public school teacher, with more than a little knowledge on racism) just signing off on this nonsense that effectively makes the character what he is. But, this wouldn’t be the first time a Black actor made questionable career choices.

With Kara, what keeps her narrative engaging are her interactions with Luther, Alice, and her denial that Alice isn’t a machine, but a human girl. But, Kara’s disadvantage is that she is a female character created by David Cage, so he spells out to the audience what he thinks she is: A motherbot to a childbot, that’s her entire role.

Why can’t we be friends?

Her desire, her want to save Alice from Todd isn’t Kara being concerned about someone who’d be under her care, someone who has to rely on her for help given her age. Instead it’s treated like the path to motherhood as opposed to a friendship. It’s like watching a version of Ripley and Newt’s relationship in Aliens where the reason for Ripley and Newt eventually regarding themselves as mother and daughter (their shared loss) doesn’t exist. Even the guy who assaults Kara and (potentially) wipes her memory assigns motherhood to her concern for Alice and it’s like, “well, that’s a bit fucking presumptuous of you, mate”.It’s really gross.

And in that sense, Alice isn’t a character; she’s a narrative tool to further exemplify Cage’s odd fixation this particular aspect of femininity. The performance of the actors sells the relationship quite well, about as well as Ellen Page sells the suicidal agony of her character Jodie Holmes in Two Souls, but the sudden promotion to “mother and child” is unearned and artificial.

The attention to detail that goes into Connor’s narrative, the choice of whether or not the player will allow the virus to trigger sentience, or go full on Robocop and fulfill the desire of CyberLife to the letter, is not the kind of detail you see in Kara and Markus’ tale. His narrative is primarily driven by the pseudo-paternal relationship he ends up forming with Clancy Brown’s Hank Anderson, who mourns the death of his son (insert “Jason!” joke here), but for reasons completely unrelated to his hatred of androids (he admits that much in the climax).

Every time the game puts Hank in danger, you’re given the choice of perusing the mission or risking a 40-80% chance of survival doesn’t mean the game will fuck you over and kill the Kurgan. I’m gonna assume everyone dove over their coffee tables to save Mr. Krabs and hung the mission.

Clancy has really round eyes, and I’m just noticing that for the 1st time

The he arc is as engaging as it is because of Clancy Brown’s performance. Dechart tries, he’s got a great rapport with Brown (unquestionably), but his limits are obvious. He often sounds like he’s putting on an act, something you shouldn’t be thinking of during an actor’s performance, and that can be distracting (I’m sure the direction doesn’t help either). I wouldn’t be surprised if that some point Quantic Dream was debating over whether or not this would be a game focused solely on Kara or Connor. Markus feels like something that was jammed into the game at the last minute to satisfy Cage’s celebrity itch and ideas of being progressive. That’s something I’ve always thought since they debuted the character back in E3 2017 (IIRC).

Out of all the human characters in the game, Clancy Brown’s Hank Anderson is the only one that feels like a person and not a plot device. Sure, he’s wrapped in all the trappings of a generic loner cop who hates partners (insert Buddy Cop Reference Here), but Clancy Brown manages to make an otherwise dull character work. On the flip-side, the generic asshole cop is such a walking stereotype there’s nothing genuine about his interactions with anyone.

He’s just there to reinforce the fantasy prejudices of the game and harp on and on about “them robots are gonna take our jobs”. Like, he didn’t need to exist because he does not contribute to the plot. The all too comical way he says “Fuck” (like he’s sneezing or some shit) – in a poor attempt to emulate the frustrations we often see in procedural dramas or action films when a standoff occurs – only further highlights how much of a caricature he is. This nigga can’t “bad cop” to save his life.

There aren’t a lot of characters to write home about in Become Human, or if there is I keep forgetting all about them and I can’t be arsed to recall them. Most of them are inconsequential and disappear after a single level appearance. If I’m being honest, I don’t hate the characters in Become Human (not most of them), so much as I loathe what some represent.

The Mechanics of Become Human;

Next Level Detective Vision(TM)

Become Human’s strength lies in being what I think is a fairly solid attempt at broadening the multiple choice system Adventure Games are otherwise derided for by individuals with a limited idea on what constitutes as a video game. It’s clear that Quantic Dream has taken cues from the likes of Dontnod Entertainment and Supermassive Games’ Life Is Strange and Until Dawn. Both are studios (with writers) managed to create a pair of fairly compelling adventure games, with wildly different takes on the multiple-choice system that’ll probably be remembered better in the positive than most, Quantic Dream included.

There are a number of outcomes that can happen within the game, depending on your actions. Some things change completely, other times it feels like a lot of its surface detail meant to wow you the first time. There’s usually only one conclusion to a level. For instance, even if Connor investigates the ruined house that Alice and Kara are hiding in, the end state is always going to be Kara and Alice escaping, no question about it. Markus always ends up getting shot and torn apart. Whether or not you decide to attack Leo doesn’t change his end state.

From my understanding there are multiple endings a player can get based on what the game decides are “morally wrong” decisions. Connor killing Androids for example, may always lead him down to a path of deactivation if you choose to fulfill your mission to the letter. Some, if not most of the central player characters and their cast can die. Hell, Markus can apparently just peace out of being the leader of the farcical android rebellion and North will take over in his place (that cracks me up). And one the more extreme options is to nuke Detroit to run the humans out of town. Whether or not it’ll make sense is another matter entirely.

Depending on the length of the levels, there are a number of things you can investigate and locate with the help of detective vision. Most of it really doesn’t inform the world in any meaningful way, a lot of it is collectibles for the sake of collectibles that never carry any consequence into the game (and the one item that does, is hidden and used as a moralizing plot twist that reeks of Cage brownnosing). The rest actually effects what you can say to characters.

The more details you find and learn about, the longer your multiple choice dialog lists becomes for certain characters. The problem, like with most multiple choice prompts, is that single words defining the response often lead to “oh, wait, shit, I didn’t mean that!” Because Cage clearly had different ideas about what “determined” and “uncertain” meant.

Jesse Williams??? In my junkyard???

If you’ve played a Quantic Dream game, then you know the deal mechanically. Motion Controls and Quick Time Events that more or less act like a fast forward button on a cinematic. Things you’d otherwise be able to do with basic button inputs, or a push of the analog stick, without any sort’ve guide, are rigged to Quick Time Events and motion controls. Want Marcus to stand up? Well you gotta wiggle that control and press and hold down numerous buttons before the cinematic decides to allow him to stand up.

It’s basically Telltale mechanics, which isn’t bad per say, but I like being able to stand up without playing Twister. The most freedom you get as a player is being allowed to walk around – to some degree – at your leisure (unless you’re being time attacked) and just take in the environment and click on stuff. In some instances, if you take too long, the game jumps to the next cinematic and that’s that.

Respectively, Connor and Markus are the only two out of the three androids that can create or recreate scenarios of through the study of their environment or certain objects. Markus can deduce whether or not he can make certain jumps or defenses against attacks. Connor can more or less do the same, but his mechanic is structured around picking up objects in crime scene and recreating a simulation of how events may have happened.

Kara lets her Otaku flag fly

Compare all of that to Kara, who can just change the color of her hair from blonde, black, brown and white. Her whole character seems built around her pixie hair cut and to that degree, the banality of her attractiveness (and remembering the creepy as fuck tech demo this game spawned from reinforces that). Yet, Connor and Markus can be both “attractive” and “functional”.

Philip Sheppard, Nima Fakhrara, and John Paesano compose what I think might be the best score from a Quantic Dream game I’ve heard after Beyond: Two Souls (which had Lorne Balfe and Hans Zimmer as its composers). It clearly apes the Vangelis aesthetic in a lot of places (namely Connor’s segments), but each character has a unique theme that either gets integrated into myriad of moods the music can adopt, or plays straight in a lot of sequences. It works pretty well as background noise, separate from the game.

All this scene needed was a saxophone

Another strong element in Become Human, outside of its narrative tree design, is the game’s environmental design. Become Human takes what are apparent cues from Dontnod Entertainment’s Remember Me, which imagined a futuristic Neo-Paris with a far more grounded approach than something like the direct-to-Netflix film Mute or even Blade Runner 2049, which is all lights, holograms, smog, and high-rise buildings. Become Human is chuck-full of nighttime shots, and rainy environments. There are still remnants of the old Detroit, but its slowly being dominated by the future that shouldn’t be able to sustain itself with a 40% unemployment rate, but go off Quantic Dream.

If you’re the type who’s easily wooed by high definition graphics (which isn’t something to write home about anymore. It’s done capped itself), especially with all the hub-bub going around about 4K RESOLUTION AND 4K SCREENS, then Become Human won’t have to do much to impress, just hit you with a lens flare.

With regard to cinematography and choreography, when Become Human is good, it’s good. Two of the strongest sequences in the game are the dead end story thread where Connor and Hank go checking into a bird infested apartment occupied by a runaway android, and the entire attack on the Jericho. Connor’s pursuit sequence is, for the most part, is pretty well directed, and it’s what I look forward play in a game like this. But, its also where the QTEs hindrance comes into play far more often. It’s not the kind of scene that needed anything except the prompts telling which way was safer and which way was quicker.

The Jericho siege is a fast paced implementation of the character perspective switch (that began slowly in earlier parts of the level) that works to keep varying levels of stress pressed upon the player. You’re encouraged to hide as Kara (she ain’t shit in a fight) and the game tries its damnedest to kill Luther (<_<), Markus has to save everyone he can (top priorities: Josh and Simon) and suddenly gains the ability to Keanu Reeves just about everyone in his path; Connor, from I can recollect, is more background support for Markus and gets shot if you try to save North (<_<). It’s cinematic when it counts and interactive where it matters.

Those are the two stand out sequences. The rest of the action in the game is more reflective of the awkward “which Connor is the real Connor?” fight scene which is just clumsily shot and broken to hell with QTEs (to say nothing of how botched the “tell me something only the REAL Connor would know” scene was).

Questionable Worldbuilding

Kamski, David Cage’s self insert.

There’s a certain level of suspension of disbelief required when it comes to science fiction. Unless you’re an author like Michael Crichton (who lived and died by the amount of [academic] research he put into his stories, or borrowed from his own experiences) science fiction – moreso than fantasy –, especially dystopic science fiction, is always gonna be amalgamation of fact and some nonsense an author threw at the wall.

But the mark of a good writer is usually the one who has you thinking about the ideas presented in the narrative, not what you as an audience member would’ve done to fix the narrative’s persisting problems. In this case, Michael Crichton is the former. David Cage is the latter.

The world in Become Human doesn’t feel lived in. There’s no real explanation as to how the world in the game got to where it is, and its obsession with “World War 3″ is a lazy dab into politics. There are places and circumstances that fit each situation in the narrative, but on a whole, it doesn’t feel like a place that could actually exist like Middle Earth, or even the Earth of Harry Potter, which blends the “wizarding world” and the “muggle world” together quite well without creating a grievous dissonance in the narrative. It’s a collection of sets characters are strolling through.

Cage lifts strife and topical issues from the past and present to build his world, but utterly fails to understand the context and environmental circumstances that informs what are issues steeped in anti-blackness and white supremacy. He’s not unlike Zack Snyder, who is so preoccupied with how “cool” a scene in his movie looks, there’s never anything of substance in the final product. The depth of his understanding of racism, mass deportation, and antisemitism is that it’s “bad” and not much else.

For instance, there’s little explanation as to why Canada has no Robot Laws (not one I found), or why ‘sentient’ Androids would even assume why they’d be safe there and not sent right back to the United States. Another head scratcher is a law only recently required androids wear signifies that they were machines, when uncanny valley still seems to be a hugely noticeable problem (at least when the plot requires it).

There’s the usual Cage mumbo-jumbo of a messiah figure come to rescue his characters from strife (RA-9, the androids call ‘em), but given that the game constantly implies that “Deviancy” was not a widespread or common thing until recently, the attempt at creating a “folk hero” character for the Androids make little sense given the story fails to properly set up its protagonists conflict. Its ever only brought up in a explanation manner and dropped shortly thereafter. it’s untrimmed fat for the investigative bits of Connor’s gameplay passed off in a move to make the world seem more lived in than it is.

You can’t afford a job, you can definitely afford to oppress a android

The big talking point that many believe punches holes in the narrative is how the implementation of Androids have impacted humans socially and financially. Become Human presents itself as a pseudo-futuristic world (set in Detroit, Michigan) of 2038 (twenty years from now) where Androids cost the equivalent of what some folk I know think an Apple or Google Android cellphone might twenty years from now (it’s like $8k or something?). Even if you’re hard up for cash or living hand-to-mouth with a drug habit, you can afford an android somehow.

Androids are allowed to participate in sports despite the general danger to human life that poses, but no one really comments on that (you only know about it because of a collectible) in the game. Not a single person of color took issue with the fact that a rich white man created androids that looked like people in their community, and effectively built them for nothing except labor, sex bot fun times, and absolute servitude.

Androids have also become so prevalent as the labor or work force, that 40% or more of the American population (I guess??? It’s unclear) is out of work. And In which case, old man Carl, sitting financially secure up in his mansion with an android, is the personification of a rich man out of touch, but having the gall to look down on the protesting poor (which is not how the narrative frames in the least).

Reasonably, this should mean the economy is in a bad way on some level. Yet, the states is somehow stable enough to maintain pristine streets, glossy stores and a thriving economy, despite most people being too broke, poor, or out of work to actually support it.

Capitalism has gouged a hole so badly into United States, it shouldn’t be able support itself the way the game presents, and this is based on just how utterly messed up the general landscape of unemployment in the Great Depression was at a mere 25% (15 million unemployed) as most people keep bringing up. And that was following a market crash that’s often used as barometer against the 2008 market crash. Our current unemployment rate is apparently 3.8% and the US has more problems than it can manage.

You’d think the world would actually look like something out of Days of Future Past or Judge Dredd, or maybe even mimic what was documented during the actual Depression (a little less extreme than the above). But, no, not really. Folk aren’t rioting in the streets, being suppressed by the police, aren’t demanding something be done a corporation that put them in a bind, or trying to overthrow the government for fucking them over the financial hole with machines. (Or at the very least leading the rich to the guillotines.)

No, most (even people who aren’t financially well off) still live relatively comfortable lives, maybe a few of them are homeless because of the android situation, but for the most part nothing seems to have really changed. And thinking about that just rather leads you down a rabbit hole of, “okay, well, how different is the economy from our reality that this can happen and the world is functioning as it were the 21st Century present?”

The future ain’t no promised land...

The game also wants to make a big to do about there being a white female president (more brownnosing from Cage), but the most you ever learn about this character is in a collectible and she simply exists to appear at the end of the game’s “good” or “bad” endings then disappears. And for the most part, considering he’s not exactly preoccupied with how politics plays into capitalism, what is so progressive about a white female president who isn’t all that bothered by the fact androids have put most of the people who probably voted for her out of work, and doesn’t lift a finger until androids start going homicidal? She not getting reelected.

The “humans are racist against androids” spiel falls further apart you realize that Cage wants to draw a parallel to a couple people with signs and the homeless, to the literal white supremacists of [middle] America that voted Donald Trump into office on the promise that he would deport and exile immigrants that “took American jobs” from the hard working racists of the United States. He wants people to believe that, when he’s created a circumstance where people would be rightfully pissed that they’ve been replaced by machines (who aren’t immigrants, let alone prisoners in Nazi Germany) and have no financial means. But, emotions, y’all, machines are people too.

Mankind in Become Human is united by their mutual racism against robots. So much so, that the habit of referring to machines with gendered pronouns or pet names is a thing of the past. Male or female coded androids are just “it”, not “they”, “she” or “he”. Racism is apparently a thing of the past. Sure, Rose (Harriet Tubman reborn) makes a reference to historical racism, and Markus bleats, “human have been killing each other over skin color and god for eons” (as though this is supposed to distance the android narrative from the allegory Cage wrapped his game around), but for all intents and purposes, you never see this this exemplified in the game that isn’t an [un]conscious display of Cage’s racism.

Like most allegorical worlds, Cage’s world is so preoccupied with creating this victim paradigm with robots, that it appears post racial to the point where the only problem that exists is basically “goddamn, I really hate those robots taking our jobs”.

For Tracy, Blue Hair Tracy is the Warmest Android

Hell, Homophobia’s not even a problem, because two female robots with the same face can basically declare their love and the only thing unusual about it is “Robots in love? I can’t comprehend that!” So, the one thing that needs to be Kumbya’ed into the past is anti-android sentiment and thanks to the multiple choice system in the game, you can either eradicate android resistance, or create a world they might sorta kinda be free (or at least the lead characters can).

For all the bluster about humans not seeing robots as individuals, they protest against and treat the androids like they’re individuals, as opposed to protesting against them as symptom created by a company that exacerbates their problem.

Appropriating Specific Pains For Entertainment

A Black Cop faces Androids mimicking Hands up, Don’t Shoot

The internet was a big part of why so many Black voices have been heard in the wake of what has always been a commonplace thing – the violent and needless deaths of people within the Black community, man, woman, child and infant. The period between reports on the exoneration of the police officer who murdered six year old Aiyana Stanley-Jones in 2010, and the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012 seems long enough that, if you simply weren’t paying attention, you’d never consider it an epidemic like we do now.

But the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice in 2014 and Sandra Bland and Freddie Gray in 2015 all seemed to bring an end to that. The less than graceful handling of the issues by the white media made it impossible to ignore how the damaging effects of the frequency of Black death were, created Post Traumatic Stress in the Black Community.

David Cage, in perhaps one the more naked displays of ignorance, decides it’s a good idea to use the imagery of the Black Power fist to represent oppressed machines wearing human faces. He decides the plight of the androids, who protest in the same fashion Black Americans did in Ferguson, Missouri, New York City, and Baltimore City, their hands up and marching through the streets, is a comparable to demanding the end of state sanctioned police brutality. He decides, the comparison of machines who suddenly gain sentience for little to no reason other than their creators manufacturing a fake rebellion for shits and giggles, to Black lives demanding that people stop killing them, are comparable situations.

She can’t quite believe the tagline she comes with

Throwing them in the back of the bus, slapping them with iconism that draws allusion to the Jewish Holocaust (which gets worse with a bad ending and references of Androids herded into camps for destruction), parking them in place like bikes, and putting them on display in stores (like slaves being auctioned off) is sensationalism mean to pull at the heartstrings – and it’ll definitely get you feeling some kind of way, that’s for sure.

I think the one thing that truly made me ill was reading subtitled off-screen dialog near the end of the game say, “Androids were being hanged all along Woodward Avenue.” It repeated in my head like an ugly mantra and I kept having to pause so as not to throw fit. The levels of irresponsibility that you have to cradle yourself in to think it’s remotely okay to invoke mass lynching imagery...

Dehumanization of enslaved Africans, whom white people regard as sub-human is not remotely comparable to androids meant to stage a manufactured rebellion by a faceless corporation headed by a deviant Black woman playing Hal-9000.

It’s a bad look and doubly insulting to just co-op the history of the Underground Railroad, which is another anvil on the audience’s head just in case the last couple weren’t quite enough for you to get the message.

And the way Markus and eventually every robot “frees” itself from “slavery” merely makes them look robots under the control of a hive-mind. They fall in line without question. They’re not acting as individuals, who’d have wildly different reactions and desires to any given situation. They literally act like the robots in I, Robot under the control of overlord A.I. that decided humans couldn’t be trusted not to kill themselves.

Anti-Blackness, Sexism, and David Cage

Yeah, I got nothing...

David Cage and his long romantic affair with anti-Blackness and sexism is one that is otherwise well documented, but largely ignored by the gaming community who still think addressing racism perpetuates racism and saying “SJW” indentures them with any remote credibility. To say nothing of the white liberals who’ve showered the game with praise because they’re convinced this is a profound take on the oppression narrative..

It’s unquestionable that David Cage is fixated on inserting violence done marginalized groups in his stories. He is incapable of handling the issue with maturity. And the news that his company reflects those same toxic ideas has spread long and loud enough that trying to pretend either is not a problem in this day and age in the name of “not ruining fandom’s fun” is stiflingly ignorant.

Sex workers/sex bots (all androids now) are brutally murdered and raped for not much else beyond the furthered narrative of characters like Markus and Connor. North only admits to being sexually assaulted so Cage can set up her as a lover for Markus, regardless of the player’s potential disinterest in romancing or interacting with the character. North doesn’t exist for much else besides being a prop for Markus and Cage exemplifying M/F relationships are compulsory in his universe.

Lesbians are used merely as a barometer for Connor’s morality, and are so ham-fistedly stuffed into the game (with awkward zoom-ins on their clasped hands, not once, but twice), that you can hear Cage patting himself on the back for even daring to think about two women in love on such a shallow level. They have no character or personality beyond that.

Child abuse and the abuse featured in the game feels jammed into a narrative that also wants you to sympathize with Alice’s father (Todd) because he immediately apologizes for being shitty. It’s also another excuse for David Cage to write a male character calling a female character a “bitch”, which is a reoccurring theme in all his games. Kara is constantly threatened harm by men and put situations where she barely escapes danger (or doesn’t) in ways that Markus and Connor aren’t. This is all meant to endear the audience to her relationship with Alice and her tenacity.

Kara and Alice ain’t even safe from the noble hobo androids

If you decide to go toe-to-toe with Todd to save Alice as Kara, Kara doesn’t get to throw Todd through a wall or even get the better of him with super android strength. She gets strangled, punched, and tossed about as though she weren’t an android but a normal human being. It’s like realizing that Jodie Holmes (Beyond Two Souls) isn’t Carrie, but is completely dependent on a ghost to protect her from sexual assault or danger in general. It’s the anti-thesis of the scene in Ex Machina where Ava (an android with a lightweight frame design) gets the advantage over Nathan. Kara and Alice barely escape with their lives.

It just comes off like cheap exploitation for the sake of making your female character suffer and it’s such a cartoon-ish portrayal of assault and child abuse. The scene wherein Kara is tied up and potentially stripped of her memory is mirrors the scene wherein the reporter in Heavy Rain is tied up and attacked by a serial killer who wants who to saw her in half and assault her.

Things get progressively worse when you start to consider how Black characters outside of Jesse Williams are utilized. The majority of Black characters represented in the game are supporting or minor characters. They run the gambit of David Cage’s greatest hits: “Scary Black Man”, the “Black Gentle Giant”, and the “Black Sidekick” who aids and furthers the narrative of his white or acceptably Black friends. Become Human also expands to respectability politics, colorism, and violence taken to new heights.

Stop_racism.png? I don’t think that’s in my programming, Carl...

Like I mentioned before, Jesse William’s Markus drives the entire narrative of Become Human. Outside of the inciting incident (the rogue android threatening to kill the child that looks a lot like Alice), nothing officially progresses until Markus becomes sentient. He is the hero of the story. As the only android taking proactive steps to rebel against the farcical android racism and slavery, the narrative dictates which decisions Markus makes are inherently “positive” and “negative”. It’s within Markus’ narrative that David Cage demonstrates that he’s just like every other white person when they observe Black communities dealing with police brutality and dehumanization.

While Become Human uses Minka Kelly’s North to badger Markus to rebel against humans with violence, even when you reject her ideas, the narrative doesn’t approach her point of view with anything other condemnation. Retaliation is never treated like it’s just as valid as pacifism (to say nothing of how they actually portray that retaliation as just mindless violence, which misunderstands the context how a city ends up catching fire).

If you agree with her and decide to avenge fallen androids, and protect the ones that are alive from immediate danger using retaliation tactics (or violence), the narrative condemns you for doing so. Markus’ punishment for not “turning the cheek” is typically death at the hands of Connor, a white character whose narrative seems to have more end-state possibilities than probably even Kara. Become Human prioritizes “peaceful protests”, but in a manner that feels lined with disingenuous intent. Quite literally not acting against your aggressors in any way is the right (and only) way to do things.

We’ve reached maximum levels of representation in media, fam

To compound the utter rot of the allegory, Jesse Williams’ Markus removes his skin (in his words “one planet, two races” lmao) and regardless of the tone you choose (”peaceful” or “determined” for example), the player is prompted with a number dialog options that include “end slavery”, “equal rights”, and a whole bunch of other things are an explicit tie in to Black History. And, unfortunately for Markus, these kinds of prompts, which includes protesting Androids singing to win the favor of humanity, continue to pop up in his dialog tree like pesky blackheads.

The constant reminders that “violence is not the answer” invokes non-Black voices saying “if you weren’t violent, you wouldn’t have been attacked by the police”. The narrative’s attitude is verbatim the kind of inanity I see posited online by spectators with no grasp on situations where Black Americans experienced violence. It even comes up in discussions about Black rebellions during the enslavement era. That’s Become Human’s narrative in a nutshell.

Jesse Williams’ position as the figurehead character in the narrative juxtaposed darker skinned characters, which all play support roles, is a continuation of the media’s reinforcement of the kind of Black character or person that is acceptable for mainstream media. He’s Black enough that he can represent Cage’s borked narrative, but “ambiguously brown” enough that he won’t raise heckles.

Weird how this game don’t let you romance folk you WANT to be around...

Most of the Black characters in the game are androids, most of them have dark skin, and most them amount to background dressing. They’re about on the same level as Kadeem Hardison’s character in Beyond: Two Souls. They act and sound like everyday people, but they’re still representatives of Cage’s awful narrative. For instance, there’s a linebacker of a Black android named Luther and he is the embodiment of the kind of Black man David Cage is clearly terrified of.

Originally, he was an introduction to Cage’s game during E3 2016-2017 even as some Negro spiritual singer. In the game, he’s nothing much other than a supporting character in Kara’s narrative that can die or be blocked from the continuation of the narrative pretty easily (unlike Hank, who is rather glued to your behind up until a certain point).

Instead of being some cartoonish violent thug (see: Heavy Rain), his whole directive in the narrative is to protect Kara and Alice, and not much else. He has no arc of his own and is practically itching to die for them. Characters shrink away from him in fear whenever they see him because of his size, and the entire level wherein Alice and Kara are threatened by the mad creator, uses Luther like a sentinel with the intent to harm the white characters.

Cage’s visual use of the “[Gentle] Black Giant” as a means of highlighting Kara and Alice’s literal white fragility is as bad embodies literally everything I hate about how white people regard and treat Black masculinity in their media.

I appreciate these character models. Rescue them from Cage’s asset files

There are three Black women in the game with speaking lines. Two androids, one human woman. All of them are helpers for white characters or Markus, regardless of their moral alignment. The overarching villain of the game is unquestionably is Black android named Amanda (at least I think she’s an android). She’s a facsimile of the teacher who taught Kamski, creator of the androids, what he knows. She more or less plays the “guide” to Connor (in the sense that her advice is identified in the wrong) and pretends that she wants to see an end to the rebelling androids before CyberLife loses any more credibility with the public (who are scratching their heads over machines declaring “I am alive”).

The human is a Harriet Tubman analog (Rose), who embodies the downtrodden Black mother raising the difficult Black son (Adam) whose father is absent (he died). Adam doesn’t want any part of saving androids, Rose seems to think she’s beholden to help them. From a visual stand point, Rose is probably the best looking fat character model I’ve ever seen in a game. Within the narrative, she exists for little else than to fortify the “Android Slavery = Black American Enslavement” allegory hill that Cage wants to die on. She tries to help Kara, Alice, and Luther to get across the border to Canada not once, but twice.

The last is a damaged android named Lucy. She exists solely so she can tell Markus “your choices have consequences” in a scene makes her look physic when she holds his hand. It was just like the ostentatious declaration from the menu-screen girl (Chloe), “Remember, this isn’t just a story. This is our future”. And even you know androids share information through physical contact, it’s clear that Cage modeled her as the wise mystical Black woman because reasons. And the role repeats itself when she confronts Connor about being “lost” and then dies in Markus arms saying “save our people Markus”.

This scene was hard to watch, honestly...

Whenever Cage wants to demonstrate the “inhumane treatment” of androids, by in large Black androids are the biggest examples. Luther has his memory wiped by the mad creator who Frankenstiens androids together and is effectively a mindless slave until he sees Alice. One android (pictured above) is tortured (cigarette burns put out on his arm and the like) to the point of a going rogue and ends up murdering his owner.

To add insult to injury, the player (as Connor) is given no choice but to increase the Black android’s stress level to get him to confess (like how policemen pressure Black prisoners into acting against their self-preservation). This later drives the android to shoot himself (and maybe Connor if you tell him to stop trying to commit suicide) in the head. When Connor attempts to grill three identical Black androids for information about Markus’ whereabouts, he goes full cop on them and tortures them. He ends up getting his guts ripped out immediately afterward (but if you succeed in fixing him, he gets to shoot the android dead with extreme prejudice.)

Lucy, the android that helps Markus, was tortured and disfigured: Her head torn open, wires hanging out, and false skin unstable. Markus himself is actively punished by the narrative for being anything other than “peaceful” and “non-violent”, to say nothing of the physical violence that’s visited upon him from the jump (being kicked around and being shot, then torn apart).

David Cage’s exhibitionism with his Black characters works well enough that it gets a rise out of you, but it’s the same old exploitation of Black pain for entertainment purposes. It more or less demonstrates why white authors writing allegorical tales of fantasic racism, usually end up perpetuating it. Markus is David Cage’s cipher for tackling a story about racism, acting out racism, all without actually dealing with racism in a legitimate manner. (I’m of the opinion that, if you’re white, you don’t have the ability to anyway.)

I can’t imagine what this game would’ve been like without the mess, lmao

Markus bears the burden of pretty much everything that’s wrong with this damn game with regard to how it uses allegory to build its fantasy oppression. As the catalyst, he’s not only the respectable Black character (fair-skinned, “non-violent”, “well spoken”), he’s also represents the whole of the slavery allegory through his relationship with Carl. Carl’s character so obviously represents “the good slave master” (masquerading as the “father figure”) that not only educates Markus on self-realization, but demonstrates to Markus that “not all humans” (read: white people) “are bad”.

I’d argue that if you exercised the racism allegory and Markus from the game, you might actually have, not a good game, but a game about two white androids on two ends of Cage’s undercooked attempt to wax poetic about sentient robots. But, the other Black characters like Luther, Josh, and Lucy exist, and also shoulder the burden of the writer’s ignorance, so there would be no point.

Bad Allegory is Bad Allegory;

It’s a pretty looking game, with some nice moments. Not much else...

Anti-Black racism is not something (most) non-Black audiences can reasonably identify as negative for the community it happens to. When it occurs, spectators view it through the media as something that was brought on by the victim – and otherwise rightfully earned. Speaking of your experiences with anti-Blackness makes them feel doubly comfortable to say “well, I’ve never seen that happen” and insinuate that you’re lying about your traumas or microaggressions experienced.

Through the lens of speculative fiction (chiefly science fiction), the utilization of anti-Blackness as a foundation for any imaginary oppression conjured by the author, once completely removed from the Black experience, becomes a digestible and even sympathetic narrative. A commodification if you will.

There’s no talk of “both sides are wrong” and “well, they brought it on themselves”. Fictionalized marginalization often creates a white creator’s ideal victim, one their hearts can bleed for and live vicariously through, because the victims aren’t just Black, they’re also white.

Allegorical racism often ends up creating equations that consciously or unconsciously say that Black people are violent or dangerous in some way, and the fear of Black people is justified. It perpetuates the myth of the Black superhuman. The biggest example of this? Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s X-Men unthinkingly equates discrimination of superhumans with incredibly deadly powers to the discrimination of Black people. That narrative allows a certain justification to hating mutants because some have abilities that can outright kill people who enter their breathing space, something Black folks, who are discriminated against without quarter or reason, can’t do.

Quantic Dream’s Detroit: Become Human shares all the same problems of every other speculative fiction narrative that uses allegorical racism as a backdrop. While something like Netflix‘s Bright lambasted by common sense, the gaming landscape has yet to develop strong enough set of tools that prevents games like this and Bioshock Infinite from being hailed as “daring masterpieces” for failing to properly handle the subject of race-by-another-name.

To further illustrate the brokenness of his tone deaf narrative, David Cage wants to be able to say “his game isn’t about racism” (or sexism) at the same time he admits to saying the current racial tensions in America definitely influenced him during the development of Become Human. You can’t have it both ways, nigga, pick a lane.

Detroit: Become Human is the neighbor of Bioshock Infinite. But where the latter is naked about its prejudices, Become Human takes the Crash approach (and we know how most people reacted to Crash before the honeymoon period ended). Racism is rarely handled in video games. So, the bar is so low, that merely daring to use the imagery of violence toward Black bodies, but not in any way that doesn’t make a caricature of the history, stirs something in the unaffected. I expect, like Infinite, half of a decade will need to pass before the feedback-loop from dualshock ends and think critical essays start popping up (I won’t hold my breath tho). There are people calling a duck a duck, but they’re largely ignored.

I could literally recommend anything else that handles the issue of sentient machines better than Become Human without the hamfisted racism allegory. The Terminator 2, Ghost in the Shell, The Big O, Outlaw Star, Alex Garland’s Ex-Machina, or even Alex Proyas’ loose adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot.

If you wanted to see how androids and the advancement of technology play into the role of capitalism damaging the quality of life, Dontnod Entertainment’s Remember Me handles the subject better than Quantic Dream does by miles. Frictional Game’s survival-horror game Soma deals with the cloning of a human mind and how that mind handles being “just a copy” inserted into a machine or a machine like body.

Jesse Williams living the dream as Markus Luther King Android Jr.

Become Human’s story of “oppressed androids” doesn’t work from the offset. There’s little demonstration of androids demanding their freedom and equal rights up until Markus decides, “um, yeah, we should do that, guys” and androids go homicidal on their owners around the same time. Everything is second hand accounts. There are no human antagonists that inform this fantasy racism that aren’t the equivalent of cartoonish high school bullies shoving people in lockers, or just poor representation of the counterargument from the get go. Android rebellion is practically framed like everyday appliances on the glitch to the disbelief of their owners, who end up traumatized or murdered.

Cage compounds that issue even further by writing that a virus (stemming from a copy error) gives them sentience, but that simply makes them look like machines that are malfunctioning because they need a better anti-virus program. I keep seeing people use this comparison, but an android passing on a virus that “wakes” them up, is not remotely comparable to a Black mind being stuck in the Sunken Place until someone (or they) pulls them out as depicted in Jordan Peele’s Get Out.

When talking to actual people, it’s obvious that they don't like being discriminated against. That’s not remotely the same case with Androids infected with a dormant malicious error and deciding they’re not free. It implies the enslaved were fine with slavery until they just wake up one day thought otherwise.

Also, you don’t get to frame your characters as victims when they’re literally spouting rhetoric like, “Androids are superior to humans in every way, yet we’re slaves?”

I wanted to like Detroit: Become Human like I wanted to like Beyond: Two Souls. There’s a lot to like about the concept (minus the allegory) that the game is built on, if not purely for how the primary cast interacts with their own group (sometimes).

But, for lack of a better word, the game is insensitive with its comfortable comparison of non-human characters to people of color (chiefly Black people) and marginalized identities, who still suffer from everything the game fails to tackle respectfully. Half of science fiction is built on the bones of wrong-headed allegory and misrepresentation of social issues, so its celebration isn’t surprising, just frustrating.

Detroit: Become Human is a constant reminder that David Cage thrives off the pain of the marginalized and can’t be arsed to do any introspection about that. It feels like I just got thrust back into 2013 all over again.

Allegorical racism needs to die.

#videogamesincolor #detroit become human #quantic dream #david cage #anti black racism

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regrettablewritings · 6 years

Note

I'm not sure if you write for Stranger Things but if you do could you do Steve Harrington X reader for the ship meme?

Thank you so much for waiting!!!

How differently do they think of eachother now compared to when they first met?: First and foremost, there’s layers tohow you and Steve Harrington viewed one another both when you first met andfrom then on after. You knew of SteveHarrington because you didn’t have any other choice: He was the big man oncampus with his good looks and confident personality. (Plus, it helped that inthe small, sleepy town of Hawkins, everybody knew everybody.) You already kindof had your suspicions that that confidence was really just arrogance to somedegree but didn’t actually know him well enough to push it. But those verysuspicions were confirmed when the two of you landed in a class together.

Biology, while not the hardest subject for you, still took a bit of time andfocus to assure that you could move on to junior year. But all Steve Harringtonseemed to need to do was smile that admittedly dashing smile of his, andwhichever girl he picked for his lab partner would practically feed him hernotes. If he was saddled with another guy, he’d probably offer to hype them upto some girl who would probably only give them the time of day simply toimpress Steve with what a “good, open heart” she had. And if it was the teacherthat was concerned, he just needed to play up the All-American Boy act and hecould skirt by that semester with a solid C. C- at worst.

Passing biology with a C wasn’t anything to be ashamed of but when it wasearned by not actually earning it at all, it pissed you off. He never reallyhad to work his way through biology (or any class, you assumed). In fact, youwere pretty sure that the only time he actually had to make an effort was whenhe wound up getting grouped with you to study a colony of C. reinhardtii and take notes. You had observed him just longenough to know his typical tricks, so you sure as hell weren’t going to fallfor them. Steve found himself struggling to not look gobsmacked by yourresistance. (He fought even more to not appear confused about the subject matteronce he realized how little he actually knew due to his lack of effort inclass.)

From that exposure, Steve concluded with blunt simplicity that you were aboring bitch. Sorry, but it was true: Your avoidance of feeding his ego didn’tsit well with him, and he was all too quick and pleased to have as manymemories of the interactions fazed out of his mind. (In hindsight, he would’veacknowledged this with far better understanding but, hey, what did he know?Clearly not how to spell “reinhardtii.”)The fact that your hard work paid off and allowed you to skip junior yearstraight on into senior year made the ability to do so much easier.

There wasn’t much chance (thank God) or reason for you to interact with him.You weren’t looking to because he was irritating, and he wasn’t looking tobecause you were a passing face whose name he didn’t much care to remember onceyou were out of sight, out of mind. You two were like passing ships up untilthe metaphorical collision wherein he his friends threw water balloonsat your car on what happened to be your last day at Hawkins High. To be fair(more like generous), they weren’t specificallyaiming for you. But you sure as hell were pissed when your car found itself inthe “crosswater” of their artillery. And, just like your car, you left, drivingoff into the distance.

Well, as distant as the college of your choice could take you.

You would’ve been content to have the story end right then and there, butfate (and your mental state) had other plans. Apparently, college wasadditionally a time for existential crises and questioning if one has actuallychosen the right path for them. You wish you’d been told that before you wentand spent two and a half years drying your soul up in a well of academia. Youtried to take your decision to return home for a break in stride, however. Youtold yourself that you weren’t going to do any good if you yourself didn’t feelgood, which was true. Besides, it wasn’t as though you weren’t actually doinganything: In the time you’d spent away, apparently Hawkins had acquired a mall.And malls meant jobs. And jobs meant money, even if it meant plastering on asmile you didn’t feel up for.

To be fair, your first day at Claire’s hadn’t been too terribly bad. Butconsidering that this was the first mall in Hawkins and was still all the rage,it was constantly busy with tweens huddling in and out. By the end of yourshift, your feet were sore, you were not one step closer to deciding what to doabout your situation, and the energy acquired from your brief lunchbreak hadlong since worn off. These things alone were enough to convince you that you’dearned a treat. Ice cream, to be more specific. And la dee da, this mall hadcome with its very own Scoops Ahoy!

Complete with (to your amusement and secondhand embarrassment) sailor-themeduniforms and the dead-eyed expressions they inspired, as evidenced by the youngman managing the counter at the time of your arrival. Talk about awkward. Itwas enough to make you want to place your order and get the heck out of there.

“Hello,” you said, forcing yourself to create and maintain eye contact outof courtesy. “I would like a – ”

Wait, you paused. You recognizedthat mane of hair; not even the dopey sailor’s cap could conceal it!

“Steve?” you asked aloud, brows raised to your hairline. “Steve Harrington?”Steve Harrington tensed. His eyes widened. “… Nnnnnnooooooo but unrelated,can you take this waffle cone and jab the pointed end into my temple? Totallyunrelated, I swear.”

But you did not stab him, let alone with the sugar cone he presented youwith. And while you did provide inevitable laughter and even a handful of jabs,it never went too far. After all, a job was a job, there was only so much thatcould be said about the getup. At the very least it certainly made you gratefulthat your job wasn’t nearly as humiliating. But you had to admit, it was quitenice to see how humbled it had made Steve… . At least, you’d thought that it was the costume thatmade the young man more grounded at first. But apparently, he’d been differenteven before then.

The more you dipped into the ice cream parlor (because let’s face it, for abusiness that embarrassed its employees, they sure knew what they were doingwith their frozen goods), the more you knew of this new Steve. And he wasnothing like he’d been when you both attended school together. He’s much more .. . dependable. And far less conceited. Sure, he still made an effort topromote this image of having dignity (it was the only thing keeping him alivein this sailor-themed icy hell), but it was nowhere near the extent of whichhad made him a colossal asshole. In fact, by the time you two had started tothink of one another in more romantic terms, you concluded that Steve was a bigsofty with a surprisingly dedicated heart who had the capacity to give a personhis absolute all. Hell, there were points where you suspected he’d give his ownlife up in a tight spot. It was weird. But also such a dramatic shift that youwondered what could’ve possibly have happened in the relatively short periodyou’d been gone. As for Steve, he’d be quick to admit that he didn’t really know you before. Butif he dug deep into the recesses of his mind, he could validate that becausefrom what he recalled, you were a lot shyerback then. More reserved and arguably even a doormat to some degree. And whileit was still true that you weren’t anything outlandish, time had certainly madeyou a bit bolder than before. Maybe it was time away in college, maybe it wasbeing away from the sleepy town that was Hawkins. Whatever the case, youcertainly conversed more and were a little quicker to speak your mind or act inways to assure the results you wanted. He had a newfound respect for your workethic, impressed that you could uphold it for such an extended period of timewhereas he was relatively recently just getting used to the practice. Plus,it’s pretty much canon that Steve holds whomever he dates in high regards, sohe ultimately just thinks you’re the best.

What do their friends/family think oftheir relationship?: Nobody saw it coming, least of all your own friends and family. When Stevefirst came to meet your parents, one of the first things that flew out of yourdad’s mouth was, “Wait, isn’t this the guy that sprayed your car with shavingcream?” (It took a bit to clarify and convince him that that was actually hisformer friends who had done it, not the young man himself.) Even still, yourparents had some hesitancy about the relationship. You dad even threatened toknock Steve out if he did anything to “break his little girl’s heart.”

Your friends were only somewhat better, having had more of a chance toobserve Steve’s progression as a person for themselves after a decent few ofthem stayed back in Hawkins for one reason or another. Still, they held theusual amount of concern as anyone would for a friend who’d suddenly begun todate someone with whom they’d had previous disdain. But once they’re assuredand have proven for themselves that Steve isn’t a threat, they warm up to himquickly and make light taunts aimed at him about “what a nice, little gentlemanhe’s become.” Steve’s parents, having had no idea about your previousrelationship with their son, had even fewer thoughts. You dare even say thatthey were predominately indifferent to the situation! Their son always seemedto be with a different girl for most of his dating life; there wasn’t much theycared to say about the situation besides being courteous whenever you werearound (which, as Steve made sure, wasn’t often). At most, they thought as muchof it as how a parent typically feels about their son dating.

And of the kids … Should they really care? Not really. Though it shouldbe noted that Dustin, being the nice kid that he is (and the one who looks upto Steve the most), has an awareness of the relationship. The result is lightjabs aimed at Steve every chance he gets. However, Steve takes them in strideand tried to use the relationship as an example of how to treat a partner anddevelop as a person, especially when regarding the way he used to be when you two first met.

How do their personalities/skills complement orcontrast with each other?: The most obvious (and thereby mostfrequent) contrast that most people associate you two with is how your academicprowess compares to his own. That is to say, they call you book smart whileSteve is … not. And while this is arguably true, you personally prefer notto put focus on that aspect (a stark contrast to how it was in high school).Instead, you prefer to note the other obvious way with which the two of youdiffer: How you’re a comparative introvert compared to his more outgoingcharacter. It’s this more extroverted nature of his that results in you slowlyand steadily going out more and “being young but, like, a good percentagecarefree” as Steve puts it. Because while he’s become far more responsible inrecent years, you still have the most experience when it comes to keepingmindful.

However, it arguablymakes for a cute sort of opposites-attract kind of thing with you making himrethink his decisions and him getting you to open up a bit more.

What is their favorite aspect of each other?: If you had told your 11th gradeself that Steve Harrington was capable of selflessness and willing to givesacrifice for the safety and happiness of others, you would’ve laughed yourselfto death. Then haunted the current timeline’s version of you for spreading suchlies. Up until the ghost of you learned that it was not only true, but itsuited the young hotshot surprisingly well. Indeed, while it was true that ittook some getting used to even for Steve himself, the truth was there: He hadthe makings of a truly kind and caring person. In fact, if you had to make noteof another aspect of him, you’d be quick to express delight over howsurprisingly dedicated he could actually be: Once he’s found something he’staken to, he becomes loyal to that something and is determined to put as mucheffort as he can into the circumstance. And you damn near questioned whetheryou were having a stroke when you saw him interacting with some local kids in away that actually wasn’t assholish. Sure,his consistent execution was a bit shaky but the fact that he was even makingan effort at all is impressive considering that just two years ago, he wasnothing more than a stereotypical pompous jock.

Or at least, that was theimage he’d created for himself. It was expected of him, after all, as the school’swinning basketball jock. Part of why he was never aware of hisown potential for kindness until recently was because the group he’d hung outwith before made no attempts to push him to look inside of himself. They neverattempted to know him through and through, only encouraging what was theabsolute worst of him. That’s why he’s so grateful over how patient you can bewhen concerning him. Sure, people hear him talk, but few actually ever listen, much less the way that he needsfor them to. Granted, he’d been warmed up a bit by the time you’d come back toHawkins, but he certainly still had a ways to go. It was by the grace of yourdecision to extend upon him your tolerance that he was able to better exerciseit because let’s be real: He needs somebody to bounce off of, or a figure tokeep a focus on in order to do his best. Whether it’s to protect, to care for,or to recognize that he needs to be a better person for his own growth.

Do either of them have pet peevesabout each other?: Steve isn’t very confrontational. To be fair, neither are you, but you’ve cometo accept that putting off issues and pretending like they’re not there justmakes things even worse. Eventually, you suck it up and push yourself throughthe issue. But Steve still relies on the mindset that if you smother asituation long enough, it’ll just die before it becomes an actual issue; aremnant from the days where he used this to slip out of predicaments.

Steve can be surprisingly patient when it comes with the person he loves,but he definitely has a breaking point. And it’s hit when that modest behaviorof yours evolves into uptightness. (Or rather, what he accuses of beinguptight.) He knows that sometimes he can still go too far about things, or thatnot everything is your cup of tea no matter how worldly you become. But that’sno reason to scold him let alone patronize him! Let loose for once, geez! If Nancy could do it, why can’t you?! …Oh … Oh, wait, no –

How would each reconcile with eachother after a fight?: Considering what happened the last time he was in a relationship and a fighttranspired, Steve honestly gets a little nervous when the two of you have yourfirst actual fight. Not an inevitable lover’s tiff, but an actual, voice-raising,angrily-talking-with-hands argument. This is the end, he thinks. He shouldn’tfeel this wound up about it considering that the two of you hadn’t been goingout for too, too long. But he can’t help it: the idea hurts as any prospect ofa break up would. And not to knock on you, but he believes you have very littlereason to get too tied up with him. He’s already on thin ice from those yearsof being a pig-headed jackass after all.

Unfortunately, because he spent all those years being a self-centered jerkwho put in very little effort, he doesn’t have any exact practice in perfectingthe art of fight reconciliation. He’s never actually had to apologize foranything before his relationship with Nancy, and it wasn’t as though that attempt to express remorse everactually came to fruition. But from that, what we do know is that he’s a traditionalist. Or maybe he just has solittle experience that this was the only thing he could think to do. Whateverthe case, Steve is the type to give you guys some time away from one another,however agonizing it may be for his poor, restless soul. After that actual dayor two of separation, expect him to come to your door toting the best bouquetthat money made at Scoops Ahoy could buy, accompanied with an apology. Becauseeven if he doesn’t necessarily feel at fault for the argument, he hates thefeeling of you being mad at him even more.

If you want to talk, he’ll sit and listen, but you need to not becondescending or act as though you’re explaining things to a child. If you talkto him with the same amount of respect he gives you and listen to him the wayhe needs to be listened to, he’ll make more of an effort to take your words tomind and do better about whatever had caused the argument in the first place.

For your end, however, be prepared to confront whatever faults you may havehad in the issue. The plain and short is that, like anyone, Steve disdains feeling as though the brunt endof the dispute falls on him. The difference is that most people typicallyunderstand their issues; Steve’s only just now getting the hang of it thanks tohis late bloomer position in terms of serious dating. Even if he was thecatalyst of the issue, the best way to go about it is to state something alongthe lines of, “I’m sorry that I didn’t confront you or the situation in a waythat would’ve produced a better outcome.” However, gently push him to be moremindful; he can’t act as though the fight is only ever one-sided. But remembernot to seem snooty about it or else the two of you are just going to fightagain.

(Additional tidbit: Also, once SayAnything comes out, expect for him to also attempt to do the boomboxoutside the window thing. You know the one. Don’t get too into it, though,because there’s a 75 – 85% chance that he dropped it after holding it above hishead for a little while because fellas, boomboxes are big and heavy.)

What would be their ideal vacationgetaway together?: Nearly anywhere else sounds amazing when compared toHawkins. But if he had to narrow it down, Martha’s Vineyard. He and his WASP-yfamily went one summer and it just tickled his little heart (probably becausethe other girls vacationing there enjoyed gawking at him as he strolled thebeach). Of course, being that the two of you are quite young and quite broke,you’re not going to be able to go any time soon. But he’d love to be able totake you there one day. Maybe collect some seashells and eat some damn goodchowder. …Maybesomesexonthebeachmaybe.

But if he had to pick some place more affordable, maybe Gatlinburg. It’s apretty big shift from the upper crust vibe of MV, but he can’t help it: There’ssomething delightfully kitschy about the place with all its rustic charm andfried foods and whatnot!

Think of a new way (AU, differentsituation, etc.) they could have met for the first time: Dustin was a goodkid. Sure, sometimes he let a dirty word slip. And maybe on occasion he stayed out too long at Mike Wheeler’s housefor a session of whatever game those kids were into. But as a whole, mostparents would give an arm, a leg, and an eyeball to have a kid like him!

These were the thoughts Steve Harrington repeated to himself over and overagain as he sat outside of the drama teacher’s classroom. Well, that, and alsosome not so pleasant gripes about the seating options. Apparently, HawkinsMiddle had no adult-sized chairs to spare, as evidenced by the only offersbeing small, plastic, navy blue chairs that obviously had been swiped from someclassroom elsewhere. If he could, Steve would’ve opted to just stand and wait. Unfortunately,the sensibility of his sensible shoes had worn away, leaving behind a pain inhis soles that threatened to fuck him up if he dared to stand any longer thanwhat was necessary. But then again, it didhave more dignity to it; there was something a bit humiliating aboutstruggling to fit one adult-sized butt cheek into the dip of the little stool.

“Couldn’t bring out some goddamn …” he muttered, just barely avoidingkneeing himself in the chin. There was just way too much multitasking going onfor his liking: Sitting in this damn chair, trying not to hurt himself whilealso trying not to panic at the fact that he’d been called in by his son’steacher.

Dustin had existed for years without coming home with a teacher’s noterequesting a meeting. But then, Dustin had also existed for years as a child ina two-parent household. And duringall that time, he hadn’t acted out or anything … But things were differentnow. The signs were all there and even though Steve had made himself open toconversation, he simply trusted Dustin to come to him when he was ready.Unfortunately, the teacher’s note came first and that was all Steve needed tobe on the cusp of panic that his son was suffering far more than he knew and hehad, by default, failed at being a good parent on his own. Cue Steve rapidlyrelaying the aforementioned declarations to himself once more with double theaggression. It had been both a godsend and a gut-squeezer when the sound of theoffice door clicking open disrupted his umpteenth run of the mantra. The voicecame first.

“Sorry for the wait,” it flowed out. It was sweet, almost melodious, yetseemed to contain a sort of power laying just beneath the surface, giving everysyllable a hint of strength. Just what one ought to expect from somebody whosecareer surrounded conquering the stage.

But what Steve hadn’t expected was the form to whom the voice belonged. Thedoor creaked as it was opened further, followed by the soft tap of a heeledfoot stepping forward outside of the threshold.

“But thank you so much for doing so patiently.” A pair of perfectly coloredlips smiled at him. And suddenly, for the first time since he’d gotten theletter three days ago, Steve’s rapid heartbeat couldn’t be chalked up toanxiety.

++++++++++

Well, you thought, observing theman before you. At least now I know whereDustin got his hair from. Was it weird to be taking in the father of one ofyour students? Probably. Maybe. Yes. But you tried to ease off the weirdness byreminding yourself that you’d never actually met the man before. You weresimply taking in the features was all. As a teacher for an elective class (anda new one at that), Mr. Harrington had been under no obligation to meet youduring open house. Furthermore, you were essentially an outsider to the Hawkinseducational circuit: After years of performances at theater companies in acouple of states, you thought it might be time to quiet down in a quiet townwhich you could proceed to introduce some theatrical zest to. And while Hawkinswas definitely a place in need of such vigor, there still was apparently a bitof a culture clash even on your end (well, besides the dramatic shift from citylife to whatever the heck this hamlet could be considered).

Specifically, how so many of the people here grew up here and therefore knewone another. Especially when it concerned Steve Harrington. Apparently back inhigh school, he was The Man™ and had since been established as somewhat of asmall-town legend of sorts as a result. And while the man before you wasn’tnecessarily the maverick the women around the water cooler had had youenvisioning, you had to admit: He certainly was nice to look at. Especially for a dad. Most fathers you’dmet during your short time here were schlubby or indifferent at best. But Mr.Harrington held a sort of boyish handsomeness to him, as though time had onlydone him justice rather than the expected harm. And considering that you’dworked alongside some pretty handsome people during your stint as an actress,that was saying something.

You offered your hand out to him.

“Hi, I’m Dustin’s drama instructor, Ms. (L/N),” you grinned. It requiredyour skills in acting to avoid acting like the giddy schoolgirl you feltyourself threatening to revert to. It was a façade that nearly cracked when theman, grunting as he stood himself to his full, lanky height, accepted it intohis own with a firm handshake.

For a former basketball player, his hands were surprisingly soft.

++++++++

Well, Steve thought, following you into your office. They didn’t make teachers like that when I was growing up. Or maybe they did, just not in Hawkins.Frankly, you didn’t look like you belonged in the sleepy town: You could’vebeen a star with a face and voice like that. And with a body like that … an invasive thought commented,forcing his eyes to watch the sway of your hips as you rounded yourself aboutyour desk.

Oh, shut up, you creep, the morelogical part of his mind scolded. We’renot here to gawk, we’re here to find out what the heck the kid did.

“Once again, thanks for agreeing to meet with me,” you said, taking your ownseat opposite to him. (Steve couldn’t fathom how somebody could actually makethe process of sitting down look graceful but you did it.) “I understand that itwas a bit last minute, so trust me when I say that it’s greatly appreciated.”

“Oh, no, it was no trouble at all,” Steve found himself insisting. He threwin a smile for good measure, though deep down he knew it was for more than justthat. He almost wanted to kick his own ass for it. This was no time to harkenback to his playboy days – he had a kid now, and that whom this meeting wasabout. His poor, sweet kid of whom probably drove this poor woman to drink froma desk flask; this was no time to be focusing on such foolishness as making hisavailability shamelessly known.

“Well, Mr. Harrington, I’ll just cut to the chase,” you sighed. The puff ofair, gentle as it may have been, was more than enough to cause Steve’s ownbreathing to still.

Oh, god, he grieved, this is it. The moment of truth, whereinSteve would have to confront the fact that he’d fucked up as a father and nowhis kid was paying the price.

You went on, “You see, Dustin’s –"

“I’m sorry,” Steve blurted. For all the acting you had been doing up to thatpoint that evening, even you couldn’t stop yourself from hiding the confusionthat interruption had caused. Your rapid blinking went unnoticed by the manbefore you, however, as evidence by the fact that you’d made an effort to speakfurther only to be cut off once more.

“I get it if it means nothing, like if it doesn’t fix any of this but I just– ” It all came tumbling down from the inside out. It started as that all toofamiliar ball of anxiety that dwelled within the man’s stomach, tremblingupward into his lungs. It didn’t take long at all before it manifested on hisface as an expression of regret and disappointment – all directed at himself.His eyes scrunched closed. All you could do was sit there quietly, watching ashe squeezed the bridge of his nose in a failing effort to alleviate thediscomfort.

“Dustin,” Steve sighed finally, “he’s a good kid, I swear. But I get it ifhe hasn’t been acting right lately; that’s myfault. I know I should be more attentive to him but just … You know howkids are, they never wanna talk to you even when you wanna talk to them but it’s just all so hard – ” Hiseyes flew open, revealing hazel hues encased with worry. He opened his hand indefeat, shaking it for emphasis.

“But it’s just like? You don’t wanna forcethem or anything because shit’s – I mean, stuff is tough. I feel like he hasn’t been the same since – ” Hewaved a hand in random directions “—since that.But it’s also like he’s hiding things from me. A kid needs his mother but she’snot around anymore so it’s all I can do to at least try to take on that role in some way, I guess. And I’m trying to bea good parent in all this but … But it’s hard. Really hard. I’m on my own,nobody taught me how to do this, let alone on my own all of a sudden so it’slike I’m relearning everything from scratch and I’m trying to get our craptogether but – And I feel like … Like I’m failing him.” He paused,uncertain of where the newly budded feeling of horror within him was sourcingfrom: That he was really vomiting his emotions out in such away-too-informative manner, or that he could swear his eyes were beginning tosting with the threat of tears.

Being that the courses you taught were electives (and therefore had littlebearing on a student’s report card in most regards), most parents who’d visitedyou in your brief time at Hawkins Middle didn’t care enough to shed any tears.If there was ever a problem that needed addressing, the typical response fromthe parents was to get on your case or passive aggressively suggest thatperhaps you weren’t cut out for teaching or that theater wasn’t even thatimportant to begin with. It certainly stung and made you feel discomfort onyour own part, but it wasn’t anything you weren’t prepared to handle or atleast hadn’t experienced in some way, shape, or form before during yourprofessional stint. But honestly, you’d never considered the possibility thatone parent would cry. Much less that it would not only be a father, but the legendarySteve Harrington on top of it. And dispensing such information, no less!

Even in all your confusion, you felt deep for the man. And as therealization of the depth of his words settled in, so did a weight inside of you.And yet, in all your uncertainty, you couldn’t think of anything more to offerthan, “I’m sorry, Mr. Harrington. I didn’t know …” You awkwardly ushered asmall box of tissues towards him. While Steve did accept it, he didn’t make useof it. In fact, he seemed to be making an effort of sorts to do damage control.Of course, there’s only so much controlling that can be done when one dispensesso much baggage in such a scenario.

“No, no,” he sniffed insistently, “it’s not your fault. You couldn’t haveknown, it’s not your job to.” You bit your lip. You wondered if it was appropriateto state that, to an extent, it was.At the very least, if you wanted to be aware of a certain child’s well-beingbut …

Steve cleared his throat, his expression becoming manageable once more. “Butwhatever it was that he did, I’ll be sure to have a talk with him when I gethome.” It’s been long enough, heinwardly sighed with defeat. Painful to acknowledge but necessary.

“Well, actually …” You pressedthe tips of your fingers together, awkwardly trying to pull the nearly one-sidedconversation down a more comprehensible and survivable path.

“I’ve had a chance to see that for myself: Dustin is a good kid.”

Wait … What? At the sound ofthat statement, Steve perked with interest and his own brand of confusion. Morespecifically one that dared to be hopeful.

“In fact,” you went on, happy to notice the subtle change, “he’s more thanjust good; he’s a wonderful student. That’s actually why I called you in today.”

Brown brows furrowed over widening hazel eyes.

“I … What?” he questioned dully. You offered him a small smile andnodded.

“I’ll be honest, sir, I haven’t been teaching for very long at all. But I’vebeen in the theater business long enough to know a true performer when I seeand hear one.”

Steve only nodded. It was all he could do, really. He couldn’t find thewords, let alone finish piecing thought after thought with ever word youdelivered.

“Soooo …” you said in a sing-song voice (one that, in spite of hiscurrent state, Steve could still compute as lovely and sweet). “I was wonderingif it would be appropriate to possibly discuss taking it a step further.” Atthis point, Steve’s thoughtful state broke with the fluttering of his lashed.

“Pardon?” he asked. “ ‘A step further’ how? Exactly?”

You pursed your lips. “Well,” you lowered your hand to a desk drawer andretrieved a slip of paper. “I thought that perhaps this may be a start. At thevery least, it’s something to consider.” Steve accepted it, quick to notice avery familiar image in the header: Two masks, one smiling and one frowning.

“I’ve recently gotten involved with the Hawkins Playhouse,” you explained,allowing Steve the time to read over the information. In grainy but stillrelatively comprehensible images, he could make out people in whimsical costumesposing and grinning at the camera. Below them, in slightly bulky font, were thewords, “Fun! Expressive! Cultured!”

“Normally, kid parts wind up being played by adults because we can’t getenough children interested or involved, let alone dedicated enough to actuallystick to it. But Dustin?” You flashed Steve Harrington a grin. “I’ve seen thatcharacter of his; I can’t help but feel like it’s a bit too big for just a classroomelective. I’ve seen people like that. They have the potential to go far, if Ido say so myself!”

“Hm,” Steve hummed, bringing his eyes back up to you. At the sight of yoursmile, he couldn’t help but force his eyes back down to the sheet before him.He also may have attempted to lift it closer to his face to hide the blush hefeared was beginning to develop. “S-so you’re saying that Dustin … mighthave a chance at this?” That dare to hope had grown, becoming all the moreevident in his voice. It made a warmth begin to dwell inside of you, a completecontrast from the mood just moments before.

You nodded. “Pretty much. Of course, it’s all up to Dustin and yourself. Andhe would still need to audition for shows. But I just wanted to bring this toyour attention, if just for thought. Your son has a lot of potential, Mr.Harrington.” You heard a slight huff from behind the paper; maybe oneaccompanied by a smile, but who knew?

“You should be proud.”

Unfortunately, you weren’t entirely certain if he was or if he wasn’t. Notwith that paper still in the way. It was in that break of silence that youobserved the man’s trembling ever so slightly.

Uh-oh. Your smile faltered. Whilethe slight breakdown from earlier had been unexpected, you had certainly beenprepared for what you assumed was about to happen. The abundance of parents(especially dads) who were against their sons becoming more and more involvedin the theater world was near endless. You’d seen far too many disgruntled andintolerant assholes criticize their sons, calling them absolutely horrid names.Sure, Steve Harrington did something most of them would not do (that is, cryand basically vomit up his anxieties), but you of all people knew by now:Tolerance had the weirdest limitations. If one thing was fine to one person,there was no for certain guarantee that something possibly linked was just asacceptable.

You had wanted to believe that maybe Steve would be different, that he wouldactually be excited to hear that his child was thriving. It certainly beat thealternative that he’d worried about before. But as the silence went on, themore that hope of yours dwindled. After what had felt like an eternity ofawkwardness, you couldn’t take any more of it. You just wanted him out of your officeif he was going to be like this.

“Mr. Harrington,” you said. Your voice no longer carried the honeyed tonesfrom before. “Are you alright?”

“Mm,” came the hum once more. But this time, you could actually see the facebeing made as it was produced. The paper lowered to reveal Steve’s face, slightlyunfocused but completely awash with something that made the tenseness almostimmediately evaporate: Relief.

“I am,” he said quietly, eyes still trained on the piece of paper he held. Henodded. “I am. It’s just … Wow.” For the first time since he’d even satdown, he slumped against the chair. His spine was grateful for the relief, butnot nearly so much as his nerves were.

“Wow,” he whispered once more. “This … This is incredible.” As he deliveredthat proclamation, you heard a hint of a giggle. “No, really, you don’t get howmuch this means to me.” In his growing joy, Steve forgot his nerves for asecond, allowing his eyes to flicker up back to your face.

“My kid … My kid is thriving?Like, he’s not screwing around or anything?” he questioned.

You bit your lip. Perhaps in an attempt to keep from laughing, but youmanaged to disguise it well enough to pass off as a habit of thought.

“Well, I can’t say if that’s the case with his other classes,” you admitted.“But considering that I’ve never heard anything around the water cooler about Dustin,I’d say that your child’s doing just fine, all things considered.”

A sigh rippled from the smile that was beginning to ease onto Steve’s lips. “Oh,thank God,” he said. He poised his hands apart, gently shaking them as iftrying to grab for the right words. “It’s just great to see him thriving. It’sthe best thing I could ask for, really. I feel like I should be thanking you,actually.”

At that, it was your turn to feel blush threaten your face. You tensed,waving your hands as if to ward off the suggestion. “Oh, nonononono! It’s notrouble at all, seriously! Dustin is a delight in class and I’m just so used toseeing people waste their potential – I just thought I could do my part and seeif that could be avoided in his case.” All the while, Steve nodded. Had thisbeen last week, he would’ve been in too much of a funk to have progressed anyfurther. It wouldn’t be true to call it a complete opposition to how he hadbeen when he was a teenager, but it certainly wouldn’t be much of anexaggeration either.

But in this moment, right now? He was invigorated. He was like a hot rodwith a fresh coat of paint and a new engine. It had felt like an eternity sincehe’d experienced good news but tonight, he felt like he’d hit a triple whammy: Hewasn’t failing as a father, Dustin was doing okay, and, most uplifting of all, Dustin had a shot at something that made himhappy. It was too much; it needed to be expressed in the most SteveHarrington-way possible.

“Maybe … Buuuuttt … I think this still calls for a celebration of sorts.”He flashed you a smirk that had had many years of practice and perfecting, a grinthat had been his moneymaker back in high school. And judging by your body language,it still worked.

“I …” You stammered. You had to be honest with yourself: While you’dseen many a handsome smile, what with all the actors you’d run into, they hadnothing on Steve’s smile. “I wouldn’t say a ‘celebration,’” you said, avertingyour eyes. But only for a moment. When you returned them to him, they had beenrenewed with confidence. “But maybe perhaps to discuss looking into the HawkinsPlayhouse? A piece of paper can only explain so much, and I’m sure Dustin wouldlike to be in on it as soon as possible.”

“Oh, most definitely,” Steve agreed, that smile and steadied stare neverwavering once. “Sounds like a date to me.”

“Indeed, it does,” you said through a smile that threatened to wobble into apile of goo. You could feel your heart throbbing, but not quite in the same wayas it did whenever you got nervous before a performance. That was because youcouldn’t act anymore; you were most certainly reverting back to the schoolgirl whofreaked out after catching the eye of the school’s heartthrob.

You no longer had any doubts in your mind that Steve Harrington was TheMan™ that your peers had talked about.

#i forgot how to write is it evident #or maybe i'm just tired...#either way!! thank so sosososo much for being patient!!!#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington imagines #stranger things imagine #stranger things imagines #regrettablewritings #ship memes

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you-thinks-wrong-romeo · 6 years

Text

Hamlet

Gretchen Fluff

Word Count: 1,618

Warnings: uuuhh... maybe a tiny little smidge of a Regina trying to not be a bitch sub-plot, but it doesn’t excuse her actions before this. She’s just trying to not be awful.

Not really requested, but highly hyped and not so patiently waited for by @theatricalwriter

A/N: I PUT MY BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS INTO THIS!! IT HAS BEEN IN THE WORKS FOR A BIT, AND IT’S THE LONGEST FIC I’VE WRITTEN, SO, THAT BEING SAID, hope you enjoy it!! And please comment!! I love hearing your thoughts!!

Masterlist

————

Cady: Hey, girl! What’s up?

Gretchen: Not much. Just finished making some cupcakes.

Cady: Cool! Soo… are you going to the performance of Hamlet at the park?

Gretchen: Of course!! You know it’s my favorite play. I’ve seen it so many times that I could probably do the whole thing by myself.

Cady: Great! Damian’s in it, I’m the stage manager, and we even convinced Janis to do some sets! And I need to ask you a HUGE favor.

Gretchen: Go for it.

Cady: Okay, so you can totally say no, but we were wondering if you could proof it for us. Our dress rehearsal is on Friday. And, again, you can say no.

Gretchen: Yes!! That sounds like fun! I’ll be there.

Cady: Great!!! Thank you SO MUCH!!!! Oh, and one more thing.

Gretchen: What is it?

Cady: You better bring some cupcakes.

Gretchen: You bet!

————

Gretchen was so excited about seeing Hamlet. She’d seen it before, at every opportunity she was given, but she still loved it. She was a huge fan of Shakespeare and Hamlet. She loved it. For a long time, she was afraid to say anything about it. She feared judgment, especially from Regina. She was afraid of losing her status.

Gretchen still feared that people would not like her. She might always fear rejection, but now she had stronger friendships. She was still close with Karen, but now she was friends with Janis and Damian, too. She got to know the real disaster known as Cady Heron. She had even decided to help Regina.

Regina wanted to change. She had driven her best friends away from her. She had manipulated and hurt so many people. She had convinced herself she had to remain well-liked and popular, but she really did want to be better. She needed to be better, both for herself and her friends. Regina really cared about them, and they wanted to her to be a better person, too. Janis and Damian still kept her at an arm’s length, and for good reason. Regina couldn’t blame them. Gretchen was helping Regina be a better person, and she had a feeling that this could help them. She had no clue just how much.

————

Gretchen: Hey, Regina!

Regina: Hey, Gretch. What’s up?

Gretchen: Cady just invited me to see Hamlet at the park. Wanna come?

Regina: Sure.

Gretchen: Yay!! There’s a dress rehearsal Friday that I’m going to, and the show is actually on Saturday.

Gretchen: You don’t have to go to both though.

Regina: Sounds like a lot of fun. I’ll go to both

Gretchen: Okay! It’s gonna be so fetch!

————

All week, Gretchen had been so excited, and by Friday she could hardly sit still. She had convinced her English teacher to give her extra credit for helping with the show.

After school, Regina and Gretchen left in Regina’s car. They had decided to watch the first run, Gretchen taking notes, and then they would go to the mall. Their plans changed, though, the moment they saw Cady frantically running up to them.

“Cady? Cady, calm down! Breathe.” Gretchen said, trying to calm Cady down.

“I can’t calm down!! It’s all ruined, nothing is going right.” She seemed so stressed, and that made Gretchen worried.

“What’s wrong?” Gretchen asked.

“The sets aren’t done, our Ophelia costume doesn’t fit Ophelia, which doesn’t matter because she broke her leg! It’s all going downhill maybe we should just canc-“

“No!” Gretchen interrupted, “You worked so hard on this, so did Damian and Janis on their parts.”

“You’re right, but I don’t know how we can do it all tonight!” Cady replied, clearly becoming more stressed out by the second.

“We can! Regina can help out with sets, at least a little bit, and-”

“And Gretchen can play Ophelia!” Regina said, admittedly a little bit excited.

“What?” Cady and Gretchen both asked though Cady seemed more excited about Regina’s words than Gretchen did.

“Yes!! You love Hamlet! You’ve seen it a million times, and I know you know all of the lines. You can do it! Plus, you have all night to prepare.” Regina attempted to convince Gretchen.

“Sure, I could, but that doesn’t help the costume situation,” Gretchen tried to find a way out of the tricky situation.

“Wait!! You have that costume from the Renaissance Faire! Remember? I let you geek out a couple of years ago for your birthday. It’s a little old, but my mom can find someone to adjust it,” Regina explained quickly, “Gretchen, if you don’t want to do this, no one will make you. I just- I know how much this show means to you. You love it, and I just want you to be happy, okay? That’s what a good friend wants, right?”

“Yeah. I do want to do it.” Gretchen decided. She walked backstage with Damian.

Regina was assigned to work with Janis on the sets. Janis quickly found out that Regina couldn’t paint very well. However, she was good at applying even base layers of paint, due to her years of experience in makeup. They eventually made a system, and actually ended up working together pretty well. They had some issues at first, for obvious reasons, but they weren’t too bad. Janis was a little bit pouty, and may or may not have “accidentally” spilled paint on Regina. Regina wasn’t much better. It took a lot to not slip back into her comfortable, and popular, “keep everyone at an arm’s length” attitude. She might have slipped up a few times, but they did finish. The sets looked amazing, and they might have talked a little bit after finishing. They definitely weren’t friends, but they were on their way to becoming able to stand being in the same room.

On stage, Gretchen was surprising everyone, both by how well she could act, and by how well she knew the part. She picked up her cues and blocking in record time, and, of course, she knew most of her lines already.

They practiced as long as they could. By the end of the night, Cady’s heart rate had lowered back to a normal level, and everyone else felt much better about the show. Gretchen rode home with Regina and babbled on about Shakespeare and Hamlet the whole time. She gave her costume to Regina, who had quickly found someone to adjust it, and she already knew her size because of their many shopping trips.

The next day, Gretchen started to feel her nervousness growing. She knew the part, she had confidence in that. Unfortunately, that’s about all she had confidence in. She worried about her portrayal of the character, whether it was accurate or not, as Ophelia was a difficult role. She worried about her costume. She worried about her blocking. She was just generally worried.

At about one in the afternoon, Regina came over with Gretchen’s costume. It was beautiful, and it fit really well. Gretchen felt a small bit of weight lift from her shoulders as Regina fastened it. Gretchen’s mom and Regina both said that it looked amazing, and, honestly, Gretchen had to agree with them. She didn’t know what it was about the dress, maybe the way the cream colored fabric hung in the design or the fact that it was a costume for one of her favorite characters, but it made her feel a little better about the day. After a while, she reluctantly took it off. Regina promised to take good care of it and take it straight to Cady’s house.

The rest of the day was spent trying to calm Gretchen’s nerves, eventually, she and her mother agreed on drinking tea and watching anything unrelated to Shakespeare.

At about four o’clock, Janis and Damian showed up to give Gretchen a ride to the show. They stopped to get food first, Damian warning Gretchen about the strict “no food in costume” rule that was the visual equivalent of nails on a chalkboard to Cady.

When they got to the park, they rehearsed the show from top to bottom. They put final touches on the blocking to make it seem more natural. They also worked on making sure everyone knew their cues and their lines. They rehearsed incredibly hard.

Finally, it was time for the show. Gretchen could feel the feelings of excitement and nervousness bubbling within her, both trying to completely cover the other up. She was in costume and mouthing her lines silently to herself.

At the beginning of scene three, she entered alongside Laertes. She walked with a grace and poise that she rarely possessed.

“My necessaries are embark'd: farewell:

And, sister, as the winds give benefit

And convoy is assistant, do not sleep,

But let me hear from you.” Laertes spoke.

Gretchen felt like she was shaking, though she knew she wasn’t. She was so nervous up there. She looked at the boy in front of her, but she could feel the audience staring at her still.

“Do you doubt that?” The words flowed from her mouth before she could stop them. She then felt an instant calming feeling rush over her. Her first line had just come out so easily. She knew what she was doing.

The rest of the show went on perfectly. Cady’s perfectionism actually did some good this time. The people left after the show. Janis and Regina both stayed behind for their friends. They told Gretchen about the many people they had overheard commenting on how well she did.

The rest of the night was kind of boring. She went home, still giddy with the thought of all the praise she received. She eventually went to sleep completely content.

#gretchen wieners #mean girls #mean girls musical #gretchen weiners x reader #mean girls fanfic #mean girls x reader #janis sarkisian #damian mean girls #regina george #mean girls fluff #mean girls fandom

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cavaliant · 6 years

Note

Do you have any modern AU headcanons? What's your muse's job? What's their living situation like? Do they have any family or friends? (Any muse!)

//This was unexpected, but thank you for asking! I do have a vague outline of everyone’s modern occupations here, (with extra details about Jamke here–the two jobs he works are probably just entry-level ones like cashier or sales associate).

Here I guess I’ll talk about Reinhardt because he has the most developed modernverse in my head? This got a LOT longer than I intended so I’m gonna divide it into sections…I guess it was just the trigger for a flood of hcs I just needed a little push to write lmao.

(Also as a side note, my talk of schooling is based on the Canadian schooling system because that’s the one I know lol)

Elementary to High School:

Similarly to my canonverse for him, Reinhardt was considered a prodigy from a very young age, and was tutored intensively by his parents who held him to very high standards. He was a straight-A student on honour roll all throughout school (he probably skipped at least one grade). When he went to high school he took the electives his parents pushed for him (think STEM-related things like calculus and physics).

Though Reinhardt performed incredibly well in subjects such as the maths, sciences, and history, and fairly well at English, music, and gym, he had more difficulties with visual and performing arts, which were abandoned anyway in high school at his parents’ discretion. I really wanna say he went through the Asian six pack (3 maths–advanced functions, calculus and vectors, and data management, plus 3 sciences–chemistry, biology, physics) but he’s German in modernverse lmfao.

University:

His parents initially would’ve preferred for him to become a doctor or a lawyer or something, but the subject where he truly shone was physics, and so he ended up going to university to study it, with the end goal of eventually becoming a physics professor (and, in his parents’ minds, publishing papers, teaching at some renowned uni, etc.). Initially I wasn’t sure whether he was a high school teacher or a college/uni prof in this verse, but I decided his parents wouldn’t have settled for anything “less”.

As in high school, Reinhardt was a very diligent uni student, extremely strict about time management, and didn’t really have much of a social life beyond designated club/student organization activities and necessary networking for the future. He finished his Bachelor’s, Masters, and PhD in quite a short amount of time and became a college professor at a fairly young age.

Current Familial Relations:

His parents are quite pleased with him currently, and they still speak, though their relationship still has that underlying distance and detachment it did all his life. They do not, however, speak much (if at all) to Olwen, which is a point of tension between them all.

Reinhardt loves them all and desperately wants to remain close with both his parents and his sister, but they cannot reconcile their views, and he can’t bring himself to pick a side. Thus, while she used to drop by and see him every so often after he moved out, she doesn’t really do so anymore, because things have become rather awkward between them.

(As for the reason for the disagreement, I’d have to talk to an Olwen RPer about that. Though I imagine it has something to do with her not following their expectations for her. I’m not sure if they’d go as far as disowning her, but they’d certainly be pretty frigid towards her and she probably spends most of her time crashing at friends’ places?)

Living Situation and Friends:

Reinhardt currently lives alone in a condo with one bedroom (for him) and a guest room. His parents helped him acquire the place as a ‘congrats for getting a good job’ gift (though really, you could argue that this was just another instance of them controlling his life).

He teaches physics at the same college where Linus works, Linus being a security guard who likes to barge into his classroom to bother him (which sometimes also causes Fergus to barge in to bother Linus). Reinhardt’s TA is Reyson, a vocal performance major who for some reason decided his class needed a babysitter and is now TA-ing for a completely unrelated subject. Kaden is a peppy guy who tries to get him to get out more.

Personality/Mental State:

In terms of his mental state, he isn’t passively suicidal in this verse, nor is his self-worth quite so low, but he still doesn’t really have an understanding of his own desires or sense of purpose. He likes physics because it is rational and helps to explain the world around him, but if you forced him to self-reflect he wouldn’t know whether that’s his own genuine like of it or a result of his parents’ conditioning of him. He doesn’t really know what he wants out of his own life, but he doesn’t think about things like that unless something forces him.

He’s a naturally serious and hardworking person, but his extremely workaholic nature and need to be productive/useful is a result of his upbringing. As in his canonverse, polite social interactions are fine for him, but more casual or friendly interactions have him somewhat awkward, as he really doesn’t do much outside of work unless his friends drag him.

Romance:

It isn’t really something he thinks about, and he currently considers himself devoted entirely to his work. He has declined a few requests in the past with the excuse of needing to focus on his studies/research/etc., though as he grows older his parents have been dropping more unsubtle hints that they’d like grandchildren someday.

It isn’t that he’s completely uninterested in having a relationship, it’s just that he would need to be very close to someone already (and they would need to initiate it) for that to even be an option on the table.

However, as a silly side note, both his students and Linus’ fellow security guards have bets (some jokingly, some for real) on the supposed “love triangle” going on between Linus, the guy he loves to bug a lot (Reinhardt), and the guy who loves to bug him a lot (Fergus) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#anons #words are all we have (replies)#rein: hcs #time ignites a spark (modern)

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mynameisdreartblog · 5 years

Text

Teachers

Aries: Football (unamerican) coach. I feel as though Betty Crocker's employees have been studying my movements in anticipation for something. Everyone I meet I assume is working for her, and that's not my paranoia acting up. Recently, factory locations have been springing up all over this country, and here I was thinking the hag would just stay in America where she belonged, but no. I was struck terrifyingly curious about this, so I looked on her website <excusing the modem's start-up process>, and look! It says here that she, herself, has ninety-plus different reasons as to why we still love chicken breasts. God, there's no way a human could write that much about chicken breasts; I'm terrified of each and every one of them if I'm quaint. This is a disturbing sight, but I'll abstain from doing something now until it really starts to become a problem… I fear I'm falling into old pits though. […] I hopped on the 'net today and I saw something only describable as vile. Fuck Betty Crocker and her offensive Kiss Me, I'm Irish cookies. Crocker, you liar and probably not even human; you are neither Irish nor worthy of a kiss. She's done it now, she's cross the line and struck me straight in the soul with everything she has: This witch wanted to infest my land with her polluted factories, steal my press with her spam articles, and now steal my culture too! [,,,] I know what I must do now; can anyone drive me to their headquarters? The new one they just built here, the one that's already polluting our water supply with chicken broth. God, I'm so furious, so vengeful, and so willing to vanquish this evil that I! That I… that. Wait, what do you mean we can't use Betty Crocker for this one? Some other epic internet-based literature uses this as a canonical joke? For fuck's sake, just use the Quaker Oats dude instead; we'll take the words we had already and change them to be about Quaker Oats and his offense towards Irish people. <Redmond starts to drive 'til their ride runs out of gas halfway through> For fuck's sake! GIVE ME THE QUAKER OATS MAN, I'M BEING PAID BY THE HOUR HERE!

Gemini: Sociology teacher. I can feel James Rolfe writing a letter that details all the offense that I caused him right now, and I'll be sure to refute his every claim like he refuted all my feedback. Just for reiteration: I will not apologize to him for those honest criticisms I made of his newer video-reviews, specifically of the 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog game and Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. If he's been going at his online profession for ten-plus years now, then he can handle a fair bit of digital criticism. [,,,] I told him that I'd prefer if he'd respect my position more after a paragraph-long explanation as to what my position was. Frankly, I thought Rolfe would be a more understanding and self-aware person to recognize that my life as a national mailperson whose work spans across the entire Indonesian archipelago. Clearly, my goal was that he'd attempt to sympathize with my working-class struggles as he'd do with any American mailman whom he is familiar with, but I didn't get any of the respect I was expecting. Not even I was spared for the decency of verbal abuse, because I was given something worse: The unrelenting silence of zero responses towards my effortful comment. That told me that Rolfe is a man who doesn't care about the issues of working-class folks like me. I'm hesitant to state, and possibly slander Rolfe, for the likelihood that he has a strong prejudice against Indonesian and Papuan peoples by refusing to acknowledge my criticism and my simultaneous first and third-world perspective. […] I just don't know what his issue with me is; after all, I've read every one of his love letters to me and I managed to enjoy them despite how sloppy his nerdy, rage-filled writing was. I think I made out his name the best of all and the thanks he granted me for sending him all of the games nobody else here wanted. «Truce, thanks for supporting my quest to protect the world from shitty-ass games. From: The fucking nerd.»

Scorpio: Public skills teacher. "Mexican-South Korean relations, from Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Mexico-South Korea relations refers to the bilateral relations between Mexico and South Korea. There are an estimated 15,000 Koreans and Mexicans of Korean descent living in Mexico. Both nations are members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, G-20 major economies, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the United Nations." [,,,] Yeah, so I pulled out a random book from the library for my book report assignment (I'm still surprised they gave me the freedom to do this), and I got a book about Mexican-Korean relations. I'm also surprised by how they can create such a thick book on a topic with little-to-no history, so I naturally assumed it was some sorta fictionalized history. As you could tell, I opened up the first page to find out that the first quarter of the book was a copy-paste job from the Wikipedia article with most of the citational numbers removed. The font was also in a very large size, presumably to fill space and not be readable for readers with impaired vision. [,,,] I tried opening the pages beyond to the rest of the book's contents, but they seemed glued shut, and the more I attempted to pull them open was I expected them to rip, but they just stayed firm to the bookcase. A closer inspection revealed that it was actually a container welded to the bookcase, and that it there was something inside of it. It wasn't alive, but it could jingle alright. [,,,] I decided to pry that sucker open and I found a mysterious note, but I was scared 'cause it addressed me directly! All it told me was that I should be in bed by 9 pm; I was so scared, but I knew the note told what's best for me, and I obeyed it. The moral of this story is that you should do your homework and follow your bedtime schedule! […] «Dear Dad, stop writing in my diaries, thanks.»

Capricorn: History teacher. You can tell the people who go to this place are from the '70s. After hauling an artificial Christmas tree into a lady's car, she gave me two quarters and said, "it's not much, but get yourself a cold drink." I felt so vintage at that moment: I felt like I was consumed with vintage appeal. My worker overalls were put onto me in that moment and I was ready to work the rest of my life in a windowless retail store. But it was before they sold all of the cool shit they have now like E-cigarettes, so they just sold regular cigarettes to teenagers who had predominant facial hair. […] Right then, wouldn’t anyone be compelled to by the working-class American luxury that is a cold soda: Preferably, whatever they sold at Becker’s? Yeah right, I used to do the same thing everyone else did except I looked aged enough to not even rely on facial hair to get one of those… cold sodas. Isn’t it so vintage that we live in a polity completely built around the idea of infinite room for exploitation resulting from the false belief that there’ll always be new lands to exploit? Isn’t it so vintage that the complete destruction of two entire continents was all done in the name of securing the existing powers in Europe at the height of the 15th century when they were beginning to crumble due to their unsustainability? Isn’t it so vintage that countless cultures, peoples, and languages were… Heh, let’s not let the blade in our mouths become too sharp and let’s get back to that vintage ‘70s lifestyle. Let’s gather me and the boys to stop by Becker’s and get some nice, cold sodas… and be called a savage by the racist clerk who made sure to call the police on me if I ever walked into that place again. Motherfucker should know his goddamn place telling me that I can’t be in the store that he built on land that isn’t his. I was a 27-year-old man and that’s how I was treated… back in sunny Halifax! Ha, I still have the fake pine on all over my hands: My bloody, beaten hands.

#Zodiaccupuncture #Zodipunc #Aries #Gemini #Scorpio #Capricorn

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blue-opossum · 3 years

Text

Fishing in the Kitchen, Transformer Forklift, more

Morning of July 26, 2021. Monday.

Dream #: 19,943-03/02/01. Optimized 3 min 45 sec read.

Here are three unrelated dreams (of many from my last sleep cycle):

Fishing in the Kitchen:

In this dream, I am sitting at my computer in the kitchen of our present home. There is not much light (and it may be before dawn), but I can see my immediate environment, mainly the area behind me, when I turn around on my chair. Zsuzsanna is nearby.

I think about fishing. Shallow water covers the floor near the counter, but I think of it as a fishing area with no association with flooding. It is more like a puddle. I do not expect to catch big fish. My dream compensates for my somatosensory response with a narrative where I fold a short piece of yellow electrical tape around the hook. (I can sense my metacognitive response deliberately creating this activity, as is often the case. However, summoning a sharp object is not a typical response to this process. It is most often coins, eggs, or hair.)

I manually throw the line into the water and pull it back to where I am sitting as the hook with the tape floats atop the water. I associate it more with fly fishing. I see some movement from minnows, but I do not hook onto anything as my dream fades. (Fishing indoors has been a dream narrative since my young adult years. My thoughts are impossibly ambiguous as I see the water's depth as less than an inch and the solid floor with no recess, yet also as a reasonably deep fishable pond at the same time. Such impossible ambiguity is common in my dreams.)

I think my sleeping brain was confusing catching flies with sticky yellow flypaper with fly fishing, as Zsuzsanna and I talked about this recently. I also had yellow tape near my computer.

Transformer Forklift:

Metacognitive awareness of REM atonia brings about the typical process involving an expanding mechanical feature and sinking sensations at one point (though curiously no slope navigation in this case, mainly because of my restricted sleeping position with two cats sleeping near me in reality). I am in an unknown warehouse (similar to one I worked in years ago) and summon a robotic forklift and soon decide it should be a Transformer robot. I mentally manipulate its form as it grows taller, becoming more anthropomorphic. Eventually, though, it becomes more like an ordinary forklift when I choose to enter my dream's setting and narrative "physically" to complete a task.

I manually operate the forklift. I have to move a large sheet of metal, oriented horizontally. I retrieve it from the top of a pile of pallets. I drive the forklift outside. I am supposed to place the metal platform atop a structure outside of a convenience store. Unfamiliar men are waiting for me. My REM atonia status becomes more noticeable, and as a result, the forklift sinks into loose sand. The imaginary sensations of movement (and forward motion) are extraordinarily vivid as they usually are with this process. I reach the structure and complete my task. (Other people often see this process, REM atonia dynamics from being in the dream state, as a negative experience, where they cannot maintain progress while walking or running, or being stuck, and similar narratives. However, as a metacognitive dreamer all my life, I enjoy navigating the process and the vividness of the sensations.)

In America Again (Virtual Amnesia Hilarity):

I sit in an unknown restaurant with Dennis (half-brother on my mother's side) and former classmate Ann L. However, the girl may not be who I think she is despite her appearance and name. Dennis seems to know her (even though he did not live in Florida). This dream has the usual attribute of virtual amnesia, but it is even stranger in that I am discussing the factor of virtual amnesia from a previous dreaming experience (so it cannot get much sillier than that). Over time, the restaurant morphs into a bedroom (predictable as at least one dream every sleep cycle has had that imperative since earliest memory, obviously, most often with my final dreaming experience of the sleep cycle).

Before the restaurant morphs into the bedroom, I tell them about my dream from yesterday and how I live in Australia but saw being in America (Wisconsin) as being in Australia and waiting for my family to "return" to me in Australia while they were in a different state (Florida). I try to make it sound coherent, but they seem to understand what I am about to say before I say it. When I say "...in America," they simultaneously say it as we tap the tabletop for emphasis. Hilariously, my dream self does not acknowledge being in America in this dream is also incorrect. Ann is soon lying in bed, modeling Zsuzsanna's current sleeping position. Dennis sits on the right side of it while I am standing, and he leaves.

In an offset dream, I am walking with Dennis and the girl I think is Ann. I ask her about our (her) teachers to see if they sound familiar. She says two names (that I no longer recall, though this time there is a shift of the protoconsciousness from sleep simulacrum to waking-life simulacrum). Eventually, I ask her about a real-life teacher. "Do you remember Mister Onofri?" I ask her. She tells me she does not. I inform her, "We used to call him Antifreeze."

It is also from a riddle we shared in real life. How do you make antifreeze? Hide her pajamas (or blankets).

Although this marks the beginning of legitimate consciousness and genuine memory, it is likely more about being cold while sleeping and wanting to attain more blanket cover, as our cats sometimes make it difficult to move more.

#dream journal #meaning of dreams

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protagonistprepblog · 6 years

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Protagonist Prep Ch. 4 Decisions

I own nothing, except my own characters

Dimension 54A-2113DB (SVTFOE)

4 hours after introduction

Location: Diazs’ household.

“That beast is wrong, Star you don’t need his help to be a warrior.” A slightly angry King Butterfly said trying to comfort his daughter, who hasn’t spoken since they returned.

“I’m not so sure River, you saw what he could do. He might be able to help Star become better.” Moon Butterfly told her husband, her tone filled with worry since she didn’t want her husband to get into a tantrum. Which started to happen, his face started to grow red, started to sputter like a motor boat until he bellowed out.

“Moon, how could you say that! How could we leave her with that creature?!? What could he teach Star that she doesn’t already know?!” Moons demeanor changed from worry to defiance and anger

“River, listen he showed no ill intent with his powers and they actually seemed to quite nice.” Moon told her husband in a serious tone and her facial features showing she won’t back down. Meanwhile Rivers’ face turned redder than a boiled lobster and then yelled.

“NO ILL INTENT!! Moon did you forget how that beast and flung me across the room or did he use magic to make you forget.” Moon just rolled her eyes at her husbands’ paranoia and then told River in a calming tone one would use on a wild animal.

“River he didn’t throw you. He flung you and he had good reason to do so, you tried to attack him” A person could see reason and common sense trying to regain control in Rivers’ mind but they quickly lost to pride and anger as he asked.

“What kind of teacher would insult their own student?” The arguing lasted for 10 minutes which deviated from Star attending and on to unrelated things. When the argument started to get more heated Star decided to try put a stop to it. Star called out.

“Mom, Dad listen.” But her call was never heard due to her parents arguing, so she tried again but a bit louder.

“Mom, Dad” Like the last time her call was either unanswered or couldn’t be heard. Now getting slightly angry she stood up and yelled.

“Enough” After Star yelled something strange happened, she floated a good foot off the ground, her eyes glowed a mix of gold, blue, and greed anything fragile broke. When she started to float down she looked worried, same with her parents, but then she looked to her parents with resolve and determination then told them.

“I want to attend.” Moon was excited if a bit nervous about Stars’ decision, River on the other hand was a complete wreck and he stuttered trying to find a way to keep her from going then a candle was lit.

“What if Marco decides not to attend?” River almost let a small smile out when he saw Stars’ resolve falter but then a miracle happened. Marco walked down the stairs and told River in a slightly angry tone.

“Actually, my parents just signed.” Seeing that he was defeated he told Moon and Star.

“Very well, I’ll sign it.” Star ran over and hugged Marco while Moon, not as excited and not hugging Marco, walked over to the couple and started to talk to Star what she should bring and what she should do while they were talking River took out his cell mirror and called someone.

“Mina, gather your men I have a mission for you.”

Dimension 36A-8376H (PZPTH)

2 days after the introduction

Penn, Sashi, and Boone came trough their portal after finishing another mission. Though that would normally bring a smile to Penns’ face but he wore a slight scowl due Droolers’ “insult”.

“Can you believe that overgrown lizard— “Drooler started to grow annoyed “thinks that he can teach us to be heroes. I mean we’ve been heroes for over a year what could he teach us. Right guys, guys?” Penn looked to his friends but they wore uneasy looks and their eyes slightly darting.

“Guys what’s---““Our parents already signed ours!” Boone blurted out which not only caused Penn to be shocked but a light smack from an annoyed Sashi.

“Why?” Penn asked his voice weak but filled with disbelief and hurt, Sashi seeing how crushed one of her best friends she started to explain her decision.

“Because of Rippen.” Penn looked at he in confusion but she continued.

“Penn, Rippen was close to destroying the multiverse and he’s getting closer to actually becoming a real villain that’s why we chose to attend.” He started to think of about it Rippen was getting closer to his goals and his plans becoming more serious. Penn put his pride aside for a moment and told his friends in uneasy tone.

“Alright I’ll try to get my aunt and uncle to sign the paper.” All three of the friends smiled but their smiles slightly uneasy since Penns’ aunt and uncle have been a bit overprotective since his parents disappeared and he took up their job.

“Beside what’s the worst that could happen?” Penn asked innocently but in a the “projection room” that housed the dimensional breach Phyllis darkly muttered under her breath with enough venom to kill a herd of elephants

“Beside fact he’s called Demented Destroyer.”

“What did you say Phyllis?’” Boone asked with his tone a mix of confusion and intrigue. Realizing that she could be figured out Phyllis lied to the boy.

“I was checking machine.” Boone just nodded at the answer and left the theater to go home.

Dimension 2B-986ZG (Invader Zim)

1 week after introduction.

Deep in his underground layer Zim was looking at his computer with mood that would be described as extreme annoyance,

“Look, can you just connect me to the tallest, the information I’ve gathered is of extreme importance.” Zim exclaimed to an Irken displayed on the screen of his computer. The Irken in question was feminine looks, with dark purple eyes wearing a lilac dress and wearing a dark red futuristic blue tooth headset. Said Irken is named Aaz and she was part of the Irken communications center, yes it was created to deal with Zim.

“State your problem that is hindering your invasion and we’ll return to you in 5-6 solar cycles.” Aaz told Zim in a bored, monotoned voice as she started to rub her head with her claws.

“My problem is that there’s a threat that is close to exterminating me and possibly the entire Irken empire!!!” Zim screeched to Aaz , who slightly flinched, she then returned to her original bored expression. Aaz just took a deep breath to calm her nerves and asked Zim.

“State the class of your threat.” Zim himself toke a breath as he looked dead into the screen as he told with his tone serious.

“A class E threat.” Aaz just looked at him for few moments to digest the information then she started to something unexpected, she started to laugh small at first then to straight out side splitting laughter. After a few seconds , and complaints from other workers, she started to calm down but she still had a small smile on her face.

“Thanks, Zim I really needed that, you have no idea how boring it’s been here.” Zim just looked at Aaz with extreme annoyance as he whined.

“I did see them Aaz and I have proof!” He motioned Gir towards the computer.

“Zim the nearest class E threat is---“The statement died in her throat as she saw the picture that Gir was projecting.

“Connecting you to the tallest.” Aaz told Zim, her tone grim.

Meanwhile at the Membrane Household Dib and his father are having a bit of a disagreement about enrolling into the school.

“Dad can you please sign it.” Dib begged his father who just looked down at his son with an unmoving face and told him.

“No.” Dib started to get a bit upset since his father always gave little or no help when it came to his activities.

“Come on please dad, this is a once in a lifetime moment. I could finally get some answers for some conspiracies.” Dib begged his father whose unmoving face started to crack when he saw the hope in his sons’ eyes. The living room was silent for a few moments but then Dr.Membrane told his son.

“Very well son, I’ll sign it but Gaz will have to go with you.” Dib was so ecstatic that he wasn’t bothered that his sister had to go then he raced up towards his room to blog. While Dib gone to his room Dr.Membrane sat down in the nearest chair and sighed and then said.

“I hope they keep them safe.”

Dimension 875-12SC (Steven Universe)

2 weeks after introduction, one was used to explain to Blue Diamond about what happened to Rose. Now they on to explaining the current situation to Greg, currently outside “It’s a Wash”.

“So, a group of highly powerful, gigantic beings want to train Stu-Ball and they my and her signature do to so?” Greg asked his voice full of disbelief and confusion but most of gems nodded their heads in agreement but Pearl decide to take it a step further.

“Yes, and they seem to think that this dictator is a better guardian than us.” Blue Diamond just glared at the smaller gem and then retorted with equal amount of venom.

“At least I didn’t try to kill him 100 times over!” Pearl was boiling mad at this point and was about to explode until Garnet put a hand on Pearls’ shoulder. Pearl just looked at the current Crystal Gem leader in confusion, who just shook her head from side to side, Pearl was flabbergasted until Garnet told her.

“Pearl calm down, despite what she has done they chose her we just live with it.” Pearl tried to say something but came up with nothing, she stayed quiet after that. Throughout the entire ordeal Steven stayed quiet and just looked at the ground with a saddened look, his dad took note of it and asked.

“What’s wrong bud?” Steven quickly tried to feign his usual happy go lucky look and tried to answer in a happy tone.

“Nothing, just surprised that’s all.” His dad saw through his lie seeing how his sons’ voice was laced with sorrow and a hint self-disappointment, hearing this Gregs’ worry went through the roof and his parental instincts kicked in.

“Steven, really what’s wrong?” Steven at first wanted to tell his dad that he felt fine and nothing was bothering him, but he knew if kept it bottled up it would backfire so he looked up from the ground and told Greg.

“I feel like they made a mistake when they sent me the letter.” Needless to say everyone around him was shocked and extremely worried, even Blue Diamond, and extremely confused why he felt like this.

“Why would say that?” Amethyst asked her voice filled with concern and worry for Steven, a person that was like a younger brother to her, Steven just looked back to the ground and mumbled.

“Because, I don’t feel like a hero, all I done is mess up and ruin things.” Needless say the gems were racking their minds to think of things to say that could comfort the young half gem. After five minutes of searching their brains and surprisingly on them did.

“Steven, though I only been about two weeks, I know you’ve done amazing things already. You’ve defeated a corrupted gem without your weapon and then later healed that same gem, you also bubbled the cluster, a giant geo-weapon. If that doesn’t define a hero then I don’t what does.” Blue Diamond told Steven her tone motherly and comforting. At first Steven was surprised at what she said but then felt at ease and his confidence was boosted, he started to remember all the other things he has done. He convinced an extreme loyalist to become a crystal gem, tricked a group of homewolrd soldiers and rescued his dad from an alien space station. He looked up from the ground, stood up and exclaimed to the gems.

“I want to go.” He then struck a heroic pose, the gems finding this funny and adorable shared a small laugh.

Dimension 7735-2246MA

A month since the introduction, the location is the Dupain-Cheng household. All three the Dupain-Cheng family were sitting in their living room trying to start up a conversation about signing the slip.

“I think—““We think---“ Unfortunately they tried to start a conversation at the same time, to which Marinette politely told her parents.

“Please, you guys go first.” Her parents quickly obliged as her mom told her.

“Me and your father want you attend the school.” This shocked Marinette, as she thought her parents wouldn’t let her, sensing this her parents decided to explain their decision and tell her something that they needed to get off their chests.

“Marinette, we know you’re Ladybug.” This statement caused Marinette squak in fear and surprise, her mind quickly looking for ways that she can disprove her parents’ statement.

“What me, Ladybug?!?!? You must be joking, I mean Ladybug is amazing and graceful, Me I’m a total klutz and can’t even get to school on time!” Her parents just deadpanned while Tom, her father, told her.

“Honey, your disguise is a mask and a too tight suit.” Marinette blushed at her fathers’ comments but they still didn’t explain why they wanted her to attend.

“So why do you want me to attend?” Her parents then gained worried and saddened looks as they started to tell her, their tones slightly grim.

“Because, Marinette we’re worried about the akumas you’re facing, they’re getting stronger and more dangerous. We’re worried that you might get seriously hurt facing them or something worse and those beings seem to know how to deal with this.” Marinette reflected upon what her parents said and they’re right. The akumas her and Chat are facing are getting more violent than the others and more of them seem to be getting closer to their goals. After giving the topic a few moments of thought she politely gave her parents an answer.

“I like to go.” Her parents slightly smiled at her, she then excused herself to her room due to Alya calling her to tell her something important, Alya got her parents to sign.

Meanwhile, at the Argreste mansion in the dining room, Gabriel managed to get home on time for once.

“What do you mean I won’t attend?!?!” Adrien almost shouted in anger at his father, who just wore a mask of neutrality. Gabriel just sighed as he told his son, his voice calm and indifferent.

“I’ll allow to go to a normal school but I will not allow to go to one that’s filled with monsters, that is where I draw the line.” Adrien couldn’t believe this, these beings could teach him to be a better hero, learn amazing new things, and possibly confess his love to Ladybug.

“So, you won’t let me go there just because they look different?” Adrien asked in a disappointed tone. Gabriel just looked as son confused and said.

“No, I’m not letting you go because I know next to nothing about them and this could all be a trap! Without knowing anything you could get hurt Adrien or even worse. Son, though it doesn’t look like it I do care about you and don’t want anything to happen to you.” Gabriel finished showing signs of emotions, mainly worry and a touch sadness. Adrien thought about it and his father was right they didn’t know anything about the teachers, beside the fact they’re scary and powerful, but there was fact that his father left out.

“Father, if they wanted to hurt us would’ve they done so already?” From what Nathalie, Gabriels’ assistant, told him the only time those beasts got violent is when other people wanted to attack or if they needed everyone to be quiet. So after an internal battle Gabriel told his son.

“Very well you may attend this school.” Adrien then ran up to his room to tell Nino about what just happened.

The end.

#Protagonist Prep #AU #svtfoe #oc #pzpth #invader zim #steven universe #miraculous ladybug

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figjelly · 7 years

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On grammar: if rules are arbitrary, why follow them?

Welcome to this week’s addition of Advice Nobody Asked For (ANAF). Every Monday I’ll post something regarding writing work I’m doing and some advice I have regarding my current experiences. It’s been a hot minute since the last ANAF because my life changed drastically so my time comes at a high premium (more so than before). This morning, I was editing a new chapter to send off to my editor and realized a new, small something about grammar and what makes writing “correct.” Long post under the cut:

I am not a licensed “expert” on communication and language, but I’d like to think I’m better than an expert because being rabidly fanatic about “facts” comes part and parcel with being an expert. I am, of course, speaking from my time in academia. But I suspect most people would consider experts as having a great deal of formal education from an institution. I’m not a zealot when it comes to disciplines. I’m discerning and critical. Unrelated to this ANAF, I probably made a lot of people hate me in academia for the same reason I’m not religious: I don’t have what it takes to blindly follow and be part of an assembly line. That is neither here nor there. All you need to know is, I’ve got a crap ton of formal education and applicable experience when it comes to writing. Anyway, you probably had at least one language arts teacher during your education who was hard on grading when it came to grammar. Maybe they knew a lot. Maybe they knew like one or two rules that they were really intent on making sure you fixed. Some of these rules might have looked like:

Don’t split infinitives.

“Ain’t“ is not a word because it breaks down into “are is not”

Never start a sentence with “but.”

These are popular adages that I grew up with anyway. I’m really pleased to see tumblr engaging with the ideas of descriptive vs prescriptive language. Just take a moment to at least read the brief descriptions of those wiki pages because it’ll become important for the rest of this ANAF. I am a hardcore descriptionist. Anytime something involves telling me how things should happen, I’m immediately skeptical and want to know, “Okay, why should X happen?” A great deal of “shoulds” in life end up being social norms that are trying to wash out the richness of variation in human behavior. Communication is a human behavior. Language is a type of communication; therefore, it is a type of human behavior. Did you notice that pretentious semicolon I threw into that previous sentence? It would have be equally intelligible as “Language is communication so it’s a behavior too.” That, my friends, is what I like to call Ash’s Law of If You Can Understand What the Hell was Just Communicated to You, It’s All Good. Language is a living, dynamic tool. That is what it is. I’ve spent over a decade studying language from sociolinguistics to ethology to cognitive neuroscience. To me, if it works then congrats, it counts. But how does all of this pertain to writing? My editor @nuwanders is probably the most talented and patient person I know. Why? Because the amount of TED Talks I give when commenting on her edits would drive any other person mad by this point. Over the years, I’ve become more aware that without great characters and characterization, complicated plots are just Sudoku puzzles and, man, do I hate Sudoku. That’s not to say Sudoku is awful--it’s just not how I want to spend my time. I’m the same way about crossword puzzles. I like the idea of how small details can be put into such complicated but richly ordered puzzles. I just sorta, kinda hate being patient with them. So, characters is where I land for how to start a story. I often write in first-person POV. Sometimes I’ll opt for third-person, limited POV. It’s easier for me to engage with my own work. My editor and I will often go back and forth on these issues:

Character dialogue isn’t grammatically correct.

Story that is not dialogue isn’t grammatically correct.

Somewhere I completely fucked things up and the back and forth is me going, “oh shit, so sorry, yes you are completely right ugh why did I make such a simple mistake???”

Okay, okay, #3 happens but it still embarrasses me to slip into wrong verb tenses (I often flip between present and past tense because my brain is usually in five different places on a good day and who knows why I do things). I know all sorts of verb tenses. I know the difference between present perfect and future perfect conditional. INSERT PLUG ABOUT HOW LEARNING OTHER LANGUAGES HELPS YOU BE A BETTER WRITER HERE. That all-caps plug was intentional btw. #1 is usually a short conversation where I explain that character A isn’t as formally educated as character B or that character C just “doesn’t talk like that.” It’s easier to make a descriptive case for a descriptive instance. #2 is more complicated. Let’s say there exists a character named Lita. She is clever although lacks a formal education beyond primary schooling. She reads a lot, works at a grocery store, and enjoys participating in community theater. If I had to tell a story about Lita, regardless of plot and her objectives, those small, background details need more fleshing out. Why? Because the details of those smaller, inconsequential items informs me how I need to report Lita’s story to an audience. Lita only exists in my head. I am trying to communicate to people a whole new world that exists only in my thoughts. That doesn’t mean that some of the thoughts won’t be easier to communicate. We all know what reading is. I don’t have to explain that process. But it does matter what type of reader Lita is. Fleshing out this detail will tell ME as the writer how I need to report Lita’s thoughts to you. If I write in first-person: “I picked up the book, read a few chapters, and then went to bed.” This tells me that Lita is a casual reader who probably isn’t too invested in critical theory of literature. I’d have a hard time convincing someone with that sentence alone that Lita was reading a hard science fiction novel. I’d have an easier time convincing you that it was a romance novel. If I wrote: “I picked up the book, got a few chapters read and then finally made the decision to go to bed.” There’s kinda a problem here. It communicates the same information as the first example, but the grammar and structure of the sentence--the way I’ve decided to report to you how Lita reports her information to me--that kinda makes that sentence a little harder to swallow. (Not really the point but I can explain if anyone asks why I’d say that). Having a name for a rule is a language “hot key” for being able to point out when something seems off. To be quite honest, it took me longer to write sentence #2 than it did sentence #1 because breaking the rule is hard for me now. Parallel structure in a sentence with a list of items simply makes the information parse easier for me. It’s a case of X, Y, Z that I’m then able to use to create a voice for my character. I just need to be able to keep X, Y, Z in mind. And that’s really why knowing the rules helps you break them: it helps create a louder voice for your character, really allows them to shine through so the story isn’t just the writer’s report of what the character is doing in their particular environment. Let’s see if I can’t make Lita a little more real:

“I picked up the book, gently sliding the bookmark from between two page to place it on my nightstand. Deciding to read a few chapters, I sat up straight and felt myself smiling at title of the next section. Lost Love. These sorts of chapters were my favorite. That moment when two lovers reconnected, their emotions so complicated that the only thing they can say to one another is, ‘You’re looking well. How’ve things been?’ But after three hours of getting sucked in, I realized how late it was and finally made the decision to go to bed.”

There’s a little mix and matching going on here, but knowing the rule of parallel structure helps me as a writer focus on something more important (i.e. the basics) so I can break it apart to make it more interesting. It’s easier on me to organize and plan if I use rules so I can help make the report of a fictional character’s thoughts easier to communicate. Sometimes fictional characters don’t report to us in grammatical ways because we, as writers, are privy to their stream of consciousness (which is decidedly not grammatical). Our thoughts come to us in stranger ways than language. Lita might only report to me that dealing with an angry customer in ways that are 0% words--frustration, heat (body temp), and the need to get away from a situation. That’s not a great way to report things. An example: “Hot. I’m hot. Idiot. I know the rules. Yelling, heart races, pound pound. Leave leave leave idiot need to be doing other things idiot stop yelling.” That is a very hard report of an internal world to follow. BUT depending on the character, it might be effective to break rules of punctuation and clarity of action. You might have a character whose self-report breaks down so much that you, as the writer, are simply forced to transcribe and little else. It’d be effective for creating a character who might dissociate in stressful situations or whose suffered an injury so severe the pain sort of takes over all organization. I can’t tell you when or what when it comes to using such a strategy but I can use rules (again, language hot keys to quickly point out something that is different from expectations) in order to try and figure out why or how using or breaking a rule is effective. In that stream example above, I can say that lack of punctuation makes me feel uneasy. Punctuation is a rule we use in writing to help organize and transition thoughts. I know how to use punctuation to sound pretentious (see: that semicolon above). I know how to limit how many words might occur between punctuation in order to create quick actions (short, choppy, active voice sentences are good here). But, more importantly, when I know the rules and have really internalized them as second-nature, I don’t spend as much time worrying about how to apply the rules. Instead, I can work on figuring out when and why I should or should not use a rule. Rules are arbitrary in the way that social rules are arbitrary--they’re pretty meaningless devoid of context. We follow rules because we don’t live in vacuums. Deviations from rules come with consequences, effects. Following rules also has consequences, effects. Knowing the rules allows you to become good at examining the effects of following the rules. When you deviate from rules, it gives you an opportunity to then compare and contrast the effects. So, what if you don’t know a rule? Imagine a social situation where the rules are much different than what you’re comfortable with. You might try different things based on what you do know, but without having the internalize, first-hand experience, it’s going to be rocky. You’ll probably have difficulties pointing to exactly why things seem so hard, why you can’t improve (improvement being individualized, of course). Then, imagine some at this particular social situation says, “You tend to show your teeth a lot while smiling. It’s unnerving.” Et voila! (Yes, I’m too lazy to get the accent mark, excuse the rule-breaking). Now you know to smile without showing so much teeth! Things are a bit smoother now! And guess what? Now that you know that people find the whole “smiling with teeth” thing unnerving, guess what you have? If you wanna tell a story about a strange encounter you had with someone, you can smile with teeth to report that you were unnerved while dealing with the stranger! Example: “So, the entire time, this guy is just staring at me so I’m just like, please please go away.” And then you smile with some teeth to show nervousness, unease. BAM! New Hot Key Unlocked! Grammar and writing work much in the same way. Grammar is a fancy way of saying “language hot keys.” Poetry is a really good example of how knowing rules allows you to break it into interesting ways because poetry is concerned with how things sound as well. There are rules for the sounds our mouths make, what’s pleasing to hear (consonance) and what’s not (dissonance). But poetry also has interesting grammatical rules as well. Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is a great example of how breaking well-known rules can produce something distinct and unique. So, I’ve rambled quite a bit. I’ll leave it at that for now but I’m always happy to field questions.

#anaf #thank you for coming to my ted talk #writing #writing advice

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