#It is not worth sacrificing your time and money and sense of self to follow the current trends that will inevitably die and become unpopula

[ardensregias]

blessed

spoilers for aventurine's past & 2.1. nightmare. insecurity. gender neutral reader. angst/hurt with comfort. :3 super duper extra soft aventurine please handle with care. i hope i wrote this well (*´꒳`*) also i hope that the metaphors made sense..... i actually wrote a fic this time gasp

written as a part of personal memoires event by @thexianzhoujade. prompt used is viii. “it’s okay if you can’t catch your breath, you can take the oxygen straight out of my own chest.” | atlas: two.

"...welcome to this sad world, kakavasha..."

that same dream, playing on his head over and over again as if to remind him of something he won't ever forget—the day he was born, followed by the day he lost his mother, his sister, and ultimately himself.

his situation forced him to adapt and grow up earlier than the other kids his age. when he was supposed to be in the safety of his mother's loving embrace and snuggled up beneath a warm blanket, little aventurine had to escape from the katicans hot on his heels, carrying the last wishes of his mama and big sis—which was for him to stay alive, for he is the child blessed by gaiathra herself. but is he really blessed, if he's stripped away from all that is dear to him?

the screams and cries of his people still haunt him in this dream, before they're slowly drowned out by the sound of raindrops hitting the dry and barren ground of his home planet as he ran, ran, and kept running—obeying his sister's wishes before she sacrificed herself, all to protect the her dearest brother, a selfless act even he doesn't understand why she would ever do that. guilt eats away at his heart whenever he recalls her last words, reminding him of his failure to protect the most important people in his life.

aventurine the stratagem, one of the ten stonehearts, the senior manager of IPC's strategic investment department—all these titles meant nothing to him, seeing as they serve to remind him of the shackles they placed around his wrists, how he can still feel the weight of the harsh and thick metal tightly wrapped around his neck as he works his little body to the bone. to him, the only title that truly shows his true self is the one on his neck—something to be owned, who's only worth so much as sixty tanbas, something his current self would have no problem with spending. heck, he can spend millions of credits at once and still have billions left in his account, but to his poor, teen self? it was his market value, showing just how worthless he is, and he still is—to himself, at least.

"...ugh..." forcing himself awake, he finds himself laying on the hotel's million-credits bed, his pajamas halfway unbuttoned, and the blanket forming a mound beside him—ah, it's you, curled up beneath the blanket you hogged from him.

for a moment, the sight soothed aventurine's heart and silenced the voices in his head. it truly astonished him that you had such an impact on his entire being, but it's not entirely mind-boggling either, for you were the one who picks up pieces of his shattered heart, put them back together with so much love and care, and place it back into his chest where it belongs—but not before worming yourself into it, settling down in the cold and empty space to paint it with your color. you brought the rotten heart back to life with the gentleness of your touch, slowly but surely convincing him that he deserves to be happy, to be loved.

he stares at you, smiling solemnly before he gets lost in his thoughts again—wondering if you were in your right mind when you confessed your love to him that day with a gaze that looks oh-so-dreamy, when your eyes seem to shine brighter than the stars in the sky everytime your gaze locks with his lightless one—that look you reserved for him and him alone—does he, someone so weak and imperfect, deserves it? don't you see how pathetic he actually is?

for so long, aventurine always thought that if he just keeps spoiling and showering you with money, you'll surely stick around, that maybe just like everyone else, you desire something for him too—that was what his anxiety and fear said to him in his head, ruining his confidence yet again, or perhaps he's never truly confident after all, always clutching his chips for dear life beneath the table while having the most cocky grin on his pretty face, fooling not only everyone, but also himself.

if only he knew that you would rip your heart clean apart to help his beats, that you would let him take the oxygen straight out of your own lungs if it helps him to breathe a little bit easier—giving it your everything to try and bring him back to life.

just like right now, gliding your fingertips across his cheek to wipe away the crystalline tears that escaped his eyes without his consent. when did you wake up? was he too deep into his head to notice that concerned look on your face? was he too busy loathing himself to realize that you have been trying to make him see just how wonderful he actually is?

"tell me, is something wrong?" your voice, as smooth as silk and as gentle as a mother's embrace, broke the silence of the room, snapping him back to reality—something he dreaded before. now? not so much, because it has you in it.

aventurine shakes his head, closing his eyes briefly to stop the tears from rolling down his face before his lips are pulled up to form a tight smile, "it's nothing serious, but why are you awake—"

"no, i don't want to talk about myself," you cut him off, sensing the emotions that are about to bursts out of him after being bottled up for so long, "it doesn't look like 'nothing serious', would you... like to talk about it? it's fine if you don't, too,"

please stop, if you keep being so sweet to him, he might just breaks down into thousands of pieces. but at the same time, he really wants to stay like this forever—no, he needs this, your pampering, your love, and you. he might sound greedy, but if you yourself are willing, then who is he to decline an angel's favor?

he doesn't reply, but you already know everything and there's no need for words—you simply pulled him close and rest his head on your shoulder, and that's it. that's the only thing you need to do for him to break the protective wall guarding all the emotions inside, which comes down in the form of salty tears that flows down his eyes, dampening your pajamas—not like you mind though.

"it's okay, you're a strong child, kakavasha—i'm so proud of you, you know?"

proud... something he's never thought of feeling before, nor does he expect someone to be proud of him. his grip on your back tightens, shifting his body closer to yours like a baby that seeks his mother's warmth. the facade of the arrogant and haughty gambler breaking down completely, revealing the little boy who only desires affection and love within.

to him, your touch feels like the warm light of the stars, doing your best to lit up the dark sky to accompany the lone moon and envelop him in your warm light, letting him know that he's not alone.

"you... you meant that?" aventurine lifts his head up, eyes glistening with the remnant of tears and pain, his voice was brittle, as if he was on the verge of breaking down. (again)

the sight causes your eyes to softens and a mirthful chuckle escapes your chest, "what kind of question is that?"

you bring your hands up to cup his cheeks, thumbs grazing his skin to remove the traces of misery from his face. beautiful, absolutely and utterly mesmerizing—those were the words that formed themselves inside your brain as your eyes ran down his features. how does one have the ability to hurt this sweet boy? if only you knew him back then, you would've iced the bruises on his back and tucked him away somewhere safe—you would've protected the light in his eyes, made sure that it won't fade away.

"i love you,"

his frown falters, his lips curling up in genuine joy, "do you?"

"have i ever lied to you?" you raised an eyebrow, now petulantly pouting at his constant doubting—a playful act to lighten the mood.

aventurine chuckles at your adorable expression as he loosen his hold on you, leaning down to press his forehead against yours, "no, no, it just... amazes me how easy it is for you to give your heart away to me," yet another subtle hint of insecurity from him—the feeling of undeserving of your affection.

"you're easy to love," you reply rather quickly, with a small shrug as if this was no big deal for you—and it wasn't, and will never be one.

his smile widen as he tilts his head, not saying another word and instead, opting to express his gratitude with a slow and tender kiss, his hands resting on your cheeks, holding you as if you're a fragile porcelain that might break if he were to tighten his grip—and he's not taking any risk. he can't lose you too—not after you poured love into every cracks you found in his soul, marking him as yours—every bone in his body, every drop of blood, every nerve and sinew in his mind, are yours, and only yours.

the kiss lasted for more than a few seconds until you ran out of breath and pulled away from him, a single thread of saliva connecting your bottom lips together. aventurine wishes he could kiss you forever though, for your lips taste as sweet as the honeyed dews that drip from the budding lotus-flower—the taste his lips are not forgetting anytime soon (or ever, for that matter).

the room is quiet for a long moment, the only audible sound being his and your labored breaths mixed together. he flashes a gleeful smile at you, "thank you. for everything,"

you nod, once again closing the distance between you two in order to peppers his pretty face with kisses as a reply, and oh how heavenly it feels—reminding him of the taste of rain in his homeland, reminding him just how blessed he truly is.

[whatbigotspost]

If you’ve followed me long enough you’ll remember that I’ve got an affinity for offering some unsolicited career advice…and I’ve arrived at one that I’ve got to share.

STOP TRYING SO MUCH. STOP DOING THE MOST.

See, I’ve been a lifelong overachiever, overcommitter, overworker, and overproducer. As a kid, I learned quickly that I could access positive attention (that I lacked elsewhere) by getting an A or doing the most chores and being the most helpful. I strove to be “perfect” however I could and that meant being the best behaved, twisting myself to fit whatever it would take to become the favorite of any adult authority figure I had access to outside my home. Inside my home, getting the best grades I could and the best comments from teachers saved me from how bad the abuse could get.

Being Type A, doing the most, being the dependable one, getting a shiny gold star, filling in the gaps, raising my hand for every new task, going above and beyond, and sacrificing (my own interests, self care, friendships, and rest) was put above all else. My sense of self worth became reduced to what I DO instead of honoring who I am.

I’ve been earning my own money since 1997 and I got what I consider my first “real job” in 2001. Since then, I’ve held more jobs that I can remember as working 2-4 at a time was how I got through my 6 years of higher ed and through my 20s. No matter what the gig was….food, retail, higher ed, office admin, public policy, K-12 school programming, and for the bulk of my professional career, fundraising and nonprofit management……. I’ve prided myself in going above and beyond.

After 20+ years of this exhausting mentality, more recently, I’ve learned about toxic productivity and my own relationship with it. I’ve tried to unravel these mindsets I was given and do what I can to actually honor my own value aside from what I produce. That’s why my biggest and best piece of career is now:

Don't be TOO good at what you do, or everyone, (including you if you're not paying attention) will end up thinking you should handle everything, all the time.

Reflecting on those 20+ years of busting my ass, I’ve come to realize all it gave me, beyond some “employee of the month” type awards is the expectation on teams that I can do more so I should do more. That literally helps no one, most of all myself, so I’m breaking up with my perfectionism and overachieving. (Well, I lied, it does help your boss and they’ll delight in treating you like a productivity machine.)

Ambition like this (directed toward things I’m not joyful doing for myself) is a curse and a trap. Don’t get stuck in it. If I could talk to my 16 or 26 year old self, I’d say: Do less. Do just enough. Step back. Say NO more. And save that extra energy for yourself, on your own time. Thinking that you can be The Best and that you need to work the grind is a scam designed to exploit and extract as much from you as possible. Fuck that.

Now if I can just remember to follow this advice more, I’ll be great.

[proheromidoriyashouto]

i think bakugo is there because he's basically the one who broke midoriya in the first place. because of his bullying, midoriya has had lifelong issues with himself, and it isn't a secret that he's struggled to reach his full potential because of them. i think, in a way, bakugou is the thing that's holding midoriya back, and he's something that midoriya needs to overcome. i don't think he was brought there to necessarily support him and give him anything positive, but moreso that bakugou sacrificing for midoriya and/or reaching for midoriya and/or getting rejected violently by midoriya will be something that can help him heal from the abuse he's suffered. for me, with my abuser, it helped me to heal from it when they were the one who reached out to me, not necessarily because i forgave them or even wanted them in my life, but because they had carved a desperate need for their approval and validation deep into me through their actions and i carried that weight until they lifted it, which was their responsibility. i don't believe this is a positive thing for bakugou or even about his character development, i think it's about izuku's healing. however, i do hope that he rejects him. because bakugou doesn't deserve to get the glory of "bolstering" midoriya when he's the one who broke him in the first place. he showed us that in the very beginning of the manga by saying he learned all people weren't equal because of bakugou's abuse.

This is a very good point. For Izuku to heal from a lifetime of bullying, that abuse must be dealt with and not simply put aside for the greater good. Their history has been ignored largely since they left middle school because neither has seen reason to bring it up and I feel like now is the time to do so.

Izuku has been conditioned to prioritize Bakugou's ambition ahead of his own--because he doesn't want to take away Bakugou's dream, HIS dream, and because he knew that as a quirkless person he would never be believed even if he did come forward about the abuse.

I think the only way to salvage this situation in bnha 320 is if Izuku just snaps and reveals the harm Bakugou has done to him and never disclosed/acted like never happened outside of their middle school to the broader world.

Izuku is tired. We know he's neglected food, probably sleep, and even the semblance of care for his costume and support gear.

Part of that is me wanting desperately for Izuku to confront his abuser and rip him off his throne and the other part is because it'd be in theme with the current state of their world.

Something like Izuku saying “You told me to end my life without a quirk, and now that I have quirks you’re telling me how to live?” would serve to show everyone the hypocrisy of following Bakugou's lead into this.

Bakugou's 10 years of bullying and abuse is the reason why Izuku does not value his own life. It helped serve as the driving force for Izuku to succeed in spite of him, but Izuku always had a golden heart and a genuine desire to help others that would have driven him to become a hero anyway.

Izuku never learned to value himself for his own qualities. After getting OFA this became worse because the primary value he saw in himself was being a torchbearer of OFA rather than an inspiring, kind young man who All Might choose based on his actions not his potential. Izuku cannot see that he is a person in need of saving because he does not have a sense of self-worth.

When a person with no self worth is given the power to save others, they inevitably choose to self sacrifice. Self destruct.

And now, Izuku, who is conditioned to not ask for help or value himself, has been put into a position that is neither attenable or abandoned. AFO will never stop coming for him in either incarnation. OG!AFO has PUT OUT HITS ON IZUKU.

IZUKU HAS MERCENARIES COMING FOR HIM WITH MURDEROUS INTENT. Of course he will not rely on his friends, other children, for assistance with his burdens. They will come anyway though and that is fine and the kind of emotional and literal support he needs.

THE PROBLEM is that they are being led by his lifelong abuser. Their entire society is asking "how can we trust heroes who lie to us? heroes who are domestic abusers behind closed doors?" and the answer the Government or what remains of it has given them is "because there is no one else, has never been anyone else, so take cover and eat the shit we're going to feed you like we always have to nary a complaint from you."

Class A doesn't know that Bakugou is Izuku's abuser. The world doesn't know that. They think Bakugou is angry but his heart is in the right place. And fuck anyone for saying he's grown and developed. YOU CANNOT GROW IF YOU DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR PAST. And Bakugou has not acknowledged Izuku, the trauma he's caused him, the on-going detriment his self-imposed rivalry has been doing to Izuku.

It's time for a change. Izuku is on the brink of a breakdown and frankly it's about time.

You're on the money, Anon. For Izuku to heal, he must overcome and turn away from Bakugou. To see his own self-worth he must come out from Bakugou's shadow, and I hope to god we get it in the following battle.

That said, I think it'd be fantastic if Bakugou reached for Izuku, only for Izuku to extend his hand past him and take someone else's. To finally see where real support can come from. Just saying but, Shouto is conspiciously absent from the front line so far --I know he's covering the back--and as Izuku's original intended rival, it would be incredible if he took Shouto's hand instead.

[nothere-notthere-nowhere]

Studying

Word count: 1704

Pairing: Natasha x Reader (platonic)

Warnings: panic attack, let me know if I missed any

Summary: Studying for an exam is overwhelming. Nat helps.

A/N: Hi! So, this is very much just me projecting my own thoughts and feelings onto the reader lol. There’s no real romance here, just Nat being a good friend. I also did not edit this, so I apologize for any spelling/grammar mistakes. 

It was late, you realized as you closed your textbook. You’d been studying for some stupid math final the next day and time had clearly gotten away from you.

Balancing avenger work with being a full-time student was difficult but you enjoyed it, for the most part. Thankfully, it was online schooling so you were able to complete work on your own time, but it was still difficult. Deciding to go back to school in your mid twenties had been a big step for you. 

You’d always hated school. It never came easy, despite being a science genius. You were what most people called brilliant. You thought it was just being creative. You thought in a different way than most people. Tony Stark had sought you out when you were fresh out of high school right before the invasion of New York. 

But, despite having a secure job working for the avengers in the compound, you had decided it wouldn’t be a bad thing to go back to school. Just because you were good at making supersuits and other technological advancement-esque stuff didn’t mean you were that smart.

For example, calc two was kicking your ass right now. Making new impact resistant polymer suits for the gang was a hell of a lot easier for you than whatever the fuck this textbook was trying to explain. 

“Stupid math,” you groaned, rubbing a hand over your face as you looked back down at the problem you’d already tried to solve four times. There was no way in hell you were going to pass this class. 

Fighting back tears of frustration as you crumpled up the paper, you stood from your desk. It was near three in the morning and you were exhausted. But you would not let yourself fail this exam. Your grade in the class was already less than acceptable and failing your final would definitely leave you with an F.

You walked to the kitchen quietly, not wanting to wake anyone. Coffee would surely settle you down and give you enough energy to make it until the morning. You had to figure this out.

“I told you to ask Tony or Bruce for help,” Natasha’s voice startled you.

“Sorry, did I wake you?” You asked, drying your eyes before you turned to her.

“No, don’t worry.” She had an amused look on her face. “You’re still on calc, right?”

“Yeah,” your shoulders slumped. “But I have to be able to do this on my own. I shouldn’t have to annoy them with questions about basic math all the time.”

“Calculus is not basic math.” Natasha snorts at you.

“To them it is.”

“Well, make sure you go to sleep at some point, okay?” The concern in her eyes was evident and you just nodded, grabbing the cup of coffee you’d just brewed.

You took a sip before making your way back to your room. The textbook sat right where you’d left it and the sight of it bright a fresh wave of tears. 

You were a scientist for the avengers, damn it. Why were you crying over math? But your parents words flashed through your brain, reminding you that you were just a stupid kid. 

The relationship between you and your parents had always been rocky. They had held you to unachievable standards and no matter how much effort you put into school, they were never satisfied. And they always made sure you knew that.

“You think you’ll get anywhere in life with grades like these?” your father had shouted at you many times. “You’re just lazy. Do you know how much money we pay for you to go to this school? And this is how you repay us? You’re embarrassing.”

Your hand shook as you picked up your pencil once again, trying to figure out that stupid problem. There were so many rules and steps and none of them made sense to you! 

When the answer you got still didn’t match the one in the textbook, you slammed your pencil down with a scoff.

“You’re so stupid!” You said to yourself, tears leaking from your eyes. You started to erase your own writing again, when you glanced at the time, half past three. You were never going to figure this out.

It was becoming hard to read the problems through your watery eyes as you fought back the tears. You had to figure this out! But it was no use, you dropped your head onto the desk, holding in sobs. 

Your thoughts began to run with your father’s words. Embarrassing, lazy, stupid. You felt that familiar sense of self-loathing begin to rise within you and you were helpless. This wasn’t even the last unit you had to learn before your final. 

You were overwhelmed and you didn’t realize that your chest was tightening or your breath was becoming short. But when you lost feeling in your hands, and your face was tense and tingling, it was obvious.

You were having a panic attack. 

You were no stranger to these, of course. But, that didn’t make it any easier. It had been quite some time since you’d had a panic attack this severe, too, which made it that much scarier. 

You slid off your chair, pressing your back against the wall and pulling your knees up to your chest. You screwed your eyes shut, the heels of your shaking hands pressing into your eyes. If you had more control over the situation, you’d have tried to quiet your hyperventilation.

A soft touch to your hand brought you somewhat back to reality.

“Y/N,” a soft voice called. Your fingers instinctively clutched at the hand that pulled yours away from your face. 

“Y/N, you’re okay. I’m right here.” Nat’s voice was softer than you may have ever heard it before. 

“Nat, I-I,” you choked out, trying to say anything.

“No, don’t talk. It’s okay, I’ve got you.” Her free hand rested on your knee, squeezing lightly. “Can you breathe with me?”

You tried to follow her soft ‘In’ and ‘out’ over and over. Your breaths were forced, almost painful as the panic refused to let up.

“Good job, dorogoy,” You felt the redhead scoot next to you, her arm wrapping around your shaking frame. “You’re doing amazing, I’ve got you.”

She pulled you into her gently. You were starting to gain the feeling back into your hands, and your facial muscles seemed to loosen just slightly. But, you were still shaking violently as you tried to stop yourself from sobbing.

“You’re okay,” Nat soothed, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. “I’m here.”

You leaned into her, balling your fist up in her shirt. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” She asked after you had nearly stopped crying. 

“I’m gonna fail,” you whimpered. You felt pathetic.

“You know,” Nat sighed, “who cares?”

“What?” Her words confuse you.

“You are smart, Y/N. You already have a job, and after working for Stark, you could get in anywhere if you decided to leave. This is one class and regardless of how you do on the final, no one will think any less of you.”

“But-”

“No,” Nat cut you off. “Your grades in some stupid college class don’t matter. I promise, even if you do fail, we’ve all seen how hard you’ve worked in each of your classes. That’s what matters. Your work ethic and your commitment to your studies is worth so much more than sacrificing your wellbeing to secure a passing grade.”

“I feel so stupid.”

“You shouldn't. It’s a tough class. You should be proud of yourself for trying, even if you don’t get the results you wanted.”

“I just wanted to prove them wrong. Even if they wouldn’t know. I wanted to prove to them I was smart.  But they were right, I’m just stupid.”

Your words hang in the air for a moment. Natasha knows you’re talking about your parents. They’d all heard about the verbal abuse you’d suffered through at the hands of the people who’d raised you.

“You are not stupid.” She tells you firmly. “You are brilliant. You’ve created a new polymer that is even better at stopping bullets than vibranium while also working as a material for clothing. Doesn’t that count for something?”

“Yeah, but…”

“This is just one subject. I sure as hell can’t do calculus! You’re good at what you’re good at. I’m good at kicking ass, Clint’s good with a bow, Wanda’s good at… well magic. You’re good at science shit.”

You were silent. You knew she had a point.

“I know that won’t make you feel better about this.” Natasha explains. “But you can’t beat yourself up for this. You need to take care of yourself. Let’s go to bed, now, and we can ask Tony or Bruce for help in the morning.”

“I need to study,” you start.

“No, you need sleep.” Natasha’s voice is firm again. “You can’t sacrifice your health or your sanity for a test. You are more important than a test.”

“Okay.” You weren’t entirely convinced but, for now, your parent’s words were fading away.

Natasha helps you up before wrapping her arms around you in a tight hug. You savor the comfort of her embrace, before realizing just how exhausted you are.

“Get in bed,” Natasha nudges you towards the bed. You lay down, eyes closing as soon as your head hits the pillow. 

Nat pulls the blanket up before turning towards the door.

“Wait,” you call, hesitantly.

“Yeah?”

“Stay?” You bite the inside of your cheek. “Please?”

“Of course, dorogoy,” Natasha smiles at you as she slides into bed next to you.

“Thank you,” you mutter, laying your head on her chest as her arms wrap around you tightly. She presses a gentle kiss to your head.

You know you’ll freak in the morning when you have to think about the final again. But Natasha was here now, and Bruce and Tony would be there in the morning. It would be okay. One failed exam, one failed class-- hell, even every class failed-- was no indication of your worth. And Nat would be there to remind you if you ever forgot. 

[books-and-or-wine]

Fifth Post / Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

Two for one post coming at you HOT! I read these books in rapid succession and, as they are a duology, I figured it makes sense to post about them together. I confess that I am starting to fall behind with my posting... but I refuse to give-up on this self-imposed exercise!! 

I’m gonna shake things up a bit here -- rather than follow my usual review format I would like to take this opportunity to present you with my thesis on:

SIX OF CROWS and CROOKED KINGDOM by LEIGH BARDUGO....

... AS VIEWED THROUGH A BROOKLYN NINE-NINE LENSE.

SO literally the entire time I was reading these books I couldn’t help but think about the recurring Halloween Heist episodes found in each season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. You know the ones. Six of Crows centers around one big heist, while Crooked Kingdom has a series of heists that are pulled off to varying degrees of success. The key players belong to a gang called The Dregs, and I couldn’t help but notice some striking similarities between the gang members and members of the 99th precinct. 

I haven’t done any internet trolling to see if this comparison already exists elsewhere, so apologies in advance if I’m not being as original and clever as I think I’m being. Also shout-out to my friends KC and JC for workshopping this IRON CLAD analysis with me. They confirmed this is legit, and I trust their judgment unwaveringly. 

1. Kaz / Captain Holt

Kaz is the boss of The Dregs; Captain Holt is the boss of the 99th precinct. While this makes the parallel between the two obvious, there are deeper reasons I believe Kaz and Captain Holt are one. 

Both Kaz and the Captain present a stony exterior, but they’ve got a lot more feels going on inside than they’d care to admit (to themselves or to others).

They care deeply about their crew members and would do pretty much anything to protect them. 

Not opposed to tough love. 

Both have had to face adversity on their climb through the ranks to the top -- the Captain as an openly gay black police officer, and Kaz as one of the youngest gang bosses in Ketterdam. 

Have made enemies along the way (see: Madeline Wuntch, Pekka Rollins, the Disco Strangler, Jan Van Eck...).

 And of course, Kaz and the Captain are clearly the best characters of their respective series. I rest my case.

2. Inej / Rosa

Rosa and Inej and are *the* most badass characters of their series. No one can hold a candle to these fierce femmes. 

All black all the time -- Inej and Rosa have mastered the look. 

Both are pros at their jobs and they’re not afraid to work hard. 

Masters of the stake-out. 

The secret glue that holds their crews together -- everyone would be lost without them (Boyle especially). Just look what happened that time Inej was kidnapped?! 

Both have mysterious pasts -- or they are at least protective of their pasts/the details of their personal lives.  No one even knew where Rosa lived for like 3 seasons. Talk about stealth mode.

Can and will kick your ass. 

Admittedly Inej is has a warmer disposition than Rosa, but we all know Rosa is a softy on the inside. And okay okay, I know I said Kaz and Captain Holt are the best characters, but I might have spoken too soon.... 

3. Nina / Gina

Well, first of all, it rhymes -- so it must be true. 

Nina and Gina are the sass-QWEENS of their series.

Witty, funny, confident, smart, beautiful, literally magic (either on the dance floor or raising the dead).

They know their worth. As I said before: QWEENS.

Unapologetically themselves. 

Gina and Nina know how to indulge in the little pleasures of life and we should all take a page out of their books.

I would say Gina’s character is more selfish, whereas Nina is quite selfless (ummmm, hello, she basically sacrificed herself to get the crew out of Fjerda), but Gina has been known to be secretly thoughtful. Also: I think if Nina had a cellphone her emoji game would be on point. I dare you to disagree. 

4. Jesper / Jake

Goofy.

Charming. 

Daddy issues. 

Good with a gun. 

Bad with money. 

Need I say more? No. NEXT.

5. Matthias / Terry

I think this might be my favourite parallel. 

Matthias and Terry embody the older brother figure who is too cool to hang out with his younger siblings... but then somehow gets wrangled into the younger siblings’ shenanigans. And has to bail said siblings out of said shenanigans when everything goes to hell. 

Older brother or mother hen?  

Literal Adonis body.

Both are role models -- as fighters, leaders, warriors, and just generally noble and good peeps.

Did I mention muscles? 

I wonder if Matthias loves yogurt....

6. Wylan / Boyle

This checks out:

Both are keen to prove their chops to the team -- although they seem to be getting by on dumb luck half of the time.

Have weird relationships with their dads (different weird, but weird all the same).

Obsessed with Jesper/Jake. 

Fierce ginger vibes (see: Boyle dressed as Mario Batali). 

THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK. 

[angstidote]

Shadowbringers Theory Time

FFXIV 5.2 spoilers below the cut, but like, THE IMPLICATIONS !!!

This is totally just a theory, but I feel like I have a good idea of what caused the end of Amaurot in the first place, the why of Zodiark and Hydaelyn, how the WoL is not in fact tempered as has been implied, why Emet-Selch felt justified in extending his faith to us, what Elidibus is working at with this seemingly empowering angle, and what we can expect to see in the upcoming story arc.

It’s a lot, I know, but hear me out:

So like, first off we know now that “the defector” was not part of summoning Zodiark OR Hydaelyn, and we’re pretty sure we were the defector because in Hythlodeus’s speech about that person, the gender of the 14th changes with your gender–implying he’s likely speaking of us. This means that WE were not necessarily tempered by Hydaelyn, because we were likely not there for her summoning in the first place:

We knew why the original convocation created Zodiark–to stop the world from self-destructing. But they have not yet explained why it was falling apart in the first place.

I’m seriously wondering if somewhere along the way someone realized that the source of the problem was the Amaurotians themselves. After all, we know that magic takes aether, and that the Amaurotians were crazy powerful mages. To not have made this connection themselves is totally unrealistic, given how advanced they were with regard to their knowledge of magic.

My theory is that they realized they were responsible, but no one wanted to admit that they were at fault. Or more than that, no one wanted to, well, stop using magic, so they started grasping at straws for what to do…and Zodiark was one such attempt. By giving the planet a will of its own they hoped that IT would moderate them as necessary, no muss no fuss.

However, to summon Zodiark took a tremendous amount of aether as we know, and after that he basically demanded that the Amaurotians pay the cost of any further large magic expenditures. My feeling is that they gave the star a will, but did so specifically so it would save itself. We know how sensitive creation magic was, so surely someone wrote this intention into it–but they probably didn’t realize what that implied for those who lived on the planet. Accordingly, it willed that people stop using its magic, and die en masse if that’s what it took.

We see only a part of the ancient ones’ conversation, but it seems like they knew this. If Zodiark stayed, eventually he was either going to kill everyone directly or allow them to kill themselves by sacrificing themselves for every expenditure:

Now, as for Emet-Selch–he made it seem like whatever was causing the end of days was a mystery, but he was one of the convocation members and he would have at least heard evidence for why Zodiark would and wouldn’t work.

It could be that the council had other reasons to believe Zodiark wouldn’t fix the problem–but considering Emet’s obvious and understandable adoration for his lost people, I’m wondering if perhaps time changed his perceptions of how the sacrificing of half the population went down in the first place.

It may not have been quite as voluntary as he remembers it–especially considering the populations of the 14 dimensions are made of the same souls as the ones who lived in Amaurot! He said as much himself. But given what we’ve seen in the comparison between us and Aldelbert, souls tend to live out their natural tendencies no matter how many times they’re rejoined. As the WoL we’re nearly half our original strength thanks to all the rejoinings, but Adelbert ran the same endless errand chains and then sacrificed everything just as we would, even though he had only 1/14th of our soul in him. This tells us that souls behave like themselves no matter how strong or weak they are.

By Emet’s estimation, the fragmented incarnations are weak and selfish and scared, but I’d put money on the fact that they were like that to begin with, and here’s why:

This was the theme of this whole expansion: selfless acts may be remembered as selfish. And I’m thinking this is likely a set up for the reverse being true as well (since all of Shadowbringers has been about the importance of understanding the other side of the story): that selfish acts can get mis-remembered as more selfless than they were.

Emet lauded the selflessness of Amaurotians being willing to sacrifice one half their community to save the other half. But if they were somehow to blame for what was happening–due to how much aether they were depleting from the earth itself by using their creation magics so much–their sacrifice may have been necessary just to stem the depletion causing the chaos.

Which is why Hydaelyn may have manifested the way she did. They probably realized that Zodiark got accidentally made to save himself at any cost, so they had to create a will of the planet that cared about its populace as much or more, to keep him in check. But knowing the source of the problem, they had to make her able to kill both birds with the same stone. By splitting everything up as she did, she both stemmed Zodiark’s power and also dramatically reduced everyone else’s power as well, which stopped the hemorrhaging of energy without everyone having to pay for it with their lives.

Note the distinct need for a permanent solution. 

It sounds to me like they knew they would be dis-empowering everyone by summoning her. That everyone would be split into pieces and forced into the reincarnation cycle. Yet they seemed to feel like it was the only choice, given the circumstances–circumstances that Emet may have omitted from his 12,000 year old memory bank due to his conflicting desires to both save everyone and serve Zodiark faithfully.

Ultimately, it’s likely that he extended his olive branch to the WoL because he knew we were not involved in summoning Zodiark OR Hydaelyn, and that we genuinely cared about people no matter who they were--like he did. It’s implied that we were on good terms or even close to him before the sundering. But while we didn’t think Zodiark was a good plan, he went with it because he was desperate to save everyone. Just like Adelbert, he was manipulated into making a horrible mistake because his love was so blinding he couldn’t see what he was doing. That’s why he was able to convince you as Adelbert, and why he knew you (”that soul”) were worth trying to win over. He knew we were capable of hearing him (Adelbert already had) and of giving him a chance when no one else could. 

Again, we see the idea that because love was the motivating factor for the crime, his selfish acts got mis-remembered by him as more selfless than they were. Instead of recognizing that Zodiark killed half the population, he just blindly believed on some level that they made the sacrifice voluntarily. And I’m sure this will come up in the story again because we already see it happening with all the guards of the Crystarium quitting “to be helpful” when it’s actually the opposite of helpful, because it leaves the city unguarded.

But back on the topic of Emet, he’s incredibly sympathetic to the scions--both eventually eliciting their respect as the story progressed, and subtly supporting them (for example, by bringing Y’shitola back from the life stream). You can tell he genuinely wants to see eye to eye, and not just for the purpose of manipulation. But as a result of his tempering he’s ultimately unable to separate his will from Zodiark’s. This made him the enemy of the Scions and ostensibly the WoL as well, something which has clearly tormented him ever since (after all, he clearly tried to make it work, as “he had children with us, grew old and died with us,” etc.) and has driven him to endlessly try to rejoin everything so we would all be on the same page again.

But in the end we couldn’t go with Zodiark for the same reason we couldn’t go with the idea in the first place–which is probably why he flew into a rage and remembered us as our Amaurotian selves. But despite this, Emet still died having placed his hopes for the future on us…his hopes that we would honor the lives that were lost in the ancients’ misguided attempts to save everyone. And I think this is significant because it tells us that on some level his love for his people overpowered his tempering.

Elidibus remarks that Emet didn’t have the stomach to do what was necessary to follow through on Zodiark’s orders. I suspect that Elidibus is indeed the Oracle of Darkness and equivalent in rank to Oracle Minfilia, and that as a result he agrees unyieldingly with Zodiark that people are the problem and are therefore irrelevant. Emet, on the other hand, did not feel this way. And though he was unable to act in opposition to Zodiark--having been tempered by him--it’s pretty clear that the only reason he supported summoning Zodiark at all was the one implied in his memories--he loved the people of Amaurot and wanted to save them. This is why all his memories of Amaurot are favorable, all the people kind and considerate and lovely...because that’s how he always perceived them. But this created a permanent splintering of his loyalties (which is tragic but cool in the sense that the title of Angel of Truth/Emet-Selch is associated with the sign Gemini).

Sorry, I got off topic there but I just really love Emet-Selch.

Anyway, as for the ancients we saw in the Anamnesis Anyder…I gotta assume we were looking at The Scions 1.0. Particularly with Venat being linked as Minfilia because of this little bit of data:

…and we know who consistently looks the same in all her incarnations on the first: the Oracle of Light. She’s probably talking to Thancred there, since he implores that anyone but her do it, then accepts her will even though he’s sad about it, which is…like, the story of Thancred’s life, the poor dude.

But I mean, what we’re seeing with Elidibus wandering around as Adelbert seems to be a new approach. To put it simply, if everyone awakens to their original power, they’ll all start draining the shards just as they did with the Source. Ultimately, this will bring about the same calamities everyone faced back in Amaurot and once again people will look for a savior…and maybe, just maybe, we’ll get the whole Zodiark thing this time (doubtful, bro, but you do you). After all, blind desire to help is exactly how he got created in the first place.

In the end, we may all find ourselves repeating the forgotten history.

This expansion is so freakin’ elegant. I’m just obsessed!

[jhaernyl]

So my ninja taxes are predicated on a handful of concepts, one of which is a big straying away from canon bc I cannot rationalize why Konoha works the way it was if we don't change Hashirama and Madara's motivation for founding the village.

If they really had started their village So That Children Would Not Have To Fight And Die then there is no fucking way that Konoha would have ended up the way it did, not even from the beginning. 

Children would not have been allowed in the field, full stop.

My reasoning, instead, went that Hashirama and Madara looked at how hard life was for their older relatives, the ones that got injured too much to fight again but didn't die, the ones that went blind or deaf and had to be cared about from the rest of the Clan and possibly thought themselves a burden on the other members of their nomadic society, respected "Elders" who weren't necessarily old but who couldn't fight anymore and who dealt with a slew of PTSD complications that might have barred them from even interacting with children and teaching them, further making them feel inadequate or who possibly left the Clan to go into civilian careers where they could settle down in one place, get more or less regular medical care as needed and thus sort of 'left' the Clan behind.

(As a side rant I would like to add that the reason why Madara and Hashirama wouldn't focus on the 'children shouldn't be soldiers' is because that while child soldiers definitely do happen in the real world, in the contest of the Naruto framework it didn't make sense for the time Madara and Hashirama were in to send children as young as the manga told us they were to fight against full-grown adults the way the manga depicted them doing.

I can buy the occasional genius being put into battle way too young (cough Tobirama cough) as long as it came with other factions being anything in the range from impressed-but-somewhat-disapproving to downright appalled at the age the kid was thrown into the field but not it being a systematic thing, because the infant mortality rate would be too high and unsustainable so I think it would make more sense, especially given their ages when they meet, if Madara and Hashirama older brothers died rather than their younger ones.

Hashirama and Madara are supposed to be SEVEN YEARS OLD when they meet and yet somehow both of them are the eldest of their siblings, with Tobirama being the second eldest to Hashirama and Izuna being somewhere around Tobirama's age supposedly, and both have already lost three younger brothers to battle against the opposite faction? Huh huh, sure Kishi, whatever you tell yourself to feel edgy.

No, it makes more sense to me that they were middle children who both became Heir because their older siblings either died or were crippled too bad to continue fighting and that was followed by frustration/rage/depression/sense of being rejected / feeling of uselessness in relation to their war-like Clan whose tradition and Leader Are In The Field kind of leadership demanded an able-bodied shinobi to lead them and that shaped them and informed their ideas for and dreams of an ideal village where that wouldn't be the case and where their younger feelings shouldn't have to feel that was going to be the end they were going to one day meet unless they died in battle.)

So Hashirama and Madara looked at that and they went "That's not what I want for my brother/cousins/uncles/aunts/relatives / etc." and so their dream was to create a place where a shinobi would be supported (the way many self-made shinobi at the time weren't, unless they joined the Clan and, as said above, even joining a Clan didn't necessarily protect them in the long run, depending on their specific situation) beyond his or her or their utility in the field, where they wouldn't have to leave the Clan and their support network to settle somewhere safer, (Tobirama, in the background: where their health and minds could be looked after so that they would not snap and go insane and have to be mercy killed.)

Which allows for the focus of the village to be on a very Japanese-appropriate taking care of your Elders who have already contributed to your society and can still have more to contribute in the way of teaching young ones without having to die in the battlefield or feel themselves become 'burdens' (which they aren't but they might still feel like) and reducing the weight of care on the families by having a support system to person and families be something organically built into the Village’s structure, in more ways than taxing but also through the taxes levied.

It also allows for a spiralling effect being present towards having more people and time to devote to training the young and thus, especially once the Ninja Wars happen and create that sort of constraint on society, leading to younger graduation classes because that can happen as a slippery slope kind of situation where no one means to send young kids into battle before they are ready but if you are sending the older teens and adults into battle, then the younger kids can take over in-village missions that would otherwise be given to adults, right? And if they are doing in-village missions, why not missions right around the village, not too far from it, with their jonin sensei coming along to ensure their safety? They are not being put at risk, they are just being helpful to the system while still being safe.

And that slides into 'well they can do missive runs to safe places on safe routes, we are not putting them in danger, they are just covering for the kind of thing that the adults are too busy with the war front to do' and then slowly and slowly inch down until it becomes 'bring cargo to the back of the lines, far away from the front line, so that we are sure it gets there safely and then they can help the adults escort the wounded back, reduce the number of people we have to discharge from duties where they are needed and there are still enough adults around that it’s safe enough.'

As I said, a slippery slope. 

Starts small and over time it gets normalized and slides down inch by inch.

Back to topic, the focus is on looking after those who get injured and/or need to retire means that two of the main taxes being levied are the Injury Insurance Tax (IIT) and the Invalidity, Old Age & Survivors Tax (IOS) which works like the national funds do in Italy.

It's something that you invest in, just in case you will need it later. Almost all ninja end up needing the IIT funds, at some point during their career, while recovering from injuries and being unable to run missions (thus reducing the stress on ninja on the monetary side and sometimes making life easier for the medics, because patients who know that they will get paid while they work to get back to 100% are patients who might be less likely to book it out of a window at the first instance) and all ninja who are not on a suicidal bend and actually looks forward to managing to make it out and retire can look at the IOS as a support system that will one day help take care of them, should they be too damaged / too old / not able to be around children to make out a living by having a profession/teaching children, etc.

The IOS being something that they have put money in during their service to the village, this also avoids the mental trap of being seen as a charity because it's not you accepting charity from someone else. It's you reaping the reward of that money you sacrificed for so long and set aside exactly for this specific occurrence.

It's not a handout but rather one of your rights that you are expecting/requesting/demanding to be granted to you as promised, so it skips quite a few mental traps that might otherwise prevent them from accepting the help they are being offered.

There are fixed percentages for how much you get taxed depending on rank because the higher you get, the more money you make and the more danger you are exposed to so you both can afford to be taxed higher and you are undergoing higher risks, so you are more motivated to invest into taxes that will give a return when something happens.

Clan ninjas are especially invested in the system and joined under the clear assurance that the village would look out for them if they look out for the village and have a higher investment in wanting their retirees to be supported and looked after properly since that was one of the reasons Konoha got founded to begin with and they were attracted to the security it was supposed to offer.

They get taxed an extra on the IIT and an extra on the IOS in all categories because living in a Clan gives you all sort of advantages that people outside of a Clan don't have and thus you are expected to have the funds to be able to afford that extra and being part of a Clan you have plenty of people around you that are benefiting from the system which goes to show you that it's worth investing in it.

Everyone pays a not indifferent amount of their paycheck to the village in general, upfront, and that amount of money is part and parcel of being part of the Village.

The Village provides for you in many ways, including allowing you to be part of the village and take their missions at all along with things like the free healthcare, but for the village to be able to afford to provide for you, the Village needs the funds and so your missions get taxed and what you get taxed on is fed back into the natural circle of the village's economy.

That is especially important during wartime when funds are going to be depleted way faster than they would normally be and a lot of missions you would see during peacetime fall to the wayside / cannot be taken on by you so you wouldn't see an income from them so you have to be offered a different kind of Wartime Paycheck if you are deploying in the field on the frontline in one long stretch rather than on a mission-back-to-Village-have-time-off-to-train-and-relax-and-get-some-TLC-get-another-mission-back-to-Village-again-etc. basis.

So every ninja pays a specific tax amount to the Village and then Clan ninja give another cut to their Clan because of societal obligations to your Clan and because the Clan provides for you and all Clans pay a general tithe to the village in the form of being taxed based on the number of members they have, the space they occupy and what percentage of whatever it is they produce (poisons and antidotes for the Yamanaka, medicines for the Nara, preserved food for the Akimichi, insect-related products for the Aburame, etc.) gets handed over to the Village to be used for everyone (the rest they keep to store or sell as they prefer).

Being part of the Clan is a privilege and a duty and part of it is contributing to the Clan, which is both a remnant of before the Villages were formed and how the Clan maintains their specific level of independence from the Village. Some Clans will ask more of you, some Clans will ask less and leave more in your pocket, it depends from Clan to Clan.

It's not all detractions, tho, though there are a few more that go to hit non-Clan, non-Clan-affiliated ninja. The Village provides you with basic kits and as they get depleted you can just go to the quartermaster and get refills issued without paying. If you go out to shop, you get discounts (calculated monthly based on medium earnings, the family of origin, living situation, taxes paid, quality material, economical support you have or don't have, etc.) on goods that you might need to use as a ninja and, if you are from a Clan, you get discounts within your own Clan or allied clans.

Orphans, especially ones without Patrons to look after them who are still underage or who are of age but do not yet have a trade to fall back on / are unable to be at least chunin ranked, are given a base monthly stipend and then they receive extra money on top of that basic stipend depending on their needs. Food needs, training material needs, age, family situation, your rank, how long have you been your rank, clothing needs as identified by the wear and tear of your gear as witnessed by your rank's quartermaster, if you need feminine hygiene products, etc.

On top of a basic food allowance, there are also extra food categories are organized based on whether you are pre-pubescent, pubescent or adult (the amount of food a growing kid vs a growing teenager vs an adult needs varies), what kind of diet do you need for your, for civilians, apprenticeship or, for ninja, training and development.

Are you focusing on your physical skills rather than your chakra skills? Non-chakra intensive diet. Are you working with a lot of Jutsu / genjutsu / training to expand your pool of chakra? Chakra-intensive diet. Are you doing both? Okay, file for both. Your sensei needs to confirm and vouch for your request.

Depending on what you are doing, who your sensei is and what he has you doing and what brand of skills you are focusing on (which influences which kind of foods you will need), the 'very chakra-intensive' / 'very non-chakra intensive' and the 'extreme chakra-intensive' / 'extreme non-chakra-intensive' diets are something you might need to apply for.

Someone like orphaned teenager Maito Gai would definitely hit the 'extreme non-chakra intensive training diet' category because he is doing extreme taijutsu training but given that he also needs to develop and train the amount of chakra necessary for summoning, he'd also be able to apply for 'very chakra-intensive training diet' whereas someone like Kurenai, who is a genjutsu mistress and relies less on her physical abilities, would go for the 'extreme chakra-intensive training diet' box possibly with a side of 'chakra-intensive training diet' if she's keeping up with something more than the barest levels of physical conditioning.

Plus depending on what kind of things you are doing, you might qualify for more than one category of the same type. Let's say you are Minato and you are working on fuck off giant Jutsu (extreme chakra-intensive) but you are also working on finicky, control-based sealing work that requires a different use of your chakra but is also exhausting in its own way (chakra-intensive) but you also need to work your ass off on your speed and reflexes (extreme non-chakra intensive) to keep up with your in-development Jutsu technique without getting disoriented / splatter yourself against trees along with the general physical training you do (non-chakra intensive).

Depending on what your schedule is and what you are doing, you will eat different quantities of food and you will need different types of food as well so if you can convince your sensei to sign off on it, you just apply for whatever you think you need the most or you go big or bust and try to apply for all categories if you think you can get away with it.

And then there's the housing tax if you live in Village housing for ninjas (with the expected wear and tear for being somewhere ninja lives and thus often needing repairs that are given to you free of charge because you are already being taxed for occupying a ninja-specific living space with all that comes with it).

There’s also whatever you (if you are an orphan) owe to the orphanage and/or academy (calculated based upon the resources spent to house and feed and clothe and wash and train you accordingly to your potential). 

A lot of the housing thing and owed-to-orphanage/owed-to-Academy debts are predicated upon whether or not you have or not a Patron or a Clan sponsoring you or relatives who might not have been able to take you in (due to age of the relative or other issues) but could help pay for your upkeep and studies and if you do have someone which kind of person they are, what kind of agreement is in place and what kind of economical support they have been able to give you.

Aaand I'm going to stop there for right now because I've been typing about taxes for an hour and a half and I need a break XD

[ollieofthebeholder]

leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall): a TMA fanfic

Tumblr tag || Also on AO3

Chapter 31: Jon

Fortunately for Jon’s nerves, Halloween week means Research is inundated with statements, mostly false ones, so the first week following Tim’s ill-advised adventure means they’re all helping out with disproving piles of utter nonsense, which in turn means none of his assistants putting themselves in harm’s way. They do get a live statement midway through the week, in the form of the exterminator who handled Jane Prentiss’ body, but as there’s nothing to really investigate regarding his statement, that’s harmless enough. Tim insists on sitting in on the statement, and against his better judgment, Jon agrees.

It’s probably a mistake, though, as over the course of the following week Tim begins having frequent headaches. They seem to pass quickly, at least at first, but they get progressively worse. Martin adds a box of ginger tea to their stash; Sasha keeps a giant bottle of paracetamol at her desk; Jon tries to reduce Tim’s workload as much as possible. Tim only accepts the first two. It worries Jon how hard Tim is throwing himself into the research, regardless of how much the others tell him he doesn’t have to make up for lost time. Even Jon Prime expresses concern, in a careful, hesitant way.

Martin Prime, on the other hand, is a lot less careful and a lot more blunt, telling Tim not to be a self-sacrificing idiot and to stop tearing himself apart trying to draw attention away from the others, because it won’t help anyone if he gets hurt, or worse. Tim laughs, but the look on his face and especially on Jon Prime’s face makes Jon hold onto Tim extra tightly that night.

In the long run, and even in the short run, it doesn’t help. Three weeks into November, Martin finds Tim crumpled in a ball on the floor in the depths of the shelves, clutching his temples and barely conscious. The mental image of Martin, pale and frightened, cradling Tim in his arms like an infant and striding across the Archives as if he weighs nothing isn’t going to leave Jon in a hurry. The doctor at the clinic can’t find any obvious cause for the headaches, but he recommends Tim go home and rest and Jon is only too happy to sign off on that.

He makes him stay home the next morning, too. Tim doesn’t argue, which tells Jon he probably really isn’t feeling all that great. He does promise to get rest, not strain his eyes, and definitely not go off on any unauthorized field trips—all of which Martin is very emphatic about. (Jon’s never actually seen Martin in full mother bear mode, and he decides it’s best for his sanity not to admit that he finds it weirdly attractive.) Martin makes him a cup of tea before they leave and reports, when he comes back to join Jon, that Tim’s fallen back asleep again.

The morning is fairly straightforward. Sasha and Martin work on their usual research work; Jon has a stack of statements to record. Mostly these days he only does the ones that are going to end up on the Discredited shelf, the ones he can record on his laptop, tending to leave the real ones for Jon Prime. Still, there are literally thousands of statements in the Archives, and Jon is prepared to bet even money that no more than ten percent of them are actually real. While that’s still probably enough to sustain both him and Jon Prime for the rest of their natural lives, even if they never get another live statement in, he does still have to record the others. He’d grumble about him and his stupid ideas if he didn’t now have seventeen months’ worth of examples of ideas far stupider than suggesting to his boss that he make audio recordings of the statements in the Archives, and not just his own.

Jon powers through about a dozen statements, narrating them into his laptop and supplementing with his team’s research. He’s just finishing a scathing indictment of a would-be writer who claims to have stayed in a cottage with a haunted lamp when the door cracks open and Martin pops his head in. He catches Jon’s eye and smiles, then waits until Jon signs off the recording before speaking. “Hey. Lunch?”

“Thank you, but I think I’ll do a couple more of these first.” Jon gestures to the rapidly-diminishing stack on the right side of his desk. “I’m on a roll.”

“Better than being on a sesame-seed bun. I’m going to call and check on Tim while I’m at it, unless you’d rather?”

“Go ahead. Ask him if he wants us to bring anything home tonight.” Jon offers Martin a smile. “Enjoy your lunch.”

Martin smiles back, his cheeks turning faintly pink. He nods and withdraws from Jon’s office.

Jon finishes two more digital statements and then pulls over the next one and begins to dictate it. Even before he gets done with the introduction, however, he can feel the static on his tongue and stops. Playback confirms his suspicion—this is a real one. Somehow, they missed it.

He skims the file. He remembers this one now—a claim of a still-living mummy in a tomb containing ancient dice and nothing else. Sasha, who, in her own words, “went through an Egyptology phase like every other girl in the nineties”, wrote out a list of every reason she could think of that the description of the tomb didn’t make sense. Even Tim’s charm wasn’t enough to get any help from the Egyptian government, and since all the names were fake except the statement giver’s, all Martin has been able to find out is that she’s currently training to be a teacher. Even with everything they know, it seems…unrealistic.

But as he flips a page over, it dislodges a sticky note from the back of the folder. Jon catches it as it flutters through the air. It’s Tim’s handwriting, and it glitters faintly, which makes Jon frown—not because he objects to glitter ink (although if they use it on anything official he doesn’t want to imagine what Elias will have to say), but because Tim’s only been using these pens for a couple of weeks, since he traded Charlie one of his old fountain pens for the pack. Which means Tim went back and added something recently.

Jon studies the note. The first words are scratched out, but the rest is easily legible: I think this one is real.

For a moment, Jon considers leaving the statement for Jon Prime to read, but he finds he can’t. Now that he’s started speaking it aloud, he has to finished. Damn it. With a sigh, he sets up the tape recorder, then checks to make sure his secondary recorder has a tape in it. He depresses the RECORD button on both and picks up the paper again.

“Statement of Donna Gwynne, regarding an unlicensed archaeological dig near the Red Sea in Egypt,” he begins.

He always sinks into the statements, at least when they’re real—which is good, because once he finishes, it’s hard for him to keep his contempt for Ms. Gwynne out of his voice as he dictates the results, such as they are, on the follow-up. Certainly he has no qualms admitting that he’s somewhat satisfied the woman is being forced into a job she’s stated repeatedly she hates the idea of.

“I feel anyone who brings me a statement about mummies deserves everything they get,” he concludes. “I’m just glad she doesn’t live in London. End recording.”

He presses the STOP button on both recorders, then hesitates. He started recording secondary back-up tapes after Michael’s visit, partly out of growing paranoia and partly so that he would have a record in case anything happened, and he’s never really stopped. He needs to let the others know about it, he just…hasn’t yet.

Sighing, he pops out the official tape and labels it, then sets it with the file before drawing the second recorder towards himself and pressing RECORD.

“Supplemental,” he says. “I’m…worried about Tim. His headaches have grown so severe over the last week that I actually had to make him stay home today. I’m sure they have something to do with these statements, with the research and all of it, but I don’t know how to prove it. And I don’t know why he’s looking into statements we’ve theoretically finished the research on. I’m…grateful, of course, that he spotted that this one was probably real, although I wish he’d left the note in a more obvious place, but I don’t know why he was even looking, let alone how he figured it out. There’s no supplemental research, no notes other than the single sticky note he put in the back. I can’t quite make out the first word, as it’s been heavily scratched out, except that it starts with a V or a W. The next two are also scratched out, but it’s a little easier to make out: The End, with a question mark. He wasn’t sure, but—of course, it’s fairly obvious. What else would mummies be? And there’s a parallel to—”

The door to his office opens abruptly, and a voice that does not belong to one of his assistants says, “Excuse me, do you have a moment?”

Jon almost topples his chair over backwards, despite the fact that the small part of his brain hanging onto rationality points out that an entity of fear likely wouldn’t be so (relatively) polite about interrupting him. A second later, the rest of his brain catches onto the magenta-tipped brown asymmetrical pixie cut, the string of black stars dangling from one ear, and the expression that manages to be somehow disdainful, sheepish, and concerned all at the same time.

“Miss King—uh—how did you get in here?” he manages, hoping he doesn’t sound like she almost gave him a heart attack.

“Sasha let me in.” Melanie King steps fully into his office and lets the door close behind her. “Are you all right?”

“Hmm? Sorry?” Jon tries to look nonchalant as he shuffles Ms. Gwynne’s statement to the bottom of the stack.

“You look like hell,” Melanie tells him.

“It’s been a rough few months.” Jon feels his old prickliness rising up in him, feels the need to puff up and bluster, but then he stops, collects himself, and really looks at Melanie. There’s a slump to her shoulders, a weariness in her bearing, and dark circles like bruises under her eyes, which look…well, haunted. “And if I look like hell, you must be in a far lower circle than I am. Are you all right?”

Melanie seems surprised that he asked, which, fair enough. “Fine. I—um—I actually need your help.”

Dread creeps up Jon’s spine, but all he says is, “Interesting.”

“All right, can you not be an arsehole about it?” Melanie snaps, visibly bristling. “I just need access to your library.”

“So talk to Diana. She runs the place,” Jon points out.

“Yeah, I don’t exactly have the academic credentials you guys demand, so apparently I need someone to vouch for me,” Melanie says. Jon sighs in annoyance, not at Melanie or her tone, but at the generations of stuffy, upper-class white men who equate university degrees with value. “And you’re basically the closest thing I have to a friend here.”

Jon can’t help but laugh at that. “We’ve spoken once, and we ended up screaming at each other—”

“Yes! And that’s more than I have with anyone else here.” Melanie tugs at her hair in frustration, hard enough that Jon’s afraid she might actually yank it out of her scalp by the roots. “Also, uh, Georgie actually has some nice things to say about you. That came as a surprise. You didn’t even tell me you knew her.”

It surprises Jon, too, enough that he blurts out the honest truth without thinking. “It was a long time ago—before she started doing What the Ghost. I didn’t think she would have anything nice to say about me, to be honest. We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.”

Melanie hums skeptically at him. Jon almost tells her everything, but catches himself. “Look, what exactly do you need from us, anyway? Can’t your showbiz friends help you?”

“No,” Melanie snaps. “I’m, uh—most of them won’t talk to me anymore.”

“What happened? Did word get round you’d talked to us ‘credulous idiots’?”

“Not exactly. In my business, your reputation is all that you have. The industry is full of skeptics pretending to be believers pretending to be skeptics.”

Jon almost snipes at her that the word she wants is charlatans, but one look at her expression and his heart isn’t in it anymore. He thinks about the Primes’ description of her as an Archival assistant, the “painting” from Martin Prime’s statement about his journey back in time, the slightly wistful look in Jon Prime’s eye when he talked about her resignation. And then he looks at her now, determined and angry and despairing all at once, and he resolves, then and there, not to ever let her get to that point.

He’s the closest thing she has to a friend? Fair enough. They’re going to get closer to that even if he has to do all the work himself.

“And none of them are helpful,” he guesses.

Melanie starts to bristle at him, then sighs heavily. “Look, Ghost Hunt UK split up. I mean, not formally, but, you know, Pete was always a flake, and the others just…drifted away.”

“I’m sorry,” Jon says, as gently as he can. “I did notice you weren’t updating anymore.” It’s a bit of a white lie—the Primes told him that—but she doesn’t need to know, not now.

Melanie continues, rambling a bit about her attempts to get a new crew together, then her solo expeditions ending in disaster. Jon can’t help the noise of shock and concern that slips out of his throat when she mentions getting arrested; she evidently takes it as interest and gives him the whole story. “After that…”

“Your reputation went with it,” Jon concludes.

Melanie looks away. The set of her jaw suggests she’s trying to hang onto her resentment, but also trying not to cry. “Yes,” she says tightly. “Look, I have leads that I really need to follow up on, and as far as my colleagues are concerned these days, I’m the ghost.”

Jon nods. “All right. Come on, then.”

Melanie looks back at him, obviously startled. “What?”

“Come on,” Jon repeats. “I’ll take you up to the library and vouch for you. If all else fails, I can claim we’re borrowing you as an adjunct for a few weeks or something. U-unless you’d rather wait?”

“Oh,” Melanie says, sounding taken aback. “No, the sooner the better. I—just expected a bit more of a fight, to be honest.”

“Yes, well, I know what it’s like to be itching to follow up on a lead and have your every effort frustrated. And I believe I owe you for being…dismissive of you before.” Jon suddenly realizes he hasn’t turned off his tape recorder. “Uh, end supplemental.” He presses the STOP button and stows the recorder in his desk, then gestures for Melanie to head out of the office.

Martin is just hanging his jacket on the back of his chair when they emerge; he looks up and offers Jon a slight smile, which freezes when he sees Melanie. “Uh…heading to lunch?”

“Eventually, but I’m going to see if I can convince Diana to let Miss King here use the library,” Jon tells him. “Unless you’d rather.”

Martin laughs nervously. “That would have the opposite effect, trust me. Besides, I, uh, talked to Tim.”

Jon bites back the hot words he wants to unleash in Diana’s direction. “How is he?”

“Fine, he says, and I believe him, but he asked if I would—” Martin hesitates for no more than a split second, then flicks a finger very quickly in the direction of the trapdoor “—run something down for him?”

In other words, Tim has a question he thinks the Primes can answer. Jon nods slowly. “All right. Just be…cautious. I don’t want a repeat of last month’s incident.”

Martin shakes his head vigorously. “Nope. No incidents. Nope. I’ll be back up before you get back from lunch.”

“Right.” Jon offers Martin a warm smile, which Martin returns, before leading Melanie over to the stairs.

Melanie, for a wonder, stays silent until they’re back up on the main floor, then says, “Does ‘last month’s incident’ have anything to do with all those scars he’s got?”

Jon bristles at the implied criticism of Martin’s appearance. “Those are months old. Did you not see the worms when you were here last time? We had an…infestation. It came to a head a couple weeks after your last visit. He was badly injured.” His voice shakes slightly as he says it. Even close to seven months later, he still has trouble sometimes shaking the memories of the black terror of that night.

“I’m sorry.” Melanie actually seems to mean it. “He seems all right now, though.”

“As I said, it was some time ago and he’s had time to heal. Last month’s incident was…it didn’t leave physical scars, but one of my other assistants looked into something he oughtn’t have.” Jon pauses. They’re just rounding the landing towards the first floor—the library actually spans the entire height of the building, save the basement, but for reasons he’s never understood the only way in or out is in the middle—and it’s deserted this time of day. Sound has a way of carrying, but they should be safe enough here if he speaks honestly, as long as he keeps his voice down. “He ran into your Sarah Baldwin.”

Melanie stiffens, but when she speaks, she manages to sound derisive. “You were just looking into my statement?”

“I contacted you when we initially did the research,” Jon reminds her. She grunts, either in acknowledgment or impatience. “This was a completely unrelated incident. I told you, I owe you for being dismissive before. You were right.”

“I wish I was recording this.”

“All right, no need to be—” Jon checks his temper. “Look. She’s dangerous. Or at least she belongs to something dangerous. You were extremely lucky to walk away in one piece.”

Something in Melanie’s face shifts. “Related to…whatever was at the CMH?”

“I—I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think they’re separate, but…there were things we know now that we didn’t know then. We may have to revisit your case.”

“Just so you don’t ask me more questions. I’m still having nightmares about it.” Melanie shoots him a glare. “You’re in them now, too, so thanks for that.”

Jon winces. “Ah…yes. I didn’t know about that at the time, either. I suppose I owe you an apology.”

“What?”

“Look, do you want to do the library today, or come back to the Archives and interrogate me? I can explain more, but it’s not something I want to do on the stairwell,” Jon says impatiently. Elias Bouchard’s office is on the first floor as well, and the last thing he wants is Elias actually listening to this conversation.

Melanie stares at him for a minute, then sighs. “Library. The less I have to talk to you, the better.”

Which is fair enough, Jon supposes. “All right, then. This way.”

Rosie’s office, door open, is just at the top of the stairs; from the way she peers over her computer monitor at them, Jon guesses she at least heard their voices, if not what they were actually saying. Melanie glances over her shoulder as they pass. “Why is she staring at us?”

“That’s Rosie.” Just about anyone who has reason to pass her door calls her “Nosy Rosie”, actually, but Jon isn’t going to mention that in earshot; despite all appearances, he’s not a complete arse. “She’s Elias Bouchard’s personal assistant. It…behooves her to keep her finger on the Institute’s pulse, I suppose.”

“She’s a snoop, in other words.”

Jon can’t help a small, humorless chuckle. “Aren’t we all.”

Between the door to Elias’s office and the library, at the end of the corridor, there’s a room with an incredibly solid door, firmly shut. It’s one of only two interior doors original to the Institute, the other being the library’s, and as such it’s windowless. It’s also unlabeled. Melanie eyeballs it. “What’s in there?”

“Artifact Storage.”

“So…what, haunted dolls, cursed music boxes, weapons belonging to serial killers…”

Jon stops and shoots Melanie a look. She shrugs, completely unrepentant. “All right, so I’m curious. Sue me. Not like I’m going to ask to go in.”

“Good, because I wouldn’t let you,” Jon tells her firmly. “It’s not a museum. It’s more of a…science lab, I suppose. They keep artifacts in there, yes, but they also study them, attempt to replicate their effects or discover why they do things.”

“Hmm.” Melanie studies the door for a second. Jon’s about a step away from grabbing her by the elbow and dragging her away when she falls into step with him. “You go in there a lot, do you?”

“Not if I can help it.” Jon leads Melanie to the end of the hall and the ornate double doors of the library, then pushes one open and ushers her inside.

Melanie’s jaw drops, which is the usual reaction among employees seeing it for the first time, from what Jon’s been told and what little he’s experienced. Three stories high, with balconies ringing the upper two, it’s near floor-to-ceiling shelves, every one packed with books. Tables and chairs litter the ground floor, and here and there on the upper levels are smaller rooms for private study. A bored-looking junior clerk sits behind a curved, ornate wooden desk with her back to the dizzying drop, filing her nails; elsewhere, other library assistants sort, stack, and shelve books from carts and precarious stacks.

“I always thought it looked like the library from Beauty and the Beast,” Jon admits in a low voice. From the startled look Melanie shoots him, she was thinking the same thing. “Come on. I’ll try and track down Diana.”

“What can I do for you?”

Jon and Melanie both jump at the boisterous, barely-contained voice from behind them. Whirling around, Jon takes a deep, steadying breath. “Diana. I…didn’t see you there.”

“That’s unusual.” Diana smiles—almost leers—down at Jon. In height and in breadth, she can give Martin a run for his money, and she towers over the two of them. Melanie nips smartly behind Jon, and he throws her a look. “What can I do for you? New assistant?”

“Ah—no. Diana Caxton, Melanie King.”

“The ghost hunter?” Diana raises one impeccably sculpted eyebrow almost into her hairline.

“Y-yes,” Melanie manages to choke out.

Jon takes a half-step back so he isn’t looking up Diana’s nose. “Miss King needs to use the library for some research. I know she’s not the…usual student type, but I’m willing to vouch for her seriousness, as well as her right to be here. I’m certain she will treat the books with the respect and care they deserve. And the subject matter, of course.”

Diana’s eyebrow raises higher. “You’re not going to put this in your show, are you?”

She says this at a normal volume, and a number of nearby heads snap towards them. Jon fights the instinctive urge to shrink into himself and hide. Melanie, on the other hand, folds her arms over her chest and manages to meet Diana’s eyes. “No, ma’am. I just need to follow up on some leads to make sure I’m informed enough on my end to go places safely.”

She’s lying. Jon knows intuitively she’s lying, but he keeps his face carefully blank. Diana studies Melanie from her great height, then finally nods. “Have to run it by Mr. Bouchard first, but I’m sure he’ll agree. I’ll have a ninety-day pass set up for you at the front desk. Come by tomorrow morning and we’ll get you started.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Oh, Jon,” Diana says as Jon starts to turn away and lead Melanie back to the front. “Do tell Martin hello, will you? I hope he brightens your Archives as much as he brightened our library. We miss his smiling face up here. Tell him he’s welcome any time.”

“I—of course,” Jon says, not sure what else to say.

Melanie waits until they hit the landing to ask in an undertone, “Is Martin the one who said—?”

“Yes,” Jon says shortly. He’s going to have a talk with Martin about his self-esteem issues, not that he can really be throwing stones. But Diana seemed to genuinely mean it.

He bids Melanie farewell at the front door, then ducks into the canteen to grab a sandwich before heading down to the Archives again. Sasha’s there, making herself a cup of tea. She looks up and smiles when she sees Jon, but her expression turns puzzled. “Hi. I thought you’d be at lunch with Martin or something.”

“He’s…running something down for Tim,” Jon says carefully. Worry churns at his gut.

Before Sasha can respond, though, the trapdoor opens and Martin comes out. His face is pale and he looks shaken, which doesn’t help Jon’s worry. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“N-nothing. I don’t know.” Martin carefully shuts the door and comes back over. “Tell you later.”

They don’t say anything else about it. Not then. But at the end of the day when they lock up the Archives, Sasha loops one arm through Jon’s and the other through Martin’s. “Mind if I invite myself over?”

“Yes, we can’t stand you and we’re thoroughly glad to get rid of you at the end of the day,” Jon deadpans, eliciting a tiny smile out of her. “Thank God you don’t live with us or we’d be constantly miserable. Oh—Martin, I forgot to ask, did Tim want us to bring anything home?”

“He said he’d put in an order at that takeaway place for us to pick up on the way.” Martin’s voice is unusually soft, and it makes Jon’s worry compound.

Tim looks a lot better when they get in the door, white boxes in hand. He greets them with a smile, which vanishes instantly when he sees Martin. “Oh, God, what? What happened? What is it?”

Martin shrugs out of his jacket. “Well, I asked them.”

“And?” Tim prompts, voice full of dread.

Martin sighs. “And they didn’t know.”

Tim blinks. “What?”

“They didn’t know. Had no idea what I was talking about. I’ve never seen Jon Prime look that confused.” Martin reaches for Sasha’s jacket, but she takes his instead and hangs them both up. “They were considering coming over tonight, but Martin Prime thought you might want to talk to us first.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s…probably not a bad idea.” Tim runs a hand through his hair. “Fuck.”

“Let’s eat. Then you can explain,” Sasha suggests.

Dinner is largely silent, except for the scrape of fork on plate. Jon does explain the purpose of Melanie’s visit to the others, and Martin frowns slightly when he repeats Diana’s words, but doesn’t say anything. Once they’ve all eaten and cleaned up, they head back into the living room to talk.

Tim sits on the edge of the loveseat, elbows resting on his thighs and hands clasped beneath his chin. “Where do we start?”

Sasha nudges Martin’s ankle with her foot. “What were you asking the Primes about?”

“Tim told me to ask them about ‘the color of fears’,” Martin replies. “They didn’t know what I meant. I didn’t know what I meant, except…” He looks up at Tim. “Except I think it has to do with your headaches.”

“It does,” Tim confirms. He takes a deep breath. “It’s…something I’ve been noticing lately. Since the Trophy Room, really. When I was there…when Daniel Rawlings looked me in the eye? His eyes were glowing. Like there was a light inside them. Right proper spooky. And when I got back to the Archives that day…I thought you’d put special bulbs in or something, at first, but I blinked and it went away. Then I was talking to you, Jon, and your eyes were glowing, too.”

“My what?” Jon touches the corner of his eye gingerly, like he can feel the luminescence.

Tim manages a small grin. “It’s not…it went away when I blinked, too, and I thought I was just imagining things. But it’s been getting…worse. Random flashes at first, but when the exterminator came in…he glowed for a second, too. After I sat in on that, it started getting stronger.”

“Hence the headaches,” Jon says. “Tim, why didn’t you—”

“I wasn’t sure. And…well, I wanted to experiment a bit. Because, see, here’s the thing. Rawlings’ eyes—when they glowed, they were this deep indigo, but the Archives, and your eyes and Sasha’s—and Martin’s lips once or twice—they glowed green. The exterminator was kind of green, too, but it was kind of a greenish-yellow, really, and the next day I—” Tim flushes and looks up at Martin. “I was watching you, and—your scars started glowing. Same color as the exterminator did, but your mouth was still the darker green, it’s how I could tell they were different colors. So…I started thinking, maybe that meant something?”

“Oh, God,” Martin says softly. “The marks.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking,” Tim says. “I—I’ve been sort of trying with some of the statements. It’s hard to see with them, really, because everything in the Archives glows green just about, and if I try too hard I get the headaches. But sometimes I could…pick out different colors in them, kind of. Sort of. Mostly. I-I thought maybe if I could look at them and see the fears’ marks…”

“You’d know which ones were real,” Jon completes. Tim nods. “You still shouldn’t have done that without telling us.”

“I know. Especially…well, I thought I could handle it. I’ve been getting better at only seeing them when I try to, and I thought I’d—give it a shot. I walked back into the shelves yesterday and just…let loose with my eyes. I tried to See what was on the couple of shelves nearest.” Tim sighs heavily. “But it was—it was overwhelming. There was just so much. It was like—like standing in the middle of a room made out of mirrors, and someone was shining all sorts of different colored lasers at them, and they were just bouncing off and refracting and amplifying and going everywhere. Like I was drowning in color, or like it was screaming at me. I can’t really explain it, but it was too much and, well, that’s when you found me.”

Martin exhales heavily. “Christ, Tim, that scared the hell out of me.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried that without warning you all. I-I really didn’t think it would be that bad.”

Jon bites his lip. “Is that how you knew—that statement, Ms. Gwynne’s, about the mummy?”

Sasha frowns. “The one that reads like the plot of a knockoff of a Brendan Fraser film?”

“Yes. I went to record it today and—it came out distorted. I didn’t see the note until after I realized it didn’t work on the laptop, but…Tim thought it might be real.”

Tim nods. “Yeah. I looked back over some of them. Started off with the ones we knew were real, and then I started looking at a couple that we weren’t sure of. That one…I wasn’t sure, but I think it’s the End?”

“Makes sense. Mummies. Death,” Martin murmurs.

“It was white. I mean—when I looked at it hard enough, it glowed white. Or at least I think it did,” Tim says. “Made the green kind of…pale, anyway. The other ones we’ve marked as being Terminus statements were the same color. But the problem is that the green of the Eye is so strong, it’s hard to really be sure what other colors there are, except if I’m looking at a person who’s been marked. That’s why I was asking about the color of fears. I-I was kind of hoping the Primes would be able to confirm what I’m thinking, but—”

“But they had no idea,” Martin completes. “Which means that, unless I just explained it very badly, Jon Prime can’t see those colors. Can’t see the marks.”

Jon rubs his temples. “I suppose it’s good to know that I don’t have to consider that, but…why? Why can you see the marks when the rest of us can’t?”

Sasha gets a faraway look in her eyes, and there’s a faint sound of static as she says, “Because that’s what’s important to Tim. Knowing when danger is coming, what danger is coming. You said yourself, Tim, you’re going to help and you’re going to do whatever you can to protect us. The Eye gave you the ability to Know what entities are around, or have got hold of someone or something, because it knows you’ll lean into that and use it for good as long as you can, up until it’s got a tight enough hold on you that you can’t get away, even if you want to.” She blinks hard, and the static fades as she puts a hand over her mouth. “Oh—oh, God, sorry, I—”

“It’s fine.” Tim manages a smile for her, but there’s a look of distress in his eyes. “It’s good to know.”

Jon’s distressed, too. “Tim you should have told us. Jon Prime’s been working with us on control, if we’d known you had powers already we’d have—he should be helping you, too. You can’t—” He takes a deep breath. “Promise me you won’t keep this sort of thing to yourself anymore.”

Tim reaches over and squeezes Jon’s hand. “I promise. No more unauthorized research, of any kind. I won’t even check books out of the library without telling you what I’m after first.”

“I appreciate that.” Jon smiles and squeezes Tim’s hand back. “Now then. Someone get a notebook and pen. We need to write down as much of this as we can.”

[lynne-monstr]

where brave and restless dreams are won and lost

Written for the malec secret santa 2019, for the lovely @gaywoodandbine

Summary: Magnus is a witch. Alec is the witch-hunter tasked with bringing him in. (Two of these things are true, one is only half-true)

ao3 link

.

In the last remaining hours before first light, Alec crouches behind a precariously balanced pile of steel rebar and observes his target.

Magnus Bane stands in the middle of the gutted out building with his arms outstretched, a king of concrete and scrap metal. It should look ridiculous but even Alec, with his affinity for nature-based magic, can feel the power swirling in the air.

Blistering gusts of wind cut through Alec’s jacket like knives as he watches the ritual unfold. Though the building is sealed off by hanging sheets of tarp, it does little to ward off the winter chill. Alec’s fingers twitch in their gloves, aching to draw warmth from the earth deep below the concrete foundation.

He doesn’t so much as shift. He’s too close to his goal to surrender to something as trivial as discomfort. Not when there’s so much at stake. He sacrificed too much to get where he is now. The closeness of his family, his morals, his self-respect. One by one, they all fell to his ultimate goal.

If he concentrates, he can still see Jace’s face on that fateful day. His brother’s usual teasing and bravado was gone, replaced by grim determination as he shoved Alec aside and cast his last spell to keep Alec still. To keep him hidden and safe.

Jace’s parting whisper of, ‘It’s okay, Alec. It’s better this way,’ haunts him to this day.

‘It’s not,’ Alec had wanted to scream, but couldn’t. Not with the spell binding him. ‘I’m not worth it.’

The smooth tones of Bane’s voice snap Alec back to the present. He shakes off the memory, focusing instead on picking out the individual words of the ritual. When he does, he nearly gives away his position with a hastily muffled snort.

Bane is reciting the New York City building code.

An urban witch. Alec has never met one before. Growing up, he’d been taught that urban magic was rough and unrefined, a substandard form of witchcraft for those who couldn’t harness the raw power of nature. Looking at Magnus Bane, nothing could be further from the truth.

Alec refrains from rolling his eyes at himself. He can spend his time in frivolous debate on the merits of magic or he can focus on the mission, the first one he’s been trusted with since infiltrating the ranks of the witch-hunters.

No matter how beautiful this man and his magic are, it isn’t enough to save him.

“I’m sorry,” Alec whispers to the concrete ground. Perhaps it’s enough to give his apology by proxy, spoken to the medium of this witch’s magic rather to the man himself. Alec hopes so.

Drawing his bow, Alec readies an arrow tipped in magic-suppressing poison and fires.

.

Magnus is sunk deep in his own spell, electricity in his blood and the bustle of early morning traffic in his veins. The ebb and flow of a city that never truly stops. All of it rushing into his lungs and bringing fresh waves of power in its wake. And something else. Something that pings on the edge of his senses, a tang of vinegar in a freshly uncorked bottle of wine.

He doesn’t know what brings him out of the ritual, only that it does. He heeds the warning of his magic, the growing itch under his skin, and opens his eyes to the sight of an object flying straight for him. An arrow unerringly seeking his heart.

Not his heart, a distant part of him notes. His shoulder. Whoever is after him wants him alive.

Magnus’ eyes flash yellow. The hue of blinking neon. Double lines on dark asphalt. Taxis trailing a cacophony of horns as they weave through overcrowded streets. He throws himself to the ground just in time to hear the arrow soar past, his hands scraping open on the loose gravel. His blood seeps out and the city rushes in to fill the void.

Wild magic flickers at his hands, called by the spilling of blood. He twirls his wrist and the pile of steel beams on the other side of the building collapses in a ringing clatter. The sounds of cursing follow.

The shadow of a man stands to his full height amidst the strewn pile of steel rebar. Even in the dark, the swoop of his impressively large bow blooms from his body like wings. An avenging angel crashed down to earth.

Magnus has never put much stock in angels.

“You must be a new recruit, I’d remember a build like yours,” he taunts. An attack like this could only come from a witch-hunter, and if this one is arrogant enough to try and take Magnus on his own home turf, he’s about to learn a very painful lesson. “It’s been a long time since one of you people dared to come after me.”

He expects another arrow. What he doesn’t expect is a gust of clean wind that knocks him clear off his feet.

The world spins and he grasps for power that’s gone slippery in the face of such distilled natural magic. Magnus recoils even as he rolls to his feet. The witch-hunter is a witch. His mind races, trying to process the impossible. The witch-hunters hated their kind for the gifts they possessed, for the sacrifices they were willing to make to wield their magic. It was a hatred borne of fear, of the unknown. For a witch to join their ranks was unthinkable.

Magnus dodges another attack. ”Why are you doing this?” he shouts across the empty space. “You must know they’ll put you down the moment they learn what you are.”

He doesn’t get an answer.

Being in the heart of a city, Magnus should have the upper hand but this witch came prepared. The man reaches into a pocket and pulls out a pinch of dirt from a small pouch. Time seems to slow as he flings the earth to the ground.

The moment it lands, the building’s concrete foundation shakes apart, small cracks growing into larger ones.

Magnus dances out of the way to keep from being swallowed, and not in the fun way. The power from his interrupted ritual has run dry and so has the boost he’d gotten when he scraped his hand. He bounces lightly on his feet and prepares to fight the mundane way while he preps another spell. Looks like all his years of Tai Chi practice are going to pay off. Balance and flexibility aren’t just good skills for the bedroom.

Several large, thick vines snake up from the widening cracks, writhing in the air.

“Kinky,” Magnus calls out to his opponent, watching the vines come at him. “I like that in a man.”

He dodges on nimble feet, keeping one step ahead of the vines as he reaches for his athame. To be fair, calling it an athame is generous. On a shopping trip many years ago, Magnus had seen one of those tiny pocket knives disguised as a lipstick and became instantly enamored. But that’s the beauty of magic. It’s the perfect marriage of tradition and interpretation. And so Magnus gets to see the scandalized look on the faces of other witches when he pulls out his lipstick knife.

Correction. He got to see it. He won’t get to see it anymore if the witch-hunters get their hands on him.

He doesn’t know what their organization did to recruit a witch to their cause, but it can’t be anything good. Magnus needs to escape, if for no other reason than to let the rest of his people know how much danger they’re all in.

The first vine breaks through his defenses and winds tight around Magnus’ wrists, jerking them apart and sending the matte gray lipstick case flying. Another set of vines encircles Magnus’ chest and creeps up his legs, tethering him to the ground.

Once he’s fully ensnared, the witch-hunter steps forward into a dim pool of emergency lighting.

Magnus’ mouth runs on autopilot as he tests the strength of the vines. It’s a good distraction for the panic threatening to claw up his throat. “This is a bit much for a first date, don’t you think? I’m afraid I have to insist on dinner and a safeword, first.”

The man’s eyes widen before his expression shutters shut. “It has to be like this.”

What a crime for such a plush mouth to utter such garbage. Magnus scoffs, even as he continues to struggle. It’s a waste of effort but it makes him feel less useless. “No it doesn’t. Lie to yourself as much as you want but don’t give me that crap. You’re hunting your own people and that’s a choice.”

“I have to.” A wave of grief flits across the man’s face so quickly that Magnus nearly misses it.

The acerbic response dies on Magnus’ tongue and he kicks himself for being too caught up in his own emotions to see the truth. Because why would a witch betray their own people? This young man is either power hungry to the point of self-destruction or being blackmailed.

Magnus has his money on the latter. “What do they have on you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m the one who’s going to die for it. I’d say it matters a lot.”

The verbal blow lands perfectly and his attacker’s pretty face freezes. If Magnus was a better man, he might feel bad about the manipulation but if he learned anything from growing up on the streets and leaning witchcraft on his own, it was that if he didn’t fight for himself, no one else would.

“It’s my brother,” the man whispers, not meeting Magnus’ gaze. “They took my brother.”

“And you think they’ll give him back in exchange for me? You’re a fool.”

The man shakes his head. “I know they won’t. But wherever they take you, that’s where he’ll be, too. I have to find him.”

Dread lodges in a tight ball behind Magnus’ sternum. The fate in store for him isn’t a pleasant one. Even so, he can almost understand. There isn’t much he wouldn’t do for his own patchwork family. “I can help you if you let me. I’ve fought them before and I can do it again. We can find another way.”

Hope flares in the other man’s eyes but it’s extinguished just as quickly. Despair races through Magnus as his attacker pulls out another arrow. He can sense the poison on the tip, the way his magic tries to shrink away from the substance.

Magnus’ mind races, searching for anything he can use, anything that will stop what’s about to happen. The sharp point of the arrow descends towards Magnus’ unprotected neck just as a last-ditch idea forms too late.

The arrow stops in mid-air.

Magnus doesn’t waste the opportunity. Words spill from deep within his chest, echoing like the clanging of steel on steel. He throws the last dregs of his magic into the words and hopes it’s enough to work on a witch who isn’t bound by city rules. His voice booms in the dead of the night, echoing around the deserted site.

“Special authorization must be granted to work after hours. You must apply for an after-hours variance. If you do not have an after-hours variance, all work must cease immediately.”

It isn’t magic, not really. Magnus calls on the city and it comes to his aid.

As if from far away, Magnus can hear the sounds of traffic, the unceasing horns and the pounding rhythm of footsteps on concrete. The shouted cursing and the chatter of conversation. The music wafting out from bars and strip clubs. The thud of the subway snaking its way in all directions like living, metal tendrils of lifeblood. It builds from a roar into a deafening crescendo, pulsing in time with Magnus’ racing heart until it spills forth in a loud crack.

The witch-hunter is thrown backwards, crumbling to the group in an unmoving heap. His handsome features go slack and he doesn’t get up. The vines holding Magnus loosen their grip and wither, sinking back into the ground.

Magnus runs.

He takes the unconscious witch-hunter with him.

.

Alec wakes as he always does, to a familiar litany of failure. Jace is gone. Isabelle is in hiding. He’s alone and it’s up to him to bring his family back together. For a blissful moment, he can almost pretend that’s all there is to it.

One thought topples into the next like falling dominoes and the full sense of his failure comes crashing down. His family. Jace. Magnus Bane. He had one shot to fix things and he ruined it.

Alec bolts upright, the fight he lost settling into his mind like the first crisp fall of leaves. He takes in the unfamiliar room around him. The clean lines and large windows. Modern architecture and exposed brick. Not a plant in sight.

The urban witch. He’s in the home of his enemy.

“Alexander Lightwood.”

A lifetime living under his parents’ strict rules keeps Alec from doing anything as embarrassing as startling when Magnus Bane appears from nowhere. Not nowhere, he realizes, studying the layout of the living room. From some sort of hallway.

“How do you know my name?” Alec asks, playing along until he gets a better feel for the situation.

“Magic.” Bane’s smile would be flirty if not for the sharp curl of his lip. “Actually, no. I picked your pocket.”

Alec pats down his clothes, alarm replaced by confusion when he feels the familiar bulge of his wallet.

Bane responds without missing a beat. “I gave it back.”

Despite himself, Alec is a little bit charmed. And trying not to think about where Bane had to put his hands to get at his wallet. Which is when he realizes that it isn’t his money or identification he should be concerned about. He was carrying something far more important. Panic quickens his breath and he struggles not to let it show on his face.

He must fail, because Bane’s smile widens and from behind his back, he pulls out a familiar cloth pouch.

For witches like Alec and his family—natural witches, they liked to call themselves—being in the heart of a city is like trying to do magic with dampeners. There are small patches of tree lined streets, flocks of pigeons, small parks, weeds valiantly trying to grow even in the most developed of places, but using it is the magical equivalent of drawing well water from a dirty, shallow puddle.

Clutched in Bane’s manicured hand is the dirt from the Lightwood family estate, Alec’s conduit to the woodlands and lakes of his childhood home.

“Looking for this?” Bane asks.

Even his gloating is elegant. Alec hates him a little bit. “That’s mine.” Alec leans forward before he can stop himself.

“Not anymore. Perhaps you should have thought of that before you turned against your own kind.” Bane claps his hands once, “Let’s talk, shall we.” He settles himself into a disturbingly bright blue side chair and turns to face Alec on the couch.

In Alec’s experience, talk means something more along the lines of interrogation or execution. He doesn’t take the flashy witch in front of him as the type to soil his expensive furniture but it would hardly be the first time Alec’s wrong about someone. Cut off from his natural witchcraft, he feels exposed and vulnerable and very alone.

His hands clench into fists. Jace is counting on him and so is Isabelle. “What’s there to talk about? Are you going to kill me or not?”

“Not all of us are so cavalier about killing other witches.”

Denial is on the tip of Alec’s tongue, and it trails a bitter line down his throat as he swallows. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t intend to kill Bane or that he hesitated in the final moments, caught by an overwhelming sense of wrongness. He would have gotten over it, shoved down the sick feeling in his gut and done his duty.

His fingers flex against the throw blanket next to him. It’s a cotton blend, the soft material against his fingers soothing to his magic.

He could draw strength from it with the right incantation and a little spilled blood. Not for the first time, he’s grateful for the rigorous training his parents put him and his siblings through when they were children. Most natural witches specialize in a certain type of magic, and while Alec prefers the soil of the earth, he can draw power from nearly anything. He’s at a disadvantage here in his enemy’s lair but he’s far from helpless.

“Nothing to say?” Silence falls between them and then completely unexpectedly, Bane’s laughs. The force of it shakes his entire body, his chest and arm muscles straining against his tight Henley. “I suppose I should thank you. I had suspected your employers were after me for quite some time, and now I know for sure.”

Alec scrambles to adjust from potential impeding execution to unexpected humor. How many times was this urban witch going to surprise him? Alec should hate it in the same way he hates everything he can’t plan for, but he can’t deny the thrill that runs down his spine.

“What will you do?” Alec asks. It’s meant as an accusation and a challenge. What is Bane going to do with Alec? Instead, the words come out sounding like concern for Bane, as if the two of them are old friends rather than enemies.

For a strange moment, Alec wishes it were true, they they had met under different circumstances. What would it be like to combine their magic, opposite forces joining together into something new? Alec feels a pang of regret that he’ll never know.

Perhaps Bane hears it too because he squares his shoulders, a strange combination of fierce and resigned. “What I always do. Survive.”

A rush of shame beats against Alec’s chest at the part he played in tonight’s events. Another crests hot on its heels—because even if he had the chance to overpower Magnus Bane and bring him in, Alec’s not sure he could go through with it. Not now that the other man is more than words in a file.

He isn’t sure whether that makes him a good person or a terrible brother. Maybe both.

“I wasn’t going to go through with it,” Alec blurts out, and immediately regrets it. When Isabelle used to tell him to be more open about his feelings, he didn’t think she meant to his enemies. “I know it doesn’t mean much but it’s the truth.”

For the first time, the smile on Bane’s face is real. “I figured that much out. I don’t take just anyone home, you know.” The man honest-to-god winks before adding, “But I appreciate the sentiment, Alexander.”

Something flutters in Alec’s belly. Before he can think too hard on it, movement catches the corner of his eye. Never has he been more grateful for a distraction. He reacts without thinking, his hand reaching out to catch an object in mid-air. He looks down at it and blinks.

His earthen pouch is in his hand.

Power surges through his veins and he stifles a gasp. With effort, he tears his eyes away towards Magnus, slouched his chair like a king in a castle rather than a lone man in his modest apartment. There’s amusement in his eyes but beneath the arrogance is something else, something that softens the harsh planes of his face.

“Why?” Alec asks. His fingers curl protectively around the little pouch.

It doesn’t make sense. Why would Magnus give him this? Alec had been caught by surprise during their first fight but he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice if they came to blows again. Magnus has no real reason to trust his words; he could easily be signing his own death warrant with one act of kindness.

Except Alec knows he isn’t.

“A witch’s power is a precious thing,” is all Magnus says before getting up from his chair to show Alec to the door. It’s a clear dismissal but any reluctance Alec feels is overshadowed by the surprise of seeing his bow and quiver hanging in the entraceway. Alec shoulders them both, half expecting Magnus to protest but unsurprised when he doesn’t.

Magnus sends him off with a final parting shot. “You’re not the only one who’s lost someone to them. If you wanted my help, you could’ve just asked. Remember that in the future.”

Alec hears the echo of those words for a long time after he leaves the loft behind.

.

By some miracle, he isn’t punished by his superiors for his complete failure of a first mission. Instead of assuaging his fears, it puts him on high alert. What if someone figured out his connection to Jace and was silently tightening the net around him? What if they were biding their time in hopes he’d lead them to Isabelle?

An attack never comes and Alec eventually stops holding his breath. Right up until he overhears a conversation in the research lab.

“…taking another run at Magnus Bane. Not even he can fight off a dozen of us.”

Alec flattens himself against the wall as the pair leaves, too lost in their chatter to notice him. The pounding in his chest crescendos in his ears as the voices fade. He can pretend he never heard it. If he plays his cards right, he can arrange to be here when they bring Magnus in. Surely his conscience would be appeased if he isn’t the one to capture Magnus. His original plan to find Jace can proceed.

He knows before the thought finishes that it’s a lie.

In his mind’s eye he sees kind eyes and magic that gleams like fresh neon. A man whose response to being attacked was a soft, ‘If you wanted my help, you could have just asked.’

Alec doesn’t stop to put on his jacket. He walks to the nearest oasis of greenery and kneels in the dirt. His fingers sink into the freezing ground, pulling the familiar power of the earth into his hands. On a crisp breeze, his message drifts towards a loft in Brooklyn.

‘Whatever you’re doing tonight, cancel it. It’s an ambush.

PS – you said I could just ask for your help. This is me asking.’

The message should feel like the end of something. Like he’s giving up on his family, like he’s abandoning the only people he’s ever loved. But as Alec gets to his feet, he feels renewed hope spring to life in his chest, a tiny sapling pushing its way into the light.

He can’t save his family alone and he doesn’t have to.

With that thought, another piece falls into place. He isn’t doing his sister any favors by keeping her sheltered from the fight. Eventually she’ll lose patience and leave and when she does, Alec won’t be there to watch her back. Before he can change his mind, he sends off another message, this time to Isabelle.

A laugh bubbles up in his chest as he imagines introducing her to Magnus Bane. He has a feeling the two of them will get along a little too well. When he finally gets back to the Institute, he feels lighter than he has since this mess started.

This isn’t an end, it’s a beginning.

[mbti-notes]

Do you have an opinion on the affects of social media on developing cognitive functions, specifically teenagers? I am asking with regard to navigating my son's adolescence. He is 16 and while the last few years have been more turbulent than previous years (with no doubt more to come) I think the road has been made substantially smoother as a direct result of me being able to access your blog, thank you. I don't feel inclined to limit his social media use, it's a part of life now, but it would be

[con’t: helpful to have some signs to look out for. I originally typed my son as Si dom with T preference and was trying to encourage his Te but now I’m thinking he’s more like INTP so I’ve changed my strategy to keep an open mind (and develop the patience of a saint LOL) and help him make the right decisions for himself. He has become more reckless and scattered lately with high value placed on acceptance from friends. Could this be Ne or does social media have a larger influence?]

I’m glad that you find the blog helpful and I admire your devotion to parenting. You raise a lot of interesting issues, though I may not be the best person to ask since I tend to have a negative opinion of social media. Parenting teenagers requires walking a very, very fine line between giving them enough guidance to avoid bad decision making vs giving them enough freedom to learn proper independence. It’s a very hard job. Sometimes, the only way to know that you’ve veered too far one way or the other is by making the mistake and then adjusting your approach - lots of trial and error. Every kid is an individual, so what works for one kid won’t necessarily work for another. Being able to adapt to their needs is the key point. It’s art more than science.

Everything has its positive and its negative side. Human beings tend to be short-sighted and easily rationalize bad decision making. When they really want to do something, they are much more likely to envision the benefits of doing it and this then blinds them to the costs. To be a good parent, I think it’s important to teach children how to recognize negative consequences and navigate them more intelligently (i.e. objective assessment of pros and cons that produces rational decision making). However, this is only possible if parents themselves are capable of it. You can’t expect kids to learn how to do something well without someone to teach them or model it for them. Unfortunately, I know plenty of adults of all ages who misuse social media just as badly as their kids. Kids learn predominantly through example, so you have to be the first one to follow the rules that you set. If you don’t follow any rules yourself, they won’t see the point in following any, either. For example, if all they see of you is your nose in your device, why would they put theirs down?

I don’t believe in banning kids from social media, but I do think it’s a good idea to be smart in limiting its usage. Social media shouldn’t be a substitute for real and meaningful human interaction, it shouldn’t take up so much time that important things get neglected, it shouldn’t interfere with maintaining good physical and mental health, and it shouldn’t be used as an escape. Teenagers become harder and harder to supervise as they get older because they increasingly have their own life going on. At a certain point, there’s no imposing rules on them because violating their autonomy only leads to rebellion.

A better strategy is to sit down with them to talk about the importance of using social media in HEALTHY ways, talk about why limits are necessary to avoid the negative/unhealthy aspects of it, and negotiate with them to come up with sensible limits that both of you can live with. If YOU also spend too much time on social media, then it’s even better to join them in adhering to those limits, to model the behavior that you expect from them and give them the feeling of being in it together. When you place limits on one aspect of life, it’s a good idea to expand yourself in other ways so as to minimize the feeling of “missing out”. For example, if you use social media for social connection, then compensate for limiting social media by making more effort to go out and join interesting social activities. Putting limits on fun means increasing boredom, so make sure that the boredom is addressed with a healthier option.

Social media is relatively new, so there isn’t a big enough body of research about its hidden effects or underlying costs. The few studies that have been done about social media mostly seem to suggest that misuse/overuse has very detrimental effects on psychological well-being. The spread of misinformation is a big problem (i.e. it makes people stupid). Cyber-bulling and violation of privacy are big problems. When you are so plugged in to other people’s lives, it’s hard not to engage in social comparison, and this often results in negative self-appraisals that diminish self-regard. This is particularly destructive for teenagers because they haven’t yet developed a very strong sense of self and are very likely to use other people’s judgment as a barometer of their own self-worth. Adolescence is usually the time that people start to grapple with level 2 ego development. It’s important for teenagers to learn how to socialize well and fit in with others, but it’s also important for them to learn the dangers of choosing the wrong socializing methods.

People at level 2 ego development are very prone to: experiencing shame/anxiety/depression via negative social comparisons, blindly following the ingroup (and rejecting the outgroup), and sacrificing self-care as they succumb to peer pressure. Helping them is not a matter of trying to stop them from doing these things, because you can’t, since doing these things is a natural part of that stage of development. What you can do is offer them guidance about self-care and help them think more critically about the best ways to handle peer pressure (i.e. give them options/strategies for working through real situations), in hopes that they’ll learn how to make better decisions. In the event that they make a bad decision, review the mistake with them. Reflect with them to figure out what went wrong and work with them to brainstorm ideas for how to avoid the same mistake in the future. Ask them what they could’ve done differently (this encourages N development). The PAIN of making mistakes is an efficient way to learn, which means that you shouldn’t be in there “helping” to the point that they don’t feel the pain of their mistakes.

Discipline is necessary for giving kids a sense of structure. To internalize a sense of structure is to possess a mental framework for making good decisions (usually requires developing the judging functions). At the very least, a child should have their parent’s way of critical thinking at hand whenever they aren’t able to solve a problem entirely on their own (i.e. “what would mom/dad advise me to do?”). Always be transparent, fair, and consistent in how you punish kids by explaining your decision, why it’s necessary, and what lesson it’s meant to teach them (e.g. self-care, intelligence, respect, patience, etc). This makes it more likely that they eventually internalize your moral lessons and learn to use them even when you’re not present. If you punish unfairly or disproportionately, if you’re a hypocrite, or if you’re inconsistent with punishments, you risk losing their respect, which, in their mind, means that they no longer have to listen to you.

Unfortunately, some kids don’t learn well the first time around and you have to discipline them to get the point across. You can develop a punishment scale that begins with a mild punishment for the first mistake and then increase the severity of the punishment for every instance of repeating the mistake. While I admire your patience, I’m sure you know that laissez faire parenting also has its problems. Overly permissive parents run the risk of losing their child’s respect because it’s easy to fall into the trap of devaluing your own needs whenever the child tests your rules and boundaries, and they will absolutely trample your boundaries if you give the impression of not having any. When you devalue your position of authority in the relationship, you encourage kids to do the same, and then you become a mere source of food or money and nothing else to them. This also enables them to be narcissistic in their approach to others.

I’m not sure how good you are at communicating, just in case it’s needed, I’ll continue on to say that I believe that one of the most important elements of parenting is establishing a strong sense of trust. If your kid trusts you, they’ll feel more confident about making independent decisions because they know that you’re there to help them should they need it, and sometimes it’s enough that you’re with them “spiritually” in their memory of lessons learned. The best way to build trust is to keep the lines of communications open. Good communication isn’t about trying to pry information or performing the role of judge jury and executioner. People, let alone teenagers, won’t want to communicate with you if they suspect that all you’re doing is judging them or just looking for an excuse to criticize them (and teens likely get enough of this from their peers).

Communication should come from the heart, use inquiry and sharing of feelings to show that you genuinely care about what’s going on with them. Good communication should work both ways: listen to each other carefully, be transparent about your motives, be honest about how you feel and what you need, negotiate compromises, and respect each other’s individual autonomy. You should model the kind of respect that you want them to give to you (I can’t count the number of times that I’ve seen parents trying to teach their kids to be more respectful… by shouting at them angrily). When they are out of line, remain calm, hear what they’re feeling (validation), then explain to them that you/people are more likely to take them seriously when they express their feelings maturely. Give them an example sentence of how to express feelings or requests respectfully.

Teenagers are emotional creatures, they live in the emotions of now and don’t respond well to appeals to the future. This can’t be helped because it’s part of adolescent brain development, so give them some leeway to get their feelings out, but use the chance to teach better communication methods. Sometimes it’s necessary to give them cooling off time before instigating a serious discussion. Recklessness is usually rooted in emotion. Some kids are reckless out of boredom, some out of anxiety, etc. Try to identify the underlying emotion that’s motivating the problem and then you’ll have a better chance of coming up with a good solution. For example, if boredom (or excess energy) is the motivation, then enroll them in productive activities to fill up their time. If anxiety is the motivation, then they need to learn better emotional management skills, perhaps get them a bit of light counseling on the topic from school or a local community organization.

An important part of establishing trust that is often overlooked is the notion of equality. A parent-child relationship is naturally unequal in power, but it doesn’t have to be excessively and unnecessarily unequal. There are a lot of different kinds of communication, since people communicate with different intents/purposes depending on the circumstances. More often than not, parents only talk to their kids in “parent mode” of ordering them around, interrogating them, or criticizing them. If this is the only mode that kids get to see from you, then they will view you as an authoritarian and their approach to you will be rooted in fear of punishment and the desire for escape. This makes it very difficult for them to trust you because you’ve taught them that your role is to supervise and discipline and nothing else, which means that everything they do will be as far away from your watchful warden eyes as possible.

There’s no avoiding “parent mode” as a parent. However, you can avoid making that the ONLY mode. A better strategy is to pick your battles wisely so that you use parent mode as sparingly as possible, especially with teenagers that are always pressing you for more freedom. But if you’re not using parent mode, then you have to know how to communicate with them in other modes, otherwise, communication tends to dry up quickly. To build trust, do more activities with them and spend more time talking to them in a way that establishes both of you as persons on equal footing. To be clear, I’m not talking about the cliche of being friends with your kids; I believe that you should maintain the position of parental authority until they reach adulthood. I’m talking about communicating heart-to-heart so that they get to know who you are outside of your parental role. Be more willing to share your feelings with them such that they feel encouraged to share theirs with you. Within reason, share with them what’s on your mind and let them in on what’s happening in your private world. You don’t want to let them in completely, however, because you still need to command enough respect to have some authority over them. Talk about problems you’ve encountered or struggled with and how you felt about them, but also talk about what you did to resolve them, which gives them good examples to learn from.

Rebellion is a natural reaction to feeling excessively restricted, and it’s natural for teenagers to feel restricted regardless of whether you are objectively restricting them, because their main preoccupation is independence. Children tend to project their psychological problems onto their parents, and you can make it harder for them to demonize you by humanizing yourself enough for them to empathize with your experience. By communicating in heart-to-heart mode more often than in listen-and-obey mode, they learn that the relationship between you matters in its quality of love and care, not just in whether they follow your rules. When you successfully establish a sense of mutual appreciation for each other, they learn to see you as a person with your own needs and desires, and then they’ll have less desire to rebel against you. If your kid understands that your “parent mode” is just one part of you but that the greater part of you is a fellow human, then their rebellion is likely to take a softer, more respectful form. As a result of trust and good communication, they are more likely to consider negotiating with you first before running off to do something dumb just to spite you. Let them know that you’re always open to calm and sensible negotiations/compromises because it gives them the sense of having some say in the matter. As you gradually “equalize” the relationship through heart-to-heart communication, it’s then easier to transition into an adulthood friendship with them in the future.

From the child’s perspective, I distinctly remember when my parents switched modes with me, perhaps you can recall your experience as well. My mother had a strict rule of never involving kids in adult affairs, ever. Both of my parents come from big families and they all grew up together in a small town (11 siblings between them), so there was always lots of drama going on behind the scenes, but my brother and I were completely oblivious to it growing up. My parents were quite stoic with us and we never really knew what they were thinking, so the relationships were often quite strained because communication was virtually non-existent.

You can imagine my shock when, one day, in my twenties, I was just minding my own business as usual and mom comes into the room and complains about this or that relative. She proceeds to tell me the entire 20+ year backstory of their horrible relationship. I thought she had gone mad for spilling all this shocking info to me out of the blue. Signs of early onset dementia already? But then I realized that this was a role change. I was no longer the kid who had to be kept in the dark. I was now a person who was worthy of being treated as a confidant and even someone smart enough to seek advice from. It was a bittersweet moment. Sweet because, starting in adolescence, people hanker to be treated as an adult by their parents. Bitter because she had decisively given up her authoritarian role and now I had absolutely no cause to keep rebelling against her, lol. The point is, she could’ve given up her authoritarian role more gradually by easing me into the role change in mid-to-late adolescence. We wasted many years being at odds with each other because she couldn’t recognize the ways that I had matured. And some parents aren’t flexible enough to ever make the switch.

In the end, you can only do your best. If I had to come up with a motto about parenting it would be that “Attention is love”. Just be attentive and respond to what’s important to them. Teens appreciate your care even when they don’t show it or claim to not want it, so long as you respect their emotional needs.

PS: There’s already a parenting title on the resources list about teenagers and social media that might be of help.

[creative-type]

wake from death (and return to life) chapter iii

AO3 Previous AN: Hey, it’s chapter 3! I fully admit that to fiddling with the mechanics of Betty’s DF in this chapter, but it’s my fic so I get to do what I want

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.

Kuina woke up sore and confused, alone in a room she did not recognize. Her clothes were stiff with dried salt and blood, and when she jerked up in a panic she discovered the bunk above her by bashing her head into the wooden slats.

“Ow....”

Slowly her eyes adjusted to the dim light, and memories of the previous day trickled in. Kuina groped for her sword, letting out a small sigh of relief when she felt that it was by her side, her bag tucked between her pillow and the wall.

Did ships have walls? Other than her voyage from Shimotsuki Village to Loguetown, she didn’t have much experience sailing. It had always seemed like too great a risk when everything she needed could be found within the city.

Kuina snorted as she sat up, careful to mind her head. Her past self would be appalled to know all the stupid things she’d done in the last twenty-four hours.

There was nothing for it now but to move forward. Kuina brought her bag into her lap and began surveying the damage. There was the beginnings of a hole near one of the seams that Kuina didn’t trust, and the thick material was still damp and heavy with seawater. When she opened the flap, Kuina couldn’t stop a small noise of dismay from escaping her throat. Nothing inside had been waterproofed, and her tumble down the cliff had smashed the bento Ipponmatsu lovingly prepared into pieces, smearing bits of rice and god knew what else over the inside of her pack. The clothes could be washed and the bag repaired, but her money—so carefully horded after years of bounty hunting—was a soggy mess of paper and ink that threatened to disintegrate in her hands.  

The loss of the money didn’t bother her. At least, not much. There was always a need for bounty hunters, and pirates in the Grand Line tended to be worth more than those in the East Blue. No, what Kuina found more distressing was the implication of failure. She had spent the better part of nine years dreaming of the day she would escape the East Blue. She’d planned and schemed, imagining what it would be like to reunite with Zoro at last, only for it to all fall to pieces the moment he made it to Loguetown.

The shattered expectations were like a kick in the teeth, and now she was at the mercy of a bunch of terrorists, at least one of whom wanted to kill her. It wasn’t fair, and Kuina felt herself getting angry all over again. She welcomed it. Anger was better than having to think about the fact she’d thrown away every protection her father had given her for nothing.

She wouldn’t let her guard down again.

Taking a deep breath, Kuina hurried to get ready as best she could. She was acutely aware that she stank and probably looked like a hobo, but a quick survey of her quarters didn’t reveal anything that could help her in that regard. She settled for brushing the salt out of her hair and changing into a pair of clothes that didn’t have any bloodstains, As she moved Kuina took an inventory of aches and pains, and was pleasantly surprised that other than a little soreness and a gimpy ankle she was unharmed.

She’d cleaned and oiled her sword before allowing herself to sleep, but Kuina inspected it again anyway. A fresh scar gashed across the black lacquered scabbard, but the night’s escapades hadn’t damaged the sword itself. There was a quiet elegance to the katana her father had given her. It was a blade that didn’t feel the need to draw attention to itself, from the plain, straight hamon, to the simple black handle, to the unremarkable round guard devoid of engravings. There was nothing about Kuina’s sword that stood out as exceptional, but to hold it was to know true craftsmanship. It was shorter and lighter than Wado Ichimonji without sacrificing durability. There weren’t many swords who would have survived being stabbed into a cliffside without shattering. Hers hadn’t even dulled.

Kuina gave a few experimental swings, blade cutting through the air noiselessly and steel singing in her hands. Satisfied that it was in good condition, she hung the sword at her hip, feeling more at ease despite the less-than-ideal circumstances she found herself in.

With her katana taken care of, Kuina looked around her surroundings for the first time. There were beds all around her, enough for at least two dozen people, but the Revolutionary Army was nowhere to be seen. Kuina frowned, senses sharpening with her alertness. There was a slight sway underfoot, but the sea wasn’t as rough as what she’d expect from the Grand Line. She could hear people outside the cabin and the pounding of feet above her, but their voices were too muffled and far away. Kuina skulked to the door and tested the handle—unlocked. Confusion deepening, she left the cabin, only to come once again to an abrupt stop.

A giant of a woman was sitting outside her doorway, eyes closed and arms wrapped protectively around the biggest crossbow Kuina had ever seen. A bolt was loaded into the chamber, one meaty hand laying too close to the trigger for comfort.

Kuina hadn’t made any noise, but the woman blinked awake. With a yawn, she looked up at Kuina, eyes unreadable behind thick glasses.

“Good morning,” Kuina said.

The woman nodded in response and clambered to her feet. She was as tall as Dragon and nearly as broad, built as solid as an oak tree. Thick shocks of short brown hair spiked in all directions, looking like it hadn’t been combed in weeks and giving her head the look of an unkempt hedgehog. The wildness of her hair seemed at odds with the rest of her face, a square jawline, narrow nose, and thin lips lending her a severe, humorless expression.

“Are you going to shoot me?” Kuina asked cautiously.

“Only if I have to,” she said, her voice too soft for someone so large. She beckoned Kuina to follow as she headed down the corridor. “This way. You slept through breakfast, but I’m sure we can find something for you to eat.”

Nonplussed, Kuina followed. “Who are you?”

“Lyudmila Kuznetsova.”

Kuina waited for her to elaborate, and when she didn’t, asked, “You’re a part of the Revolution?”

Without turning around, she said in that too-soft voice. “We all are, but you. We took you because Dragon asked and nothing else, so do not presume to think you are privy to our secrets.”

As if Kuina wanted their secrets. People...Revolutionaries...stopped at the sight of them, many wearing masks or with their faces covered in bandanas or cloth wraps. Kuina could hear them whisper before they even got out of earshot.

She squared her jaw and kept her hand near her katana, refusing to be cowed. “Fair enough. Have we made it to the Grand Line yet? I know the entrance is near Loguetown, but I didn’t feel us ride up a crazy mountain so…”

A ghost of a small passed over Lyudmila’s features, gone almost before Kuina had to register its existence. “We are not going to the Grand Line.”

“What.”

“You join a Revolutionary ship, you run on the Revolution’s timeline.” Lyudmila stopped to pound at a thick wooden door. “Elizabeth!”

After a few seconds of silence the door flew open, revealing a five foot bundle of wrath and irritability in the shape of a woman wearing thick rubber gloves and a backward baseball cap. “What is it, I’m busy!”

Lyudmila gestured to Kuina. “Guest needs food.”

“Guest can kiss my ass!”

Elizabeth’s attempt to slam the door shot were foiled by Lyudmila stretching out one thick arm, effortlessly arresting the door’s momentum. The smell of something sulfuric wafted into the hallway.

“Guest needs food,” she repeated.

“Then take her to the galley. I’m busy.”

“I don’t need anything to eat,” Kuina said. “When is this ship going to the Grand Line?”

“See, she doesn’t even want food. Now go away and—” Elizabeth was cut off by a sharp popping noise, like someone had set off a firecracker in the room behind her. With a strangled yelp, she rushed back towards the smell of sulfur, which was getting stronger by the second. Unperturbed, Lyudmila went in after her, with Kuina sneaking in close behind.

The room looked to be a converted storage closet, crammed with shelves of strange bottles full of mysterious liquids and dominated by a solid oak table that had been bolted to the floor. The source of the odor seemed to come from there, where a large beaker of bubbling fluid was threatening to boil over into an electric burner that for some reason had been wired to half a dozen potatoes.

Elizabeth quickly cut power to the burner, waving her hands to disperse the fumes. She gave Lyudmila a look that could have peeled paint.

“If that’s how you cook potatoes, I don’t want any,” Kuina deadpanned. She smiled innocently as Elizabeth turned the full force of her glare on her.

“I see the Revolution’s recruited another meatshield,” she said acidly. “Probably spent too much time learning how to wave around pointy metal sticks to ever go to school, or you might have known it’s a battery. Idiot.”

Kuina’s grin sharpened. “Didn’t grow potatoes back home, my teacher used lemons instead.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “You’d think Revolutionary agents would know how to recognize a joke since you joined up with one, but I guess that’s my fault for not lowering my standards. Idiot.”

Sighing softly, Lyudmila set her crossbow on the table and stepped between them. Clasping one hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder and another on Kuina’s, she forced both of them to take a step back. “Enough. Elizabeth, you are assistant cook. It is your job to make sure our guest is fed. And you—” A coldness passed over her, even as her expression remained perfectly neutral, “—would do well to keep your mouth shut.”    

Her grip on Kuina’s shoulder was like iron. There was no indication that it took any effort for her to hold her in place. Part of Kuina wanted to push her just a little bit farther, just to see how far that strength went, but the sensible side of her knew better than to test the generosity of the Revolutionary Army. At least while Dragon was aboard.

“I just want to get to the Grand Line,” Kuina said.

Lyudmila loosened her hold, eyebrows rising over the rims of her glasses. “You have chosen a very odd way of doing so. Elizabeth?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get the asshole her breakfast. Just give me a sec.”

Kuina decided it would be better to wait outside the strange room full of exploding liquids and potatoes, and a few minutes later Elizabeth emerged to thrust two slices of toast into her hands. One side was burnt so badly to be charcoal, while the other was still cold. Kuina looked up at Lyudmila in silent question. The giantess only shrugged.

“I did not say she was a good cook.”

Xxx

“Okay, but seriously, when are we going to the Grand Line? Because if it’s going to be awhile I might as well get off at the next island and hitch a ride with someone else.”

They were above deck, waiting outside the captain’s quarters, but why, Kuina didn’t know. She was impatient and ill-tempered, but tried not to show it as she scanned her surroundings for potential enemies. In the daylight she could see that she’d lionized the ship the night before. Without the storm and the lightning it seemed like a perfectly average brigantine with a crew of about a hundred men. There were no signs betraying its true nature; it sailed under the flag of a merchant company and there were no cannons on deck to draw suspicion.

There were a surprising amount of women, maybe a quarter of the crew in total. Some, like Lyudmila, carried weapons, and all looked to be competent sailors. Kuina couldn’t recall a single ship passing through Loguetown with so many women aboard, pirate or otherwise. Even the marines base, despite their relentless recruiting efforts, couldn’t boast so many, and they had a Tashigi as their second-in-command.

Kuina didn’t know what to think of that, so she pushed the thought aside. The gender ratio among the Revolutionary Army wasn’t her concern.

“Why do you wish to go?” Lyudmila asked.

Kuina’s grip on her sword tightened. “You have your secrets, I have mine.”

Lyudmila inclined her head. “Fair enough.”

The two of them fell into a comfortable silence, and Kuina felt a knot in her stomach loosen, grateful that Lyudmila didn’t pry or seem suspicious of her intentions. There was a steadying presence about Lyudmila, like an anchor during a storm, that made it easier to bear the uncertainty of not knowing what was going to happen next.

They had waited for about five minutes when a figure descended from the crow’s nest and bounded toward them like a bullet. It was yet another woman, taller than average but nowhere near Lyudmila’s hulking height, with a willowy build and crow-black hair pulled into a braid that fell halfway down her back. She grinned mischievously, white teeth flashing against coppery brown skin. “The stowaway lives!”

“I’m not a stowaway,” Kuina said.

“Eh, close enough. Name’s Darareaksmey, but most call me Dara. It’s a pleasure to meet you at last. Although I guess technically we met last night,” She clasped her hands together and gave an irreverent bow.

“We met?” Kuina said.

“Kinda sorta—you were asleep by the time my watch ended. Did you know you snore?” Dara looked up at Lyudmila. “So what’s the verdict? Does she get to stay, or is someone going to have to throw her overboard?”

The door to the captain’s quarters opened before Kuina had a chance to voice her indignant protest. Dragon stepped out onto deck, along with Betty and another woman Kuina didn’t recognize.

“Dara, if you’re going to eavesdrop, you better learn how to do it quietly,” the woman Kuina didn’t know said. “Now scat. If you have time to loiter, you have time to work.”

Dara stuck out her lower lip. “But, Boss! I want to know what happens—”

“I said scat.”

Still pouting, Dara slunk away with the unrepentant mulishness of a cat that’d just been scolded for clawing up the furniture. Betty smirked, a look of fond exasperation on her face. “I bet that one gives you grief.”

“Not as much as I suspect this one will,” the woman retorted, jerking a thumb in Kuina’s direction. “Are you sure you can’t take her?”

“You know that’s impossible.”

“Only until you reach the Grand Line,” Dragon said soothingly. “Then she must decide where the wind will carry her.”

The woman narrowed her eyes at Kuina, her hand resting on the elaborate hilt of the rapier she wore at her side. Kuina had always wondered how people could fight with a sword like that. It looked like it would hold up in a real fight about as well as a toothpick against a machete. “I don’t like it.”

“It’s a week at best,” Betty said.

A week. They were going to delay her entrance to the Grand Line by a week. Under any other circumstances Kuina would have been ecstatic to be so close after so many years, but she’d just been at the entrance the night before. She should be there now, not however long it took for the Revolution to tire of dragging her around for the hell of it.

“Don’t I get any say in this?” Kuina asked.

“You got your say when you demanded for Dragon to take you in the first place,” Betty said. She gestured to the woman beside her. “Kuina, meet Aria de Gris. She will be the captain of the ship that will take you to the Grand Line. Aria, this is Kuina.”

The two women regarded each other warily. Aria was stockily built and carried herself with feline grace. There was a sharpness to her features, which were more handsome than beautiful, that was accentuated by a jagged scar on the left side of her face that ran from temple to jaw. Her hair was kept shorter than even Kuina’s, with garish streaks of purple in her otherwise dark hair.

Like many experienced sailors, she was weatherbeaten in a way that made it difficult to tell if she was thirty-five or fifty, and she wore a heavily-embroidered doublet and black breeches that she tucked into scuffed, knee-high boots. A long jacket hung from her shoulders, empty sleeves rustling in the breeze.

Kuina narrowed her eyes. Only marines wore their jackets like that.

“I appreciate the offer, but when I asked to go with you I was working under the assumption you’d be headed directly for the Grand Line,” Kuina said. “Now that I know that’s not the case, I think it would be better for everyone involved if you guys just drop me off at the next island, and I’ll find my own way.”

“And you would think wrong,” Betty said.

“Look, I’m trying to be reasonable here,” Kuina snapped. “It’s clear you don’t like me, and I sure as hell don’t like you, so why can’t we just part amicably and call it a day? It’s not like I’m going to be able to narc after what happened at Loguetown. The marines don’t cut deals with people who attack their junior officers, even if the info’s good. I don’t plan on ending up in prison.”

Aria snorted before reaching into her breast pocket for a cigarette and a lighter. “There’s no planned stop till we get to our destination, and I doubt you want to hang around a war zone. Not many ships headed to the Grand Line there.”

“War zone?” Kuina echoed.

“This is an army, kid, not a pleasure cruise. So put on your big girl panties and let Mila show you the ropes. On this ship, if you don’t work, you don’t eat.”

“You trust me to do work for the Revolutionary Army?” Kuina asked.

“Nope, but I already told Mila to put a bolt between your eyes at the first sign of trouble, and I do trust her. So I guess it’s up to you how this charade plays out.”

Kuina’s eyes flickered up at Lyudmila, and wondered if she was as fast as she was strong. She suppressed a grimace and forced her hand away from her sword. As much as she didn’t like it, she couldn’t deny that it was her own fault she was on this ship. With her money nothing more than a soggy lump of paper, it was only fair that Kuina earn her keep.

Dragon nodded approvingly. “Listen to Betty and Aria, and when you arrive at the Grand Line make your choice. I can’t guarantee your safety otherwise.”

“You make it sound like you’re not going to be around,” Kuina said. Dragon didn’t respond, but his silence said plenty. A quick glance was enough to show that Betty was no happier about their arrangement than she had been the night before, and Kuina didn’t want to find out how she’d act when her big boss wasn’t around. “Where are you going?”  

There was a delicate pause, broken by an unladylike snicker. Aria hid her face by taking another drag from her cigarette, but couldn’t stop her shoulders from shaking with surprised laughter.

“It’s the Grand Line, isn’t it?” Kuina said. “You get to go to the Grand Line while I’m stuck sailing in the opposite direction.”

“Yes.”

Kuina bit back a caustic remark. She didn’t know what game he was playing, but whatever it was, she wouldn’t let him win. A swordsman paid their debts, and as twisted as the deal was, the Revolutionary Army had promised her a way into the Grand Line.

And if they tried to renege on their promise, then, well, she could pay that back, too.

“Fine. You’ll have my blade for a week and no more. What kind of war are we walking into, anyway? Has the Revolution taken over some backwater island, or are you going after the Government directly?”

“Oh, you won’t be doing any fighting,” Betty said.

“Why not?” Kuina asked. “I’ve already proven my skill, and I don’t have much choice but to do what you say. I won’t go after civilians, but I’m pretty sure any marine who knows who I am is going to attack me on sight anyway.”

“I’ll show you why.”

Betty reached behind her and pulled out a small flag from somewhere on her person. Where, exactly, Kuina would never know, because the volumes of her skirt didn’t appear to have pockets, and the only other articles of clothing she was wearing was an unbuttoned jacket and tie. It was the most uncomfortable ensemble Kuina had ever seen, but before she could make a smart remark Betty had waved the flag in front of her.

Kuina saw the black lettering on a scarlet background, a stylized dragon standing proudly between the R and the A, showing for all the world to see who exactly who the Revolutionary Army fought for. Kuina tensed, bending down into a ready stance, but Betty didn’t seem to be attacking.

“What the…?”

Sudden, naked fear pierced past Kuina’s defenses. Her stance wobbled, cold sweat beading at her forehead and heart pounding in her chest. The echo of cold, mocking laughter reverberated in her mind, memories half-forgotten painted anew, rejoining the terror and powerlessness she felt when she had been unable to break Dragon’s hold. The bruise on her wrist throbbed where he had grabbed her, the acute awareness that her blade had failed to even touch him leaving a dread heaviness in her gut.

This is what happens when you do business with the Revolution.

Kuina wanted to puke. She wanted to run, to throw herself into the sea, because to be in the same space as the Revolutionary Army was to court death and pain. It didn’t matter how altruistic they seemed, they were the enemy. An enemy that was much stronger than she.

“Devil Fruit?” Kuina spat between clenched teeth. “That’s playing dirty.”

“A flag properly wielded inspires those who fight for it. But for those that don’t, it brings nothing but terror,” Betty said. “And put your sword away before someone gets hurt.”

Kuina looked down at her hands. She didn’t even remember drawing her blade. Her hands shook so badly she doubted she could swing it, although at that moment there was nothing she wanted more than to cut the smug look off of Betty’s face.

“I’m surprised she can even hold it,” Aria said thoughtfully.

“A trapped animal bites hardest,” Betty said. She raised an eyebrow at Dragon. “Are you sure about this?”

Dragon turned back to the captain’s quarters, cloak billowing behind him. “Until the Grand Line.”

He shut the door behind him, leaving Kuina alone with the three other women. Lyudmila patted her bracingly on the back, the force of the blow almost making her stumble. “Welcome aboard.”

Kuina didn’t trust herself to speak. Despite the tremor in her hands she managed to sheathe her blade cleanly. Swallowing hard, she gathered a modicum of her composure before glaring balefully at Betty. The Revolutionary remained unmoved.

“Dragon seems to think you have potential, but I can’t help but wonder why someone who was nearly cut in half by the World Government would hold such resentment for the people fighting against it.”

Without waiting for Kuina to respond, she and Aria rejoined Dragon. Once the door shut behind them Kuina looked up at Lyudmila. Between shaking breaths she said, “Just so you know, I’m not going to let myself get shot.”

Her expression was impassive as stone. “Then I ask that you do not give me reason to do so, because I will not miss.”

.

.

.

[gofancyninjaworld]

The World of Heroes. Part 2: What is a Hero, Anyway?

Part 1 here

I realise that one of the things we think everyone agrees on is what a hero is.  We also tend to think we know what ‘hero’ means in One-Punch Man.  But let’s walk this thinking back a bit. 

A Chimera of a Beast

To start with, there are many definitions of hero. Originally, a hero was a man (or woman) who opposed great adversity with strength, courage and ingenuity. Critically, they did this for the sake of personal glory. If it helped anyone, that was nice, but it wasn’t the point.  We have the one many are familiar with from the Bible (and from Maccabees, if you’re Catholic), where the idea of sacrificing oneself for the sake of others was held up as both a heroic and loving thing to do. The hero is an altruist.  More modern readings (Middle Ages onwards), have conflated 'hero' with 'champion' (a defender of a cause or person) and have the hero doing these acts for the sake of others, sacrifice optional. 

Tying these definitions together would be Philip Zimbardo (yes *that* Zimbardo), who sees heroism in terms of the willingness to act for what one perceives to be right. Crucially, he sees the choice to act when one might otherwise have stood by as the key definition of a hero: the opposite of heroism is not villainy, but indifference. The bystander, the person who could have acted but chose not to, is the one complicit in evil.

So which one is right for One-Punch Man?

All of them. 

We get all these strands in OPM, in all their uneasy contradictions. It’s rare to find any hero who doesn’t have more than one of these ideas motivating them at the self-same time. The heroes whose strongest motivation is to act to show their power and gain recognition rub shoulders with those 'just doing what is right'. The strong desire to experience triumph butts heads with the satisfaction of knowing one has helped someone. Often, they're the same damn person. 

Does it make sense to talk about acting with moral courage when one gets a paycheck at the end of the month? After all, we don't go lauding the police or doctors as heroes -- unless they do something that is truly over and above the call of duty. If we say that a hero is one who is not just willing to act to oppose evil, but do so to the point that they would put their lives on the line, what if they're so strong that this resolve is not tested?   It’s no wonder that within the story, we have so many differing views on heroes from near-worship to regarding them as self-indulgent fools.  And it’s no wonder that outside, fans find plenty to argue about which hero is better. 

How do we unpick all this?  So this isn’t too long, I’ll just pick on Saitama, not just because he’s strong, but also because he wrestles with many of these aspects within himself.  

Even He Contains Multitudes

Philosophically, is Saitama a hero? I'm with Zimbardo on this one: a hero is the one who sees a clear moral line that once crossed, compels them to act.

The important part is choice. So heroism is not being a trauma surgeon saving a patient's life -- that's just her job. On the other hand, if a group of armed men burst into the theatre, hold a gun to the surgeon's head and demand that she stop operating right away to focus on saving their bandit chief, heroism would be keeping calm, persuading the men to quit menacing the surgical team and work out a way to save both original patient and bandit.

Even if the choice is far less drastic, the fact that a person has a) noticed the problem, b) decided that it is a problem and c) decided that it's one they should do something about is what makes a hero a hero. Heroes are busybodies. They're pests. They're the ones who harsh the vibe in the room by telling people about Steve -- you know Steve, the one who's a bit of a laugh (but you don't want to be alone with him when he's been drinking). They hound, they ferret, they badger, they wear out their friends in their pursuit of what they think is right. Until such a point as their efforts are noticed, many a hero is a pest who keeps harping on about the same old shit.

This willingness to personally step up despite the potential for embarrassment or worse is something that ONE refers to when he's thinking about heroes. As ONE puts it, when you see a child being abused, you want to step in and stop it. However, if the abuser is bigger than you, what do you do? Whether or not he has the means to change things, Saitama is one of those people who simply couldn't walk away when he saw a child in danger. Saitama is a hero. A hero might be about taking a stand, but a hero who can WIN, now that is a mighty one indeed.

Coming to Saitama specifically, he's an old style hero with more modern motivations. Sometimes. He really wants the joy of a hard-fought battle, for his own glory and self-satisfaction.  This is a real and valid part of Saitama: 

AND Saitama is also someone who will literally give the clothes off his back to get a child shivering with cold and humiliation safely home. Clothes he really needed himself at that time to not make a fool of himself at a competition.

AND Saitama is someone who consistently defends the very idea of heroes, even to the point of sacrificing what would have been a very easy ride, not just out of Class C, but all the way to Class S. He did so that the greater sacrifices other heroes had made to keep the crowd alive long enough for him to come  save them would not be disparaged.  

All of these are part and parcel of Saitama. With so many different motivations, it’s little wonder that Saitama struggles with what and why he decided to become a hero in the first place.

He Who Raises Himself Up Is Watched

The ancient world has one crucial aspect right about heroes: they are watched.  Because they take a stand, heroes stand out.  And thus, they are noticed, whether with disdain or admiration.  Better make sure the figure you cast is worth watching.

Whatever Saitama’s still-evolving thoughts on why he became a hero and what heroism means to him, by his actions, his heroism has had some profound impacts on others.  Which is worth examining as different characters draw very different things from Saitama. 

Suiryu would say that Saitama's heroism lies in his power to restore hope to people. No matter how black things are, don't give up; someone might yet save you.  From chapter 74, page 34. 

  "Only now do I understand... that when people find themselves in darkness, they seek light. And it doesn't matter how faint or small it is, as long as it's there." (emphasis in text)

There is an important psychological truth to this -- in disasters, the ability to hang onto hope influences one's ability to survive. Knowing that help is coming or might yet be coming can have a huge impact on people's willingness to do more for themselves and so survive. A hero is the one who gives you reason to avoid despair.

To Genos, Saitama's heroism is something different: he is the symbol of strength, the strength to end evil. From chapter 84, page 131.

 "Master Saitama's battles are showing me the way forward. The symbol of strength. That is the goal towards which I should strive.. That is where I’m headed." (emphasis in text). 

A hero is the one who has the power to end an oppressive situation. Justice may be the heart of a hero, but justice without power is empty. Without that power, courage, good intentions, a strong sense of right and wrong, fighting technique, intelligence, self-sacrifice, all of them are for nothing -- the situation doesn't change. Those on whose behalf you act are betrayed.

Glasses sees Saitama's heroism in yet another way -- it's the courage to follow your own path, despite what others might say. From chapter 20.6, pages 26- 27.

Glasses: "Normal people have limits! Talented people are fundamentally different from us!" 

Saitama: "Who said so?"... "Who decides limits? And based on what?"

 And from then on, Glasses quit the Blizzard Group and started running. Why? A hero sticks out -- standing up for something when you might otherwise have walked by means going your own way and not being constrained by what others might think of you. That is the aspect that Glasses wants. As he says much later in volume 16's bonus chapter, 

"Knowledge, experience, decision making... I am lacking in all of those things. The only thing that has changed for me is determination. I have decided not to be bound by my limits."  (emphasis mine)

Whose version is right? Which one would Saitama agree most with? Who knows? It depends on which day of the week you ask Saitama! And in a way, it doesn't really matter. What matters is first, that Saitama is taking a stand against the evil that monsters wreak on society: he did it before he was strong and he's not stopped doing it now that he's overwhelmingly powerful. Second, what matters is that Saitama inspires others. He might not be getting the parade he hoped for, but he's sensitive to the fact that a hero is as much a symbol as an action. We sing songs of praise to heroes because they inspire us to do better in our daily lives, they challenge us not to ignore what we might by our action end.

From the start, the point has been made that there is too much evil in this world for any one hero, no matter how powerful, to stop. The argument has been made that in a sense, heroes act out of self-satisfaction. Nevertheless, heroes matter. Someone has to stand up for what's right. 

But man, heroes can't win. If they work for extrinsic reward, like recognition and money (ha!) they're shallow and hypocritical. If work for intrinsic motivation, like justice, they're deluded. If they find intrinsic reward in helping, they're self-indulgent.

Part 3, I plan to look at the world of pro-heroes. 

[chiseler]

The Weeder in God’s Garden

A moral crusader from his early years, Anthony Comstock was born in New Canaan, Connecticut in 1844. His father, Thomas, was a prosperous farmer who also owned two sawmills. While the family had plenty of money, it was through the influence of Comstock’s fervent Congregationalist mother Polly, who like her husband had descended from Puritan stock, that the seven Comstock children led very austere lives marked by hard work, religious instruction, and precious little fun. Among his siblings, Anthony was the only one who clung fiercely to his mother’s fire and brimstone sensibilities. Polly died when Anthony was ten, but by then he knew full well Satan was a very real force in the world, and the only way to stay right with God was to remain pure in thought and deed, resisting the ever-present temptations presented by the Prince of Lies. Alcohol, tobacco, gambling and especially sex were all tickets straight to Hell, a belief he inflicted on everyone around him. This made him, no doubt, a very annoying child.

As a student in the local public school, Comstock never got a firm grasp on reading or spelling, which he considered useless anyway. He also found his growing sense of moral outrage enflamed by his fellow students, those godless little miscreants, who among other things would surreptitiously pass around ads for packs of those French playing cards with the pictures of the girls on them. No, the only education he needed he learned through the Old Testament stories his mother had read him, those tales of a vengeful God and the awful fate awaiting sinful, wicked men who ally themselves with the forces of evil.

When the Civil War broke out, Comstock, then 19, volunteered for the union army and was packed off to Florida. Much to his horror, he quickly discovered that certain Northern businesses, hoping to ease the burden of those proud soldiers willing to sacrifice everything in defense of, well, whatever it was, were in the habit of delivering shipments of not only whiskey and tobacco to the camps, but pornography as well. Although he saw precious little action, he immediately became an enormous pain in the ass to the fellow soldiers in his regiment. Forget about the Confederate army—it was the smoking, drinking, cursing and gambling among those in camp with him that would prove their downfall, and he let them know it on a daily basis. He would claim in his diary to have converted two or three of his fellow soldiers to the ways of righteousness, promising Comstock they would neither drink nor chew tobacco for the duration of the war. But given the evidence of his diary entries, it seems Comstock’s own wartime vice was porn.

In a 1863 diary entry he wrote: “Again tempted and found wanting…Sin, sin. Oh how much peace and happiness is sacrificed on thy altar.” Other entries make it clear the early morning temptations he failed to resist took the form of self abuse.

(In psychological terms, as history has shown time and again, Comstock’s weakness for porn is hardly a shock considering his coming crusade.)

Comstock was not exactly a wholly freelance operator when it came to his wartime proselytizing. He allied himself with The Christian Commission, a project spearheaded by the YMCA which sent missionaries to the front in order to try and save the souls of both Confederate and Union soldiers. His association with the Christian Commission would prove very profitable in the years following the war.

After leaving the army, Comstock moved to New York and took a job at a dry goods store in Manhattan. While most commentators seem baffled by Comstock’s decision to move to the very heart of American vice, a growing dirty metropolis where taverns, gambling join’s, contraceptive devices, prostitutes and erotic literature were all plentiful and accessible, his motivation as a crusader made the move an obvious one. If your self-appointed mission is to stamp out vice, then you go where the vice is.

And sure enough, the bookseller next door to the dry goods store where Comstock worked, a Mr. Conroy, did a brisk business selling pornographic pictures and erotica to those heathens deaf to the word of the Lord. Understandably outraged by this, Comstock entered the store, purchased an obscene book, brought it straight to the police and then led them to the man who sold it to him.

Although the police took Conroy into custody, the bookseller was soon free again and back to his godless business. Every time Comstock demanded the smut merchant be arrested, he was freed again in a matter of hours, convincing Comstock (and correctly) the cops were in cahoots with the city’s purveyors of vice, though this epiphany in no way tempered his holy mission.  

Entrapment not being a major legal roadblock in the late 19th century, Comstock would use the same technique—making an illicit purchase, then fingering the seller—to wage his one-man war om smut peddlers throughout the city.

His tireless crusade soon not only earned Comstock coverage in the local papers, in 1872 it also brought him to the attention of the founders of the YMCA. It was the YMCA’s Christian Commission, after all, which had pushed for an amendment to the 1865 postal bill making it a misdemeanor to send obscene material through the mail. Impressed by Comstock’s efforts to eradicate vice, the YMCA’s brass began introducing the young zealot to a number of wealthy and powerful men around the city who who likewise felt something needed to be done about New York’s shocking moral degradation. Comstock seemed to be just the reformist warrior they were looking for. With their financial backing and political connections supporting him, Comstock founded The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.

Under the guise of the NYSSV, and with the enthusiastic encouragement of local and federal politicians, wealthy conservatives, and evangelicals, Comstock expanded his efforts, demanding the confiscation of not only blatantly pornigraphic materials and the arrest of those who sold them, but the banning of books, artwork and plays he deemed obscene, though his definition of “obscene” was so broad and so vague it essentially boiled down to “anything Comstock didn’t like.” Over the years this would include medical textbooks, classic literature and newspaper editorials condemning his campaign. The efforts to ban works of art and literature willy-nully came to be known, in a term generally if inaccurately attributed to George Bernard Shaw, as “Comstockery.”

Although Comstock did have any number of outspoken enemies around town, especially among early civil libertarians and women’s rights groups, no one seemed capable of stopping, or even curtailing, his efforts. Because of this, his sense of personal invincibility grew, as did his political clout. People were scared to death of him, even if they hated him and everything he stood for. Cross Comstock, and you could find yourself in prison for sending a Mother’s Day card.

It’s been argued that Comstock’s war on obscene material was, at it’s core, really a war against contraception and abortion, given he argued that the reading of obscene materials inevitably led to the sort of behavior that would bring contraception and abortion into play. Inspired by the 1865 postal law, with the help of his political backers, in 1873 what came to be known as The Comstock Act was passed. The law not only forbade sending obscene material through the mail, but any product or information related to contraception or abortion. Three years later, the Comstock Act (aka The Comstock Law) was amended, its powers greatly expanded. The amended version read:

"Every obscene, lewd, or lascivious book, pamphlet, picture, paper, writing, print or other publication of an indecent character, and every article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of conception or procuring of abortion, and every article or thing intended or adapted for any indecent or immoral use, and every written or printed card, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of any kind giving information, directly or indirectly, where, or how, or of whom, or by what means, any of the hereinbefore mentioned matters, articles, or things may be obtained or made, and every letter upon the envelope of which, or postal card upon which, indecent, lewd, obscene, or lascivious delineations, epithets, terms, or language may be written or printed, are hereby declared to be non-mailable matter, and shall not be conveyed in the mails, nor delivered from any post-office, nor by any letter-carrier.”

After the Act was passed, Comstock was made a Special Agent of the US Postal Service, a position that gave him police powers and the right to carry a gun. Although he received no pay as a postal inspector, it was a position he undertook with gusto, as it granted him the power to make his own arrests without bringing those corrupt cops into it. Returning to the same technique he first used to nab that smut peddler Conroy, Comstock, under a false name, would order material through the mail that was covered under his namesake law, and upon receiving it, would order the arrest of the seller, who would then be charged with a federal offense. This included the publisher of anatomy textbooks, two journalists who had written a piece about the sexual improprieties of a well-known religious figure, even one activist who, as a test, had sent some of the Bible’s racier passages through the mail.

In Charles Gallaudet’s 1913 biography, Anthony Comstock, Fighter: Some Impressions of a Lifetime Adventure in Conflict with the Powers of Evil, Comstock would boast he had destroyed 284,000 pounds of printing plates used to create obscene books, 15 tons worth of printed material, nearly 100,000 “articles made of rubber for immoral purposes,” and millions of pornographic images.

It’s also been rumored, and I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if it was true, that in the process of destroying all that material, Comstock quietly squirreled away a massive secret personal library of confiscated books and images, which he would freely share with his wealthy and powerful friends

By his own account, Comstock arrested some four thousand people over the course of his four-decade career as a “weeder in God’s garden,” as he termed himself. Of these, no case received more press than the arrest of D.M. Bennett, a Free Thinker and publisher of The Truth Seeker magazine. As noted in its first issue, the magazine sought to promote "science, morals, free thought, free discussions, liberalism, sexual equality, labor reform progression, free education, and whatever tends to elevate and emancipate the human race." This, needless to say, did not include religious zealots or self-righteous political opportunists, and so found itself in Comstock’s crosshairs.

Comstock had Bennett arrested for both sending a pamphlet advocating Free Love through the mail, and fore writing an editorial for his magazine entitled “An Open Letter to Jesus Christ.” At the close of the highly-publicized trial, Bennett was found guilty and  sentenced to thirteen months in prison for violating The Comstock Act.

Comstock was also mighty proud his efforts had driven at least fifteen lost souls (again by his own reckoning) to commit suicide. One was an abortionist who’d been arrested for giving a bottle of pills to Comstock, after he approached her claiming to be the husband of a woman whose current pregnancy was putting her life at risk. Another was Ida Craddock, the author of several explicit marriage manuals, who was arrested after mailing them to her naive and confused customers. Craddock killed herself the day before reporting to federal prison, leaving behind a blistering note condemning Comstock and his supporters.

Comstock’s final arrest and court case came in January of  1915, when he arrested Bill Sanger, husband of pioneering feminist and contraception-rights activist Margaret Sanger, for distributing her pamphlet “Family Limitation.” Like most of those targeted by Comstock, Sanger was found guilty.

Although Comstock took aim at some worthwhile targets in his war on vice, including medical quackery and economic fraud, he will always be remembered as America’s foremost book-burner, a man whose influence would linger for half a century after his 1915 death. His postmortem influence over what Americans could and could not legally read or see would only be broken in June of 1964, when the Supreme Court ruled Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer was not obscene.

Yeah, Anthony Comstock was a real asshole, a man utterly incapable of minding his own goddamn business. But like Joe McCarthy he still has his ardent supporters among the pro-life and evangelical set, pinch-faced types who pine for the days when abortionists were jailed and books they didn’t understand were burned. In fact one of Comstock’s devotees recently published a graphic novel based on the 1913 biography, which itself was turned into a crudely animated film for those True Believers who remain as illiterate as Comstock himself.

by Jim Knipfel

[skarletterambles]

Gods of Egypt reaction blog

As a fan of both Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and ancient Egypt, I had to watch this movie.  It’s a hideous mess of whitewashing, incorrect mythology and WTFery, but I got it from the library so no money went toward it.

Random thoughts typed while watching are below.

[Warning:  Spoilers ahead, plus a mention of rape and victim blaming.]

So I guess we’re not going with the original story in which Set chopped Osiris to bits and scattered them so Isis had to track down her husband’s reproductive organs to conceive Horus.  I bet nobody ejaculates into each other’s food as a power move, either.  Tsk.  (Seriously, though, that’s for the best.  I have complaints about the accuracy of the mythology in this film, but some Hollywood adaptation isn’t necessarily a bad thing...)

Oh, the irony of Nikolaj playing a lionslayer instead of, well...the Lion of Lannister...is hilarious.

Yikes, they really, really whitewashed this shit, didn’t they?  Holy cow.  (That wasn’t intended to be a Hathor pun, but if fits...)

At least they made Thoth black, even if he does talk like Data from Star Trek.  Isis was like, “Did you ever imagine your pupil would become king?”  Uh, he’s the king’s only son, you don’t have to be the God of Wisdom to predict that.  Duuuuuuh.

OMG Gerard Butler is keeping his Scottish accent for this role.  He’s dialed it back somewhat, but it’s definitely still there.  WTF LMAO

“I will be the one true king of all Sparta...errrr, I mean, Egypt!”

And he’s like, “You have to be rich to enter the afterlife from now on.”  Since when does Set have any say in that?

I was hoping their animal forms would look cool, not metallic bodysuits ripped from Transformers.  What a letdown.  

At least this eye-gouging was significantly less gross than the ones on Game of Thrones.

*insert jokes about Set overcompensating for something with the huge obelisk to Ra*

Bek was like, “Derrrr, gee, I’ve got this blinding artifact holding my enemies at bay.  I could flee immediately, or I could be a TOTAL IDIOT and take a few seconds to kiss my girlfriend first instead.”

“Death is not the end,” says the generic doe-eyed love interest.  No, no, no, it’s “Death is only the beginning,” and it was a MUCH better movie’s tag line! This pile of crap cannot steal it!

Okay, Anubis looks kind of cool.  So do the giant scarab beetle mounts.

OMG this is dumb.  It just is.  Let’s fly to a freaking space station without any kind insulation or oxygen.  Horus, I can understand, since, y’know, magic, gods, etc.  But the mortal dweeb?  No.  He should have frozen and suffocated.

Geoffrey Rush is Ra?  What?  Whyyyyy???  He’s done such amazing stuff in his career.  How much did they have to pay him to do this?

Oh look, the Earth is flat after all!  *shocked emoji*

I’m not sure what reaction they were going for with Gerard Butler flying around on a sled pulled by giant beetles, but I bet snorting laughter wasn’t it.

So the other gods and goddesses are either 100% human-looking, or in their metallic animal forms, but Nepthys has pretty wings in human form.  Okay.  Sure.  All the rules are made up.

Scaling up the gods to be bigger than mortals was a neat idea, but I don’t know if it was worth the amount of CG that it must have required.

Did we need random bullet-time moments while Horus fights the metal bull men?  No.  No we did not.

These gods aren’t that powerful, if being pushed off a waterfall almost kills them.  I know, I know, they’re playing it up that Horus is not as powerful without his other eye, but come on.

Am I supposed to know who these two women are with Set?  One black, one albino?

Since when does Hathor have anything to do with the dead and the Afterworld?  And come on, you cowards, let her turn into a giant silver cow to fight!  She had one slightly bovine-looking tiara early on, but otherwise there was no sign of her true nature.  Harumph.

Oh, the black and white women ride giant fire-breathing cobras.  Of COURSE!  Makes total sense.  (WTF??????)

Hathor:  You should tell the mortal the truth about his dead lover. Horus:  No, I refuse. [Bek, who is walking like ten feet behind them:  Tell me what? Horus:  Oh shit.  I forgot you were back there.]

The Sphinx doesn’t really look like a Sphinx, but okay.  Did it just say “Oh, bother” like freaking Winnie the Pooh?  LOL!

Set just stole Thoth’s brain.  Rude!

The wings of Nepthys, the mind of Thoth, the heart of Osiris, the eye of Horus...by your powers combined, I AM CAPTAIN PLANET! 

And the most predictable patricide in cinematic history in 3...2...1...stabby stabby!  *golfclap*

Forecast for this afternoon, 80% chance of Apophis destroying creation...

Instead of a golden hand, here Nikolaj has golden EVERYTHING.

Horus is like, “That darn mortal had to go and be mortal.  Tsk.  I knew there was a reason I didn’t hang out with their kind.”

But literal deus ex machina to the rescue, Grandpa Ra (that rhymes!) fixes everything.

And they all lived happily ever after.  I guess.

What the actual fuck did I just watch?

I mean, it kept my interest.  Nikolaj was by far the highlight, as he was giving his all at playing Horus, despite the absurdity of it all.  So it wasn’t entirely horrible, but it wasn’t what I’d call good, either.

The CGI was really hit or miss.  The fire effects, Apophis, the collapsing sand pyramid, and the scenery was cool.  The bull-headed soldiers, the gods’ mech outfits, and some of the magic effects were...not as good.

Perhaps paradoxically, the plot was both predictable and hard to follow at times.  I mean, the major story beats were predictable, but the details of what MacGuffin they needed to take where for what reason got convoluted.

The female characters were cardboard and passive, existing mostly as eye candy and prizes to be captured by the men.  Hathor had a few decent story beats, but the narrative also glossed over the fact that she was kept as Set’s sex slave for years, and had Horus be annoyed that she didn’t escape to return to him, so...yeah.  She regained some agency toward the end but even then it was the self-sacrificing kind.  Meh.

I think the movie would have been better if it was just a sci-fi/fantasy world, without the ties to Egyptian mythology.  It’s not like they were going for accuracy with their depictions of the myths, or put in Easter eggs for lore buffs to catch.

Honestly, the more the movie went on, the less I noticed the painful amount of whitewashing, because it was so loosely based on actual Egyptian mythology that I sometimes forgot that’s what it was supposed to be.  It was just a generic sci-fi/fantasy adventure story with a bunch of white people (and a couple black people) in it.  The vibe was more Graeco-Roman than Egyptian at times (for which I partly blame Gerard Butler’s costumes).  I was expecting more attempts at authenticity.

That doesn’t mean that the whitewashing wasn’t egregious, because it really was, and there’s just no excuse for it.  That was the most serious flaw in the film, but definitely not the only one.

I’m glad I saw the movie since now I have an informed opinion about it, and Nikolaj is fun to watch, but it’s like a 3/10 overall.

[veroticker]

Someday, someday - Emma Scott

Summary (from Emma Scott’s website)

How long would you wait for love?

Max Kaufman was kicked out of his home as a teen and his life has been an uphill battle ever since. From addiction and living on the streets, to recovery and putting himself through nursing school, he’s spent the last ten years rebuilding his shattered sense of self. Now he’s taken a job as a private caretaker to Edward Marsh III, the president and CEO of one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Max soon learns Marsh’s multi-billion-dollar empire is a gold and diamond-encrusted web of secrets and lies.

The longer Max works and lives with the Marsh family, the tighter the secrets tangle around him. And his heart—that he’s worked so hard to protect—falls straight into the hands of the distant, cold, and beautiful son of a dynasty…

Silas Marsh is set to inherit the family fortune, but his father is determined his heir be the “perfect” son. Before Silas can take over the company and end its shady business practices, he must prove himself worthy…and deny his true nature.

Silas must choose: stand up to his father by being true to himself and his undeniable feelings for Max. Or pretend to be someone he is not in order to inherit everything. Even if it means sacrificing a chance at happiness and real love.

Blurb

““I let go.”

I blinked out of the memory and came back to the present, into a room in the community college, downtown Seattle, Washington. Not on that San Francisco street corner. Not in the car that smelled of smoke. Not in a body that smelled of that man when we were done. I was me again, and I was going to stay that way.

Twenty or so pairs of eyes were watching me. Some nodding.

“That was my rock bottom,” I said, leaning into the mic on the podium. “Or the beginning of it. It took a lot of hard work and the benevolence of a total stranger to help me crawl out of it and see my own worth.”

I glanced around at the faces in front of me that were waiting expectantly to hear the rest. My happily ever after. But I didn’t have one, and I was done talking for the night. Telling my story—putting myself back on that street corner—turned me inside out. I didn’t have it in me to keep going.

“But I don’t want to eat up all of the time. I’ll finish up next meeting.”

The group offered a smattering of applause, and then Diane, the Narcotics Anonymous coordinator, resumed the stage.

“Thank you, Max, for that honest and deeply personal share. And welcome to our group. We are so glad you’re here with us.” She addressed the group at large. “Max was a sponsor in San Francisco, prior to moving here. . .what? A few weeks ago? We’re so happy that he’s willing to sponsor someone here as well. Please let me or Max know if you’re interested.”

More scattered applause and some tired nods. I recognized that weariness in the people assembled here. That bone-tiredness that came with the fight. Addiction thrashed you like a dog with a rabbit in its teeth, sometimes retreating but never slinking away for good.

Before I resumed my seat in the front row, I caught sight of a guy all the way in the back. He slouched in his chair with his long, jean-clad legs stretched out in front of him. He wore sunglasses indoors and a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over his head. A lock of golden blond hair had escaped the hood and hung over his brow. His full lips were pressed together, arms crossed tightly over his broad chest. His clothes looked plain enough, but his shoes and the sunglasses—not to mention the watch strapped to one tanned wrist—screamed money.

Hot Unabomber, I thought with a smile.

“Are there any new members who would like to introduce themselves?” Diane asked.

I imagined I felt the stranger’s eyes boring into me. I suddenly itched to turn around and get a better look. No one responded, and I couldn’t help myself; I snuck a glance over my shoulder. The tall guy shifted uncomfortably, arms crossed over his chest like a brick wall, his face a stony mask behind the glasses.

You’re staring, I scolded myself. Stop staring. Jesus, dude, this isn’t a singles mixer.

I faced forward as another person volunteered to share. The squeak of a chair brought me around again, and I watched the guy get up on long legs and stride out the door.

I was sorry to see him go. He might come back. He might not. Sometimes the desire for help drowned a swift death in the face of shame, guilt, and the vulnerability in asking for it in the first place.”

(review under the cut)

Review

I’ve read my share of slash fanfictions, but Someday, someday was my first “serious” fiction about two men who love each other. And I couldn’t have found a better first time. It’s both sweet and well written, with very compelling characters.

Here we have two manly men--even though one of them is a nurse, which could be considered a feminine occupation--who struggle to express their feelings. One of them because he’s not sure the other swings this way. The other because it’s been ingrained in him to deny that kind of feeling.

Poor Silas. He’s got nothing: no love, no real family--except his autistic brother--and no hope; and barely the will to go on, at first. Until he meets with Max, who hasn’t got much more, but who at least is strong enough. Their relationship is beautiful, although full of angst.

Also, Emma Scott offers an interesting reflection about big pharmaceutical companies and accountability. She also writes about homelessness for young homosexuals, and what their life is when their family has kicked them out--drugs abuse and prostitution. A lot of heavy subjects for a “simple” romance, but that makes for a wonderful read.

At the end, everybody gets what they deserve, good or bad. So dive in, you’ll enjoy this book :)

Quickie

Series: standalone

Hashtags: #MM romance #billionaire #in the closet #first time #switching

Triggers: physical and emotional abuse, drug abuse, conversion therapy, prostitution, slurs (not your happy romance... at first)

Main couple: Max Kaufman & Silas Marsh

Hotness: 5/5

Romance: 5/5

+ the author acknowledges what homosexuals might be going through without fetishizing it and offers information for those who struggle with the problems she writes about at the end of the book

- what the characters have to go through may seem a bit too much (like all the odds are against them)

Stalker mode

You can suscribe to Emma Scott’s newsletter on her website.

You can also follow her on Facebook.

[treatyourhammywell]

Emmy 'Homeland' Hero Rupert Friend Revisits Quinn's Sacrifice - 13 June 2017

As we enter Emmy season — nomination voting runs June 12 to June 26 — Yahoo TV will be spotlighting performances and other contributions that we feel deserve recognition.

He belongs in the Jack Bauer category of TV hero: Peter Quinn, the Homeland paramilitary officer who — spoiler alert, if you’re not caught up! — died in the Season 6 finale, sacrificing himself to save the President of the United States and his colleague/love interest, Carrie.

Joining the show as a guest star in Season 2, actor Rupert Friend quickly turned Quinn into a fan favorite. Viewers were crushed when he seemed almost certainly dead at the end of Season 5, after a sarin gas poisoning while on assignment. And while it was great news that he was alive when Season 6 premiered, he was a very different Quinn, his body and mind badly damaged by the gas, his spirit low, and drugs and alcohol his method of choice to deal with the devastation.

Yahoo TV talked with the Emmy-worthy British actor about his final season as Quinn, including his thrill to have the chance to show what a wounded warrior can do after suffering injuries, what he thinks ultimately severed the bond between Quinn and Carrie, and the story of how he wrote one of the series’ most memorable and beloved segments with Quinn’s Season 5 letter to Carrie.

I’m sure you’ve become very aware of how beloved Peter Quinn is to viewers, especially after the Season 6 finale.

Yeah, I’ve been overwhelmed by the fans’ response. I’m not a big social media, or frankly even Internet, guy, but we just couldn’t help but be exposed to the outpourings of love and remembrance for this character. Sometimes anger. Very, very strong emotions from people, and I guess I realized just how loyal both Quinn’s fans and also mine are, and that was a very wonderful thing to experience. I was very grateful for that.

What do you think it is about him — why did we become so invested in this character?

Can I ask you? Presumably, you follow the show. What is it about this guy?

I think it’s that he made so many sacrifices, and that we wanted so desperately for him to find some… I guess happiness was too optimistic for him, after everything he had been through… but I think we certainly hoped he would find some peace. I think the audience, to the very end, hoped that would be true. He was a funny guy a lot of the time, as well. There was really just a lot to love about him. He was smart and no-nonsense, loyal, and, as you said in another interview, he was more self-aware than any of the other characters.

Yes, I think he came to be. When we first met him back in Season 2, he was kind of a wisea**, kind of cocky, and I think he just knew he was good at his job, but couldn’t talk about his job and didn’t care. He had almost like a kind of frat boy quality about him, in a way. He just behaved as if there were no consequences. What I loved following him through the seasons was seeing his conscience and his soul and his moral code develop, to the point where he questioned his position in the black ops society, what he was being asked to do for money, his relationships, both professional and personal. Toward the end of Season 6, he was really questioning the morality of somebody who would risk his life, awake him from a coma, and [doing] so cause these injuries to his body and mind. Carrie doesn’t seem to understand why that’s morally bankrupt. That, to me, is a big flag of how Carrie and Quinn have really grown apart morally by the end of Season 6. I think one of the things that I loved about him is he wasn’t — we have this expression in the U.K. — a “goody two-shoes.” I don’t know if that exists in America. Do you have that here?

We do.

Yeah, so he wasn’t a goody two-shoes. He wasn’t just an amazing guy who was saving kittens from trees every weekend. He was a cold-blooded killer for money, and he was at times cruel and at times incredibly efficient and effectual in his work. Yet, you always sensed underneath all that, that he had this heart of gold, that he’d be an amazing friend, if only he could learn to trust somebody. My heart broke for him when I realized that he died not ever having found that person. Dar Adal betrayed him, Carrie betrayed him. He had a few one-night stands, and they’re not worth the paper they’re written on. He didn’t really have a friend. He didn’t know his child. It made me realize how lucky I am to have relationships that I trust, because this guy didn’t even get close to that.

His story is very tragic. Do you see him as a hero, though?

Absolutely; he’s absolutely a hero. He’s my hero, and he is someone who pays heroically, in the Greek sense of the word. Especially at the end there, he could perform the ultimate selfless act. I think heroes understand that there is a greater moral code than just putting the self first. There is a sense of, whether it’s your country or peace or just what’s right, they put what’s right before their own interests.

Is it true that you wrote Quinn’s goodbye letterto Carrie at the end of Season 5?

That is true, yes. I’ll never forget… I was actually in Paris. [Showrunner Alex Gansa] had phoned me and said, “Listen, I’ll be honest with you. I’m so slammed here, and I have to write this letter, and I don’t know what to do. I’m running out of time, and I have to write another episode. Do you think you could have a crack at it?” I said, “Sure.” I wrote the letter, sent it off, and kind of thought, “I’ve never been asked to contribute before, and they’ll just say, ‘Thanks a lot, but no thanks.’”

I was in Paris when the episode came in. I was sitting in the Jardin des Tuileries. I remember it very clearly, reading the new episode, and I got to the end and my heart just skipped a beat, because they’d printed the whole thing, word for word. And they called the episode “A False Glimmer,” which is a direct quote from the letter. I was like, “Wow, this episode is titled [with] my words, and it ends with my letter.” It was an incredible moment.

I think a lot of fans felt very angry that we didn’t get to see Quinn’s memorial service. That letter is the only thing that really gives us a bit of what that would have been like, a bit of closure.

I haven’t watched Homeland at all, but we watched the finale, like a respectful thing to do for Quinn, actually. [My wife] Aimee and I watched it as sort of a sendoff, and it was a bit jarring that nobody showed us how anyone celebrated this guy, the few people that knew him. As he says in the letter, “Don’t put a star on the wall for me, don’t say some dumb speech.” Then I think, “Okay, so how did these few people, who are not allowed to publicly celebrate him, remember him privately? What did they do? Did they go somewhere magical and special and sacred to him, and did they say some words? Did they pour a little whiskey on the ground? What happened?”

I missed that, and then afterwards, no one spoke about him. Carrie didn’t speak, Saul didn’t speak, Dar didn’t speak. Then I started thinking, “Hang on a second. If we didn’t see his body, no one checked his pulse…” Do you know what I mean? I’m like, “Maybe they dragged the President out of the car, took her to a safe place, and then what we don’t see is that they pulled Quinn out of the car and rushed him away.” He was only shot in the shoulders. Do you know what I mean? I was like, “Oh, I don’t know. Now, I’m going to feel really stupid giving all these death interviews.”

Is that really a possibility? Are you going to get another call from Alex, do you think?

On this show, everything is possible. The end of Season 5, I was taken aside and given a few thoughts by Alex. Then, I came back in Season 6, and it was very different, but I came back. I’ve been told it’s absolutely the end, but yeah, I agree with the fans. It’s funny, though, I also feel like maybe the fans remembering this guy in their own way is the best memorial that he could have had.

Quinn was going to die at the end of Season 5, came back in Season 6, in such a huge way. Do you think he should have died at the end of Season 5, or are you glad for all of the things that you did get to do with the character in Season 6? That he got to do even more heroic things, and portraying those injuries in such a realistic and respectful way — veterans and their loved ones have reached out to you about how much that meant to them, the way that you portrayed that.

First of all, thank you, because portraying a modern returning veteran, with modern injuries, truthfully was the top of my agenda. It’s something I will never understand, sacrifice in a way that veterans sacrifice. The only thing I can do is to try to pay tribute honestly, and that was a hugely important thing for me. I’m so grateful that we got a chance to tell the end of Quinn’s journey in this completely different way, to take this beloved action hero guy and make some realistic, circumstantial changes to his life. As you mentioned, I was in touch with veterans, with PTSD survivors and sufferers, with people who had strokes, with specialists in aphasia, with doctors from Veterans Administrative hospitals, doctors who specialize in chemical warfare. I also put on 20 pounds — I wanted [to show] that idea that if you sat in an institution, eating crappy food, you don’t exercise, you’ve just given up on life, and you’re just this kind of lump, you’re not the fit soldier that you used to be. There was a lot of stuff that I did to help that. It didn’t take any effort — wearing the hair, and not washing it, and just kind of being really quite gross, horribly scraggly beard and all of that stuff, just to really show that feeling of giving up that he had at the beginning of Season 6, that he has to overcome.

The response has been amazing, as you said, from the people that matter the most, which are the people that feel represented by this character. I’m very proud that we’ve had a hero in television — a major character in a big, popular TV show — who has basically been an action hero, while he’s semi-paralyzed, struggling with linguistic programming, and perhaps is unable to really formulate language he needs, and he can’t use both hands. We haven’t seen that before, and yet there are soldiers out there who are being wounded and continuing to fight. We know that happens, we just don’t get to see it. Whether that’s fighting in a battle, or coming home and fighting against prejudice or social exclusion or the inability to get work, or, how are you going to work if you’ve only got the use of one hand? That’s a fight that soldiers face. For soldiers, the fight doesn’t stop when they come home. The fight just changes, because we’re not really ready, as a society, to welcome soldiers in an effective way.

One of the best things about Quinn’s story in Season 6 is that the focus really became about what he could do, that he was still Quinn. He still had all of Quinn’s capabilities, and he found a way to be able to utilize all his skills.

Yeah, and I’m glad that that came across, because Quinn’s always been a man with great agency. He’s someone who can do. If you’re in trouble, if you need something, he’s someone I would want to call. That never went anywhere, and watching him go from giving up, and smoking crack with hookers in slum dens, to going, “No, I am the guy that can load and level a gun with one hand. I am the guy that can engineer a hostage scenario with trained military operatives, with one arm and one leg working” — all of that was real. There are no tricks. Everything that happened, one-sided as it were, happened with just one arm and one leg.

Just thinking about where the character started, you were a guest actor, and now to all the things that we got to learn about him, and all the things we’ve seen him do and go through… the series has been his story as much as anybody’s. I would guess that it’s tough to let go of him.

Yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever fully let go of him, just because there’s something pure at the heart of Quinn, which I love. I think when you’re lucky enough to play somebody who has that effect on you, my privilege is I get to choose to take that with me. If I was to play somebody horrific, and I’ve certainly done that, I get to choose to say, “I don’t want any part of this. I’m washing my hands of this. This was a character that served a story, and that’s the end of that.” With this guy, there is so much strength and agency and goodness underneath, that I guess I feel it’s my job to carry that forward a little bit.

Having played this character who was so layered, and really has become a Jack Bauer-level hero, is it tougher to think about your next role? Do you find yourself comparing other roles to Quinn? And do you now maybe want to go do a comedy, or something just very different from Quinn, from Homeland?

Yeah, it’s a good question, and yeah, the answer is it’s a tough benchmark to follow. I think the mistake would be to compare roles to this one. To start, I got to play this guy for five years, in real time, which I think was about seven years in TV land time. That’s a privilege that you never get in the movies. You might play someone over the course of their life, but you’re going to do it in three or four months. There’s a depth there that is exciting in and of itself.

And yes, I would say to do something completely different — I think most actors are looking for that. I was lucky enough, before Season 6 began, I played a role in Armando Iannucci’s dark comedy The Death of Stalin, with Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor, and Michael Palin, who are all heroes of mine. I’m effectively the clown in the movie. I’m the ineffectual, drunk, spoiled son of Joseph Stalin. It’s ridiculous, I make a complete fool of myself every time I’m in the movie. And it was joyous. That was before Season 6, and now I’m looking at what to do next, and looking for something that is, yeah, either layered and wonderful and interesting, and/or completely different.

What if you did get a call from Alex Gansa this summer saying, “False alarm there, we do want to bring Quinn back again in some way.” Would you consider it, or would it depend on what they wanted to do?

I think the fans would riot. I would not be responsible for their actions. Yeah, I would want to know in what capacity. I would expect it was realistic, because we stuck to that all the way through. If you’re talking about a zombie Quinn, it’s not really a good thing; an angel, a ghost Quinn, all of that stuff is a little soap opera, but the writers are too good on Homeland to ever do that, so I wouldn’t worry about that