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outof-thepast · 2 years

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The Metaphysics of Cyborg Labor

“There was no subjective evil in their life, just the invisible background of the systemic violence.”

Slavoj Zizek

The rituals of our everyday lives are preconditioned activities imposed on us. Not imposed coercively, as in by someone holding a gun to our heads, but in a much more sinister way. The threat underlying our daily decisions, a threat that lives in our unconscious, consistently reminds us that we can either submit to exploitation or starve to death. The current system does not allow for a third option. You either submit to work or good luck trying to survive in the streets. What makes this threat even more sinister is the way it is presented as if it comes from nature itself: whether it was God, human nature, the selfish gene, the naked ape, the bell curve and all the other pseudo-science developed by the rich to justify treating us like machines.

“The poor are poor because they want to. That’s what I heard her saying. It made me angry but I didn’t know how to dispute that,” said my roommate Eva as we sat around the table. She was visibly distressed.

“The sayings and cliches of the rich are meant to rationalize our poverty. They say stuff like that, mostly to themselves though sometimes in public, to make themselves feel better about the miseries of the world that they created,” I responded.

“Hmmm. Yeah, I guess I buy that… I don’t know, Rosa, sometimes I can’t tell what you mean..”

I got up and picked up the dishes from our table. I had the intention of washing them but my exhaustion pushed me towards my bed in the living room. I live with six other women maquila workers in a small one-bedroom apartment intended for two people. All of us are from the small town of Tecoanapa, Guerrero. The border hellspace we are in makes me have visions and dreams of the miserably poor Tecoanapa as a utopian territory existing centuries in the past, in a realm other than the one of the factory system, a territory where time, space and identities are corroded and eventually erased, throwing us into an empty space designed for machines rather than humans. People become something other than humans after years of being here, and once you were here it was hard to leave because of the system of traps in place to keep us in. The system of credit, debt, wages, loans and always looming the threat of unemployment trapped us.

During my first years in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, now renamed Maquila City by the ruling elites in an attempt to sell it as a megalopolis completely subservient to the international masters, I talked about my dream to everyone. I had the simple aspiration of saving enough money to build a house back home and to never have to work again. “I’d rather be poor and not have to work as long as I have a roof and some food,” I used to say, attempting to convince myself and others that there was a way out of the hell. The dream eventually evaporated or was exported to China along with the commodities I produce sixty hours a week. About the time my ability to desire was deflated I read about the rise of the class struggle in China, so logically i knew that’s where my desire was to be found, in the barracks amongst the Chinese workers and students who held banners denouncing the world of work which I also hated. One of the things about our work at the factory was its way of reducing your capacity to desire and messing with our heads. Karl Marx wrote about the effects machinery under capitalism has on our minds in one of his books. I wrote down his quote when one of my friends read it to me.

“Labor is replaced by machines, but it throws one section of the workers back into barbarous types of labor and it turns the other section into a machine. It produces intelligence - but for the worker, stupidity, cretinism.”

The view from my bed consisted of three crumbling white walls with no paintings or pictures and a window that offered a view of the Pan American Transnational Highway and its endless waves of truckers, traffic, border-enforcement drones and police robots. The sound of commerce and repression came swiftly through our tiny walls and windows, a vomit of highway noises and drone sirens and decomposing truck motors. It created an unacknowledged sense of eeriness that went unperceived most of the time due to its pervasiveness. Sometimes I believed that the people responsible for designing Maquila City wanted to make us feel like machines ourselves. Everything about the city pushed you to behave and think like a machine- automatically, lacking consciousness and a sense of being. Every move you made had already been decided by someone else, there was no reason to think for yourself.

The living room window opened up a view of the city at night and I liked staring at it. Eventually it became a daily reminder of the MegaMachine that had trapped me and all those out there being worked to death throughout and beyond the night. That’s what I started calling Maquila City a few years ago, the MegaMachine. I knew that there were better words to describe it, I just didn’t know them, at least not yet. Sometimes I would feel a sense of unity and solidarity with the people and things I saw through the window, including the drones and the killing robots that had been created and coded to become enemies of humanity. Most of the time I stared at the highway because I became transfixed by the show of lights - mostly white, red, green, and blue - coming from all directions, altitudes, moving through space like sinister mechanical fireflies. After all these years I still wasn’t used to the cheap spectacles offered by the city, yet there was nothing else to do or observe.

Every day was the same thing. Walking to work with my roommates, who were still not quite my friends, I’d stare at the hallucinatory desert sand blowing around dead fields and the alien buildings and factories. There was nothing beyond them but more desert, death and the dehydrated visions of those that have tried to escape and the joy of those that had made it. I had gotten used to the way the area around the maquila made us forgot everything about ourselves - our real serves, the selves under the superficial identities of name, age, sex, gender, and nationality. The nearer you got to it, the more disoriented you felt, the more ready you became to become one with the machine.

Twelve guards stood outside the prison-like gates. They carried machine guns, bombs, and death technologies that we couldn’t name. Five stood inside the gate, five outside, and the other two guarded a war tower in the middle of the artificial court yard. The bosses told us to not be intimidated by their private military as they were just there to protect the commodities we were producing from narcos, bandits, emancipated cyborgs and other groups that pledge alliance to laziness or what they called tortuguismo. It had taken decades but the subversion against the factory system and the tyranny of work were finally appearing again.

One of the union organizers I met years ago, at some point in 2098, told me about why the bosses hired mostly girls and women. She said it was because of the mythology of femininity: the soft-hands, passive behavior and submissive character that is attributed to us made us attractive to those that want to exploit without encountering resistance. In their eyes, we were the equivalent of cyborgs. They believe that we are the nearest they have to access their utopia of a world without workers.

Everyday was the same at my workstation, as well. I stood in front of a machine that will force me to repeat the same act over and over again for at least the next 12 hours. I entered a particular frame of thought as I turn on the machine: I concentrate on the repetitive task until it becomes a compulsive act, until I become an appendix of the machine, both in a phenomenological and ontological sense. Then my mind breaks free and I regain a sense of self. I usually thought about work, workers and their hands, legs, limbs and other body parts they had brutally lost for the sake of the bosses profits, about the nature of time in the maquila, where each passing second injures your body and mind. I thought about the dialectic of friends and solitude, the unnecessarily hour-long walks home, and the threatening shadow of the sons of the elite that roamed around the MegaMachine abusing and killing the women that produced their families wealth. The devil comes to mind as he represents both the evil banality of the shadow beasts of the elite, as well as the spirit of revenge growing in China and in the maquilas of the border and I’m sure in other parts of the world, too.

“Last night a group of gachupines stopped in front of me. They were driving a BMW. When they lowered their windows I saw the driver pointing a gun at me. I remember him smiling - it was nightmarish. I froze as they laughed, some hysterically. The driver was telling them to imagine if he’d shoot me, they continued laughing and then drove away.” My friend spoke about her experience during breakfast and we stood there quietly. These where the usual stories that we told each other every morning, so no one really felt like saying anything. There was nothing left to say. All we could do was accept that reality and confront the devil when we encountered him along the desert roads.

The savages came from various social backgrounds, some had been born into it while others arrived seeking to convert death into money. They all adopted to their families, to their assigned microscopic world and their (anti)social role. They were the agents in training of the MegaMachine. In today’s world, the state and the economy depend on the alliance between legal and illegal forms of commodity production. This alliance created a social world for this parasitic strata that were known as the members of respectable society. As kids, they were all sent to the same U.S. military schools - “they’ll teach them how to become men!” their fathers would say -, they owned property in the same cities across the U.S. - Aspen, Colorado, Austin, Texas, New York City. They were also united by a shared cultural code, a shared sense of ritual, folklore, fashion and aesthetics. For any outsider, their shared cultural world would be indistinguishable from a society of cannibals. But, in our world, they were the members of respectable society.

The threat of violence and exploitation constituted our days and nights. It made us nonexistent. Before leaving to work, we tried to dedicate 10 minutes to drinking coffee and doing nothing. It was our daily confirmation that we still held some autonomy over our lives, and if we did then maybe we could have more, somehow. The walk to work started while it was still dark and we arrived at the maquila at day break. This morning we received news from the dictators that ruled over maquilas. They announced their reports over a series of megaphones placed around the dirt roads:

“We are going to be growing and generating 50 thousand new jobs in the IMMEX sector. In 2064 we closed with 270 billion dollars and we think that we can easily achieve the rounding of 300 billion driven by the elimination of the uncertainty of the T-MEC. We have every confidence that it will be implemented in the second half of the year - and for that, we need you all to do your best in terms of productivity and please remember that we will be keeping tabs on your levels of input. We need to keep this up and we must have confidence in ourselves and, if foreigners are trusting in investment in Mexico, then we should too.”

The walk to the factory was a terror in itself. Those we called the savages, the gachupines, the sons of the local caciques, roamed the area searching for whatever form of aggression and violence would satisfy them temporarily and we were usually their target. The savages, the sons of narcos, politicians, businessmen and bankers and all other kinds of criminals saw MegaMachine as their playground and the women workers as their property, just like their fathers saws the city and the country. I knew this. The hundreds of thousands of women maquila workers knew it, too. They believed there was little they could do about it. They lived in misery and prayed to God for another day. My coworker Marina, an elderly woman in her late seventies, once told me that religion offered her a will to life that carried within it a hatred for all the anti-life forces that currently dominate society. I later realized that most Maquila workers knew this, they just didn’t talk about it, nor had they had the time to think about it in decades.

We knew that they called us carne de monte. It was one of the ways they used language to dehumanize us in order to rationalize their demented behavior towards us. It probably also helped them make their barbarism more bearable in their minds. The new generation of savages are the heirs of Juan Guines Sepúlveda, the Spanish philosopher that defended the right of the Spanish crown to enslave, torture and kill the masses of the Americas on the grounds that they were not human beings. Sepulveda’s colonial worldview has persisted since the 15th century, now manifesting in the ideology of the sons of the local elites at a time of social decay and failing economies. He expressed the worldview and innermost beliefs of the savages back in the 16th century:

“Those who surpass the rest in prudence and intelligence, although not in physical strength, are by nature the masters. On the other hand, those who are dim-witted and mentally lazy, although they may be physically strong enough to fulfill all the necessary tasks, are by nature slaves. It is just and useful that it be this way. He who is stupid will serve the wise man. And so it is with the barbarous and inhumane people - the Indians - who have no civil life and peaceful customs. It will always be just and in conformity with natural law that such people submit to the rule of more cultured and humane princes’ and nations.”

Their delusion of having being born masters is what grounds them in the world and defines their sense of self worth, their pseudo-humanity. If they weren’t the masters ruling over slaves, who where they? This was a question that never crossed their minds. Their dogma was established: “It is just and useful that it be this way.” This is the creed they are raised with, they had been told they were the masters by their families, the church and the state until it was engraved in their unconscious. The savages owned nightclubs, produced cocaine and heroine, controlled the political establishment, the maquiladoras, construction companies, parking lots, and basically everything else that exists in modern cities. They owned the jails and the judges and the local police force. They also owned us. Sepúlveda absolved them of their sins. If the poor had a hole where their soul should be, they were free to treat us worse than animals, like objects.

At six minutes before midnight, Vicente Niebla was doing lines of coke as he sat in his Porsche GT6 next to an OXXO. He was with three… allies, or business-partners.

“Pass that shit, jefe.”

“We all need it. I can’t do this shit without being high. It helps me bring out the monster.”

Vicente gave them the bag of coke to shut them up. He looked down at his new Rolex watch, feeling proud of how far he had gotten, how much farther than his father on whose shoulders he stood. In recent years he had turned his body into a shrine to his father. It was covered in tattoos of the spectral symbols surrounding him and his death: the names of ranches, horse saddles, machine guns, and a hyperrealist portrait of him on his chest. He began to think about the respect he was shown in his circles as being entirely due to the achievements of his father - something that kept him awake at nights - but he shook off the thought quickly. He had to concentrate on locating and abducting the next unfortunate woman that crossed his path. It’s what the boss wants, he told himself.

The old ladies staring through their windows at midnight, hoping to catch a glimpse of love, sentiment, affection, things which they could only access through their implanted memory systems or movies, took notice of the out of place car. They knew why it was there. They prayed to God and told each other stories of the Devil over the phone. “The devil is loose and its brigade of ghouls and monsters have even taken over the souls of our poor sons. Even the sons of the poor have been taken by the beast. So I pray, I spend most of the day praying for compassion.” “Amen.” It was typical for the older generation of factory workers to have shrines dedicated to Our Lady of Sacrifice Santa Carmela. She had become a deity after leading the last wave of union struggles in the maquiladoras that led to the massacre of 2038. Carmela had been decapitated in the central plaza and her decomposing head exhibited for weeks. For the crushed maquila workers she became a ghost and a deity. They talked with her to give some meaning to their lonely lives. They prayed to her because they believed in the magical cosmovision opened up by the mysticism of religion: they believed in ghosts and spirits and angels because of their capacity to intervene in the world on behalf of those lacking any power over their lives.

The Porsche was still parked on the corner of Ixtepec and Ponciano Arriaga. Vicente turned on the new military technology he had recently installed in his vehicle in order to search for his prey. The technology allowed you to see and track anyone within a two mile radius by tapping into the extensive camera system installed throughout the city to spy on the population. Vicente moved a play stick around the screen until a group of women appeared. His mechanical eye began to follow them. “It’s time. It’s what the boss wants. Did I tell you guys he needs eight a week now? Business is looking good. That’s all it is, it’s business. Remember that.”

The last thing Rosa saw that night was a black car creeping up on her and someone coming at her. Before her world went black she caught a glimpse of the savages: Rolex watch, gold-plated gun, foreign car, diamonds and a crazy-eyed and strung-out kid with no desire other than to kill for money. She then realized these were the last snapshots las desaparecidas see before being taken to be stripped of their dignity and their short lives.

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joontier · 3 years

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Subliminal in Scrubs | V2; report xiii

pairings: dr. jeon jungkook x female reader

chapter rating: NC-17 | genre: humor, workplace relationships

warnings: swearing

word count: 1.8k

g/n: decided on a bit of a filler for this one as a sort of prelude to future scenes 👀👀 ((likewise manifesting my plan to post another chapter this week))

[taglist]: @nottodayjjk @ditttiii @zeharilisharaban @btsbunny07 @turquoiseandplaidinautumn @aamxxrii @codeinebelle @btsmakesmehappy @stargukkie @moonchild1

Subliminal in Scrubs (the records) | navi. | m.list

Jungkook locks his apartment door behind him, jiggling the doorknob afterwards for ‘double security’ as one would usually call it. He grabs his backpack from the floor and places one of the straps on his shoulders and heads on his way. As he passes by two of his neighbors who live in the same floor, he nods at them, adding a brief hum in greeting.

“Hey man!” One of the men, Jikwang (as what Jungkook believes this man’s name was), calls out just before Jungkook reaches the elevator. “There was this hot girl asking about you last night.”

Jungkook raises a brow. He hadn’t really met anyone recently, besides that one cute law student who was looking for a new tenant - and eventually turned out to be your neighbor this whole time. She was cute and all, but she didn’t seem like the type that was ‘hot’ to these types of people.

Jungkook racks his brain for anything, trying to remember the very few number of his one night stands.Surely,none of them would have gotten pregnant with protection on….surely? On top of that, he hadn’t really disclosed his address to a lot of people too, so there was no way someone would be looking for him, all the more a “hot” woman,as these two would claim.

“Did she say what her name was?”

The one beside Jikwang shakes his head, adjusting his beanie. He’d seen this dude a couple of times hanging around, but he never actually got his name. “Nah bro, I don’t think you’re the commitment type of dude…” he comments, dark eyes looking at Jungkook from his head down to his toe. Who was this guy anyways and who was he to judge whether Jungkook was the type to enter a committed relationship or not?

“She just...looked rich, rich. She had a driver... who helped her come down from a nice Benz.”

Jungkook feels his heart drop to the ground. No way in hell.

“I think her name was Hee something...Junghwa? I dunno man, I’m not good with names. But it sounds similar to that…”

“Was it Junghee?”

“Yeah I think that’s it…” bonnet-dude replies, tapping a finger against his chin as he approaches Jungkook. “You think maybe you can set me up? With you know…”

Jikwang knocks the back of bonnet-man’s head. “I got dibs first, shithead. “If she’s not already yours though,” he adds, delivering a wink aimed at Jungkook. “Her friends will do.”

Jungkook squints his eyes at the duo. “No. She’s my sister. And she doesn’t have any friends.” A chill courses through his spine as he replies, wondering how she managed to find out where he lived, and why would she even reach out? Why now, when she had so many years to do so?

Beanie guy simply laughs at him - if it was even considered laughing, when he was practically splitting his sides with laughter - like the thought of having a sister was hilarious to him. “You’re real funny, man. There is no...way...in hell… that that lady was your sister.”

Ah yes, this man is a health vice personified. Jungkook notes the discoloration of his teeth, the god-awful odor coming from his mouth, and they both reek of alcohol and drugs combined. From a safe distance, Jungkook watches their amusement over the subject that is his sister, thinking about why he even indulged these two in the first place. For all he knows, they might have been shitting on him the whole time.

“Sorry man. I mean...she’s rich and hot… and you?” Jikwang shrugs his shoulders.

‘And he?’ What about him?

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Jungkook clicks his tongue silently, clearly taking full offense with Jikwang’s statement. Did they just imply he didn’t look rich and hot too? Well, compared to them though, they’ll obviously have way longer to go.

Jungkook blinks before equally returning their level of disbelief. “For real, bro?” These men diss him, won’t believe he has a sister whose aura dwarfs his by a million percent, and now they want him to set up a date with her? He shakes his head. Only crooks like these would say insane shit like this.

If only this wasn’t the cheapest and most convenient apartment he could find to accommodate his daily hustle, Jungkook would have moved out of this crap excuse of an apartment building a long time ago.

“Keep dreaming man.”

“Hey, this is what I get for selling you my bike for a good price?” Jikwang eyes Jungkook, taunting him.

“I owe you nothing. I paid for it ages ago.” Jungkook turns on his heel, leaving the two in the crusty ass corridor of their apartment building. He needs to get a new place. Quickly.

With a sigh, he pulls on his down jacket, keeping himself warm as he walks to the garage.

‘King Auto’

There’s a certain warmth that envelops Jungkook whenever he sees the garage, a place he’d rather call home than his terrible apartment building. It sits right at the corner of two busy streets, just six blocks away from his apartment.

Funnily enough, it wasn’t him who first found out about the garage but the other way around. Well, technically, the owner did. Lee Dongmin, owner and manager of ‘King Auto’ repairs and restores almost all types of cars and bikes alike, occasionally servicing high-end cars on lucky days.

Dongmin would usually see Jungkook pass by the garage in the morning on his way to the university or his part-time job.Well, being located at a busy street in the city of Seoul, there would normally be a lot of passersby but Dongmin knew these people either worked or lived around the area; Jungkook, however, always lingered when he walks past the garage.

It had come to Dongmin’s knowledge a few months later that Jungkook purposefully used a longer route on his way, walking two extra blocks just so that he could pass by the garage. Dongmin hadn’t initially done anything about it, as he thought Jungkook simply took interest in cars - especially when the shop had its fair share of servicing cars from the western market.

There was this particular day though one summer, that their paths would finally cross. Jungkook’s bike, the same bike he bought from sketchy Jikwang, broke down. Coincidentally just in front of King Auto too. Funnily enough, no one in the garage was familiar with fixing up bikes, but Jungkook simply asked if he could borrow a few tools and he’d fix his bike himself.

Ultimately, Jungkook became part of the King Auto family. He’d spend his spare time in the garage when he’s not busy with his part-time jobs and on occasion, Jungkook gets to keep a tiny commission whenever he helps out with the repairs.

Jungkook goes through the front door greeting the new receptionist, Clark, a good morning before heading straight to the garage. Jungkook spots a familiar shade of blue peeking through the scissor lifts, just by the end row. He practically dashes to the car in excitement, too thrilled to greet his favorite car he had worked on previously.

“My baby!” The boy exclaims as he rests his chin on the Porsche Panamera’s roof. “Kook! Get your hands off that! I just had it cleaned!” gruffs Mansik from the other side of the car, flinging his towel at Jungkook who mumbles a sorry but continues to cradle the car, a little more gently this time.

“If you continue doing that, you know a towel isn’t the only thing Mansik is going to throw at you.” Lee Dongmin’s voice is low, careful that the man he’s referring to won’t hear his words. “I’m glad he hasn’t resorted to tools yet...just a couple of smelly socks and a t-shirt that smells like it hasn’t been washed for months... “

“Fuckers.” True to Jungkook’s foreboding, Mansik does throw a sock ball from out of nowhere, one which barely misses Jungkook’s face. Dongmin simply shakes his head at his workers, who he has considered family at this point, Jungkook included. “I’m just glad none of that fell into my first coffee of the day.” Dongmin observes, drawing himself father from the Porsche and any flying objects later on.

“By the way, the owner is actually here to pick up the car. I may or may not have mentioned your infatuation with it.”

Jungkook almost instantly jumps to his feet, searching for the owner inside the garage, but disappointingly ending up with all the familiar faces at the garage. “Chill, kid. He just grabbed some coffee down the street,” Dongmin mentions as he takes a sip of his own. “Ah, speaking of the devil,” the latter states, nodding his head towards someone behind Jungkook.

“Seokjin-sunbaenim?”

“Oh hey! Wasn’t expecting to see you here...Jungkook, right?”

“Yes sir!” Jungkook’s pupils shake, animatedly looking back and forth between the garage owner and his upper-level resident. “So...you’re the one who owns this Porsche?” Seokjin raises his cup, adding a small nod in Jungkook’s direction. He internalizes his excitement, before confessing his love for Seokjin’s Panamera.

“And so, Dongmin here mentioned. Also said you were the one who fixed her up. Thanks man!”

Dongmin looks at the two of them, eyebrows creased in the middle. “You two know each other?”

“Seokjin-sunbaenim is a senior of mine at Woocheon.” Seemingly shellshocked at the new piece of information, Dongmin turns to Seokjin, “You’re a doctor?” The owner of the Porsche rolls his eyes fondly, “Yes, Dongmin. We can have lives outside the hospital too, you know.”

“Anyways, ‘Mera’s ready to go yeah?”

“Of course. Kook fixed it up just fine.”

“Alright. Got a shift today man? Need a ride to the hospital?”

Jungkook is tempted to give in, but merely fixing Seokjin’s car is enough honor for him and he can’t take advantage of his generosity. “No thank you, sunbae. I’ve already got a ride to work today.” Jungkook points to his bike on the other side of the garage.

Seokjin tuts his disbelief. “You’re kidding me right? In this weather?” The older doctor points outside, then rubs his palm against his down coat. “No way in hell, kid. Get in the car.”

“Really?” Jungkook mumbles, dimple on display as his lips form a thin line. Seokjin makes a hum of approval as he takes off his jacket while Jungkook dashes back to where he’d left his backpack. “He’s a good kid, Jungkook. Can be a bit of a delinquent sometimes, but he’s good. Take care of him, yeah?”

“Huh,” Seokjin smirks, “this handsome face got nothing he can’t handle.” Dongmin rolls his eyes this time, “Seriously doubt we’re the same age honestly.”

Jungkook returns to where the Porsche is parked, and Seokjin gets a spur-of-the-moment idea. The surgical resident throws his keys to Jungkook before settling inside the passenger seat. Jungkook, surprised as ever, simply stands there in surprise. “Well?” Seokjin asks, ducking towards the dashboard so he could take a look at Jungkook, “We’re gonna be late!”

#jungkook x reader #btswritingcafe #bangtanarmynet #btsghostie #jeon jungkook #bts aus #bts fic #jeon jungkook x reader #jungkook fluff #doctors au

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blacksunscorpio · 4 years

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Astro Musings No. 4

Synastry in the 12th house

…Can make two people secretly afraid of each other. They can be intrigued but also afraid of the depths the know the other person has. Things may go unexpressed between two people especially if Mercury is in hard aspect here. It can also cause misunderstandings. Someone’s Mars in your twelfth house will cause you to sense an animalistic sexual feeling coming from them or you may feel these feelings towards them but don’t know why. At its worst, you may feel like there is something aggressive about the other, but you really can’t place it. It may be an unexplainable, aggravating, and uneasy feeling. Someone’s moon here may feel like the other person has a deep understanding of you on an unconscious level giving. It may make you feel eerie or give you inner peace. 12th house also rules the spirit world so there can be an other-worldly feeling or telepathic insights between people with synastry in this house. Neptune can touching the Sun or the Moon can also indicate parents who might have substance abuse issues or alcoholic tendencies.

Aries Mars’

….Need to be careful not to expend so much of their energy during sex. They are prone to going balls to the wall *no pun intended* that it may be over rapidly. You all need to either find someone who is okay with multiple rounds of quickies, or they need to do solar plexus chakra work. They can learn to control their urge to get to their climax at NOS-aided speed. If they don’t get things under control and reel it back a bit, they run the risk of leaving their partner unsatisfied.

People with Venus in Aquarius

…Or Aquarius touching the Moon or Venus in hard aspect or Saturn/Uranus touching Mars or Moon in hard aspect, do not like to be touched. They like their bubble. They dislike PDA and can be awkward when it comes to physical affection. The ones who give the “weird hugs”. They like distance between them and others. However, these people can also be very good dancers since Venus is about Art and Mars is about action, and Uranus is all about sudden “breaks”. Dancers with this placement can bend and break their bodies however they see fit. Mars in Virgo can also be excellent dancers, especially in regimented forms of dancing like Ballet, or rhythmic gymnastics.

Libra placements and Taurean placements

….Are by far the most affectionate in terms of physical touch. Especially if in the 4th, 5th, or 7th. They are ruled by Venus and the 2nd house which rules the material. Things that are very much about the senses. They can have oral fixations. These people love having sex. Natives with Mars in Taurus [particularly men] will enjoy “eating” their partner out. Perfumes that smell nice, music, food, anything that sets an ambiance. They love massages. They like holding hands and making out. This will be especially true if any of these placements.planets fall into the 5th, 7th house, 4th house, 8th or 11th house in harmonious aspect.

Asteroid Sado

…is all about abuse and pain, if touching Saturn it can make one prone to cruelty or people can show this to them. They can also be very good at torture tactics but regimented since Saturn is about discipline. Pretty sure the folks running Guantanamo have this placement somewhere in their chart.

Saturn conjunct Algol

…Can make someone have a very high pain tolerance because Algol is also about pain and Saturn is about time.

Saturn opposing the moon

…Can make people struggle with fear of intimacy. They can completely avoid it. The good thing is when in opposition there is still the ability to balance. An opposition is just an imbalance, there needs to be equal reciprocal to keep things level. Natives with this placement need to remember it is okay to be vulnerable. They may do well having friends who are older. They need to overcome their fear of getting close to people. Not everyone will waste your time.

When someone's Priapus

…. is touching one of your personal planets or vice versa there will be an uncontrollable desire to merge with them. If it’s mercury you want to delve into their minds. If it’s Mars you want to fuck them constantly. If it’s Venus, you’re dying for them to love you. If it’s Jupiter, this is intense and buckle up. The urge to mate with them will be exacerbated. Also, watch out if this guy falls into the 8th house or when he conjuncts Black Moon Lilith.

Believe it or not, Capricorn placements

…Are the best in regard to knowing how the body operates.

Especially if it’s forming a harmonious aspect to a sexual planet or to Pluto/1st or the 8th house. Capricorn is about time and wealth. It is also an earth sign so they are very in touch with the physical. When this placement is messing with Mars or say, one’s Eros or Adonis, or whether these asteroids are in Capricorn or Lilith in Capricorn, they can be cold publically but a machine in the bedroom. They will typically like things on the rougher and more indulgent side of sex. They take their time and are extremely penetrative when figuring things out *no pun intended*. They will decipher every movement, micro-movement, action vs reaction, and store it in the earthy archives of their minds for later. They’ll never forget. Mars in Capricorn can also be seen in the charts of many personal trainers.

Capricorn placements with Pluto in the mix

…Often become Doctors; specifically surgeons or morticians. Especially if Saturn rules 8th house, Midheaven in Scorpio, or Mars in Capricorn placement in either of these houses. Capricorn Venus’ can often Marry for money or have marriages based on political ambition. Arranged marriages can be seen here or a general formality in regard to love. Again, we’re dealing with the father of discipline energy so Capricorn Venus can be reticent to show love. They kiss you while you sleep, but show toughness while awake.

Capricorns also have a very strong psychic ability.

…Hear me out. Since Saturn is the Seagoat, he straddles both earth AND water. The Physical and the Spiritual. People with strong Saturn placements can often experience dreams that have strong karmic attachments to them. Past Life regression etc. Dreams of catastrophic events or dreams of court case outcomes. Especially if Saturn is in or ruling 12th house or the 8th house.

Taurus Venus

…Will purposefully and actively pursue their partner when they really want them. So if a Taurus Venus person isn’t giving you the time and attention you want, they may not be fully committed or interested in/to you. However, if this same Venus is opposing or squaring the native’s Pluto it can make them shy and secretly obsessed but withdrawn in demonstrating it. These are the people who can be in love secretly but never say a word. The ones who can orchestrate secret affairs for years and no one would be the wiser. Remember, 8th house is what’s hidden and forbidden and venus is about love.

Mars square Venus

….When flirting will poke fun at the object of their desire. They will see if the person can keep up with their banter. They’ll throw digs to see if the other can give it as good as they get it. They may also create drama for attention. Love just doesn’t feel right without passion and fire. They can also attract people who make scenes or bring drama into their lives.

An Unaspected Sun

…Can make one enigmatic or someone with aspects of themselves that will be hard to figure out. They may even be hard to remember. There will be something Neptunian about them. They sort of fade or blend into the background.

Lilith in the 3rd house

…May make a native addicted to writing. Particularly unafraid of writing about darker things. Taboo subjects. Even erotica. Lilith in the 6th house and the 2nd is a placement for many sex workers.

Mars in the 4th house can indicate military lineage or “army brats.” While a Sun inconjunct or square to Uranus can indicate a father who is brilliant/a genius or a father who “split” early in a native’s life.

Gemini’s

…Actually like to show off more than Leo’s. But Leo’s show off less than Cancers. Cancers cry less than Pisceans but Pisceans can actually be some of the harshest people when angered. It is because they are ruled by Neptune, a water planet. In mythology, he is also known as the “Earth-Shaker”. Seas get violent too, people.

Contrary to popular belief, Virgo’s can actually be very messy.

Yes, messy, not dirty, there is a difference. As stereotypical as this sounds, they prefer clean sex and are the types to do it in the shower. As for the “messiness”, They of course will know where everything is but their mercurial energy can make them throw things here and there as they run around trying to get 10 things done before breakfast.

Mars and Juno

In synastry can indicate a couple/marriage that will be very active physically.

Mercury in aspect to Aquarius

…Or an Aquarius stellium can make people out of the box thinkers. The people will be inventors. The ones who create things you didn’t even know you needed. Things like the pop socket grip that goes on the back of your phone or 0 calorie carbonated water. Uranian placements can also be seen in people who are Asexual or conversely pansexual.

Contrary to popular belief, Mars in Scorpio

…Gets very attached actually when they have sex. That is because they feel sex is more than just a physical act but a merging of souls. This is Pluto we’re dealing with, remember. Merging is what he is about. So they prefer to not just have sex with anyone and can actually be quite picky about their sexual partners. Astro Musings No. 1 Astro Musings No. 2 Astro Musings No. 3 Astro Musings No. 5 Astro Musings No. 6 Astro Musings No. 7 Astro Musings No. 8 Astro Musings No. 9 Astro Musings No. 10

#astro musings #Astro musings No. 4 #broke this up so it's easier to digest #a cocktail of your inquiries #astro tumblr #astro advice #astrology tips #12th house astrology #synastry #mercury #stelliums #Mars #Scorpio #Asteroid astrology #my writing #blvquesunscorpio

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sanktnikolais · 3 years

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Invisible String

The three major events of Zoya's life that Nikolai has had glimpses of, and he feels her emotions all the way to his side of the invisible string connecting them.

or that zoyalai psychic/emotional connection au

@grishaverseonline mission 12: favourite character - nikolai lantsov

A/N: guess who’s posting a new content after months of hiding? HAHAHA. This was supposed to be posted yesterday for my birthday but I wasn’t able to finish early. So have this late birthday treat from me. ;-;

Warning tho, contains some RoW spoilers, and contains the alternate version (Am’s version LMAO) of the garden scene.

Word count: 5174

They said that it would take a lot for one to get accustomed to the pain that came with losses.

Nikolai never realized he had lost so much until he had everything within his reach.

He didn’t know it was already a loss when his mother had decided to be unfaithful to the King of Ravka and bore an illegitimate child with a Fjerdan merchant. He didn’t know it was already a loss when he had met a certain brown-haired boy in one of his private classes, not knowing that he would be the reason why that same boy would be drafted early for the war that would take his life later on. He didn’t know it was already a loss when he still tried to seek the approval of the older brother that never wanted him, and that would end up in him developing a cunning personality to gain acceptance from everyone around him. He didn’t know it was already a loss when he dropped the guillotine that would imply that his father was guilty of such a heinous crime, exiling both him and his queen to a faraway place, never to set foot on the country they had sworn to protect yet failed in every possible way.

It only came to him, when he was finally sitting on the throne and overseeing a broken country, that he hadn’t really gained anything along the way. Only nightmares that weighed on his shoulders and kept him awake at night, and the black scars that were just as dark as the blood of every life lost in the war coating his hands.

And pain.

Both the ones he had known and acknowledged, and the sudden, unexplainable bursts of physical or emotional pain that came to him in the most random times throughout his life.

Nikolai didn’t know when it started. Being a young royalty that grew up doing everything in his own cunning way had taught him to mask the pain into something less hurting. Whether it was telling horrible jokes or making something more complicated by talking too much—it was his way to beat around the bush and away from the impending truth, thinking that if he ignored it long enough, he would forget it.

It worked, somehow, but it only pent up the emotions in his heart that were bound to explode later on.

Even though that fact was clear to him, it still wasn't enough to justify his first, sudden outburst when he was twelve.

It was quite a normal day—he had another hour with the extra reading on chemistry and Kaelish history he had requested from his tutors, and he was stuck in the library until the late hours of the afternoon. But the truth behind it, however, was to have time to sneak in and out of the palace to visit Dominik and his family in the countryside.

The whole day of learning to braid Dominik's sisters' hair had ended happily, with Nikolai able to finish tying all of them, albeit resulting in tangles that would need more attention to fix later.

You'll get used to it, Dominik had mused with a light laugh. I didn't learn this in just one day.

Nikolai thought of them on his way home, seeing how their smiles seemed to reach their eyes when they laughed around each other, something he never saw or felt in the Grand Palace. An unwanted pricking stung his eyes, and he immediately reached up to wipe the tears away. It was foolish to be longing for something insignificant when he already had everything he needed. He could just ask anything from his servants and tutors, and they would appease his request without question. So why was he suddenly—

His throat clogged up with muffled sobs, the sickening feeling of both anger and sadness constricting his heart as if there was a fist was trying to crush it. The next thing he knew, he was collapsing on the palace gardens, and the tears were endless.

The wind picked up around him, followed by the sound of thunder. But they fell deaf in his ears as the wails tore from his throat.

Then it happened. The dreadful images of a ruined church and a horrified expression from the face of an old man flashed before his eyes, along with the searing feeling of anger directed to him.

But then the images faded as fast as they had come, and there was the sudden hollow feeling in his chest.

Palace guards found him in the same spot a few hours later, curled into a fetal position as if to shield his body from harm. The King had demanded he explain what had happened, and knowing their judgment to anything Nikolai had ever done and said made him lie. He told them he had hurt himself when he tripped and fell in the gardens, and they easily believed it as it was his own foolishness. There was no way they would believe him even if he tried to tell the truth.

He had been sent to a Healer right after that to check for other injuries, even when he knew to himself there wasn't any.

Except for the sudden hollowness in his heart that could never be filled.

***

The next one didn't happen until three years later, when Nikolai was fifteen.

He would never know what had given him away, but years of sneaking back and forth in the palace made him careless, and it was only a matter of time before Vasily, his ever cruel brother, knew about it.

"You're just turning sixteen," Vasily said with a sneer. "But you're already tumbling peasant girls. You're no better than father."

Fear gripped at his mind almost instantly when he realized that this mistake would befall on Dominik. Nikolai knew too well how commoners who had done something wrong would be punished by being barred from the palace in disgrace, sending them back to their families with nothing else but their clothes and themselves.

Nikolai had begged Vasily to hold his tongue, to keep a secret for him. But if there was one thing he knew about his older brother, it was that Vasily never cared about him.

So why would Vasily care about some boy with no name?

"Do you understand what you have done?" Nikolai asked furiously the next morning when he had cornered Vasily in the lapis drawing room.

Vasily merely shrugged. “Your friend won’t get to study with his betters, and you won’t get to keep rambling in the fields like a commoner. I’ve done you both a favor.”

“His family will lose their stipend. They may not be able to feed themselves without it.” His rage was boiling into something much worse, and he could feel it coursing through his veins. But he still held back. It was his weakness, he realized, that he didn’t have the heart to lash out his anger on someone close to him, no matter how cruel they had treated him. “Dominik won’t be exempt from the draft next year.”

“Good. The crown needs soldiers,” said Vasily. Then he scoffed, giving Nikolai a once-over. “Maybe he’ll learn his place.”

Nikolai had expected his anger to explode, all the pent-up emotions to finally be let go. But he felt disappointed instead, as if he had lost something important. It took him a second to realize that he had lost his respect and admiration for his older brother.

For years, he thought that Vasily was better than their father. Whereas their father sat slouched on the throne and shoulders hunched when he stood, Vasily was the exact opposite of him. He always stood tall, chin held up high. He was the spitting image of what Nikolai had imagined a royal should be.

But Nikolai had never been ashamed to admit that he was so wrong.

"You should be ashamed," said Nikolai quietly.

But Vasily only jabbed a finger to Nikolai’s chest. “You do not tell me what I should or shouldn’t do, Sobachka," he snarled, his voice laced with poison, the same one that Nikolai almost drank when Vasily had mixed a droplet of it into Nikolai's cup. "I will be a king, and you will always be Nikolai Nothing.”

Then it happened again, the strange images appearing before his eyes. Where Nikolai expected it to be the same ones he saw four years ago, they were different this time.

The drawing room morphed into a rough terrain full of snow, and an enormous white tiger had replaced the spot where his brother was in front of him, its teeth bared and hind legs laid back to pounce.

It was then he felt the sudden feeling to protect himself, his survival instincts kicking in, and he did just that. The images faded, his surroundings fading back to the drawing room.

With a strength that came from nights spent roughhousing with peasants and workers alike in some shady fight club in Os Alta's outskirts, Nikolai snatched his brother's finger that was on his chest and twisted hard.

Vasily fell to the ground with a yelp. He looked impossibly small. A satisfying feeling settled itself in Nikolai's chest. It was most likely the worst he had seen his brother, and if Nikolai had only known that his older brother was nothing more than a facade to hide such a vile and weak face underneath, he wouldn't have wasted his whole life trying to be like Vasily.

"A king never kneels, brother," Nikolai hissed before he left his brother's prone form on the ground.

He was sure that Vasily wouldn't let him forget what he had done to him.

But the next time his brother would try to come for him, Nikolai would be ready.

***

The worst one happened almost five years later.

He was finally fulfilling his dream as a privateer in the seas, and the name Sturmhond was born right in the middle of the True Sea, never to be forgotten by all sailors and pirates as the years would go on.

It was supposed to be a diplomatic meeting with the Fjerdan traders that came from Djerholm. They were set to talk about the territories, with Fjerda claiming that they didn’t allow enemy ships to sail freely at the northern True Sea without permits unless they wanted their ships obliterated by Fjerda. Nikolai had wanted to laugh when he saw the ship; it was too enormous and too sturdy-looking to be of trading purposes only. He assumed that it had to be a warship since its captain and crew were too confident to stop the Volkvolny. No one ever dared to go against the Volkvolny —the black sails that had guided them for years were already a familiar sight to all the sailors and pirates. Though it was smaller than any warships in the seas, it could still go on par with ships twice as big as it, and it had sunk numerous vessels and gotten away unscathed.

These Fjerdan ‘traders’ should have known better than to get in the Volkvolny’s way.

True enough, when Nikolai had stepped into the enemy ship to negotiate the terms, he immediately noticed the heavy artillery carelessly covered by a rag on the main deck. They had even attempted to blend it in among the cargo crates scattered on the floor, but the canons were obvious underneath the thin material covering them. He let out a breath. He suddenly wasn’t sure if going here with only his two Shu mercenary turned personal guards was ideal. At least twenty rough-looking men were surrounding them, and their captain, Captain Hjar, was only a bit shorter than Tolya, and yet he still looked impossibly tall than all of them. His hair had been cropped close to his skin, exposing the lined scar that ran from his temple to the spot behind his ear.

Tamar had voiced out her concerns then, telling him that something was not right, and Nikolai acknowledged it greatly. The Shu mercenary’s gut instincts already saved their lives countless times before, and he wasn’t going to ignore that. But he knew the Fjerdan crew’s taste for dominance. He wasn’t just going to let these men do as they please to the travelers that would pass their private routes.

He could only hope that this risky meeting they were doing would turn in their favor.

And yet as soon as they stood in front of Captain Hjar and his men, the wooden bridge that connected the two ships was cut off, causing shouts of protest from his crew back in his ship.

“Oh, wow," said Nikolai with mocking surprise. Tolya and Tamar tensed behind him, their hands already poised on the weapons strapped to their belts. He turned back to Hjar. "We haven't even started the meeting yet."

Captain Hjar only smirked. "Better not waste your time, little wolf," he said, his voice scratchy as if he had been shouting his whole life. "Why try to prolong this when it would still end in the same result?"

"Lay down your sword, Hjar."

"These men would be making bread from the bone and skin of skinny Ravkan boys tonight, little wolf. And I can assume your ship has plenty of valuables, aye? I cannot promise not to hurt your men," he said, and his men laughed together with him. When he stopped, his cold eyes held a dangerous glint as he stared at the twins behind Nikolai. "And it'd be fun to have some nice, warm campfire with those two Grisha of yours."

Something in Nikolai's mind had quieted, shutting out anything logical from coming into his head. The thoughts halted. His rage slowly took over like a monster finally overwhelming its prey. He felt numb and empty, and he realized that the rage was focused on the Fjerdan captain.

Then for the third time in his life, it happened again. Everything else faded around him and threw him under the landscape of complete darkness. It was like he had been thrown into the Fold. After a moment, it blurred and shifted to another—a small, empty shop in some town he couldn't recognize where. Then it shifted again, and this time, it showed him a man who was on his knees, clawing at his throat as if he were struggling to breathe.

Nikolai held onto those images in vain, so he could make sense of them earlier on. But the rage inside him had him forgetting them in a snap, and all he could feel was anger. Anger towards everything.

With that, his body relaxed, and he regarded Hjar with a calm tone. These men needed to know their places. "Maybe you're right about that, Hjar," he asked, and he saw the Fjerdan captain acknowledge him with mocking curiosity. "But it wouldn't be my men who would be butchered today."

He saw the shift of expression from the Fjerdan captain's face, and Nikolai pounced with his own sword.

The fight hadn't even lasted for a minute. Hjar's men had completely underestimated the mercenary twins by just being Grisha, but they were just as deadly as any well-trained assassins. Soon enough, Nikolai’s crew had the Fjerdans tied up and shoved them down their knees, with Hjar at Nikolai’s mercy. But he felt nothing at all.

"You want to know something, captain?" asked Nikolai mildly as he went behind the burly man and held up his tied hands on his back. Hjar gave a pained grunt. Then Nikolai leaned down near the man's ear. "Foolish old captains aren't fit meat for Ravkan men."

Then he took out his knife and cut the Fjerdan captain's fingers.

Nikolai barely heard the man's screams or even felt the blood gushing out from the wounds. He just felt numb all over. If his crew noticed the sudden change in his behavior, they didn't voice it out. Only the twins were the ones who showed a bewildered reaction as Nikolai held the decapitated fingers in his bloodied hands.

He threw them over his crew's guard hound dog at the side. "Eat up, Razjen," he said. "I'm pretty sure the dogs would appreciate that kind of meat given to them."

That same night, he and his Volkvolny crew had drunk and eaten to their guts' limits from the spoils they had divvied up from the Fjerdan trader ship. From the night until the earliest hours of dawn, they had laughed, celebrated, and sung until their throats were raw and their bellies full.

But when the night ended and Nikolai had retreated into the confines of the captain's quarters, he had thrown up everything he had eaten until tears stung his eyes. He had expected them to stop when he was done, but it only worsened as sobs and wails tore from his lips again, just like it had almost a decade ago, when he had collapsed in the palace gardens and cried himself out for a reason he had never known.

And as the hours passed and night broke into dawn, the tears had finally stopped. Nikolai fell asleep, but the hole that had made its way to his heart from the first time he felt the sudden shift in his emotions now only felt deeper than before.

***

Nikolai blinked as he felt the heavy tug in his heart again. It was much more painful than before as if whatever at the other end of the string wanted him to hurt on purpose, and he was left to choose whether to still follow her in or not.

The funeral had ended hours ago but he could still feel the heaviness and gloom lingering in the air. He wanted to visit Genya in her quarters for the night, just to extend whatever he could offer her for the meantime. But he decided against it when he rounded the corner leading to the Tailor’s chambers, and that’s when he saw Zoya coming out from the door. She had lingered outside for a moment, her hand clutching at the handle as if to hold herself upright. If he looked harder, he was sure it really was the reason as he saw her shoulders shaking and her head was bowed down, something his general never did.

A searing pain in his chest made him wince, the hurting so painful it felt like he had just been burned by a branding iron. The want—the need—to reach out for her was the only thing he had wanted to do at that moment. But he willed the thought away, remembering how the things were between them.

They did not look to each other for comfort, and he knew the last thing Zoya would want was for him to give her his sympathies. It had been their unspoken agreement ever since Ravka was put on their shoulders. There was no time for sentiments, they would only spiral them down much worse.

After another minute of silence, Zoya had quietly left, her form completely blending in with the gloominess that surrounded the palace walls. Nikolai decided to follow her out then, and it led him to now, following her through the dark, narrow walkway that led into someplace he wasn’t sure of. Tangles of vines pricked at his skin as he walked further. Eventually, he reached the other end of the path, and the sight of the place astonished him.

Flowers and shrubs of every variety were lined up in the soil beds, overwhelming the ground in different colors. The open ceiling of the area had allowed frost and snow to fall over the plants, and it coated the leaves and petals alike. It looked almost like a small world of only peace and serenity, and yet it felt like a garden of sadness, with grief dripping on every plant and bleeding through the four walls that surrounded it.

Nikolai spotted Zoya in the middle of the dim garden, her back turned to him as she looked around. Snow was starting to fall, and it caught in the dark waves of her hair. Under the moonlight, she was glowing, a saint watching over the people. But behind the light that masked her real face, something was wrong. What once was her perfect stance and chin held high, she was now hunched, bent down, as if she were hiding from the world.

Then he felt it again, the sharp and painful tug in his chest. But this time, it felt different. This time, it was leading in a direction.

And it was leading towards her.

Nikolai blinked, his eyes widening a fraction. Could it be—

"I'm running out of room," she said, her voice barely a quivering whisper.

Had she known he was following her all along?

"Do you—" Nikolai shook his head, unsure of what to say. He tried again. "You tend to this place?"

Zoya was silent for a moment. Her shoulders had gone stiff the same way she was poised for battle. But Nikolai had merely asked a question, and he wondered if it was prying enough to cause that reaction from her.

"I needed somewhere to go to distract myself, and this has always been the place my feet would lead me to," she said quietly. "It was an old vegetable garden. I found it years ago, back when—" Her voice broke into a muffled cry, and yet there were no tears, like she refused to let them fall. She shook her head, her hands lifting as if to brag about the wonderful bunch of plants around her. But the gesture looked so helpless, so lost, and she let her arms fall back limply to her sides. Then in a broken whisper, she repeated, "I'm running out of room."

Nikolai's eyebrows drew tight in concern. He took a step towards her, and stopped almost immediately. It felt like he was treading across a dangerous line that neither of them ever had the guts to cross. Things were already too complicated, whether it’s about Ravka or about them, and he didn’t want to make things worse. But he refused to leave her on her own. Not like this.

Slowly, he made his way towards her, feeling the tug become stronger and stronger until he stopped at her side. He felt the cold seep through his clothes, harsh and biting like Zoya’s daily demeanor. But tonight, there was only grief and sadness, and it made everything even colder.

There was a long silence between them as he waited for Zoya to speak. Or if she wanted to speak. He wasn’t going to force anything from her. It was already a painful day for them to get through, and he wouldn’t add to the burden they were all carrying on their shoulders. He was grateful for the silence either way.

But when Zoya spoke later, her voice was quiet, lacking the usual sharpness it always had. “I plant something new for every Grisha lost,” she started. And there it was again, the heavy feeling in Nikolai’s chest that weighed down on him and made him struggle to breathe. It took all of Nikolai not to reach out for her. Then she lifted her hand and started pointing to the plants. “Heartleaf for Marie. Yew for Sergei. Red Sentinel for Fedyor. Even Ivan has a place. He was once a soldier like us too, before the Darkling corrupted him.” She touched her fingers to a frozen stalk near the edge of the soil bed. “This was for Harshaw, and they will blossom bright orange in the summer, just as bright as his ridiculous hair.”

Nikolai felt a small smile twitch on his lips. There was an obvious jest in her tone, but her words were sad, still haunted by the past war they could never be free of. He reached for the plant, letting his fingers touch its leaves delicately. He dusted off the frost from the leaves’ surface, and it almost looked as new as ever. The Inferni had once fought beside him in the mountains and with Alina and the others in the Fold, proving his loyalty up until the very end. It was unfortunate that he didn’t get to see past the war as it had already taken his life.

“These Dahlias were for Nina when I thought she’d been captured and killed by the Fjerdans,” Zoya continued, her hands reaching out to the flowers next to Harshaw’s. “They bloom with the most ridiculous red flowers in the summer. They’re the size of dinner plates.” Then as steady as her hands were when she first reached out to touch them, they began to tremble badly. “This was the last one I vowed that I would plant. I kept promising myself over and over and over. But they only kept increasing. There was no end. And now David—” She stopped abruptly, her throat clogging up with a quiet sob. “I’m running out of room, Nikolai.”

A tear escaped Nikolai’s eye, and he quickly wiped it away. He didn’t know why he did that. Earlier in the funeral, he didn't shed a single tear when he gave the eulogy, only the prickling pain that gave the first signs of tears. But they didn’t fall. Guilt had been clawing at him ever since, thinking that he hadn’t cared enough to show that he was mourning the loss of an old friend. It was only reasonable to cry; they were all grieving, after all. So why still hide, when there was no one else to see him?

Then he realized it was what he had been used to. This was what they were taught. You don’t let yourself wallow in sadness—you get back up and continue on. No matter how heavy the weight on your shoulders was.

Soldiers did not cry. Princes did not weep. And kings should never get fazed by such sentiments and emotions.

But what if it was the only thing left to do?

Nikolai glanced at Zoya, seeing tears staining her cheeks as well. She wiped at them hastily and tried her best to blink them away. He heard her draw in a shuddering breath.

“They will continue to thrive and bloom as long as they get taken care of,” said Zoya, her fingers curling around a stalk from the dahlias. “But what if they don’t? What if they stopped even as I tend to them everyday?”

He immediately understood the deeper meaning behind her words. Every life lost under her watch; every Grisha blood staining her hands. It was the weight on her shoulders she had always carried, a weight that existed ever since she had been a soldier, up until now that she was their general.

If he could only take all the burden from her chest and carry it along with his own, he would have done it. But that wasn’t how it worked. They were all bound to have their own burdens—it would only be a matter of difference with the people around them that would help them get back up on their feet whenever they get too tired from carrying it all.

Nikolai let out a long breath, his gaze landing on the twisting gray branches that ran along the perimeter of the garden. He recognized it right away. “Thorn wood,” he murmured. He felt Zoya’s confusion even before she could voice it out, so he continued speaking. “It grows around, protecting everything within these walls, stronger than anything else in the garden, weathering every season. No matter the winter it endures, it still persists, all prickles and thorns and spines anger just to keep protecting everything here.” Then he turned to her, looking down at the bright and never-ending flames behind her eyes. He gave her a lopsided smile. “Those thorns, they remind me of you. Prickly and sharp, just like you are. But its purpose was to protect all these flowers and plants, like the way you protect our people.”

Zoya almost looked like she was on the brink of breaking, but her questions persisted. “And what if the winter is just too long and hard? What if it can’t continue protecting them all?”

He was afraid to reach for her, but he did it anyway. He took her gloved hand in his, and when he expected her to pull away, she didn’t. Instead she folded into him like a flower closing its petals at nightfall. “Then it would still be there, watching over all the flowers and plants, giving them the sense of protection, keeping them strong until the summer comes, even as its life withers away.” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze, a laugh escaping his lips. “I do hope I made sense with all that blabbering.”

This earned a huff from his general. “Who says you ever did?” she said, but he felt her hand squeeze his back, gratitude evident even from that smallest of gestures. That was when tears fell from her eyes again, and Nikolai felt some of his own as well.

Trusting what his gut told him to do, he wrapped his arm around her.

And in the same exact moment, Nikolai didn’t feel the painful tug in his chest anymore. It was as if he had undone all the tangles and knots between, and he could finally pass through the thread without difficulties.

Zoya seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then with a soft breath, she let herself lean against him. Zoya the deadly. Zoya the ferocious. The weight of her against him felt like benediction, the long lost piece from the puzzle that he had been trying to figure out for years. For the first time in his short life, he felt at peace. He had been strong for his country, his soldiers, his friends. It meant something entirely different to be strong for her.

When he thought that they did not look at each other for comfort, he had just been understanding it quite differently. No, they gave each other comfort in their own way—whether it was through sharp wits and harsh words that kept their will stronger, or even just through knowing looks and long silences. It was their way to tell each other that they were always there to keep each other marching on their feet, and pull each other from the darkness they were both continuously fighting their way out of.

There would still be a lot of problems to face, obstacles to get past with, lives to be lost. But they would be alright. They still had each other to get through everything, and it was enough.

Together.

And that’s how it would be from then on until the very end.

***

He used to believe that the other end of the string was just like any other end, blunt and empty. Not once did he ever think that he could be wrong.

Now, Nikolai knew one thing. It would always lead towards her.

#zoyalai #zoya nazyalensky #nikolai lantsov #king of scars #my writing #hHNNNNGGGG #guess who came back to post some shitty mess #HALJKHASDFLJAS #the canon events in their childhood are so close to their ages so it's quite fun to make these parallels #and it's sad sad #;-;#i hope i did justice with the garden scene rewrite/alternate version #tiff came up with this idea some time ago and i only finished it today T-T #everyone go support tiff and her galaxy brain plz #no that is not a request #it's now time to disappear again for another few months HAHAH

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infinitesundrop · 3 years

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Read Chapter 2: Perks of Being a Civilian on AO3 | FFN

Banner Credit to the Amazing @the-dream-team

Fic Summary: They say time heals. It’s been nine months since Lily lost her mother and sister, but she still feels their absence every day. The only thing getting her through these difficult times has been the masked hero, Spider-Man. With the attacks on the city getting worse each day, and with the growing animosity towards London’s only hope, Lily has no choice but to act. After all, we all have powers of one kind or another, in our own way. (Spider-Man AU)

Chapter Summary: No one ever said doing the right thing was easy.

Rating: T

Fic Warnings: Grief/Mourning/Survivor’s Guilt, Violence, Referenced Character Death (minor character) | Chapter Exclusive Warnings: Street Harassment, Mass Panic, Gun Violence (lasers), Destruction of Property (building collapse),Violence (hand-to-hand combat), Mentions of Explosives, Premature Acceptance of Death, Car Accident, Self Endangerment

Read from the Beginning on AO3 | FFN

When she finally tore her eyes off the skyline, she found that Spider-Man was staring over at her again. She ducked her head to hide her blush behind the curtain of her hair. “What?” she mumbled.

“Nothing,” he replied, shrugging slowly. “It’s only...what’s your name?”

Her name. Spider-Man wanted to know her name? “Lily,” she said, turning back to face the hero directly and sitting cross-legged with her back resting against the stone railing. Lily tilted her head up to see him, a shy sort of smile on her lips. “My name is Lily Evans.”

“Lily Evans,” Spider-Man repeated, and she had to admit she quite liked how it sounded coming from him. Lily heard him suck in a breath. “You know, Lily, what you did today...it wasn’t smart.”

Clutching her house keys in her hand, the metal bits poking out from in between her fingers, Lily kept her head down as she made her way into the dimly lit London streets. As young as five years old, Lily had been taught never to walk the streets alone, especially at night. Now, with all the attacks on the city, Lily couldn’t help but wonder what she was doing.

If something happened, her father would have no idea where she was. To be completely truthful with herself, Lily wasn’t exactly sure where she was headed either.

The road and sidewalks glistened with the fresh coating of rain from the afternoon, but in the night, the air felt biting and cold. A scuffle behind Lily made her jump, but it was merely her neighbor taking out the trash.

Granted, it wasn’t like Snape was the most savory figure either. They had been something close to friends as kids, having grown up next door to each other. When they hit secondary school, something had changed him. Whether it was his mother’s death or something else, he had gotten into some really shady stuff. One day, she remembered him walking into chemistry and laughing about all the various dark uses the chemicals had if mixed a certain way.

Ever since then, Lily had made a point to stay very far away from the man.

Feeling his sullen eyes on her, she swallowed back the lump in her throat and nodded in his direction, wanting to make it perfectly clear that she saw him.

Of course, he seemed to take that as an invitation to come talk to her. Lily was really not in the mood. Seeing him almost sent her straight back into the house, but there were more important things she needed to do tonight than sit at home because of Snape.

The sooner she returned home and saved her father from the worry he was undoubtedly experiencing, the better.

Picking up her pace would surely send him away, right?

Wrong. The greasy man had quickly caught up to her, reaching out his hand to grab her elbow. As his fingers brushed against Lily’s jacket, she ripped her arm forward and swung around, fist balled in the air. “Don’t ever do that.”

Whatever Snape was expecting, that was not it. He stood there, his mouth opening and closing as if he were a fish out of water. As Lily turned to run off, he cried out, “W-wait, Lily! You looked...lost!”

“Not lost,” she hissed, clutching her keys tighter, backing up away from him, but not daring to turn her back yet. “Don’t touch me. Don’t follow me.”

“It’s just,” he continued as if Lily hadn’t already made it extremely clear she wanted to be left alone, “It’s dangerous at night. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

Narrowing her eyes, Lily pulled up her polaroid, snapping a photo. The flash lit up the whole block. It was only the two of them out right now. “Okay, well, you lay another finger on me, this will be your wanted photo. Leave me alone.”

Snape said something, but Lily didn’t catch it as she darted in the opposite direction. She didn’t think about where she was going; she just needed to get away.

Maybe she shouldn’t have come out here tonight.

Lily sucked in a shuddery breath as she reached a crosswalk a far enough distance away. Puffs of condensation filled the air as she took a moment to breathe while the cars drove through the intersection.

As much as she wanted to help Spider-Man, she had to admit her plan was a long shot. She wasn’t even sure if the hero would trust her enough to talk with all that was going on.

Lily pushed those thoughts from her mind, turning to the present.

She was already several blocks away from home, and even if she wanted to turn around, the idea of running into Snape again turned her blood cold. No. She had to see this through.

Taking stock of her surroundings, Lily realized she was no longer in the more residential districts. Passing a few shops that had closed up for the night, Lily wondered if maybe she was being reckless. She had no idea where she was going. While this part of town was familiar, Spider-Man had been spotted all over London.

Who was to say that she would actually find him? London was a massive city, and it was just as likely that Lily would end up somewhere unknown and in danger without anyone by her side, let alone a masked hero.

Where was she going?

She was torn from her thoughts by a loud bang, and Lily whipped around, nearly slipping off the thin piece of sidewalk she was on in between the two sides of the street, to see a gaggle of 30-somethings stumble out of the pub door that had been flung open. Starting to stagger down the street, the group roared with laughter. She placed her hand over her heart to soothe its hammering.

It took a moment for Lily’s breathing to calm down before she turned to continue walking. Her nerves were already frayed from that encounter with Snape.

Feeling herself become more grounded within her body, Lily reminded herself that she was on a mission. No backing down. Where would Spider-Man be?

She had to think about this logically. Spider-Man usually showed up around heavily crowded areas. The Bridge, Gringotts, the attack last month by the zoo... they were all bustling areas. That made sense, he wanted to protect the most people possible. Perhaps it would be a quiet night, and Spider-Man would only have to watch over the city. If they were lucky, he could stick to the skies without having to fight a second time today.

She’d heard people talk about that in classes. Some claimed that there were sightings of him on the rooftops even when the city was calm. She’d even heard some of them insisting that Spider-Man lived on the rooftops of London.

Glancing over to make sure the intersection was clear, she hurried the rest of the way across. Halfway through the crosswalk, she was hit with the realization that she was already taking her usual route to school without a second thought. Why hadn’t it occurred to her to go this way before?

Lily supposed when she first left the house, she was too worked up about the whole Spider-Man thing to do much thinking at all. For the first time since April, she'd fought with her father. And how had she handled it? She stormed out on him.

He barely let her go out for a drink at the pub with some friends after dark anymore, let alone go off wandering by herself. Not since her mother and sister...

Still, it wasn’t like she was going to any unknown parts of the city. Lily was only headed to school.

It was nighttime, though. While students did stay late to work on classwork, there wasn't usually much danger there. The worst thing that happened was students getting too drunk at the pub or arguing in the dorms.

Perhaps going to school wasn’t the best idea, but staying at least on the walking part of her commute provided her with the familiarity she needed to keep her from turning back and heading home. Once underground, she’d decide her final destination.

A familiar bright blue and red light signaled her tube station, and Lily continued on her daily commute. She descended to the Underground, scanned her Oyster card, walked down to the platform, and stood with her camera held close to her chest to await her train.

Time passed slowly and all too fast at the same time. What she was about to do was senseless, and once she boarded, it would be much harder to turn back. Lily recognized this but was still worthwhile to her.

Boarding the first car that arrived, she took a seat across from a sleeping man with facial hair. It was only Lily and the dosing passenger in their section. Normally, with so few people on the train, she’d take a seat somewhere farther away, but it was oddly comforting to be near someone else right now.

She felt bad for him. He looked exhausted, like he had come straight off a long shift. Based on his uniform, he was a subway operator. Squinting, she thought she could make out the name ‘Stan’ on his nametag.

Above the entrance, the little timer ticked down until the doors closed. What stop was he waiting for? Lily held onto the upper railing in case the train started moving, stepping forward towards the tired subway worker. She shifted her hands to brace against the seat beside Stan and leaned down to shake the worker gently. “What’s your stop?” she asked.

Stan barely responded, peeking one eye open lazily and muttering, “Piccadilly Circus”.

Of course. One of the most populated places this late would be the middle of the West End. It was always lined with tourists and locals alike.

She nodded her head, looking up at the map to see where she wanted to get off on the line. “That’s where I’m going too,” she decided aloud. “I’ll wake you when we’re there, yeah?”

Stan let out a little ‘hmmph’ in response, shifting his body so his face was squished against the subway seats with his back turned to Lily. The pleasant robotic voice announced the doors were closing, and Lily made it back to her seat right in time. The train lurched forward again mere moments later.

Studying the map above the man’s head, Lily saw she only had two stops until her own. Soon enough, the announcements declared that they had arrived, the doors gliding open. Lily stood, stepping closer to Stan and giving his shoulder another gentle shake.

In return, he grumbled something she couldn’t quite make out then turned in his chair again. It looked like there was no rousing him. Although she wanted to help, the overhead voice called for doors closing. She didn’t want to miss her stop, so she ran off the train quickly. The doors slid shut behind her with an audible click.

Once out of the car, Lily was immediately struck by how empty and quiet the place was. Usually, on a Friday night in London, people crammed onto the platforms, fighting for a place on the next train. Tonight, it was eerily quiet. The only person she saw was a janitor humming to himself as he swept.

She climbed the first set of stairs quickly. If anything, the theatres should be getting out soon, and the Circus would be filled with people going home via the Tube.

When Lily had left home, she had been sure she’d heard the weatherman call for clear skies the rest of the night. As usual, he must have been wrong, because the thunder from above the station was almost deafening the closer to the ground floor she got.

Lily climbed another set of stairs, the roar almost deafening at this point. Reaching the top of another flight of stairs, she thought she saw shadows growing larger and larger on the tiled wall towards the exit. Lily had to blink a few times to make sure she was seeing correctly. The pit of her stomach dropped with the realization that she was right.

And it wasn’t thunder.

She had been hearing a stampede of footsteps, and they were coming her way.

Turning a corner into a long hallway, all Lily saw was a horde of people flooding in, barreling towards her as if they didn’t even see her coming. The crowd ran straight into her.

Lily gasped as people shoved her aside, trampling on her feet and knocking her against the tile. Her camera crunched loudly with the impact. She braced herself for the rest of the onslaught, making herself as small as possible against the wall.

Screams of terror echoed along the tunnels. Well, at least she’d been right about where to find Spider-Man.

Hopefully, she was.

Filled with purpose again, Lily pushed against the crowd, trying to wedge her way through. She had to find Spider-Man. She had to. This was what she’d come out here for, after all. Camera or not, she had to warn him about the police and the press.

A pair of hands wrapped around one of her wrists in a vice-like grip.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the woman demanded as Lily tried to shake her off. The woman yanked back in return, Lily’s feet sliding along the floor towards her. “Lily!”

Hearing her name, Lily’s head snapped up. A familiar face stood in front of her, trying to tug her back towards the Tube. “Hestia, no, I can’t!”

“What’re you on about?” Hestia’s dark eyebrows furrowed together for a split second before she shook her head. It was as if she already decided that trying to sort out whatever Lily wanted to stick around for was not important. “Lily,” she pleaded desperately. “You have to come with me! Now! You can’t go up there!”

Lily had never seen her friend this way, so frantic and terrified. Hestia Jones was not the sort of person to scare easily‒or at all‒in the time Lily had known her. Whatever waited up there must have been dangerous.

If she turned back now, it would save her father and her friends the heartache and the fear of not knowing if she was all right. Looking into Hestia’s eyes, she almost did turn back.

But she couldn’t. Not with everything at stake. If they took down Spider-Man, who would be here to save all these people? Even if it meant sacrificing her own life, Lily would do everything in her power to help Spider-Man protect the city.

It was the right thing to do.

Everything happened so fast. One moment she was resisting Hestia’s pull, the next the two of them were running along with the chaos. Hestia had loosened her grip on Lily’s wrist, so Lily took the opportunity to slide her hand into Hestia’s instead, giving her friend’s hand a tight squeeze.

The gesture seemed to have alleviated Hestia’s worries as her friend breathed out in relief. It made what Lily had to do next so much worse.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, quickly dropping her hand and disappearing into the crowd.

When Lily turned back, her friend was being pulled along by the undertow of the crowd, her arm outstretched for Lily to grasp like a life preserver. Hestia looked distraught, and Lily was certain if she were any closer she’d see tears on her face.

This had better work.

James webbed from building to building, quickly weaving his way towards the scream. It wasn’t long before he found its inspiration: two masked terrorizers perched on the base of the statue in the middle of Piccadilly Circus.

He felt a sense of familiarity as he stared at the two. It was a man and a woman, but they looked so similar. They were both childlike in stature, but their shoulders sloped inwards, making them appear hunched over. Their faces were partially covered by masks, but the features that showed through were familiar.

He’d seen them before. He just didn’t remember where exactly.

The man had a lopsided sort of leer, and through the holes on the skull mask he was wearing, James spotted beady little eyes. The woman had less distinctive features, but like her counterpart, her skin was pallid, and she bore the same wicked expression as her counterpart.

A building on the other side of the road exploded James he landed atop the flashing billboards in the junction. The rubble scattered across the road, joining the rest of the debris the two had created. Screams echoed through the streets, people in the traffic circle abandoning the cars and buses in favor of an escape through the Tube as the two culprits cackled, taking great pleasure in the mayhem they were causing.

The woman’s wheezy giggle was what made James realize who they were, the noise bringing him back to all the times he’d heard it previously. They called themselves the Carrows: a brother and sister team. They didn’t look dangerous at first glance.

They had been there, though. At the Millenium Bridge collapse. They had been the ones who took down the rest of the bridge with the same weapons they were using now.

Both brother and sister were equipped with some kind of laser, allowing them to bring any structure to the ground with a simple push of a button. The sister, Alecto, shot a theatre close to the Circus, the building wobbling more and more until it crumbled to the ground.

It appeared as if they were searching for something as they decimated each structure, but what, James wasn’t exactly sure. The buildings all around the junction had evacuated; he’d watched them flee via the Tube with the rest of the civilians from the traffic circle, so he didn’t have to worry about saving people from the collapsing buildings.

All James knew was that he needed to stop the Carrows before they moved on, before they found a building full of people to destroy somewhere else.

But, how?

He did wonder if they had any real power without their laser guns. The easiest way to test it would be to simply grab one. It seemed too easy, but sometimes, the easiest strategy was the one overlooked.

So, he did it.

Turning his wrist, James aimed his web-shooter at one of the Carrow’s laser guns. Silky webbing shot out, traveling at lightning speed from James and attaching to the side of one of the guns. He grinned widely under the mask, grabbing hold of the web with his other hand.

He reached to grab the webbing with his other hand and pull, but a sharp tug from the other end of the web made him stumble on the precarious ledge. Another tug sent him flying to the ground.

James grimaced, shooting his webbing towards the building he had been standing on only moments ago. Suddenly, the building began to crumble around him, chunks of concrete and shards of glass raining onto him as he webbed onto a double-decker bus abandoned in the road.

So sometimes the easiest option didn’t work out.

“Good to see you two again,” he said conversationally as he jumped off the top of the bus. Their guns pointed straight at him. “Haven’t seen you two out much lately. I was afraid maybe you got busted.”

That earned him a green beam shot right at him. He probably deserved that after such a terrible joke, honestly. Still, James ducked, sliding out of the way with ease.

“Is that the best you’ve got?” he asked. He needed to find another way to take their guns from them, but at least the Circus was empty. It gave him time. Usually, he’d have to finish things as quickly as possible so that no one died. The lack of innocent civilians to worry about afforded James more time to be thorough. Tonight, the Carrows would be caught.

Still, it was two against one, and he had to keep moving to dodge the onslaught of laser beams coming his way. Usually, his best course of action was to web onto a building, but that wouldn’t be such a good idea when they had the ability to destroy whatever structure he was webbed onto.

As he passed by the Tube station, another beam shot right past him, hitting one of the walls. Too busy trying to come up with a plan, James didn’t even notice the civilian who ran out of the station’s entrance as it crumbled. Instead, he just looked at the Carrows, a smug smirk on his face as he said, “You guys really can’t hit anything that’s not stationary, can you?”

They had their guns pointed right at him, and James knew it was the perfect time to web onto the guns. They were too distracted by the idea of taking him down, both wearing wide grins under their masks.

This was it. This was his chance. All he needed to do was web both the guns and get out of the way without any of the lasers hitting him.

“Say goodbye!” Alecto cackled, but before she could shoot, a small chunk of concrete landed by James’ feet.

“No!” James heard someone cry, another piece of concrete hurled into the middle of the Circus. “Don’t hurt him!”

James glanced around to see who was senseless enough to be out here at a time like this. Why hadn’t they run screaming like everyone else?

And then, he saw her.

Lily.

As his heart leapt into his throat, body freezing mid-fight, his only thought was: Not her. Anyone but her.

He stood, frozen, as Lily ran closer, the obviously broken camera around her neck swinging wildly with her movement. Luckily, it seemed as if she’d also distracted the Carrows with the disruption.

At least, James had thought so until he realized that one of the laser guns was pointed at him and the other at Lily.

“Now!” He heard Alecto cry, and the lasers came shooting towards them.

Knowing he didn’t have much time, James webbed onto Lily and tugged to bring her to his side. He heard her frightened gasp but didn’t have time to reassure her. All he could do was hold onto her and dive out of the way as the building that had been behind them crumbled down.

James grimaced as the two of them roughly slid to the ground. He scrambled up, yanking Lily up with him. In any normal circumstance, James would never manhandle anyone, let alone Lily, the way he was right now. But this wasn’t a normal circumstance.

He needed to find her a way out of here. It wasn’t as if he could leave the Carrows and take Lily to safety. As much as he'd like to, there were other things he had to worry about.

Namely, the fact that the Carrows were shooting at them again.

Without thinking, he tugged Lily across the circle with him, ducking between two piles of rubble. They didn’t get very far before having to dodge the laser beams shooting at them. There was no way they’d be able to cross the junction without stopping to duck for cover every few paces, but their options were slim at the moment.

When he heard the sounds of the guns stop for the moment, he pulled her along, running again to find cover under another pile of debris. While it was safe for the moment, they had to get moving again soon. If they stuck around, the two masked villains would find them again.

He refused to let them be caught and cornered, not with Lily beside him.

She couldn’t be here. Keeping her by his side put a target on her back. As risky as it was to send her out there with all these toppling buildings, James wasn’t sure he had a choice. Yet, looking at the devastation around them, he knew he had to think of something to give her a fighting chance.

Anything.

Despite the fact that he knew he shouldn’t leave the Carrows alone in the Circus - after all, what if another unsuspecting citizen happened upon the scene in his absence? - Lily’s safety was taking precedence at the moment.

“How’d you get here?” he asked suddenly as they dodged the lasers. If it was safe, he’d send her back the way she came.

“I was in the Tube,” she said, panting as she tried to catch her breath while they ran through the junction. Well, that was unfortunate since the station’s entrance had been decimated into a pile of rubble. He’d have to think of some other way to get her out of here. For starters, they needed to get away from the Carrows.

“T-there was a stampede,” James heard her say, and it seemed like she was just rambling to keep from panicking. He only hoped she wasn’t too focused on her words to prevent herself from stumbling. “Everyone was running towards the train, but I-you needed help. You’re fighting for the city on your own. It looked like you were in danger, and I-” She was talking so quickly James wasn’t sure she’d have any air left in her lungs, and he’d never seen those green eyes as wide as they were in that moment. “I had to do something!”

James froze, staring at her momentarily. Had she really gone towards the danger when everyone else fled? It was dangerous to dwell on her blatant lack of respect for her own life right now. “I need to get you out of here somehow,” he muttered more to himself than to her as he looked around the junction.

She had to get out of here. The Carrows were going to destroy every building in range, and Lily couldn’t be there when they did. The Tube couldn’t be her escape route. There had to be another way out.

That was when he noticed dim light coming from behind them, casting their shadows on the pavement in front of them. There was a car - an abandoned but still running car - behind them.

A blast from a few feet away reminded him that the Carrows were still shooting at them, and Lily was looking rather worn from being dragged around Piccadilly Circus. Having her drive off in the car would be the easiest getaway, but with all the lasers shooting off at random, James thought better of it. If the Carrows hit that car with Lily in it, she’d be done for.

He needed to find a way to make it safer for her.

“Stay,” James commanded, leaving her behind a tall pile of crumbled concrete. She was huddled underneath the rubble, peeking out from behind as if keeping watch, but he saw her mutely nod her head. At the very least, he was certain that she wasn’t going to move from that spot, so he swung up onto a building, trailing along his webbing.

“Aww, no more puns? What? Not as confrontational when your little girlfriend’s around?” Alecto cooed.

Gritting his teeth, James tried to work faster, jumping around from building to ground to building and back, sticking his web to every surface he reached. Each time he landed, he glanced towards the wreckage where Lily was hiding. Thankfully, the two didn’t seem too interested in her. At least, not when they realized what James was up to.

“A spider web,” Amycus said, looking at his sister with a raised eyebrow. “How quaint.”

James heard Alecto’s wheezy giggle again before she cried, “Let’s see how well these webs work to protect your beloved from our lasers.”

Seeing their distraction as his opportunity to get Lily to safety, James dropped back down to the ground, racing back to Lily. They didn’t have much time.

He grabbed her hand tightly, tugging her backwards to the awaiting car, her escape. “Get in. Drive away. Just...just stay in the car until you’re safe, okay?” He had to know she was going to be okay, that she’d be safe one way or another. Sure, this wasn’t how he wanted this to go, but this was the best option he had.

He watched as she got into the driver’s seat, her hands shaking as she clutched the wheel. “But what about you? You can’t get hurt. We need you. London needs you.” The panic in her voice made James almost want to stay with her. He could climb into the car with her or, better yet, take her back home by webbing building to building. It would be so easy to leave with her and not deal with any of this right now.

But as she said, London needed him.

He just nodded his head to her. “I know. I’ll be all right. All in a day’s work of being Spider-Man, yeah?” He knew she was trying to hide it, but he saw the corners of her lips twitch up at that. “You need to go.”

When she gave him a shaky nod in return, James gave himself one final moment to look at her before turning on his heel and webbing back into the fight.

“Miss me?” he called as he swung back.

Upon seeing Amycus wound tightly in his barricade, much like a bug trapped in a real spider’s web, James broke out into a stupid grin. Maybe this wouldn’t be so difficult after all.

Alecto’s eyes narrowed and she lined up her laser not at James, who was still behind the indestructible webbing, but at a building holding it up. It wobbled precariously, like the others had done earlier, and then crashed to the ground, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. With it, fell a section of webbing. While it wasn’t enough to tear down the whole web, it was enough to surpass his barrier he’d set up.

“Are you mad?!” Amycus cried from inside his web cocoon. “You’re going to crush-” Without concern for the rest of his sentence, or apparently the well-being of her brother, Alecto shot at the other building. As the building toppled, tearing the remainder of the web down with it, James knew it was time to move.

He wanted this over with. The Carrows might’ve gotten away on the bridge, but he wouldn’t make that mistake again.

One down. Amycus’s laser gun was laying on the ground, but it looked damaged. There was a flashing red light on the side, and a blue and green glow peeked through the cracks along the barrel of the gun. James didn’t want to risk picking it up only for it to backfire on him. Besides, James only played offense in football. He'd stick to the defensive; he preferred his webs anyway.

One more to go.

Alecto Carrow seemed to be more competent than her counterpart given that she hadn’t gotten trapped in the web, and her actions were always a bit more calculated. Despite her intelligence, without her brother, the fight was now one-on-one, and James had the upper hand.

He landed in front of Alecto as she scurried back to her safety atop the base of the statue. It was a good vantage point for her since she’d be shooting down at him. He still wasn’t quite sure how to take down Alecto, but if the web had taught him anything, they were easily distracted.

Lily was tucked away in that cab and on her way to somewhere safe. Amycus was a bit preoccupied at the moment. A lazy smirk slid across his features, looking at the Carrow while stretching his arms behind his back languidly as if he were bored.

“What did you call my web again?” he asked somewhat tauntingly. Until he figured out how to take her down physically, this was his best course of action. “Quaint, was it? Seems like a good place for your brother to hang out. Bit of a sticky situation, really. Care to join him?”

Alecto swiftly pointed her laser at James, firing without a moment’s hesitation. As he’d assumed, Alecto thought he wasn’t paying close enough attention.

Except he was.

James shot back, his webbing threading around the barrel of a gun. He grabbed onto the silky web with his other hand, tearing the gun out of Alecto’s hands. He heard her rabid shriek as she hurled herself at him, landing on his back with a violent thud.

James tried to throw her off, but she clung to him desperately, kicking and screaming for her weapon. Right when he thought he’d lost her, she started digging her long, sharp nails into his shoulders as she clawed for her gun back.

He knew he had to get her off—the pain made sure of that much—but he needed to figure out what to do with this gun too. It wasn’t as if throwing it far enough away would actually help, even it was far enough to keep out of the Carrows’ clutches. Not if it gave anyone the power to decimate the entire city. The webbing blocked anything firing from it for now, but he knew the web weakened as its chemical composition deteriorated from the elements. Far faster than James liked to admit, it became no more than glorified silly string.

He needed to act fast.

With a fierce elbow to her gut, Alecto’s grip on James’s back weakened slightly. As he began to deliver the final blow, the circle was illuminated in a green-blue light, and a feverish laugh filled the streets. James’s blood turned cold.

Amycus had escaped. In his hands was the damaged laser gun, sparking and shooting in random directions.

Alecto hopped off James’s back and ran towards her brother. Apparently, she had bigger fish to fry than fighting for her gun. With that weapon in both of their hands, ready to explode at any moment, they would be nearly unstoppable.

Not on his watch. James whipped a web around Alecto’s ankle, gripping the web and yanking her into the air. With his other hand, he webbed her to a nearby billboard. There. Even if she did get free...good luck coming down from there.

With Alecto taken care of, Amycus grew even more violent. He began firing his gun in every direction. Sometimes it went off and other times, nothing happened. The sparking was getting worse with every misfire.

Luckily, it was compromised enough that none of the shots directed at James actually hit him. The shaking of the gun from the sparks made Amycus’s aim haphazard at best. Simply blocking the lasers from coming too close was working for now.

That gun was going to be a problem. James wasn’t sure he was even equipped to deal with the aftermath if it did explode.

Amycus’s aim was getting worse, barely able to hold onto the weapon anymore. Maybe this was James’s chance. The second Amycus let go of that weapon, he could get close enough to finally put an end to all this.

Just as James thought this all would be over, Amycus had climbed back onto the statue, attempting to maneuver the gun to point in James’ direction, using the statue as a base to keep his grip on the device as it jerked about. His target line was so much better with the statue stabilizing the gun.

The Carrow was done playing bulldozer on the city. His target was set on Spider-Man.

James knew this wouldn’t be good. His options were: get shot, grab the gun and have it blow up, or, possibly, both. None of it sounded very promising. Sure, he’d been in scary situations in the past, but he’d never dealt with an unstable weapon with this kind of power in the hands of someone like Amycus.

There was a real possibility that he’d die here. That fact hit him so hard that it was almost as if one of those buildings had crushed him.

He could die right now.

There were so many things he hadn’t done, things he hadn’t said.

He had regrets, sure. He wished he’d stayed as close to Remus Lupin as they had been before he became Spider-Man, but he’d decided months ago to keep Remus out of this for his own protection.

Now, he regretted not telling Sirius how much he appreciated all his help with this Spider-Man stuff, even if he hadn’t wanted Sirius to know at first either. James wished he’d told him how he was the best friend he could’ve ever asked for, the brother he’d always wanted.

More than that, he wished he hadn’t fought with Lily at the Prophet. She didn’t know he’d seen her again tonight. Unless she found out he was Spider-Man, her last memory of him would be of their fight. He wished he’d told her how he felt.

James swallowed thickly as his mind wandered to Aunt Minnie. More than anything, he wished he could give her a proper goodbye. He knew how devastated she’d been when James’ mum had died without saying goodbye. Minnie would be crushed again, and she’d be downright furious with him for being Spider-Man.

But he couldn’t think about any of that right now. Not when Amycus Carrow was prepared to end this at any moment, his finger on the trigger.

Like Lily had said, London needed him. He needed to be there to save the people of the city. He needed to save London because that was where Remus Lupin lived. Where Sirius lived. Lily. Aunt Minnie.

He had to save them. Even if saving them meant losing himself.

Resigning himself to the fact that things were probably about to get very, very messy, he raised his hand, shaking slightly as he moved, to shoot at the gun before Amycus shot at him.

Amycus’s eyes lit up with a devilish delight in what he was about to do.

A screech from the distance caused both parties to pause for a moment. When James looked to where the noise was coming from, two bright lights from some sort of car blinded him. As he blinked away the lights, he’d seen enough to know what had happened.

The taxi careened past him, slamming into the statue in the middle of the junction. The heavy bronze figure swayed for a moment before toppling to the ground with a deafening clash, its motion bringing Amycus down with it.

The gun soared through the air, alight like a meteor. He hoped this worked.

James used both web-shooters to catch the gun, twirling it with one web, and wrapping it like a bandage with the other. Fully covered now, James webbed it to hang from a pile of rubble well lit by the street lamps, somewhere the authorities would easily find it.

He heard their sirens now, coming from a distance. Figured that as soon as things finished up, the cops arrived.

Amycus was out. The statue must have knocked him unconscious. He might’ve checked to see if the Carrow was still breathing if it weren’t for his unexpected hero. As James approached the black taxi, his heart pounded in his chest.

Lily. It had to be Lily. No one else disregarded their own safety enough to do something so stupidly brave except her.

The car was crushed in at the front, the wheels bent at a strange angle and steam billowing out of the grill. He couldn’t see her through the windows since the whole cab was filled with the deployed airbags.

Please be okay.

When he looked inside, ripping off the door of the crushed cab, Lily was heaving, and tears were rolling down her cheeks. She had a bruise purpling along the side of her cheek but otherwise appeared okay. As he opened his mouth to ask if she was, Lily cut him off.

“I-I stayed in the car,” she gasped, looking at him, her green eyes wide.

James swallowed his initial response as she stumbled out of the destroyed taxi, and he reached out, grabbing her hands to steady her. “Be careful,” he murmured, worried her injuries might be worse than what was visibly apparent. He’d gotten too used to the luxury that was self-healing. Lily, on the other hand…

She looked relatively okay though. She wasn’t too pale - well, not any paler than she normally was - and she appeared to know what was going on at the very least. Still… “I think you should let me take you to the hospital.”

“Take me home,” she said, rubbing at the bruise on her cheek. It was swollen a bit, and she had this look of exhaustion on her face that made James’s stomach flip. Maybe she was more hurt than he thought.

James shook his head slowly. If something happened to her, it’d be his fault. “Err...No. I think you need to go, really,” he insisted. “You need to get checked out at the hospital.”

Lily scowled at the suggestion this time, and it was a welcome sight. That was the Lily he knew, the one that crashed cars into famous landmarks. “Look, Spider-Man. If you won’t take me home, I’ve already committed grand theft once today. I can do it again and get home by myself, but I’m bruised and tired and I really don’t care to deal with the traffic this fight has no doubt caused. So, I’ll ask you again. Take me home.”

“That wasn’t a question - more of an order, really. You sure you didn’t hit your head too hard?” She was fine; that, he was sure of now. She was talking normally, didn’t seem too confused about where she was or what she was doing, and though her walk hadn’t been all that steady when getting out of the car, he knew she’d been shaken up. She seemed stable now.

Besides, she’d told him off, so that was an encouraging sign.

James watched with a bemused smirk as Lily narrowed her eyes and then swished around, apparently giving up on travel by web. Her walk was definitely more steady again, which, James supposed, was good. Still, he couldn’t let her drive home. Not when she’d already been through so much that night. Not with that big bruise forming on her cheek. Not with her complete disrespect for her own safety.

Lily had already spotted another taxi and was marching towards it purposefully. James, not wanting her to go off by herself and get in more trouble tonight, ran to catch up with her, leaning on her cab of choice when they got close enough. “So, tell me,” he said conversationally, “do you commit grand theft often? Should I be worried about you?”

That broke through her wall she was building up. He wished he could say the way her eyes lit up, her nose wrinkling slightly at his words, didn’t make him feel anything, but he’d felt this way since he first met her. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing that’d change anytime soon.

“Oh, be very worried,” she teased, leaning against the taxi as well. “Planning to be an accessory to my crimes, Spider-Man?”

“Sorry,” he sighed, crossing his arms as he smirked underneath his mask. He knew they needed to get out of there soon since the sirens from earlier sounded far too close for comfort, but he was having too much fun teasing Lily. “No can do. That sort of thing is bad for my image.”

“Ah, yes. Your image, which as we all know is already so good.” Lily let out a soft little laugh, more of a breath than anything, and looked down at the ground. Her smile faded rather quickly, and he knew she was thinking about the paper. As she pushed off the car and examined the wreckage they’d left behind—piles of rubble in and around the streets, the statue toppled, a destroyed cab—her eyebrows knitted together in worry.

It probably wasn’t the best thing to mention his image to her. She’d want to go and fix it, and he’d seen how reckless she could be. Reckless enough to save his life.

And she didn’t even know she knew him. He was glad that in all the chaos, he’d remembered to lower his voice a bit so it wasn’t as easily recognizable for Lily.. If she had known, James knew she’d want to help more. He could only save her from herself so many times.

Thinking back on the events of the day and watching her with that worried look on her face, he wanted to reach out and tell her it’d be okay. They were just buildings. Sure, his reputation might suffer, but he didn’t care about that. No one had died today, and that was the biggest relief, especially with Lily being involved. He didn’t even want to think about something happening to her on his watch. Of all people, hadn’t she suffered enough from his failures as Spider-Man?

He’d wanted to tell her he was sorry for all that had happened tonight. He wanted to apologize for what had happened at work too, despite the mask. He wanted to plead for her to put herself first for once, to stop being so reckless, but the authorities were rounding the corner now, red and blue lights flashing against the facades of the remaining buildings.

James took a deep breath instead. They had to get out of here. “Let’s go,” he said suddenly, offering her a hand.

Lily looked down at it as if it were a foreign concept to her. “What?”

“I’ll take you home,” he said, trying not to sound too impatient, but he needed to dodge the cops. She knew that. He took her moment of hesitation to shoot a web at an intact building, getting ready to leave whenever she was ready. “You’re far too reckless to get home safely by yourself.”

“Right.” She looked nervously over her shoulder before taking his hand. “What if I slow you down, though?”

As she said this, the tires of the police cars and ambulances squealed as they screeched to a stop. Behind them, a few dozen media vans, including Daily Prophet 24/7 coverage. Their time for questions was over.

Reporters scrambled out of their vehicles. They had to leave, now, while James still had a clear view of his escape route. He wrapped his arms around Lily, tucking her in close to his side. “Hold onto me,” he murmured, kicking off the ground and swinging onto the top of the building his web was on.

As they flew through the air, the flashes of reporters’ cameras filled his vision. Looked like the Prophet got their picture after all.

The city was absolutely breathtaking at nighttime. From within the dark, the soft glow of the streetlamps and the lights inside the different apartments was a warm and welcome sight. At a distance, they almost looked like fireflies.

High above the ground, the people and the cars all looked so small. It was as if all the problems of the world were the same size. Up there, it felt like you were untouchable, undefeatable.

Of course, Lily didn’t know this because her face was smushed against Spider-Man’s chest as they fled the scene. She felt the wind whipping around them, stray pieces of hair tickling her cheeks, but she was not going to look around. Her arms wrapped around his torso tightly, and her fingers clung around the fabric of his suit as if it was the only thing able to save her if she fell.

Most certainly not the webs the superhero was soaring through the sky with.

From above her, she thought she heard Spider-Man chuckle. Lily furrowed her brows but figured she must be hearing things. What was so funny at a time like this?

Then she felt his laugh, his chest shaking with every little chortle. Terrified to look down, Lily moved her head up the slightest bit to peek at the man above her.

Problem was, it was really hard to read his facial expression with the mask situation. From the way his head was angled, it looked like he was laughing at her, watching her. “What’s so funny?” she asked, burrowing her face back into his side.

“Oh, nothing,” he murmured back to her, the two of them dipping down as he webbed onto another building. “I just think it’s funny that you were so...so reckless and brave earlier with everything you did, but you’re frightened of heights. You can run into a stampede. You can crash a car into a statue-a national landmark, mind you. But heights, that’s what does you in.” There was a beat as he thought this over before Lily heard his laugh again. “Honestly, this is probably the safest thing you’ve done tonight.”

But it didn’t feel like the safest thing, not to Lily. She felt like she was moving through the city at a very fast pace, very high off the ground while being held up by a couple of little strings. That felt like a very unsafe thing to do. She was sure her father would agree, but he wouldn’t have approved of anything she’d done tonight.

Besides, he’d done this tons of times. At this point, it must’ve been as natural as breathing for him. “I’d bet you were scared the first time you did this,” she replied somewhat bitterly.

“Sure,” Spider-Man said in return. “I couldn’t close my eyes though. Something tells me that wouldn’t have worked out for me too well.”

A smile tugged at Lily’s lips, but she didn’t dare look up. “Perks of being a civilian, yeah?”

“I suppose,” he sighed, and Lily felt him hold her a little closer. She tried to ignore the blush creeping up her neck when, suddenly, he jerked to a stop. She opened her eyes to see what had happened only to find they were hanging on the side of Big Ben. Lily gasped, tightening her grip on his suit for dear life.

“Spider-Man,” she cried, her eyes trailing down the clock tower to the streets below of their own volition. The buses and cars directly below them looked so minuscule. She felt like she was going to be sick, her skin turning clammy and her stomach churning at the sight. Her heart was beating so hard against her chest she was positive Spider-Man felt it.

“Relax,” he insisted, shifting to place her feet on a close-by ledge. “Li-Let’s breathe, okay?” He tugged her closer, shuffling so she was closer against the tower and more securely on the ledge. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”

Lily did as he said, breathing in, but it came in as a shudder. Spider-Man nodded encouragingly and she thought she heard him say something like, “good, keep going,” but she wasn’t really paying attention to his words. He was holding onto her with one arm wrapped around her in something of a hug, and Lily was very aware of his hand on her back. His other hand was gripping onto his suspended web, only his toes touching the ledge she stood upon.

She tightened her hold on him, not able to think clearly when she was terrified that now he would fall. It didn’t seem to phase him in the slightest, his head tilted upwards into the open air, looking at something high above them.

Her breath must have evened out with her distraction because Spider-Man looked to her suddenly and nodded his head in approval. “Good. See, you’re alright.” Lily only nodded slowly. “Hey, I don’t want you to be scared, but I think you’d think the city is really pretty right now. Can I take you up a little higher-”

“Are you joking?” Lily snapped, looking at Spider-Man with disdain. “I’m terrified, and you want to go up higher?”

He seemed amused by her outburst. “Are you done?” Lily opened her mouth to speak again, but he cut her off. “As I was saying, can I take you up a little higher where there’s a railing and a real floor? You can calm down before I take you home. Does that sound okay?”

That didn’t sound too bad, Lily had to admit. When she nodded her agreement, Spider-Man scooped her up and began scaling the side of the building. From over his shoulder, she saw tourists pointing them out amongst themselves from the London Eye.

As far up as they were when he first took her to the tower, Lily didn’t realize how much farther up there was to go until she was carried up to the top. The white light from the clock cast their shadows on the city below.

Soon, they reached a railing, and Spider-Man pulled them over it. Finally on solid ground, Lily let out a deep breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“Better now?” he asked, and she nodded quickly. She’d never been so happy to have her feet on the floor, even if the floor was much higher up than she preferred. As she glanced out over the city, she had to admit that it was rather pretty. The river Thames looked like glass from so far up, its surface calm and dark other than reflections from the surrounding lights and the moon in the distance. Across from them, the London Eye ticked along at a slow, leisurely pace.

“Yeah,” she breathed, unable to take her eyes off the city. It seemed so strange that the city felt so calm and quiet in one place, and yet, in another, it was filled with destruction.

When she finally tore her eyes off the skyline, she found that Spider-Man was staring over at her again. She ducked her head to hide her blush behind the curtain of her hair. “What?” she mumbled.

“Nothing,” he replied, shrugging slowly. “It’s only...what’s your name?”

Her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach. Did Spider-Man call her dumb? Even though she had just sat down, she scrambled back to her feet so she was on his level, looking into his eyes-well, eye markings. “What I did today was I saved your life.”

“And you could’ve lost yours,” he shot back, crossing his arms against his chest.

“So could you!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms out. “You know what you do for a living right? You’re at least a little self-aware? Spider-Man, your job is putting your life at risk. I don’t think you’re in a place to lecture me about safety.”

She crossed her arms too, looking him over. He was tall, but his voice sounded young. While it was hard to tell if he was younger or older than her, he seemed like he was at least around her age range. What was a university-age kid doing sacrificing his life for the city? Lily’d had enough lectures this evening for the both of them. If he wanted to lecture her, fine. Two could play that game.

Spider-Man began shaking his head. “You don’t get it. I didn’t choose this. This was put on me, and like you said, London needs me. But you...you need to stay safe. Surely you have people that worry about you. If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for them.”

Guilt washed over her like a tidal wave. Her father would be so furious when she got home. Surely by now, the news had aired. She knew the reporters had gotten a photo of her. She didn’t know if her face was visible, but with her luck, everyone would know she had met Spider-Man by tomorrow morning.

But Spider-Man was wrong. No matter what her father said, Spider-Man saved people. And no matter how angry her dad was, Lily knew she did the right thing. She set out to help Spider-Man and she did.

He was alive because of her. He’d go home to the people who cared about him tonight because of her.

For all she knew, the whole city was alive because of her. What would have happened if the two masked villains had gotten away? What if that sparking laser gun had exploded like it looked like it was going to?

Because Lily risked her life, so many more were safe. She refused to apologize for that, no matter what anyone else said. Even if that person was Spider-Man.

Besides, she was fine.

He did raise a good point, though. Her father was probably worried sick waiting for her to come home.

Lily felt Spider-Man’s gaze through his mask, and she was vaguely reminded of an ant under a microscope. He must have been waiting for her to respond, but she was so caught up in her thoughts she hadn’t noticed.

What did she even say to that? Did Spider-Man not want to be Spider-Man? If she could, Lily would trade places with him, take the weight off his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” Lily murmured, taking advantage of the fact that Spider-Man probably thought she was talking about risking her life. She wasn’t, but at least her words placated him. She wasn’t sorry for what she did.

She was sorry that he had to carry this burden for the city, sorry he had to be responsible for keeping people who didn’t appreciate him safe.

“It’s fine,” he mumbled in return, and Lily watched as he paced for a moment before he stared back at her. “Look, it’s not… I’m grateful that you saved my life and all.”

“Then-” Lily started, but Spider-Man cut her off, looking down at her in a way that she practically felt the intensity through the air.

“But I don’t want you to go risking yours for something like that again.”

Lily nodded slowly in return, even if she didn’t mean it. Something like that. They weren’t talking about saving a couple of buildings or a famous landmark. She’d saved his life. It was worth the risk. If she had to do it again, she would. But Spider-Man needn’t know that.

“Anyway,” she heard him sigh as he stepped closer to the ledge again. “I’d better get you home. Where might that be, Lily?”

She knew she needed to get home before her father went out and started looking for her himself. She’d be surprised if he hadn’t already. Lily murmured her address, joining him at the edge and grabbing his outstretched hand.

This time, she didn’t close her eyes. Whether she had grown used to the sensation or if she’d grown numb, Lily wasn’t sure. Granted, she was keeping her eyes on what was in front of her, deliberately ignoring the ground below them.

Instead, she watched as Spider-Man webbed from building to building. Every time a bit of web was released, he pressed this mechanism built into his suit. As she first noticed it, she had to blink a few times to be sure of what she was seeing.

All this time, Lily had thought Spider-Man had special supernatural abilities, and the webs were only one of them. Although she didn’t understand how Spider-Man would be able to shoot webs from his skin, she’d just assumed he was some type of mutant.

But those web-shooters were man-made. He must have engineered them somehow. Or maybe he’d commissioned someone to or something. Either way, they looked complicated.

Spider-Man must have been really intelligent to figure something like that out, but engineered web-shooters meant he was really just a regular guy.

She did wonder who was truly behind the mask. Not because of any desire to expose his identity to the world, and certainly not to turn him over to the cops. No, Lily was simply fascinated by the mystery.

Plus, it didn’t hurt that this man had sort of saved her life tonight too.

She had so many questions for him, but she was afraid that if she asked, he wouldn’t tell her. Or worse, he’d get upset and think she was trying to discover who he was. So instead, Lily kept quiet the entire way home, watching Spider-Man use his web-shooters.

How did they work? What substance inside that tiny mechanism created those near-indestructible webs? They were strong enough to resist lasers. They pulled both his and her body weight through the sky. Forget their weight, that day at the bridge, Lily watched on the telly as Spider-Man stopped a bus from falling into the river.

And it all started with those little web-shooters.

Far too interested in the web-shooters, she hadn’t realized that Spider-Man had gotten her back home until her feet were placed firmly on the ground. She glanced around, realizing that most of the lights in the building were dark now as people had gone to sleep for the night. Her own home was still lit brightly, and she was sure her father was waiting for her.

Lily turned around to thank Spider-Man for bringing her home, but by the time she did so, he’d already disappeared into the darkness.

She sucked in a deep breath, reaching out for the front door’s handle and turning it until she heard the click. “Dad?” she called, stepping inside. “I’m home…”

#jily #jily*#lily evans #james potter #lily potter #prongs #fnjp #our writing

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hello-im-not-a-possum · 3 years

Text

2. twisted

The cartoon that came out of the machine was pretty as a picture, perfect in almost every detail, and had a bubbly, positive personality. But she was not what Joey had wanted Susie to become. (Set in an AU where Joey gets perfect toons from his freshly killed employees and STILL isn’t happy, the unpleasable bitch…)

“Progress report to GENT home office, Client; Joey Drew Studios.

With the addition of the new ink recipe to use in the machine, we have made an unbelievable leap in progress and have almost met our client’s expectations. What had started as a machine to mold life sized figures out of ink has now done things that border on being supernatural.

Although Mr. Drew seems unimpressed, even frustrated with the results at times, in spite of the fact that the models have come out identical to their cartoon counterparts.

The process of running the cartoon film through the machine for the figures to imprint on has been successful, but it looks like that unless someone goes through the trouble of making a short that only has ONE character in it, the machine picks what character it makes at seemingly random. That is our client’s complaint; that instead of being user chosen, the machine picks out which living, breathing, thinking ink models it makes at random. Upon working on this, if I were to be in the client’s shoes, I’d have several valid complaints regarding the machine and the models it created, but our client’s complaint… Is that the machine that doesn’t have a system that allows the user to pick and choose which model it makes yet creates a physically flawless model every single time, does not allow the user to pick and choose which model it makes. He never ceases to infuriate me.

On a sour note, there was an incident with the figure in the likeness of a character called ‘The Brute’. Upon its creation, it immediately went and broke our client’s leg in a very… well, brutal fashion too. But fortunately, it has not physically attacked anyone since The Cameraman figure was made as we have threatened to separate them if it keeps up that behavior. It still likes to insult people, and it still does things that unnerve me though. We’re hoping that the rest of the figures will be less violent and or creepy.”

Thomas clicked off the recording and sighed as he looked at the newly made report, there was no way he could submit this to his boss without someone sending in someone to make sure he wasn’t huffing in ink fumes and whatever the Studio workers smoked to consider any of this to be normal.

“Hey Tommy! I think I figured out the issue with the machine! Or rather, its fuel.”

The mechanic grit his teeth and turned to face his client.

“What? I wasn’t aware that there was a problem with it.”

“Why, Tommy, how could you forget? I’m talking about the figure deposit problem of course! Why did we get The Brute when we wanted to get Boris? Why did we get Cameraman when we wanted Bendy? The answer was so simple, why, it was even staring at us the entire time!”

“Uh huh…” Thomas did not look convinced. “And what was this issue?”

“The ingredients, the Ink of course! You simply can’t put blueberry pancake batter in an oven and be surprised when you get blueberry pancakes instead of blueberry muffins, We got those two knuckleheads before we got the real stars of the show because the souls used to make them weren’t fit to make those two, but the machine still did what it does best: made living cartoons.”

Tom had an uneasy feeling in his gut as Joey grabbed his arm and led him to the Ink Machine’s room. He felt like a sheep being led to the slaughterhouse, he KNEW what went down in there! He knew the other ingredients, not well, per say, but for long enough to judge them and their characters.

He didn’t shed a single tear when Sammy was used in it, in fact, he was rather pleased with the results before it started acting out like that. He and the music director were almost always at each other’s throats for one reason or another. If you asked him, the ex-musician was strange, rude, clearly mentally unstable, and sometimes even cruel. And even if he wasn’t, his physical health had declined so much over his time at the studio that it was obvious that he would die regardless of whether or not he was put in the machine. Feeding Sammy to that machine was an act of mercy, really, and even if it wasn’t, it served him right to become a- err, The Brute and have him put the former musician in his place- put his villainous ways to a decent cause. Now if only someone could ensure for a fact that The Brute would behave...

Now the other ingredient, Norman Polk, was a different story. The man was old, weird and kinda creepy. On the surface, the man was an ideal candidate. Like Sammy, he would die anyway and nobody would miss him when he did. But on the contrary, he seemed like he still had some good years left in him. And while he was weird and creepy, he had been those things in an oddly endearing way that most of the studio had either liked or tolerated enough to not be bugged by it. The mechanic didn’t know how to explain it, that man reminded Tom of a mysterious, mostly-estranged relative that shows up out of nowhere and was always there for you even if you don’t always see him. So when the man snooped too much for his own good and had to be silenced… Tom could never look the resulting toon in the eye, or in his case, the lens.

But the mechanic couldn’t deny that it needed to be done, after all, the former projectionist was far too nosy for anyone’s sake. Nobody who knows the secret of the Ink Machine (or rather, it’s unconventional secret ingredient needed for its ink) should be free to wander the studio and spill the beans.

And a feeling in his gut was beginning to tell him that that was why he was the next on the chopping block.

He had built it, he learned what it would take to make it work, he had done what it took to make it work, and it was working now; No more models that would only move a tiny bit before collapsing into puddles! No more off model models! No more issues aside from x, y, z… -No more reasons for Joey to keep him alive when it was now too dangerous to his business…

A tiny voice at the back of his head told him it served him right. The creator of this unholy torture device would now be consumed by it, just like how the maker of the Brazen Bull was the first victim it claimed.

At this point, he was almost morbidly curious on who or what the machine would make him; would it poke fun at his past and make him that territorial junkyard guard, Canoodle? Would it ironically punish him for his greed by making him The Fat Cat of the show, Boswell Lotsobucks? Would it acknowledge that although he was a villain to the bitter end, he still tried to go clean only for demons to drag him back down his dark paths and make him into Charley? Thinking about it, any butcher gang member would be a good enough fit really.

He was a mix of relieved, disappointed, and horrified when he was brought into the room and saw the unconscious voice actress of Alice Angel strapped to a mobile operating table. Joey seemed to ignore his reaction as he proudly showed her off and began to monologue.

“Like Boris, Sammy was a musician, simple-minded, and was very loyal to those he considered friends until the bitter end. But what made Sammy more like the Brute then Boris- Aside from body type, obviously, was that Sammy had quite the short temper on him, one that got messed with often, and a tendency to hold onto a grudge that can’t be swayed away with a good meal or a bad joke… Just like our friend; the Brute.”

Tom stayed speechless as Joey continued his seemingly prepared and rehearsed speech.

“As for Bendy and Norman, well, it’s obvious that those too simply weren’t compatible in the slightest! Sure, they both have their mischievous sides, but that alone doesn’t make a man into a good imp… However, do you know who DOES have more in common with Mr. Polk? That’s right! A certain smart alec-someone who knows a thing or two about anyone, everyone, and everything whether he wants to or not. Someone with a darker, more jaded sense of humor than our little devil, someone who can lurk in the shadows, or in his case, ‘backstage’ for safety or to gather Intel, but be happy and proud to take the front stage when the need arises! ...Alright, I can see that Norman’s soul may have influenced the personality of our Cameraman, but at least he did it in ways that make sense to the character.”

The mechanic continued to stay silent as Joey continued.

“But the main point is: we know what to do to fix this little issue. If we want a main character, we need someone who embodies the soul of that character. And Ms. Campbell here said it herself; Alice is a part of her!”

“Joey…”

“Why, she’d be thanking us if she knew what was coming! This is a dream come true for her! She always seemed to be the happiest when she was singing our angel darling’s songs…”

As if he was snapped out of a trance, the mechanic pulled Joey to his face, gripping the animator’s arms tightly and shaking him up a bit.

“Joey! We can’t do this! Susie isn’t like Norman or Sammy. She’s young, healthy, and still has a lot to live for. Nobody would buy that she passed on from something out of the blue, or that she moved away without warning or telling anyone. Everyone in the studio loves her and talks to her frequently! If we do this, especially so soon, they will make the connection, and they will find out about this. It was bad enough when Norman went, imagine if someone as well loved as her went too!”

Joey just laughed and slapped Tom’s shoulder.

“Oh Tommy, all we need to tell them is that Susie got her big break and is Bringing Alice to life in ways never before seen! And to sell the illusion, also tell them ‘you know how those folks in Hollywood are with their schedules, always a bunch of busy bees.’ They’ll bite, you just have to trust me.”

“What if they don’t?” the mechanic argued. “What if they start snooping around and start to piece together what really happened to her?”

Joey’s smile wavered a bit, but remained steadfast.

“Well, we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we reach it. And when we do, we’ll have our answer!”

“Nnnnggghhh…”

Both of them shuddered when they heard the voice actress start to stir awake.

“I swore I used stronger stuff in her drink…”

“...Jo...Joey..? ..Mr. Conner..?” The voice actress’s real eye widened in horror as she looked around, and her voice wavered as she grew more and more frantic. “WHat’s going on?! Where am I- Why am I tied up?!”

“S-Susie! Everything’s perfectly fine my dear, you just need to calm down a bit and I’ll explain everything…” He subtly jabbed Thomas in the ribs with his elbow. “Tommy!” He hissed “Throw her in the machine already!”

The frightened voice actress began to struggle against her restraints while Tom hesitated. Joey shot him a glare as he strolled up behind Susie and put a ‘reassuring’ hand on the weeping angel’s shoulder.

“Joey, please… let me go… Don’t do this to me!” Tears were running down the woman’s face, her voice was soft and breaking from her stress. “Just let me go and I promise I won’t tell anyone…”

“Now, now, Susie, there’s nothing to worry about, yes I know this looks unsettling from your position… But you and Alice are going places, new, big places that most people only dream of seeing! You’re going to bring her to life in ways that will touch the hearts of generations!”

A flash of realization crossed her face.

“Joey… answer me this: when Sammy ‘died from untreated lung cancer’ did he actually die from lung cancer? And when Norman ‘died from a workplace injury’ did he really…?” her voice trailed off a bit with uncertainty before asking her third question. “Did their deaths have anything to do with those two toons that showed up?!”

Her questions were not answered by words, but with actions as the two men stuffed her into the machine. When it turned on, her screams echoed throughout the mostly empty studio, chilling all who heard them to the very bone.

When they finally stopped, the machine whirred and roared to life and Joey rubbed his hands together in glee as he watched the machine work its magic.

Thomas, on the other hand, stood in silence while staring at his hands as dread and guilt sank in his gut.

The former man’s smile fell into a look of confusion when he saw a pair of gloves with ‘X’ marks on them come out, followed by arms that connected to them. That look of confusion fell deeper into a frown when he saw the arms stretch, curl, and twist when the gloves reached the floor as if they were streams of ice cream coming out of the machine at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Alice didn’t have arms that curled and stretched, but Joey knew a certain demoness toon who did; Miss Twisted. He was cursing under his breath, of course it would complete their little trio before giving him what he wanted! Now he wasted his one shot at getting Alice!

The rest of the toon didn’t even get out of the damn machine, it was like she was taunting him by continuing to stretch her arms and let them continue to coil in piles on the floor instead of showing him the finished product.

Furious, he marched over and grabbed the toon demoness’s arms and yanked her out of the damn machine.

“Stop messing around!” He scolded before pausing and reapplying his signature smile. “Your friends Brute and Cameraman have been worried sick about you ever since their creation! You wouldn’t want to keep them waiting for you any longer than they’ve already been, right?”

He could’ve been imagining it, but he swore that she had a look of pure terror on her face before she put on a fake smile of her own. And was it just him, or was this Miss Twisted’s left eye slightly discolored, glassy looking, if that made sense for someone with pitch black pie-cut eyes. The grayer eye she had reminded him of Susie Campbell’s fake eye.

“Y-yeah! You’re right!” She pushed Joey out of her face, clearly uncomfortable by his staring but pretending to be perfectly fine. “I can’t keep my boys waiting for too long, who knows what they’ll do?” She chuckled nervously. “So… where are you keeping them? where are they hiding?”

“Tommy here will be happy to show you, just follow him and-”

“Thanks!”

The demoness chipperly chirped and swiftly yanked Thomas out of the room at a speed that almost insulted the man.

#Bendy and the Ink Machine #Thomas Conner #joey drew #susie campbell #miss twisted #fanfic #ink demonth #murder warning

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houchlife · 3 years

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10 Steps to Attract the Life You Want

By Heather Mathews Author of Manifestation Miracle

“What you seek is seeking you” - Rumi

If I told you that you could create the exact type of circumstances you want, would you call me crazy?

What if your very thoughts could create ripples of change that not only impact your life…but those around you as well?

Philip, a call center worker from the Philippines certainly didn't think so. He dreamed of moving overseas so he could secure a better life and provide for his family.

But at every turn, his own mind shut down every opportunity he thought of.

For instance, Philip considered seeing an immigration consultant, but he either “didn't have the time” or “couldn't afford it”.

So, he resented his situation and cursed himself (and the world) for his “bad luck”.

He didn't realize that the real culprit was his mindset - not his circumstances.

And it seemed like the more he ruminated, the more bad things happened.

Thus, he kept feeding the cycle of being stuck in a rut and feeling bad, trapping him even more.

That was, until his aunt Sara introduced him to the Law of Attraction.

Turning the tide

Before she moved to California, Sara had been close with Philip and treated him like a son.

She had her own share of struggles finding greener pastures abroad, but she applied the principles from the Law of Attraction to overcome them.

So she sent a few books on the topic to Philip through Amazon so he could gain the clarity to turn his life around.

Discover the Lazy Person's Secret To Get Everything You've Ever Wished For

----- CLICK HERE ------

At first, Philip didn't really think much of it, but he decided to read through the books since his aunt went through the trouble of sending it over.

After he started applying the lessons he learned from the material, things started to change for him.

It came as a complete shock to Philip - he never thought in a million years that making a simple shift in his thinking could have such a direct and POWERFUL impact in his life.

And soon enough, the fog of negativity and despair around Philip lifted and he found a way to make his dreams happen.

Through his persistence, he was eventually able to borrow the money he needed for the consultation fees, and learned the step-by-step process to get work overseas.

Philip was finally able to find a fulfilling and rewarding career in Australia. Not only does he get to support his family back home, he also made friends and enjoys his new life abroad.

Just a few months ago, Philip's parents started their own business, thanks to his help.

At the rate they're going, his family could save enough so they can pass on their business to another relative and follow Philip to Australia. ould wait for Philip to take the offer so they can move there instead.

Whatever option Philip chooses, the possibilities for him are almost limitless.

But he's just one of thousands who made the Law of Attraction to work for him. Like Philip, a lot of people are initially discouraged to try because they think it takes a lot of work.

But the reality is that it's surprisingly easy to get started. You just need to follow these 10 Super Simple Steps to Attract Everything You've Ever Wanted:

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Step #1: A little gratitude goes a long way

The first thing you should learn about the Law of Attraction is that it operates on energy.

YOUR energy, to be exact.

Everyone has a different kind of energy they bring into the world, and it affects them in ways they often don't see or appreciate.

The secret lies in the FREQUENCY of a person's energy - and you need to raise yours in order to change your life.

Think of your unique energy as a sort of gas that fills the space of your reality. Whatever “gas” or “energy” you pump out into your immediate space will define your existence.

Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, said this in his book, “Man's Search for Meaning”:

“To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative.”

So if you want to invite great things into your life, you need to set the stage first. And you can do that by leading with the right energy.

That's why being grateful and appreciating what you have is powerful way to recalibrate your frequency.

Most folks hold off on feeling this way for AFTER they get what they want. But that's putting the cart before the horse, as the saying goes.

When you LEAD with gratitude, it will act as the precedent for everything good that follows.

Discover the Lazy Person's Secret To Get Everything You've Ever Wished For

----- CLICK HERE -----

What I like to do is start of my day by making a list of things that I'm grateful for. If I miss anything, I save it for later and update my list at the end of my day.

And when I go over my list during the weekend, I'll see exactly how much good stuff I've accumulated.

This creates a kind of snowball effect and helps me attract even MORE good stuff down the road.

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Step #2: Be generous

This can be a challenge for some people if they feel like there isn't enough to go around.

But if you take the initiative to SHARE whatever you can without asking anything in return…

… you'll generate the kind of energy that attracts prosperity for everyone…

…including YOU.

Again, this is the Law of Attraction at work.

Try offering your time, talents and material wealth to those who need it - you'll soon invite blessings without even trying.

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Step #3: Visualize your future

What I find amazing about kids is how powerful their imaginations are.

When they role-play with other children, you can see in their eyes how REAL their games are to them.

This is something that's lost on grown-ups, and it's important to recapture that ability to envision the kind of reality you want.

The Universe likes to play games with us- the better you are at visualizing, the more you'll be rewarded.

Like I said, a certain type of energy attracts a certain kind of reality.

So if you focus your energy and thoughts on that dream job you want or the car you've always wanted to drive, you'll raise your frequency to ATTRACT those exact things.

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Step #4: Let the negativity pass

When the bad times roll in and you feel like dirt, sometimes it's better to step aside and let it run its course.

Having negative thoughts and emotions are totally normal, but you don't always have to wrestle with them.

You can simply acknowledge what's going on in your inner world - then CHOOSE to keep moving forward anyway.

Let this negative energy pass through your system like bad case of gas. The sooner you let it do its thing, the quicker you can get back to what you were doing.

(Sorry for the fart analogy, but it get the point across, doesn't it?)

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Step #5: Never stop growing

It's good to have a daily routine in your life, but not at the expense of your personal development.

Most people are so set in their ways that they're afraid of the thought of doing something new.

Then they complain about their humdrum lives, or that some folks “have all the luck.”

Breaking out of your comfort zone is never an easy thing, but it's a step worth taking.

No matter how loaded your schedule is, find some chunks of time to do things that will help you grow.

Whether it's taking an online course, joining a community, or taking up a hobby, this is a powerful way to attract new and exciting things in your life.

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Step #6: Avoid the “toxic” crowd

There are people who seem hell-bent on pulling others into their world of misery.

Whether they're trying to lessen their own pain or simply enjoy doing it, you need to steer clear of them.

Instead, choose people who will have the opposite effect on your psyche. Not only does a person's energy attract circumstances, it's also CONTAGIOUS.

So make sure you hang out with the people who'll inspire you to achieve greater things - and not bring you down with apathy or inaction.

Learn How to Force the Universe to Manifest Your Dream Life -

CLICK HERE

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Step #7: Give yourself permission to succeed

Most of the world's most brilliant people were put down in some way.

Somewhere along the way, someone told them they'd “never make it” or were “destined to fail.”

In your own life, certain people have tried to discourage you in some way.

They might have tried putting you down when you were growing up - or it could have been last week.

It doesn't matter.

What's important is that you understand that NO ONE can put labels on you.

And more importantly, they can NEVER give you permission to achieve what you want in life. You need to do that for yourself.

Don't let their words define your “story”. You don't have to fit whatever petty narrative they're trying to force on you.

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Step #8: Affirm who you are

Instead of feeding into the lies that people tell you, let this be the day to start living your truth.

Create statements that embody the truth you choose to be, AND to live in.

People do this all the time.

When Elon Musk tried to launch the world's first privately owned rocket and failed, he told himself, “I'm going to try again, and I WILL get that thing into orbit.” (Well, maybe not exactly like that, but you get the point.)

And so his company SpaceX went back to the drawing board and got it right after the third attempt.

Elon affirmed his truth and it manifested into reality. In the same way, you can choose to affirm whatever truth applies to you.

Be honest with yourself and acknowledge the things that TRULY matter to you.

You know it, and the Universe knows it.

The key is to repeat it yourself every day. For example, if you know deep in your heart that you want to make a better life for yourself, you can say something like this:

“I may be struggling right now, but I know deep inside that I have what it takes to improve my life. I see myself transforming into a happier, wealthier person who makes other people's lives brighter.”

When you operate from even the tiniest shred of truth, you can grow that into a powerful force over time.

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Step #9: Fail spectacularly

Here's something most people don't know about the Law of Attraction: before you can enjoy success and find true happiness, you need to crash and burn.

It's better to go after what you want and risking failure rather than playing it safe and not trying at all.

To create order in your life, you'll have to embrace the chaos that comes before it.

This is where you'll find the real lessons, even if they hurt a little.

(Or in some cases, a LOT).

Think of yourself as the beautiful Phoenix, like in the legends.

Imagine burning off bits and pieces of yourself that you don't need. As you rise from the ashes, you're reborn into a NEW YOU.

That's evolution. It may be an imperfect and unpleasant process, but the results are worth it.

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Step #10: Remove your BIGGEST barrier to success

People don't realize that their greatest roadblock is none other than their own mindset.

They may say they want something to happen, but don't REALLY mean it.

For instance, someone might want to lose weight, but they don't want it bad enough.

Worse, they might not actually believe they can shed those pounds. A part of them refuses to acknowledge the faintest possibility of it happening.

This is pretty much why people NEVER attract the things they want in life.

In order to remove this barrier, you'll need to change something inside you.

You need to dig deep and understand WHY you don't want it as much as you say you do.

Are you scared of suffering through the process of getting what you want?

This is what turns most people off - they simply can't process the discomfort involved with growing up.

At the same time, you need to deal with the reasons why you think that your desired reality is impossible.

It could be some deep-seated beliefs brought about by past events, or experiences growing up.

Once you sort this out, you'll be free to do what you want without any pre-programmed beliefs holding you back.

Now, these ten steps we just talked about will get your foot in the door. Once you start doing them regularly, you'll experience remarkable breakthroughs you didn't think were possible.

But if you want to witness even MORE changes on a massive (or even cosmic) scale, you need to check out my FULL course called Manifestation Miracle.

Like the name suggests, I enjoyed nothing short of a life-changing revolution not too long ago.

In a lot of ways, my situation was the same as Philip's. I worked myself to the bone and felt unfulfilled.

I was trapped in my soul-crushing career. Even though I needed the money, I HATED having to put up a hollow appearance of a happy, successful businesswoman.

But then I discovered how turn my mind into a magnet for prosperity and abundance…

Learn how I unlocked the secret to ATTRACTING anything AND everything I wanted - CLICK HERE to watch the video now…

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careerclass · 3 years

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A "Short" Reflection

As a medical doctor who spent 5.5 years in medical school, I thought there are many things I don't know outside this profession. On some previous occasions, when I had to collaborate with someone from another background, I feel that their world is different in many ways from mine. Or, when I listen to non-medical worker stories, their struggle in the workplace, their struggle in social life, always made me think "these are very new stories I never encounter in my life or listen from my doctor friends!"

With that thought, I decided to join this class. To answer a simple question: How do people live their lives?

It has been 8 months on this journey and I encountered tremendous insight about people. For example, LinkedIn and career acceleration. In my profession, the utilization of this social media in searching for jobs is not popular. There are so many job vacancies in Indonesia health services, disseminated from mouth-to-mouth, from faculty, or from friends. They are looking for us to work in their hospital, public health center, or other health facilities. They are, if I dare to say, craving for us, desperately need us (sorry to exaggerate a little bit), especially during this pandemic. LinkedIn, if I must say, often plays as a formality, except if you are interested to work in a particular workplace, such as a researcher in WHO. But, to be a clinician in public health services? I don't think LinkedIn plays an important role here.

Contrary to others who are not medical doctors, this social media plays as a stepping stone for their career pathways. This will be the first "door" in their meeting with clients or employee finders. The recruitment process is also very competitive. For some occasions, LinkedIn determines whether the opportunity to accelerate their career arises or not.

Disclaimer: I don't mean to make the health professions look "cheap" and "easy". No. I want to point out that, we, as a human, have its own role and challenges in this life. While medical doctors have to deal with death and other emergency situation where human life is at the stake, other professions have their own challenges during this pandemic. Maybe the stake of being laid off in the office, the decrease of clients, human resources crisis, and etc. And this class exposed me to those realities.

Of course, I learned various soft skills during my journey in Career Class 2021, such as financial planning, project management, Individual Development Plan (IDP), and so on. But, beyond that, the most thing I learned in the past eight months is about empathy.

I learned how life goes on outside my world as a medical doctor. I was exposed to others' struggles, how difficult it is to chase your dream job, how difficult it is to pass the interview test (especially as a fresh graduate), how big deal it is to have a side hustle, and the list goes on. Gradually, I have a better picture of the answer of my question before taking the class. I become more understanding, more aware of the patients' problems, and become wiser in giving therapy or suggesting solutions. I become more capable in standing in someone's shoes, which support my responsibility as a medical doctor to see human as a whole, to humanize humans.

I realize this class might help in accelerating the medical doctor's professionalism, as medical doctor's most important role is "to cure sometimes, to relieve often, and to comfort always". And "to comfort", a medical doctor needs to be humanist, to be empathetic towards others.

#remahnastar #medical doctors #empathy

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years

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Duke is academia's meanest trademark bully

Two of the most astute IP scholars I know also happen to be two of the best legal writers I know, and also happen to work at one of the worst IP abusers in the country: Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle, of Duke University, the nation's leading academic trademark abuser.

Duke has a universal reputation for being a serious trademark abuser, but Jenkins and Boyle wanted to empirically investigate that reputation. The result is "Mark of the Devil: The University as Brand Bully," forthcoming in Fordham IPLJ.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3780381

To do empirical work, you have to find stuff to count. The problem is that questions like "who is the biggest bully?" are stubbornly qualitative, and quantizing Duke's conduct risks incinerating the most important elements in the quest for some kind of quantitative residue.

But the authors hit on a very good quantitative/qualitative methodology: they would count trademark oppositions, which are legal filings sent after a trademark has received preliminary approval. That way, they'd be counting oppositions to trademarks that had some merit.

Even better: trademark oppositions have to be accompanied by legal arguments explaining why the university thinks the trademark should be blocked, and that produces a qualitative account of how Duke thinks about its trademark.

Then Jenkins and Boyle used their considerable legal knowledge to characterize each opposition's argument on the basis of how plausible or stupid it was, quantizing the qualitative question of whether Duke's lawyers were fucking around.

Some background: universities have reinvented themselves as brand-factories and oriented their activities around slapping their logos on random shit and selling it. That's why Ohio State applied for a trademark on, I shit you not, the word "the."

Boise State asked for a trademark on all non-green football fields. U Texas wants the trademark over making devil horns with your fingers ("I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of metalheads suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced").

The trademark and licensing business is a squalid affair. The (grossly overstated, rarely realized) risk of a mark lapsing into the public domain ("genericide") justifies endless bullying of people who say and do normal things that glance off your trademarks.

Trademark was established to protect buyers, by allowing the makers of well-known goods to punish rivals who sought to deceive their customers. Over the years, trademark has been distorted into just another grift, a way to make the rich, richer.

As the authors point out, citing Mark Lemley et al, there's no good trademark justification for allowing a university to snuff out "counterfeit" tees - the buyers of these items haven't been tricked into getting a bargain on a way to advertise their team allegiance.

But the expansion of trademark into an economic right for mark-makers (and away from a way of protecting the public from deceptive sellers), combined with the bogeyman of genericide add up to a perfect business for the greedy and unscrupulous. For bullies.

So, is Duke a bully?

Oh shit yes.

Let's look at some graphs. Here's how Duke stacks up against comparable US institutions in terms of how often it challenges a trademark.

They slice this data many ways but it always looks like this: Duke is a huge outlier.

But wait! Maybe those trademark cancellations are good, actually. So let's go to the quantized, hand-coded qualitative assessments of Duke's arguments.

They're garbage.

"85% of Duke’s oppositions were coded either clearly erroneous or far-fetched"

But wait! Maybe the authors are being mean to Duke. What's "erroneous or far-fetched?" Well, it seems that Duke challenges any trademark application containing "Duke," the letter "D," a devil, the world blue, or any word that sounds like "duke."

All of this is laid out with beautiful clarity in the paper, and the back third of the paper moves on to ask What It All Means - why is Duke such a godawful bully. The authors entertain several possibilities, like perverse incentives in trademark, etc.

But they don't draw conclusions. I have one, and it may be uncomfortable for my honorable and good lawyer friends, which is that law has a bullying problem. There are many fields where esoteric knowledge gives you the power to coerce others, but the law is especially bad.

Luckily, most of my experience of lawyers has been with people who fight for the underdog, but honestly, I think they're the exception. I had a very eye-opening experience about 15 years ago, when a friend asked me to come speak to some co-workers.

My friend worked at a giant company in a creative unit, and he asked me if I'd come speak to his group. It was close by home and I told him of course I'd do it. A day before I was meant to come by, he emailed apologetically to say that legal had sent him a contract for me.

Now, I wasn't charging this massive, profitable company a dime. It was a favor for a pal. But I looked at the contract and it was bonkers - like, I promised I'd never mention the name of the company in print, ever, without written permission.

I told my friend I couldn't sign that clause and he told me he understood, but the legal department wouldn't let me in the building unless I signed it. I canceled the talk. A couple months later, I met a lawyer from the company at a signing and I told him this story.

He grimaced and said he knew whose doing that was, another lawyer in the department who counted their successes by how badly they could humiliate the people who contracted with the company. He listed several of these, each more outrageous than the last.

This wasn't just a power-trip, it was sadism. And it's not limited to that lawyer or that company. I sent back two minor, small-dollar publishing contracts today that had abominable language in them - blanket indemnities, binding arbitration, huge rights grabs.

These aren't (or weren't) standard. There's no business reason for them. I mean, I *can't* indemnify a multinational corporation against all claims for the simple reason that I couldn't afford to hire lawyers to argue their case. I'd just go bust.

There is a toxic strain of competitive sadism in the law, an ethic of victory through someone else's humiliating defeat. If I had to guess why Duke smashes all those trademark applicants' dreams, I'd say that sadism is playing a major role.

#pluralistic

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Squid Game’s Scathing Critique of Capitalism

https://ift.tt/3kOEMpF

This Squid Game article contains MAJOR spoilers.

From the very first game of ddakji out in the real world with Train to Busan actor Gong Yoo, Squid Game poses the question: how far would you go for money? How much of your body, your life, would you trade to keep the wolves at bay and to get to live the life you’ve always dreamed? Once you start, could you stop, even if you wanted to? And in the end, would it even be worth it? While Squid Game depicts an attempt to answer these questions taken to the extreme, they are the same essential questions posed to everyone living under capitalism: What kind of job, what terrible hours, what back-breaking labor, what level of abuse, what work/life imbalance will we tolerate in exchange for what we need or want to live? Unlike many examples of this genre, Squid Game is set in our contemporary reality, which makes its scathing critique of capitalism less of a metaphor for the world we live in and more of a literal depiction of life under capitalism.

Squid Game’s Workers

At the most basic level, the entire competition within Squid Game would not exist without extreme financial distress creating a ready pool of players. It’s no coincidence that Gi-hun’s hard times started when he lost his job, followed by violence against the workers who went on strike. Strike-breakers and physical violence against striking workers may feel like an antiquated idea to an American audience. South Korea, however, has something of an anti-labor reputation, with only 10% of its workers in unions and laws limiting unions to negotiating pay, among other restrictions. In the US, the anti-labor fight is alive and well, though transformed, where it takes the shape of the deceptively named “Right to Work” laws, which benefit corporations and make it harder for unions to operate.

As noted in our review, (most of) the players choose to leave and then willingly return to the arena, which separates Squid Game from other entries in the genre like the Hunger Games series and Escape Room. This element of volition contributes to the series’ primary critical goal. As Mi-nyeo and others brought up early on, they’re getting killed in the real world too, but at least inside they might actually get something for their troubles.

As an anti-capitalist parable, the only ways to fight back or upend the game in some small way are through acts of solidarity or by turning down the allure of the cash. The final clause in the game’s consent form states that the game can end if a majority of players agree to do so. After the brutal Red Light, Green Light massacre in the first, they do exactly that. The election might as well be a union vote. It’s shocking that the contract for the game included an escape clause at all, but it seems the host and his ilk enjoy at least allowing the illusion of free will if nothing else. The players who didn’t return after the first vote to leave the game, though unseen in this narrative, are perhaps the wisest of all.

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During tug of war, Gi-hun’s team surprises everyone by winning. Their teamwork, unity of purpose, and superior strategy help them defeat a stronger adversary, which is a basic principle of labor organizing, albeit usually not at the expense of the lives of other workers. Player 1 (Il-nam) and Player 240 (Ji-yeong) each find their own way to beat the game by essentially backing out of the competition during marbles. In exchange for friendship and choosing the circumstances of their own deaths, Ji-yeong and Il-nam each make their own, ethically sound choice under this miserable system. Il-nam gets an asterisk since he was never going to die, but he still found a choice beyond merely “kill” or “be killed” by teaching his Gganbu one “last” lesson and helping him continue on in the game.

In the end, Gi-hun confounds the VIPs and the Front Man by coming to the precipice of victory and simply walking away. Under capitalism, this group of incredibly rich men simply could not understand how someone could come so close to claiming their prize, and choose not to. But for Gi-hun, human life always had greater value. Gi-hun followed (Player 67) Sae-byeok’s advice and stayed true to himself, refusing to actively take anyone’s life, especially not the life of his friend.

Squid Game’s Ruling Class

Since the competition only exists because of the worst aspects of capitalism, it’s not surprising that in the end, it is itself a capitalist endeavor. Ultra-wealthy VIPs, who mostly seem to be white, Western men, spectate for a price and bet on the game. In their luxury accommodations, they lounge on silent human “furniture” and mistreat service staff. In one notable example, a VIP threatens to kill a server (who the audience knows to be undercover cop Hwang Jun-ho) if he doesn’t remove his mask, even though the VIP knows it would cost the server his life.

Perhaps most enraging of all is what Player 1, who turns out to actually be the Host, has to say to Gi-hun a year after the game ends. It all circles back to the game’s existential connection to economics; on the one hand, there is the unshakeable link to a population in which a significant portion of people suffer from dire financial woes. On the other hand, there is the Host and his cronies, the ultra-rich who are so bored from their megarich lives that they decided to bet on deadly human bloodsport for fun just so they could feel something again, as though they were betting on horses.

In spite of the enormous gulf between the two, the Host attempts to draw comparisons between the ultra-wealthy and the extreme poor, saying both are miserable. His little joke denies the reality of hunger, early death, trauma, and many other ways that being poor is actively harmful, both physically and mentally. It’s the kind of slow death that makes risking a quick one in the arena seem reasonable. He and his buddies were just kind of bored. Moreover, the Host denies the role of economic coercion in players taking part in the game, insisting that everyone was there of their own free will. But what free will can there be for people who owe millions, with families at home to care for and creditors at their back, when someone comes along and offers a solution, even a dangerous one? Anyone who has taken a dodgy job offer to get away from a worse one, or because they’re unemployed and the rent and college loans are due, knows that there is a limit to how truly free our choices can be when we need money, especially if there’s little to no safety net.

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Throughout the series, it is clear that someone had to be funding Squid Game at a high level. Unlike science fiction or fantasy takes, the show is grounded in our current reality, so the large-scale, high-tech obstacles and the island locale must have cost a pretty penny. Of course for any who see it as unrealistic, consider the example of Jeffrey Epstein, a man who bought an island from the US government and ran a sexual abuse and human trafficking ring not entirely disimilar (though far more pedestrian in its purpose) from this one.

The Host is able to pay for everything because he works in – you guessed it – banking. It’s a profession where he gained wealth by moving capital around. Given the Korean debt crisis – South Korea has the highest household debt in the world, both in size and growth – his profession makes him a worthy villain, in the same way the Lehman Brothers were after the 2008 crash. The bank executive calls in Gi-hun to offer him investment products and services, because of course someone with 45 billion won can accrue significantly more money passively, and who wouldn’t want that? Gi-hun’s decision to walk away is a callback to his earlier attempt to walk away from Squid Game when millions of dollars was within his grasp.

Throughout the series, the people running the game actively pit the players against one another in much the same way capitalism pits workers against one another. Whether they’re giving the players less food to encourage a fight overnight, the daily influx of cash every time another player dies, or giving them knives for the evening, the mysterious people pulling the strings want the players to fight each other like crabs in a barrel so they can’t work together to figure out what’s going on or take on the guys in red jumpsuits. Though there are notable examples of the players working together to succeed, it is always within the rules of the system. It is never treated as a viable or likely option for the players to team up and take the blood money literally hanging over their heads or to prevent death, merely to redirect it or choose how they will die. No, to win that, they must play the Squid Game’s rules.

In our society, this kind of worker-vs-worker rhetoric takes the form of employers telling workers their workload is harder or they can’t go on vacation or get a raise because of fellow employees who leave or go on maternity leave.. In reality, these are all normal aspects of managing a business that employers should plan for, and their failure to do so is not the fault of their workers. Much like in Squid Game, it benefits managers and owners if workers are too busy being mad at each other to have time or energy to fight the system and those who make unjust rules in the first place.

Squid Game’s Managers

The Front Man insists the game is fair, gruesomely hanging the dead bodies of those involved in the organ harvesting scheme because they traded medical knowledge for advanced intel on the game. However, like capitalism, there are many ways that the system is clearly rigged, no matter what the people at the top insist. There’s the obvious corruption in the organ harvesting ring, but even at its “purest” form, the game is not equitable. Sometimes the managers and soldiers in red jumpsuits stand by when unfair things happen, like Deok-su and his cronies stealing food. At other times, the people in charge intervene in player squabbles, like enforcing nonviolence during marbles and elections but encouraging violence at other times. They especially set things up to their own advantage, such as cutting the lights so the players couldn’t see the glass in the penultimate game, or the way they set up the election. Everyone knew how everyone else voted, they shared the total amount of money immediately beforehand, in an attempt to sway votes, calling to mind Amazon’s scare tactics before the recent unionization vote.

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Ultimately, much like any manager/employer, the Front Man’s insistence on fairness has nothing to do with the actual value of equality, but rather the capitalist need to ensure betters are happy with the stakes and their chance at a favorable outcome.

Even the workers, soldiers and managers in red jumpsuits, who seem to be in charge, are ultimately only in power (and alive) so long as they serve the needs of the system. Like so many low-level managers, many wield their tiny amount of power ruthlessly, shooting players with impunity or running their organ harvesting side gig. It soon becomes clear that they’re as expendable as players, if not moreso, and the Front Man shoots them without hesitating. A player asks (and it’s too bad we never learned) what “they” did to the people in red jumpsuits to get them to run this game, but it’s not too hard to guess. They seem to be very young men, who likely needed money and wouldn’t be missed if they never returned.

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The biggest trick capitalism ever pulled was convincing workers it’s a zero-sum game, that anything we want but don’t have is the fault of someone else who “took it” from us. Within the game, that means every player was a living obstacle to the money, and that Gi-hun should kill his childhood friend to succeed and celebrate when he’s done. But as we see after he “wins,” even without taking Sang-woo’s life himself, the money isn’t worth it. The greater success would have been both men walking out of the arena alive.

The post Squid Game’s Scathing Critique of Capitalism appeared first on Den of Geek.

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