#I do believe he is a teenage boy with years of pent up rage and frustration at the life the districts lead | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ginnyggginny · 3 years

Text

Francoise Gilot painted “Adam Forcing Eve to Eat An Apple” in 1946, the year she moved in with Picasso to become his young muse. In a New York Times article, Alexandra Schwartz quotes Gilot saying that this is no accident. The painting depicts a woman looking at the viewer with an apple forced into her mouth by an angry man with furrowed brows, and the Biblical title implies a sense of lost innocence and hindsight realization of her own unfortunate situation. The description of a “forced” act calls to mind descriptions of sexual assault, a nonconsensual penetration. Gilot is keenly aware of this connection, as she compares Picasso to the monstrous pirate Bluebeard, who

… didn’t cut the heads [of his wives] completely off… he preferred to have life go on and to have all those women who shared his life at one moment or another still letting out little peeps and cries of joy or pain and making a few gestures like disjointed dolls, just to prove that there was some life left in them, that it hung by a thread, and that he held the other end of the thread. (Schwartz)

Gilot clearly delineates the emotionally manipulative tactics that Picasso used, with his desire to keep all his women at arm’s length. Her description of him keeping his muses “hung by a thread” (Schwartz), which he holds in his hand, shows the way Picasso treated her and others as doll-like objects that he could use however and whenever he wanted, and that he had a sense of entitlement towards their bodies, due to a successful career and an inflated career. Even today Picasso is cited as one of the most famous artists in the world, with Guernica and Weeping Woman being some of his most well-known. It is worth noting that Francoise Gilot was a painter in her own right, and she became a muse in an effort to make connections within the art world that would improve her own career by association. She expected that working with Picasso would bring her artistic opportunities, though likely did not expect the mistreatment she received. And yet she is not famous. The tradition of the muse is named after the Greek goddesses who blessed men with inspiration, but it is most famously used referring to the women who posed for portraits, dating back to the Renaissance when classical-style realistic paintings came back into fashion. The essay “Sexual Violence: Baroque to Surrealist” by John Loughery claims that the proliferation of nearly-nude women in Renaissance painting, so ubiquitous in art museums, comes from a more sinister tradition, describing that the paintings “speak volumes about the power factor inherent in the post-Renaissance tradition of the female nude, and, with their riveting straightforward glance, they point ahead to Manet’s Olympia, Zola’s Nana, and an avalanche of prose and imagery that affirms women’s comfort with their own sexuality, or male projections about that level of comfort” (Loughery 299). This essay sees these centuries-old masterpieces not as ethereal works of art that transcend sexuality, but as works of pornography that were designed to titillate the viewer and bypass the highly religious era they came from with their classical setting. Putting aside the oil brushstrokes, Edouard Manet-- and Pablo Picasso-- are simply depicting the nude body of a young woman. While in many cases this situation may have been consensual, Loughery claims that it would be hard to put aside the inherent power dynamic. Like a high-ranking executive of a film company taking advantage of a young woman, a famous and well-connected artist would certainly hold sway over an ambitious young girl. It would be hard to ignore the age difference between the muse and the artist, the often married man and the often-underage ingenue. Also, the idea that “male projections about that level of comfort” discounts the assumption that the women involved would be comfortable with her depiction. Women are often expected to be beautiful and available, Andrea Pino-Silva argues in the essay “I Believe You, Como Eres”, with their “success determined by the boys we charmed at our quinceaneras, of the lengths we took to prepare ourselves to be wives (Pino-Silva)”. There is a clear gender division, visible in every situation from a muse sitting for a portrait to a girl in a ball gown at a quinceanera. The man is expected to have power, he is masculine, the one who asks the girl to dance, the one who moves his model into the position he wants to paint. The woman is just beautiful and must work to keep herself that way. Not only can the artist use his own power and position to take advantage of the muse, he can choose to make her appear however he wants, like a posable doll-- he can make her look like she deserves whatever attention she gets.

Nowadays, the world of artist-and-muse shows itself differently, as the prominent art forms have shifted with time. The familiar story of a man exploiting a woman for creative gain is now most often associated with the film industry, in particular with director Harvey Weinstein and his actress victims. In the case of Weinstein, this is put in a very sinister light with Salma Hayek, who wanted to star in a movie about the artist Frida Kahlo but was forced to include sexual scenes in order to appease Weinstein’s own sexual desires. The muse and the model are very similar, in age and in public perception-- being a beautiful woman paid to look good and inspire works of art. One such model/muse is Kaori, a sitter for the Japanese photographer Araki Hirohiko. During the time of the #MeToo Movement in 2018 and 2019, when millions of women came out with their stories of sexual harassment and assault, Kaori told her story to the New York Times, describing how the photographer emotionally abused her. She describes Araki as treating her “like an object (Kaori)”, when “he asked [her] to do abnormal things, and [she] did them as though they were normal. (Kaori)” Kaori described an incident in which the photographer took nude photos of her, and then published and distributed them without her permission, as described within the New York Times article . It is clear that Araki has taken advantage of his position of power, both as an elderly man in a patriarchal Japanese culture, and in his successful career as an artist allowing him to take liberties with the normal steps of asking for permission and consulting her. This is an extremely similar scenario to Salma Hayek’s experience with Harvey Weinstein, as along with his sexual harassment, Hayek endured extreme emotional abuse. Hayek states in her op-ed for the New York Times that “the range of his persuasion tactics went from sweet-talking me to that one time when, in an attack of fury, he said the terrifying words, ‘I will kill you, don’t think I can’t.’” Like Picasso pushing the apple into Gilot’s mouth, and treating her like a poseable doll rather than a real woman, Kaori and Hayek face emotional abuse from creative men. In fact, the distribution of Kaori’s images could be compared to revenge porn, in which images that have been captured with consent of the body depicted are released without permission, usually for spiteful reasons. Revenge porn is considered a Class A misdemeanor in many states and is considered a form of sexual harassment. The fact that this is such a widespread problem, to the extent where it has been banned by Ireland, shows that the idea of distributing non-consensual nude images has evolved far beyond the Victorian boudoir images of young women resting in nothing but a necklace-- the “male projections about level of comfort” that Loughery mentioned, where male pleasure in viewing a woman’s body is more important than her own comfort and consent.

Women throughout history are often disbelieved, ignored, and left to their own anger and rage. Francoise Gilot channeled her anger into her own Cubist paintings, following a tradition started by Artemisia Gentileschi among other underappreciated female artists who suffered from sexual abuse. Gentileschi is best known for the iconic painting Judith Beheading Holofernes, another example of a Biblical motif being used to convey another meaning. In this image, Judith is bent over the man’s helpless body, her sleeves rolled up over her elbows. muscles outstretched to drag the sword through his neck. Blood spurts out gorily, as Judith is attended by her maidservant. Though the woman in the painting is Judith, it is likely Gentileschi as well-- a woman who was raped by her father’s friend as a teenager, and who was subjected to a humiliating rape trial, according to John Loughery’s essay. The story of Artemisia Gentileschi’s life shows how little her life differs from that of a modern-day rape victim, although Judith was finished in 1621. The painting becomes a revenge fantasy, a way for Gentileschi to release her pent-up rage, visible catharsis as Holofernes becomes her rapist, and her maidservant holding the basket for his severed head becomes a metaphor for the women who unite over a shared enemy. Pablo Picasso and Gentileschi’s rapist were both artists who took advantage of their success and power, in addition to their position as creative men-- as art has been considered a feminine pursuit, creative men may compensate for their choice of career by acting with masculine bravado. Rebecca Solnit writes about the patriarchy’s discomfort with women, and desire to erase feminine attributes among men.

If emotion must be killed, this is work that can make women targets. Less decent men hunt out vulnerability, because if being a man means learning to hate vulnerability, then you hate it in yourself and in the gender that has been carrying it for you. Girl and pussy have long been key insults used against boys and men, along with gay and faggot; a man must not be a woman. (Solnit 30)

#stuff i wrote for shcool

16 notes · View notes

plsbyallmeans · 4 years

Text

Hillary Clinton on Her Surreal Life and New Hulu Doc: “I’m Not the President, and I Got More Votes! It’s So Crazy!”

The former candidate looks back and laughs. What else is she gonna do?

Hillary Clinton sat serenely before me, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. That was my first surprise as I was ushered into a room at a Pasadena hotel to talk to the former Secretary of State and the woman who won the popular vote in the 2016 election about Hulu’s four-part documentary series, Hillary (premieres March 6). Although she’s been accused of being plodding and dour, Clinton exuded buoyant warmth. And then there was her laugh. At first I was convinced that it was deployed for effect. (Politicians get media training; is laughter training a thing?) But gales of it tumbled out so regularly and recklessly that it seemed clear Clinton was just relaxed—maybe for the first time ever?

Sure, sometimes her laughter sounded rueful, but a lot of us feel rueful these days. And while she has stopped ascending the political ladder, Clinton’s name still sparks both adoration and loathing, as well as generalized post-traumatic stress. Some people wish she would withdraw into media exile rather than shadow the current election like the ghost of campaigns past. That gave some pause to Nanette Burstein, the documentary filmmaker behind The Kid Stays in the Picture and American Teen who took on this project in 2018. Burstein knew the Clinton defeat was still a raw wound for liberal America. But it was a cross she was willing to bear, given the complete editorial control and 35 hours of interviews with her subject she was granted, along with leeway to pose any questions she wanted.

I started to ask Clinton how it felt to participate in this legacy-defining project after so many years of having her life’s narrative framed by others, but the word “framed” triggered an explosive howl of laughter. “By all definitions of that word!” she said, eyes flashing, before collecting herself again.

“I decided to do it because I’m not running for anything and I think my life and my story has parallels with women’s lives and stories and what’s going on in politics,“ Clinton told me resolutely. (This was several weeks before the rumor circulated that Mike Bloomberg was considering asking Clinton to be his running mate.) “Thirty-five hours sitting in a chair answering questions is grueling but I felt like if I didn’t tell my side of the story, who would?” she added with a shrug. “At least there’ll be a baseline: Here’s what actually happened in my life. Here’s what I actually said about it.”

That led to some very uncomfortable conversations about the many scandals that engulfed the Clintons, including her husband’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. (“It was awful what I did,” Bill Clinton tells Burstein, barely able to look at the camera. “I feel terrible about the fact that Monica Lewinsky’s life was defined by it.”) “I had to ask the ex-president of the United States about the most personal thing in his life and why he would make such a decision,” Burstein recalled. “It was very intimidating! But it was about: How did this affect Hillary and her marriage and the repercussions of that, which followed her 20 years later, into this last election.”

The series flickers back and forth between Hillary Clinton’s youth and the present, weaving together a complicated and flattering (if not quite hagiographic) portrait of a woman who’s provoked admiration and abhorrence for much of her life. Sometimes she seems like a real-life Zelig, popping up near the center of American culture for the last half century. But Zelig was a bystander, whereas Hillary got right in the thick of the action, sometimes changing the course of events and others times being swept along by them.

Clinton came of age at the exact moment that the women’s liberation movement was rising, and her 1969 Wellesley commencement speech landed her a spot in Life magazine. As a young lawyer, she wrote briefs as part of the staff for Nixon’s impeachment hearings (decades later, in a savage irony, she saw the process from another angle when her own husband was impeached). After following Bill to Arkansas, she confronted good old boy sexism, encountering judges who thought women shouldn’t be lawyers and constituents who felt the first lady of Arkansas should take her husband’s name. When Bill cheated on her in the White House, some women were furious with Hillary for standing by him. Conversely, when Bill entrusted her with the daunting task of devising a universal health care plan 16 years before Obamacare, right-wing rage, and revulsion boiled over. Footage in the Hulu series features protesters brandishing posters with slogans like “Hillary makes me sick” and “Heil Hillary.” At a Kentucky rally, they even burned her in effigy.

“I was threatened when I went around the country talking about it,” Clinton told me of that heated Hillarycare moment, shuddering at the mention of the burning effigy. “The Secret Service made me wear a bulletproof coat at one event because they had taken guns and knives off of people trying to get into the outdoor event. I thought, Shit, I’m trying to get people health care! It’s not like I’m stealing your firstborn here! What is the matter with you?” she shrieked, howling with laughter. “It was so weird—like, what’s happening here? Were they paid? A lot of them were riled up by talk radio…. But yeah, I had a lot of very unusual experiences.”

In the Hulu series, former adviser Cheryl Mills recalls “Hillary hater sessions” during Clinton’s 2008 campaign for the Democratic nomination: Women complaining that the candidate was too power-hungry or that she’d been weak for staying with Bill. “It was like watching The Exorcist: The bile would just keep coming up,” Mills said. Clinton herself told me that before she ran for president, a psychological researcher warned her she’d have problems with white women “because they don’t want any conflict with their husbands, their fathers, their sons, their brothers, their boss. And white men are not going to vote for you—they didn’t vote for your husband, they didn’t vote for Obama, et cetera. So there was a lot of pressure on these women.”

Whatever your view of Clinton’s politics, Hillary reminds us that she was voted the most admired woman in America in the Gallup Poll for 16 years in a row. (Michelle Obama knocked her off the top slot.) Clinton fervently believes she had the white woman vote nailed down in 2016 “until Jim Comey dropped that letter on me,” she said. “I was going to win, I am absolutely convinced of that…. What happened is that white women left me, because their husbands or their bosses or whatever said, See? See? She is going to jail! It was a very effective assault on me.” The series points out that not only was Clinton’s career shaped by her own husband’s infidelity, but it was derailed once again by the sexual misbehavior of Anthony Weiner, husband of her top aide, Huma Abedin. The FBI probe into his sexting a teenage girl ultimately led to Comey’s announcement that they were reopening the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server. This reignited the frenzied right-wing smear campaign and, she believes, turned off enough vacillating voters to throw the election to Trump.

Burstein didn’t want to lean too heavily on the gender angle because there are elements at play in Clinton’s turbulent trajectory that “have nothing to do with that,” she said. “They have to do with politics. With her own personality. But there are also things that are very specific to being a female when you’re trying to do something no one else has done…. You really see that play out in her story over and over again.” The documentary shows how the battery of conflicting public expectations and right-wing vilification over several decades caused Clinton to build up defenses, which made her seem ever-more guarded and humorless. That armoring process started as early as law school, where she learned to put her head down and work hard “despite whatever obstacles were put up. And when you fast-forward into an age where everybody wants to see what your emotions are and how you respond and all that... It’s really a different environment in which we find ourselves now.”

Clinton first sat down with Burstein for interviews just a few days after the 2018 midterm results came through with their record number of women elected to Congress. The former first lady and Secretary of State regards the anger-fueled impetus that drove so many women to run for political office as the silver lining to her 2016 defeat. “She doesn’t feel that it’s a tragedy, so why should I depict it that way?” said Burstein. “She’s not bemoaning her existence every day. She’s like: Okay, what’s next?”

Sitting in front of me in a nubby tweed blazer, Clinton said she tries to be realistic about the progress women have made during her lifetime. “A lot of legal barriers have disappeared, and that’s a big step. So now we deal with all of these pent-up stereotypes and judgments about what women should and shouldn’t do or should and shouldn’t be. And we have all these forces—political and ideological and religious and financial—arrayed against further progress. And we have a president who is a willing tool. He doesn’t believe any of this stuff. He has absolutely no core beliefs whatsoever.”

Clinton won’t endorse anyone in the primary, she told me: “I just want whoever can beat him to get the nomination. Beat him in the Electoral College. That’s all I care about. I’m not going through this again!” she said, dissolving into laughter once more.

I asked Clinton if she ever thought about what she’d be doing in a parallel world where she hadn’t moved to Arkansas and married Bill. She evaded the question, telling me she moved there because she wanted to decide whether to marry and just fell in love with her life there. But then I mentioned to her William Gibson’s new novel, Agency, which takes place in a world where Hillary is president.

“Oh, I’d love to read it!” she gasped, asking for more details. In our own reality, “I’m not the president and I got more votes. It’s so crazy! So I’m interested in somebody writing something about a different ending.” She smiled and wailed, “I want to live in that world!”

(Link)

#Hillary Clinton #Eek so she's going to read the alternative universe Hillary Clinton and I am living for it

28 notes · View notes

superlonelypin · 4 years

Text

A well deserved punch

"Nothing screams home like the polluted skies of Gotham city." Those were the first words to leave Marinette's lips as she stepped foot into the gloomy outside of the hotel her class would be staying in for their month-long class trip. She hadn't been planning on coming back to the crime-ridden city, not since her brother had died, but Ms. Bustier didn't leave much room for convincing, especially when it came to the likes of Lila and her lies but th young half Asian girl didn't let her phase her much, she kept to the positives, like being able to visit her godfather.

"Now, why would my favorite little bug have such a big frown upon her face?" The voice of her godfather breaking her out of her thoughts. She instantly turned and threw herself into the older man's arms, arms of which instantly caught the small teenager and pulled her into a hug of his own.

"Uncle Jim!" She laughed happily as he carefully began to spin around before carefully placing Marinette back down onto her feet and stepping back to get a better look at the young girl he hadn't seen in person for almost ten years.

He let out a chuckle as he pushed up his glasses. "It seems you haven't grown much since I last saw you..." Gordan had trailed off on his sentence as the all too dark memories of Marinette's last time in the city had been of her older brother's death and her adoption into the Dupain-Cheng family having gone through the court systems after two years of the French couple filing for her adoption.

Wide blue eyes took on a faraway look that could only haunt the police commissioner to his very core. He never did like seeing such a look in Marinette's beautiful blues, but it seems that such a look will always find its way back into her clear eyes.

"Come on, I did promise to stop by the precinct so everyone could say hello to you."

The rest of their day went by in a flash, Gordan taking Marinette to a lot of her favorite spots from when she was younger. They even dropped by and hung out with Barbra for almost a whole hour before the teenager was needed back at the hotel for dinner with her class.

"Thank you again, Uncle Jim." Jim ruffled the bluenette's hair and smiled back at her. He's forgotten the last time he's smiled as much as he has today, but he wasn't going to dwell on that, for right now he was going to focus on his goddaughter.

"It's no problem kid, and remember if you have any problems of which you informed me of with your class while here, call me up and you'll stay with me for the rest of your time here."

When the topic of the school had come up between the two, Marinette had instantly tensed up and looked down at her lap. The inner cop in Jim had nearly jumped out but he held back and waited until his goddaughter was comfortable enough to speak about it on her own terms and when she had he had expected tears, but none ever made an appearance in her blue eyes, and it had worried him, for Marinette had always been a sensitive child.

"I will, pinky promise."

The two exchanged hugs and one last goodbye before the police commissioner left the hotel lobby leaving Marinette in peaceful silence, but said silence could never last too long for the blue-eyed girl.

"I guess Mari-slut just can't stay away from men and older men at that!" The snide remark of Lila carried out through the lobby causing the crowd of French students to snicker or to look on at the Asian girl in disgust, but Marinette wasn't going to allow them to bring her down, not in her own city.

So, growing a smile and determination in her clear blue eyes, Marinette marched her way over towards the Italian Burnett and glared daggers onto her.

"Lila, that man you 'claim' to be my lover without any proof just so happens to be my godfather."

The taller Italian stepped back in surprise at the confidence that radiated from the shorter teen. The green-eyed lier hadn't expected for Marinette to even stand up to her, but it seems that being within a city as gloomy and crime-ridden as Gotham brought something out of the half Asian girl that she'd never seen before, but she wasn't about to let some goodie-two-shoes get the better of her, not now that the empire she's built within the class of dimwitted students was so strong.

The other students looked on in a daze. They didn't know whether or not to pull Lila away from the bully or to allow Lila to walk away from themselves, and before they could really step up was when Marinette spoke up.

"I'd watch your back, every one of you. We are now in my city. A city of which will kill you without any Ladybug to bring you back." And with that, the short blue-eyed girl walked away and into the elevator.

A few days pass, and then came the day of the Wayne Enterprise tour. The class and Lila had chosen to ignore Marinette for the time being and she couldn't be any happier for that fact. For she had more time to herself to sketch out new commissions and more free time to allow Tiki out of her purse without any interruption from anyone demanding her of assistant or accusing her of harassing Lila in some way or another.

"I'm just disappointed that Bruce had to be on a business trip." Why after two peaceful days of no lies did Lila have to start them back up and inside the very building where she was likely to make a fool of herself.

This was sure to become a disaster on its own.

"But no worries, I can set something up for you some other time Alya." Marinette rolled her eyes and sighed at her former best friend's apparent lack of a lie detector. Mr. Wayne had stated through email that he would remain in the city while he hosted the French classes trip, Marinette even made sure the class knew of his words.

"Do they really believe everything she says?"

Blue eyes widen at the sudden break in her thoughts from the newcomer, causing for Marinette to jump a foot off of the ground. The man- no teenager found such an action amusing and laughed as he ran his fingers through his hair.

"Sorry, didn't mean to startle you, I'm Tim the tour guide for your class." Tim offers his hand out for a shake with a slight smile to his lips.

Marinette could tell he was lying. The tour guide was supposed to be Dick, whom of which she counted as a second brother. She didn't ask any questions knowing that something probably came up, so she put on a smile and took Tim's hand into her own and gave a firm shake.

"Marinette Dupain-Cheng-" She spoke with confidence in her voice as her blue eyes gleamed up into equally, but cloudy blue eyes. "I'm the class president and I do apologize for the lying going around."

Tim smiled politely at her before turning his attention to the class. He soon called out to grab the attention of the others, "My name is Tim and I will be your tour guide for the day. I would like to inform you that we will be having a bodyguard join us, it's mainly because we don't want to risk an attack from the Rouge's or any escapes for Arkham."

The class gathered around Tim with widening eyes, seeming to now take notice of just how dangerous Gotham was. Their attention though soon sifted to the sound of approaching footsteps nearing Marinette's left side.

"Name's Jason, I'll be your bodyguard."

Marinette's world soon went blurry.

That voice, she knew that voice anywhere. Yes, it may have changed with age, but it was still the voice of her brother. The boy who would protect her from their father's beatings or beating from the strays on the street. It belongs to the boy who made sure the little blue-eyed girl had a meal before her every day.

It was the same voice of the teenager who had died when she was seven.

With a shake in her steps and blurry vision, Marinette turned to look up at her once dead brother. Even through her teary vision, she could see the moment that Jason recognized her. For the young man flinched slightly as his own blue eyes clouded in shame.

"You died."

Jason's mouth opened and closed, he couldn't speak. He couldn't think because before him was the very girl he had promised to always protect, but he had failed such promise. He became too scared to face his sister after awakening from the Lazareth pit.

"You died, and you left me on my own for ten years! Where were you when I need you the most! Where was my big brother!"

Jason flinched once again, he even tried hiding behind Tim's back, but his replacement wasn't having it. He knew he deserved his pixies out range but he was never too keen on experiencing it.

"Pixie I-" the shorter girl cut him off before he could even finish what he was saying.

"Don't you dare fucking pixie pop me, Jason Peter Todd!" Marinette gasped out and let out a sob as she hid her face in her hands. Her body trembling from pent-up rage and frustration.

Everyone within the lobby of Wayne Enterprise was tuned in on the scene at hand. Some brave enough to have their phones out recording the whole affair going down, while others looked on in astonishment as the small girl continued to yell at Jason Todd. Even the class was blown away at the outburst. Marinette normally had the most control over her emotions, so seeing the Asian girl crumble before the very man to be her brother was all a shock to them.

"Does Uncle Jim know, does Dick know! Who all knows and didn't tell me? Who all made me believe you were dead for ten years!?"

Everyone was practically on their toes. They watched as the short bluenett, who was still crying into her hands and stood hunched over on skating legs that looked as if they were to give out any minute.

They watched on as Jason took careful steps towards his sister. He looked as if he were going to wrap her in his arms and hug her, but he was stopped as a fist shot out and struck him in the nose, and from the blood now running down his nose, the smaller girl most likely broke it.

"Ow, fuck!"

The entire room held their breath after the punch had been blown. They sat waiting to see what would happen next. They waited to see if Jason would drag the girl out of the building or if the girl would strike the other once more. But neither of those happened. What happened next only further their surprise.

"Oh god- Jay-Jay, I'm so sorry." Marinette brought shaking hands up to her brother's face in worry. She may be mad at him but her caring nature will always shine through, no matter the situation she's in.

"S'fine Pixie." Jason chuckled and pulled the shaking teenager into his arms, being careful not to get his nose blood onto her midnight black hair. "I deserved it. God do I deserve that." He finally let himself cry as well further shocking everyone taking a witness to the reunion.

"Missed you so much Nette. Never a day went by that I wasn't thinking about my baby sister and whether or not I was doing the right thing in keeping you away. I was so fucked up after I- after I died, so much so I didn't want you to see me. To know that me, so I never reached out. I just recently got better, and I was, I promise I was going to tell- I was. And I do, I deserved that punch to the nose."

Marinette pulled away from the hug and smiled softly at her brother. "I get it, but just so you know, I'm punching Dick and Bruce when I see them."

#maribat #marienette dupain cheng #jason todd #miraculous lb

7 notes · View notes

rckyclrk · 5 years

Text

alex turner. 27. cismale. he/him. the black keys | i can’t believe i just saw RICKY CLARK walking out of cadence records. they’re the VOCALIST / BASSIST from the PUNK group HEATSTROKE who have been in the industry for THREE YEARS. the tabloids love to focus on their COLDHEARTED nature , but they’re also pretty CHARISMATIC and they seem to give off a vibe that reminds people of FRIENDS HOLDING YOU BACK FROM BAR FIGHTS, CUNNING SMIRKS, CRYING FROM RAGE WHEN YOU’RE ALONE.

hello !!! i’m jess, i’m 22, reside in the bst timezone and use she/they pronouns !! i literally only found this rp like two hours before it opened for plotting so excuse me if this intro seems a bit rushed, and i apologize for how late it is. this is the first of my muses, king asshole ricky clark. he’s a damaged angsty boi and i hate / love him. please like this if you’d like to plot, or slide into my IMs!

p.s. we can also plot on discord @ aries baby#7087 and you can check out a pinterest board for ricky here!

trigger warnings: heart disease, loss of a parent, ‘daddy issues’, abandonment, drugs & alcohol mentions, violence implication

BACKGROUND

ricky was born to dirt-poor parents in upstate new york. they had pretty much nothing but the basic necessities but it was v much a “they had each other and that was enough” kinda thing

his mother was his hero, ricky idolized her as she would do anything for him & was a kind, honest woman with a good heart who put every penny she earned into trying to give ricky a good life.

but his dad? quite the opposite. he was a distant, aggressive man with violent tendencies. whenever he was home, he was causing conflict. but most of the time, he wasn’t. it was pretty obvious that he was cheating on ricky’s mom, as well as just generally giving zero shits about his son. he was just an all-around asshole.

his mom was a waitress. she worked very few shifts as she wanted to make sure she could spend a lot of time around her son making sure he had a good upbringing.

when ricky was eleven, she suddenly fell ill with heart disease and her condition deteriorated very quickly. she could no longer work and decided to turn to music as a way of coping, learning to play guitar to keep her spirits up. ricky always took an interest in this and loved listening to her play him his favorite songs in the final years of her life

she ended up passing away before she could see ricky enter his teenage years. in their shared grief he and his father bonded and had a better relationship for a short period, before long he was back to his old tricks again never coming home & ricky had to basically raise himself for a little while, before finally he ended up in the foster care system for the remainder of his teen years

this is where he taught himself how to play the bass guitar his mom had left behind for him, as well as singing and songwriting. he quickly realized why she found such escapism in music.

he was a bit of a ‘bad boy’ archetype at school, who was constantly getting into fights etc but would show a softer side to the other outcast kids, especially the other musicians

foster care is also where he manifested a lot of resentment, anger & hostility after everything he had gone through. he kinda felt like life had dealt him such a shitty hand, and he had so many abandonment issues due to his father’s ways. he struggled to bond with any of his foster families and basically hopped around homes for years, still mourning his mom & acting out as a coping mechanism

so pretty much the second he turned eighteen and could leave foster care he got the hell out of town and headed downstate to new york city with pretty much nothing to his name, telling himself he was off to pursuit a career as a solo musician. he wandered around a bit, going about his life as somewhat of a vagabond living out of cheap motels whilst he struggled to settle.

after a few years spent working shitty 9-5 jobs and almost ending up homeless multiple times, he figured it was time to admit defeat and head back home, as his dreams of becoming a musician hadn’t really took off. he returned to his hometown & found that an old classmate from high school had been advertising around town, for a bassist for his band. it seemed like the perfect opportunity, and ricky jumped on board.

before he could even process it, the band were moving to LA to chase their dreams of making it big. after performing in bars & underground venues, they landed themselves a record deal with cadence

ricky LOVES the fame. he’s finally getting the love, adoration & attention he lacked in his life after his mom died. he’s living the rockstar lifestyle, having fun, and doing whatever he can to feel fulfilled and numb the pain and lasting scars left by his past — which by the way, he’d rather die than open up about.

PERSONALITY

so as is mentioned, the whole thing with his past has made him grow extremely resentful as a person and he has a lot of pent up issues that he bottles up. this makes him extremely stand-offish, short fused, arrogant etc? but the better someone gets to know him the more they’ll see a softer side to him. he’s a complex, multi-dimensional and very guarded person

he’s FIERCELY loyal and will protect his friends at all costs ( yes surprisingly he does have friends ) he’s prepared to fight someone if they’ve done something to hurt his friends

hes a really social guy despite the fact he can be quite intimidating. if you’re not on his bad side he’ll be completely fine with you, like? the main thing that’d get someone onto his bad side would be if they just assumed he was an asshole based on his initial demeanor, without getting to know him

Closed Off Emotionally™ - he basically put up a huge wall so that nobody can see how much the abandonment from his past has got to him but there’s definitely a kinder, damaged boy beneath who just needs time tbh

he lives his life pretty carelessly bc he kinda cant resist the whole idea of a rockstar lifestyle. very reckless i know but can you blame him? the issues of his past are still very much there so he tries to numb the pain in any way he can by drinking and taking drugs tbh, which he knows is unhealthy & he’s trying to stop

actually pretty funny when he wants to be

really competitive

a bicon

when given reason, he can care so deeply about people. it’s so hard for them to see it because of the way he is, but a dead give-away is that if he really cares about someone he will never lie to them. ever

he’s basically just very intense if you couldnt tell already

#cadence.intro #hmu for plots !!!#this is so long im sorry

14 notes · View notes

hwaryungrp · 5 years

Photo

SPOTTED! KIM SEUNGBIN . 20.

Looks like they’ve been wandering around Hwaryung! You can find them living at RYEON APARTMENT #202, if they’re not home they’re probably at NIGHTBLUE ENTERTAINMENT AS A TRAINEE or at BK KARAOKE AS A BUSBOY. Turns out they are also currently studying MUSIC at HWARYUNG ACADEMIC INSTITUTE. If you can’t find them offline, feel free to message them @bin52.

BIOGRAPHY

BOOK I The journey begins with the tale of a bastard son born to a common woman, his father of no substantial wealth. Unwed, but madly in love. It is a romance held in secret behind the back of their parents. From this love is the child conceived. Seungbin is the name he is given; an homage to an uncle he would never meet. His eyes resemble the stars in his mother’s and his unwavering expression mimics his father’s. His birth is hailed as a joyous occasion, but the euphoria is short lived.

The girl weeps. While her mother’s mouth spills lies that deceive those with the power to rip the infant from undeserving arms, but the cruel woman’s grasp loosens with persuasion. Barely aged eighteen, the girl agrees to give him away. For both of their sake.

An infant could never comprehend the gravity of the situation.

BOOK II Seungbin finds himself swept away to another city, forced to drown among a sea of unfamiliar faces. The decrepit old building looms over a dead street, its aging foundation festering with an infection of ivy and mold. The interior is packed to the brim with toddlers and glassy-eyed adolescents. Their faces are sullen; aged seven and already wise to the unyielding hand of reality.

He grows there with each passing day; until eyes finally look upon him with pity. Sympathy for the wide-eyed child desperate for nurture.

“This is your new home,” the caseworker snarls, wrought with misplaced contempt. “And you would do well to be on your best behavior.” She speaks with a purpose, cognizant of the child’s capacity to understand despite his young age. She is a wicked being indeed, and her face twists with agony as he pulls on her greying hair in a blinded rage.

Thus he is forced in amalgamation with parents not his own, and he is well aware of who they are not. He’s a boy made of recklessness and untamed fury ㅡ taken out on the wrong people.

Perhaps it was better he remembered nothing about the origin of his existence as he grew up, raised by parents not his own ㅡ the neighbor downstairs who had often watched him while the child’s mother disappeared for days on end testified he was a “good kid”. It was better this way. The former family of only two are afforded gainful employment and a roof over their heads but remained childless. What they referred to as being dealt a bad hand. However, they are attentive to their new responsibility. As far as the child knows, the two are his parents, and they would never utter a word to tell him otherwise.

BOOK III The boy matures into the charms of his prepossessing appearance. Arrogance grows with him. He is aware of the power of his own fists, knuckles colored with healing shades of purple and crimson. Disputes can be caused with a quarrel with his bedroom wall or the recreational center’s punching bag. Hungry claws are also satiated with petty theft. Desperate fingers clutch the stiff material of a candy bar as he tears it from its display. The decision is bold and foolish. He can’t resist, else his palms begin to itch.

The only effective distraction he finds is through music. At twelve years old, he picks up his first instrument. It releases pent-up rage in the way his fists never could.

High school paves the way to finally meeting those like himself. A place in the group of outcast teenagers takes him in as one of their own. Even still, he is ever so slightly misplaced. What divides their interests is Seungbin’s distaste for parties and their penchant for sciences and literature. What solidifies his place among them is the way he handles a guitar. He’s absorbed into their makeshift rock band.

BOOK IV He finds himself submerged in another tide of faces he did not know; faces like his own. The inner walls of the underground club are cold and stark, blistering from the corruption of those it houses. These faces are dark; aged beyond their years and hardened by society. He doesn’t belong there, but the bass guitar confidently fastened to his front says otherwise.

The other patrons are tough and mean. Caged animals often thrash within the confines of their cells, riled up by what they consider audible trash and their overindulgence in alcohol. Balled fists, heavy and determined, resist the grasp of callused palms around his wrists. The pain is an excruciating one. Their heels dig into the crevasses of his rib cage. Their knuckles scrape against the roughness of his teeth. He screams for repentance; their laughter at his anguish roars too loudly. Tell him to never return again.

The group of boys steps away peppered in bruises, but not discouraged. Seungbin laughs in his stifled way, dryly proclaiming they had just become men. The event turns them to the packed streets of Hongdae on the same night to complete their rite of passage.

BOOK V A man dressed to the teeth slips a card in his hand with a crocodile smile. Sixteen years old, vulnerable, and with an aimless view on life, he accepts the offer as his golden ticket. A snort nearly pushes past his nostril at the name etched into the card stock. NightBlue.

Atonement for past transgressions comes in the form of something more subtle, but it still contains lies. He is handed a second chance at life on a silver platter in another town, an unknown future.

He doesn’t break the news to his parents until the company phones their home questioning his decision. The man on the other line gives them the promise of success. They hold understandable reservations towards the offer. Their passive natures, however, leave them little room to argue; and the unwillingness to leaves a sour taste in Seungbin’s mouth. Bittersweet when they smile and reassure them they’re willing to move to help him pursue his dreams.

Powerless to resist the beckoning hand of fame, he finds himself caught in a crevasse of the entertainment industry he never expected to be. He is thrust into a training program as abruptly as his initial discovery. Believing to be sucked into a world of dreams, he wanders the company halls aimlessly, mesmerized until he stumbles upon a soundproofed practice room. Carpeted floors and comfort of dim light contrast the bright dance rooms in a way he is incapable of explaining. The boys inside exude an air of familiarity in spite of them being strangers. He turns to the new faces with a crooked smile. This unknown sea is only the second to make him feel welcomed.

The opportunity to reach for his dreams, however, would never rear its head again. And, so the wannabe rock star makes the most out of his circumstances.

PERSONALITY

( + ) loyal, passionate, confident ( - ) temperamental, impulsive, rebellious

#HR;FOLLOW

1 note · View note

thatslytherinanderson-blog · 6 years

Text

Self-Para: You Have My Respect

“Don’t waste it, don’t waste your life.” Cooper looked across as he hesitated before uttering a small “What?” “You. You’re a kid. You have years ahead of you. Years. Don’t waste it.”

The boy stared at the man for a moment. The man with long, greying hair and a shabby white beard. He looked scraggly. Like he hadn’t been living the best life for a long while. Yet the boy had to quickly remind himself not to judge. For all he knew, he could be rich without a care for material possessions. Cooper’s mother had always told him to never judge a person before you really knew them.

“Uh-... I’m not following,” he responded after a short pause.

The seventeen year old was sat in the local pub, The Fox and Hound, in Dorset. It was nearing eleven at night at the hustle and bustle had cleared out leaving a few drunks and quiet couples hidden in corners of the stone establishment.

It was a muggle bar, one he was all too familiar with. He’d worked there during summers, yet this particular day he’d just come to get out of the house. Away from his father’s raging voice and his pressure. His constant questions bellowing down on the boy about his future, what he was going to do, where he was going to go in life and how he better not end up being a disappointment.

“I see you. You barely look old enough to buy that. I wouldn’t be surprised if you weren’t,” the older gentlemen gestured to the whiskey in Cooper’s grasp.

As the boy stuttered out a response, he waved it off before continuing. “You look like you’ve barely stepped out of school and don’t worry, I saw the card stint.”

Cooper froze as his eyes widened, realising he was talking about the small charm he muttered under his breath while at the bar. The one that turned the digit in his birth year to allow him to be served. He’d been seen using magic.

“Don’t panic. It’s okay. I know,” he reassured as he noticed the immediate fear in those young, brown eyes. “Still at school then? What house are you in?”

“Uh- Uh... Slytherin,” the younger swallowed hard as he stared down.

“Ah, yes, the greens,” the old man smiled to himself, the glaze over his eyes making it clear he was lost in the memories of days gone by.

Cooper found himself nodding before turning his attention back to the wall of assorted liquors in bottles. Sipping the last of the amber liquid in the bottom of his glass before sighing softly and running his hand through his hair.

“What is it then?” The old man asked, bringing Cooper’s attention back. “A boy, a kid, sat in a pub at eleven o’clock at night, knocking back whiskies like there’s no tomorrow. For what reason? Why? Is it really that bad?” he queried.

Cooper stared at him in disbelief, a frown forming on his face as he tried to process what the other was saying. “What’s it to you? You don’t know me.”

“No. No I don’t. You’re right there. But I know whatever it is, whatever is going on. It’s not forever. Nothing is forever because you always have a choice. To say yes or no. But what I’m going to tell you is when those choices come by, follow your gut, follow your heart. Don’t listen to your mind. It only thinks in moments. Your heart, that’s what truly knows. That’s what holds onto things forever.”

The teenager, looking absolutely bewildered beyond belief, found his frown growing. “What the fuck do you know? You come at me when I’m minding my own business. Start yammering on about school and about my life choices and all this bullshit about wasting it. What’s it to you? Get the fuck outta here man”

As the attitude presented itself, the man withdrew. Drawing in a long sigh as he tapped his fingers on his half-empty glass. “So defensive, you’re a natural.”

Cooper scowled as he looked away and sank his head onto the palm of his chin, his elbow resting itself on the polished wood of the bar. “Fuck you.”

“So much attitude, you really have a lot pent up don’t you? Who’s done you wrong then kid? The whole world owe you a favour?” he taunted slightly. “Typical Slytherin. You’re just like all the other Slytherins huh? Got a chip on your shoulder like the rest of them. You’re all meant to be bad ones anyway. Making bad decisions. Unforgivable choices. Unspeakable deeds.”

Admittedly it was a fear of his. The stigma that went with being in the house of the snake. There wasn’t a witch or wizard that didn’t go bad that was in Slytherin. Was he destined for failure? Was he destined to follow in the steps of those before him. To follow a corrupt man into battle. He felt like he’d always face scorn when people learned of his house. That other students would judge him immediately as being evil or damned to wickedness.

The anger was clearly building in the boy, the frustration showing in his jutted jaw and clenched firsts. “You’re not there. You don’t have to walk around with eyes on you. That everyone’s waiting for your next fuck up or that you’re going to beat them up for nothing. You don’t have people blaming you for the past, you can see it in their eyes. -It was the Slytherins who turned against us- I wasn’t even born! So what the fuck do you know about it?” Cooper snapped.

“Because you’re not me....”

Anger turned into confusion as his face fell. That was until the elderly man revealed a scar on his forearm, one in the shape of a skull and snake. Fear flooded his expression as he almost fell out of his seat in a bid to flee.

“Don’t worry- I won’t hurt you. I’m a frail old man, look at me, time has been unkind. But let me tell you something. That look on your face, the one of fear and dread,... is the same one you’ve just described to me.”

Cooper found himself becoming aware of his expression and it quickly fell. “Y-You- you- you were a-” he gestured, getting a nod in response from the man.

“I was twenty-one in 1970. I was young, bullied, without a purpose. I had no parents, I was looking for security. I found it in the wrong people. People who were manipulative, made me feel safe. Like I mattered. That’s who I was.”

The boy was stunned to silence as he collected his thoughts. “Why are you not... y’know. Locked up?” he queried hesitantly, afraid to offend him.

“I claimed I was under imperio after the first war, not my proudest moment. With the second, I kept my head down. Most believed me to be dead, still do. But that’s not what I’m trying to say here, kid. I don’t want pity. I made my choice. That is what I am saying to you. Do you really want to be here for the rest of your life? Drinking yourself into oblivion because something that is momentary, something that doesn’t have to last forever is what’s pulling you down.”

Cooper glanced over when he turned to face him, tapping the sleeve where the scar was concealed. “This does not define you, nor does it define your house. It defines me by the choices I made. But you said it yourself, you weren’t born. You never made those choices. So don’t burden yourself with what isn’t yours.”

The elderly man gave the teenager time to process as finished his drink and ordered two more drinks, one for himself and one for Cooper.

“Did you know?” Cooper looked over at him, “my house?”

“No.” The answer was clear and simple. “But I could tell you were shouldering a lot, the way you hold yourself, like you’re ashamed, you’re hiding. The knowledge of your house spoke for itself in your attitude, defensive. I saw a lot of kids like you, angry, lost. You were the perfect candidate,” the man sighed.

Cooper looked over at him as he hesitated. He was at a loss for words.

“That was before, this is now. This is your generation. You have to make something new. Go out there, graduate, be the best damn person you can be and hold your head high when you tell someone you were a Slytherin. Do not waste your life kid, do not make those bad decisions. They are the ones that feel easy at the time, they’re the ones that feel like you have no choice but to accept. This, me, the past. It’s all gone. Now it’s up to you. So I don’t want to see you in here again, drinking yourself away in the middle of the night. Okay? You’re a fighter, you have my respect, kid. Don’t let me down. Be something better.”

Shutting his bedroom door, Cooper ran his hand through his hair as he sat on the bed. His father had been so proud when he found out Cooper was a Slytherin and Cooper knew it was somewhat for the wrong reasons too.

His future frightened him, the uncertainty of life, of where he was going to go. Yet the unplanned conversation had left him with a new outlook. A new perspective coming into view as he tried to envision life after Hogwarts. He had a chance.

#selfpara #location; dorset #date; summer holidays 2018

1 note · View note

roadswim-collective · 7 years

Text

Three Times He Lied To Me Lie 1.

I was twenty three when I met him. I was back at home, living with my mother, after three years in halls of residence. Here's a list of the places you'd be most likely to see me during the year I was twenty three:

on a train

in a library

at a railway station

in a corridor

at my tutor's office

in my bedroom.

I had literally no social life, unless you count going to the shop for tobacco. My best friend was my I, Claudius box set. On Friday nights when my mother was out with the girls from darts, I'd drink Prosecco in the bath. Sometimes I'd do that on Saturday nights too.

I did go other places sometimes. If the weather was nice you might see me in a castle. Caerphilly was my favourite. Or I might be at a Roman site like Caerleon. And now and again you might see me out of breath at the top of a hill somewhere looking at the remains of an Iron Age fort. I was always alone on these excursions. I'd end the day pretty much as I'd started it, lying in my bed, in my old bedroom, probably watching Gladiator.

I was halfway through a master's in history with archaeology, a two-year course, and I was completely broke. Amazingly I'd got a First in my degree, and my tutor recommended me for post-grad. It was all a bit overwhelming. I was the first in my family to go to uni, you see. Well, my father was accepted at some art college back in the day but he didn't finish the course, he dropped out. Other than that, though, I was the first to go on to higher education. It was quite a big deal at the time. Nerve-wracking. I more or less expected to crash and burn.

Everyone else seemed so confident, so talky, and loud. So English, I was about to say. But that's not fair. I just hadn't met many people like that back then, middle class people. A lot of them hardly bothered going to lectures and they were always incredibly insulting about the tutors. They were always on the piss too. Now me, for the first two years I just kept my head down and my mouth shut. I worked as hard as I possibly could, hoping to keep up. I read literally everything. When a lecturer praised my work, I'd carry that around with me for days like a little glow of fire to ward off the doubts.

Not that I was some kind of nun. My main indulgences were:

thin little roll ups in liquorice papers smoked on the library steps, about one every half hour

a bottle of vodka in my bottom drawer for winding down at the end of a long essay

the occasional lump of cheap hash to see me through the holidays

a boy from Norfolk with nice dark eyes, though that was more trouble than it was worth.

By the final year, though, I knew I was heading for at least a 2:1, possibly even a First. There didn't seem so many of the loud talky ones around by then. There were a lot of drop outs. On the one hand that made it hard, because the spotlight began to shine on me a bit more. I couldn't just hide in the back of the seminars anymore, I was invited to contribute. On the other hand, those little glows of praise from my lecturers had grown into a proper fire, burning day and night. And I started to see them as human, my tutors, not as untouchable gods or whatever but as people who were obsessed by the past, by trying to dig it up and see it as it was, just like me. It was hard to believe I'd made it to the end of the three years. And now they were encouraging me to take it further, to do an MA.

I mean, it was way beyond what I'd expected. That last year was just wonderful, I loved it.

The day I graduated, my mother cried and my brother puked. We were all in the union bar, toasting each other. I can drink my brother under the table, and I did that day. Uncle Lloyd was there too, wearing a blue suit that I won't forget too soon, putting away the cheap beer and chatting a bit too much to girls. My father hadn't turned up. He'd promised he would, but that's my father. I can't believe I really expected him to be there. Maybe I didn't, I can't quite remember now.

So anyway, yes. That was, nice, to be doing so well. And now I got to spend the next couple of years digging around in sub-Roman Britain, a time I'd been mildly obsessed with since I heard the stories of Saint David and Saint Dyfrig in RE at school. I always saw it as this mysterious realm full of saints and kings and warlords and clashing cosmologies, and all of it hidden in layers and layers of myth and dirt. It was like digging up a real life epic, it was kind of a dream come true for me.

On the other hand, after three years as a student I was completely broke, massively in debt, and I hadn't made any friends. And now I was back at home, with my mother, in my old bedroom, commuting to Cardiff from Aberdare, an hour each way on the train, to do my studying. I was making a tiny bit of money working part-time in college libraries at different campuses all over the place, Merthyr, Treforest, all over. I read my Mary Beard books over lunch, and on station platforms in all weathers I listened to podcasts.

My mind was usually far off in the mist, tracing trade routes of lost empires, digging through dead cities, reading old epitaphs. I was starting to feel a bit sort of nothing about everything, or everything modern, everyday life, here and now. I'd even stopped watching reality TV. The only things I watched now were documentaries. Well, and Derren Brown, I loved his stuff.

Everyone I'd known, my uni friends, had all sort of evaporated. The same thing had happened when I left school, or whenever I changed jobs. It was happening again now. Helen and Julie, Rupinder, Jay, Alex and Steve, Danny, my sort of ex, they'd almost faded out, just a year after we all graduated and I promised to stay in touch. None of my friendships were ever strong enough to survive the transition, everyone just floated away. I couldn't say why.

I was happy enough though, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my own company. To be honest, I couldn't really imagine looking round a historical site with someone else. Having to talk to them, listen to them, instead of just looking at the stuff. Or standing on an iron age site, a hill fort, looking down into the valley, no sound, only the wind whispering and the birds calling – and just because someone else is there you've got to ruin it all with small talk. I tried to see it in more positive terms but I failed to convince myself. I just couldn't imagine it. Very often, I paid for the audio guide tour, with the headphones.

Anyway, there was this librarian I was sort of obsessed with. His name was Will and he was twenty nine. He worked at the humanities library at Cardiff Uni. I did some shifts there, he was sort of my line manager, one of them anyway. He was slim and tall with thick hair and he talked a lot. The women all loved him. He was funny though not quite as funny as he thought. Well, they never are, are they? But he wore tight jeans and brown boots and they suited him, oh my god they suited him. His eyes were green and twinkly, his grin was cheeky. I didn't think he fancied me but I knew for sure that he knew I fancied him.

I sometimes got flustered when we were chatting in a corridor. I was full of pent-up lust. There were moments when literally all I wanted out of life was for Will to turn up at my door late one night and fuck me senseless. Preferably a Friday night, when my mother was out with the darts girls and I was all wet and alluring from my Prosecco bath.

Anyway it was no good, he had a girlfriend. Cerys. They lived together. No kids though. So there was always the chance they'd split up. I tried to gauge the likelihood. It seemed a pretty stormy relationship. He made lots of bad jokes about him and Cerys rowing all the time, her insane jealousy.

He turned up to work one day with his wrist in a splint. When we asked him about it, he said this: "A woman in a bar came up to ask where the toilets were, and the missus didn't like it so she broke my wrist, just as a friendly warning." It turned out later he was joking and he'd actually fallen over drunk. Everyone laughed. But the next day when we were getting cans from the machine Will confided to me that the reason he'd fallen was because Cerys pushed him over some bins on the way back from the pub. "We shouldn't drink together, me and her," he told me. "Only one of us should be drunk at a time. Or it goes bad."

So it all seemed quite volatile. Sometimes he looked miserable. There were phone calls from Cerys that sent him scuttling outside, scowling. He made lots of jokes about how unreasonable she was, how she flew into a rage, shouted and screamed. In dark moments I imagined that what he was leaving out from all these stories for the sake of decency was all the amazing, passionate, hot sex they were having when they weren't rowing. She probably shouted and screamed all the way through that too. Lucky bitch. I didn't have enough experience to make that assumption, really, but it crept up on me sometimes as a slightly depressing certainty.

All this drama seemed very distant from my own life. It was like watching I, Claudius, all that passion, the lust and the violence, Brian Blessed. And there was me, alone in my teenage bed at night, my hand wandering down, trying to visualise the exact lift and curvature of beautiful Will's tight bum. I was wondering if it was finally time I invested in a vibrator.

So then they did split up, Will and Cerys. It wasn't the first time but she'd gone back to Llanelli or Ammanford or wherever she was from, and apparently she'd never done that before. Will seemed pretty upset and he got a lot of sympathy at work, which he obviously enjoyed. I'd say the percentage male/female split at the humanities library was about 30/70 to the girls. Some of the men seemed a bit uncomfortable with this, with being out-numbered, but others blatantly loved being surrounded by women. Will was one of those.

He started going out for drinks after work. We'd all go, a big pack of us. Yes, me too. This sort of party gang developed. Friday nights mostly and usually around Cathays, in the Woodville or the Pen and Wig. There was boozing and there was bad behaviour. I got caught up in it a bit. I'm not really into that kind of thing, in general. I'm useless at small talk, it's just embarrassing, so I drink too much to compensate, and I talk a load of crap, wear myself out, and have to spend the next fortnight in bed. But it's funny how a change in just one colleague's relationship status can act as a catalyst on the pent up frustrations of the whole office.

And of course I always had to catch the last train back home. That was at ten to eleven so I was leaving early, baling out while the night was still young. They were all staying out, Will and everyone, they were going on somewhere else. And I'd be on the train, half-cut but not quite pissed, with all the sweaty bellowing valley boys, nodding-waking-dribbling all the way back to cold dark Aberdare.

There was nothing left for me at home really. The girls who'd stayed there were on their second or third kids. We had nothing in common now. All the boys were messing about with the same old things as before, cars and sports and booze, just with jowls now and already balding. Thinking about it, I don't suppose I had much in common with anyone in the first place.

So I started staying the night now and again with my new friend Abby who was doing a PhD and lived in Roath. Not every weekend, just if it was going to be a big night, someone's birthday or whatever excuse came up. I was quite good at drinking, still am, and I'd always be among the last standing. It was me who had to get Abby into a taxi and find her door key and let us in and, more than once, hold her hair back while she was sick. And when it came down to the last handful at the very end, Will was always there too. Will and me, Abby, Hannah, Chris, a few others. There until the bitter end. None of us had anything much to go home to really.

So one Friday night we ended up in this over-priced cocktail bar on City Road, six or seven of us I think, probably about 1am. Abby and I happened to be sitting opposite Will, the three of us leaning in close over a tiny glossy circle of table to be heard above the music. He was on great form that night, Will. He listened to the latest installment of Abby's catastrophic love life with great interest and had a lot to say about it all. He told Abby that none of it was her fault and she deserved much better. He said, "Look at me, after all this Cerys stuff – I'm bruised, sure, I'm bruised to holy fuck, but I'm not bleeding." I'd almost say he was cosying up her to her but I didn't get that feeling, it read more like a supportive friend thing. Also, I noticed that he was addressing quite a few of his comments on love and heartbreak and so on directly at me. As in, right into my eyes. So of course I began to feel ridiculously excited and kept insisting on more drinks all round.

When men try and chat you up, it's almost always boring, and forced, and makes you cringe. I mean, I suppose I'm partly to blame because I'm just no good at small talk. And chatting up is usually just a subset of small talk, really. You're not usually talking about anything in particular, there's nothing to cling on to, and it's all crappy, you're just wafting these threadbare festoons at each other in desperation. So I tend to just sort of clam up and that's the effect most blokes' efforts have on me, their intended target. Not Will. He was good.

Abby was talking to Hannah so now Will and I were just looking at each other over our tiny table. He grinned and beckoned me to lean in closer, so I did, and he said, "I'd like to try something out on you, if you don't mind." So I raised my eyebrows at him and said Um, okay..? To which Will did a mischievous little chuckle and told me it was a kind of personality test, and I said A test? O-kaaaay... "Don't be worried though", he said, "it's not serious, it's just a bit of buggering about, of no diagnostic value," so I said, Well that's a relief and he chuckled again.

And he was wearing this really nice aftershave and I could see the hairs on his chest poking over the top of his shirt. Plus I was half-cut. Plus it had been a bloody long while since I'd even been near a bloke. So you can imagine, can't you?

Will's idea turned out to be quite good. Basically, you've heard that thing – if you could have as your superpower either being able to fly or being able to make yourself invisible, which would you choose? Those crappy questions you get on Facebook that are meant to reveal some essential truth about your personality based on a seemingly throwaway choice you make. Well, Will said he hated it because it was an obvious fix, a swizz, the superpowers thing, because all the traits associated with flying were really good ones – success, confidence, flying high, reaching for the sky, freedom, the great beyond. And then you had invisibility, said Will, which was the choice of creeps. Think of the kinds of things being invisible would allow you, would invite you to do. It's nothing very noble, is it, Will said. It's sneaking around, it's hiding, not being upfront and honest. It's peeping toms, he said, it's sneaks and spies and saboteurs, it's eavesdroppers and shoplifters and pickpockets. Invisibility appeals to the voyeur, to the nosey parker and the perv. So it wasn't really much of a choice, he said, in fact it was a complete fix and he'd thought of his own, much better alternative.

I was laughing at all this, by the way, and reaching across to maul his arm from time to time. This was a good deal better than your average chat up, I was thinking, and even if it wasn't a chat up I was having fun with a silly man on a Friday night and and he was making me laugh so just go with it, just enjoy yourself for god's sake.

"Okay," says Will, "here's the thing. Some old fella down the road from you, mad professor type, he's built a time machine. It's in his garden shed and he's invited you to have a go."

"So this old man is trying to get me to go into his garden shed with him?" I say. "I don't think I believe he's got a time machine in there, to be honest. I think he might have other reasons."

"Fair point," says Will. "Make it your grandfather then. Someone you trust."

"How about my grandmother?"

Will says, "What's the matter, you don't trust your grandfather?"

"Very funny," I say. "Well, yes I did trust my grandfather and he did make things in his shed, but he's not alive now so..."

"Oh shit. Sorry," he says. "I haven't got any grandparents left, as of last month. Ah well, life's a shit, your grandmother it is then. Okay, so you go into the shed, there's the time machine, and your lovely old Nana is inviting you to be the first to have a go on it."

"First?"

"Yup. First ever trip, the maiden voyage. And she wants it to be you, her favourite grand-daughter."

"Her only grand-daughter, " I tell him. "So, I'm like a sort of guinea pig? My Nan wants me as a guinea pig?"

"Yeah, I suppose so," Will says. "But in a very loving way."

I did one of my stupid big honking snorting laughs all over him at this point. By now, fed up with shouting over the music, Will had come round the table and we were pretty much squeezed together. He seemed to enjoy it, this muffled explosion of me. We were laughing at my laugh. I called it my walrus call, he said it was a great, unashamed, life-affirming laugh, he said it was one of the great laughs. What a bloody charmer, eh? I was seriously starting to wonder if I'd be spending the night at Will's instead of holding Abby's hair as she puked. I was starting to feel pretty damn good about myself, doing all the sexy banter, all the flirty-flirty stuff. I'm a bit slow on the uptake sometimes, I don't always read the signals. This, though, with Will, this Friday night, I felt bloody fantastic about everything.

"Alright, forget about your Nan and the shed and everything," Will said. "You've just got hold of this time machine somehow, okay? But you can only use it once, I mean for one return trip. There and back, then that's it. So the question is – where would you choose to go, the future or the past?" Then he frowned. "Actually this might not work so well on you because you're an archaeology student, not a normal person."

Anyway, to speed things up a bit, that question of Will's led to a conversation between us that went on until we all got chucked out of the place at about two and then continued in the taxi heading for Abby's house. I told Will I'd choose to visit the past, of course, either to sub-Roman Britain to see what it was really like, or all the way back to the start, before agriculture, to when we were still nomads. We talked about that for a while, the distant past, then Will said if he had the one-trip time machine he'd definitely choose the future, no question at all. At least two thousand years, he said, either that or a few million, because he wanted to see how it all panned out.

So then we talked about that for a while, the far future. It was all quite slurry and rambly and drunken, of course, but it just kept going, and we got on to what all this might for our respective personalities, and about the state of the world in general, whether things were getting better or worse, whether there was any hope for the human race and all that.

And then, suddenly it seemed, we were outside Abby's house and she was getting out of the taxi, stumbling on her doorstep, trying to find her key, fiddling it into the lock, waving goodnight, and falling into her hallway, while I was staying in the taxi with Will, who was in the middle of saying that there never was a golden age, it was just a fantasy, there was never a time when everything was in harmony and everyone was happy, but that there could possibly be one at some point to come if we didn't blow ourselves up or make ourselves extinct through climate change, and also there was Paul the spotty Australian IT boy who was fast asleep and snoring and had to be shoved really hard to wake him and get him out at his place in Riverside while we went on to Will's flat, quite a nice one in Llandaf North.

And then, suddenly it seemed, it was a year a later and we were on holiday in Rome. It was my first ever visit and it was amazing, overwhelming, beautiful, and Will and I were celebrating the anniversary of that night when we got together, and we were walking around having what was basically a continuation of the same conversation that we'd started then, in that over-priced cocktail bar in Roath.

It was an odd match really, Will and I. We were different in lots and lots and lots of ways. We hardly agreed on anything. And at first, I think we were both kind of fascinated by how different we were, despite having quite a lot in common. Here are some of the things we had in common:

smallish working class valleys hometowns, Aberdare and Glynneath

stopped feeling that we fit in to our respective hometowns at around the same age, 14

each had an older brother who got married and moved away, his to England, mine to Monmouthshire, which amounts to the same thing

divorced parents, both our dads had left home, both of us were under 10 at the time, and neither of us really saw much of our fathers

both went to Welsh school but hadn't really kept up the language since

first in our family to get a degree, Will having achieved a 2:2 in psychology

we'd both been members of the Green Party at some point, although neither of us was now

similarly miserable teenage years, greasy depressions spent in cocoons of totemic books, music, films, art, clothes, comedy, metaphysics, magic, comics, etc, evolving into a dense and intricate personal para-reality to which the everyday world of bus stops and dog shit was merely a laughable and mundane annexe.

It felt as though we'd started off in roughly the same place but had headed in different directions. We kept coming back to the past/future thing, it was like some structuring principle we used in thinking about our differences. Here are some of differences we noticed:

Favourite films - me: Agora, with Rachel Weisz as Hypatia, Elizabeth, with Cate Blanchett, Mel Gibson's Mayan epic Apocalypto, and yes Gladiator. Will liked Bladerunner, Alien, Star Wars, the first Matrix, The Fifth Element, and Guardians of the Galaxy

Books/authors – On holidays from my study reading I liked Sarah Waters and Hilary Mantel. One of my favourites was Alan Garner, ever since I read The Owl Service when I was thirteen. As a kid I read and loved all of Tolkien to the point where it affected my dreams and I saw epic battles on my walk to school, raging in the morning clouds that cling to the scarp of Maerdy mountain. Will had never read any Tolkien but had an impressive number of multi-part space operas under his belt, his favourite being Iain M. Banks' Culture novels. He could quote huge chunks of Douglas Adams and he also loved William Gibson...or was it William Burroughs? One or the other anyway. He mostly read non-fiction now, a lot of pop science, Freakonomics, Malcolm Gladwell, Dawkins.

Music – I listened to Fairport Convention and Nina Simone. Will listened to German minimal techno

The state of the world today – we both agreed that everything was in a right mess, massive poverty, total exploitation, greed, capitalism, eco collapse, extinction event imminent, all caused by us. Not just Will and me. Humans. Where we differed was where we looked for possible solutions. It was the time machine again – he went forward, I went back. Will felt there was no way to fix all the things wrong with the world by going back, it was too late. Humans had caused damage to the world by being too clever – fossil fuels, international tourism etc – but it was only humans therefore who could fix it all, by being even more clever. He looked to a post-market utopia in which we've abolished scarcity, outgrown the lizard brain, conquered evil and greed with intelligence, and built a new world based on a new understanding. We'd first heal our planet with our incredible new machines, and then we'd move out beyond Earth in creative, peaceful waves, slowly evolving into children of the stars. I exaggerate, but only a bit. And me, I still do the same now, I dig back to older societies and pre-modern ways of life, tribal ways and folk narratives, non-profit motives, sustainability, to structures of feeling abandoned on the road to modernity, old medicines for our modern sickness. Will was never very open to any of this stuff. His closing flourish was always something about whatever the old days might have had going for them, it was basically a kind of blissful ignorance, hardly to be envied, and besides, no-one – not even you! - would genuinely want to live in any era of human history before reliable anaesthetics were invented.

As I say, we hardly agreed on anything. But in the early days that was part of what made it fun. We used to debate things a lot in the early days, it was what we did. And whatever we were talking about, at some level you could sense that same old past/present thing, his time machine thing. It really seemed to me he'd hit on something essential about his approach to life and mine, and the differences between them.

So we were in a cafe opposite the Colosseum having coffee, sat right in the bay window, watching the street life. I tried to order two double espressos but I messed up my pronunciation and the waiter brought us singles. Will beckoned the guy back over, and the waiter smiled and said, in English, "You want milk?" Will gave him half a grin, shook his head, and said, "Nessun latte – doppio – prego," and they both laughed, the waiter nodding and whisking off our tray. Then Will turned back to me and grinned his bloody adorable grin. I was thinking we might have this coffee then maybe pop back to the hotel room for an hour or so.

"Milk indeed," he said. "He must have taken us for a couple of weak ass English milk weeds."

I laughed.

"You know what you should do, Will? You should be a writer. You should write something."

"Ha, what?" he said. "I don't think so. I haven't got anything to say."

"You've always got something to say, you idiot."

"Well, yeah, but it's all bullshit really, when you come down to it."

"Well, yeah, but that needn't matter. Look at some of the crap that that sells."

"Mmm, Da Vinci Code, Fifty Shades, Jeremy Clarkson, fair point," he said. "But, no, no, I really don't think there's anything in my particular brand of bullshit that would sell."

"I don't know," I said. "What about your time machine? I'd say you could definitely make something out of that. It's good. It gets you thinking."

"Do you reckon?"

"I do, yes, I think you could make that into something, a story, something funny and clever," I said, "like you."

And he leaned across the table and kissed me. A big kiss, right there in the bay window, with everyone going by. When I opened my eyes again he was smiling at me, his eyes were so warm, he was so handsome, and golden autumnal Rome was glowing away behind him. I felt so good, so happy, more than happy. It was all so much more than I'd expected. I whispered a suggestion to him and, after our espressos, we popped back to the hotel for an hour.

Will often said he'd like to write but he never did. And the thing is, he already had a story about that time machine, an actual story with a beginning, a middle, and a funny but very bleak punchline. I couldn't see why he didn't write it up. Can we just skip just for a minute back to that first night I spent with Will, at his flat in Llandaf North? So it's stupid o'clock in the morning, we're both at the point where you drink yourselves sober, and we're out on his brown bolted balcony. I'm squinting at

glimpses of the Millennium Stadium and the BT building through the trees. A mile and half away, the city centre. The rain is falling but the air is warm and smells sweet. We're still not quite sure if we're going to do it. Will had a text from his ex earlier – at three in the morning! - and it sort of made the atmosphere between us a bit weird. So now we're on the balcony, talking. I remember telling him that all his Bladerunners and his Aliens and his cyberpunk whatever, all these futures he was into were all horrible. Mostly these were all dystopias. It was satire. The future in most of these things he loved was some crazy exaggerated version of today's world, with all our problems pushed to the limit. I remember him grinning as I pressed the point. Well, he said, realistically, and whatever I'd prefer, it's probably more likely we'll fuck it all up and ruin the world. Realistically speaking, he said. That's funny, I told him, you love the future but you don't even believe in it really. Your best guess is it's going to be even worse than today.

And then he told me this story. There's this couple, he said, and she's like you, she loves the past. And he loves the future. And one day this time machine really does turn up, but you can only take one ride each in it. Just one return trip because human minds can only deal with the experience once in a lifetime, any more and you burn out your brain. So she goes first, heads into the past, and comes back a few seconds later in a state of deep depression and disillusionment. Then he has a go, into the future, and comes back a few seconds, depressed and disillusioned. They conclude from their experiences that the present is as good as it gets and enter into a suicide pact. As for living, they say, our spambots can do that for us. But then he remembers that he's already visited both their graves in the far future and the dates on their headstones made it clear they were going to live for several more decades so they don't bother and just split up. She later married a quantity surveyor and bought a big house near Chepstow, and he drank himself to death.

So it was a funny little story with a bleak punchline. I kept telling him to write it up but he never did. I couldn't understand because he kept saying he wanted to write. I mean, I thought it would be a good little exercise to get him started. After all, he had the whole thing there, he just had to write it up. But he didn't write it. He didn't write anything. If he did, I never saw it.

This morning I looked through my bedroom window and the sky was turning a lighter and lighter blue as the sun came up over the motorway. Everything around was beginning to glow. By the time I got to work the clouds had come, colours went grey, and at lunchtime it started raining. It was pouring down as I drove home at five. I sat in a traffic jam on Cathedral Road, blowing the heaters to clear the windscreen, getting hot and prickly, opening the window and getting splashed, and thinking, well, how quickly it came and went, that early sun, and what a long time ago it seemed now.

There's a Welsh saying, Nid yn y bore mae canmol diwrnod teg. A rough translation would be something like, Morning is not the time to praise a fine day. In other words, it's very unwise to call it a nice day when it's still early and it might well piss down later. I love that. It's one of the cliches about the Welsh, that we're very pessimistic. All down to the rain, or the diet, or being conquered, or the Miners Strike. I can't speak for anyone else though, Welsh or otherwise. You might call it pessimism, fair enough - I just call it realism.

I've just got back from a conference in Rome. The paper I gave looked at some of the connections between Macsen Wledig of the Mabinogion and the real life Roman emperor Magnus Maximus. It was beautiful, of course, as it always is in the autumn, golden, and glowing. I walked down by the Tiber where all the plane trees had turned orange and were dropping their leaves into the river. Being the maudlin bitch I am, I made a point of walking pretty much the exact route I walked with Will, eleven years ago now, from the Circus to the Colosseum and up to the Capitoline Hill. It was dark by the time I got to the top and my legs were aching. I leaned on a railing, looking down at the spotlit Forum, and I thought about Will, and I thought about my father, who died six months ago next Tuesday, and I felt like crying to be honest. But I didn't, partly because it would have been pathetic and made me feel worse, but mainly because these anti-depressants I'm on seem to dry up my tear ducts. I get the trigger to cry but nothing comes. Probably for the best.

When I get home from these things I'm always exhausted. Even a short trip with no paper to give leaves me completely worn out. I know what it is. It's not the work, that's nothing. It's not even giving the paper, I've long since built my public speaking armour, I can climb into it whenever I need to. No, it's all the other stuff. The chatting and socialising. Relaxing, kicking back. Networking. All that side of it. I'm useless at it. Wears me out. Never been any good at that stuff.

So I tend to get home, lock myself in my house, set the phone to messages, and basically not talk to anyone for, well, for as long as I can get away with. Which is usually about 48 hours, then I go back to work. I always make sure to book time off for exactly this purpose. I call it my decompression period. If I don't get it, if I have to go straight back to work, I go a bit mad. Noticably so. Incredibly irritable, interspersed with moments of mild hysteria. To be fair to my colleagues, they're used to it by now, they've adapted, it's become 'a thing', an amusing thing everyone knows about me, Anna. Academia is a perfect trap for eccentrics. Everyone has their quirks, but actual, diagnosable personality disorders are no more or less common than in any other vocation.

I haven't really changed. Not really.

During decompression I can't even read anything. All my books stay on their shelves. I turn instead to the internet. Last night I watched a whole series of a forgotten ITV sitcom from the 80s called Me and My Girl, starring Richard O'Sullivan as a widower bringing up his now teenage daughter Sam, played by Emma Ridley. Don't ask me why, it's not very good. And this morning I looked up Will's Facebook. Don't ask me why. He's got his profile set to public so I can have a good look at all his family holidays, his wife's birthday, their anniversaries, their kids growing up. Not that I envy her, I can just imagine all the crap she has to put up with. She probably doesn't even know the half of it. She looks more and more hopeless in the pictures, to be quite honest, and a bit thinner every time. This – looking at Will's Facebook – this is no good. I realise that and I hardly ever do it. Why would I, really? I found out all about Will a long time ago, and that's why we're not together now. The main feeling I get when I think of how close I came to ending up with him is relief. I look around my cosy house and I think, wow, close escape. But when I'm in this state, post-conference, I end up doing it, peeking into Will's life, I don't know why.

I wondered if Will ever did rouse himself to write anything. If he ever made something of his time machine thing. By the look of his Facebook, he hadn't, he was still at the humanities library, head of department. When I was full of his family pictures I just sorted of drifted through various Google searches, all pretty desultory. I suppose I was vaguely wondering if anyone else had come up with a similar idea anywhere in the world. Turned out, someone had. My drifting led to a review of a book of short stories, called Minimum City, including one which sounded remarkably similar to Will's time machine story. It was just a synopsis really but it was enough to make me look up the short story collection and its author. It was an American author, a man, quite a big name but I'd never heard of him. Contemporary set fiction still isn't really my thing. From reading the Amazon reviews and all the rest of it, this is what I learned about Minimum City:

It was made up of 28 stories

They were all very short, some only a paragraph long

It was a very slim book, with big type and wide margins

All the stories were set in the modern world

They all tended to have some kind of twist / sting in the tail

The tone was cynical, darkly funny, etc etc

It didn't sound like my kind of thing but I could imagine Will enjoying it, at least Will as he was when I knew him, I can't speak for now obviously. I found the story. It had first been published in an online literature journal before being collected in the Minimum City collection. Its title was The Return Trip. It was very short. A couple come into possession of a time machine. All the rest follows exactly as in the story Will told me on the balcony of his flat in The Crescent at about four in the morning, twelve years ago. Right down to the spambots line.

I'd already checked publication dates. The Return Trip by this American author whose name eludes me now was first published in an online magazine called Young Boasthard's four years and eight months before Will told me the story. It was collected in Minimum City and published by Harper Collins six months before Will told me that story and passed it off as his own, on the balcony of his flat.

And I started laughing and laughing, until I had to put my bowl down in case I got milky cornflakes over my t-shirt.

#The Effluent Lagoon #roadswim collective #three times he lied to me #fairport convention #german minimal techno #richard dawkins #ursula le guin #tolkein #iain m banks #sub-roman britain #the dream of macsen wledig #magnus maximus #st dyfrig #bladerunner #agora #time machine #time travel #minimum city the return trip

2 notes · View notes

olympiansrpg1-blog · 7 years

Photo

BASICS

Name: Felicia Odette Brava Age: 26 Affiliation: New Olympus Occupation: Bruiser Faceclaim: Eiza González Status: TAKEN by Misha

THE STORY

They call you Cerberus, fighting with the ferocity of a beast. For the majority of your adolescent life, you felt suffocated, crushed under the weight of certain expectations you never wanted to meet. They wanted you to be gentle and kind, everything the storm that raged inside of you was not. So you learned to fight under the midnight sky, sneaking away from the watchful eye of someone who claimed to love you as you were, rendezvous in dark alleyways and underground rings filled with people much bigger than you. This was a life worth living: packing hits and watching people fall under them as you felt every irritation and frustration leave you, inciting a passion in you that you had never felt in any of the things your parents wanted for you. It was there that you found your future calling, someone who represented death themselves with the moniker of Hades extending the hand of freedom to you. You ceased it at the first opportunity, knowing you would never have to do any of those redundant things again. You have never left their side since, even if you’ve begun to feel stifled again from their faith in you and the expectations that come with them.

CONNECTIONS

PAEAN - If there is one person that you are eternally grateful for aside from Hades, it is Paean. You cannot remember how many times you’ve come to them, with wounds that would otherwise terrify anyone else and they calmly talked you through every single one while their hands made you whole again. It is in this calm that you found a friend, someone decent enough in this world of crime to earn that title. Though your loyalties are on opposite sides, you know you can count on them far more than anyone else.

CHIMERA - It seems as though they are everywhere you go, your very own shadow with a touch of insanity in your eyes. You’re not certain what it is they have against you, going out of their way to find you and start a fight. All you know is that you’ve had it with them, especially with the way you two seem to be evenly matched, leaving the both of you in a sweaty and bloody heap when all is said and done. You’d do almost anything to wipe that smirk off of their face and knock their snarky words right out of them.

MEDUSA - It is of no surprise to you that people tend to stay away from you, with knuckles cut and bruised to the point of scarring and a grin made for violence, you don’t blame them. Medusa, however, has never shied away from you and you often times work together, almost too cohesively, to pull of a job. You know of their reputation, but you learned long ago that perception isn’t always reality and you genuinely want to get to know them better.

SUGGESTED FACECLAIMS

Eiza González, Alisha Wainwright, Lindsey Morgan, Medalion Rahimi, Max Schneider, Jade Hassouné, Luke Mitchell

BIOGRAPHY

TW: Drug use mention, violence, murder, abuse, eating disorders

Ever since she was a child, Felicia was not tender. She was bossy and feisty, a real “problem child,” as some would refer to her. Living in London, there were certain expectations of her. She had to be a good girl, she had to sit up straight with her legs crossed and wear white without getting it dirty, of course. Her grandparents immigrated from Mexico to England, making her the third generation and by god did she had mighty shoes to fill. Her mother certainly would never let her forget it, perhaps that was why she was forced to assimilate by wearing skirts that were too long, or why she went to high tea and had a nice gaudy hat for every damn occasion.

In truth, her father was planning on becoming apart of Parliament and eventually, Prime Minister. So Felicia needed to be the prim and proper, perfect little girl that everyone wanted her to be. It could not work, in year two she got sent home for twisting a boy’s arm too hard that it deeply bruised him. In year five, she beat another boy up with her little purse full of rocks. Each time her family got such phone calls, she was demonized back at home. Her mother was livid, it was a nightmare trying to get her to calm down and the bored expression on Felicia’s face only sent her over the edge. “Do you have no shame? Your father needs this family to be perfect!” Felicia sat there, her blood curdling in her veins from her rising temper because she needed to fight back. Yet instead, she clenched her fists and spoke through gritted teeth.

“Take another sedative then, mother.”

Things had been intensely uncomfortable between them ever since. In public she was forced to bite her tongue, and becoming a teenager did not make her mother take her more seriously. If anything, it meant that her arm would be twisted back tightly under the guise of a saccharine sweet smile in public, and in private you were engaged in a screaming match that was only calmed by the condescending words your father would whisper in an attempt to soothe you. “Mija, you are supposed to be my good girl. Can you be that for me?”

She wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, but of course she didn’t. She simply nodded every time and tried to stifle the war raging inside her. Her bones felt heavy with the fight she needed to go to, but she tired. As the years went on, Felicia pretended that she actually could be gentle and soft. She almost believed herself for a moment as well, she spoke with a proper English accent and walked with perfect posture. Her hobbies included croquet or cooking, and for awhile, she forgot who she really was. She was completely numb and hazed out for the majority of her teenage years; her mother always had a problem with something she did but Felicia could only remember taking a biting blow at the moment and screaming into her memory foam down pillows later at night. If zombies were real, Felicia was your polite and beautiful zombie. She never came home with knee scraps anymore, she looked like a doll and everyone ate her up. Both her father’s coworkers and her aunties all said that they much preferred this version of Felicia compared to when she was “an obnoxious little girl.”

She truly did try to stay “good.” At least until she was seventeen. Oh her family could’ve said that they truly did love her for who she was, and they just needed her to not be herself in public, but she knew how badly they wanted her to stay the same mindless Barbie doll. With her father’s seat secured in Parliament, Felicia knew things would only start to get worse. He was going to get more media attention, he was going to be the damn Prime Minister if it killed him and it was going to kill her for certain. The high society ladies and gentlemen weren’t so pure themselves, she’d overhear them talk of gambling rings and boxing matches. So rather than stay home at ten pm on a Friday night, she donned her leather jacket, grabbed a pack of cigarettes hidden underneath her bed, and snuck out of the suffocatingly large house for the first time in her entire life.

It was terribly cold but she was determined to find a bloody fight to make up for the years of suppression. She found the bar that she heard had an underground ring and it only made her more excited to watch the burly men beat one another to a bloody pulp. She could feel the adrenaline pumping through her veins as she watched, the scent of the blood and sweat was almost intoxicating and she felt dizzy from excitement. She couldn’t remember the last time she was excited and it was enough to make her step in between the spectator's’ and right into the ring, a wicked smile on her face and her eyes alight with a wild hurricane flashing behind them. “Let me fight.”

They tried to make her fight another woman, as if she couldn’t tackle the bigger men.

“No, I’m going to pulverize h i m.” She pointed to someone double her height with a permanent glare on his face. She should’ve been terrified but instead she released all that pent up aggression, all that numbness, all that rage. She didn’t remember what happened during the fight until she was standing up with one foot on his chest, her lip swollen and cut while he was clearly a mess beneath her. She knew she didn’t look like a proper, perfect, good girl right then. So when she smiled, baring her bloodied teeth, she sent a message: she was a vicious wolf who was not afraid.

She continued this life, always sneaking out at night for fights in alleyways and other underground rings, and she always came back with different bruises or cuts. It was getting harder for her to look so innocent, especially when she switched her pink lipsticks with dark red to hide the blood and when her lace gloves did nothing to hide the bruises on her knuckles. Her mother would ask what had happened, but Felicia would just smirk and say something cryptic. She was becoming a mystery to her family, and they just couldn’t handle not knowing what she was up to. She was right when she had thought that the publicity presence would only get worse, it certainly did. In a way, she was glad they could all see her a little roughed up. Her appearance didn’t hinder her father from becoming Prime Minister, however, and she knew it wouldn’t. It didn’t matter what she did, but god did her life become even more stifling. Suddenly she had to be even more careful when she’d sneak out, she had to wear disguises and learn how to clean up her own wounds.

It was maddening enough to make her want to leave the country altogether. Screw the rules of High Society England and the disgusting finger sandwiches, and most importantly, the stiff and dry losers who had nothing better to do but to kiss up to their parents. Felicia was going to New York City, where she had a warped sense of reality about the types of underground fighting and altercations that she would get into, mostly because of all the American movies she’d watch. When she told her father, he seemed perplexed, but also secretly glad that she will no longer be causing trouble at home. He was more than happy to pay for everything, as long as she “stayed out of trouble” or as Felicia translated, as long as she didn’t get caught. With her lips closed to hide the chipped tooth she’d have to fix later, Felicia nodded and spoke in the mock sweet voice for what she thought would be the last time. “Of course, daddy.”

She got herself a nice loft in Chelsea, even though her parents pushed for her to live in the nicer “upper east side.” She didn’t want to go where part of the city actually did go to sleep at eight pm, no, she was fine with being an obedient uni student during the day, but she was going to do whatever she wanted at night. Eventually, she grew a name in the underground fighting world and there were rumors of a gang being whispered between the crowd. Olympus, how opulent. She was no goddess, she was hardly one of those beautiful mortal women who’d get screwed over by their selfish demigod lovers. So she ignored these talks, because who cared who her new drug suppliers were? Just as long as she got something.

In school however, she found a new type of fighting. She found the adrenaline rush that was being a defense attorney, and she excelled at it. It was perhaps the only way to tame her, in a sense. She was still just as passionate and just as fiery, but she was composed and succinct, and it was in her pre-law major where she saw herself become a well rounded woman. When she told her father she was going to law school, he was joyous and immediately invited her to come back home, offering to pay for law school in England. Yet she knew she couldn’t leave the city she had fallen for now, especially with her newfound glory that would soon only grow. For the first time in several years, she was allowed to be associated with the family, but Felicia realized she was truly a mistake. He agreed to let her stay in the city and pay for law school there, and she knew their relationship was once open again, but she still was resentful since she knew it was only because he thought she was ready to be a kept woman again. So while she studied endlessly during the day, it was at night where she released the tension and anxieties that came with her career path.

She knew she wasn’t all bite and blood, she just had to figure out who she really was. Being away from her parents was good for that; she swore more, she went tried to be more punk but quickly realized she was not whiny enough for that scene. Felicia explored herself and the city as much as she could, and found herself right where she lived in Chelsea amongst the eccentric FIT students or the artwork that wasn’t polite. Nothing was clean and proper where she was, it was raw and honest. Something she hadn’t been with herself for the majority of her childhood. She even thought she could settle down with someone.

He was her professor during her undergraduate years that she affectionately referred to as Mr. Darcy and as cheeky as she was, Felicia wasn’t really interested in seriously pursuing him while she was still a student. Still, it’s not like she wasn’t going to indulge herself now that she was away from the confines of her family’s watchful eye. So the day of graduation, they had a drink, and it went on from there. It wasn’t meant to become serious, she was still a fighter at heart anyways, but it felt nice to come home to someone who wanted to wrap her up in his arms and talk about everything and nothing. They were domestic, she almost believed she could be normal, that he was her prince charming and that this was what it meant to be a regular girl. After all, women her age were settling down like this, right?

She later learned that the term for the euphoric feeling was called the “honeymoon phase” and it was quickly short lived. They settled into one another, and while things seemed fine for awhile, Felicia quickly learned again what it meant to be a kept woman and she did not like it. She had forgotten that once again, this man was making her forget who she really was inside. Yes she now knew she could be tender and loving, but she wanted to travel; she knew deep down that domesticated life wasn’t for her. Of course, Mr. Darcy certainly wasn’t pleased with this either. He thought he had finally controlled Felicia but no one really could. He forced her to classy dinner parties that put her to sleep on the way back home for boredom, he made her interact with other normal people who were usually just people like her father’s co-workers and friends or like her mother and her friends. When she responded negatively they began to fight. They never fought before, so why was it happening now, just because she didn’t like the things he liked?

That tactic, apparently, was called grooming, because her wonderful Mr. Darcy did not love her the way she was. Nobody did, it seemed. He became more controlling of her, and at first Felicia believed she could handle it. Nothing wrong with some healthy arguing, right? But the healthy arguing turned into screaming fits. She’d want to go out at night to make her earnings from the people who’d bet on her during her fights but he was watching her every move. He began to make comments about her weight, her appearance, it was like living with her mother all over again only with someone much more domineering. She was suffocating, she was pissed, and she wanted him g o n e.

She wasn’t sure how she was going to get rid of him when the thought of dumping him made her nervous as to what he’d do to her career or otherwise, and leaving the city was no option for her when she knew that this was the place that she belonged. She had friends at the ring and when she’d complain at the bar about Mr. Darcy, they’d all offer to roughen him up and scare him away on their own but Felicia knew she could do that herself and she didn’t need to pay a fee for it. One night, she finally got away from him freely, only because he was away at a conference for a week so of course she headed to the ring, determined to find a solution. Was Olympus real? Was it not just some stupid myth that everyone whispered between the ring? She supposed tonight would be the night she’d find out. She had gotten one of their dealer’s number through a friend in the ring and they promised to send Medusa to help her with her problem. There she was by the bar just as described, only much more exquisite than she could’ve imagined. It seemed impossible that she could be a hitwoman, and yet here was Felicia, looking delicate yet donned her trademark split lip all the time.

“So… you’re Medusa?”

“Yeah, and you’re the one who wants to kill your boyfriend?”

“Well, maybe just a little.”

The smile they shared made her instantly feel connected to the other person. It was so strange to her, yet she didn’t question it. They discussed the logistics, where it’d be done, what time and how. Felicia knew she wasn’t supposed to be there, but part of her wanted to be there, to see how it would happen, to help. It was so stupid of her, she should’ve felt guilt or doubt, she should’ve called Medusa off because this was terrible of her. She had never killed a man before, and even if she technically wasn’t killing him, she still ordered the hit and she still was pretending like everything was fine. She knew it was an extreme, but with how bad things had been going, she more or less felt scared for her safety until he was taken out. So for her, this was peace of mind. If anyone else asked, however, she knew she’d seem completely insane.

The night she officially became a lawyer was the night Mr. Darcy was going to be taken out. She made it seem like they were certainly going to go out celebrating, but she was really leading him to Medusa. Medusa did not like that idea but Felicia insisted, she was far too curious as to what would happen. Just as they exited the subway into the Bronx did she find Medusa with a man who was donned in an expensive suite and looked irritatingly impeccable as he stared at Felicia with a meticulous gaze. The pair walked further up ahead of Felicia and Mr. Darcy, until they were at the very far outer edge of the borough right by the Hudson River. Mr. Darcy asked where they were, but Felicia swiftly silenced him by kicking him in the back of his knees with her arm encircling his throat tightly.

“What are you doing?! You can’t handle seeing this, and you aren’t supposed to be here.”

“I’ve seen worse and maybe he should get what’s coming to him. Who’s the man?”

“That’s Hades, sometimes he monitors.”

Felicia ignored her better half struggling beneath her as her hand squeezed his throat and her fist came to brutally punch him in the jaw. “We’ve watched you fight before.”

It was Hades who spoke and shocked Felicia. She blinked as Medusa took Mr. Darcy from her yet she stopped the other woman to grab his jaw, a snarl in her voice as she spoke, “good riddance David.” She allowed Medusa to take him away, and even if she wanted to watch, she knew deep down she wasn’t strong enough to watch someone get murdered, even if she was at the height of her anger. Instead, she redirected her attention back to the calm and collected Hades, who seemed to both not approve of Medusa’s methods and yet be the one to help if something were to go wrong. “You watched me fight?”

“Of course. Cronus even got interested in you. We could use a bruiser, you know.”

Olympus truly did exist and she was no goddess or hero, no. She was just like her counterpart, Medusa, she was a monster. All bruised knuckles and bloodied lips. She was Cerberus. They appointed her bruiser and oh how she thrived. It worked well for her schedule as well. With the medic to patch her up to make her look almost good as new and her realizing just how many Olympians were rigging the systems in the court, her job became easier too. She was untouchable it seemed. But tensions were rising when Cronus died. Zeus may have been her new boss, but she didn’t answer to him. She owed this newer freedom to Hades, so when Olympus split, she didn’t hesitate to choose his side. He and Medusa broke her out of her haze forever, she knew no longer she wouldn’t let anyone control how she felt ever again.

For awhile, she didn’t really question her new life, she felt in control again and that was all that mattered to her. But maybe it was the fact she still saw Paean in secret to fix her wounds, or the fact she didn’t respond well to people having high expectations of her, but Hades did make it clear New Olympus is his family and he has faith in her. She’s not sure what he sees her as, the loyal dog who’d do anything for him or the girl who just so badly wanted to break free when in fact she had earned her own freedom, but whatever it is, it has rubbed her the wrong way. She’s not just some helpless women and god did he really need to bestow his idealism down upon her? She was only human and a perfectly flawed one at that, she wasn’t an immaculate painting like she believed he thought she was. She never voiced her opinions, however. Usually, she would’ve, but she is grateful for the new family who actually accepts her, and she is glad Hades does not want her to be anything less than who she is. Still, she wonders if all of this will be worth it down the line now that fighting has no longer become her extracurricular activity but instead a full time job.

#cerberus #lsrpg #lsrp #gang rp #greek mythology rp #new #all #taken

2 notes · View notes