#and also maybe for the people are cannot figure out suit anatomy

[arlcn]

formalwear suits: a trilogy

(not a tutorial)

[youllallriseintheink]

Put in his Place

Here is a one-off of Bertrum and Nathan playing a prank on Joey. This is going to be really goofy.

After this, I’m doing the two-part Lacie x Abby story. That’ll be a lot more serious. So if this kind of thing isn’t your cup of tea, stay tuned!

—-

Bertrum’s visits to oversee the construction of Bendyland were rarely eventful. Lacie generally had everything under control, as she did now. Seeing all his men (and women) constructing the rides that he’d designed was like watching the coming together of a masterpiece, or the precise work of a machine.

“You there!” he boomed at one of his men, who turned to him, terrified. “Those bolts need to be tighter. Keep up like that and you’ll get someone killed!”

“O-okay, sir!” The young man replied. Bertrum smiled and nodded to let him know it was okay. And it was- Lacie would have caught the mistake.

Despite the client, coming out of retirement had not been a mistake.

“Oooh, Beertiee!” came a voice.

Oh, the client. Joey Drew. The young man turned to look at the unfolding scene, but immediately turned back to his work once he caught Bertrum’s glare. Bertrum took a deep breath, and turned to the most loathsome part of his job. “Yes, Mr. Drew?”

“A very important person is coming to the studio. I was just wondering if you could make it look... I don’t know... better in here? I mean, the air is just thick with sawdust, and the lighting conditions aren’t exactly the best... and maybe you could have at least a few rides up and going for tomorrow afternoon?”

Bertrum clenched his jaw, took a deep breath, and managed to answer this callow excuse for a business owner in a dignified manner. “Mr. Drew, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re in a warehouse. There is going to be sawdust everywhere no matter how often we sweep because people are cutting pieces of wood. The lighting conditions of the warehouse you rented are not in my control. As for getting the rides up and going, no, I cannot do that three months before our negotiated deadline. Do you understand?”

“Oh, but I thought you could do it. With all your experience and competence... I kind of thought I’d show it off to my good pal Mr. Arch! He’s coming for a tour tomorrow and I want to impress him. And I mean, what does it say if you can’t pull it off?”

Bertrum was unphased by Joey’s attempt at manipulation. “You do not judge a chef by how a meal looks when it is half-cooked. Wait, did you say ‘Mr. Arch?’” Nathan Arch supplied Bertrum with the steel for his rides, and Bertrum had met him a few times at business conventions and fancy parties and the like. They’d gotten along well enough.

Joey nodded.

“Trust me, Mr. Drew- Nathan knows what a construction site looks like. Because he’s a business man who has overseen a few of them in his lifetime. He won’t see this as a mess but as a well-functioning machine.”

The condesension Joey was used to, but he was stunned as soon as he heard the word, “Nathan” from Bertrum’s lips.

“Yes, Joey, we've met. Perhaps the three of us should do this little tour together.”

“Sounds like a great idea, Bertie! Meet me in my office at nine tomorrow!”

---

Joey was on cloud nine. Nathan had been letting Joey take him on these annual (well, aside from the ones Nathan missed, which was most of them) tours for a decade, and each time Joey had done his best to impress him. This year, he’d wanted to show Nathan some Bendyland attractions, but this was even better! What better way to show Nathan that he was in the big leagues than to have this tour alongside the industry legend he’d befriended. On his way to his office, Joey checked his suit and hair for the millionth time- which was really unnecessary, since he’d decided on black everything to avoid ink stains, but one couldn’t be too careful.

Joey opened his office door to find that Nathan and Bertrum were already there, sitting in chairs facing the door and smiling at him. Suddenly, Joey felt a lot less confident. And he should have- Berturm had been pleased to find out that Nathan thought of Joey as just as much of a try-hard nouveau-riche as he did, and they had made a plan to put him in his place.

“Nathan. Hi. I see you’re already acquainted with my business partner, Bertie. How was your flight from New Orleans?” In hindsight, the fact that Bertrum didn’t react to his nickname should have been the first sign.

“Wonderful. Joey, Bertrum and I were just talking about how you’ve bloomed as a businessman since he started working with you. He’s very proud. I never realized that you were real deal until now, but, well! I have to apologize. All this time I was refusing to treat you like a rich man. Are you ready to be treated like a rich man, Joey?”

Joey was stunned and ecstatic. He’d been vying for Nathan’s respect since they’d met, and he’d finally done it! “I- I- yes! Thank you for finally realizing how brilliant I am, Nathan, old buddy! Now, are you ready for a tour?”

“I am.”

With that, they went. Joey took Nathan on a tour of the animation department and showed off his fancy new technology, the toy department complete with waterfall, the plans for Bendyland (but not the dirty, dusty warehouse), and even snuck in a tour of the music department while Sammy was on lunch- he wasn’t about to let Nathan know that he let Sammy call shots on when he could visit his own music department! Today, he was to be large and in charge.

At fair amount of time into the tour, as the trio overlooked the toy department, Nathan spoke up. “It seems like your company is growing, Joey! When did you start investing in the steel wool of this place?”

There was a pause as Joey tried to figure out how to respond.

“Oh come on, Joey. Steel wool. The thing that all successful businessmen know about. The measurement by which other high-class men will know to judge your business’ future chances of success. When did you start investing in it?”

Joey’s face was beginning to flush with embarrassment as he looked into Bertrum and Nathan’s completely calm, understanding faces. “Um, I, started investing in it in 1936. Can we take a little detour, boys? My company is just doing so well that I think I should go order more steel wool right now. Nathan, how much would you suggest?”

“Hmm... about seventy or eighty tons should do it.”

“Great! Follow me.”

Joey led the two of them to the accounting and finance department and knocked on the door of their director of finance. The door opened to a weary-looking man who did not seem at all happy to see them.

“Grant- I’d like you to increase our stockpile of steel wool. Increase it to ninety tons!”

Grant nodded slowly, trying to work out how much that would cost. When one’s boss regularly asks you to account for items such as coffins and electric chairs, one learns not to ask unnecessary questions.

Bertrum, not wanting his financially precarious client to throw out so much money over a prank, shoved Joey aside and whispered something in Grant’s ear.

Whatever it was, it put a coy smile on Grant’s face. “Wow. Ninety tons of steel wool this year. Well, Joey, it sure is good to work under such a rich man, and with such a promising company.”

Joey beamed. Thank God Grant was playing along with him having bought it previously. But soon, he’d have that important status symbol, and respect amongst his peers.

The door closed, and (over the faint sound of snickering) Bertrum spoke up. “You know, Mr. Drew, steel wool isn’t just an item. It’s also in one’s personal style.”

“Oh? And how would you rate mine, Bertie?”

“Hmm... middling,” Nathan replied.

“Yes, ‘middling’ is a good word for it.”

Joey’s face fell. “Oh. Well, I was about to update my wardrobe. Maybe you could help me find something better?” God, he hated asking for help, but clearly he didn’t know much about being a rich man yet.

“We’d be pleased to!” Bertrum beamed, putting an arm around Joey’s shoulders. “It’s been so long since I had a young, inexperienced, callow little business boy under my wing!”

Given the circumstances, all Joey could do was smile and fantasize about rearranging Bertrum’s anatomy.

Soon, they were in a high-end tailor shop. “Just tell him what you want,” Nathan advised, “he’s a rich man, he’ll know what to do.”

Joey nodded and rang the bell on the front desk. The tailor, who had been at the other side of the room at his sewing machine, came right over.

“Hello, I’d like to buy an outfit that lets people know that my company has a lot of steel wool.”

The shopkeeper squinted at Joey like he was an alien.

“Why don’t we help you find the style he’s looking for while he takes his measurements?” Nathan suggested.

As soon as Joey getting his measurements in the changing room, Bertrum and Nathan explained the situation to the tailor, and by the time Joey came out, they’d selected the perfect outfit for him. It was a glittering silver suit with a purple tie. The light from an open window hit it and nearly blinded Joey.

“What... is that?” Joey asked, starting to wonder if he was being messed with.

“I believe we have found your new outfit,” Bertrum asserted, “the perfect embodiment of steel wool.”

“Cutting edge- in a few months, everyone will be wearing them, but you’ll be among the first,” Nathan added.

“No, it can’t be. I mean, you’re saying this, but the two of you are wearing plainly coloured stuff...”

“No, they’re right,” the shopkeeper interjected, “I’ve actually received many, many orders of these from wealthy business owners. In fact, this is the last one I have!”

Joey grumbled, but he put on the suit, which was stiff and uncomfortable and was shedding glitter into his hair and leaving a trail behind him. He paid the shopkeeper a sizable amount of money and left in a huff.

The shopkeeper stuck his head out the door. “Remember- we do exchanges, but no refunds!” he called.

The summer sun was beginning to dip below the horizon. Bertrum and and Nathan had talked about taking Joey to a party to be laughed at, but Bertrum had decided it would make it too obvious that this was a prank. And anyhow, they’d come up with a better idea.

“Well, Joey, I think I should be getting back to my hotel room. But, maybe you could come with me, and I could show you one more aspect of what it means to be higher class. It’s obvious that you could use the help.”

“I- fine. Whatever. I don’t care.”

“Wonderful idea,” Bertrum said, “and on the cab ride over, I could give you some pointers of my own.”

“Oh, and Joey? Step into the shade, please. It seems that that suit turns you into a blinding hazard when the sun is low.”

After a miserable cab trip listening to Bertrum ramble incoherently about things Joey barely understood and using terms he’d never heard of (which made Joey feel simultaneously even more like he knew nothing and even more like he was being toyed with), the trio pulled up to the hotel that Nathan was staying at. Once they were in Nathan’s hotel room, Nathan kicked off his shoes and socks and laid on the bed with his feet hanging off of it. Normally, Joey would have some sort of teasing quip for him, but he was feeling a little worn down and just wanted to get the rest of the visit over with.

“So, Joey, the last thing we’re going to teach you about acting like you’ve got it, is how to give a good foot massage.”

Joey flinched in disgust. Then, he stopped. “Actually, I think it’s time I taught the two of you a lesson- this one on storytelling. You see, there’s this thing called the suspension of disbelief- and you just broke it. There is no ‘steel wool,’ this suit is a crime against humanity, and there is no way that it’s custom for rich men rub each others’ feet.”

Nathan laughed, and Bertrum laughed with him, doubling over in laughter and using Nathan’s shoulder to steady him once he collected himself. “Mr. Drew, you do realize that the only way you could believe that is if no other rich man had ever offered you a foot massage, right?”

“Humiliating.”

“You really told on yourself there.”

Tears were forming in Joey’s eyes- which was ridiculous because he was still sure that this was fake. He also knew that surviving two plagues had left Bertrum a considerable germaphobe. “Alright then, Bertie, show me your technique! Show me how a rich man does it!” he took off his shoes and threw them one at a time into Nathan’s arms.

“Okay, okay, we were joking!” Bertrum admitted before Joey could remove any more clothing.

“But... I think we made our point.”

“What point could you have possibly made except that you’re a bunch of assholes?!” Joey yelled.

“That compared to us, you’re new. We know it, you know it, stop trying to convince us or yourself otherwise. You wouldn’t have fallen for any of that unless some part of you realized that we know better than you on some things. And disrespecting Mr. Piedmont isn’t going to change that.”

Anger built up in Joey’s chest. He screamed in rage, punched a wall, and left, slamming the door on his way out. Then, less than a minute later, he knocked on the door. Bertrum opened it.

“Uh, could I use the phone? I need to call my accountant so he won’t buy dozens of tons of cleaning supplies.”

“Oh, we explained it to him. He won’t be ordering a thing. See you at our next weekly meeting.”

Without another word, Joey left. He could never look Bertrum or Nathan straight in the eye again.

[unsoundedcomic]

I skimmed through the Loomis PDF you linked and it's quite good, but it's very disheartening that Loomis advises his students to avoid drawing overweight or short people (or anyone who has an "unideal" figure) because it won't be commercial.

-- It was good advice back when this book was first published. The forties, I think? Commercial illustration was all of idealized housewives taking roast chickens out of the oven, and husbands in their three piece suits. Comic books featured exactly two women - one old, one young - with varying hairstyles, and maybe half a dozen men in different coloured tights :3

Honestly I’ve never read any of the text in Loomis’ books; I always assumed it would say pretty much what you reported! I find the muscle and landmark diagrams the most useful, and also the perspective diagram of the figures moving through space. What Loomis does is show us how to translate anatomy to flattened graphic structure. Once you understand that, every different body type is only a variation of that structure.

Think of it like baking. Once you understand how to make a perfect loaf of plain white bread, you can tweak the recipe to make hundreds of different varieties of much more interesting bread.

Likewise, once you understand idealized human anatomy you can apply a layer of fat atop it to make an overweight person (fat works almost exactly like a layer of clothing atop the body), or emphasise bony landmarks and shrink muscles to make an underweight person, or shorten the proportion of legs to torso to make a short person, or stretch the proportions out to make them taller. Getting the “recipes” for these different body alterations comes from observation and practise, which there’s no shortcut for and which Loomis cannot help with much.

[purkinje-effect]

The Anatomy of Melancholy, 34

Table of Contents. Second Instar II, Ch1. Go to previous. Go to next. The beginning of Second Instar. ‘Choly worries too much.

Melancholy rode Angel past a sign which indicated ‘turn left now to visit Jonathan Emery Historical Site,’ and continued down Route 62 East through Concord. His mind wandered a bit, and he decided that, at least for the time being, donning the vault suit wasn’t so bad. Now that he had found new foundation-wear in the form of the surgical corset, the bodysuit fit acceptably, and contrary to the Vault-Tec staff’s insistence, wearing anything underneath it didn’t seem to have impeded the effects of its technologically advanced lining. He could appreciate its efficient thermal regulation, and also its dry-wicking technology. It seemed to sync up with his Pip-Boy as well somehow, though beyond introducing an additional icon on his health screen, he couldn’t discern how at a glance it even mattered. Of course, he still wore the belt from his dress military uniform so that he could utilize the suspender cases which held his then limited stock of syringer ammunition, as well as his white Pharm Corps coat. To make himself less visible at a distance, he figured the coat would dull out the bright royal blue of the vault suit, and the belt and bracers would dull out the rich gold edging along the bodysuit’s zipper and collar.

His canvas ankle braces didn’t fit inside the short boots that Vault-Tec had provided as footwear with the vault suit, so he stored the boots in Angel’s compartment and continued on with the oxfords from his dress uniform.

Following the road around the perimeter of a quarry property, the route switched to North Road Route 4, and from there it only took a matter of minutes before they finally came upon the junkyard ‘Choly sought. They entered the open double hurricane fence gates, and ‘Choly surveyed the yard with the impression it had been heavily looted in recent years, but knew better than to trust his eyes. The only visible salvage at a glance seemed to be car bodies stacked as many as five high, but he could tell robotics parts lay scattered here as well. Without going up to the piles, he couldn’t tell what robots they’d once belonged to. He dismounted from Angel and kept his syringer rifle at the ready, in case they happened upon any unwelcoming occupants in the office at the South corner of the property.

“Before we get to work, I think we should stop for lunch first.” He opened the metal door with its reinforced glass window, and skimmed the room with his weapon before dropping it.“Guess it’s just you and me as usual.”

“I can appreciate that,” Angel replied, following him inside.“You’ve only the one Melancholia left. What should I fetch you from my stores?”

“You could put on a pot of coffee, and fish out a sweet roll and the deviled eggs.”

“As you wish! Sounds like we’re here for the day. Forgive me for asking something likely quite obtuse, but Sir...What are we doing at the robotics disposal ground?”

“Making use of the facilities to repair you.” The chemist slung his rifle onto his back and pulled up a folding metal chair, sitting at the operational terminal to poke around.“And upgrade you, if you’ll allow it. We can stay here a day or two I think, before rations make it more urgent to keep moving. Getting you freshened up is my top priority today.”

“Beyond refilling my Handy Fuel tank, and reaffixing my laser attachment, I can’t possibly imagine what upgrades you’ve in mind.” It filled the percolator with canned water and measured out the coffee grounds.“There’s only so many different features that General Atomics offered for the Mister Handy line.”

“If you’ll recall, one of your tendrils is a Miss Nanny's, actually. Looking back on it, I’m surprised the DIA let me put in any sort of custom order for receiving you. All kinds of robots got discarded here. Maybe we can find a Mister Gutsy or two, to get you some hardier shell plating. I’m sure there’s some paint laying around, so that you don’t look quite so cobbled together after we’re done.” He looked up from the log entry for what all had been disposed of there between June and October 2077.“This place was a robotics graveyard on the surface. Most of its clients just wanted a place to dump broken or defective robots on the cheap, no questions asked. But the owner made good money by also offering salvage scrap as well as repairs. There’s good equipment here. I was taking a chance, coming out here without knowing for sure, but it looks like it’s survived in tact, unrusted, here in the office space. --Hm. What’s a Robobrain?”

“It doesn’t sound like anything General Atomics might have created... Perhaps it’s a RobCo product?”

“That’s my thought. I’m not nearly as versed with RobCo technologies as I am with G.A.” His head drooped over the terminal keyboard. “You wouldn’t dislike it if we mixed components between Nanny and Gutsy parts for you, would you? My priority is maximizing your hydraulics, to make it as easy as possible for you to carry me. I... I feel bad that you have to.”

“Mister Carey, it’s company-approved to combine any of the parts families you listed. As long as we don’t void my warranty, I want to optimize my performance any way you see fit. Until we find a better option to increase your mobility while out and about in the Commonwealth, you can count on me to provide that service. It’s not your fault that the apocalypse so direly ruined accessibility across the state.”

“You’re sure you’re all right with it? You’re not just a wheelchair. You’re an artificial intelligence.” For a moment, the Handy only replied by handing him a melamine plate with a sweet roll and two egg halves on it, and a ceramic mug of coffee. It observed him as he took these from it, and he ate one-handed with the plate in his lap.“Thank you.”

“It’s my pleasure to see you continuing to function and excel, Sir. My behavioral matrices thrive when my owner thrives. Emotionally, physically, financially. ...Spiritually...” It let out a reserved holographic chuckle, then fell quiet.“Did you mean it, that we’re headed up to Chelmsford after this?”

With the question, suddenly the entendred use of the word exceldidn’t sound accidental. Yet, Angel hadn’t been there when he’d spoken to Missus Murphy. It couldn’t have possibly known. He set down his coffee and glasses and screwed up his face with both hands.

“I have to go to the base. I have to know what I was supposed to be working on when they sent me that letter calling me back to active duty. If they meant for me to cook more Psycho for another war, it’ll put my mind and soul at ease, knowing the nuclear exchange prevented any need for military-size shipments of the stuff. In hindsight, I suppose the fact they called me back to active duty two weeks before the bombs fell is all the proof I need that the government had advanced paranoia that something was wrong. I... I wonder if they knew what was imminent, but didn’t know how to stop it in time...?”

“Oh, Sir. That’s not a constructive mental track to get on. It doesn’t change what’s transpired since. If going to the Deenwood Compound will provide you some manner of closure, then we shall do so. But you cannot keep dwelling on a course of events over which you had no control. You have so much more control now than you ever did.”

“That’s part of the problem. Who the hell died and gave me self-agency?” He swallowed half of one of the egg halves and choked a bit, having forgotten to chew it enough. He washed down the musky, salty protein with black coffee and sat a moment to recollect himself.“I’ve made very few decisions in my life on my own behalf. And I feel like every decision I’ve made since I came back into the world has been poor.”

“Ah yes. This misguided worry again. We’re here to repair me,” it offered, topping off the mug.“I know you care about my well-being just as much as your own. It’s just that your needs have been a little more... time-sensitive, shall we say? Things will work out in the end. Just like with the wonderful people who settled into Sanctuary. They couldn’t have gotten there without us. Without you.”

“I’ve gone too long without giving you maintenance. In my own defense, I didn’t have access to the materials I needed to do true repairs and calibration. You really think they’ll be all right?”

“I’m more worried about you doing well, especially with us headed up to the Lowell area. Are you certain it’s wise? You don’t handle memory of your military career very well.”

“You’re here with me. And it’s not like Johnston will be there to put me right back to work. Besides, wouldn’t you like to figure out how Jared knew X-Cell was a Deenwood product?”

“There’s little greater meaning my programming could find, I could imagine. I’m positive that the DIA would love to nip that leak in the bud.”

‘Choly almost reminded it that the DIA likely no longer existed, but he still wasn’t completely sure. He didn’t say so, but he hoped to measure his speculation of the continued existence of the DIA, going by how Angel would react to his navigation of the military base. It ate at him, not knowing for certain whether all his behavior had not only been transmitted to some DIA outpost, but also observed by someone still surviving to this day--whether he’d eventually see consequences to his actions in Lexington. He balked into laughter and quietened himself with part of his sweet roll.

“Was it something I said?”

“It’s nothing. I just realized that the concept of having to answer for misdeeds, and the fact we’re operating on faith alone that the DIA still exists... It’s like with the Christians, and the belief that if they sin, they have to go to hell. Like they have to be held accountable by a higher power, in order to behave. A ridiculous comparison, I know, and without tact or nuance. The DIA is simply... an intangible source of authority that has not yet stepped in and punished me. Or maybe it has. I don’t know. I suppose I’ve sought accountability from others all along, to validate whether I’ve made the right choices in life.”

“Need I remind you that the Defense Intelligence Agency has offices at the Deenwood Compound. You might find those answers there as well.”

“Something in me doesn’t want to know for certain whether it exists. But you’re right, that I might.” He finished off his food and nursed on his coffee while he continued reading the terminal.“There’s something here about a Sentry Bot. Warnings not to let the temptation get the best of you, and to not under any circumstances power it on. It was dumped by government personnel, it seems. Wonder what the fuss is.”

“A shame it’s a RobCo product, isn’t it, Sir? Even if it’s survived in tact, its parts wouldn’t be compatible with a robot in the Mister Handy line.”

“They were hulking things. They had to carry the weight of a tank on their treads, with how heavy their armor was. It’d be a dream, it it were possible to harvest the hydraulics from their wheel-treads.” He glanced to the holotape on the desk, and pretended he didn’t see it was labeled ‘Combat Sentry Proto MK IV.’“It’s probably impossible, though, since mecanum mobility is a completely different mechanism than hover-thrusters. We should focus on locating Handy, Nanny, and Gutsy parts. I never said I was a genius with this stuff, so going wild is probably outside both my knowledge and skill set. Even if it were doable.”

“Just don’t overdo it, Sir. It’s all right to only do what you can manage. Even the most minor of adjustments will facilitate my facilitating you. I’m entirely content with an algorithm scan, a tank refill, and my laser repaired... and if you do feel so inclined, perhaps a bit of fresh polish.”

“First, let’s see what we can put our hands on out there.” He pocketed the holotape surreptitiously, and slung his syringer rifle onto his back while he pulled his cane from his belt. With his free hand, he brought his coffee with him. “That way, we’ll know what we’re working with.”

Go to Next »»»

[courageforbeginners]

Discouraged  August 14th, 2018

I am going to be completely honest, and quite frankly really upfront. I am feeling very discouraged. It seems like I can’t figure out what I want to do with my life anymore. I keep going back and forth, wanting different things in life. And right now, all I have is a simple list. 

1. My absolute unattainable dream: an Actress on Broadway. 

2. My somewhat attainable dream but is going to be a very rough, hard, and expensive journey: A Marine Biologist.

3. My most attainable and current pathway dream: An Editor for Novelists. 

Now time for  little explanations:

1. Broadway: 

Pros: My ultimate passion I have found in life is theater. There is just something about taking on the persona of another person that brings me joy. The stories, the characters, the emotions, everything that it takes to embody a character and to put on the best show possible, all of these things fill me to the brim with happiness. On top of adopting a new life for awhile, the theater, the stage, the spotlight, and the sense of family and community brings a sense of accomplishment to my life. The applause from each performance fuels me to bring my all night after night. I have been in productions since age eleven. I have had parts ranging from extras to principal roles. No matter my position in the cast or on the stage, I take every moment and store it in my heart. Theater is what I love doing so much, and I couldn’t imagine never doing it every again. Now that I am out of High School, my sense of community and belonging has been stripped away and I am still raw from it.  

Cons: I grew up performing in the smallest theater in the world: my tiny Christian school auditorium. The theater program was run by a very very underpaid English teacher who had a theater background. Though I love her to death, there was very little training in acting. Students who wanted to do theater, got to do it. When a high school only has 37 students total, you take what you get. Experienced or not. Good or not. Passionate or not. Those who take it seriously or not. Beggars can’t be choosers. It was like a taping of Oprah Winfrey up in there, “You get a part. You get a part. Everyone gets a part!” However, with only 37 students in the high school, the ratio of students who were interested in theater to the students who could be talked/bribed into theater to those who would never join theater was pretty skewed. This left only a handful of students who actually cared enough to try and impress on stage. This also meant that there was absolutely no possible way for us to EVER do a musical. Which for me was a blessing and a curse. The blessing would have been if I had started doing musicals when I was eleven, I would be relatively experienced by now. The curse would be the fact that I couldn’t (and can’t) sing or dance to save my life. I am aware that Broadway isn’t exclusively musicals, and that they produce plays too, but there is a huge difference in popularity. I cannot sing. I cannot dance. It is too late to begin learning. People who make it, are beyond talented and have usually been working hard since they could walk, whereas I have not. This dream is pretty much a fantasy. An unachievable goal. 

2. Marine Biology:

Pros: From the moment I could speak, I knew I wanted to work with marine animals. However, at the time, I wanted to work at Seaworld to train the dolphins and the sea lions. This too was my mother’s dream, as she is dolphin-obsessed. She never once pushed me to have this dream though, I just must have inherited it. I am in love with marine mammals too much, they are just so adorable. But as I have grown up now, I know that I probably couldn’t work at Seaworld. Half of me believes that training such intelligent animals for entertainment seems a little wrong to me. But the other half of me believe that it is pretty cool to see how these species learn and interact with humans and each other. I don’t know. The biggest thing that worries me with keeping these creatures in captivity is their comfort level and well-being. I guess, I’ll just leave that there for now until I research it further and this is not the place for this discussion. Anyways, what I’m trying to say is that, I would love to work with marine animals in an environment that is beneficial to both parties, perhaps at a reservation. 

Cons: There are many things about this path that will terrify me. First off, the biggest issue that I know is going to completely stop me from becoming a marine biologist is the biology part. Science has never been my strong suit, but the hardest thing for me to do in school ever is any type of dissection. I am too squeamish to cut into anything, which would put a huge damper on the whole biology part (I mean I did the projects but I could never willingly do it by choice). Anatomy is a no go. This just means that I couldn’t go into any veterinarian-biology side of the marine care career. However, I have talked to dolphin trainers down at Discovery Cove who have said they went the psychology/behavior route, which is a much cleaner road, and have worked in places ranging from reservations in Hawaii to the east coast. So, this is an option. However, this is a ton of schooling and a ton of money for someone coming from a lower- middle class family. On top of this, the community college I am currently enrolled at has no degree for this marine biology (they do have psychology, though), so even if I wanted to change my current major, I would have to change schools as well. I feel like with such a specific career field, finding work will be super tough. 

3. Editor for Novelists

Pros: Writing and Grammar is another one of my passions. I didn’t get big into it though until early middle school, but in elementary I always loved writing projects and assignments. For me, reading is definitely a favorite pastime, so I thought “why not be paid to read and to give my two cents.” This is why I decided that being an editor would be a great job for me. To clarify, I don’t want to be an editor for newspapers, magazines, or whatever. I specifically would love to edit novels or series (I mean I could edit whatever comes to me, though, but my first choice would be books). I want to be the person in the very back of a book to whom the author gives that little shout out to in the acknowledgements, “This book would have never come together if it weren’t for my lovely editor so-and-so.” If you pick up any book and flip to the acknowledgements, then you would see exactly what I mean. I also believe this would be a very practical career as well. Many books are being published on the daily, and I could help get someone’s voice and story out there. And just maybe, if I get in at a publishing house, I could always try to get my own writing published, and it would be fully edited!

Cons: My biggest fear with this career choice is that I will hate my life after awhile. Bare with me. I love reading and grammar as I said, but I’m terrified that this job will require me to sit in an office all day, just staring at a computer until my retinas burn out or I kill myself. Whichever comes first. Will I be stuck in an unexciting job my whole life? Will I even make it in a publishing house or will I have to freelance? Anyone can learn grammar; there are plenty of people you can hire online to edit your work or hell, even write it for you. Will I end up becoming one of those people who write college papers for students to buy? This career is my current path, but it is filled with so many possibilities and anxieties that I just don’t know.    

Final thoughts: Two of the three options could take me any where in the world. I have no clue where I will be, who I will meet, or who I will become. These thoughts may entice many, but to me they bring nothing but fear. I have no clue what to do. All the adults in my life just tell me to pray about it and that God will show me the way.  I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who I am.  I am lost. I am so discouraged. 

Will I move from here or fall from fear? 

(12:05 am)

Macin

[ladydracarysao3]

Nemesis of Neglect: A Dragon Age & Jack the Ripper Tale

Chapter Two

Disclaimer This is a canon divergent Dragon Age and True Crime mash-up of Kirkwall, and London’s notorious Jack the Ripper. It is a tale not for the faint of heart, but rather for the reader who wishes to ride a thrilling mystery of sex, deception, and murder.

[Read Chapter Two on AO3]  or  [Start with the Prologue]

Chapter Two

Hours filled with the sounds of Leandra and Carver mourning turn slowly throughout the day. Silently, Ian sits in her home and listens to her mother berate her and blame her for Bethany’s demise. Ian hasn’t the strength to object, in fact, she agrees. So, she listens and takes every hurtful word her mother cries, absorbing each one into her burden. Building blocks to strengthen her revenge. Steam to power her hate, both at herself and at Kirkwall.

Eventually, late in the evening, her mother loses the energy to continue and retires to her bedroom. All who reside in the house follow suit, and Ian lies awake in her bed, listening to the soft sobs coming from her mother’s room.

She stares at the top of her bed’s crimson canopy. She watches lights and shadows move along her stone walls, ghostly shapes haunting her from large bedroom windows. She listens to the low cracks of the wood in her small hearth after the sounds of her mother give way to exhaustion and sleep.

Death to conjurers.

The evil words repeat in her mind.

There are those who exhibit a talent in the conjuring of magic. The practice, whether natural to the person or not, is strictly forbidden by both governmental law and the law of the Maker. Those who are devout are especially zealous against anyone who may attempt at using their conjuring abilities, and the common people as a whole tend to view it as an evil and vile practice.

The self-righteous men Carver has involved himself with are some of those who think they fight against wickedness by hunting and imprisoning conjurers. Victims are rarely heard from or seen again, and those who do come back from the Templar’s hold are never the same people they once were.

The order is an unofficial, though widely accepted, special branch of the Chantry. The Chantry does not formally lay claim to the Templars, however it is one of those unspoken truths that everyone knows and most accept, even support.

Ian is not one of those supporters. She views them as a group of thugs acting as illegal enforcement for a religion. A view that was instilled in her since childhood by her father. For the reason her mother and father fled Kirkwall to begin with - where the gang of Templars is most cherished and rampant - was due to the fact that Malcolm Hawke was one of those souls who naturally took to magic. His resistance to religious persecution caused him to flee, his loving young bride in tow.

It made sense that Bethany would have inherited their father’s abilities, but she never spoke of it. Ian knew that she, too, held some talent for conjuring. However, while her father fled in order to practice his beliefs, he discouraged it from his children. To amplify or use one’s abilities was to risk one’s life. Dangerous, addictive, and highly guarded substances were sometimes involved, and Malcolm did his best to shield his children from the knowledge.

Malcolm used his own abilities far from home, often leaving to perform feats for both shady and legitimate organizations alike. He wanted a different life for his children, and he explained early on to Ian that while he saw potential within her, he wished for her to pursue a more normal way of life.

Funny how the wishes of parents work out for their offspring.

Ian followed her father’s wishes for the most part, in that course anyway. She never cared much to dabble in magic and worked on her other skills instead. She never assumed her siblings conjured, either. They never spoke of it. It was never a topic the family discussed at the dinner table. Instead, Ian held fast to ideals that opposed the Chantry and left it at that.

To think that Bethany could have been involved in magic, conjuring, bending the laws of physics with others like her… in the shadows of Lowtown…

Ian is aware of pockets, or perhaps covens, of people who practice in secret.

But Bethany?

If true, Ian knows less of her sister than she had ever imagined.

As dawn crests the smoky horizon over Hightown’s billowing black chimneys, Ian feels her mind returning. She has questions, and she’s found her voice to demand them answered.

It does not take her long to dress and storm to the city center. The Viscount’s Keep had barely unlocked its doors by the time Ian slams them open. A smattering of guardsmen and townspeople stand in the grand hall, most of whom stare wide-eyed at Ian as she marches past, startled by her loud and commanding entrance. Albeit, she has bloodlust in her eyes, there are still those in the city who find it hard not to stare when they see a woman in trousers walk by.

Quickly scaling the red carpeted marble steps at the end of the opulent hall, Ian veers toward Aveline’s office. Upon arrival, she does not knock, she does not announce herself, she whips the door open with such force that it slams into the wall making the office windows rattle.

“Why is my sister dead?” Ian demands, fists slamming onto Aveline’s large oak desk. “I want answers, Aveline.”

“Hawke,” Aveline says, slowly raising her eyes from the papers in front of her. Unlike the windowpanes, Aveline is not at all startled by the way Ian entered. It was not the first time Ian’s paraded through the keep in such a manner, in fact, it is her tendency.

The Guard Captain sighs and rubs her forehead with tense fingers. “I’m trying to figure that out.”

“Death to conjurers? What is that about, Bethany never mentioned--”

“I’m sorry to say, your sister was part of a group, a cult maybe. It seems she had magical talent that she kept secret.”

Ian slumps into a chair opposite Aveline’s desk. “Do you have any leads?”

“Unfortunately, hers was not the first murder of this nature,” Aveline admits with a drop to her shoulders.

“What are you saying, there have been others?”

“One. A man. Cut in a similar fashion with the same writing over his body.”

“Why hadn’t I heard of this, Aveline?” Ian shouts.

“Hawke, you of all people know that murder is no strange fate for those who haunt Lowtown. I had hoped it was an isolated incident. I kept the details hush in an attempt to not start a stir, or inspire others to be as gruesome.”

“And this man, he was also a conjurer? Are there other similarities?”

“Both had the message, both had their throats cut, and…” Aveline pauses and avoids eye contact.

“Tell me.”

“You no doubt noticed Bethany’s stomach. I received word from the medical examiner that… Oh, Hawke, I’m sorry.” She shakes her head, fingers once again finding purchase on the forehead that clearly plagues her with pain. “They took her womb.”

“Her womb? They took…” Ian’s voice trails off. That familiar sick feeling possesses her stomach. She feels the color leave her face, but she presses on with her questions, though her voice asks them in a weakened state. “What does that have to do with the man, or magic?”

“He had been castrated. I think it is another message of the killer’s. Even more gruesome than the writing.”

Ian ponders for a moment before her realization softly leaves her lips. “Reproduction. Eliminate conjurers entirely...”

“I’m afraid there will be more. So far, what we know is that he must be intelligent. Well-educated or with access, for him to have an understanding of anatomy, and also I think he works alone. He is either strong enough to quickly overtake his victims, or perhaps he lures them willingly. I cannot be sure which.” She pauses and watches Ian for a moment. “I want to keep this hush, Hawke. I do not want copycats or hysteria to strike our streets. I need to work this right. I have my best men going through the evidence, and I’ve been reviewing it constantly, trying to connect the dots. This all needs to be done above board, Ian. I can’t have chaos take over the investigation.”

“Aveline, people need to know. These groups of conjurers need to know they are in even more danger than normal. They have families. If I had known this, maybe I could have kept Bethany safe.”

“You didn’t even know she had magic.”

Like the pebble needed to tip the scales from sickness over to the favor of rage, Ian’s fury takes hold. In one swift movement, she slams her feet to the ground and launches her body so that her palms land on Aveline’s desk. She leans across it and sneers down at the Captain. “Well I do now, don’t I? Or at least whoever this monster is thought she was. Silence is a grave mistake. Who did she know, Aveline? Tell me.”

“I would kindly remind you that you are in the office of the Guard Captain, Hawke. You do not get to question me in such a manner, no matter our personal history, or your personal tragedy,” Aveline says. An underlying river of anger, a tremor of a warning lies within her tone.

Ian’s eyes scan the woman across her, curling her lip in a snarl. “Useless. The city guard have always been and always will be useless.” From her fists, she pushes herself upright and points to Aveline’s office window. “The little people of this city get no justice. And it’s due to the lack of care from this house that people like me even earn a living. Your men do nothing for them.” She shakes her head and turns to stalk out the door.

Aveline yells after her. “Do not take law into your own hands on this, Hawke! I’m warning you! I will not turn a blind eye to you this time! It is my duty!” The words fall on deaf ears. Ian has no trust in the government. If there was any control on this city, this wouldn’t have happened.

Her feet carry her through Kirkwall to the slums. The stark contrast between the care of the streets in Hightown, especially the Viscount district, and the laxity in Lowtown is even more apparent when traveled at once. No longer are trees and bushes decorating the clean cobblestone. No longer are there guardsmen patrolling in almost laughable numbers - whose main purpose seems to be helping the elderly society folk from their stately carriages, and knocking their billy clubs on rot iron fencing when rascal children get too loud.

None of that is present.

No, instead of wide avenues lined with beautiful estates, the streets turn smaller and smaller until bystanders and carriages alike have difficulty moving. Instead of greenery and fencing, there is filth and crates - poor folk standing with stolen baubles hollering at passersby to purchase their treasures for the lovely ladies at home. Instead of cobblestone that is swept by silent, invisible men, the streets begin to resemble more of rivers of mud, shit, and piss than anything else. And instead of kind guardsmen keeping order and helping the weak, one more likely will find them heckling or beating the numerous starving unfortunates in rags.

Ian follows the ruin to The Hanged Man. The inn happens to be the epicenter from dealings with those who do not wish to strictly follow the law. Law that has many times failed them all. If Ian wants to learn more about the underground groups of conjurers, and whom may wish them murdered, The Hanged Man is the best place to start.

It is also a place where she can have a drink to cut her nerves, and a meal that is more palatable. She’s never had much taste for higher cooking, peasant food is perfectly fine to her.

She orders the day’s mash with a stiff drink to accompany it, and she sits down at the end of a long wooden bench and a long wooden table.

She does not have to wait before her first visitor strides by.

“Ian,” a thick Rivaini accent purrs as slender tan fingers grip at Ian’s shoulders from behind. Lips trail so close to the shell of her ear that Ian feels them tickle her tiny hairs. “I am so sorry to hear about Bethany.”

“You know? Aveline said she was keeping it hush.”

“Oh please, you know that nothing stays hush in Lowtown, and certainly not from me,” Isabela says as she produces herself from behind, strutting slowly around the table to other side.

“How much do you know?” Ian asks as the woman sits.

Isabela smirks, her amber eyes peering coyly through fallen strands of thick, wavy black hair. “As much as there is to know, I suppose.” She shrugs her shoulders. “Sweet Bethany walked with the a new crowd. No matter how hard you worked to keep her from here, she was determined, apparently.”

“Why didn’t I know about this? Why didn’t you tell me?” Ian feels her anger rise in her chest. The city knew her, especially the folk of Lowtown knew that everything she did was to protect her family. People knew, yet didn’t bother to warn her of her sister’s secret, and it is becoming infuriating.

Isabela crosses her arms and tilts her head. “Listen, you spend so much time in that mansion of yours now, honestly, how am I supposed to have any idea what you know and don’t know anymore?”

Ian growls and glares across the table. “I am here at least two nights a week, Isabela.”

“Yeah, sure. Getting pissed and knocking out benders. But you’re not truly here. Not like you used to be.”

Ian speaks low, enunciating each syllable as if it is dripped in blood. “You should have told me.”

“And risk your fist coming at my head next? No, thank you.” Isabela scoffs. They sit silently for a moment, a war of the wills, but Ian’s glare bores a hole into Isabela’s sarcastic armor. Finally, the woman sighs in capitulation. “I’m sorry, Ian. If I had known this would happen to her, I wouldn’t have listened to her. I would have told you.”

That is a shock to Ian, and she feels a cold rush across her skin. “She talked to you about this?”

“Not in so many words, no. I found out a little of what she was up to and confronted her. She begged me not to tell you. She assured me that she had everything under control.”

“What do you know?”

“Not as much as it sounds, I’m sure, but I saw her talking to Merrill here a lot. That seemed a bit odd to me, especially since if she spotted you walk in, she vanished.”

Merrill is a known conjurer in Lowtown, and a unique one at that as she moved from a small clan of elves outside the city. It is fabled that her people have long mastered the art of exotic magics that Ian never cared to investigate.

Ian’s food and drink arrive. Everything feeling a little too much, and she grabs the mug of amber liquid and gulps it down so quickly that small rivers of whiskey stream down from the corners of her mouth.

“What did Bethany say to you?” Ian asks, wiping the corners of her mouth on her coat’s sleeve.

“Nothing much except to not tell you.”

Their conversation is interrupted by a drunk fool who strides up to their table. “Well aren’t you as pretty as pie... Except you,” the man says with a burp to punctuate it, pointing at Ian with a lazy finger. “What is it with you dressin’ like a man. One’d assume you like to fuck ladies like a man, too? Are you going to fuck--”

Ian chucks her empty mug at the drunk’s face, and before he can react, she is out of her seat and slamming his body to the ground. He lands with a loud thud, and she is on top of him in an instant. Her left fist gathers the garb at his neck, and her face hovers maliciously over his. The smell of his breath disgusts her, only intensifying her snarl.

“Assumptions are the lies of wicked demons in your ear,” Ian says in a low growl. “Now unless you want me to remove both of yours,” Ian’s right hand grabs hold of his ear and pulls until the man whines and writhes beneath her, “then I suggest you leave. My business is none of your own.”

“Hey, hey, Hawke. This is a little early for bar fights, even for you, don’t you think?” a raspy voice says beside them. Boots walk tentatively beside her head. Ian looks up to find the short-statured Varric Tethras standing over them. “Why don’t you let the man go and come sit with me in a my office, huh? Sound good? A little less violent, perhaps?”

Ian grunts and pushes herself off the drunk. She spits at the feet of the man before following Varric to his office in the rear of the tavern. She glances back, and with satisfaction, watches Isabela toss the sod out the tavern door and into the street.

Varric gestures for Ian to sit at his table in his personal room in the inn, and then shuts his door behind them. “How are you holding up, kid? To anyone else I’d say not very well, but that behavior isn’t exactly uncommon.”

Ian grunts again and slumps into one of his dwarven inspired chairs, geometric and sturdy by design with furs draped over the seat and arms. Varric sits at the head of the table and patiently waits while Ian stares into a roaring fire across from her.

“You loved her, how the fuck are you handling it?” Ian eventually grumbles.

Varric sighs. “I want to filet the bastard that did it.”

“Only if I gut him first.” There is a silence again until Ian adds, “Aveline thinks there will be more. We have to stop him.”

“Anything I can do to help, you just let me know,” Varric says, and he means it. The dwarf is probably the one man in this city with the most connections. He runs a rag called Bianca Knows that is tossed around the city. Legends swarm the streets about the dwarf, though Ian knows better. The most comical of the rumors being that he has actual ears on the walls of alleyways.

“You need to get the word out to anyone who may need it,” Ian says. “Aveline doesn’t want it in the papers, but you follow Lowtown’s rules.”

Varric nods. “Consider it done. I already drafted the story and sent it to my printer this morning.”

“Good. Let’s hope we get this guy before there is another Bethany.” Ian glances at Varric, noticing the way his gaze hangs in the air. The far-off stare of a man who is nowhere nearby. Instead, his mind drowns in a dimension of sadness and regret. It is well known how deeply he admired Bethany, though he never once acted on his feelings.

A soft knock at the door calls their attention, and Varric summons the person to enter. A young boy walks in, shaken, dirty, and obviously malnourished. He speaks with a tremor and his tattered gloved hand holds out an envelope like it could be his unfortunate ticket to the Maker. “I have a letter for M-M-Miss Hawke. A man gave me six coppers to deliver it right away.”

“What man, boy? Speak up,” Ian says as she takes the envelope from his hand.

“Don’t know, Miss. He was in the shadows. Face covered up with a scarf.”

“Where was this man now?” Varric asks.

The boy shrugs his shoulders and points to the far wall. “Called me from the alley by the inn, he did.” The boy looks between them both a few times and before turning and bolting from the room.

“Hey! Get back here!” Ian yells, but he’s gone. She hesitates and stares at the letter in her hand. Her curiosity for its contents ultimately outweighs her will to chase the child, and she opens the envelope to find red writing.

I know your Captain pet thinks she’ll have me. It gives me quite a thrill.

I am down on witches. Will rip them up till their foul wickedness reeks these streets no longer. Your sister was grand work, but I gave the lady no time to squeal. Saved a bit of her tainted blood to write this letter, though the stuff went thick. Red ink will have to do.

I’ve found I enjoy this venture more than I’d thought. First out of passion, second of lust, the next will follow and follow until the job is done. It is my calling.

Death to conjurers.

Ripper

Ian places the paper on Varric’s table. Whomever this Ripper is, he seems to know Ian, and knew he was killing her sister. If Ian had conviction before, it has now been increased ten-fold. She eyes Varric, his nervous wait apparent in the chewing of his lower lip and the wringing of his hands. Glancing back at the letter she says, “I need to speak to Merrill.”

[seeingdoublestans]

Well prepare your fingers for more keysmashing ‘cause this one’s a doozy!!! ….Okay guys, so long story NOT short: I decided to camp outside near the site despite the cold. I had laid out the bait and after triple checking my cameras, decided to settle down and wait. (It was bright enough with the moon and snow to see enough to knit by btw. You inspired me to try to pick that skill back up again, but I’m getting offtrack) Shortly after 0200hrs, I was drifting off when I heard a faint rustle. To my surprise and delight, one of the largest pumpkins (about 60ft from my spot) had vanished. A moment later, another disappeared. I whipped out my phone and approached cautiously. I managed to see another leave, not unlike it was falling through the ground in the blink of an eye. It was as if the patch was made of quicksand but with an insane rate of grainlier displacement. A moment later, there was a multitude of the previously heard shuffling noise and I was surrounded by….. Have you ever watched that old cheesy movie, Tremors? With the giant worm creatures that tunneled through the ground at unreasonable speeds and ate everything? Well, standing there, I was reminded of that movie. Out of the ground came half a dozen centipede-esque creatures with large, wicked pinchers. Absolutely fascinating anatomy! Their dark and sleek armor was made of overlapping, accordion plating, like on an armadillo, covering their whole lengths. Only the plating was reversed! Very odd. The texture was pock-marked, and a countless array of spindly legs peeked out from the soft, unexposed underbelly. The odd structuring was not the most fascinating part of the insectioids….it was their riders. Holding onto the back hooked legs of each Wyrmipede was a stout, short hairy man. Approximately a foot tall each, and savage. Dressed in loincloths, and the seeming leader a toga. The only other visible garments were the strangest hood/masks. They carried miniature spears and lengths of twine/rope were wrapped about their waists. They were immediately violent, attacking me with their spears, and hopping onto the backs of the Wyrmipedes to charge. As I imagine any sane person would do, I fled. The small force whooped and yelled in an unintelligible language as they gave chase. I headed for the treeline about 100yds ahead, Wyrmipedes popping out of the ground, disrupting my sprint along with the many spears thrown my way, some of which made their mark and stuck into my legs, back, and rump. The Wyrmipedes ran at an incredible speed! One launched itself from the ground and caught my left forearm in its pinchers. Hence the aforementioned injury. Hurt like hell, and the thing took a chunk of me with it when I punched it off. Clutching my fresh wound, I reached the woods and scrambled up the first tree that had reachable branches. ….Unfortunately the Wyrmipedes began to snake up the trunk themselves. I kicked them off one by one, one glazing my calf with its sharp toothed pinchers as I fought them off. After a seeming eternity of adrenaline filled struggling, my phone went off. I had set an alarm for 0215 to keep myself awake. Thing was, my phone had been dropped at the base of the tree in my hurry to escape the small mob. Time seemed to freeze as the little warriors started at the device, instantly captivated by the glowing screen and X-traordinary Cases Theme song. The toga one slid off his steed and poked carefully at my phone with the point of his spear. Others came forward, and they discussed something in hushed tones. I watched, fascinated, frightened, and thrilled beyond all belief. After a few moments, Toga pointed up at me with his spear, yelling garrulously to snag my attention. It was all his. Then he pointed at the device, yammering some more. I couldn’t decipher any meaning for a moment as he repeated these gestures. Then I caught on. Nodding vigorously, I gestured at the phone. He nodded, picked it up, then sat heavily on his rump as he and his followers played with my phone. I cannot say how long I was up there, watching them try to figure out the “magic.” Then, he stood up, remounted his steed still carrying the phone, screamed at me for a minute, then turned back towards the pumpkin patch. The rest followed suite and I was alone. Instinct and curiosity fought within me. Part of me was rooted to the branches of the tree, determined not to go down until sunrise. The other halfway screaming to follow the odd group…and eventually won. Retracing my steps, I arrived back at the site to catch the end of their curious operation. The little men were tying the squash with their lengths of rope and expert speed. Then, they would pull down their hood/masks, tie the rope to the end of a Wyrmipede, then hold onto the long back legs, one in each hand. Yelling a command caused the insect beasts of burden to dive back into the ground, dragging man and bounty behind them. The soil was so finely churned, that it seemed almost like there was never a disturbance in the first place. Nothing else of interest occurred. Conclusions: 1) My hypothesis that the pumpkin thieves were subterranean in nature proved correct. The little savages have domesticated the Wyrmipedes and have been using them to steal goods for at least 7yrs here. The pattern of the teething of the bite on my calf match those from the sawed vines pictures, meaning the Wyrmipedes are also trained to harvest during the actual harvest season. …I wonder how they sensed there was resources available during the wrong time of year? Do they scout out the area? The hood/masks are most likely to ease breathing as their beasts tunnel the way back home. On that account, I would not be surprised if the little men (whom I have not found a name for yet) had some form of underground civilization. Imagine finding such a place! 2) Once my arm heals, I’m going to have a wicked awesome scar. Big saw marks, and a chunk gone? Yes. I’m actually rather curious as to how it’ll heal up. I had to give myself stitches, as I’d rather not try to explain the injury to a medical professional as of this moment. 3) As well as losing my phone to Toga’s fascination, I couldn’t find my cameras, just loose soil where they had been sitting. A real shame, seeing as I have no solid evidence of this adventure. I wish I were a better artist, I’m trying to draw the men and Wyrmipedes from memory, but it’s difficult when you have had no such training. I’m trying to figure out how to explain my injury to my skeptic of a roommate, and I’m wondering how well this story will go over on the paranatural forums, if at all. I’ve never heard of an anomalous race so employing another like this, and never even dreamed of the Wyrmipedes!!! …I suppose if I’m the only one who knows of the truth, that’s alright. I know what I saw and did and …freaking felt. Believe me or not, but I doubt that a hallucination could so shred my arm like this. At least Ms. Brown, owner of the property, believed my story, if only after seeing the pincher tooth marks on my leg. So, mystery solved, fun scars acquired, mysterious species to obsess over? All in all, a successful excursion! –Exhausted yet Giddy Your pal in the Paranatural, Lee

You are a great storyteller, and a great scientist, and this sounds like a great adventure! I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed reading about your discovery. Tiny people riding on giant centipedes! I can’t imagine what kind of subterranean society they must have! Thank you for describing the details of the tale!!!

I’ve been practicing sketching for the very purpose you mention; drawing realistic depictions of creatures that I encounter in my research. When we’re able to meet in person, if you describe the visual appearance of the creatures you faced, I’d be happy to draw it to the best of my ability for you! How long do you anticipate it will take for your wounds to heal? I don’t want to aggravate your injuries by scheduling our lunch meet up on a date before you’ve fully healed. 

I haven’t seen Tremors, but if you’re interested, maybe we could watch it together sometime? I’ve heard that watching a movie is a common way to spend a date. (I mean “date” in whatever way you hope I mean it.)

~Ford

HOLY SHIT

[pluckyredhead]

Daredevil 101: Fall from Grace

And we’re back! It’s time for the death of Matt Murdock (again). Also, a lot of 90s-style grimacing. Most importantly, ELEKTRA RETURNS!

Content Warning: Some extremely racist (specifically, anti-black) imagery behind the cut.

When we last left our hero, he had returned to New York, regained his memory, and patched things up with Foggy. And aw, they’re being so cute:

YOU GUYS FOGGY MADE A MODEL OF THE OFFICE SO THAT MATT COULD FEEL WHERE EVERYTHING WOULD GO. AND JUST LOOK AT THEM CUDDLING OVER THAT SIGN. I’M CAN’T.

Now up there I mentioned 90s-style grimacing, and I just...I feel like if you’re not familiar with the aesthetic of comics in the 90s nothing can really prepare you, but basically, picture a lot of veins and teeth, flowing hair, everyone wearing armor and wielding two swords and six guns, POUCHES, and very questionable anatomy. This cover is a pretty good example:

No, I cannot explain anything that’s happening here. Just accept that the next few posts are gonna look like this until we round the horn into the late 90s. We’ll get through this. It’ll be okay.

(That art, by the way, is by Scott McDaniel, who is responsible for most of this post. The writer is still D. G. Chichester.)

Despite that cover there’s not a lot of Frank in here, but I do have something behind the cut for the Fratt fans:

That’s real gay, Frank.

In between fellatio metaphors with Frank, reestablishing Nelson and Murdock, and trying to patch things up with Karen, Matt also tries to protect a Haitian immigrant from a convoluted protection racket and winds up tangling with a “voodoo priestess” villainess named Calypso. Here’s where that content warning comes in:

Like honestly what the actual fuck. I don’t even have words for this bullshit.

Anyway, that’s obviously Calypso on the bottom. At the top is Hellspawn, a doppelganger of Matt created during Infinity War? I literally just had to look this up because large parts of Chichester’s run are incomprehensible and I honestly had no idea where he came from - I thought Calypso created him, but apparently not. Anyway, it’s during this plotline that Hellspawn encounters and becomes obsessed with Matt.

I’m skipping a lot here but I want to get into the meatier plot as opposed to the more episodic storylines, so we’re going to scoot ahead to “Fall from Grace,” which is what I used for the name of this post because it’s the most major event here. Again, this story falls under the category of “unnecessarily complicated Chichester nonsense riddled with cameos, crossovers, and incomprehensible McDaniel-scribbled fight scenes” and I’m not going to get into the details of it because...like. It’s such nonsense. Even the simplified version I’m about to share with you is going to make no sense. (I don’t hate Chichester, who I think writes a really interesting Karen, but his character stuff is much better than his confusing plots.)

SO. The plot revolves around a defunct, shady government program wherein they created a chemical called About Face that altered people’s appearances, put it in glass balls, and sent telepaths out to secretly drop the balls in heavily populated areas, where they would break and...change people’s faces??? It makes NO SENSE. One of the balls never broke, and the guy who broke it - a telepath named Eddie - ran away, horribly traumatized by his experience with the government, and has hidden as a street person for the past few decades.

Now it’s become clear to multiple interested parties that there’s one remaining ball of About Face somewhere in the subway system, and they’re all after Eddie to find out where it is. Matt discovers this and steps in to protect him:

What’s Eddie running from? Oh, just Hellspawn, and also maybe how veiny Matt’s chest is:

I’m concerned about your neck, Matthew.

While all this is going on, the Bugle is temporarily shut down because of *handwave* plot stuff, idk, but Ben freaks out because all of his in-progress articles are on the Bugle computers, which he now can’t access. He asks a Bugle intern named Sara to help him out:

omg those references

Unfortunately for Ben - and Matt - when Ben’s not looking, Sara stumbles across an unpublished article that Ben has idiotically saved to the Bugle server: the one he wrote about Matt being Daredevil, before he decided not to publish it. Oops!

Meanwhile, as we saw above, Matt’s classic suit has taken quite a beating, so he decides that he needs a tougher look:

Parts of it or armored, or the whole thing is, or something? Armor was very on-trend in the 90s. Anyway this is not a good sign, any time Matt is in black and it’s not Charlie Cox in skintight army surplus you know the story is going downhill.

Matt is so busy with Eddie and the virus and his new threads that he’s neglecting his day job, and Foggy has gotten tired of the same old patterns:

I find this page fascinating, because this arc is the only time it’s implied that Foggy knows Matt is Daredevil before, uh, Foggy officially finds out Matt is Daredevil. (And it’s made clear when that happens that he had no suspicion beforehand, so this aspect is dropped.) But also, Matt is being SUCH a dick here! “I’m responsible for more important things that you don’t know about”? If Foggy didn’t do your paperwork you wouldn’t be able to pay for that fancy armor, bucko. And you can’t lie to Foggy and then blame him for not knowing the truth.

Anyway I just love Foggy’s “Don’t forget your CANE” and Matt storming out and knocking a wastebasket over with his cane all “HOW DARE YOU I AM SUPER BLIND,” even if it never went anywhere. (Though Foggy does go talk to Karen after this and ask her to talk to Matt about...the other aspects of his life that he and Matt don’t talk about. So Karen gets involved in this dancing around the subject too.)

Meanwhile...*sigh* So. Okay. Remember how I said there were a bunch of people after the About Face virus? Well, they include government agents, bounty hunters, Hellspawn, A VAMPIRE, and the Hand. (The Chaste is bopping around here too, trying to stop the Hand.) The Hand sends an elite sect called the Snakeroot after About Face, plus these two:

This is sleazebag former SHIELD agent John Garrett, and Elektra’s “dark essence” Erynys. Garrett kind of explains their deal up there, but the short version is: after killing Elektra off in Daredevil, Miller still wanted to write her, so he did a miniseries called Elektra: Assassin. I’m not a fan of it, despite stunning art from Bill Sienkiewicz. We’ll see this next time, when I cover the Man Without Fear miniseries, but basically the more Miller wrote Elektra, the more he wrote her as sort of this fascinating, dangerous fetish object instead of as a person. Even though she’s ostensibly the star, Assassin is narrated by Garrett and is told through the lens of his fixation on her. It’s pretty gross.

Anyway, Elektra’s trying to stop a demon called the Beast from installing one of its pawns as president of the US (insert political commentary here), so she uses the psychic powers she occasionally has to get Garrett to help her. The story ends with her victorious and Garrett mostly cyborg parts, but now, during the Fall from Grace arc, the Hand is able to use the traces of Elektra left in Garrett’s mind from her possession of him to create Erynys, a separate being who embodies all that is dark and evil in Elektra. She wants About Face, which will enable her to be a full human being and not just an offshoot of Elektra.

Understandably, she’s a pretty upsetting figure for Matt to run across, especially since he thinks the REAL Elektra is still dead. (She’s not, as the reader knows.)

And that’s not the only bad news for Matt, because Bugle intern Sara has taken the story that Matt is Daredevil and gone to the tabloids:

Matt’s teeth are so dismayed!

Obviously Matt’s friends all see this story too, and Karen for one is not about to let it stand:

I LOVE NINETIES KAREN!!! She is so tired of men and their ridiculousness, she has shit to do and papers to throw! And again, Foggy’s still carefully talking around the whole thing, which I still find fascinating - but in the clinch, he’ll always be here to save Matt from himself.

Matt, meanwhile, has another shock waiting for him:

It’s Elektra! Bald Elektra! How very Sinead O’Connor.

(If you’ve forgotten, the Hand attempted to resurrect Elektra after she was killed by Bullseye and Matt was able to purify her soul with the power of his love (hence her white costumer), but thought the resurrection itself failed. She’s basically been meditating on a mountain ever since.)

While Elektra fills Matt in on where she’s been, Ben and Foggy team up to save Matt’s secret:

Sara basically ignores Foggy and his restraining order and barges past him and Ben with a camera crew to find...an ordinary apartment, filled with the kind of accommodations a blind man might need, like foam bumpers on the sharp edges of furniture and a Braille subway map. Humiliated, she departs.

Meanwhile, Matt and Elektra are still catching up as they try to keep anyone else from getting to About Face before they do:

If you can look away from Elektra’s weird seamless naked plank-butt there, basically she’s upset because she was finally at peace meditating up on that mountain (and also when she was dead) and now she has to, like, be alive and deal with the forces of evil and confront her own evil nature and UGH. Matt is not threatening to punch her there but reminding her of how much she loves punching??? Sure.

Despite all this embracing, Matt goes straight to Karen and tells her that Elektra’s back, but he knows who he really wants to be with:

WHEEZE! WHEEZE AGAINST EACH OTHER’S CHINS!!! No, seriously, despite the crappy art and the tiresome love triangle and the hilarious childishness of that crayon heart drawing, this is close to the healthiest Matt and Karen have ever been and I’m happy for them. I love their late 90s dynamic.

With Karen thoroughly kissed, Matt suits up again and heads back into the fray. (It’s important to note here that Karen doesn’t know a) about Matt’s new costume or b) about Ben and Foggy’s successful dismantling of the “Matt is Daredevil” story.) They finally find the About Face virus, and Hellspawn tries to take it to make himself...a real boy, I guess? A real demon boy? Idk.

Hellspawn uses the About Face, but Erynys kills him before he can do anything with it - and then Elektra kills her before she can use the About Face, thus reabsorbing Erynys’s evil into herself. Or something. THIS COMIC IS A MESS.

The weirdest aspect, though, is that in death, Hellspawn’s About Faced corpse turns to...Matt Murdock. He is an absolute spitting image of a dead Matt, which gives Matt an idea. Remember, Matt doesn’t know that his secret identity is a secret again, and as long as it’s out there, the people he cares about are in danger. Plus, like, Matt Murdock’s life is really hard and stuff?

So he bundles up the Mattcorpse and dumps it off at a police station or something, and Matt Murdock is declared 100% Dead and Probably Not Daredevil. Giving this story something of a downer ending:

If I’m not mistaken, this is the third time Matt has faked his death, counting Mike Murdock and that time he crashed a plane with a Matt dummy in it. MATT. WHY IS THIS A THING FOR YOU.

Anyway, tune in next time for a detour into the Frank Miller/John Romita, Jr. miniseries Daredevil: Man Without Fear, followed by Black Armor Matt making more bad decisions!

[ellanainthetardis]

I’m thrilled you all liked the prologue! I hope you like this one too! Let me know your thoughts please! Feedback keep me alive! Also please note there won’t be a chapter next week since I have a show on Saturday and a competition on Sunday.

[FF] or [AO3]

2. Five Weeks (1)

You’re expecting a child.

Sounds were oddly distorted. The words rang in her ears but she wouldn’t have been able to repeat them if she had tried. She was aware of Haymitch standing shock-still next to her, of his hand clutching hers to the point it hurt, but she saw nothing, heard nothing of the following exchange. He moved away. She tried to cling to his hand but he tore it away from hers and left the room without looking back.

She was left alone to nod and automatically answer questions she heard but didn’t register.

It was only a long time after that – when dawn started to lighten the room, when they were done probing her stomach, using the ultrasound machine, printing images of her insides or sticking needles in her arms and she was allowed back into her own clothes – that she started to snap out of the daze. She couldn’t tell if she was in Twelve or elsewhere. The smell of antiseptic was barely better than the smell of blood.

Haymitch wandered back once she was dressed but he didn’t speak. She took one look at his shaking hands and supposed he hadn’t gotten drunk like she had expected him to. She wanted to ask where he had been but she supposed he had needed some time alone to panic in peace.

There was no reason to panic, she wanted to tell him but the words remained stuck in her throat.

A nurse led them to Doctor Larcher’s office and the man offered them a seat. The room was small but well decorated, she couldn’t help but notice. Light brown paint on the walls, a couple of framed diplomas, comfortable chairs in front of a metallic desk…

“I’ve studied your medical files.” Larcher declared as way of an introduction, typing on his computer. “They’re not as precise as I would have liked but that’s not surprising. A lot of prisoners of war’s and soldiers’ files have been botched after the rebellion. There was no time to keep up with things like that.”

Her hands were neatly folded on her lap, her back was straight and her ankles crossed under the chair like a proper lady ought to sit. She started worrying her fingers in nervousness. Haymitch reached out and covered them with his hand. It must have been an automatic response because he was still staring into nothing. She wrapped her hands around his instead, rubbing the quivering fingers in hope of soothing the tremors.

“As far as I can tell, they figured your tubes had been damaged during…” Larcher glanced up at her and quickly switched tracks. “I don’t see anything worrying on that front on the latest ultrasound. It is possible there had been some swelling due to your injuries at the time. I can’t find any medical record past the immediate surrender of the Capitol. Did you…”

“No. I had had enough medical attention.” she cut him off very rudely. Her nerves were too frayed. She forced herself to use a polite tone. “Can you tell when I will lose it?”

Haymitch turned his hollow eyes in her direction but she ignored him.

“I…” Larcher opened and closed his mouth. “Miss Trinket, nothing indicates you are in immediate danger of losing this child.”  

“I lost blood.” she reminded him, detached.

“Yes, but it is not as uncommon as you would think in the first trimester of a pregnancy.” the doctor countered. “I estimate you’re about five weeks pregnant. Would I say you need to be closely monitored? Yes, absolutely. You should be careful but if we take some basic precautions, I don’t see any real problem.” Larcher lifted his hand in a matter-of-fact gesture. “I will be honest with you. Your age and the trauma your body has been through are concerning factors but, medically, right now, you are fine. With close monitoring…”

“I had two miscarriages.” Effie hissed. “I won’t go through a third.”

“What’s that about miscarriages?” Haymitch asked, rubbing a hand over his face.

“Accidents. Both times. It is not important.” she dismissed with a wave of her hand. She refused to acknowledge the pinch in her heart. She refused.

“When?” he insisted.

“Can we not talk about this now?” she pleaded but his face was stern and she could tell he had enough troubles snapping out of his dazed state as it was. “Once when I was eighteen and another after the Sixty-Sixth Hunger Games.”

The hand that was still imprisoned in hers clenched.

“Was it…” he kept his voice schooled but she heard the panic underneath.

“No.” she shook her head. “The timing wasn’t right.” She waved her free hand again. “It doesn’t matter, neither were planned. Accidents have a way of taking care of themselves as Mother used to say. The point is: I can’t carry a baby. My history proved that.”

Larcher licked his lips and took off his glasses to clean them with the sleeve of his shirt. Bad manners, she thought.

“Absolutely nothing indicates you are going to have another miscarriage.” the doctor repeated.

“I know, isn’t it proof enough?” she snapped and then raised a shaky hand to her face. “My apologies.”

“It’s alright.” Larcher said, not unkindly. “You went through a lot of emotions in a short bout of time and your hormones are all over the place. It is perfectly understandable. Miss Trinket, I urge you not to think like this though.”

“How soon can you do the abortion?” she asked anyway.

She felt Haymitch bristle next to her. He snatched his hand back as if he had  been burned. “Effie…”

“Miss Trinket…” Larcher sighed at the same time, sounding weary. “I understand this pregnancy comes as a shock to you but if you do not want this baby… I beg you would consider other options than abortion. A lot of children died during the war. The demands for adoption are high. There are programs that allow you to choose the family you would entrust your child to. You can decide if you want the child to be able to have contact with you or not. It’s really…”

“I won’t carry to term.” Effie cut him off for the third time, through gritted teeth. “Why do you refuse to understand? I won’t carry to term.”

“He says you’re not going to lose it, don’t you think he knows better?” Haymitch spat with enough anger that she simply stopped talking. “Self denial is all well and good, sweetheart, but can you take your head out of your pretty ass and realize what’s going on here? You’re pregnant. With our child. We’re having a child.”

“No, we are not.” she retorted, almost desperate.

“Yeah, well, tell that to the thing in your stomach!” he scowled.

“Uterus.” she shot back, annoyed. “Have you no grasp on human anatomy at all?”

“Fuck you.” he sneered. “If you had said you could still have kids, we would have…”

“Oh, so this is my fault, isn’t it?” she shouted. “This is so typical of you! Did I get pregnant on my own? I am not the one who cannot keep it in their pants.”

“What are you saying, Princess? I forced you?” he laughed bitterly. “Always seemed eager to me.”

“You are the absolute worst!” she screeched “I do not know…”

Doctor Larcher cleared his throat. “Now would be a good time to warn you that stress is bad for the baby.”

“We are not having a baby!” Effie yelled. She horrified herself. Screaming like a banshee in public wasn’t like her. Causing a scene wasn’t like her. She covered her face with her hands and bowed a little, fighting a sob. “I apologize. I…”

“You’re tired.” Haymitch grumbled, gruff. “I’m tired too. Let’s go home. We can fight just as well there.”

She shook her head. “I want an abortion.”

Larcher sighed. “There is a week length delay before any abortion, baring special cases. It’s procedure. I want to see you back in a couple of days anyway to check on you.” The doctor stood up and Haymitch followed suit, shaking the doctor’s outstretched hand mechanically. “Think it over, Miss Trinket. And perhaps consider the adoption option. I will stop at your house let’s say… In three days? You can tell me what you’ve decided then and if you still wish to go through with an abortion we will schedule one for next week.”

She nodded weakly and let Haymitch help her to her feet, not quite listening to the list of things she should avoid that the doctor enumerated. Haymitch was attentive enough for both of them and the main part seemed to be: rest. All she hated in short. Her legs felt like jelly.

The sunlight almost blinded her when they stepped out of the clinic and she leaned against his side. People in the street shot them strange looks. They must have been a sight, Effie mused. She wasn’t wearing make-up and he was in pajamas with no shoes on…

“Tom!” he called out suddenly to a man in a cart pulled by a tired looking horse. She sympathized with the horse wholeheartedly. Haymitch left her side in a flash to exchange a few words with the man who glanced at her and eventually nodded with a smile. “He’s going to take us home.” Haymitch told her. She didn’t question it. She climbed in the cart and leaned against Haymitch’s side again. Angry or not, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and let her rest her head against his neck. She might have dozed off on the way because, next thing she was aware of, they were at the entrance to the Village. She thanked Tom profusely, to the point he blushed and rubbed the back of his neck, mumbling that any friend of Katniss was a friend of his. That made her smile even brighter. “Breaking hearts everywhere you go, aren’t you?” Haymitch mocked when the cart was gone and they started the short walk from the iron gates to their house. His arm remained tightly wrapped around her shoulders and she thought that, maybe, they would get through this. “How are you feeling?”

“Exhausted.” she answered frankly.

The children were in the middle of the street, talking to each other. Katniss was gesturing frantically and it was her who spotted them first. They were right next to them before Effie could blink.

“Where were you?” the girl hissed. “We couldn’t find you anywhere! Never thought about warning us before taking off like that? We thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere. You…”

“Not now.” Haymitch spat, pushing Katniss aside to support her inside the house.

“What’s going on?” Peeta asked, less aggressively. “Effie, are you alright?”

“I said not now!” Haymitch shouted. He slammed the door in their faces.

“Rude.” she whispered. “Why do you always have to be so rude…”

He didn’t gratify that with an answer. He helped her to the couch and disappeared long enough to come back with a mountain of blankets.

“You have to rest.” he told her. “You lie down and you do nothing all day.”

She rolled her eyes. “This is stupid. I…”

“You rest.” he barked. “It’s your health. We’re not taking any chance with it. We’ll talk about everything else later.”

“There is nothing to talk about.” she sighed.

“There’s plenty to talk about.” he retorted. “What do you want for breakfast?”

He actually loaded a tray for her with entirely too much food, her favorite tea and a glass of orange juice. She was almost impressed.

He hovered near the door, watching her eat until she couldn’t take it anymore.

“Oh, please!” she scoffed. “Go drink yourself into a stupor. We both know you are dying to.”

The tremors, if anything, were betraying him.

“You just want me out of your hair so you can do something reckless.” he accused.

“Send one of the children if you must.” she snapped. “But get out. I cannot bear you looking at me like that. You are not the only one who is scared and angry, Haymitch. I did not want this any more than you did.”

A shadow passed on his face and he stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him again. She had no appetite so she didn’t touch what was left on the tray, reclining back on the couch and nursing the tea between her hands instead. She forced herself to keep her mind blank. She didn’t want to think about what had happened in the last twelve hours. She didn’t want to remember.

It wasn’t long before Katniss wandered in the living-room, a little wary. The girl’s face was all worry. “Effie, what’s going on? Haymitch says I have to stay with you and that I can’t let you get up but he won’t explain… Are you alright?”

“Perfectly fine, dear. Haymitch is just being an idiot.” Effie sighed.

The girl was a little assuaged by that but not much and it took fifteen minutes of pleading before Effie was allowed to leave the couch to take a shower. She swallowed back her irritation at being treated like an invalid and guarded like a prisoner in a cell, she knew it came from a place of love so she tried not to be harsh with Katniss. Like Haymitch, the girl was terrified sick of losing someone else.

She kept the water lukewarm in the shower, not daring to use too hot water, and she didn’t linger. The state of the bedroom made her tut-tutt. She gathered the clothes Haymitch had tossed around the previous night to place them in the hamper. He hadn’t bothered getting dressed before leaving and she hoped he had had enough common sense to stick to the backyard or to the immediate surroundings of the house. She hated the idea of him wandering the District in his pajamas with no shoes on. Not only was it shameful but he would hurt himself.

She placed the soiled nightgown next to the door, ready to take it down to the trash can. She didn’t want to see it again. Then she undressed the bed mechanically, trying not to look at the blood. She heard the footsteps but didn’t have enough presence of mind to toss the blankets back to hide the stains and so she could only stare as Katniss stopped dead in her tracks, her grey eyes locked on the blood.

“I’m sorry.” the girl said. “You were taking a long time and…” She frowned. “Are you hurt? Did he hurt you with his knife? Is that why he’s freaking out?”

That was a logical explanation but Effie shook her head, licking her lips and forcing a cheer in her voice. “I’m not hurt. It is nothing to worry about, just a simple medical problem. I am absolutely fine, dear. Haymitch just had a scare last night, it will pass.”

“You’re sure?” Katniss frowned.

“Certain.” Effie smiled.

It was easy to pretend for the children. Easy to force a mask of bubbly contentment on her face and to sound cheerful. Katniss helped her change the sheets, humoring her by answering her chatter, sometimes rolling her eyes with fondness when she thought Effie couldn’t see. Effie squeezed her shoulder lightly when they were done, knowing the girl wouldn’t appreciate more effusions but needing to convey just how much she loved her all the same. Katniss smiled at her and suggested she should nap for a while.

“I’ll stay downstairs.” Katniss declared. “Shout if you need anything.”

“A lady never shouts, dear.” Effie reminded her, ignoring her own behavior from that morning.

A nap did her a lot of good. She felt better when she woke up, rested. Her head was clearer and she was surprised to realize she had been asleep most of the day.

Katniss was sitting at the kitchen table, working on her memory book. It always left Effie with a bittersweet feeling, that book. Haymitch was helping her add sections about the tributes he had lost over the years. She had shared a few memories but thinking about them was painful and she usually preferred staying clear of that particular project.

“Sit down.” Katniss offered immediately. “I’ll make you some tea. Or do you want coffee?”

She wanted some coffee very badly but… Her hand fluttered to her stomach and away just as quickly. She crushed the thought before it was even born. “Tea, if it’s not too much trouble. Thank you.”

She sat down while Katniss bustled behind her, putting the kettle to boil and taking out mugs out of the cupboard in a banging of faience. Her fingers inched closer to the memory book and dragged it toward her. She flipped through it, her eyes lingering on the familiar faces. She brushed her fingertips against Rue’s young face before flipping further back… They hadn’t managed to find pictures for all the tributes but Peeta was good enough of a painter that he could draw a close likeness from Haymitch’s descriptions…

It made her stomach churn.

She studied every face, not needing to glance at the names to remember them – the names were too familiar, she was used to reciting them in whispers sometimes. She would never forget, she could never forget, she owed it to them. She stopped on her very first pair of tributes. Stella, the girl had been called. She had been fourteen and an absolute darling. Effie had loved her very much. Peeta’s drawing didn’t completely match her memories but it was enough to make her close the book and push it away.

“Are you alright?” Katniss asked, worried.

“Perfectly fine, dear.” she hummed around the lump in her throat.

So many dead children… And most of them because her fingers had clasped the wrong piece of paper.

No more, she vowed, no more.

She had done enough ill to children.

They drank their tea mostly in silence. Katniss kept working, adding entries to Finnick’s space thanks to some letters Johanna and Annie had sent, sometimes glancing up at her. Effie noticed the looks but pretended she didn’t see. She stared at the wall and mused that the paint was cracking and that they really should replace it. Perhaps paint it in a more joyful color than the light brown it currently was.

Eventually, Peeta showed up. His worry morphed into relief when he saw her up and about. She told him the same half-lie she had told Katniss and the boy gradually relaxed when he realized she wasn’t in pain or about to keel over and die.

The children were darlings.

They refused to let her do anything, insisting that she should relax on the couch while they did the dishes from the previous day and dressed the table for that night’s dinner. Katniss hadn’t gone hunting so there was no fresh meat but Peeta chopped vegetables for a soup. She listened to them laugh in the kitchen from the living-room and couldn’t help but smile. They were sweet, behaving as young people in love did. She liked watching them. It was good to remember some happiness had come out of the whole mess.

The hour grew late though and Haymitch didn’t show up in time for dinner.

Worry started to grow in the pit of her stomach but she dismissed it. He would come back – drunk as a skunk, no doubt, but he would come back. They ate in silence on her insistence that they shouldn’t wait any longer.

Around eleven p.m. she started to fret though, thinking he might have passed out drunk somewhere – or worse. She worried her fingers and bit on her bottom lip until Peeta took pity on her and offered to go looking for him.

She nodded eagerly, grateful beyond words.

Katniss tried to reassure her, joking about Haymitch having forgotten to look at his watch.

“You know how he is.” the girl scoffed.

She knew.

That was the reason she was worried.

[ecotone99]

[MS] The Adventures of John Doe: The Case of the Doppelganger

For better format: https://www.quotev.com/story/12220330/The-Adventures-of-John-Doe

Our adventures began in the Fall semester of my Sophomore year. I arrived at the UNCW campus in full spirits. I had accomplished what seemed like years in development, to get good grades, participate enough extracurricular activities, and enough recommendation to get into a university. It was a long road to get to where I am now. My initial attempts were rebuffed with a rejection letter, but, I did not despair. I worked hard to achieve transferable credits from a community college. Stepping on that campus, with my luggage in hand, this was the accumulation of my endeavor. I had decided not to live on campus in their residential rooms, but rather to rent a room somewhat close to the university, at Campus Evolution Villages. The rent of the apartment was somewhat cheap, rather, much cheaper than the other enlisted apartments. I expected to find perhaps some holes in walls, or ripped curtains, or other common attributes that accommodate cheap apartment rooms. Instead, I found a disgruntled fellow stomping out of the apartment even before I went inside.

“You the new tenant?” The man said, stopping in his tracks the moment he saw me. He was gripping a laptop on his side.

“Yes, this is 101 at Campus Evolution villages?”

“Good luck.” He snarled and quickly moves off to his car.

“Wait, what do you mean by good luck.” The man, however, didn’t respond as he drove off.

This exchange had me in doubt. Was the apartment that atrocious? Maybe I should reconsider a pricier apartment complex. Well, I’ll just have to see for myself.

Upon entering the room, I was taken aback by its appearance. It was not deteriorating as I had thought. In fact, it seems to be in decent shape. Orderly, in fact. No mess, no holes in the wall. No curtains ripped or torn. The couch was in somewhat of a good shape. The room didn’t smell of any problematic plumbing or other substance that might be expected of a university student apartment. However, thinking back of the previous encounter, I was quite perplexed as to what might enlist such visceral disgust from that man. As I continued to explore the lower level of this relatively normal apartment, nothing really caught my attention. That was until I heard a loud voice coming from upstairs. “Robert, you still owe me 20!” I didn’t know how to respond to this, nor do I know what I have stumbled myself into. I walked, perhaps instinctively, to the source of that strange declaration.

Up there, sitting in a very orderly room, on an inclined chair, was a fellow typing away on a laptop. He noticed my appearance at the room’s doorframe.

“Oh, Hello. I assume you’re my new tenant?” The young man spoke thrusting his hand forward for a handshake.

“Umm, yeah.” I project my hand outward to shake his hand.

“My name is John Doe, and who may I have the pleasure of speaking to?” John Doe said.

“John Doe?” I said. “Like the name assigned to unidentified bodies?”

“Precisely.” We both waited in silence. I was expecting him to explain his name, but he never did.

“And may I be privileged with your name?” John Doe said.

“Oh, it’s Steven. Steven Myint.”

“Well, Steven, it’s a pleasure making your acquittance.”

“Yeah, you too. John Doe.”

He sat there for a bit, looking at me as if analyzing every feature.

“Is John Doe your real name?” I said at last.

“No, no it’s not. But it does well to suit its purpose.” John Doe replied.

“Purpose?”

“I am, what you would call, a consulting hacker, a web sleuth, an internet detective. The IT guy.”

“What do you mean?”

“I solve crimes, internet crimes. Crimes committed by ordinary people becoming extraordinary under the guise of anonymity. You’ll be surprised what people do when you don’t know their name.”

“Right.”

John Doe motioned me to a chair next to him. “Come, sit.” I placed my luggage down and sat down beside him. “Coffee?” He asked getting ready to pour some in a cup.

“No thanks,” I replied.

“Something stronger perhaps?”

“No, really, I’m fine.”

Following this was another bout of uncomfortable silence. Finally, John Doe spoke first. “Something bothering you?”

“No. It’s just, you folks tend not to have a good reputation.”

“Us folks?” He asked.

“Hackers.” I blurted.

John Doe lean back. “Well, your concerns aren’t without merit. There are many brilliant people out there. More brilliant than myself. But brilliance does not correlate with morality, especially of decent moral aptitude. These people, whom you associate as hackers, use their brilliance to find ingenious ways to gain unauthorized access to data at the cost of their victim’s misfortune. In their mind, they possess strength, or knowledge, which in the course of nature, triumphs over the weak, and dull.”

“But there are others.” John Doe said slowly swinging left and right on his chair. “Others who cannot, who will not abide by such an outlook. Who does not believe that the weak are to be bullied by the strong. Others, who are just as strong as those strong bullies. Hacking is a tool, Steven. It is neither evil nor good. Such morality can only be assigned by the one who uses such a tool, as applies to other tools and techniques of human creation. I happen to be very good at using this tool, and many others of similar caliber.”

“Really?” I said.

“Quite. I presume you met with Robert. The ruffled individual who stomped out this apartment?”

“I did.”

“Robert was a fellow tenant of one month. He had wagered 20 dollars that I would be able to crack into his laptop. Of course, I accepted, and within two weeks I had broken in into his laptop.”

“And how did you manage that?” I asked.

“Simple, by the method of shoulder surfing.”

“Shoulder surfing?”

“Indeed Steven, it is the simplest of the hacker’s repertoire. Some might even consider it not truly hack, but it accomplishes the task of hacking by its definition. You see, Steven, Robert was expecting me to observe him when he uses his laptop, especially filling in his laptop password. He was expectedly cautious around me. But where caution increase in one area, it tends to decrease in another. I was indeed observing him every time he would type his password on his laptop, but not as John Doe his roommate. I was John Doe the random guy walking alongside Chancellor walk. I was John Doe the classmate of his genetic class. I was John Doe the fellow who suspiciously sat behind him every time at the mess hall. I simply followed him around, in disguise of course. Day by day I procured letter by letter until eventually, the password manifested.

“So you just stalked the guy?”

“Indeed, and in the end, my efforts paid off. Of course, having reached this far, I was curious as to further figure out this Robert. You’ll find he has a large homework folder. It seems he’s quite fascinated with a detailed depiction of the female anatomy.”

“So you also invaded his privacy. You know John, you don’t seem like one of those good guys you described earlier.”

At this John Doe chuckled. “Well, with every angel to guide your way, a devil pulls you to the opposite. I guess the devil pulled harder in this instance.”

“Right well. I think it’s worth to mention business. You have a job? How you intend to pay your share of the rent. And don’t tell me you hack bank accounts by stalking people as well.”

“Of course not. You’ll find that my rent has already been paid in favor.”

“Already paid in favor? What do you mean?”

“I mean that the landlord owes me a debt for helping her wit-“

“You know what. Whatever.” I stood up. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“And you as well.”

Truth be told, my dear reader. It wasn’t a pleasure to meet this strange man. I didn’t know if I should report him to the police or the FBI. Moreover, I didn’t feel secure with any of my possession with this criminal. But the rent for the month had already been paid. So, I resolved to stay with this John Doe till the end of the month, with plans to move out by the month’s end. The orientation of the university had come and gone without much event, and moving my stuff into the apartment, though never an easy task, had been accomplished in due time. All the while, I observed John Doe. He mostly stayed in his room, typing away some script or code, or running some strange experiment. I recall he had a jar of turmeric and was extracting something from that yellow powder. John Doe rarely slept, and on occasions when he would, would pass out the whole day.

Aside from that, the following days were uneventful. Classes had started, syllabus read, and us students returned to our residence awaiting the storm that followed the calm of starting classes. I resolved to get ahead of my classes and study ahead of time. With this attitude, I made my way back to the apartment when I happened to encounter a small old woman. She was the first to speak to me.

“Ah, are you the new tenet of 434 Racine drive?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.

“You can call me Ms. Jeanie and good, I’ve been trying to have someone take that apartment, and more so have them stay. Folks tend to leave in a month or so.”

“Oh,” I nervously chuckled.

“Mmh! I even lowered the typical rent cost to see if that would attract younglings. I assume that’s how I got you!” Ms. Jeanie laughed. “So, how is he, the fellow with the silly name?”

“John Doe?”

“Yeah, him.”

“Well, he’s out of the ordinary-.”

“Extraordinary!” Ms. Jeanie cuts in.

“Yeah, um, I was told that he was not paying rent. Might I ask the reason for this?”

“Oh.” Ms. Jeanie blushed. “It’s because John Doe helped me with something. It’s so embarrassing.”

“Oh, then, you don’t have to-.”

“No no.” Ms. Jeanie cut in. “I think you ought to know. It’s only fair you know. You see, being around 65, and losing my husband some years ago to lung cancer. It gets very lonely sometimes. And, well, I thought it’s about time I reenter into a dating relationship.”

“I see.”

“Now, you know, nowadays you younglings have the internet and all that and Ruth, my best friend, said I ought to go on a dating website. Now on the very first day, I found me a man. A young man in fact. And bless his heart he was so kind, said many sweet and lovely things. We had kept contact on the internet for some months. The young man said he was a missionary in Thailand, and you know, he would ask funds and contribution to sustain his congregation there. God, I feel so stupid thinking about it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, he would message me, apparently in prison, how he would be locked up for teaching about Christ and how he misses his faith-adopted orphans that would go starving without him. He would request that I pay for his release to help him out and all. And it just seemed so convincing at the time. Well, by the time I figured it was a trick, I had lost most of my savings. I thought I’d end up having to beg in the streets. But, thankfully, Mr. Doe was able to track down the criminal. I didn’t know how he did it, but he said something about following the transaction. It turns out our missionary in Thailand wasn’t a missionary or in Thailand at all! No sir, he was some supermarket employee in his mid-20s living in Tampa, Florida. Now I don’t know what Mr. Doe did, but surprisingly, all my money returned to my savings account with an apology letter from the fella himself! I can’t tell you how grateful I am of Mr. Doe. When I figured out Mr. Doe didn’t have a place to live, well, this is the least I could do for him.”

“I see, he seems quite generous to have helped you in this horrible situation,” I said.

“Yes, he’s a good kid. Anyway, I don’t want to keep you here too long. You know how college students are, always having to go somewhere. Good day!”

When I arrived at my apartment. I had noticed there was an extra car in the parking lot. Suspecting just a random person parking in this lot. I didn’t give it much thought until I found another pair of pointed, elevated heeled shoes different from John Doe or myself at our doorstep, indicating that there must be a visitor. I was perplexed. I never thought John Doe to be a socializer, more so to have a girlfriend or any friend of that matter due to his introvert tendencies. I walked into my apartment and immediately got a whiff of perfume. Somebody is definitely here. I walked up the stairs and looked into my estranged roommate’s room to discover John Doe, sitting on his usual chair, and opposite to him, a morose looking woman, the same age as myself.

“Doe?” I said, which followed with John Doe turning to face me.

“Ah, Steven, an opportune time. Come in.”

I walked into the room to find the room illuminated with only John Doe’s numerous monitors behind him and a disheveled woman sitting opposite to him.

“I don’t mean to intrude-.”

“Not at all!” John Doe interrupted. “On the contrary, you’re going to help me with this fascinating case.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Rose, this is my partner, Steven.”

“Partner?” I said but was ignored as John Doe continued.

“If I may trouble you, Rose, to recount your story as my partner hadn’t heard it fully.”

“Oh, okay.” Her face, already darkened by the dimly lit room, seems to have grown darker as if this story she was about to tell me troubled her greatly.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I said.

“No, no, if you’re Mr. Doe’s partner. Then it’s only right that you know too.”

“This all happen when I was about to graduate from my Senior year in my local high school. I was the leader of the Varsity volleyball team. This was our last year together, and growing up playing volleyball with those girls since middle school, this year was really special to us. I also got accepted into Harvard on full scholarship over my merit in the ACT/SAT scores as well as being what they said “an exceptional leader in your community.” I had a boyfriend, we’ve been dating since starting high school.” The woman stopped, and looked away, shaking her head, as if remembering all those things she once had. “All of that’s gone now.”

“Gone?” I said. I noticed tears starting to form on her eyes.

“A video, excuse me.” John Doe grabbed some tissues and handed them to the lady.

“Thank you. A video found itself on my social media feed. A porn video, my face and all. I knew something was wrong a few days ago. The students looked at me all strange like. My locker marked with the word SLUT. It was done by the usual delinquent boys, so I didn’t pay much attention to it. But then I was called to the principal office. He was questioning me about being loose or having sex or something. I just sat there, confused as all hell! It was then walking back home, that a friend of mine sent the damn video.”

“She showed me the video, it was my face doing some sick thing to a man. But that’s not me! That’s not me…” Rose paused here, trying to recollect herself. “But it didn’t matter what I said. To everyone else, that girl in that porn was me. I got kicked off the Varsity volleyball team, and barred from playing, said I wasn’t representing them. My Harvard acceptance and scholarship was rescinded because I “wasn’t what they expected me to be based on my application.”

“They tend to do that.” John Doe cut in.

“Kicked off the student council because my actions were not ‘that of a role model.’ All the friends I thought I had left, giving one excuse after another. ‘My parents didn’t want me to be associated with you.’ ‘Oh my Gosh, I didn’t know you were such a slut.’ Kevin broke it off, four years of relationship. Said I was a slut, a whore, that I betrayed him. Me? Of all the people I thought he would at least believe me. Four years of saying I’ll always be with you, over in a second. None of them believed me. My years of working hard to get into a good university, years of building and molding relationships, years of building my reputation, the future I tried to cultivate, it only took one video made by God knows who…”

By now the poor woman was in tears, and she vigorously tried to wipe them off. A heavy silence fell upon this room. I was lost for words. What can I say to a woman who’s entire future was tarnished over something like this. I looked over to John Doe to see if he had anything to say, but what I saw startled me. John Doe sat, quiet and contemplative, but within his eyes, I saw something. Fiery indignation for justice, to rectify this most unfortunate circumstance.

After Rose had finished wiping most of her tears away, she looked up to John Doe and said: “So, Mr. Doe, can you prove my innocence? Will you take my case?”

After Rose had shown us the video and given other information that John Doe requested, she departed from our apartment. I turned to John and asked, “How should we start this.”

“Well, Steven, our first method is to see if what our client claims are true.”

“You mean to say you don’t believe her?”

“I’m saying I don’t have enough evidence to believe her.” John Doe opens up the video observes it entirely.

“We start my dear friend, with the video in question. Because, what I suspect, is Ms. Rose is an unfortunate victim of deepfakes.”

“Deepfakes? What’s that?”

“It’s an AI algorithm with the ability to swap just about anyone’s face with another. Here is a famous example.” John Doe opens up a video of superman interviewing a woman. “Notice anything?”

“I don’t see anything, it’s just Henry Cavill and Amy Adams.

“What about this one?” John Doe opens the same video, but to my surprise, Amy Adams had turned into Nicholas Cage with a wig. The transition from Amy Adam and Nicholas Cage was smooth. The facial features were all the same.

“Amazing.” I murmured.

“Indeed, an amazing piece of technology which is unfortunately abused in our case. If what Rose is saying is true, and that woman in that porn video is not her. We simply have to find either her video on fakeapp, which helps generate these deepfakes; or, we simply find the original source of the video, as you can observe, deepfakes can only manipulate the face. In either of these scenarios, if proven true, we can definitely confirm that what our client says is true.”

“Therefore, all we must do now is to pause it, take a picture, and reverse google search. If not for the face, we may expect to find google giving the original porn source.” John did as he said, but when we reversed google image searched, we were always reverted to the same video.

“Interesting…” John Doe murmured as he clicked websites to websites but was constantly being shown the original video with Rose’s face.

“It seems, what we have before us, my dear friend, is indeed the original video.” John Doe shakes his head. “Or, the original video has been deleted, which means we aren’t dealing with an amateur copying and pasting Rose’s face on some obscure porn video using fakeapp, but rather someone with a large repertoire of Rose’s picture edited into the original video. Whoever did this, knew what they were doing.

“What do you mean, John?”

“I mean, someone has a large stock of Rose’s pictures and a large stock of pictures similar to Rose to train the Deepfake model on. The app, I presume, has a script whose function is to download, if fed, a large number of images to its home directory. God! This means our criminal understands what deepfake is to its very basics.”

“But how is this possible?”

“Social media perhaps, the scourge of man’s privacy.” John Doe said as he scours through Rose’s Instagram, Twitter, every social media Rose had given to John.

“But I don’t understand, if the perpetrator used images from the social media, assuming there even is enough, aren’t there any background or even unrelated features in the environment that might distract our character facial features.”

“My dear friend, that’s the beauty of the app. This app sifts through these images to perform face detection. Very specific face detection in fact. A method called HOG.”

“HOG?”

“Yes, Histograms of Oriented Gradients. Ever wondered how cameras were able to have real-time face detection features? It simply uses HOG. What HOG does is that it turns our image of interest to black and white. Then, observing each and every pixel, the algorithm measures in vectors, from light-colored pixel toward dark-colored pixel within it’s surrounding. This process accumulates to every pixel having some sort of arrow pointed toward to darker neighbor. Now if we reduced our image to simply arrows, which indicates the direction of light pixel to darker pixel, we have created an albeit simplified but consistent image, consistent in that the image is the same representation of the original, but simply in arrows.”

“You’re losing me, Doe.”

“Don’t stop me now I’m already in the zone. Now saving all these directions generated by the arrows takes too much storage. However, if we break down these arrows into boxes, count how many directions are in said boxes, and compare it with a premade HOG face pattern from many different face images, there are distinguishable similarities. Distinguishable enough for the algorithm to detect a face. What HOG has done, is reduce the said image to basic structures of a face, to be detected by a premade pattern HOG has already generated of a face. We have, therefore, detected our face.”

“Now, what this implies is that these images from social media and I suspect other pictures due to the extremely similar facial feature of Rose in this porn video, had been cropped and saved somewhere. The Fakeapp can only do so much, but, it seems that our criminal has a homebrew model, based on the structure of fakeapp, but that is more trained to encode with the image data set that this criminal provided.

“Trained to encode?”

“Yes, to be able to tell apart between the original image and the image provided. It must be very good since it’s able to keep up frame by frame of the original video.” John Doe says, looking back at the porn video. John Doe chuckled, “a really good convolutional neural network, with its own distinct set of pool and operations. It must be designed to learn features from the image data set. Which means this model might have a very good autoencoder.

“Autoencoder?”

“Yes, it’s also a convolutional neural network whose purpose is to attempt to recreate the input image. Typically, the input image is of lower resolution, which the autoencoder will attempt to swap face with the desired image. How? You might ask.

“I didn-“

“One encoder will take the image of the original source and distorts it to its basic vector that identifies core features of the face. Now, this autoencoder also has a decoder that will attempt to covert that basic vector back to its original face. Of course, error abounds, but this autoencoder is training to minimize said error. Here our autoencoder learns. Because once the autoencoder learns, a second autoencoder utilizing the same encoder to distort the original image to it’s a basic vector which then utilizes a different decoder that converts this basic vector into another image, in our case, into Rose’s face. Both these autoencoders run at the same time in our convolutional neural network with each image frame of the porn video, so it is training to reduce its error all the while converting our pornstar face to that of our fallen star Rose.”

“So what does this all mean?”

“This means, my dear friend, we have digitized the mythical doppelganger. In the flesh, or, perhaps in the pixel. But the human mind has reached only to the face of the doppelganger power. The body is left untouched. However, due to the fact that this technology of Deepfakes has restricted itself to facial images, where I am stumped is that we cannot find an original video source of which our Rose’s image was doctored upon. Now why might that be, I wonder. Perhaps we should do more searching.”

Thus, my night intent for studying spent away searching porn sites for the original video.

A few days go by. I could barely pay attention to my lectures, thinking about what other location I can find that original source. When I returned to the apartment, I saw John Doe scouring through different porn sites looking for keywords that might reveal the original source. His hair was ruffled and a curly mess. His eyes were bloodshot with dark bags underneath. Cups of noodles were scattered across his floor.

“Steven, there is no audio, but based on elementary lip reading, I can deduce some keywords, however, they’re not showing up. Nothing, it’s like it’s been cleaned from the internet, and all that remains are the copies.”

“John! Your mail has been pili-Oh my goodness!” Ms. Jeanie walks in. “I didn’t know it was that hour in time.”

“No, no you misunderstood us, Ms. Jeanie. This is for a case we are investigating.

“Hmph, I’m sure it is. Anyway, John, your inbox is full.”

“I’ll get to it, Ms. Jeanie.” John Doe said barely looking at her. Ms. Jeanie then closed our door to leave us to our investigation.

John Doe leans back from his chair and rubs his temple. “Steven, I’m beginning to think we are looking at the original video. This is not a common Deepfake case, where one’s image would be pasted on a pre-made pornstar video. The body composition is very similar to our client, and its mannerism does not provide any telling indication. No distinguishable mole or blemish. Even the hair is the same!"

“You mean to say this is really Rose who did this?”

“An improbable consideration now among the probable.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said. “Why would she destroy her own future like this.”

“Because people make stupid mistakes. And never owns up to it till it catches them in their tracks.”

“You’re telling me you don’t believe her?” I said, astonished at mere consideration.

John Doe looked down, in deep contemplation.

“Don’t tell me you don’t believe her?” I repeated. “Her whole future was ruined because of this video, and no one believed her!”

John Doe looked back at the video, in all its grainy quality expected of an amateur porn video.

“John, she has no one to turn to. Don’t tell me you don’t believe her.”

“No, Steven, I do believe her. I would’ve never taken the case if this was a goose chase. Look.” John points at the video as it played. “She doesn’t blink.”

“Excuse me?”

“Her face, she doesn’t blink. Look.”

I looked at the video as John Doe played and true enough. There was an unnatural pause between each blink.

“The human eye blinks about every four seconds. Hers are two minutes apart.”

“What does this mean, John?”

“This means, my dear friend, that although this criminal is capable of using a program that utilizes deepfakes great ability with a great repertoire of images of our client, which results in a case of almost identical mimicry in facial features. However, pictures usually are taken, at least the ones that are kept, with the eyes open rather than closed. Neglecting this fault, our criminal has a poor understanding of human anatomy, and…” John paused for a bit as if eureka had struck him silent. “..where there is strength in the similarity of the face, perhaps this criminal has neglected in other fields of technological nature… I got it!”

“You got it? What do you mean Doe?”

“Steven, you magnificent bastard! The metadata! Of course, how could I have forgotten about such a thing.”

“Metadata?”

“EXIF info, Metadata, whatever you want to call it. I was trying to crack the code of the discrepancy of the video and was obsessing over finding the original video when I should’ve been taking the metadata of the image frame.”

John Doe paused frame after frame of the video and copied it, URL and the image itself, to some program called Exif editor. “Of course,” said Doe, “there is a margin of error when procuring these data, but we have a large collection of frame images in this video, overtly enough to procure what we want.” Doe opened his software and inputted the image, but nothing came up. I felt my stomach drop.

“Don’t fear, Mr. Myint, some prominent websites have processors that erase metadata once the video or picture is uploaded, however,” John Doe opens up another website that contained the video, “In the malicious nature of this criminal, with the unfound desire to spread this video, this criminal had inadvertently uploaded this video in some poorly administered website whose care is more so to ensure pedophilic content is not uploaded then to ensure the metadata is erased. Bingo!” And with that, before us, the metadata that John Doe was raving about appeared before us.”

“Serial number of the video recorder, GPS location, what sort of video recorder, date, John Doe this is amazing!”

“Indeed, and all data points to September 27 of 2016 at this location. Let's see, the longitude and latitude coordinate give us…Here.” John Doe points to the screen.

“What’s there?” I asked.

“Our porn set.”

We arrived at an unsuspecting motel called Sleepers Motel. The place looked like it was about to crumble at any moment. The parking lot had a weed growing within it’s cracked concrete.

“An unassuming, dilapidated building. What a perfect place to commit a crime!” John exclaimed.

As we got out of my car I asked, “So, what are we looking for again?”

“The room at which the video was taken. Some hints from the video revealed a hole in the upper left corner of the wall to the opposite of the bed, and of course, the bed in question, decorative white sheet with a repeating pattern of flowers. We want to see if we can find any clues that might aid in our investigation.”

“And then?”

“Once we find our room and confirm it’s number. We observe from the motel logbook of who stayed. I’m sure the receptionist can give us a description as well.”

“John, what makes you think the receptionist will let us see the logbook, moreso comply?”

“I’m very confident, my dear friend, that our dear receptionist will comply entirely.”

We entered the motel, and, were immediately greeted by the receptionist.

“Shit, ya’ll sure took your time getting ‘ere.”

“We got stuck in traffic, I’m sure you know the driving prowess of this city.”

“Whatever. ‘ere.” The receptionist gave us some keys. “Just, just make sure ya’ll do this quickly aight?”

We scoured room to room. There weren’t many patrons of this Sleepy Motel, so we didn’t quite intrude into occupied rooms.

“Steven, come over here! I think I’ve found it.”

I ran up to room 11 with the door ajar and John inside, inspecting the place. I opened up the video to confirm if this was the area. This was it.

“So this was where our criminal did their shoot?” I asked.

“Yes,” John Doe pull over the sheet and looked underneath the bed. “Hmm.” He looked at the wall, the curtains, the bed frame. “They sure cleaned up the place, nothing here reveals any clues.”

We made our way back to the receptionist. “Y'all done? Am I clear?” He asked.

“Not yet, may I see the logbook,” John asked.

The receptionist presented the logbook. John flips over to September 27, 2016, and scoured through the rooms till he reached room 11, occupied by two fellows named Jezebel Ginsberg and Hunter Carver.

“Do you how these two individuals looked like when renting this room on September 27?” John asked the receptionist.

“How’d I s’pose to know? I don’t member the faces of every livin critter that come up this motel.”

“Based on the empty parking lot when we arrived. You’re not being very honest with me Josh. There’s no point in delaying this any further.”

Josh looks away, then back at John. “You promise you’d delete them photos?”

“On my word, Josh.”

“Cause I don’t want my misses finding em, else I won’t belong in this world.”

“I promise.”

“Them two young’uns that came renting a room at that day. Theys never spoke their name, but they’d look like some high school students.”

“How’d you know that?” John asked.

“Boy had some sport coat on. Don’t member the name or nothin, but it was a tiger.”

“Isn’t that high school Herbert Hugh football mascot?” I said.

“The physical characteristics, Josh, how did those two look like?”

“Uh, well, the girl had blonde hair, um, blue eyes definitely. Smooth face, uh, no make up at all. Damn well look pretty I must say. Sharp eyebrows. Flat nose.

“And the boy?”

“Uhh, tall, 6 feet I think. Brown hair sorta cut like a military man. Green eyes.”

“Any distinguishing features, freckles, moles? Pores? Pimples? Anything?”

“Freckles! The boy had freckles I think.”

“I don’t need an ‘I think.’ Are you sure.” John said.

“Yeah yeah I’m sure, that boy had freckles.”

“Then that is where we must go. Come, Steven lets go.”

“So uh, those photos are gone right?”

“Like they never existed,” John said.

As we made our way back to the car. “Photos? What was he talking about.”

“I caught the receptionist having an affair with a woman, the boss’s wife no doubt.” Took some pictures, blackmailed, and that is that.

“I don’t think that’s right, John.”

We both get in our car. “What’s right or wrong is of no relevancy, Steven. We have our lead. Take us back to the apartment!”

For the next few days, John Doe could not be found in his room. I found it hard to study for classes as my mind constantly wandered off to what John Doe was doing. It was not normal in my experience to see John Doe out of his room for this long. I wondered what could have prompted him to take such action. Well, little did I know my answer was a few knocks away.

“Steven! Steven!” The familiar voice of John could be heard as he knocked on my room. I rushed to the door and quickly opened it. “Steven, get dressed. We’re going to dinner?”

“Dinner? Where? With Whom?”

John Doe grabbed his coat, “why, at Rose’s residence of course.”

“It is always wonderful,” said Mrs. Evergreen, mother of Rose our client, “when Rose’s friends come over to our home. Our daughter has been quite lonely for some time.”

“Of her own doing.” Rose sister, Tracey, sneered.

“Tracey, behave yourself.” Mr. Evergreen said.

“Well Rose has been quite a helping hand at Good Shepard center. We’re just concerned as to her sudden disappearance. She used to be a regular volunteer.” John Doe said.

“Indeed, she has.” Mrs. Evergreen gave a side glance at Rose, who was quietly eating her food.

“Um, if I may ask, do you happen to have a bathroom I can use?” John Doe said.

“Certainly Martin, there’s one upstairs.

“Thank you.” John Doe got up and gave me a quick glance. I took a deep breath. I guess we’re doing this.

“Well, Johnny, I was told yours is a miracle story. Tell how did you overcome alcoholism.” Said Mr. Evergreen.

“Ahem, well, it’s not an easy one. In fact, I’m still dealing with withdrawal symptoms. It almost makes me want to go back to the bottle. You see, it’s actually a recent thing. I haven’t really overcome it yet.” I said, trying my best to make it sound convincing.

“I see, when did you quit exactly?” Said Mr. Evergreen.

“Tell you the truth. I had a moment of weakness and partook of the devil liquor three days before. But I haven’t had a single drink since.”

“Goodness, well I do hope you are improving that. I hear detox is very difficult. But I’m sure the folks at the Good Shepard center is ensuring that you do.” Said Mrs. Evergreen.

“Yes, they do, they do-.” Then, I tried to stiffen myself.

“Johnny, you okay son?” Mr. Evergreen said.

Against all embarrassment, I forcefully yelled so as it expels as much oxygen out of my lungs.

Everyone got startled. “What the hell is going on?” Mr. Evergreen said.

“He’s going into a seizure!” Rose said.

“A what!” Mrs. Evergreen shouted.

At that cue, I threw myself off the chair and started shaking as violently I can.

“Quick, someone put something between his tongue before he bites it off!” Said, Tracey

“No! That’s just a choking hazard!” Rose replied rushing into the living room to grab a pillow

“Then grab his head so he doesn’t break his spine!” Said Tracey.

“No, we don’t want to restrict spinal movement while he is in seizure, that could make things worse!” Rose said.

“Damn it, Rose, stop being a smart ass for once in your life! You’re going to get this man killed!”

Rose ignored the tirade of her sister and placed a pillow on the back of my head.

“I’m calling the ambulance!” Mrs. Evergreen said.

After shaking as much as I could, I laid there, motionless.

“Is he…is he dead?” Mrs. Evergreen gasped.

“No thanks to fucking Rose!” Tracey said.

“No, mom,” Rose places a pillow under my head, “this is the postictal state. The brain is recovering.”

John Doe came down from the stairs. “I heard shouting, what happened?”

“Your friend, Johnny, went into a seizure.” Said Mr. Evergreen.

“It must be detox induced,” Rose said. “Because he said he took some alcohol during his withdrawal period.”

The ambulance arrived and did their assessment on me. I, of course, refused transportation. Driving back to our apartment, I cupped my face in my hands.

“Fine acting, are you majoring in theater by any chance?”

“Shut up. Did you get it?”

“Of course I did, thanks to your operatic performance.”

For the rest of the story and better format: https://www.quotev.com/story/12220330/The-Adventures-of-John-Doe

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